Greetings to ALL,
I hope this post finds everyone in good health and spirits. Like my profile states, I am running an ATI 5870 1 GB 5DDR VC. It had been almost a year since I updated the drivers for the V/C, so I went ahead and updated them from v12.1 to v12.6. I know, I know, I broke the cardinal rule of the Mechanical World..."If it ain't broke, don't fix it". Well, right on Que, my TrackIR 5.0 stopped working. I checked the Natural Point FAQ site and the OFF web page. After going through the suggested steps, w/o any success, (approx 6 hrs), I called the Natural Point support folks today. There is a know issue with ATI software and TrackIR 5.0 software. The fix is just to un-check the "Triple Buffering" option box. After I did that, everything works fine. Thats after I removed/re-installed OFF and several versions of AMD software. The folks at Natural Point said to expect a software fix for this issue "soon" from them.


Once again, my stupidity never ceases to amaze me. I hope others may gain from my "adventure"


For you folks running ATI cards, here are the settings in CCC that I find to run well on my system:

ATI Software version 12.6

A/A.....Edge Detect 8x (24 samples)
Check Morphological Filtering
A/F.....16x
Catalyst A.I......Check Performance,Check Enable Surface Format Optimization
Tesselation.....Check AMD Optimized
MipMap Detail Level..... Check Performace
Vertical Refresh.....Check Quality (Always On)
A/A Mode.....Check Multi-Sample (Performace)
**Open G/L.....Un-Check Triple Buffering**

Within OFF Congif.exe, my settings are:

*All "Slidders" set to 4
Under Over-Rides Tab-
Un-check the 'Dual Pass Render' box
Check the 'High Resolution Z-Buffer' and the box below it
If you wish, disable the intro movie and music (I do) and block targeting cone and unsupported hardware


Under Texture Info-I set the following:

Composite Terrain Texture Pool-Managed
Composite Terrain Texture Usage- Rendertarget
Composite Aircraft Texture Pool-Manage
Composite Aircraft Texture Usuage-Rendetarget
Vertex Buffer Pool-Manage
Index Buffer Pool- Default
Full Screen Swap Effect- I use Discard (some use 'Flip' setting)
Click on "Save"

As the inst say, set your monitor for its largest (naitive setting) mine is 1980x 1080x32 24" Wide Screen, FOV 27/15 (Thanks Olham)

With these settings and my system as listed, the FPS ranges from a low of 32 to a max of 65. I used to get Whited "jaggies" when I would rotate my head with TrackIR too fast...not any more. Visuals are very good, if not great.

Oh, BTW, I do have my ATI 5780 1 GB V/C O/C'd (w/their software).
**The High Performance GPU Clock is set to 870 (factory is 725)**
**The High Performance Memory Clockk is set to 1130 (factory is 1000)**

I also had my system OC'd...from 2.8 Ghz to almost 3.6 GHz with the Intel on-board software. After runnning the system OC'd for a few months and benching marking several apps, I realized I was not getting enough "bang for the buck". In other words, the slight increase in perforfance was not worth the increased wear and tear on my system (through heat build-up and RAM modules not covered by my warranty). So, I backed every down to the stock settings and have not noticed any difference.

'Nuff Said for now....

Luther1517

Great post for ATI users thanks Luther1517

If anyone thinks it worth putting in the FAQ let me know.

Overlocking can work very well as OFF and CFS3 like raw CPU mhz, but of course you need to take care of memory speeds etc too - not good having a mega CPU Mhz then low memory setting making it wait - better memory will usually give you more options in that department.
Also if you also only using software to o/c you need to check on things like CPU throttling and other BIOS options that can interfere and slow it all down again
(plus you need decent cooler and test core temperatures properly once you do serious overclocks of course.

Next time be sure to check the pc hardware forum too. It would have saved you a few hours of frustration. Now go do a BIOS upgrade to get back in the saddle :-) I had the same thing happen to me and my swear jar is filled to the brim.

http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/3577387/Updated_vid_card_drivers_now_T.html#Post3577387

-C-

Thanks Charlie,
I have had the Triple Buffering enabled for so long, it never even entered my (somewhat) feable mind. This is really odd...it never caused a problem when I was using the AMD 12.1 drivers, but as soon as I updated them to the v12.6----"BOOM" . Go figure. Thanks for the Heads-Up regarding the HW forum....I would never have tought to search there. Is that on CombatAce? Because I did search for "TrackIR" here on SimHQ and only returned a few hits.

Thanks again,

Luther1517

No I actually meant the pc hardware forum here at SimHQ. I find the search functions at these forums leave a bit to be desired though. I guess Track IR doesn't get a hit when you search for trackir or track-ir. Glad you got it fixed though. My last trackir setup failed and I spent weeks trying to get it working again. Finally ordered a new unit (which worked fine).

Happy hunting!

-C-

Thanks a lot for the help, Luther - I had the same problem,
but instead of searching for a solution, I wrote the backup
of my C:partition back, and all was like before (but no new
driver, of course).

You should post a link to this post in the two main forums
(General Discussion) - some people (like me) don't visit the
sub forums (I only found this through Polovski).
(If you did post it there, I have overlooked it; in that case
forget about this).

As for your graphic settings: I will try them out; they are
a bit different than mine.
But one thing you should definitely change: put the Quality
Slider for "Aircraft" on 5 - you want them look best.
If that should drop your frame rate, you could put "Terrain
Detail" on "3" - that is more than sufficient for me.

Thanks again, Luther.