Mod to remove blue triangles! (and other improvements)

I know the Devs did a great job reducing the dreaded "blue triangles" that show up briefly when you are flying close to the ground, but I wonder if any of the brilliant modders out there would be able to find a way to finish them off for good?

I remember RAF Louvert saying they went away for him completely when he setup a pair of video cards (GTX 980s?) in SLI mode. Has anyone else using a pair of cards in an SLI configuration experienced the same benefit? This might offer a clue as to how to solve the issue,

Hi Hellshade. I too still get the triangles on My 980ti.
I don't know if there is a mod able solution.
I have to plead ignorance as to what the technical aspects of the problem are.
If there is the possibility of a molded solution I would be willing to take a Crack at it.

Best Regards

check also when on the ground, behind the plane it is like a blue shadow.

Yep. It shows up there too, especially during take off and at low altitudes. I am sure someone smart who understands the workings of the game rendering engine knows why it happens. I just wonder if there is a way to stop it from happening completely. It's not a raw GPU horsepower based issue because everyone gets it with a single card, no matter how beefy their card is. Hopefully there's a tweak to the underlying game engine that can fix it.

If anyone else besides RAF Louvert is not getting the issue, please let us know. It might be a clue to resolving this little niggle.

Maybe that wizzerd could also fix the flashing clouds and the straight line moving in these clouds.

Dutch

The clouds issue I am pretty certain is unresolvable with the current game engine. The issue has been hammered to death looking for a solution.

I agree. Blue triangles might be another dead horse to beat but I just figured I would ask and see if any of our brilliant modders could take a look at it. AnKor and others have done some amazing things that eventually got brought right into the sim itself.

I have those show up from time to time, only, mine are white. Not too annoying.

Hellshade, if you have an Nvidia card, have you played around with Nvidia Inspector? I was able to reduce blue triangles to a fairly minimal level by experimenting with various settings. They are not gone completely, but provided I don't look around to fast /often when at low altitudes I see very few of them. I see none at all when stationary on the ground. What I have managed to improve quite significantly is the cloud flickering and straight edged clouds. I believe the transparency settings in the Inspector are quite sensitive but useful for improving this issue. I think the general effect of the 2D cloud textures (I'm using Buckeye Bob's mod btw) is pretty amazing given the age of the game engine.

Cheers

H

I have a GTX 1080, Harry. I have not used Nvidia inspector in a long while. What are the settings you use for cloud flicker?

I'll post my settings tomorrow.

Part of the issue with the blue triangles is that any part of the game environment that is out of your field of view is not created until it actually needs to be rendered. This was done back in the day to speed up the game and reduce the resources required to draw and hold on to all that 3D information that you would never see anyway. AnKor has done some things with how the data is sequenced to minimize the effect, but quick movements that look very far into spaces that didn't exist in the previous frame can still occasionally outpace his rendering before it needs to display the next frame.

As far as the clouds are concerned going from 2D to 3D volumetric would take care of the intersecting lines, but that is better done in DX11 or DX12.

I think Ankor is trying to get some of the DirectX10 or higher, aspects to Wotr. So this could mean better clouds and reduced triangle.

So yeah Robert, sometime we only need a bigger hammer. :-)

I had not heard that but it will be great if its true and he is able to make it happen. I hope that comes true.

Inspector Settings

Hi HarryH, I just looked at your settings, and as a suggestion I would turn off the Anisotropic filter and sample optimisation options. They basically overide the 8x Anisotropic filtering option above them and have worse image quality. As the optimisations apply the filter to the size of the textures its applied to, all of the textures in WoFF are tiny and the overall image quality will suffer as a result.

The optimisation option is really old, and isn't required when using any modern (last 5-10 years at least)graphics card. No performance benefit anymore, but definite image degradation compared to having it turned off.

I also have 16x Anisotropic filtering applied to every game I have owned for the last 20 years, the performance hit between 8x and 16x is basically nill.

Cheers!

The reason those blue triangles appear is that CFS3 engine incorrectly assumes that those terrain tiles should be out of view and doesn't render them. It doesn't depend on GPU or your config, it is purely a bug in their algorithm which runs on CPU.
I don't have a direct solution for this, but I have something that may reduce the issue and improve the performance at the same time.
I've already mentioned this tweak on sim-outhouse some time ago but it had little effect on the "stock" CFS3, however I believe it may work better WOFF because WOFF terrain is more detailed.
You can try it if you feel adventurous

Here is a zip file with compositetexturebudgets.xml - the file goes into WOFF\OBDWW1 Over Flanders Fields\terrains folder, but don't forget to make a backup of the original file there.
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AvmtwF9vPtwVgYoiGbgXo8KXiEzxUQ

Additionally you should edit shaders30\Terrain.fx file and change 256 to 1024 in this line near the beginning of the file:
const static float fTextureSize = 256;
This is needed for terrain bump mapping to work properly with modified budgets.

I would have made a JSGME package but I don't remember how.

PS: And yes, I'm working on DX11 version of shaders

I have no words other than..just knowing it's possibly in the pipeline to occur makes me happier than you can possibly know. Thank you for all that you do. /s

That´s some good news!!!

Wow! Is that even possible? AnKor, you are a God! One of those less known ones, but still a God nonetheless. I am drooling at the thought of what could be possible. And because I don’t know what’s possible, I imagine a lot. Can you tell us what DX11 would mean for WOFF? No more blue triangles? Rain and oil streaking on the windshield a la ROF? Grass? French maidens waving as we fly by? The possibilities are endless! And yes, thank you for your efforts.

I have applied AnKors file and modified the other as instructed. These are my results.

This is great AnKor - thanks.
Four (4) missions so far and no blue triangles - cannot say that I got them all the time - will keep you posted.

Seriously, the blue triangles are gone. That's amazing.

TL;DR - Honestly, it ought to be an official WOFF UE patch. It's that good of an improvement.

I have flown around 10 missions so far and I "might" have seen what I would call 2 micro blue triangles at most. By micro, I mean they were so tiny and gone so fast that I'm not even sure they were really blue triangles and not something else like a part of the scenery. For sure I haven't seen a single one of the normal blue triangles yet. Time will tell, but certainly a significant improvement over stock, patched up WOFF UE.

Additionally, maybe some others can confirm or deny this, but it seems to just run smoother - faster - now. Hard to describe until you just see it for yourself. It just feels like the world is more "solid" than it did before AnKors mod.

A couple combat vids that end up close to the ground for your own inspection.

Thank you sir!

Thanks, 40LM, appreciated!

This is pretty incredible, looking at Hellshade's vids. Awesome AnKor, thank you!!! Off to patch now

Well I was not going to say anything yet, but I had the feeling my FPS was running higher than normal.

My FPS doesn't take as big a hit when looking backwards now either. Not sure if it helps, but seemed too...I modded the file from 256 to 2048. I got extra ram and vram so I figured what could it hurt?

Increasing fTextureSize in texture.fx doesn't cost additional memory or performance, but it might make bump-mapping look different, can't say if better or worse
This value in fx file should match PatchPixelDim from the first line in compositetexturebudget.xml:
<Budgets PatchPixelDim="1024" MinPatchDimUseThumb="4096">

If you have 4GB or more of GPU RAM you can try setting PatchPixelDim="2048" (and fTextureSize = 2048 as welll) so you will get more detailed terrain. It is not a huge difference in details as it is still limited by actual textures, but may look interesting. However in may introduce some stuttering when looking around and if you don't have enough VRAM the computer may lock up when you start the game.

Possibilities for DX11 are indeed endless, it is my free time that is limited
But I promise there will be something interesting otherwise I wouldn't have started this at all.

Added:
This mod does make the game lighter on CPU. That's why I invented it in the first place, but the reduction of "blue triangles" is also a nice side effect.
Perhaps if you already have a powerful processor you won't see immediate increase in performance, but FPS hit in busy areas or with time compression should be reduced.

Very interesting indeed, it may prove a very beneficial change in 1918. AnKor, you never cease to surprise me, DX11 in WOFF, lol, who could have ever imagined that?

Ankor, would your directX11 shaders also bring in the possibility for the use of full VR?

dutch, yes. I haven't tried it yet, but the possibility is there and I have HTC Vive to experiment with.

One word...WOW

I played until 2am last night. Its not just the reduction in blue triangles but the increased fluidity of flight, especially while close to the ground and while looking backwards. Truly, this should be considered for an official patch. Once again, I can't thank you enough, AnKor. You are a true marvel and a blessing to this sim and community.

.

What strange and wondrous sorcery is this?! I just tried out your mod AnKor flying around my WIP Belfort mod. Until this I thought I'd max'd out the number of objects I could have in any given place as I was starting to see less-than-smooth tracking when flying low over the area. But that has vanished completely! It is now smooth and beautiful, whether taking off, landing, or flying NOE over the entire region. Amazing! This mod is an absolute "must have" and should be at the top of everyone's install list. Or better still, as already noted here, make it an official patch to WOFF UE.

Many, many thanks AnKor for this gem!

.

Thank you very much, Sir! Your work is real magic and never stops to amaze me.

.

I've just noticed an additional benefit from this mod, (at least in my set-up), and that is further minimization of horizon shimmering when at low levels. It seems to be about non-existent now - very nice.

.

Better performance, sharper textures at low level, not more blue triangles, smoother flying , yes, we have a new patch candidate!!

1.48!
1.48!
1.48!

[size:14pt][/size]

Nice MOD. Works good.

Noticed that at 2048 setting, stuttering occurs just like you mentioned. Using 1080 ti with skylake. reverting back to 1024.

Also, is there a way to reduce popping in/out of trees/buildings with modifications such as this?

Hellshade, time to remove that question mark from the subject line of this thread!

Glad it works

I've tried making a similar mod for trees, but without much success yet.

Done!

AnKor - if it can be done, I am sure you will find the way. If not, this is already another nice leap forward for WOFF UE. Can't imagine what goodies WOTR will bring.

I too have found the exact same benefit and especially with my aging i7-920 @ 4 GHZ with GTX 970. Before I used to get some stutters looking around while flying close to the ground and especially when looking back at the airfield as I take off.

Now with this marvelous update, the stutters are virtually gone and I'm playing with all graphic settings set to the max.

Super thanks for your time and effort with this update, AnKor.

I tested out a JSGME mod for Ankor's blue triangle problem and it worked fine. I will make a JSGME self extracting mod for release early tonight and send it off to Sandbagger for his mods page.

Some of you may want it.

Best Regards

Ahhh, hiding your light under a bushel I see. I think this deserves a thread of its' own (or a title change). I'm glad I checked this thread to see what had everyone so excited.

Excellent, Robert. I am sure a lot of people will love the experience! As Yaan98 noted, 2048 introduces some minor stutters even on a high end card, so best to stick with AnKors recommended 1024, IMHO. Thank you for your efforts in making this easier for the community to use.

Wow, wow, wow, this is simply incredible!!! What a massive improvement... in EVERYTHING, it seems! Not a single blue triangle, much improved fluidity to everything.

Fantastic job AnKor, thank you so much!!! And thank you Hellshade for asking in the first place!!

H

I'm still waiting to hear any criticism
Actually there's a noticeable flaw in this mod which I honestly underestimated at first. (but no, it doesn't steal your money )

The problem with this new terrain setup is that changes in texture quality over distance are much more abrupt and at about 10km the quality is noticeably lower than without the mod. This is solvable at the cost of increased GPU memory use.
Basically this terrain optimization is about finding a balance in a triangle of CPU performance vs GPU memory vs Texture Quality.
Stock WOFF UE is about the texture quality, my current mod is all about performance. It is possible to make a more balanced version, but it takes time.

Are the distance quality issues more noticeable at lower altitudes? I guess I should go fly some free flight and take a closer look, but I have only seen improvement with no downside.

H

No, I believe you have to be at quite high alt to notice.
Near the ground the higher quality terrain remains up to a slightly larger distance than in the stock version.

I just flew a longish campaign mission, escorting 2 x Aviatiks over the lines. It's early October 1916 and the weather is pretty overcast and stormy. I always use the campaign manager to generate weather and accept the default. On this occasion it was wind @ 10 knots, which is typically a challenge to fly in. With your mod I was able to cope far better than I usually do, even with the buffeting from the wind. At 10,000 ft Ground visibility was poor because of clouds, so I can't comment on texture quality. In any case, I think for the smoothness your mod brings, it's probably worth the tradeoff, for me at least.

The only negative thing I noticed was that there was some slight stuttering when scanning the skies above me (none when looking left / right horizontal or scanning the ground below). This seemed to improve at higher altitude. Does that make any sense to you AnKor? I may need to revisit my TrackIR profile and tweak it a bit.

Overall I'm finding it infinitely better than before!

H

.



You should have made it available a year ago.

.

HarryH,
At 10,000 it should have been visible, but as you say the weather often makes it impossible to see all ground details.
Regarding the stuttering, if it is caused by my mod, it would have been possible to reduce it by reducing the values for
<TerrainMaxBlenderInstPerFrameNear val="256"/>
<TerrainMaxBlenderInstPerFrameFar val="128"/>
in config overrides, but it is impossible as they are always overwritten by WOFF when mission starts.

Louvert,
lol, I've only discovered it a couple of months ago. I've been working on DX11 shaders and noticed that while the simplest version without any effects can run at 500 FPS in stock CFS3 it struggles to keep 100 in WOFF. That prompted me to investigate the cause of such huge performance drop and it appeared to be the terrain.
I didn't publish the mod earlier because I wasn't sure if it is really needed. I use GTX970 with an old i7-860 (WallysWorld, I think your overclocked 920 is faster than mine ) so I am really limited by the CPU, but most people here have much more powerful processors.
Then I've seen this question about blue triangles and figured out my mod should help with this issue as well, so I decided to finally share it.

By the way, speaking of performance mods, have you tried the "facility merge" tool I made?

.

Just kidding of course AnKor. To the facility merge tool, I apologize that I've not had an opportunity to try it out yet, but I am anxious to see how it will affect my current mod. I will try and get to it soon, perhaps this weekend. Thanks again for the mods Sir, they are very much appreciated.

.

Ankor I can create another mod if you can advise what the new settings would be.

Cheers

Honestly, with super-fluid dogfights and highly detailed terrain that is totally solid below me, I don't really notice or care what things look like 10km away. That's a personal opinion, of course.

This is an in campaign dogfight with a Nieuport in late Sept 16 with all WOFF UE settings maxed. We get LOW and wild with the air combat maneuvers and WOFF never skips a beat. Air to air combat has never felt more fluid than with this mod. I'm sold.

Yes, definitely this must be one of the best improvements WOFF has had in a long time. Nice sharpened terrain textures, solid and fluid framerates even on heavy areas, I fly at 60 FPS no matter what , this is a game changer.

Now taking into consideration that I am flying in my campaign in March 1915 and not the heavily populated later years, my frame rates are at steady 60 fps like ArisFuser posted. and Hellshade shows in his video.

Before this mod, I used to drop down into the high 30's and low 40's quite steadily when looking back at the airfield I just took off from and just scanning around. Now it stays steady at 60 fps and that's with the Consolidated Airfields mod, Historically Populated Airfields mod, weather mods and so on and with every single graphic setting set to its max (I tend to sacrifice frame rate for extra eye candy). I am truly impressed with this change.

Wow! Just simply Wow!!

Like HarryH posted, I still get some slight stuttering when looking around using TrackIR even though Fraps still shows 60 fps constantly now so I think it's more related to TrackIR than to the game and this mod.

There ought to be a Nobel Prize category for AnKor's work. I just installed the mod and got caught in a 1918 dogfight with more than 20 aircraft at close quarters and low altitude. Smooth as silk. I can't wait to up the detail level and revel in Lou and Robert's recent terrain work! Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, AnKor!

Regarding TrackIR. I don't have it, but when I used OpenTrackNoIR which emulates TrackIR I noticed that there can be odd stutters when framerate is too high. So it seemed like the FPS is still good, but the tracking itself stutters somehow.
I don't know what causes it.
If it is indeed somehow FPS dependend then the only thing I can suggest is to try switching VSync in workshops. There are 3 settings which behave differently so there's a chance something may work better.
It may also be possible to adjust VSync in your GPU control panel - modern ones have more options than simple on/off, and there's usually something like "Maximum Prerendered Frames" available in driver settings changing which may also improve fluidity of the game. However I don't use it myself so I'm not really sure, maybe someone else may advice better.
The mod itself doesn't change any code, it is just a configuration file which tells CFS3 to use larger terrain tiles with larger textures.

This mod Something similar is going to be a released as WOFF UE patch when OBD has time to implement it. We had some arguments regarding texture quality though
And as I mentioned before there are a few variables in config which should be adjusted to better suit this mod, but it not possible until we have an official patch.

Robert_Wiggins, I will make a set of files with different quality and performance levels.

Hi all,
'Ankor's' graphics fix for improved terrain at low level and the reduction/elimination of 'blue triangles' (version 1.0 - as compiled for JSGME by Rob Wiggins) has been uploaded to the Users Mod page (Terrain page).
Remember to refresh the site if the 'home' page or the 'Terrain' page are dated older than 15 May 2018. Clearing your PC's cache also helps in this regard.

AnKor, I love you, man. No, Really, I love you. This is great. Criticism? um, I'm still fat and bald. didn't change any of that. otherwise, this rocks, like everything else you guys do.

I do understand that some of the stuff far away is now less detailed, but given how much this smooths out game play and removes the blue triangles, I didn't even notice the details in the distance. I just put that down to "things get blurry the farther away they are and there is mist, fog, etc". This is, in my opinion, one of the top improvements the sim has since you added DX9 support. I am really glad it's being added as an official patch.

Also, I get the rare stutter too but having switched Vsync back on, I haven't really noticed one since. I probably haven't flown enough missions to be sure though. I was flying anywhere between 90 - 115 FPS. With Vsync on, it stays pretty solid at 60.

For anyone having issues with stutters using TrackIR with this mod, VSync needs to be enabled. I set my VSync to force ON in the Nvidia Inspector but it may also work by setting in the WOFF workshop.

Cheers all!

H

Has anyone else using an Nvidia card tried setting Vsync to Fast and set Triple buffering to Disabled? Just curious.

Actually that's part of my next test using the following nVidia Inspector settings:

1) Always had VSync turned on. Will remain on.
2) Will turn off Triple Buffering. I turned it off for the Total War games recently and noticed less stuttering.
3) Increase Maximum pre-rendered frames from 1 to 3. Always used 1 with WOFF.

My nVidia settings for my next test with my GTX 970.

I am having excellent results with the new mod using the below Nvidia settings. WOFF UE is set to all 5s, High Aircraft quality, High Airfield Complexity, High Forests, etc. Playing in 4k resolution.

Additionally, I turned OFF all CPU and RAM OVERCLOCKING. That helped minimize the microstutters down to almost zero even in a late Summer 1918 campaign with Air Density set to Medium. I will post a video soon and you can see for yourself - bearing in mind Shadowplay doesn't record in 4K, of course.

28 August 1918 - flying with JG III, Air Density set to medium - flying in 4K resolution. Never seen it fly this smooth, this late in the war before. Was averaging between 60 to 90 FPS even during combat and able to fly with 4X compression at 45 to 55 FPS.

Fantastic video Hellshade! I enjoyed that one

I made one final change - lowering Air Density from Medium to Light. Boom. 90 to 118 FPS - smooth gameplay even over the front in late 1918. Thanks again, AnKor. Your mod is amazing!

yeah, even on low air density you have more than enough to watch out for.

Oct 1918 JG III campaign dogfight with F2bs. 40 - 50 FPS while at 6x time compression over the front. 90 to 118 FPS while in combat over the front. It's seriously like a new sim.

[edit] There is a total frame jump at around 2:45. That was caused by me moving my head out of TrackIR range.

The popping has to do with sudden changes in density and LOD levels with viewing distance.

I've experimented with changes in the CompositeSceneryBudgets.xml with settings like:

<Budget Name="Five">
<Rings AboveGroundLevel="0" MaxDistEyeInnerRing="0">
<Ring PatchWorldDim="1024" RingDim="50" LOD="20" MajorDensity="0.00020"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="512" RingDim="25" LOD="50" MajorDensity="0.00020"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="256" RingDim="25" LOD="70" MajorDensity="0.00020"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="128" RingDim="25" LOD="100" MajorDensity="0.00020"/>
</Rings>
</Budget>

or

<Budget Name="Five">
<Rings AboveGroundLevel="0" MaxDistEyeInnerRing="0">
<Ring PatchWorldDim="1024" RingDim="80" LOD="20" MajorDensity="0.00036"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="512" RingDim="25" LOD="50" MajorDensity="0.00036"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="256" RingDim="25" LOD="70" MajorDensity="0.00036"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="128" RingDim="25" LOD="100" MajorDensity="0.00036"/>
</Rings>
</Budget>

The idea is to have the object density fixed, ring dimensions large, and the LOD not changing too much in one step. This essentially creates unchanging scenery for as far as the eye can see.

If these values have too much impact on your system making the density a smaller number would be the first thing to try.

FYI,

The units for density is in objects per square meter.
0.00020 has an object at about every 235 ft
0.00036 has an object at about every 175 ft
0.00061 has an object at about every 135 ft

The outer view distance diameter for a ring is calculated as the Ring PatchWorldDim x RingDim / PI.

For Example:
4096 x 11 / 3.14 = 14.3 km diam so objects extend out to about 4.45 miles from you
1024 x 50 /3.14 = 16.3 km diam so object extend out to about 5.05 miles from you
1024 x 80 / 3.14 = 26.1 km diam so objects extend out to about 8.10 miles from you

The pixel resolution is a function of the PatchDim and the PatchPixelDim that we've been discussing in the compositetexturebudgets.xml.
PatchDim / PatchPixelDim = size in meters of each pixel

So with a setting of 1024 in the 1024 ring each pixel of the texture represents 1 meter (1 square meter).
With a setting of 256 in the 1024 ring each pixel covers 4 meters (16 square meters)

In the compositetexturebudgets.xml AnKor provided the outer ring covers
32768 x 3 / 3.14 = 31.3 km
with a pixel resolution at the edge of
32768 / 1024 = 32 m (1024 square meters)

The original WOFFUE has the outer ring as
16384 x 9 / 3.14 = 46.9 km
with a pixel resolution at the edge of
16384 / 256 = 64 m (4096 square meters)

Ideally the mask radius is supposed to be matched to the PatchWorldDim and the RingDim by the formula:
((RingDim - 1) x PatchWorldDim) / 2
For example
((3-1) x 32768) / 2 = 32768
((5-1) x 512) /2 = 1024

It looks like AnKor is consistently using larger values for MinMaskRadius than what's called for, but I'm not sure what effect that's going to have.

It is my error, I took values from other file and forgot to recalculate them. Incorrect radius causes abrupt changes in texture quality instead of smooth transition, but it doesn't affect performance.
When official patch comes out it will have corrected numbers.

Нour idea of using larger rings and with more consistent density/lod for scenery is interesting. I don't have time to experiment with that right now, but I plan to revisit scenery stuff at some point.

Sounds like things are going to continue to improve even more. If the new official patch also reduces scenery popping while killing blue triangles and pumping up FPS smoothness, it will be a glorious day for WWI flight simming, indeed. Can't wait! Thanks for all that you do.

Just to clarify - I didn't say that anything is going to be done with the scenery in the official patch
Terrain - yes (but not exactly as in this mod), but scenery adjustments need research and it needs time and there's never enough of it.

MajorMagee, maybe you can share a full scenery budgets xml so people could try it? People generally are not as technical here as on SOH to do edits manually

I must have misunderstood (which I do often). I thought changing to the correct values in the official patch would cause some improvement in scenery texture quality transition.

All I know is that late war, 4k simming with max details and highest forest / airfield complexity is now not just viable, it's liquid smooth, as long as I put Air Density to Light. And that isn't an issue because there is more than enough air density late war, even on Light to keep things interesting. This is like - the miracle mod / soon to be patch.

We're talking about two different control files, compositetexturebudgets.xml and compositescenerybudgets.xml.

The one AnKor provided (compositetexturebudgets.xml), that will be part of a general update to WOFFUE, only deals with the textures on the surface of the terrain. He's refining that a bit before it goes into the official patch.

There was another question about keeping the scenery objects from popping in and out of existence, and I proposed a work around in compositescenerybudgets.xml for that. That will not be part of the update. Again, the values I'm talking about solve the issue, but are very dependent on the power of your system, and would have to be tuned to what your specific CPU/GPU can handle without bogging down. To some extent it would be trading FPS for how many scenery objects you want to see that don't appear and disappear as you fly along. Because it's so machine dependent it's probably never going to be a viable candidate for an official patch. Even as a user mod, providing a default set of values would end up being "wrong" for a lot of people. It's a matter of coming to an understanding of the reason behind what's causing the popping, and then following a few principles to set it up for each user individually.

Thanks MM! I appreciate you taking the time to answer and it makes sense how it may well never be a viable for a general mod, let alone a patch. I guess if it was a mod, there would have to be like at least 3 or more versions of it for "Beefy, Moderate and Budget CPUs / GPU configurations."

I spent a lot of hours twiddling with the numbers until I got a steady 77 FPS on my system with a reasonable looking scenery density.

I did some research into the classification of real world object densities. It turns out that we measure trees in a similar way to buildings.

Trees, Buildings, Scenery Density, Objects/hectare, Objects/sq mile, Spacing in ft
Prairie, Rural, <0.00005, 0 - 0.5, <129.5, >464
Savanna, Residential, up to 0.00050, 0.5 - 5, 129.5 - 1295, 147 - 464
Woodland, Mixed Residential, up to 0.001, 5 - 10, 1295 - 2590, 104 - 147
Forest, Urban, >0.001, >10, >2590, <104

The implication is that our scenery budgets should ideally be tailored to each particular landclass area rather than universally as they are now. Building the scenery density values into the landclasses.xml would make the simulation look much more realistic, but from a programming perspective the memory allocation becomes very difficult because the requirement is constantly changing as a different mix of landclasses comes into view while you're looking around. You could error on side of allocating the maximum possible (like flying over a city center all the time) but that might eliminate some systems from being able to run the sim at all.

p.s. The landclass.xml file provides a dimension value in multiples of 1024. The number of objects that are generated within each landclass changes as a combination of this dimension and the density set in the scenery budget. When the land class files were created the pixel locations within the tile where the auto-generated scenery objects could appear was predefined (e.g. trees only appear around the edges of open fields). Adjusting the Dim value in the landclass.xml file can change the total number of objects being created for a given scenery density value, but it also changes things like the size of the fields, and city blocks within a particular landclass area being displayed. So, in addition to adjusting the global scenery density values, you can tune the performance by making localized changes to the Dim values in the landclass.xml, but you will change the size of the terrain features you see by doing it that way. For example with a large value like 10240, you could end up making the small hedgerow fields of Normandy look like the wide open spaces of the American Mid-West.

Thanks Major,

I get no popping of building/trees now, but I need to experiment more to get better frame rates while using my VR headset.

I currently have the density set to 0.00010 and still only getting around 30-40 FPS (with the headset). Maybe I'll try to adjust the ring diameter to 25's or 20's next as I don't know if lowering the density any more would make much difference.

Can now confirm that AnKor's tweaks work well when running WOFFue in WineSkin too - the only suggestion for those running it on a Mac through WineSkin, if you have a low-end, integrated video card - is to use a value of 512 for the fTextureSize in the Terrain.fx file unders shaders30, and in the corresponding entry at the top of the compositetexturebudgets.xml file. This results in an average increase of about 6-8 fps but terrain remains crisp even from further distances.

A value of 1024 removes detailed ground texture across the board on integrated vid. cards; values of 64 and 128 give detailed ground texture immediately below or around your aircraft, but detail then fades out noticeably, especially when ascending (128 giving more subtle transition than 64).

With a value of 512 I haven't yet noticed any rough transitions between detailed and smooth terrains....will test further, and will also try out MM's suggestions for both the scenery and textures xml files (the tweaks remind me of what in FE2 is called a Flightengine.ini file...that controls the density of the terrain mesh in that sim, popping in/out of trees, textures, etc.).

Happy flying all,
Von S

Since this is a scenery density generation over a given area issue, dialing back on the outer ring's 50 value will have the biggest effect in reducing the total object count. What you will notice is that the farthest distance that you can see objects will be reduced, so at some point you will be back to noticing them suddenly appear in the distance. You will still get the benefit of not seeing extra objects popping up at the intermediate ring distances as long as the densities are still all the same.

p.s. AnKor discovered that the game will look at all of the lower budget levels for missing ring values if you skip over any. In my example for Level Five, I had to also edit the lower levels (1-4) to eliminate the larger PatchWorldDim entries.

Trial and error, I guess to find the sweet spot.So, if I'm understanding your formula correctly, then I can double (or triple) the PatchWorldDim values and lower the RingDim values while keeping the same LODs and still have long ring distances?

MajorMagee:
4096 x 11 / 3.14 = 14.3 km diam so objects extend out to about 4.45 miles from you
1024 x 50 /3.14 = 16.3 km diam so object extend out to about 5.05 miles from you

It turns out that running a larger RingDim with a smaller PatchWorldDim to get the same view distance was smoother for me that bumping up the PatchWorldDim with a smaller RingDim.

Interesting findings by all

@Major any chance you can post your entire CompositeSceneryBudgets.xml from <Budget Name =Debug> to <Budget Name=Five> so i can have a nosy on my system with your settings?
Much appreciated if you could
Cheers

Well, I was trying to do some validation testing this morning before I posted the file and Win 10 suddenly decided to declared WOFFUE to be a Trojan attack, and I've not been able to get it running again even with a reinstall...

You folks on Win 10 make me glad I stayed on Win 7!!
I'll wait until that platform is 100 % and even then I'll keep my game platform on Win7 as long as possible or practical.

So so glad I stuck with Win7 64.. Truly hope you get it all sorted and are back in the skies soon Major

Okay finally running again. I guess the third time's a charm.

<Budgets>
<Budget Name="Debug">
<Rings AboveGroundLevel="0" MaxDistEyeInnerRing="0" MaxMilesPerHour="50">
<Ring PatchWorldDim="64" RingDim="3" LOD="250" MajorDensity="0.0001"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="128" RingDim="7" LOD="250" MajorDensity="0.0001" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="256" RingDim="7" LOD="20" MajorDensity="0.0001" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="512" RingDim="13" LOD="17" MajorDensity="0.0001" />
</Rings>
<Rings AboveGroundLevel="0" MaxDistEyeInnerRing="0">
<Ring PatchWorldDim="128" RingDim="7" LOD="250" MajorDensity="0.0001" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="256" RingDim="7" LOD="20" MajorDensity="0.0001" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="512" RingDim="13" LOD="17" MajorDensity="0.0001" />
</Rings>
<Rings AboveGroundLevel="250" MaxDistEyeInnerRing="0">
<Ring PatchWorldDim="256" RingDim="7" LOD="20" MajorDensity="0.0001" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="512" RingDim="13" LOD="17" MajorDensity="0.0001" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="1024" RingDim="13" LOD="17" MajorDensity="0.00005" />
</Rings>
<Rings AboveGroundLevel="500" MaxDistEyeInnerRing="0">
<Ring PatchWorldDim="512" RingDim="13" LOD="17" MajorDensity="0.0001" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="1024" RingDim="13" LOD="17" MajorDensity="0.00005" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="2048" RingDim="13" LOD="17" MajorDensity="0.000025" />
</Rings>
</Budget>
<Budget Name="One">
<Rings AboveGroundLevel="0" MaxDistEyeInnerRing="0">
<Ring PatchWorldDim="1024" RingDim="50" LOD="20" MajorDensity="0.000150"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="512" RingDim="25" LOD="50" MajorDensity="0.000150"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="256" RingDim="25" LOD="70" MajorDensity="0.000150"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="128" RingDim="25" LOD="100" MajorDensity="0.000150"/>
</Rings>
</Budget>
<Budget Name="Two">
<Rings AboveGroundLevel="0" MaxDistEyeInnerRing="0">
<Ring PatchWorldDim="1024" RingDim="50" LOD="20" MajorDensity="0.000175"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="512" RingDim="25" LOD="50" MajorDensity="0.000175"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="256" RingDim="25" LOD="70" MajorDensity="0.000175"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="128" RingDim="25" LOD="100" MajorDensity="0.000175"/>
</Rings>
</Budget>
<Budget Name="Three">
<Rings AboveGroundLevel="0" MaxDistEyeInnerRing="0">
<Ring PatchWorldDim="1024" RingDim="50" LOD="20" MajorDensity="0.000200"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="512" RingDim="25" LOD="50" MajorDensity="0.000200"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="256" RingDim="25" LOD="70" MajorDensity="0.000200"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="128" RingDim="25" LOD="100" MajorDensity="0.000200"/>
</Rings>
</Budget>
<Budget Name="Four">
<Rings AboveGroundLevel="0" MaxDistEyeInnerRing="0">
<Ring PatchWorldDim="1024" RingDim="50" LOD="20" MajorDensity="0.000225"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="512" RingDim="25" LOD="50" MajorDensity="0.000225"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="256" RingDim="25" LOD="70" MajorDensity="0.000225"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="128" RingDim="25" LOD="100" MajorDensity="0.000225"/>
</Rings>
</Budget>
<Budget Name="Five">
<Rings AboveGroundLevel="0" MaxDistEyeInnerRing="0">
<Ring PatchWorldDim="1024" RingDim="50" LOD="20" MajorDensity="0.000250"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="512" RingDim="25" LOD="50" MajorDensity="0.000250"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="256" RingDim="25" LOD="70" MajorDensity="0.000250"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="128" RingDim="25" LOD="100" MajorDensity="0.000250"/>
</Rings>
</Budget>
</Budgets>

This runs well on my system (i7 7700 @ 4.6 GHz CPU, GTX 980 GPU, and 100 MHz 3440 x 1440 G-Sync monitor) at level Five. (Makes me wonder if I should be pushing the density values even higher.)

This does take care of making the auto generated scenery steady out to about as far as you can see. You will still see some predefined things like airfield objects pop into existence and change LODs as you approach them.

Somebody want to turn this into a JSGME mod for us chicken #%&*$#?

Thanks Major really appreciated pal. Il test soon ..cheers

Interesting Major.

Here's what I found to work for me, kindda,

<Budget Name="Five">
<Rings AboveGroundLevel="0" MaxDistEyeInnerRing="0">
<Ring PatchWorldDim="8192" RingDim="8" LOD="20" MajorDensity="0.00061"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="512" RingDim="25" LOD="50" MajorDensity="0.00061"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="256" RingDim="25" LOD="70" MajorDensity="0.00061"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="128" RingDim="25" LOD="100" MajorDensity="0.00061"/>
</Rings>
</Budget>
</Budgets>

Since I only use 5s in workshop, I deleted everything above <Budget Name="Five"> in both compositescenerybudgets.xml and compositetexturebudgets.xml (except for first line in this one). The ringdim was killing my FPS, so this was the tradeoff where I had to lower it as much as I could. I even tried AnKor's old suggestion to modify the texturebudgets to see if it would make a difference so that I could keep a large ringdim, but no luck:

<Ring PatchWorldDim="32768" RingDim="3" MinMaskRadius="65536"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="8192" RingDim="5" MinMaskRadius="16384"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="2048" RingDim="5" MinMaskRadius="4096"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="1024" RingDim="5" MinMaskRadius="2048"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="512" RingDim="5" MinMaskRadius="1024" DetailTileCount="64"/>

I found that there is a limit to the number of objects displayed no matter how high the density is set. As I increased the MajorDensity from 10 to 20 to 30, the number of buildings/trees I could see would proportionally increase as well. Once I hit the upper 50's, I found no difference in the number of buildings or trees. So, I kept it at 61.

I wonder if changing the patchs (or adding more patchworlddims) to 1024 or 4096 and lowering the ringdims on the other LODs would make a difference.... another experiment, I guess.

However, I still do get the occasional stutter which I will live with. This and AnKor's previous modification are awesome finds I tell you. I can fly close to a major city and see the densely populated building from far away as well as nearby villages without popping in/out. Good stuff!

Yaan98,

As I mentioned yesterday I've experimented with these values on my system and had more stuttering doing it the way you're approaching it.

This was smooth
<Budget Name="Five">
<Rings AboveGroundLevel="0" MaxDistEyeInnerRing="0">
<Ring PatchWorldDim="1024" RingDim="80" LOD="20" MajorDensity="0.00025"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="512" RingDim="25" LOD="50" MajorDensity="0.00025"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="256" RingDim="25" LOD="70" MajorDensity="0.00025"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="128" RingDim="25" LOD="100" MajorDensity="0.00025"/>
</Rings>
</Budget>

This suffered long pauses regularly
<Budget Name="Five">
<Rings AboveGroundLevel="0" MaxDistEyeInnerRing="0">
<Ring PatchWorldDim="8192" RingDim="10" LOD="20" MajorDensity="0.00025"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="512" RingDim="25" LOD="50" MajorDensity="0.00025"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="256" RingDim="25" LOD="70" MajorDensity="0.00025"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="128" RingDim="25" LOD="100" MajorDensity="0.00025"/>
</Rings>
</Budget>

I suspect the problem with making an outer ring extend inward farther is that it creates a lot of overlapping patches that have to get sorted out. I really did not expect that simply making an inner ring extend farther out would work so well.

This is all top-notch, everyone! Thank you, Hellshade, for opening this up for discussion; and thank you, AnKor, MajorMagee, and yaan98 for your experiments with the compositescenerybudget.xml and compositetexturebudget.xml files! I have also experimented with these variables and am generally pleased with the results.

Notably, altering the compositescenerybudget.xml file also has an effect on how clouds are displayed. Generally speaking, the cloud shimmering that people tend to see with certain clouds can be "pushed back" into the distance by increasing the diameter of each of the texture rings. While this doesn't get rid of the problem, it does tend to push it into the distance where it may be less noticeable. I suspect that the cloud popping problem is influenced by the size of overlapping texture rings, as well. Increasing the diameter of each ring may make this less noticeable, as well. Unfortunately, coming up with settings in the compositescenerybudgets.xml file that both improve the rendering of objects on the ground and clouds in the sky at the same time may be quite difficult to achieve. We will have to see!

yaan98, the original file has DetailTileCount="8", right? What is the major impact of changing this value?

Wow. This has been a ground breaking last few days for WOFF UE and the potential for it to get even better is within reach.

Blue Triangles: Dead. Gone. Hasta la vista, baby.

FPS: Pumped up quite nicely, even during late war campaigns, making the sim more enjoyable to fly during every stage of the war.

Micro stutters:Being stamped out . Between AnKors work and turning off CPU and RAM Overclocking, mine at least have become a very rare exception. Many missions flown without it.

Ground scenery popping: Challenging because so much is dependant upon individual machine performance - but progress is being made as MajorMagee, Yaan98, BuckeyeBob and others comb through the configurations.

Cloud popping: Thanks to BuckeyeBobs personal dedication to this particular area, is now looking into the possibility that what fixes ground scenery popping may be loosely related to the clouds popping too.

Damn. It's like Christmas for WOFF UE. Major round of beers for the modders! Gentlemen, I salute you!

Be careful in experimenting with High Densities and large RinDims. I was pushing my system until my FPS was dropping into the 50s over the cities again, and then when I pushed it a little more I had a hard memory crash. I'm back to what I posted in #4421216 as it will run at the full FPS of my GSync monitor in most areas, and looks nearly as good as the much higher density values.

Some random pics









Last pic before work....



11,000 Ft @ 77 FPS. Medium air activity. Jasta B, April 1917. Over St. Quentin.

Damn. Those are insane! How's the FPS though? Microstutters?

I still need more testing this weekend, but getting close. No microstutters, just hangs when I move my head quickly sometimes, otherwise it's smooth enough for me to fly a whole mission without breaking immersion. Sorry, for being vague, but I didn't get a chance to measure actual FPS numbers.

Major, I created a mod from your above settings and tested it out in campaign. I liked what I saw but unfortunately something about it crashed my CFS3 and threw me back into the WOFF mission summary screen.
I see you have been having similar issues. Do you have this resolved now? If so would you mind posting the revised settings for the fix?

As was discussed during the course of this thread, the values are going to need to be tuned to each system that's running this Mod to avoid running out of memory. My problems started only when I pushed the outer RingDim up to 80 from the 50 shown above. Since the area driving the object count for a given density is a function of the square of the distance (pi * r^2) dialing that back to 50 (5 mile view distance instead of 8) resolved the issue for me. If you are having a problem, then you can either reduce that further (45, 40, etc), or lower the density (use one of the lower Scenery Budget settings) if you want to keep seeing auto-generated trees and buildings out to the edge of the haze. This need to tune it for each user is why I've been cautious about recommending this getting converted into a one-size-fits-all Mod.

I apologize, didn't see this post before. correct. but I don't know what it is used for. Maybe AnKor or Major know.

From the Terrain SDK



In looking through the SDK again I see that the RingDim needs to be an odd number so the 50 probably should be 49 or 51.

Thanks for that info.

My final modifications to scenerybudgets which worked very good on my system (so far):

<Ring PatchWorldDim="1024" RingDim="21" LOD="17" MajorDensity="0.00046"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="512" RingDim="45" LOD="50" MajorDensity="0.00046"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="256" RingDim="45" LOD="70" MajorDensity="0.00046"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="128" RingDim="45" LOD="100" MajorDensity="0.00046"/>

Interestingly, the first ringdim makes a huge impact to the point it crashes cfs3.exe if I wander into the 30s or 40s. However, I can raise any of the other ones besides the first without crashes. Also, I see no difference in view distance if I reverse those numbers and put the first ringdim at 45 while the rest at 20s. I noticed that density setting at 46 is just as good as 50s and 60s. Between ~36 - 44, there is slightly lower density of trees/buildings, but better FPS (~5 FPS) and less hanging.

Overall, I'm pleased with these results.

I believe DX9 shaders ignore the value of DetailTileCount, just set it to a small non-zero number for best performance (or zero but you will lose terrain details for the nearest texture).

The problem with high-density scenery in CFS3 is that being an old engine it doesn't support "geometry instancing" feature of modern GPUs (and "modern" here means "since about 2005")
So if you have 1,000 trees and each tree is 50 triangles, the game has to generate that forest of 50,000 triangles entirely on CPU and send them all to GPU almost every frame. It is a waste of CPU time and memory bandwidth.
With instancing, CPU just needs to send coordinates of those trees and GPU will do all the job.
I want to make it work like this for DX11, but no success yet.

That would cartainly free up a ton of CPU and memory bandwith in some of the more heavily forested areas which woukd again help things run smoother in the late war years where so many AI craft are in the sky. Hopefully you find the key to make it work in DX11. Just let me know where to send the beer!

Thumbs up, AnKor, just do not surrender . We all believe you.

The diameter of the ring is calculated as the PatchDim x RingDim / 3.14 ( derived from Pi x Diam = Circumference) where the Patch Dim is the dimension of the patch in meters, and the RingDim is the number of patches around the edge.
The way you show it above the 1024 ring (6844m diam) is a smaller diameter than the 512 ring (7333m diam). I'm not sure what the rendering engine is going to do with the overlap, but that's why the view distance didn't change.

Post #4421049 now includes some comments about the effect of the landclass.xml dimension values that has an influence on this as well.

From my experimenting over the years I've never found anything that was able to influence the draw distance for the clouds. I've come to the conclusion that it's hard coded, but I'd love to find out that I'm wrong.

You have suggested two options:
1) dial back the RingDim

or

2) lower the density

That being said, can you give me a quick "101" course on what this is all about. I am playing with numbers here but lack the basic understanding of what each line is actually doing and how those numbers inter-relate.

I have dropped the Ringdim to "40" but still no go. I am continuing to lower these numbers by 10 until it doesn't crash. Can the MajorDensity settings cause a crash?

Thanks for the tip. Good to know.




Thanks for this. I now understand better and can further tweak it.



I can't understand which of your classifications would translate into Dim values that are already in the landclass file. The values range from 2048, 3072, 4096 and 5120. So, would a prairie be 2048? and Forest 5120? or lower or higher numbers?

I can see the description of the landclass ID like "large city center" or "french town/city surround" with their associated dim values, but most of it would be a wild guess on my part to figure out where those descriptions belong in the game world.

Each Dim in the landclass.xml is a multiple of 1024, and bigger numbers make for bigger blocks/larger fields. I agree that it's a bit of a guess on the part of the developer, but you could do some rough form of calibration by checking different values in an area where you know the distance between terrain features like two parallel rivers or the width of a peninsula. This was done a couple of years ago for the ETO Mod of CFS3 to set the values. Even then the values selected had to be a compromise to reality, as the fields of Eastern France and Germany are actually much larger than the ones sharing the same landclass in Normandy and South Western England.

Yeah, I may have become a little excited and jumped to a premature conclusion. Sorry about that.

Robert, some people have had trouble with RingDims bigger than 40, others have not. Apparently, it is highly system dependent. If you are starting off with RingDims of 40 for the PatchWorldDims of 128 and 256 and working your way up, that may be too high. I have also found that setting the MajorDensities too high is a major (ahem) drain on system resources--especially if your scenery rings also have a large circumference. I would start by dialing back the MajorDensities to "stock" values and then gradually increase them to the point your frame rates begin to sag or you start to get brief screen pauses.

Hello again gents',

Further tweaking of the stimulating data posted in this popular thread over the last several days has led to some final numbers that I think work well on Macs. Those who are running WOFFue in WineSkin on a Mac, and on a low-end and/or integrated GPU, are advised to check over the bottom lengthy section of my WineSkin post here (http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/4345346/installing-woff-ue-on-a-mac-using-wineskin). New info. has been added, and should help to wring out an extra 10 FPS or so from slower video cards. The dogfights are much smoother now, and the graphics still remain acceptably sharp.

Happy flying,
Von S

Yes, the combination of distance and objects density creating too many things for the system to keep in memory is the the source of the problem. If you want to maintain a larger view distance then the density would need to drop. This is probably the better choice if you are trying to avoid having objects pop into existence within view range. If you really need to see a high density of objects with a less powerful system then you're probably stuck with seeing them suddenly appear only a couple of miles away.

Remember the premise of these edits is to eliminate the sudden popping up of new objects that happens as you move along over the terrain. Keeping smaller LOD changes, and uniform auto-generated object density, out to a large view distance is the key to making this work.

I built a spreadsheet calculator to help me understand the math behind the patch ring distances, pixel size resolution, and the number of objects being placed, so I could quantify the effect it was having on my system. In addition to the CPU/Memory/GPU system tuning, I've had to redo some of these values as I've changed monitors and FOV settings in the d3d8.ini as well.

Good information, MM.

I notice that the Dim values for Landclasses.xml range from a low of 2048 to 5120 and are in multiples of 1024. Do you know if they can be in smaller values, say 512? Also, do increasing or decreasing these values displace landclass objects on the ground, say for example, towns or forests if you alter these values, or do they just make the landclass objects bigger or smaller without displacing adjacent objects?

Finally, what does the "Priority" setting do? I presume it helps the GPU decide which landclass object is rendered first?

Thanks. As a new owner of a Nvidia 1050 Ti video card, I am intrigued by your findings.

The priority setting determines which one is predominantly on the top when the transition edges between landclass types gets blended together.



The SDK doesn't say what happens if you try something less than 1024. Each landclass is mapped to local regions of the theater map. So, within a given landclass' assigned area the patches will be larger or smaller depending on the value listed in the landclass.xml.

Thanks, MM.

Here are the settings that I am currently playing around with:
Notice that the inner RingDims are slightly larger than MM's settings, while the outer RingDim is slightly smaller. I also raised the LOD of the second closest ring from 70 to 75.

Have any of you guys tried putting all lod values to 100? Shouldn't have any impact on a 3GB+ card, and will save the engine swapping lod values continuously for a possibly smoother flight and definitely reduce the hideous and noticeable texture switching.

I know I probably sound like a broken record, but the textures in this game are tiny file wise compared to any modern game.

May not do anything, may give you a crippling framerate, but I personally would give it a go. No harm in trying.

I'm leaving for a 4 day conference but I hope somebody does try this. Reducing texture switching wouldn't be a bad thing. Hopefully it doesn't have a downside with the larger RAM cards.

Thanks for the tip 4L0M. It gave me more options to try. Unfortunately, although it initially runs smooth, it severely hangs going down from a 90 FPS to teens for a couple of seconds which is enough to throw my head tracking off and I need to recenter. I've tried setting all the LODs to 100, then 250, then 1000 with the same outcome. Just had to set the last LOD to 250 which actually gave me a small FPS boost (~5).

After 2 days of fighting with my PC to get WOFF running smooth with an extended view and no popping, I finally found a winner. I still get the occasional stutter just like I do in WOFF without this MOD. However, I also had to increase the MinPatchDimUseThumb to 8192 which resulted in less stutter (but it may also be a placebo effect).

Maybe this will be of use to someone, so, here are my numbers:

compositescenerybudgets.xml:

<Ring PatchWorldDim="2048" RingDim="13" LOD="17" MajorDensity="0.000460"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="1024" RingDim="27" LOD="30" MajorDensity="0.000460"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="512" RingDim="27" LOD="50" MajorDensity="0.000460"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="256" RingDim="27" LOD="70" MajorDensity="0.000460"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="128" RingDim="27" LOD="100" MajorDensity="0.000460"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="64" RingDim="27" LOD="250" MajorDensity="0.000460"/>

compositetexturebudgets.xml

<Ring PatchWorldDim="16384" RingDim="3" MinMaskRadius="49152"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="8192" RingDim="3" MinMaskRadius="24576"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="4096" RingDim="3" MinMaskRadius="12288"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="2048" RingDim="5" MinMaskRadius="8192"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="1024" RingDim="5" MinMaskRadius="5120"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="512" RingDim="5" MinMaskRadius="3072"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="256" RingDim="5" MinMaskRadius="1792"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="128" RingDim="5" MinMaskRadius="1024" DetailTileCount="6"/>




Unfortunately, I'm not going to mess with the landclass file because it seems like a daunting task which I don't have enough knowledge.

Looks good!

Unless I'm being a bit dumb, having a lod number higher than 100 in your compositetexturebudgets.xml is completely pointless? LOD (Level of detail) normally tells the game what level of texture details to use depending on your distance from an object. As the tree and building textures are in .Dds format, going off the top of my head as I'm on my phone, there are 7 levels of mipmaps created when using dds files in Woff. This should give the game 7 levels of detail of texture to use for an object depending on your distance to it. Lod value of 100 being the best quality texture.

Having a LOD value over 100 is probably just confusing your game to be honest. I can't test this at the minute, but that's how it normally works.

4L0M, for scenery budgets LOD has quite unusual meaning: it is the maximum number of triangles (or vertices? I don't remember what SDK says) in a single object - a tree or a building.

It seems we are going from higher performance and drop in visual quality, to the other way totally and higher quality and slower rendering and straining the system with higher ring dims. Everyone likes different things of course.

Problem lies with it being a really old engine, yet people's hardware getting more and more powerful. It's not actually a problem, that's the wrong word, but surely with the power we have available, some things can be tweaked for better performance and/or better visuals.

I have spent the last 10 years tweaking FSX for the best available performance, and when I first fired it up (day1) I'm sure people who used it back then remember the blurry textures, horrific autogen etc. Now, in P3D I'm able to use 99.9% of all my FSX addons with an absolute stack of AI planes flying round the world in beautiful smooth 4K with fantastic performance.

My mind would have been blown if you had a time machine and shown me what my PC would be capable of 10 years down the line.

Yes, the SDK says:

LOD – The maximum number of triangles that each scenery model can contain. Each scenery model has multiple levels of detail (LOD), each with different numbers of triangles. The LOD with the triangle count closest to this number without going over is used.

I suppose finding the right balance for the default settings is going to be a challenge in WOTR, as there has grown to be such a diversity of machines that people will be trying to use it with. The key will be to provide for user customization that will allow for the sort of fine tuning we're seeing discussed here. The old days of having only five preset levels to pick from may not get the job done anymore.

If we can eventually switch the rendering to DX11, then we can add both features and performance to the game like when we went from DX8 to DX9, and the whole process starts over again.

Polovski:
I like the new mod improvement that Ankor provided at the beginning just fine. I allows my 7700K, 980 Ti PC and 2160x1440 Monitor to improve the overall FPS by at least 10 FPS without a hitch (almost always above 100 FPS now).

As for the loss in terrain detail, if I look close, I can see it just outside the haze ring, so I just ignore it with the increase in the FPS in the game. My PC (set at all 5's) never drops below 65 FPS, whether it be high, low, landing or in dogfights.

Remember that the distance you can see into the distance is limited by the amount of haze on the horizon, which is controlled by the precipType variable. In unmodded WOFF, most of the time this variable is set to "HeavyRain" meaning that the view to the horizon is limited to less than 8 to 10 kilometers. Everything beyond that (including rivers, buildings, and trees) is hidden behind the haze. Of course, the computer still has to calculate these objects even though you can't see them, taking up more and more cpu cycles and computer resources the farther you have extended the view via the RingDim variable. Most people will only see objects farther than 10 kilometers away if they use JJJ's Mission Editor and click the "Horizon fix" button, which only removes the haze in Good or Light weather conditions. Something for everyone to keep in mind.

That's just it everyone likes different things. Some guys like higher fps and others prefer more eye candy, inevitable trade off.

Sure it's an old engine, but with many changes and improvements along the way, including Ankor's fantastic DirectX shaders and it's pushed way beyond it's original scope now so we have stunning visual crispness and good fps.
AnKors rings settings give more fps, and look fairly good but "5" is no longer visually what 5 in WOFF is of course.

For us to release something incorporating something useful for everyone it will have to cover all the angles, so may be a while before we have something that can be configured for everyone.

IMHO this is part of the problem: The emphasis on higher "FPS" rather than smoother, more even distribution of frames. It simply doesn't matter if you get 100+ frames per second; if the FPS bottoms out for even a split second every so often, you'll notice.

Yet, most people continue to confuse high FPS with smooth graphics. They are not the same thing; this has been covered at great length all over the internet, and it happens that the continued misapplied fixation with higher frame rates is not only part of the problem, but is genuinely misleading. You can be cruising along at 60 or even 100 FPS, but the 'stutter' that you get when the frame rate drops, even briefly, is the real problem.

I'd take a smooth 35 FPS any day over even 100+FPS that dips and stutters. Here's an example: 60+ FPS is generally a decent number, and most people that get at least 60 FPS are generally satisfied with graphics performance at that level. Now, take a machine/scenario that typically runs ~100 FPS . It will still be very noticeable when it dips down to 60, even though 60 is a very good frame rate.

If you prefer to make the example more clear and insist on higher numbers, no problem: Take a machine that generally gets ~144 FPS, and let it drop to ~100 sporadically. Even though 100 is considered an excellent frame rate, you're still going to notice when it drops to 100 (a change of ~45 frames is still roughly a 33% drop, exactly the same delta as going from 100 to 66).

If a given setup runs FPS most of the time above 100, and never below 65, that means there are still changes of as much as 35% - essentially dropping one-third the frame rate.

Especially if folks claim they can see the difference in 40 and 60 FPS, then it's hard to reconcile that a 35% change in frame rates isn't noticeable, no matter how high the FPS.

The truth is, it doesn't matter how high your FPS is, nor does it matter that it never drops below x. The extent of the values (highest/lowest) isn't what you see when there's stutter; what you notice is the change. If there's enough of a delta in the rate frames at which are being displayed, it will be noticeable.

FWIW, just my own $.02

(EDIT: Incidentally, the reason there is so much confusion, I believe, is because there are a lot of games and utilities that have FPS counters/displays, which is fairly easy to do in software. However, it's an entirely different thing to monitor and keep track of how much a frame rate is varying. So, people have gotten accustomed to expressing the only values thy have access to - but this doesn't mean it's an accurate way to measure or record the actual behavior.)

Another point is that most people are running 100fps while it is an 60hz monitor.
If I do check whats is the best adjustment, I let afterburner log me an frametime graph, to compare two settings.
Frametimes guys thats the only factor to be used, not FPS.

Good points, kksnowbear.

I just recently upgraded from a Nvidia GTX 460 to a Nvidia 1050 Ti. Before, I was getting framerates in the 30's and 40's, but no noticeable stutter. With the new card, my framerates are much improved, but the stutter has become more noticeable (not a killer for me, but still more noticeable than before). Sudden drops from 60 fps to 40 fps is apparently more noticeable to my eyes than a drop from 30 fps to 20.

Another thing I've noticed is that with the old card, the stutters lasted longer, akin to mini screen freezes. With a faster card, maybe the pauses are shorter and therefore appear as microstutters?

So kksnowbear, how are you suppose to measure your method you talk about above versus the old fashion FPS counter (my monitor is a 144 Hz, so I max out at that with the new AnKor mod now).

The Nvidia Profile Inspector has a graphing function called Flip Indicator that can be helpful in visualizing the interruptions in the flow of frametimes. In my case I use the Frame Limiter function to cap my system to 77 FPS most of the time to keep the CPU / GPU / 100 MHz GSync Monitor from ever outpacing one another and causing a micro-stutter or tearing.

Well, as I mentioned, a big part of this problem is that there's no readily available tool (at least that I know of) for doing what you're asking about.

However, that doesn't mean it's not a legitimate issue. For example, I know plenty of people who have lots of complaints with traffic, even though none of them really know much about measuring it or fixing the problem.

Far as I know, there's no law against recognizing a problem without being able to quantify and/or correct it - though I would definitely say that, in order to correct a problem, it's crucial to understand the problem first. And you can't understand something until you recognize it for what it is.

In my estimation, that's actually why this is actually a problem - because it's far too widely thought that higher FPS equals better performance; too few people recognize the problem that's really at issue isn't as simple as higher and higher frame rates. Like I said, look around - the internet is full of accounts where people have very high frame rates but still don't get smooth graphics.

Another unfortunate effect of this is that people often wrongly assume that buying better hardware will solve a problem that isn't because of hardware problems to begin with. If a game isn't well optimized, or doesn't take advantage of technology improvements as they come along, then buying better hardware isn't necessarily likely to help. (I think this may be what 4L0M was referring to above).

As for 'old fashioned' ...well, I don't really think I said or implied that - but I don't think measuring FPS of itself is wrong. It's a number that has a certain meaning, and can be useful within the constraints of what it actually measures. But it just doesn't seem to accomplish telling us how 'smooth' graphics performance is. I don't think it has anything to do with it being 'old fashioned', because I'm not sure it was really ever a good way to measure what really matters to begin with. I've been using FPS counters for maybe 20+ years now, and while I still think it has some value as a measurement, I happen to believe it's become misunderstood and doesn't really reflect what people often try to suggest it does.

I do really wish someone would come up with an tool that could accurately reflect what I think FPS is commonly used to try and represent. Maybe what MajorMagee mentioned above is a good method; I wasn't aware of it TBH. Unfortunately, what you often run into when trying to illustrate problems with games that have these issues is that people will then say running the utility itself causes the system to perform poorly...so it sort of defeats the purpose.

I hope this answers your question.

kksnowbear:
Since I have a G-sync monitor (which you know matches monitor refresh rate with GPU outlet to minimize stutters & tears) and my WOFF UE runs way above 60 FPS all the time now, all those stutters in the past are gone. This is why I like to keep the game FPS high because on my PC/Monitor, you can tell the difference in smoothness from when the game is running over 100 FPS versus down in the 80's FPS like it use to do.

Of course, If I turned off my FPS counter, I may not be able to tell 144 FPS from 80 FPS too, but I have not tried that since adding AnKor's latest mod yet.

PR, I run a G-sync monitor also and I turned off my FPS (along with in game labels) some time ago. What I found was that the FPS numbers and the labels were a distraction from the sim itself. Pulling those two things out (speaking only for myself) turned out to be one of the best decisions that I made for my campaign experiences. Sure, I turned them back on briefly to see what effect AnKors mod had, but I have already turned them back off again. You might want to give it a try and leave them off for a week or so until you get used to it.

I figure once the sim is running smooth with nary a micro stutter (I get them rarely now at 6x time compression), the numbers aren't that important. The metric I was using to help tweak the sim to better performance became a distraction to the performance I now had.

Hellshade:
I understand what you are saying because with Ankor's latest mod, I have not had at any time in 1917 or 1918 the FPS drop below 65 and that was only for a brief moment.

Normally it is above 100 FPS at all times, unless I am coming in to land and then it may drop in the 70's, where before it dropped into the 50's at that time.

This is why I like AnKor's mod just as it is, but like Pol said, they will probably make it a option for you to pick higher FPS or better visuals for the next WOFF version.

Yours is a good example, I think, of what I'm talking about - higher frames rates don't necessarily mean better overall graphics performance/smoothness/no (or less) stutter.

I think it's possible that the old card's seemingly 'longer' stutters might be related to a faster GPU and more dedicated memory on the new unit. But you'd also have to consider other changes made in your system (if any) at the same time the GPU was changed.

I also have a g-sync monitor, driven by a 1070Ti, fairly capable of higher frame rates for sure.

The point, however, is that there isn't necessarily a direct relationship between higher FPS and smoother graphics overall/no stutter. You can have very high FPS and still have stutter; conversely, you can have lower FPS and it still appear fairly smooth.

But, regardless of 40 FPS or 144, if it changes by a significant amount, it's noticeable - and changes like this are often confused with being able to tell the difference between lower and higher FPS.

Like everyone here I've been impressed, nay delighted by AnKor's mod to eliminate those annoying blue triangles, they were quite an immersion-killer for what is otherwise a magnificent sim. My compliments to him, and also to all of the devs who have brought WOFF so very far from its CFS3-mod beginnings.

However I do have one remaining annoyance, a blue-grey unrendered zone visible below an ac on the ground when looking towards its rear quarters. The attachments show what I mean.

Does anyone know of a solution to this, or is it just another issue hardwired into the old CFS3 program? (BTW apologies if I missed this already being covered, I read through this now rather long thread but didn't see anything on it).

Mike

Mike:
How did you manage to do that ????

I have never seen these grey squares on any of my OFF3 / WOFF / WOFF UE games since I started playing years ago (blue triangles, yes, but grey squares, no).

Sounds like either a "reinstall" or a message to Pol asking him what your problem is.

It happens sometimes, CFS3 renders virtual cockpit in an odd way and the terrain gets clipped when it is too close.
I don't think it can be fixed with any config settings. I haven't tested this issue specifically, but maybe it is fixed in DX11 version.

The reason these bands are grey is because skybox for that weather is grey below the horizon, otherwise they would be blue.

I think this is not unheard of, and possibly still related to the original ("blue triangle") bug that AnKor has described. Maybe he could comment further.

I recall something along the lines of the triangles' color being a function of the overhead (sky/clouds); IOW if there's a blue sky the triangles are blue, and if it's gray (like in Mike Dora's images) the triangles will be gray. There were also more "white"-looking triangles that were very light gray, and were present with very light grey skies/clouds.

Why it works that way I've no idea, but I seem to recall it being mentioned more than once, by different people.

Cross-posted - and the master himself confirms what I'm saying.

Just asking Mike but you have edited this:?
"Additionally you should edit shaders30\Terrain.fx file and change 256 to 1024 in this line near the beginning of the file:
const static float fTextureSize = 256;
This is needed for terrain bump mapping to work properly with modified budgets."

Has per AnKors instructions on page 2 of this thread pal?

TBH I ain’t been paying attention to this thread as I thought “blue triangles” were part of life.
Jump around a bit and see a mod for it that also reportedly improves FPS?
Feels kinda Christmas-ee on a Memorial Day weekend. Can’t wait to try it.

And before I started on the above I figured I would my dear friend Sandbaggers site to see what else I may have missed and Ankors mod is there and JGSME compatible. What a day.
Too bad it’s raining as I have to stop working outside and play WOFF now. Darn...

I still can't believe there is a DX11 version for WOTR in the works. I know there are no guarantees but I am just so excited that it's a possibility. Fingers crossed.

For Adger,

Yes I followed AngKor’s instructions to the letter.

For AngKor,

Thanks for the confirmation/validation, but what do you mean by “maybe it is fixed in DX11 version”? How does one get that version (of WOFF UE?) please?

Mike

Dunno if this applies to your use case, but if you are using JJJ's Mission Editor and routinely enabling the horizon "fix", try disabling it. I found odd ground texture problems were occurring with Ankor's mod when enabling the horizon fix.

H

Short answer:
"You can't...yet."

Long answer:
The DX11 version is in the works for Wings Over The Reich (WOTR), which is the WWII flight sim the devs (OBD), AnKor and others have been working on for a couple of years now. IF AnKor is able to get DX11 to work in the sim engine, it will show up in WOTR first. Then with any luck, any cool improvements like DX11 will get ported back into WOFF UE.

For HarryH,

Thanks but I’m not using that utility.

For Hellshade,

Thanks for the info.

I can live with this minor remaining issue, just have to stay focussed ahead (as I should be!) when taking off/landing.

Mike

I would think (and I am not a programmer) that any and all WOTR graphic improvements could be ported over to WOFF.
I think?
Isn’t the same “graphics engine” is being used? If it is as simple as that.
I’m hell on wheels with Notepad and that’s about it.

I ran across this video recently. The whole thing is interesting, but it's quite long, so I have it set to start at the section that's relevant to our discussion about object view distance. It reinforces that it's both a matter of tuning for your hardware, and that it's a matter of visual preference. The only thing he doesn't get into is the object popping into existence problem our old game engine has, because the more modern games he's looking at just fade them in less distractingly.

Click Here To View Video


Please keep in mind that our discussion of text editing the files to change the parameter values is one step deeper into having control over the rendering than simply selecting from level 1 through 5, or as in the video, choosing between low, normal, high, very high, and ultra.

These numbers removed virtually all stutter and LOD pop for me. Highly recommended for people with an older (3-3.5GHz) processor. Thanks Yaan, I've been trying to get rid of stutter for months now and this did it!

Maybe someone could make a JSGME mod with this in it? I know its not for everybody but it might be a good place to start.

++++++1

I can wrap it up as JSGME mod on Monday18th.

You rock, RW. Thanks!

My pleasure

You rock Part 2...

Tnx Duke.

Update on JSGME mod version.

Small delay here. Waiting for PM feedback from Yann.

A JSGME mod has been created and sent of to Sandbagger for implementation on his mods page. The mod actually loads two mods into your JSGME mods panel and you can select one or the other depending on your system specs.

Please read the "ReadMe" file that accompanies the mod as it will explain the usage in more detail.

Hope it works for you.

Best Regards;

Thanks Robert! Can't wait to try it out.

[Edit] Silly me but I can't seem to find it on Sandbaggers site. What is the mod called and which category is it filed under, please?

It's under terrain

It's the "Ankor's terrain graphics fix 1.0"

Ahh I saw that file but I thought that was AnKors original fix, not Yaans settings. Will try it tonight. Thanks!

It has both versions.

:

Your such an enthusiast Panama! Cheers mate!

Wow! What an amazing difference. I can't thank Yaan, RW and everyone who worked on this project enough! I am using the High End version of RWs JSGME Mod and there is virtually no scenery popping at all. The world seems so much more solid and real now. Here is a 15 minute video showing a take off, high flying over scenery some down low air to air combat (where I nearly kill myself as I slam my gear into the ground) and a landing next to a city in ruins. Through it all, no matter the altitude or the angle, the ground scenery is solid!

Glad it works for you Hellshade. I am using the high end as well, but there is still some stuttering in Campaign mode as the mission starts and all the terrain and models load up. This may be more noticeable when using the "Consolidated" mods which load more detailed scenery and complex airfields. It usually smooths out a little after takeoff. I know Ankor is working on some stuff that will minimize the load that the trees put on the sim. I suspect he will port this over to WOFF once he is satisfied that it is working in WOTR.

Best Regards

I am getting best results so far by changing Scenery Density to 3. I am not sure that I notice much of a density difference but it seems to reduce that random stutter. Nothing will ever be perfect but this is a wonderful optional compromise that WOFFers can now use to enhance their sim experience more to their liking. Really wonderful stuff. Even as we wait for WOTR and any potential upgrades it may offer to WOFF, the Mod Community continues to push things in the direction of a WOFF UE 1.5, visually.

Quick video down low over heavily populated scenery area (ruined buildings, etc). Scenery pop in has been drastically reduced and blue triangles are, of course, just plain gone. If you haven't yet tried this mod bundled together by our esteemed Mr. Wiggins, you owe it to yourself to give it a try.

Hellshade;

Thanks for posting the vids, I'm sure the pictures are better a thousand words description!

Thanks for doing this, Robert.

I'm curious - AnKor created the original mod and then yaan98 developed another version. Is AnKor's original version now the one for "high end" systems and yaan98's is the "medium" systems one?

That is what is intended, of course, things may vary depending on the user's system specs.

I just did some testing this morning on this mod and this is what I found out with the bleow settings.
1. I have a High end PC - 7700k CPU, 980 TI GPU & a 2160x1440 144 HZ monitor with FRAPS as the counter.
2. If you have a 60 Hz monitor you will not be able to see the real difference in FPS.
3. Flying out of Boistrancourt toward Cambrai using QC Autopilot and checking everything at the exact same point outside of Cambrai to test FPS and Scenery Density.
4. Workshop setting at all "5"s, High Forest and Medium Airfields.

1. Stock (with out Ankor's original mod) - Blue triangles, FPS 115, scenery looked like a 5 with items popping up when with in range.
2. Ankor's original mod - No blue triangles, FPS 144, scenery looked like a 5 with items popping up further out when appearing.
3. Yaan98 "High PC" mod - No blue triangles, FPS 144, scenery looked like a 6 (more buildings in Cambrai than the 5 setting) with items like buildings appearing way out then and minimum "popping up" of items.
4. Yaan98 "Medium PC" mod - No blue triangles, FPS 134, scenery looked like a 7 (with even more buildings in Cambrai than the above High PC mod) and no noticeable "popping" of any items.

As a result of this testing, I would say that Yaan98's two mods are cross labeled and his "High PC" should say "Medium PC", and his "Medium PC" should be labeled "High PC".

Panama, thanks for your post here and your testing.

I you are correct that my monitor only supports 60 hz.
I cannot duplicate your experience.

Anyone else here who can confirm that the mods are mislabeled?

Best Regards

Thats quite a mod here.
I guess I have a lower end system these days, but I just flew 2 campaign missions 1918 with terrain/dens= 4/5 which was a killer on the FPS
And WOW what a diff.
Nothing is popping up etc.
Well done

I just wish I had brought up the solution to the scenery popping here sooner.

Lederhosen, what version of the mod are you using, and have you tried both? Did you notice any difference between them?

Well I started with the "medium" mod as I have a medium system, but after I saw Panama's post I tried the high end mod and got a much more enjoyable experience all round. Incredible, in fact. Best experience I've ever had with WOFF!! With the "medium" mod I was seeing quite a bit off corrupted terrain textures in the distance. They would "heal" as I got closer to them, but they were a bit of an atmosphere killer However, I've seen no such issues with the high end mod (so far). So perhaps it is cross labelled as PR suggests.

WOFF is such a joy to fly with these improvements. A BIG thank you to everyone involved, including Ankor for the original BT fix, MajorMagee for the science behind the scenery popping, Yaan for the experimentation and Robert for whipping up the JSMod!!

Oh, and one other thing: I bought a pair of "Prospek" computer glasses. Mine have a slight magnification (1.5). I can fly for longer now without eye strain and everything is sharper now. Flying over cities with this mod and these glasses is an absolute visual treat!

H

HarryH, your comments about the mods is interesting. According to Panama's comments, the medium mod acts like the high end mod and the High end mod acts like the medium mod. I have a high end system but find the high end mod slightly reduces FPS at times and the medium mod does not. I am seeing just the opposite that you explain.

All in all it is rather interesting.

Seems people prefer to go expensive big Vcards and 555hz 55” 8k monitors while a cheap computer glasses gets more results.
http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.p...ware-upgrade-i-ever-did-made#Post4358452


But anyway it seems this mod is now being optimized to perfection so I will give this finally a go.

Well, maybe I'm not explaining things properly. I don't know why the high end version works for me, but it really does work. I just flew another mission to see if it was a fluke the first time, but again, it was rock solid. I have an i5-8600K (6th gen) with a 2GB GTX 950. Is that medium or high end? Also, I have made a bunch of graphics tweaks using Nvidia Inspector.

Well you can't knock that can you. If it works for you, that's great.

This combined mod feels like it takes WOFF UE to the next visual / performance level. Certainly a "must have" in my book. Can't thank all those who worked on it enough.

Robert, it seems to me that all three of you think the mods are reversed. You and Panama have high end machines and get better results with the medium mod. Harry has a medium system and gets better results with the high end mod.

That is not quite true and I guess warrants a clearer description. I feel that both mods give no significant difference in performance. I get a small degredation in FPS from the High end mod only during the initial loading of the graphics at mission startup. Actually I prefer the High End mod because for me it seems slightly smoother once the load is completed, but that may be subjective..

OK, understood. In (very) limited testing I have the same feeling. I have a high end PC and think that I get slightly better performance from the high end mod.

My biggest (but still minor) issue continues to be choppy play near cities. I just follow the old advice to pause and pan around using an exterior view to load the graphics. Then it's fine.

I'm going to try Hellshade's approach and drop scenery to 3.

I much prefer the high end version, by far. Because you made both so easy to switch out, Robert, then it's easy for people to try both and choose. Finally I can really "feel" the aircraft in flight, and at the same time, soak up the atmosphere of the scenery and surroundings with full on detail settings. Amazing stuff.

H

HarryH, the primary credit goes to Ankor and Yaan98, all I did was package it as JSGME.

Yes indeed. Great collaborative effort. What a great community WOFF has!

H

I would also like to add my thanks to AnKor, MajorMagee, Yaan, Robert Wiggins, and everyone else for making this mod. Good riddance to blue triangles and scenery/object popping! Now if we could only get rid of cloud popping!

One word of caution, however. Using Yaan's "medium" settings, I experienced one or two CTD's while testing over central London. Lowering the MajorDensity from 0.00046 to 0.00035 seemed to stop the CTD's on my rig, so if anyone else experiences new, unexplained crashes after installing the mod, I would recommend they first try reducing those values.

BTW, I guess I would call my rig either medium or medium-high, with a i5-2500k OC'd to 4.5 GHz, and a Nvidia 1050Ti graphics card.

Thx, guys, for outstanding mods.
I have tested, checked and compared files and I can confirm the "compositescenerybudgets.xml" files are really misplaced - i.e. high end version is located in medium folder and vice versa.
High end folder also misses "shader30" folder with its respective fx files.
Robert, could you correct that, pls?

JJJ65;

I can confirm that the compositescenerybudgets.xml are not misplaced by me. They are just as they were defined by both Ankor and Yaan98. I can reverse them if advisable, but before doing so, I would appreciate receiving a full copy of the recommended modified ".xml" files, keeping in mind that they should be modelled after the default WOFF versions. What I mean by that is that there should be entries for levels 1 through 5 so that users have the full complement of options.

This will save needless repeats of changes and releases.

If I can get this for both Ankor's and Yaan98's then I will make the changes.

I don't want to do it myself because I do not have the necessary data to modify the files appropriately.

P.S. both mods contain the Shaders30 folder. It is not missing from either mod. are you sure you have downloaded the latest versions of the mods?

Best Regards;

Oh, that seems to be a problem on my computer. Accept my apologies, Robert. I have experienced problems with mod installation due to virus/malware warning, so, it is very probable my mod is corrupted.

No need to apologize Jara. I would appreciate your analysis of the latest mods because you may be able to help make them better. Please keep me informed.

Best Regards;

Thanks to all involved. Anyone else getting this weird river tile?

I'm only getting this in the Marne region. (I'm using the High-end mod, because I have a Low-end system) It switches to normal when I get closer.

Haven't seen that one but here is a repeat of my recent post in the DiD Centennary Challenge:

Albert Earl Godfrey

25 Feb 1918 @ 08h22 DOP to Villers-au-Tertre aerodrome

What is worthy of note in the video is the weird terrain tiles which I suspect were affected by cloud cover since they disappear on approach and reappear on withdrawl (09:11:23 minutes in). Anyone else experience this?

Hey Robert, I didn’t get to reading the reports yet, but looks like the river tiles aren’t getting as much love as everything else. Are you using Olham’s brighter rivers mod? Maybe that has something to do with it?

Yeah I have Olham's river tiles mod but it is not enabled, but to be honest, I haven't seen this before and haven't had a chance to experiment with it. Assuming I can duplicate it, I will try a few things. It might be related to shadow casting from the clouds but I am only guessing.

I am also seeing weird river tiles in Flanders. Mine are darker rectangles. Small price to pay for all the other improvements I guess.

H

If anyone sees this again, please turn on the "Z" key and note the coordinates and please post them here. Tnx

I have experienced the same weird river textures in Flanders ( Lahussoy - Albert). This was only with one version of modded compositescenerybudget file. Unfortunatelly, I do not know which one.

I have it with the high end version, but I also would see it even before using these new mods, just using Ankor's original BT fix. I'll try to get Z coordinates later today for Robert.

Thanks Harry.

Fullofit

I flew a few QC out of Lahussoy - Albert and didn't encounter the problem. I haven't tried a mission in that area yet.UPDATE:

Just flew a mission from Lahoussoye and yes the rectangular river tiles appeared when at a distance but when you approach closer they go away.
I have the high end blue triangle fix active. I will try it without the mod and see what happens

[img]https://pasteboard.co/HrB8ggq3.bmp[/img]

I just removed the mod and flew another mission and the problem with the river tiles did not occur again.

I suspect something is up with Ankor mod specs but that is above my head.

Thanks Harry, but I managed to find the location without much trouble. Your effort is appreciated

No trouble, Robert. Just another good excuse to fly a mission or two

Thanks for digging into it. Right now this is the only issue I'm having with your JSGME high end mod and I can happily live with it. There are many more issues with the medium mod on my machine, I think probably because that should really be labelled high end and I don't have enough CPU / graphics memory.

Cheers

H

Hopefully someone with the correct knowledge, can take the mods and make alterations to them to resolve the issue. I can certainly re-package them after that.

I have tried both and I can't say as I have had a problem with either one, but I'm running a GTX 1080 so graphics memory isn't likely to be an issue for me.

Robert, keep in mind that just because you didn't see the glitch on your first mission after removing the mod that it won't occur again! It could be a sporadic issue that needs to be confirmed by flying several missions. Having said that, I can see how the mod might create some strange graphic anomalies. I suspect that people with lower end video cards may need to lower the RingDims or the MajorDensity settings in the compositescenerybudgets.xml file a bit.

edit: Sorry, meant to say MajorDensity settings instead of MajorParticle settings

Robert, my anomaly occurred west of Chateau Thierry. And it does disappear when you get closer. I don’t think my VRAM is the issue. 6GB should be plenty.

I agree with you. You could try deactivating the mod and see if the anomaly goes away.

This strange river anomaly can be eliminated by tuning down either the LOD, MajorDensity or RingDim values in compositescenerybudget.xml file. MajorMagee described very well how it works earlier in this thread. Unfortunately, I have not saved my working test settings.

I see that both High and Mid mods have incorrectly calculated MinMaskRadius numbers in composite texture budgets. This may cause artifacts in terrain textures.
I have recalculated them for both versions and uploaded a new zip archive here (not self-extracting):
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AvmtwF9vPtwVgYwXpGLGpOb1lXxikA

Maybe it will help. Though I have to say I've never seen this kind of artifacts (and I have seen a lot of them )

Thanks for chiming in here Ankor.
I will download your file and see if I can apply a fix to the mods.

Thanks

Regarding the question of the High System versus Medium System Mod naming being reversed I ran the values through my Budget Calculator.

________________________ Medium_____High
Texture_Outer_Dim_________15,645______31,291
Scenery _Outer_Dim_________8,474______8,148
Scenery_Density____________0.00046____0.0002
Scenery_Objects_Generated__25,947______10,430

So the answer is that it's mixed.

The compositetexturebudgets.xml is in correct folder but the compositescenerybudgets.xml is reversed from how they were labeled.

Major, I am trying to make sense of your data and having difficulty the names you refer to above are not found in the compositetexturebudgets.xml file and it is not clear to me how that data can be applied to all the necessary fields in the file.

Example
"Texture_Outer_Dim" where is that referenced and how is it named in the texturebudgets file? If it is refering to "MajorDensity" then there logically should be multiple entries for each of the levels (1 through 5).

I appreciate your analysis but I don't know how to apply it to the mods

Best Regards;

Ankor;

I tested out your modification to the mods and it seems that it has cleared up the river tile problem. I have only run 2 missions and everything looked fine.

Thanks for your time and effort, it is greatly appreciated.

Didn't you say that you had already reduced your scenery density from 4 or 5 to 3? Perhaps that is why you aren't experiencing the problem that others are having?

Sorry, my analysis was only looking at level 5 to see how the files compared to each other.

The one labeled Medium System uses a density of 0.00046 for all 5 levels. The one labeled High End System has a range of density values from 0.0001 up to 0.0002.

The diameter of the ring is calculated as the PatchWorldDim x RingDim / 3.14 ( derived from Pi x Diam = Circumference) where the Patch Dim is the dimension of the patch in meters, and the RingDim is the number of patches around the edge.

The number of objects generated is the Area x Density = (3.14 x Dimater^2) / 4 x MajorDensity

Thanks for the.formulas Major, but It is out of my league to apply that and generate the necessary mod changes.

The reason the medium mod has the same settings for all 5 levels is because Yaans only gave the numbers for level 5. I just applied it to all levels for continuity but it needs attention by someone knowledgeable.

The real point is that the scenery budget you placed in the Medium set-up should have been in the one for High, and visa versa. The texture budgets are already in their proper places.

Yes, I believe that Yaan98's scenery budget is too high for the "medium" setting. More specifically, Ankor's "High" setting for MajorDensity in the compositescenerybudgets.xml file is .00020, while Yaan98's "Medium" setting for MajorDensity is .00046, which is more than twice as dense as Ankor's settings. I experienced CTD's when I used Yaan98's MajorDensity values, but those went away when I reduced those values to .000335. So far, I haven't experienced any graphics anomalies like the river texture problem as described above, but that is with extremely limited testing.

My point being, that even Ankor's Fixed MinMaskRadius.zip file still contains Yaan98's MajorDensity values that are too high for "Medium" settings.

For comparison purposes, I have an i5-2500k cpu (3.7 Ghz OC'd to 4.5GHz) with an Nvidia 1050Ti video card.

Yep, that is what I supposed either.

A new version of the mod has been sent of to Sandbagger for the mods page. The update should be available soon.

In brief;

I have adjusted the mods so that the high end mod no longer appears to have the medium mod specifications and vice versa.
The mods have been slightly renamed so that they group together in your JSGME panel window.

Please keep posting any issues you identify so that the mods can be refined.

Best Regards

Just tried the new High End Machine version and it really is amazing. Smoothest, most high fidelity WOFF UE experience yet. There needs to be awards and cash for all those involved in this. LOL Seriously though, thanks to all involved. Just stunning accomplishment with this combined mod.

Hi all,
Version 1.3 of the mod is now up on the terrains page of the 'User Mods page',

Mike

Thanks, Mike. Can anyone tell us what is different about the 1.3 version, effectively?

Ha Ha Hellshade. Let me poke you in your weak point! "Read the accompanying ReadMe file"

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. LOL

Okay, we now have:

Level_5__________________ Medium_____High
Texture_Outer_Dim_________15,645______31,291
Scenery _Outer_Dim_________8,475______8,475
Scenery_Density____________0.000200___0.000335
Scenery_Objects_Generated__10,430_____18,895

Level_4__________________ Medium_____High
Texture_Outer_Dim_________15,645______31,291
Scenery _Outer_Dim_________8,475______8,475
Scenery_Density____________0.000175___0.000200
Scenery_Objects_Generated__9,121_____10,430

Level_3__________________ Medium_____High
Texture_Outer_Dim_________15,645______31,291
Scenery _Outer_Dim_________8,475______8,475
Scenery_Density____________0.000150___0.000150
Scenery_Objects_Generated__7,822______7,822

Level_2__________________ Medium_____High
Texture_Outer_Dim_________15,645______31,291
Scenery _Outer_Dim_________8,475______8,475
Scenery_Density____________0.000125___0.000125
Scenery_Objects_Generated__6,520______6,520

Level_1__________________ Medium_____High
Texture_Outer_Dim_________15,645______31,291
Scenery _Outer_Dim_________8,475______8,475
Scenery_Density____________0.000100___0.000100
Scenery_Objects_Generated__5,215______5,215

So Major;

Does that sound reasonable?

So far I haven't had any reports back yet on experiences with the latest mods

Yes, that looks proper. Knowing the number of scenery objects being generated gives an indication of the relative demand each option and detail level puts on someone's system. As has been mentioned before, these Mods are an attempt to cover the typical range of computer capabilities being used. If you have an extra powerful, or particularly marginal system, you might need to tweek the density up or down from these values to optimize the performance.

Thanks for the reply Major. We shall see how people get along with it.

Hi Gents,

Just had to report in. I've never used a mod in WOFF:UE but this one looked too good to pass up. Installed JSGME and the mod.

I'm running what might be described as a "modest" system at best. i7 4790, 16GB RAM, nVidia 745GTX (OEM Dell Card), so WOFF has always been smooth-ish sim for me.

I'm floored by the results. Everyone involved in this patch deserves a medal! I've done a few missions and some quick scenarios and it is noticeably smoother - especially if you disable the cockpit g-force movements as well. I haven't seen microstutters and the hiccups that have been a part of flying are also all but gone entirely. I'm also noticing far less pop in on the scenery and overall performance is definitely improved. Going to dive back in but I had to send out a quick report!

Cheers!

Yep I think the mod is working correctly now. My current campaign is in summer 1916, so I'm running the high end version and things are flawless, including river tiles. It's worth experimenting with the workshop detail settings as well, to get the best balance.

H

Yep, definitely smoother. I've tried playing with some of my nVidia settings but I actually think where I have them is correct. There are some stutters in 1918 with the air activity cranked up to Normal/Medium but it's a far cry from where I was before, when I had to downgrade air activity after about December 1917.

Hellshade or any other nVidia experts - would you mind spot checking my settings to see if I've missed anything? I'm consistently around 60fps with the random drop below to 58 or 59. If there's any suggestions for what to do or any places I can crank up the detail (or the AA) with my settings, I'd be grateful for your thoughts. The settings attached were mostly meant to compensate for stutters and pauses in FPS, so I'm not sure if I need to / should change anything.

Specs:
Dell XPS 8700
16GB RAM
Intel i7 4790 3.6ghz factory clock settings
nVidia 745GTX OEM card with 4GB VRAM
Windows 10 - all updated.

Capt, I'm not sure if your specific Nvidia card supports it but I have Vertical Sync set to FAST. That said, as long as you have no stutters and a smooth 59 - 60 FPS, I wouldn't change a thing!

During testing on my system I determined that setting Max Pre-Rendered Frames to Use 3D Application Settings produced the best results in terms of maintaining a balanced GPU/CPU load that avoids synchronization stutter.

Thanks for the help guys! Looks like my settings are the best option for my particular system (and my very particular card, as it's only made for Dell, AFAIK). Tried Fast and the card isn't keeping up well. Also tried adjusting max rendered frames and had some massive micro-stutters. So, I'll follow the best advice there is - if it ain't broke, don't fix it!

Did a few more missions and man, does this mod make a difference. I can crank my AA up to 8x and while I get some heavy FPS hits when I'm looking down into the cockpit, the eye candy is gorgeous. I've never been able to do that AND run a 1918 campaign at medium. Only odd thing I can report is an AI issue with my 148 Aero Squadron campaign. Flight lead got stuck circling to engage some DFW's that I couldn't find. Round and round they went for nearly 20 minutes until I broke off and headed for home. Not sure if that's anything to do with any settings in this mod, or just an AI quirk in general. Otherwise, all good and then some!

Cheers!

Regarding the AI issue, I have seen that before but mostly when in approach for landing at an airfield. In the case of the occurrence at the airfield I suspect they couldn't decide which airfield to land at since there were three fields adjoining each other and I suspect the closeness was the cause.

Ankor and BuckeyeBob have been the primary contributors to the Blue Triangle Mods. I would also like to thank all those that contributed their thoughts in this thread.

There will soon be another release of the mod (V1.4) which has some improvements that will be defined in the accompanying ReadMe file.

During some testing today, I did a vid capture mainly because the weather and scenery was inspiring. To get the best effect run it at 1080p



Best Regards;

Looking forward to v.1.4. I expect the framerate to double once again.
Also, I think OBD should release a new airplane pack to commemorate this event.

Are you saying some of us haven't been reading the ReadMe's?

No, I was just being brief, but now that you mentioned it...

I am actually very interested to see what the improvements or additions will be into 1.4. The good times keep rolling in because of our wonderful modding community.

shouldn't be too long (two weeks is the standard response, but I see it coming faster).

Cheers to everyone who's involved in this mod,it's a game changer.
Looking forward to 1.4 thanks Robert

Soon, very soon!

Hi folks;

Just following Canada Day and in advance of July 4th for those of you in the U.S.A. I have send off the latest V1.4 of the blue triangle mods to Sandbagger for inclusion on his mods page. I believe you will like the performance of this version.
Please read the ReadMe file that accompanies the mods because it has some important information about the mods performance and recommendations for selecting the correct mod for your configuration.

For those who have high end graphics cards (releases above the 980ti) and high end GSync 144hz screens, I recommend the high end mod and it would be nice if you gave us some feedback after flying a few missions. We want to hear any negative and positive experiences.

Thanks primarily go to BuckeyeBob for judiciously testing and recommending settings for the mods. Cudos to you Bob!!

Best Regards to all

Its kinda hard to believe that even more performance increases could be tweaked out of the engine but i am extremely excited to give it a go once the 1.4 version becomes available. You guys are amazing!

I don't suppose you could post the ReadMe text here so we can see what we will be getting a smidge sooner?

Here is an extract of pertinent data from the ReadMe:

Changelog 1.4

– Improvements to performance of these mods. BuckeyeBob recommended dropping MajorDensity value for “Budget 5” from “0.000335” to “0.000300”. Budget 1 through 4 have also been refined.
– The entry “Ring PatchWorlDim=2048” has been altered to set the RingDim to 14 instead of 13 and the3 LOD values have been adjusted slightly.

These mods do make the game lighter on CPU. That's why Ankor invented it in the first place, but the reduction of "blue triangles" is also a nice side effect.
Perhaps if you already have a powerful processor you won't see immediate increase in performance, but FPS hit in busy areas or with time compression should be reduced.

Most people will benefit from the use of the “WOFF UE yaan98 mod to remove blue triangles Medium System by RJW” mod. Those with high end system should use the “WOFF UE Ankors mod to remove blue triangles High end System by RJW” mod. That being said, I have noted that when I use the high end mod, I experience stutters when panning left or right with TrackIR and that is because the sim has to load the distant graphics during the pan. Once you have panned the stutter goes away until the next terrain area loads up and then the same thing happens again. I have the following system config and I find I have to use the medium mod for the best performance and no stutters during panning with TrackIR. I suspect those with higher end graphics cards and monitor speeds than mine will be ok with the high end mod:

Case: Cooler Master Storm Trooper
Pwr Sup: OCZ, GameXStream,1000-Watt
MB: Asus Maximus VI Extreme
Mem: Corsair Vengeance (2x 8GB), PC3-12800, DDR3-1600MHz, Unbuffered
CPU: Intel i7-4770K, OC to 4.427Ghz
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Seidon 240M Liquid CPU Cooler
Vid Card: ASUS GTX 980Ti STRIX 6GB
OS and Games on separate: Samsung 840 Series 250GB SSD
Monitor: Primary ASUS PG27AQ 4k; Secondary Samsung SyncMaster BX2450L
Periphs: MS Sidewinder FFB2 Pro, TrackIR 4

Awesome. Thanks Robert! Can't wait to give it a go. FPS boost in busy areas and with time compression are always welcome. I will check using the High End mod if I get stutters while panning and let you know.

TrackIR stutters with this mod (high end version) went away for me when I enabled vertical sync. Of course, that means my frame rate never exceeds 60fps but it also rarely drops below that and everything feels silky smooth and looks awesome. I'm no longer seeing funky rectangles around rivers, etc.

H

So it should probably be 13 or 15 and not 14.

Major, I used to have the SDK readme for CFS3 but no longer have it. Do you have a link for it or could you make it available via dropbox?

In the alternative, do you know why the RingDim values have to be odd? Thanks.

Hi all,
Version 1.4 now on the Terrains page at 'User Mods',

Mike

I just tried the medium version of 1.4 and WOFF crashed. After I made my mission editor selections and tried to start the WOFF mission I got the following message (condensed):

WOFF DLL did not start or WOFF DLL runtime crash!
Mission outcome could therefore not be evaluated.

Yes there seems to be a problem with the mods. I suggest everyone stop using the V1.4 until we fix it. I too have the same problem.

Best Regards

Very sorry to hear that, hoongadoonga. What are your system specs, particularly your cpu and video card?

These files are still very much works in progress, so additional tweaking may be required.

The high end version seems to be OK. At least the mission started up normally and then I terminated it. I'll complete a full mission test now.

I tried the medium version four times. Twice it crashed before the mission even opened. Once the mission opened up and then crashed and once it froze on the mission loading screen and then crashed.

I have an i7-6700, 980Ti, and a G-Sync monitor.

CPU?

If the high end version works, there may be a missing comma or quotation mark in the medium file. Let me take a look at the zip file I sent to Robert.

Edit: Your specs are certainly good enough to run either version.

Bob, it's not a typo problem. It is resource oriented. I dropped the specs back a bit and tried the mods out and they work now. I will make them available to the community via my dropbox temporarily until you have time to make the permanent fix.

Are you ok with this?

The zip file looks okay, at least at first glance.

Hoongadoonga, if you feel comfortable editing .xml files, you can try replacing RingDim="15" with RingDim="13" in the compositescenerybudgets.xml file and then reloading the mod. I am away from my computer right now, so I can't make the change myself until later tonight. If that still doesn't work, you may also have to replace all instances of RingDim="23" with RingDim="21".

That sounds fine, Robert. I think the only change needed to make the medium file run is to make the change I was just explaining to hoongadoonga in the post immediately above this.

The 980Ti is a fairly powerful card. I wonder what might be causing this?

Hi Folks;

Here is a temporary fix until BuckeyeBob gets a chance to update things tonight:

Here is a link to my dropbox where you can download the temporary fix:

click to download

I'd prefer to just wait for the next update.

The high end version worked just fine on my full test mission.

Since this mod first came out I've been able to push regional air activity up to extra heavy (or whatever the second highest setting is called). I've been flying in Flanders in 1917. Perhaps I'm pushing it too far?

Try the temporary release I submitted to this thread. It is pretty close to the last update.

Understood.

I am currently at a loss for why the high end version works for you and the medium version doesn't. All of the specs (RingDim's, LOD's, MajorDensity values) on the high end version are higher than the medium version. If the medium crashes, so should the high end one. Weird.

Robert Wiggins also has a 980Ti and he knew as soon as I did that there was a problem.

Robert, did both versions of 1.4 crash for you?

Yes

Robert, do you mind trying a version of the medium setting that just has the above changes without changing the LOD values? It might save me a bit of time with testing when I get home later this evening.

Out of curiosity, how much Vram does the 980Ti have? I thought it had 6 Gb's, which should be plenty.

I tried this temp fix and both seemed to run fine. I did one short test mission for each, using autopilot and time compression much of the time. I'm out of WOFF time for today, RL tasks call.

In layman's terms, what is the difference between the high and medium versions? Is it just that the high-end version provides a larger area of detailed terrain?

The "rings" that surround the player's aircraft are each a little larger, the level of detail inside each ring is slightly better, and the density of objects (trees, buildings, etc.) that can be "stuffed" into each ring is higher with the high-end version. (Also depends upon the users Workshop terrain and scenery settings). I thought I could get away with the outer ring being the same size in both the medium and high-end versions, but I guess I was mistaken--it worked on my rig!

Terrain SDK Readme

Let me know if you can't retrieve this, and I'll try something else.

I have flown maybe 6 full missions using the 1.4 High End system version and it's hard describe how silky smooth everything flows now, even up to 6X time compression. Pure Magic, gentlemen.

I took a look at the values, and don't see any reason why the Medium version is causing problems when the High works for people.

I did notice that in both versions the MinMaskRadius in the texture budget is incorrect whenever the RingDim is set at 3. The formula is =((RingDim-1)*PatchDim)/2

It should be:

32768 at 5, is 65536
16384 at 3 is 16384
8192 at 3 is 8192
4096 at 3 is 4096
2048 at 5 is 4096
1024 at 5 is 2048
512 at 5 is 1024
256 at 5 is 512
128 at 5 is 256

So...it could get even...better?

Question for the historically astute among us. What month (I presume in 1918?) and sector of the war had the highest air activity? If you know of a particular squadron and date, even better. Give the recent leaps, bounds and super jumps in WOFF UE performance lately due to this ever improving mod, I'd like to try a "Stress Test" to see just how smooth or not WOFF UE flies under those circumstances at max settings in 4k resolution.

Thanks for your observations Major. I applied your suggested settings to the mods and re-flew them. I was surprised to note that performance was the same. No improvement or degradation noted. I'm wondering how it makes a difference.

Best Regards

I created a British pilot in the 64 RFC, flying an SE5a Viper on 23 March, 1918 - which is during Operation Michel in his sector. All settings maxed except Medium Forests and Medium Air Activity, 4K resolution. Flew over an enemy base and engaged in air combat against a German patrol that was returning from their own mission.

I have no idea what my FPS were because - as has been previously pointed out - they don't too much matter past a certain point, at least in terms of stutters. Certainly I didn't feel like I had any low frame rates. I did get a few rare, single micro stutters but that's it and in the heat of combat over the enemy air base, were barely noticeable. Mind you, I was recording while playing in 4K resolution at the time as well. Clearly this wasn't any kind of scientific test, but it is a good indicator of just how much additional "stress" can be put on WOFF UE while using the High End version of this mod and still get a smoother game play experience than ever before.



If you haven't tried either of these mods yet, I cannot recommend them highly enough. Thanks again to all those making this happen.

Pretty sure if I either reduced to Scenery or Terrain down to 4 or wasn't recording, I probably would have even fewer of the single micro stutters. I could fly at 3x / 4x Time Compression with no problems. 6x would sometimes have a slight lag.

Great video and good shooting, Hellshade, although you might want to check your six just a little more often!

For using the high-end version of the blue triangles mod, your video shows only very little evidence of stuttering or other hiccups. How do you do it? The next release of the high-end version has been tweaked slightly to hopefully make it run even more smoothly for those whose machines can handle it. I will look forward to hearing your comments on the new release.

Thanks, Major. Do you have the documentation for any of the other SDK's, out of curiosity?

Sorry, I don't.

How do I do it? Well, I have pretty good gear but more importantly, there's this amazing modding community....

Hellshade;

Would you kindly confirm what your vid card is and of course your monitor. Tnx.

Robert,

Like you - it's all in my System Specs (hidden content in my sig)

Hi Robert,

Came to this issue a little late. Downloaded the 1.4 and can confirm I had a crash mid-mission as well. Can also confirm that with 1.4 and the hotfix, I am seeing significant micro-stutters on my end.

Specs: i7 4790 3.60Ghz
nVidia 745GTX 4GB
16GB RAM

Yes, Bob and I are working on a new version which I think will be ok.

Looking forward to it, Robert. Thanks to both of you for working so hard on this mod. I've rolled back to the prior version for now - which smoothed things out nicely!

Hellshade, what's the refresh rate on that Acer XB280HK 27" G-SYNC Monitor? 144 or 60?

Just 60 sir. But I run Vsync on Fast so that the GPU can put out as many frames per second as it wants and it just drops the ones not in sync with the monitor refresh. Reduces screen tearing almost completely without the lag.

V1.5 of the "WOFF UE Graphics mods to remove blue triangles by RJW" has been sent of to Sandbagger for posting on his mods page.

I believe this one is a significant improvement over the previous. here is the changelog:

Changelog 1.5

– Resolved issue that was preventing medium version from working on some systems (effort by BuckeyeBob).
– Adjusted RingDim settings to comply with cfs3 SDK recommendations (thank you MajorMagee)(effort by BuckeyeBob).
– Tweaked overall settings in both versions to (hopefully) reduce stuttering and increase performance on both medium and high-end systems (effort by BuckeyeBob and Robert Wiggins).

BuckeyeBob provided the initiative to the modification of these mods which are based on the originals provided by Ankor and Yaan98. Both Hellshade and I tested and validated the results. I think everyone will like this version.

Here is what I believe may very well be a game changer for a lot of people who haven't yet discovered the following:

Hellshade identified that if the NVidia 3D setting “Antialiasing – Gamma correction” is set to “off” it seems to reduce the stutters significantly on his high end system (NVidia 1080 card). I tried it on my system (Nvidia 980ti card) and found the same to be true. I recommend users of these two mods to try the same to see if it improves their sim performance.

Using the High End version of this mod with Workshop settings at all 5s, High Trees & High Airfield Complexity, 4k - I flew over Paris while turning the cockpit off for maximum scenery draw, They have done some pretty great work, tweaking the settings. Hard to imagine how far the sim has come. This video was taken with AA Gamma Correction turned OFF.

Ran across of pair of Sopwith Pups while in my trusty Alb DI. Man, I could NOT shake those SOBs. Anyway - made with the new 1.5 version of the mod and AA Gamma Correction is OFF. Enjoy.



PS - How do I turn off the Pilot Health in the upper right hand corner?

Hellshade, Re pilot health. Not sure, but try Shift+d

Health is part of the F6 dials, did you turn the dials off by cycling throug ctrl+1,2,3,4 etc?
You can move it off screen maybe or edit viewui.xml Hud gauge section.

Hi all,
Version 1.5 now on the Terrains page at 'User Mods',

Mike

Nice!

Version 1.5

Enthusiastic fellow aren't you!

I am a firm believer that if some one does a great job that they should be told about it and v1.5 is a fantastic mod.

Yes I have to agree it is a keeper. There we a number of contributors that made it possible. They are Ankor, Yaan98, BuckeyeBob and MajorMagee. The testing was done by BBQ, Myself and Hellshade and of course Hellshade has provided some great complimentary videos demonstrating it.

Best sim community ever. Team players all the way. 1.5 is a marvel and a must have mod, IMHO. I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't want to use it.

Yummm, BBQ!

I'm both tasty and delicious!

Oops, keying error! Not a bad handle though. Maybe worth epping!!

There is this thing you've probably heard of called Texas BBQ. I'm not too sure about Ohio BBQ!

Good evening all. Just wanted to report in with some feedback on 1.5. I have to say, I am blown away. I have dialed in my settings quite nicely and I am noticing significantly smoother FPS across the sim and most importantly, the near elimination of pauses, hiccups, and stutters. I finally had to admit to myself that my 745GTX isn't the 1070 Hellshade is rocking in his case, and kicked my AA back to 4x from 8 (why does 8x have to be so pretty!? ). Once I did that, even my summer 1918 campaign with US 148 Squadron is running smoother. I *may* have to tick air activity down to light, but the fact that normal is even an option shows you how much this mod has unloaded the CPU and created a much more balanced running scheme for the sim. My hats off to everyone involved, I owe all of you a pint! Thank you again!

Cheers!

Hi Cap'n

I just want to acknowledge your comments on behalf of all involved in the production of this mod. Glad it is enhancing your experience.
It is good to hear!

Best Regards

with this mod I was able to "UP" the air activity a notch

Glad to hear it. Which version are you using, lederhosen?

Just found this... working for me

1.5 is indeed a fine piece of work. Thank you again to everyone who contributed! On my system, which I would classify as medium, I actually find that the high end mod suits me better. Weirdly, with the medium mod I actually saw a blue triangle on one flight! That never happens with the high end mod and there's less noticeable landscape popping than with the medium mod. I have also found a combo of Nvidia settings that lets me turn off VSync without tearing (including the AA tweak that Hellshade found) and I now have super fluidity, with only occasional minimal stuttering when I look upward (which I don't do that much). I have actually turned air activity down a notch and WOFF is now running far better than ROF ever did on my system and looks 100 times prettier. There are a lot of things to tweak and balance now but it's been fun dialing it in. What an amazing Sim and what a great community!

H

Still when I’m on the ground I do see them, using the 1.5 medium or for strong systems.
I must admit I use Vsync off and do play Woff in windowed mode.

errrr the from 13 may

High end or medium mod?

medium

Where can I download the mod?

Thanks

Go to the mods section/Terrain and it's on the left side.

Thanks Panama Red!

I am very outdated of the latest WOFF changes. This is the only must have mod to start over? I mean mods for the game and performance.

There are a lot of good mods, but this one gets rid of the dreaded blue triangles and increases your FPS to boot (two for one).

I'm back playing WOFF with this new mod. I'm having a blast again.

I have stutters with a good CPU and videocard. I need to tune better my config.

Do you guys limit your FPS at 60 with NVIDIA Inspector or Control Panel? How you set your Vsync ingame for an 60hz monitor?

Folks;

I have been absent from the forum for a couple of days because I have been unable to access my gaming platform, but have been following all the threads regarding these mods and the inherent stuttering issues, some of which seem to be the result of high air and ground activity in 1918.

I just flew a mission in March 1918 after having revised my settings in WOFF and on my NVidia Control Panel. I have to report major success in reducing the stutters to almost non existent. I still get some micro stutters when panning my TrackIR but they are almost unnoticeable.

Here are my revised WOFF and NVidia settings. I feel that the major contributor is reducing air activity to very light in the 1918 time frame. Hope this post is helpful. I still need to run more test to prove this out. I'm using the blue triangle high end mod,

Looks good, Robert.

My only suggestion is to change Triple Buffering from "Off" to "On." Nvidia control panel recommends leaving it on when vSync is enabled. Of course, your mileage may vary.

Bob;

Here is an extract related to VSync and Triple Buffering. It advocates Triple Buffering only when VSync is turned off, that is why I have Triple Buffering off. Above, you suggest the opposite, so I will do more research.

Exract:

"Triple buffering gives you all the benefits of double buffering with no vsync enabled in addition to all the benefits of enabling vsync. We get smooth full frames with no tearing. These frames are swapped to the front buffer only on refresh, but they have just as little input lag as double buffering with no vsync at the start of output to the monitor. Even though "performance" doesn't always get reported right with triple buffering, the graphics hardware is working just as hard as it does with double buffering and no vsync and the end user gets all the benefit with out the potential downside."

If you do more research, you will find that Triple Buffering actually only applies to GL games, and not D3D games.

CFS3 is a D3D game, so it does not work in this game.

The above quote seems a little vague to me. I don't think it is very clearly written.

I read it as saying that triple buffering gives you all the benefits of double buffering without vsync enabled, but with the addition of getting the benefits of vsync.

The NVidia Control Panel states: "Turning on triple buffering improves performance when Vertical sync is also turned on."

By the same token, triple buffering should probably be turned off when Vsync is NOT turned on.

EDIT: Or, what Panama Red said!

Well the proof is in the pudding as they say! I will try out both options to evaluate the impact. Thanks guys.

Explanation of what all the NVidia Control Panel setting mean: nVidia Contol Panel Setting Explanations

Hey Robert,

Dunno if it's my UK brain, but that extract summarized reads to me as "triple buffer on with Vsync on" is as good as or better than "double buffer on with vsync off".... so I suppose I concur with Bob

H

Thanks, PR. That link helps a lot.

Here is another good source at TWEAKGUIDES

In the official FAQ, pg 10, it specifies:

6) Video cards with less than 2GB of VRAM.

Under NVidia Control Panel for 3D settings, disable Triple Buffering. You may need to do this in the Global Setting not just CFS3 profile as often the profile can be ignored by CFS3. In a card with plenty of memory (2GB+) if it is enabled it creates a third buffer inside the video cards existing RAM. The result is that it can smooth out any choppy frame rates by providing that third stop gap buffer. However under 2GB Video RAM it will slow things down as it eats up what little memory you have and can cause screen stuttering as the card runs out of room to create the next video frame. So if you have less than 2GB video RAM, set Triple Buffering to OFF. - Thanks to “Hellshade” for this tip.



*ahem* \crickets *cough*

Now, I'm not saying who's wrong or right here, so kindly don't go off on me. But it does seem sort of obvious that both cannot be true. Just sayin'.

Well if past is prologue, I'm probably wrong. Ultimately, turn it ON and then OFF and see which one gives you the best performance with the least amount of stutters.

So, if I'm following, the FAQ should also be corrected...?

I think there is some confusion here about two different settings:
"Maximum pre-rendered frames" does apply to D3D games which does virtually the exact same thing as "Triple Buffering", but Triple Buffering only applies to OpenGL games like IL2, not D3D games like CFS3.

I think the PDF meant to say "Maximum pre-rendered frames", but used Triple Buffering" by mistake.

That's an interesting perspective, but if you read what the FAQ says, there's entirely too much specific discussion about how the buffers work, etc, for it to be confusion between the two.

After reviewing those Nvidia Control Panel settings that were so kindly posted, I changed my config to below then ran a test with max WOFF UE settings in April 1918. I must state also I am using a updated version of AnKors Triangle Killer mod put together by BuckeyeBob, too. Thanks to him, Robert Wiggins, Panama Red and everyone else whos been experimenting to get extra smoothness and graphic fidelity out of the sim. It feels like it's really paying off.

Even when I pushed it to 6x Time Compression, it felt at most a very slight lag but didn't notice many micro stutters except after I clipped the DR1 near the very end. Could be recording that caused those.

Triple Buffering: In normal rendering, the GPU uses a technique known as Double Buffering to store two graphics frames in the Video RAM - one frame of graphics which the GPU is currently working on, and one frame which has been completed and is sent to the display. When Vertical Synchronization (See the Vertical Sync setting further below) is enabled in a game, your GPU will become synchronized to your monitor's refresh rate. In this environment, if double buffering is used, and your framerate falls below the refresh rate, the GPU may fill both frame buffers and become temporarily idle while it waits for the display's next refresh cycle so it can free up one of the buffers. The end result is a reduction in performance, sometimes by quite a significant amount (e.g. 50%), as the GPU is underutilized. Triple Buffering adds a third frame buffer to the process, specifically aimed at preventing the GPU from becoming idle due to waiting for the display to refresh, thus maintaining maximum performance when VSync is enabled. Triple Buffering is covered in more detail on this page of the Gamer's Graphics & Display Settings Guide.


The available options for this setting are Off and On. However, although not clearly indicated by Nvidia in the NVCP, this setting only applies to OpenGL games. Since the vast majority of games are based on DirectX, this setting won't have any impact on them. An Nvidia Engineer confirms this in this article by noting that there is no driver override functionality for Triple Buffering under DirectX. This has been done for compatibility purposes, since DirectX games use internally controlled frame buffering, and forcing Triple Buffering via the graphics driver can break this internal buffer management. If you wish to use Triple Buffering in a DirectX game, check the in-game settings for buffer-related options. Many games don't have any such options, in which case, to force Triple Buffering in DirectX games, you can use the D3DOverrider utility covered under the Advanced Tweaking section later in the guide.


Some important things to keep in mind regarding Triple Buffering:

◾It only works to improve performance if enabled when Vertical Sync is On.
◾It only improves performance whenever your framerate falls below your refresh rate.
◾It increases the amount of Video RAM used.
◾It can increase input lag because frames are buffered slightly longer.



It is recommended that Triple Buffering be set to Off under Global Settings, and only enabled under Program Settings for OpenGL games in which Vertical Sync is also enabled. In games which have a built-in Triple Buffering setting, it is recommended that it be enabled if VSync is On. Forcing Triple Buffering on with a third party utility is an option best used only if there are no other alternatives.

Wonderfully informative.

So, if im following, should't the FAQ be corrected?

That is up to OBD, but I would say that they should change their FAQ per the information available on Triple Buffering and it's application to only OpenGL games, not D3D games like CFS3.

Right...I just can't imagine any support person or developer would want an FAQ to contain information that is inaccurate or misleading.

Panama;

I would suggest you send that link off to OBD Support as they may not see it here.

Robert, I have a question regarding vertical sync. You have it "on" in the Nvidia control panel and set to "force on" in the workshop. It's not better to have the workshop set to "driver setting" if it's enabled by Nvidia?

You are correct and I do have mine set to "use the 3D application setting" in my NVidia. I suspect you were looking at my older settings I previously posted. My workshop is set to Force on as you have stated

Robert, I was looking at the settings you posted on page 34 of this thread. The global settings show "use the 3d application setting" but the program setting is "on".

The only other place where the program setting differs from the global one is antialiasing - FXAA (Global - off, program - on). Should it be on for WOFF?

Robert, you do realize, that you are now the "go-to guy" when it comes to all things NVidia, from now on!

No, the program setting is not "on" currently. Again, what you are looking at is not current.

Let me post my current settings now:

[img]https://www.dropbox.com/s/hr41oxiw4wuwka0/NVidia%20GS%20Pg1.JPG?dl=0[/img]
[img]https://www.dropbox.com/s/9vfmwi7j05j30b0/Nvidia%20GS%20Pg2.JPG?dl=0[/img]
[img]https://www.dropbox.com/s/jzag790gz40pfv6/Nvidia%20PS%20Pg1.JPG?dl=0[/img]
[img]https://www.dropbox.com/s/btj4xxwxz7rik9b/Nvidia%20PS%20Pg2.JPG?dl=0[/img]
[img]https://www.dropbox.com/s/z6hrn3qwk97p5v4/WOFF%20WorkShop%20Pg1.JPG?dl=0[/img]
[img]https://www.dropbox.com/s/rpqhgtyradpebxh/WOFF%20WorkShop%20PG2.JPG?dl=0[/img]

Hope that clarifies things. If not, just get back to me.

I just went back to the original post and updated the images as well.

Thanks very much Robert.

On an unrelated note - I was starting to wonder if I was losing my mind but I just figured it out. When I'm logged in to this forum this thread shows that it has 37 pages. When I'm not logged in it shows that there are only 19 pages. Very odd, but at least I'm not crazy. No really, I'm not!!

Ha Ha....Chalk it up to the mysteries associated with "Murphys Law"

When I'm logged out I can see all the posting date from start on, when I logged in I can only see as a date: yesterday and today, the rest has only a useless posting number.
This SimHQ-forum is so strange.

In developing and testing several different versions of the BTM, I and others have found that identifying the best version for you to use highly depends on both the user's individual computer setup, as well as the year and overall ground and air activity level taking place during a particular campaign mission. The same version that works fine on a low or medium system may not work as well on a supposedly better system. Therefore, in order to help users determine which version works best on their individual setup, I have developed a tool in the form of a Quick Scenario mission you can use as a torture test to see just what your computer can handle, stress wise.

The mission takes place over a particularly active part of the front in late March 1918, during the opening phases of Operation Michael. It requires that you have an active British campaign pilot. To use, install and apply the mod and then, as a British pilot, click the Quick Scenarios button at the bottom of the main WOFF menu. Before you start the mission, first be sure to click the "pilot never dies" box so you don't have to create a new pilot after you get killed during the mission--you WILL die, both because of the sheer number of enemy planes about, and because the Se5 you are flying has a nasty habit of occasionally exploding and catching fire on you!

This utility can be used more generally as a stress test for anyone's computer system. If your system can handle this torture test mission without freezing up or experiencing more than a few micro-stutters, you should be able to handle just about everything WOFF can throw at you!

You can download the test mission here: WOFF UE Torture Test Mission

Thank you BB! This will be interesting to try.

I agree with you that air activity makes a huge difference. Personally I prefer the high end mod, BUT, when I start a new career I always check the Mission Editor on the first mission to see how many aircraft the campaign is generating. The sweet spot for my rig with the high end mod is 80-100 aircraft. If on that first mission I see a number above 100, I quit out and reduce the air activity setting in the workshop accordingly.

H

That is an excellent suggestion, Harry! Air activity makes a big difference, even when the other flights are probably too far away to get into a fight with you.

Thanks! One related question: when dropping the air activity and with encounters set to "historical" in the workshop, does the chance of enemy encounters decrease with each lower air activity setting, or does the game logic ensure there will be a sufficient / appropriate chance of encounters regardless of air activity settings? I guess I could use the mission editor to check for intercepting flight patterns at different activity settings. Kind of laborious

Harry H, funny you should say that. I always check the # of airplanes in ME before each mission. To me, it simply means I’ll most likely not be able to use the higher time acceleration when the numbers are in 240’s. From my experience the number of airplanes fluctuates from day to day. Especially if the weather deteriorates - numbers can drop from 200’s to 60’s. Just wondering if you set the air activity based on that first mission and then leave it at that for the reminder of the career?

That's a good point. I do keep an eye on things, by running the ME before every mission. If I see the number of craft regularly higher, then I'll reset the activity level lower still.

Is it possible to make a mod or two that caps the total number of aircraft that it will generate for missions - say 100 or 150? That way it wouldn't matter what your Air Density was set it, it would never rise above those numbers.

Very good information, Sir. I will experiment with some of these items.

Hi Chaps!

Hope you are all doing well. I wanted to quickly mention that Hellshade's idea of keeping triple buffering OFF seems to help with my rig. The occasional pause that would hit when my fps dipped between 60fps and about 58 has pretty much vanished now, which is making the gameplay much smoother.

And Hellshade, you'll love this. After months of tinkering my settings, I've pretty much gone in a full circle! With the exception of triple buffering and the gamma settings, I'm right back where I started! Barmy indeed!

Hello gents',

Those flying WOFFue on a Mac are encouraged to see the blue triangle removal tweaks section in my long post for Mac installation of WOFFue. Several values were slightly increased in the terrain.fx, compositescenerybudgets.xml, and AnKor's compositetexturebudgets.xml files - transitions between lower and higher-quality graphics are now more subtle, with the overall picture slightly more crisp, and with minimal drop in FPS (about 2-3 less frames, really minimal, but with decent picture improvement). See representative pics. below, and also notice how the gpu value number has not dropped too much - from my previous average of about 910-915, into the 850-865 range...a very small increase in graphics processing usage, but with good FPS maintained on integrated video cards.

Von S

Hi Chaps,

Hope everyone is doing well. Just wanted to check in and see what version of the mod everyone is using these days. I know PR started work on his own implementation - what general results have folks found with it? I find that the Ankor stock version of Panama Red's mod tends to work best for my modest system. Just curious as this thread went quiet a few months back.

I use customisable version of this mod included in Mission Editor:

If you haven't tried it already, JJJ's latest mission editor (pictured above) has integrated selectable levels, so that you can experiment on a per-mission basis to find the optimal balance between performance and visuals based on the number of planes in the upcoming mission. I think it's an incredibly elegant solution

H

First of all, thanks to everyone involved with the various versions of this great mod. I never had much issues with the triangles but it made the game look much better while greatly increasing FPS in WOFFUE.

Has anyone done any in depth testing or research of whether the mod still works as well with PE as it did with UE?

I prefer to run PE without the BT mod, to get the best from the new terrain treatments in PE. In fact, I'm not running any mods with the new PE version until there's more clarity from the mod makers themselves on what works / what doesn't. I did try the BT mod with PE and it does still seem to add a slight smoothness, but at a cost visually. Also, the occasional "hiccup" that occurs when terrain or other things are loading is actually worse with the BT mod on (IME).

I still get the blue triangles in PE... I thought that they were removed with the upgrade?

Thanks HarryH. I think I'll try to fly without this mod for now and see how it looks and runs. From discussion in other topics it sounds like PE has some performance improvements.

Interesting.

Interesting.

Hoping to pick up WOFF PE this week guys,with a bit of luck Panama Red or somebody else can have a look at the BT mod with the new PE version and if needs be,make it compatible. The PE upgrade looks incredible.

Adger:
I have already created a new set of my Scenery Improvement mods for PE that does three things:
1. Eliminate the dreaded BTs (which you can still get if you use the wrong combination of settings in PE).
2. Improve the Scenery Density all the way out the the new "fog horizon".
3. Increase the FPS over the stock OBD PE settings (magic).

It is being tested at the moment, but I am always looking for a "few more good testers" to see if the are any problems. PM me if you are interested.

Is something documented so that users such as Trooper117 would know how the settings should be? Which settings?

Are you saying the "original" blue triangle mod (with proper settings) isn't already included in PE? I thought it was long since incorporated...

Thanks PR should be getting PE this week,if you've not released your mod by then il certainly test..Thank you

I found that editing MajorDensity to a value above 0.00040 in compositescenerybudgets.xml will slightly increase the amount of buildings in the mission without any effect on FPS.