I find the effects setting is one that needs to lower as it is a big hit on the FPS esp when lots of explosions over No Mans Land.

I love the artillery and archie explosions & sounds in this game. Just can't bring myself to lower them. Gives me something pretty to watch while I'm travelling along in time compressed autopilot.

Well I m reporting back.

I lowered my overclock to default.
I closed out my Nvidia sound drivers.
I have tweaked everything in everyway.

No joy.

The ONLY thing that gets rid of stutters for me is hitting "Q" to eliminate the sounds all together. This has to be a sound issue (at least for my rig). ummmmmm cant play this way.

Sad for me. I might have to put this game on a shelf until I get a different rig. (Something tells me the stutters will STILL be there if I do). Oh well.

Anymore ideas for me to try before I brick this thing?

Hi everyone,

my rig: i5 2500k@4.3ghz, 12gb ram, gtx770, tir5.
Yeah, I get stutters and lag but not so as to detract from WOFF.

I've tried most of the fixes but the only one that made a really noticeable
improvement was changing from supersample to multisample.
I have all the w/shop sliders at 5 because I want to enjoy the fruits
of the devs hard work and also because lowering them doesn't improve
stutters and lag that much.
I disabled the NVidia sound drivers per Hellshade's suggestion and saw a very slight improvement.
Reduced pre-rendered frames to 1 and again saw a slight improvement.

At the moment vsync is adaptive with triple buffering turned off. Minor tearing, well more of a
ripple, but bearable. With vsync turned off I can get high FPS numbers (130)depending where I'm
looking, but tearing is a pia.

Note that at the mo I am flying in 1916 during the Somme battles so quite heavy ground action, but
dogfighting e111s etc over the lines goes very smoothly. Any stutters that do occur are easy to ignore.

Lanzfield113, chin up, this will get sorted.

Hth

RS

I would just like to thank Hellshade publicly for his noteable effort to help those like me with terminal stutters.

They didn't work for me but at least I know that killing sound all together makes it smooth.

Salute.

There is a way to access these settings, and they can be set to match many of the tweaks you describe above for OFF & CFS3. These settings DID help some ATI users with low end cards. But that was years ago....they do not help if you have a modern card. I tried, out of curiosity and they actually made things much worse.

BUT, there is one setting that made a dramatic improvement for my ATI 7870. The default for Full Screen Swap Effect is D3DSWAPEFFECT_DISCARD. When I changed this to D3DSWAPEFFECT_COPY_VSYNC, my stutters completely disappeared. And that is with 12X AA, 8X AF, Workshop settings on Max and 54455. I'm getting a solid 40-60 FPS over the front in furballs with occasional drops into the 30s, but no stutters. I need to test some more, but don"t think I experienced any lags when textures loaded, either. This is with a 3.7 quad core. I plan to test this some more, but think I'm on to something. Of course, I've been fooled before.

EDIT: For this to work, you MUST turn off Vsync in your graphics card control settings.

If anyone is interested in trying the Full Screen Swap Effect tweak, simply change line 139 in c:\USER\AppData\Roaming\OBD_Games\OBDWW1 Over Flanders Fields\ConfigOverrides.xml to read <FullscreenSwapEffect val="D3DSWAPEFFECT_COPY_VSYNC"/> . Be sure to make a copy of this file first, but it appears that the default game settings are held in DefaultOverrides.xml in the same folder.

Turning on or turning off Vsync in ATI Catalyst doesn't make a difference. Catalyst Vsync doesn't work in older versions of DX.

The Config.Overrides.xml file stores your Workshop settings. However, this tweak does not change as you rewrite new Workshop settings to the file, so you can adjust your Workshop settings to your heart's content.

How this will work with nVidia cards is unknown. I'd be very interested in hearing if it helps.

EDIT: When I used D3DOverrider (part of RivaTuner) to turn on VSync, I get a "InitDX for Window Failed" error. So far, this tweak only works with driver level Vsync turned off.

My pleasure Lanzfeld. It's a truly great sim and once we get your stutters sorted out you'll be very glad you stuck with it. I know I was frustrated when I had my stutters so I can sympathize completely. That said, I was able to get mine worked out and I believe that there is a solution somewhere for you as well.

BirdDogICT suggested in the post above changing to D3DSWAPEFFECT_COPY_VSYNC and turning on Vsync in the CFS3config.exe That is normally located in your c:\program files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Combat Flight Simulator 3 folder if you did an install of CFS3. Not sure if the way they have WOFF programmed now if it will impact the sim or not, but definitely worth a try.

Also, a bit of a reach here but since Q kills the stutters completely for you, I'm wondering if maybe CFS3 doesn't like 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound configurations? Shouldn't be an issue, but perhaps try going into your Realtek Sound configuration program (or whatever sound hardware you are using) and try switching it to just be regular desktop Stereo with the old standard 2 speaker config. It's a reach, but it would only take a few moments to try it sir.

Chin up. We'll help you get this sorted sir.

Hellshade,

Check my second post. It's not in the CFS3config file, it's a WOFF file.

I'd be interested in hearing if this works for your nVidia setup.

Best regards.

I think I just found my MOJO with NVidia issues!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Will report my findings shortly. It is most definitely related CFS3 and maybe the settings in Nvidia Inspector or Graphics Control Panel. Do not, repeat do not change Global settings on the Inspector for NVidia Graphics cards and leave as default, only change the CFS3 program settings. No stutter, no jaggies and no white triangles at full settings in Workshop. The most beautiful site in WOFF I've experienced so far. Please stand bye as I think I found the issues and sound does play a role in this scenario as well.

harumph.

I've been testing primarily in QC.

I tried HSs Inspector settings and things were actually worse. (4xSGSS is too much for WoFF I think, even with a high end video card and 4GB of VRAM)

I tried disabling FFB, no joy.

I tried disabling sound, no joy.

I tried disabling nvidia sound driver, no joy.

I tried lowering AA and SuperSampling in inspector, no joy.

I did learn a few things:
Setting vsync tear control to standard and vsync to force on pretty much eliminates tearing (white/grey triangles) except when zoomed out and turning fast.

I went back to my original settings (8xSQ[combined: 2x2 SS + 2xMS] and 2x Sparse Grid Supersampling and am calling it good enough. I get jerky movement in fast turns in the camel.
I have all my settings set to 55555. That's about all I can think of doing....going back to 11111 and working my way up from there.

It's odd that I dont get smooth flying. I do have super smooth flying in other sims and can get almost shimmer free horizons.

There's a problem somewhere, and I think its imbedded in CSF3, and related to AA.
I'll keep thinking about this though, and hopefully will find a Eureka moment that fixes this issue for all.

Do tell!

Yes, as someone with an Nvidia card I'd love to read more as well, please.

After more testing, I have confirmed that the very mild stutters (at least on my ATI 4870, AMD Phenom II 980 quad core 3.7 MHz rig) can be cured completely with VSync. This also eliminated lags due to texture loading.

Unfortunately for ATI owners, Catalyst drivers do not force Vsync, so it doesn't really matter if you have Vsync turned on or off in Catalyst - this has been a known problem for years.

So, by changing the Full Screen Swap Effect in the ConfigOverrides.xml to D3DSWAPEFFECT_COPY_VSYNC, I was able to finally turn Vsync on. This completely eliminated stutters, at a somewhat lower, very playable FPS. Even when the FPS dropped from the 40s to the high 20s, it was smooth as silk. I purposely maxed out my settings to see if my system could keep up, and it ran great.

I was able to accomplish the same result by leaving the ConfigOverrides.xml file to the default of D3DSWAPEFFECT_DISCARD, and forcing Vsync through a program called D3DOverrider. I set D3DOverrider to turn on VSync when CFS3.exe starts but not use Triple Buffering.


Your mileage may vary, but hope this helps.

Birddog, I'm taking note of this for my ATI card. Currently awaiting new main board and processor so hope to check things out next week. Tnx

Robert,

Hope this helps get your new rig up to snuff. That 7870 card will run just about anything you throw at it, but ATI could sure do a better job with the drivers.

I never did mention that my forced settings were done by directly targeting the CFS3.exe in the Nvidia Control Panel - not using the Global settings.

I didn't think it would make a difference as the global settings should be forced for all programs, not just CFS3. Hrmm.







Forcing Vsync is what smoothed mine out too. I can't believe I forgot about setting that before.

After i updated my Windows to 8.1 all my nividia inspector settings turned back to deafault. I thought i will try it without turning anything off or on and it had no effects on WOFF. After all my tryings to get rid of the stutterings its almost funny that i have the same results without doing anything.

The only thing where i see difference is when i hit the Q button (stuttering stops). I tried almost every settings i read here but it was no difference to the now default settings.

Please dont get me wrong, i dont say its sensless to try to change settings in nividia inspector it seems to work for some but it did not in my case.

I think the stuttering problem has something to do with the sound because as i said only when i turn off with Q the stutters stops.
Its only my opinion and i am faaaarrr away from an expert in those things, its only my experience so far.

It's probably pure coincidence, but for me I found the best AA smooth performance when I matched my AA settings to be the same numbers, like so:



Might be worth a try if you haven't already, sir.

I had a Vsync brain cramp too. I kept trying to force Vsync through Catalyst, assuming that ATI had fixed this problem with the 13.12 drivers. When this approach didn't work, I began to look at the ConfigOverrides.xml file to see if I could find settings that would control flip queueing (the equivalent of NVidia's pre-rendered frames).

So, anyone with an ATI card should be able to duplicate my results with D3DOverrider. I use it with a few other games (Battle of Britain II) that require Vsync due to screen tearing. Radeon Pro may also work...I'll give it a test.