Originally Posted by rwatson
Enjoying reading the AAR reports 33 Lima ,,Found my old BOB II cd's..Are there any active sites for patches,mods or general guidance setting it up..I did a base install and it looks kind of raggedy..I liked using the strategic map to organize intercepts..But I want to try getting it to look a bit cleaner Thanks for any advice


The A2A BoB2 forums...

https://a2asimulations.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=42

...are the go-to place for advice, info and new stuff which is released from time to time - like Boreas's A and B pattern mirror-image fixed camo schemes for Hurris and Spits, and alternative 6-patch and 8-patch gunport mods for the Spit. These and other mods are just linked to from the posts which announce them in the 'subscriber modifications' thread in the BoB2 General Discussion forum. Unfortunately there is not a downloads page where everything is nicely organised, but there is really only one must have mod (well, one for Win 7 and another one for Win 10, more of which below). The other mods are generally cosmetic and nice to have, according to taste.

The big issue is getting the sim to run in Win 10 and if it does run, it will CTD when you exit a mission. This means that in single missions, there is no debrief. in campaign missions, the results your squadron achieved will not count, although when you re-start the sim and reload the last save, the wargame/map game can be picked up where you started (before jumping into the mission in 3d and left to resolve that encounter), leaving you to fly another mission when you choose.

It may be possible to get the CD version, or early BDG updates, to run in Win 10, without the CTD on quitting problem.

However, the 'must have' update for BoB2 is the latest BDG 2.13 which includes a lot of good stuff and has multiskin built in (individual aircraft and squadron markings for all planes). BDG 2.13 definitely has the Win 10 'CTD on quitting' problem and all tries at solving this have so far had only temporary success, with the problem quickly returning.

I run in Win 7 which I set up for dual boot just to get around this and play BoB2 fully updated and without the CTD hassle. Not for everyone though as Win 7 apparently just won't work with newer mobos, without some serious techy stuff (but is fine with my i3 and GTX580).

If you have Win 7, the thing to do is download BDG 2.13 from here: https://a2asimulations.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=51298 Installation is simple, double click the .exe and choose any options presented as you go.

It comes with a very comprehensive manual which includes installation and is an update to the very good hardcopy one that came with the big box release of BoB2.

With BDG 2.13 installed and running, the trick then is to set up the graphics (and other) settings to taste and get rid of the vanilla look. Basically I have everything maxed out except particle effects; 'Use desktop resolution' turned off; and the 2d and 3d resolutions set to my monitor's native (despite an exclamation mark showing against one of them in the drop-down).

I used the Nvidia driver to set AA and AF, but then added the settings here via Nvidia Inspector, which helps with distant terrain shimmer: https://a2asimulations.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=68107

If you have Win 10 only, the best bet instead of BDG 2.13 seems to be this Win 10 mod/patch by Felizpe, which doesn't have the 2.13 features but has some neat ones of its own and should certainly produce a better game than vanilla: https://a2asimulations.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=68917

Another must have in my view (with BDG2.13 anyway, not sure if needed with Felizpe's patch) is to edit External_View_Starting_Distance = 1.3 to get back the vanilla external view distance limit, so that the closest view distance is closer to the A/C (BDG 2.13 pushed the closest you could get way too far out, for me), as mentioned somewhere on this thread:

https://a2asimulations.com/forum/vi...&p=284900&hilit=distance#p284900

As the BDG 2.13 manual explains and as is discussed in that thread, the Notepad-editable bdg.txt file has many settings that you can't change via the options menu, like one to stop AI RAF fighters pursuing over France. Not sure if this file comes with Felizpe's patch.

Good hunting!

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Last edited by 33lima; 09/30/20 09:25 PM.

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