Setting FXAA to on solved the little stuttering i had, so I suggest for those who are still suffering from stutters, to try it. I set the dynamic tiling also to on, dunno if it's a combination of both but anyway. No more stuttering. Contrary to Hellsahdes suggestion to turn off Gammacorrection, i set it back to on because it set the colours better.

Thanks for tinkering around and your suggestions, Hellshade

Well for me it's also the frontline in campaign that sometimes makes my game to stutter considerably. When I'm playing in QC, outside or far from frontlines or even near the frontlines but at high altitudes I get no stutters but when fighting near the frontline at medium or low altitudes I get some considerable stutters.
I'm also posting here again because I see many suggestions regarding Nvidia video cards but none regarding AMD/ATI cards which is what I have.

Anyway my system is:

Intel E7500 @2.93Ghz
AMD/ATI HD7850 with 2GB VRAM
8 GB of RAM
Windows 7 Ultimate - 64 bits

Currently the graphic cars settings running with WOFF are:
2xAA (override application settings)
Filter: Standard
AA method: Multisampling
Morphological Filtering: Off
4xAF (override application settings)
Texture Filtering Quality: Performance
Surface Format Optimization: Off
Wait for Vertical Refresh: Off, unless application specifies
OpenGL buffering: Off
Tessellation Mode: override application settings
Maximum Tessellation: Off


So if there's someone with ATI graphics or even a similar system as mine that managed to get rid from stuttering near the frontline, please help and the request also extends to others that might have any ideas to help!

BTW, my graphics setting for WOFF in the Workshops are:
Graphic detail: 5-3-2-3-3
In cloud fog: off
Terrain detail textures: Normal
Aircraft Skin Res: Normal
Woods/forest density: Medium
Resolution: 1280x1024 (my monitor's native resolution)


BTW and as someone already mentioned in this thread, could we have the "CFS3cfg.exe" (or something like that) file/options back? I'm asking this because I remember that there were some options that helped VERY, VERY MUCH regarding stutters and ATI cards in OFF P3 (only after messing with those options did I see the stutters gone in OFF P3), options that are missing in WOFF Workshops.

Take a look at my post Link to Immersion Killers thread

I have a 2.66 ghz board and an ATI 7870 card not far off from yours. Try my settings. According to the Devs and the information on the WOFF web site my system is very low end!

Thanks for the reply Robert but while your tips seem to have improved FPS a bit unfortunally they didn't solve the stuttering issues (perhaps with your tips it stutters a little bit less but only a little bit, I'm afraid).
After several tests from my end with different graphical settings I came to the conclusion and I strongly believe (I'm 99% sure) that what brings my system down to "its knees" or resuming the cause of the stuttering is definitely the artillery explosions.
What seems to prove this is when there's a major battle/offensive there is major stuttering when flying over the frontlines.
When there isn't any major battle/offensive there is only minor and very occasional stuttering which is coincidental with an artillery shell explosion.

For example:
With my British pilot currently playing in 1915 which entered in combat during May 1915 (during the 2nd battle of Ypres) I experienced major stuttering when flying over the frontline. But after the 2nd battle of Ypres ended I only experienced minor stuttering which didn't affect gameplay much, BTW.
Now I created an another pilot, this one German (Jasta 8) and I'm currently playing in October 1916 which is during the Battle of the Somme and again I'm experiencing major stuttering which definitely affects gameplay.

So it seems clear to me that the bottleneck here is the artillery shell explosions - I don't even need to be looking into one artillery shell explosions, I just need to hear one in order to experience stuttering.

ric;

I guess what I was trying to point out is that we both are processor constrained and that may be the real problem here. we both need some real cpu powerover 3.xx if we hope to really stop this. our gpu's are adequate but our cpu's are not.

There seems to be a couple of threads on this topic of settings and stuttering. Maybe combining them as someone suggested previously could be done somehow.

I think there should be some type of methadology for testing the stuttering and FPS issues. I've come up with my own testing method which helped me to localize and somewhat fix my issues with acceptable level of gameplay. Here's what I did:

1. Create a test pilot in the Flanders area in early 1918 stationed somewhere near the front.

2. Made sort of a "baseline" to start from:

a. Quick Combat

i. Basic settings: Workshop all minimized, nvidia inspector all default global profile. (I did this experiment with TrackIR before and found that it produced the least amount of stutters with the lowering my smooth setting to 4). Then optimized my desktop themes.

- Parked at airfield: inside cockpit with no looking around, then looking to right, then left, then behind. Recorded the FPS fluctuations along with any notes on stutters. Repeated these for the next steps.

- Parked at airfield with time compression (only x2 and x4)

- Flying level (~500m) no airbases with and without time compression.

- Flying over airbase only without time compression.

- Flying over the Front with and without time compression. This one was difficult to get a consistant amount of activity including shelling and # of aircrafts. But I did this many time to get an average recording.

ii. Maxed Settings: Same as above

Then I started to tweak the workshop and nvidia settings one by one from the basic settings and recorded the differences.

I did the same for the Campaign mode as above.

A summary of my results are:

QC I could leave everything maxed out without any noticble effect in gameplay. The issue (as everyone already knows) is with the campaign mode. So, here are the campaign settings:

Workshop:
AA needs to be set at x8 (not 2 or 4)
Aircraft, texture, scenery, effects seem to not make a difference setting them anywhere from 1 to 3.

4 and 5 I get an overall 2-3 FPS fluctuation with slight stuttering when: (1)turning my head right while parked (i.e. facing the hangers), (2) flying over an airbase (3) flying over the front with activity.

Texture detail did not make a difference
Forest density made a difference of 1-2 FPS but no stutters.
Cloud fog needs to be off
Air activity did not make a difference between low and medium. I did not test high.

THE LARGEST FPS and STUTTERS came from setting the clouds anything above 1. That means 2, 3, 4 and 5 all produced the same results of large FPS fluctuations with stuttering.

Also, using time compression for brief periods of time, then continuing the mission without it seemed to worsen the fluctuations in both the FPS and stuttering. I found that when I don't use time compression during the whole mission, I get more consistent results.

Inspector settings:
AA Mode: Override application setting is a must.
AA Setting: Lowest FPS drops (no stuttering) with Multisample. I ended up using the 8xS for good visuals.
AA Transparency: Turned off was the best for FPS and stuttering, but I ended up using the 2x SGSS for improved visuals.
Texture Filtering to High Quality.
Negative LOD bias is clamped
Pre-rendered frames: same results I get from 1, 3, 4 or 8.
Vsync set to on as well as "tear control" set to standard - both to eliminate tearing on my monitor. Also, Vsync set to "OFF" allowed for much smoother gameplay with almost no stuttering, but the tearing was too distracting.
All optimizations set to OFF.
Vsync AFR behavior set to ON.

Ankor's coverter with SweetFX:
Is a must to use, not only for increased eye candy, but also without this program, my overall Stuttering worsens. FPS does not get affected.

Also, I use Process Lasso for managing my cpu during the game which made a huge difference both in FPS and Stutters.

Overall, I am satisfied with the results of my testing and this helped me know what I can adjust or where to look when I get any problems in FPS or stuttering.

Yes, our CPUs are getting a bit on the outdated side and I believe that a better (faster) CPU) would or could probably solve or at least minimize this issue.
But nevertheless, I think that artillery shell explosions (which as days goes by I'm more and more convinced that's the reason for my stutters) are having a too big impact on gameplay, specially for a game which is centered around an airwar.
I believe that or if artillery explosions are proved to be the reason or the main reason for stutters that if there was a way to tune down those artillery explosion thru options that could indeed improve the gameplay for many WOFF players.
For example, why not having artillery explosions in one area only (the area where the player's mission occur or in the area where an offensive is happening) as optional?
Guess this is a request from my part for the devs.

Good observation, ricnunes. You may be right about the explosions. I don't play the game loud, so I never connected it to the explosions. However I may have normal fps with 2 or 3 explosions in view.

Dirk.

I concur that my experience is the explosions appear to be the culprit. The Devs just ironed out the un-zoom jaggies challenge in the last patch. Maybe this is something they can look into also, however everyone had the un-zoom jaggies issue and not everyone has the micro-stutters so that makes it much, much harder to pinpoint.

I have been trying Process Lasso as advocated by Yaan and it does appear to help. Need to fly around the front a lot more to be certain though. Thanks for that suggestion Yaan.

I should try clouds @1 and sunny weather in the workshop.

Dirk.

This is what I am finding as well. Arty and HUGE stutters are going hand in hand.

"Calling" Winding Man.

Question: during QC, are ground/air offensive dynamics in play as they are during campaigns?

In particular, I'm interested in fine tuning a test mission for "Bloody April 1917" in/around Arras.

plug_nickel

ps, 2304x1440x32@80hz is a dream to fly.

I seem to get even better performance since patch v1.8.

Dunno what the devs did but it runs even better now on my computer. Must've been something to do with the virtual cockpit tearing that they fixed.

The only gfx setting I still had off, due to the occasional stutter when quickly viewing it, was Sun Glare. After turning that back on, it has almost no effect on my fps after this update.

Thanks dev team!

hey all....had all kinds of issues....mostly low fps and some crashes....and that's with a pretty good rig. Did a graphics card cleanup using cc cleaner and driver sweeper and i'm seeing decent fps steadily now....mid 30's mostly with no crashes....still stuttering so i'd love to fix that somehow....but there were gazillions of display drivers in the registry that caused a lot of conflicts I reckon....there are good youtube tutorials on how to do this if anyone's interested....helped me a lot

We may have been barking up the wrong tree. Might not be graphics causing the micro-stutters at the front.

I noticed, as others have, that when you get over the front and the AA fire starts up, the stutters seem to show up then too. But I also noticed that even when the flak burst graphic was still on the screen awhile after the "boom" sound had faded, there was no dip in FPS or stutters. The stutter seemed to hit the moment the flak burst went off. I thought maybe on some machines, the stutter might be tied to the sound of the explosions themselves.

Can someone who is adept at computers and file management try something for me please? Go into the directory : OBDSoftware\WOFF\OBDWW1 Over Flanders Fields\sounds\

Find the file named air_explosion.wav and either rename it with an X in front of it or do what I did and back it up and re-record it as a blank wave file, then save it. Test it to make sure when you try to play it that you hear no sound. Do the same with all of the various files named "flak".

Now, using whatever graphics settings that you have been using to get your best FPS and where you didn't have stutters anywhere except over the front...go fly over the front please. I'm using FXAA on my Nvidia card for antialiasing because it's very light on the FPS hit to the card and does a fairly decent job.

Suddenly I'm flying over the front at 60 FPS with virtually no stutters. Even got into combat with some RE8s. I had one quick stutter on a close fly by of an RE8 and that was about it.

Other than that, the only stutters I experienced was the first time I tipped the plane sideways to look at the ground (while over the front) and it loaded the texture and also when I stayed in warp 4x for too long. But as soon as I dropped out of warp, FPS shot right back up and stuttering stopped.

Anyone else mind giving this a try please? I'm probably wrong, but man it sure seems like a night and day difference to me.

PS. If you aren't familiar with file management, etc, please don't try this. Wait to see if there is any actual confirmation that this works.

Happy New Year everyone.

Here's a campaign jaunt over the front. Air start and we get bounced by a flight of Camels. You can see a few quick micro-stutters at the start of the fight and then after that, things went pretty smooth. All flak files had been re-named so as not to play during this flight, plus the air explosion file. FPS in yellow in the upper right hand corner.



This is a 9 minute flight over the front lines. Most of it in combat with Spads. At about 3:40 in you see the sky filled with flak, but no sound for it and no micro-stutter either.

Hellshade

Thats a great video, thank you. After one of your postings i bought also a gtx 780. Its the Gigabyte GTX 780 overclocked windforce.
Can you tell me your exact settings and how i change those soundfiles and if you use something else like process lasso??
Sorry if i am asking to much but i would live to fly WOFF like in your Video. This SIM is so great but i also had always troubles with stutters. At least in 1918 it was often very bad. If you can help me you will be my new hero

p.s. how do you set TrackIR speed and smooth?

Hellshade, when you have a moment please post newer settings that are different (if any) from here:

http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/3885435/Re_Tweaks_to_get_rid_of_micros#Post3885435

Thanks,
Dirk.

So the explosion sounds could be causing the stuttering? I'm not good enough with computers to start fiddling around with the sound effect files, but I'd love to hear if other people have fixed the problem like Hellshade.

That near collision with the friendly at 3:00 in the first one really woke me up...

I wonder if rather than getting rid of the Flak sound files, would just adding them to the preload.xml work?