Performance improvement mods (Low clouds/smoke/grass/shadow, no mipmaps, etc)

I made a few mods that hopefully improve the game performance a bit. To use them, you'll need to install my sfsMod first, which I also just updated to work with IL2COD v1.00.13954 and up. Get it from: http://www.kegetys.net/misc (Read the readme!)

The mods themselves are:

- Low clouds/smoke/grass/shadows mods: These mods simplify the clouds, smoke, grass and shadows rendering for some FPS improvements. Download from: http://junk.kegetys.net/lowcgsmod.zip


- A low resolution textures mod. This mod will reduce the sizes of some of the DDS files in the game which have some quite crazy sizes*. It doesn't have a huge effect, but it can help a bit for the stuttering if running on a video card without much video memory. Download from: http://junk.kegetys.net/xzy/lowtex.7z (With sfsMod installed, use -mod=lowtex to use it. Use 7zip to extact.) In latest IL2COD version you can also use the new video options setting for similar effect.


- noSSAO mod. This mod will disable the SSAO effect from the game. This effect seems to have a big impact on framerate, with minimal(if any) effect on visual appearance. Especially when playing in higher resolutions disabling it can almost double the framerate, though it doesn't help for the stuttering. Download from: http://junk.kegetys.net/nossao_mod.zip (With sfsMod installed, use -mod=nossao to use it) no longer required for latest IL2COD version


- No mipmaps mod. This mod will disable the use of mipmaps from all materials used by the game. This seems to help alot to the constant stuttering the game has. An unfortunate side effect is that the textures will get an extremely aliased / "shimmering" appearance. But at least for me it makes the game perfectly playable everywhere... This makes me believe there is some very serious bug with the management of textures in the engine, it is constantly shuffling high and low detail mipmaps to the video memory which is causing the stuttering. And when the mipmaps are disabled there is nothing to shuffle. Download from: http://junk.kegetys.net/nomipmaps_mod.zip (With sfsMod installed, use -mod=nomipmaps to use it)


* By default there is, for example, two 4096x4096 textures for the pilot textures, uncompressed ~20MB normal map texture for the buckingham palace, uncompressed ~20MB normal map texture for some small ship, etc... The engine should be smart enough not to load these at full resolution unless they're needed, but reducing the sizes can apparently help a bit anyway. The mod also reduces some other textures, if you want you can delete some of them manually to use the full resolution ones instead (ie. from lowtex\$bob\3do\Plane).

A "quick start" guide for the nossao mod: (Read the sfsmod readme for more detailed instructions + FAQ!)
- Download the sfsMod v1.1 and extract the kegetys.dll into your IL2COD dir
- Edit the Launcher.exe.config file and add kegetys.dll there similar to steam_api.dll
- Download the nossao mod and extract it to your IL2COD dir too
- Create a shortcut to launcher.exe and add -mod=nossao parameter to it

You can also add the parameters (like -mod=nossao) from Steam by right clicking on the game, select properties and "set launch options" from general tab.

Can confirm fps rise with this as was beta tester On Bomber Interception over channel my fps was 50 without this at beginning and with this 69, so go ahead and try it folks

Have you posted this on the Ubisoft Il2 site? It might be helpful for the team to know so they can come up with a fix for the game?

PS, the textures are THAT BIG??

Bananaforum too.

I'd post it on the 1C forum where the devs seem to loiter, but as it seems every thread even hinting for some problems with the game are deleted, I'm not going to bother.



Yeah (That's just the diffuse map converted from DDS to jpeg, theres also a normal map of the same size). You can see them yourself if you run the sfsmod with -dump parameter and then look at the DDS files extracted to _dump dir.

I am sure it's just their way of saying thank you! lol

PS, i do some 3d modeling.. that file needs to be either compressed or brought down by HALF!

Tested it and can now confirm this really helps in FPS (I can get over 30fps now over London). Micro stutter are still there tought. But overall very helpfull mod.

Thanks for doing this Kegetys - will check it out.

Thanks Kegetys, your works have always been amazing. Hopefully it will lead the developer to the right direction on optimization.

I prefer my Shift Delete optimization.

Followed the instructions to the letter and used both Lowtex and NoSSAO and well this has the been the biggest boost ever with no loss from what i can tell in eyecandy! Muchos Gracias mate. Beta patch no improvement over release, steam patch big improvement but this..... game changer for me.

Flying over land is much better and actually playable from the cockpit now albeit a few minor stutters. Can do big engagements over sea and over land now. Wow.

System is E8500 Core 2 Duo, Win7 64bit, ATI HD4800 and 8Gb Ram

Silly your supposed to do that on a file not yourself

I tested the noSSAO mod and in my standard test flight (freeflight over France) got ~20% higher average FPS @1920x180 resolution, while not noticing any loss in Image quality. Average FPS increased from ~24 to ~28.

Thanks!

Thanks for posting this and doing this for us, I noticed a decent improvement in FPS with the nossao of 20%, great mod.

When I use the lowtex mod it gives a large dark circle under the player aircraft. I have attached a screenshot.



I am using a HD6970 with 11.4 preview drivers.
Windows 7 64 bit.

I also installed SSAO mod and it seems to be working great: couldn't tell the visual difference from original with SSAO and FPS was clearly higher and more constant at least based on quick testing. Game is definitely better with mod what it comes to performance, although FPS was already okay for me especially after the patch. Yes, stutters are there, but this is a clearly a must mod for everyone at least so far game is repaired by developers. Now similar solution to stutters and we are there

My rig:
i7 920@3,92GHz
6GB
GTX480@800,1600,2000
Vista 64-bit

Yes, another confirm - the SSAO off is now nicer, just did the Blenheim quick mission and certainly felt better (getting tired of staring at a FPS counter). Land, grass all high on a mid-range Q6600@3.6 ATI4890 1G and it's very playable.

Thanks, and keep em coming!

Are you sure that's not a cloud overhead 2005AD? The shadow looks familiar.

First thing I checked, no clouds overhead and it happens with all aircraft.

Fair enough, and on retrospect not a great question as I knew you'd check

I don't have that bug - maybe clear out the cache directory just in case? There seems to be a bunch of prebuilt DDS's in there doing something or another.

OMG Kegetys, you done it again, thank you, at last we are getting close.

Sounds great - but I can't get it to work.

Here's what I have done:

1. Put the kegetys.dll and nossao directory into C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\il-2 sturmovik cliffs of dover

2. Editted Launcher.ece.config in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\il-2 sturmovik cliffs of dover to add the lines

3. Made a desktop shortcut to Launcher.exe, right clicked it and added -mod-nossao to the larget line so it reads "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\il-2 sturmovik cliffs of dover\Launcher.exe" -mod=nossa

When I then double click on the shortcut to launch, I get the Windows 7 "whirly circle" to show it's doing something, but this stops after two seconds and the game doesn't launch.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks,

Nick

SSAO is a huge frame rate killer in every game I have seen it used. There is usually an option in graphic settings to turn it off. You mean it permanently enabled in COD?

Sounds like a broken shortcut. Maybe try using the Steam shortcut helper thing, i.e. right click in Steam on IL2, select 'Properties' and then on the 'General Tab' press 'Set Launch Options' and put this text in '-mod=nossao -mod=lowtex' (or just the first one, plus no quotes).

Make sure he Start in: line of the shortcut looks like this:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\il-2 sturmovik cliffs of dover\Launcher.exe" -mod=nossao -mod=lowtex

BTW as you can see I added the lowtex mod as well. Make sure you are using the appropriate drive letter - in this case "C:\"

Looks like it. In DX10 SSAO is a train-wreck in terms of benefit/cost, especially on NV200/ATI4/5000 cards. One of the better things about DX11 is the DirectCompute use of SSAO to actually make it worth it. Perhaps this is an oversight, perhaps due to the devs experimenting with DX11 as the original plan?

You did it AGAIN Kegetys! Nice work!
I tested only this SSAO thing and it really makes some differences.

Dont just look framerates, look for the differences between without this mod and with this mod.
These graphs are made with 1280x720 and 1920x1200. I didnt want them to be too big but You know the pairs on that graph.

Same problem as RocketDog. I edited through the Steam interface for the game launch options, didn't work. I also removed the launch options, and still no dice.

I took the SSAO download and had it replace the files in the CoD directory - which I assume is what we're supposed to do?

The noSSAO mod almost doubles my frame rate with almost everything high settings except buildings, shadows and shaders. I had 30 fps now I have 45 over a multiplayer map. Stuttering is still there but frame rate is way better.

Seriously, this should be included in the next patch.
Excellent work!!.

You have a new 'nossao' directory like here?

Don't know if this helps at all, but this is what I see in my application log:

Log Name: Application
Source: Application Error
Date: 4/9/2011 4:44:01 PM
Event ID: 1000
Task Category: (100)
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: Fohteeland
Description:
Faulting application name: Launcher.exe_Launcher, version: 1.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x4d6e3d08
Faulting module name: KERNELBASE.dll, version: 6.1.7600.16385, time stamp: 0x4a5bdbdf
Exception code: 0xe0434352
Fault offset: 0x0000b727
Faulting process id: 0x97c
Faulting application start time: 0x01cbf6f6db5d4916
Faulting application path: d:\program files (x86)\steam\steamapps\common\il-2 sturmovik cliffs of dover\Launcher.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Windows\syswow64\KERNELBASE.dll
Report Id: 19396f7c-62ea-11e0-bcfd-002618df6d13
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
<System>
<Provider Name="Application Error" />
<EventID Qualifiers="0">1000</EventID>
<Level>2</Level>
<Task>100</Task>
<Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2011-04-09T20:44:01.000000000Z" />
<EventRecordID>1891</EventRecordID>
<Channel>Application</Channel>
<Computer>Fohteeland</Computer>
<Security />
</System>
<EventData>
<Data>Launcher.exe_Launcher</Data>
<Data>1.0.0.0</Data>
<Data>4d6e3d08</Data>
<Data>KERNELBASE.dll</Data>
<Data>6.1.7600.16385</Data>
<Data>4a5bdbdf</Data>
<Data>e0434352</Data>
<Data>0000b727</Data>
<Data>97c</Data>
<Data>01cbf6f6db5d4916</Data>
<Data>d:\program files (x86)\steam\steamapps\common\il-2 sturmovik cliffs of dover\Launcher.exe</Data>
<Data>C:\Windows\syswow64\KERNELBASE.dll</Data>
<Data>19396f7c-62ea-11e0-bcfd-002618df6d13</Data>
</EventData>
</Event>

And:

Log Name: Application
Source: .NET Runtime
Date: 4/9/2011 4:44:01 PM
Event ID: 1026
Task Category: None
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: Fohteeland
Description:
Application: Launcher.exe
Framework Version: v4.0.30319
Description: The process was terminated due to an unhandled exception.
Exception Info: System.IO.FileLoadException
Stack:
at eaTDGGiVSMTBXcIxSnE.QZHRGZiDUIQFBc3X8Pt.jMQP2qiVJ()
at maddox.Launch.gdBsT4sx8TDXBtoALM4()
at maddox.Launch.Program(System.String[])
at Launcher.Program.Main(System.String[])

Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
<System>
<Provider Name=".NET Runtime" />
<EventID Qualifiers="0">1026</EventID>
<Level>2</Level>
<Task>0</Task>
<Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2011-04-09T20:44:01.000000000Z" />
<EventRecordID>1890</EventRecordID>
<Channel>Application</Channel>
<Computer>Fohteeland</Computer>
<Security />
</System>
<EventData>
<Data>Application: Launcher.exe
Framework Version: v4.0.30319
Description: The process was terminated due to an unhandled exception.
Exception Info: System.IO.FileLoadException
Stack:
at eaTDGGiVSMTBXcIxSnE.QZHRGZiDUIQFBc3X8Pt.jMQP2qiVJ()
at maddox.Launch.gdBsT4sx8TDXBtoALM4()
at maddox.Launch.Program(System.String[])
at Launcher.Program.Main(System.String[])
</Data>
</EventData>
</Event>

I does not, that must have been my error.

I'll give it another shot. Thanks!

If You do everything like it was told it should work. I made mistake with Launcher.exe.config part. REMEMBER to write those addons just like in the readme (my mistake was <setting name="nativeDLL" serializeAs="string"> and the rightone is <setting name="nativeDLL" serializeAs="String">

Cool - it might be worth restoring any overwritten files first before popping that new directory in. In Steam you can do a:

Properties / Local Files / Verify Integrity of Games Cache

..and it'll put the originals back (after downloading differences)

It's all set now. Thanks FearlessFrog!

Shouldn't have overwritten the files, should have just dropped them in the folder as a new directory as FF stated.

Excellent work Kege! I noticed good improvement, over land i get now around 45 fps and the stuttering is a bit easier on the eye now
I really hope you come with more tweaks that help us low end users. Kippis!

That fixed it - thanks!

Nick

I added another mod added to the first post, "nomipmaps". It seems to help alot for the stuttering, although at the same time it makes the textures look quite badly aliased.

(I also get some random crashing at mission startup, not sure if it this mod or something else I broke)

Thanks! Works for slight improvement for me.

For those with launcher.exe.config problems - I found I had to add the new dll BEFORE the steam dll or I had a problem.

I was thinking the same thing when I watched that constant texture swapping that maybe that's responsible for the stutter. I will try your mipmap mod too. You should really post this to 1c forums too, it might prove invaluable.

"You should really post this to 1c forums too, it might prove invaluable."

Somebody already has pointed to this thread over there, just they are so fickle about mods .

@Shado : Roger that.

Well the mipmap mod surely erased the stutter and the "aliased" textures look quite bad but I think it's still better than the constant stutter. Gonna upg. my gfx card soon but these mods made this game VERY playable for me. Thx again.

P.S. Mipmad mod didn't cause any crashes so far.

Kegetys,

MANY thanks for what you've made for the sim! I was able to cruise over London at 60+ fps at low level

I made a donation at your site in apreciation, too

What are your thoughts on expanding the functionality?

As far as I know this kind of discussion is supposed to be against forum policy as well as linking directly to mod content:

http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/2579012/SimHQ_policy_on_IL_2_Series_mo.html#Post2579012

but I guess that doesn't matter when the site is trying to put lipstick on a pig to maintain positive relationships with the developers of software and hardware that it covers.

Thanks muchly works for me too. Made a few fps over what I had before but that is now at native res instead of 1680x1050.

I think I'm on about the 6th or 7th campaign mission and its a joy to fly

Interesting point, some thoughts:

- The addition of "Il-2" was a last minute change by marketing analysts. The series was not intended to be called by this name and doesn't include the Il-2 (yet). It was also intended to be modded (however, this would be through the SDK/documentation, rather than reverse engineering). So, I'm sure the moderators still somehow think of this as "Storm of War".

- If I recall correctly, a major motivating factor for preventing links to mods had to do with concerns over cheating, and the initially locking of discussions was due to the fact that they immediately turned into flame wars around this issue. These mods don't effect multi-player directly, and probably aren't at issue.

So, I'm going to leave the links until an issue develops or the policy is sorted out.

P.S.
The reasoning for leaving this up is not about favouring the developer. There is actually considerable lee-way in the terms of service which could allow a massive "crackdown" on criticism (especially a small minority of which is technically without sufficient evidenced, inaccurate and defamatory). There are many good and noble reasons why this crackdown isn't happening - and it isn't because the staff hates the developer either.

Kegs is THE man! Smooth takeoffs, crosscountry and landings in my Spit1 with full CEM and med to high settings. This game has become a joy at last.

Thank you Kegetys.

1920res performance is improved, good job kegety this ssao thing was well spotted
there is surely some good fps to gain on the mip mapping side too

I have a launcher crash when using the nomipmaps or lowtex...but the nossao is fine...

Set shaders to high and see if it helps.

nice work kegety, my pc has a gt220 these mods get me a good 30 fps
with minimal stuttering, at 1024 x 768 of course, but at least I can
play it till I get a faster video card. I don't use the nomipmap though
as it makes the buildings look very shimmery.
thanks kegerty!
spud

Do you have Antialiasing on? try disable it if you do and shimmering should disappear.

Hi Kegetys, thanks for the mod. Disabling SSAO in particular is a great help, I was completely unaware the game even used SSAO as the effect is so subtle and very hard to notice in a flightsim game.

I have noticed that disabling the mipmaps causes a launcher crash when loading a mission that spawns you on an airfield, such as the Cross-Country quick mission. Airstart missions seem to be unaffected. I have 4GB of ram and a 1GB HD4870, might not be an issue with people with more memory I'm not sure.

I also noticed that using low textures causes a dark circle to appear when flying near terrain, its size is like the same distance the game renders grass and such. Might be something you can fix by reverting some of the textures related to this.

Hi,

as this is a mod, how does it affect online - play?
Does it affect it?

SSAO is such a framerate killer - really dont understand why this option is not available for turning off in the sim... I n every game that is the first thing I switch off..

For example in Battlefield it make game look like you are all the time on mushrooms (esp in the desert) and such a performance hog...

i have a hd6990 and cant disable crossfire.not even with radeon pro tool. i always have black meshes around the visible texture box,that sorrounds my plane or position. i also see dividing lines on sea,like borders or mathematical stuff.... GRRRR

You can disable it but you must rollback drivers 10.xx , then CCC has option to turn off catalyst A.I

Nice mod Kegety. Raised my fps up 15-20%. Now I'm flying with 30fps over London with all settings maxed @ 1920x1080 (sans grass + roads). I can go higher with grass and roads if I use the nomipmaps mod, but I can't stand the shimmering so I'll do without it.

2005AD - I found the culprit for the shadow (had this myself). It's actually two or more of the files in the folder:
il-2 sturmovik cliffs of dover\lowtex\$bob\textures\Terrain\Detail

Two or more files because when I removed only one of the files in that directory (for testing purposes), I still had the shadow. If I delete the complete folder then it's gone so it must be the way the dds files work together.

Those using the lowtex mod but not having the issue may not have it installed properly. When I unpacked the lowtex.7ip using winrar, it created a folder called lowtex and placed the unpacked folder structure underneath that one, effectivly giving me two "lowtex" folders. Anyone who has move the top "lowtex" into his/her "il-2 sturmovik cliffs of dover" directory will be getting the following structure:
"il-2 sturmovik cliffs of dover\lowtex\lowtex\..." which effectivly negates usage.

I Hope I posted my find understandably. It's early morning and I still have massive rings around my eyes

Cheers

S!

Kegetys stated to use 7Zip to unpack Ja Kegetykselle ISO kiitos, melkoinen velho olet!

Awesome mod mate, it's running smooth as butter now, thank god for the modding community! Why didn't the ruskies identify this?

Same problem with mipmapmpd, i cannot start even in air QMB missions.

Ok whoever made these mod I think has single handedly saved this game...........wow what a difference. I can get over the shimmering effect.........

Kegetys in il2 too?
Being a old OFP and ArmA-series gamer seeing your name here will definately push my descision to buy il2:cod or not to a "buy" one.

Are you really human Kegetys?

All air missions though, haven't tried any starting from the ground......

now it worked, really no stuttering anymore but i cannot live with shimmering.

S!

Kankkis, try lower building detail to very low an use CCC for anisotropic filtering a 8x or 16x. Reduced it a little bit. The noSSAO alone helped quite a few FPS..now if the dev team could look into this mipmap and texture issues, because it seems Kegetys pointed out that the coding in these areas is not very optimized..or am I wrong? But was such a joy to fly the game, enjoy the FPS...

Hi, Kegetys !

This is not really in my habits, but I decided to donate you 10 euros (via your site / Paypal) for your excellent job.
In the hope that other enthusisastic simmers will do the same.
You are giving IL-2 : COD a second chance of long life.
Best regards,
Pierre Antier

Shouldn't the devs do it and not the mods ?

I hear ya and to be honest it's a little concerning but however it happened now we are at least heading towards the right direction, it was a bit spray and pray before. The shimmering will get old fast though, but at least no more stutters for now... god that spitII is nice to fly

Yes it's quite intereseting that a team that's working on it for years cannot fix a thing that a guy who has his game for a week, sees it for first time, makes an more efficient and quicker fix than the main devs.

lol

If life seems jolly rotten
There's something you've forgotten
And that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing.
When you're feeling in the dumps
Don't be silly chumps
Just purse your lips and whistle - that's the thing.

And...always look on the bright side of life...
Always look on the light side of life...


Cheers,
Slug

Incredible!

Using noSSAO alone gave me 10 - 20 FPS increase overall. However: Stutters and rubberbanding remained.

Installed noMipmaps next and tried and air-launch-mission. Launcher started loading from FMB, then crashed (using a home-made shortcut to launcher.exe). Used Steam-properties to set command-line switches and this time the mission loaded and ran. Rubber-banding seems almost completely gone. I'm still getting stutters however under certain conditions.

Example: I fly through an enemy bomber formation and once I overtake them I look around and back at the formation from short or medium range. This will give me a stutter.

Still: Much better than before, thanks for the great work! I'll also try the lo-res textures next and see how my system fares over London with these new settings.

Oh and BTW: Haven't noticed any large deterioration in visual quality. The only thing I noticed is that the terrain looks somewhat different with noMipmaps on. Kinda grainy and "sparkling" .. sorry, can't describe it better than that..



I gotta say though that it puzzles me that a community-member has to come up with these kinds of optimizations when 1C clearly didn't. Seems to me that it would be easy for them to inlcude this stuff as "on/off"-switches in the video-options.



S.

Embarrassing hey....Luthier must be a bright little tomato by now... lol

Great improvement for me, can fly the tiger moth over england nearly without stutters. Texture mod and nominimaps gave the most noticable improvement.

1920x1200
Intel Core i5 2500K 3.30GHz @ 4.40GHz Sandybridge CPU
Asus P8P67 PRO Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard
Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel
ENGTX 285 1gb
Win 7 professional 64bit

FYI - I noticed these mipmap-error-messages in the console






S.

Big improvement for me as well.

I am getting screen tearing still, I know this isn't releated to the mod but does anyone have any advice?

RE the mod...at first I wasn't that impressed but I actually got improvement in smoothness when I increased the settings. I have all except building amount on hiugh/very high. Kept my low resolution of 1280x720 for now.

Thanks!

wow thanks buddy great improvement! I also noticed when I turned off my mirror it gave me an extra 15+fps. :P

Couple of additional observations:

Flying over London was the smoothest I've seen so far. I wouldn't call it "playable", but FPS were definetly better than ever. Mostly high teens, very rarely single digits. That is until I zoomed in on Big Ben and openend fire. FPS dropped dramatically and only recovered when I pulled up and was looking at nothing but sky again.


Missions in the FMB seem to load a lot quicker... and I mean a *lot*. My London-test (just me in a 109 and nothing else) took 3 to 5 seconds to load at most. I had loaded other missions before during that FMB-session which had always resulted in quicker loading .. but I've never seen a mission loaded *this* quickly.


EDIT: Almost forgot about the trees. With lo-textures they seem to be much less of an FPS-killer now. I timidly switched them from "off" to "low" and I didn't notice any negative effects. Gonna try medium now and some low level flying over France.




S.

Ahem.

While official SimHQ position is forthcoming, please note that IL-2: 1946 and IL-2: CoD are two entirely different sims.

And some more:

Loaded a custom mission with me in 109 taking off from LeHavre and a flight of Defiants coming in lazily over the channel. I made this mission initially to test cold-start and CEM.

First thing I noticed is this:


This is how the airfield-icon looks like on high zoom. No idea what all the dots/numbers mean, but I thought it interesting enough to grab a screenshot..:)



I expected the game to crash during loading, but it didn't. Found myself in the cockpit alright and after a quick look around to check the improved video-settings I now used, I started her up.




While flying low over LeHavre wasn't perfect, it was certainly playable. Rubber-banding was back at this low altitude, and while it is annoying and an immersion-killer, it doesn't prevent you from flying in a controlled manner. General FPS were pretty good and stable at this alt. EDIT: Oops.. just realized I din't take shots at low alt. These two were of course taken while I was a bit further up in the air.




Anyhow: I gained some altitude and checked out my surroundings. Gotta say that the game looks a lot better down low with some eye-candy switched on. The smaller the villages, the less pronounced the rubber-banding BTW. Once I had left LeHavre it was smooth sailing all the way with record-braking FPS.







Even when I found the flight of Defiants (pure luck, they weren't shown on the map for some reason) and did a quick attack, the game was so smooth that it actually ruined my guns-pass and made me ram one of the Brits . I was expecting stutters any second and so I didn't fly in an appropriate fashion to avoid collision.. well, at least that's my excuse..


And another thing I noticed was that the game ran super-smooth and with high FPS on time compression. Could be due to the fact that there weren't many other planes around, but it was definetly noteworthy.
This shot was taken at max time compression. FPS were high and stable and the action was totally smooth instead of jerky and stuttery.





Note: Shots taken with all three mods active. If there's a significant loss in visual quality compared to the unmodded version, I sure can't spot it.

S.

How many people are using the 'No mipmaps mo'? Is the shimmering that bad?

The other two mods have worked wonders but I do still get a little stuttering and as I am abit OCD about such things would like to get rid of them entirely

Those are respawn and taxi points. Which means that you can make your own airfields, which was possible only in moded IL2 1946.


Anyone knows does this "mod" works in WindowsXP? I cant get it to work.

Emil: using all three together gave me the biggest performance-boost.

In fact, the boost was so significant that I started ramping up my video-options. Here's what I'm using now and it works pretty well:




Mind you: Even at lower settings, London is still a no-no for me. Haven't tried it with lower screen-res yet. At 1920x1080 it's a lot better than before, but it's not really playable.

UPDATE: Quick-missions don't seem to work anymore for me. Doesn't really matter though as long as the FMB-ones work.

S.

Great job my FPS jumped to 30 down low from 15 but I can't use - No mipmaps mod game is crashing when I load missions. btw is the command line -mod=lowtex-mod=noSSAO or is there a space between them 2

I tried to install it and I didn`t backup so ended up deleting clod and reinstalling via Steam.Is there an easy installer or could someone write a step by step instruction how to do.
many thanks

Paul

^Simbo: Check the readme included in the main-mod (html-format).





S.

Great job on the mods, using nossao and lowtex here, made a vid running high buildings with medium details, medium forest, low shading, pretty much everything else on high, 1080p on i7 970 with a gtx 560 ti.

good work kegety

Give this man a medal, or two !
Lowtex & nossao work wonders for me.

Cheers,
Slug

I as well think this Mod saved the Sim, and pointed out the problem with textures overloading.
Interestingly Oleg was making fun of FSX in the past about the same problem but they did the same mistake.
Thank you Kegetys, now the dev team can focus on the SLI huge problem and stutters..

We may want to reduce even more the textures for older systems to test.

Roger that Blue Leader ! Mission accomplished with rather good results what !

Thanks Sascha

Paul

sakai: Are you sure? I'm using -mod=xxxx -mod=YYY -mod=ZZZ and it seems to work.

Positronic: That looks awesome! I'm pretty much getting your performance over "normal" cities.. alas, not over London, but hey: It's a start..




S.

I stand corrected...you are right

S!

Hmm.. some not so good news now on my end ... tried running my London-mission (just a single 109 on the city's outskirts at 500 meters) and the game wouldn't load it. Crashed every time at around 95% loading-progress.

Tried another mission (cold start) which loaded. Managed to take off and after flying around at about 600m over LeHavre for maybe a minute or so, the game crashed on me in mid-flight.




EDIT: Switched off mods one at a time and when I disabled "noMipmaps" the London mission loaded up fine again.

EDIT2: Ooops.. just read Kankkis' post about mipmaps..


S.

I got that 95% loading error too really often with mipmap mod.

Kankkis

hmm, it seems to work rather splendidly, I've seen fps increases up to 25 %!

Ditto on the mipmap mod crashes. Others work great. Using the same FMB mission (a/c all in air, none player controlled, starting in external view) it fired up the first time, crashed the second. Changed some graphics settings. Fired up once, crashed on subsequent attempts. Was changing land detail & shading, might have been coincidence though.

Dick: Same here. After I changed the land shading around, the crashes started to happen. Didn't crash on me before while fully modded.


S.

Bit of a random guess, but using the mipmaps mod would probably require deleting the existing /Documents/1C Softclub/cache directory first? Might help.

I, for one, don't particularly care about who does what. So long as the end result is a playable game I'll take it.

TBH though, these mods are exactly what was needed and I had faith that if the devs didn't figure it out the community will - and they didn't disappoint.

Just as I'm sure you won't disappoint in whining. What's your next topic of complaining... I say that sincerely because I'm sure you'll get shot down there too when it's addressed and fixed.
Meanwhile, how bout you get the WoP community to work on removing the mission timer from WoP...oh wait.

I have a space and judging by the framerate they are working.

Just tried the noSSAO mod as well as lowtex

Using the cross country mission as the test - 9fps on takeoff and 21fps flying around. I see no difference from the stock game. Yes I installed correctly and yes I put the correct parameters in the launch options in steam. Tried with a shortcut on my desktop as well. No dice.

running at 1920x1080 with all medium graphics settings
AMD 955 CPU at 3.7ghz
4gb ram
2x GTX 460 1gb factory OC'd SLI (sli disabled)

Envious of all you who are getting results hehe ;-)

Wow you just don't give in do you, you are the ultimate buzz killer, what difference does it make who is fixing the sim as long as it works, same happened with IL2 at times as I recall, I'm now getting great fps over sea and pretty good over land even over London, and thats with an 8800gt 512k.

Instead of complaining why not be thanking kegetys or is it that you want CoD to fail?

I had a similar experience at first then went back and reinstalled the SFS mod, which as it turned out I had not RTFM so hadn't loaded the following into the launcher.exe.config file
<applicationSettings>
<maddox.Properties.Settings>
<setting name="nativeDLL" serializeAs="String">
<value>parts\core\steam_api.dll</value>
</setting>
<setting name="nativeDLL" serializeAs="String">
<value>kegetys.dll</value>
</setting>
</maddox.Properties.Settings>
</applicationSettings>

Once this was done I had a large fps increase, df's over water now sit at about 40fps on an 8800gt, settings are high (planes and damage) and medium for cities except I am running buildings to unlimited which has no impact on fps that I can see, but with grass roads and shadows off.

I did RTFM The above... "code"? was the first thing I did to my launcher.exe.config file
I then added the nossao directory and lowtex directory
then added the -mod=nossao and -mod=lowtex to the launcher options under steam AND via a shortcut (tested both)

no luck

It's ok though, maybe I'll get satisfactory results eventually.

I'm sure you did, but just in case, you did put the kegetys.dll file in the COD app home directory as well?

I think the nomipmaps mod is the one that makes most of the difference try that one on top of the other two mods. Works wonders for me couldn't get off the computer last night!!

Same here, no difference with nossao and lowtex. The nomipmap mod does help tremedously with the stuttering, but makes the game unstable on my rig.

Specs: 1080p, Windows 7 64bit, Intel i5-2500k@4Ghz, 8 Gig RAM, Nvidia GTX570, 120 Gig SSD, TrackIR3 with 6DOF, TM Warthog, Saitek Combat Pedals.

Personally i'm not touching any mods yet for this game. With all the bugs i don't want to introduce new ones. One never knows how these mods affect the game.
And i want all the floss candy i can get in this game heh

But it's good that someone looks into the game files for the future!

Nothing more than a "drag & drop" + "cut & paste", and if it breaks, I'll just re-install.
If you are having fps & stutter troubles, you should not miss out. Changed the game for me in less than 2 min work from my end!

Cheers,
Slug

Same here - no difference: Still a stuttery train-smash.

Thanks Frog! Just tried it and, sadly, it didn't help.. Deleted the cache-folder, reactivated nomipmap and tried my custom "empty London"-mission again.

Result:




Still: Even without that mod and the other two active, the game is a *lot* better ... I'd go so far as to call it playable under most circumstances - with the exception of London. But even there I'm getting much improved performance. It's just not enough to actually enjoy the sightseeing.


Thing is: Before I started switching the Land-shading around (went from medium to low), nomipmaps worked fine for me. I had one crash while loading a canned quick-mission but that was it.


S.

Yes, kegetys.dll is in the COD root directory.

Hope the developers will work these temporary fixes/settings into the next patch asap. They really should consider it. At least as an ini-file option, and then soon after as a WELL-documented gui option. Documentation has always been the problem child of these Russian sims, and CoD seems to be no different. Thanks God('s teeth) for the community.

And I also hope that Kegetys will be well rewarded by those who are using his fix! - Really nice to see a forum member who uses his great talents on something productive.

Mipmaps gets rid if the stutter and I wouldn't worry about the mods breaking your game it's what 3 files that you drag and drop that don't overwrite current files. To remove just delete those files and remove the command line from the launcher.exe easy +++

I wouldn't worry about the mods breaking your game it's what 3 files that you drag and drop that don't overwrite current files. To remove just delete those files and remove the command line from the launcher.exe easy +++

Thanks Danosh, nothing overwritten ah very good, feeling less panicky. When that's confirmed I mean

Ming

From 1c forums:
Originally Posted by McDaniel
Just FYI

"I used all the mods and with the nomipmap mod the game crashed always at 90% at the loading screen.

I knew its the nomipmap mod so I started testing and I found the problem for me:

I removed the file in ....\il-2 sturmovik cliffs of dover\nomipmaps\$core\painters

LandDefault.tep

and now it works, but I dont know maybe someone could fix the file?"

McDan out

ya Ming dont worry those mods are basically new folders with some data in it. when you lunch the game you jut define where to look for those mods with parameters (basically their folders) and that is it..

when you dont want to use those mods you dont need to reinstall or delete anything, just dont use parameters after launcher.exe

easy

Ming: Even if you have the mods installed on your system, you can still start CoD without them. Simply remove the command-line parameters or, even easier, double-click the standard "launcher.exe". As far as I can tell, nothing gets overwriten. Simply because installation consists of dropping three new folders into your game-directory and not of *replacing* folders/files. Besides: If all else fails: Simply do a re-install. Not that big a deal.


You really shouldn't miss out on this one. It really is a game-changer on my system.

EDIT: Oops Genie.. looks like we were typing the same thing at exactly the same time... damn! you were 8 seconds faster than me...



S.

Works nicely on my system. Now I can fly with models = high and forest = medium!
Many thanks, Kegetys!!

nuggetx is right... the devloper should fix the problems, not crowd-source it out.

Taht did the trick.The game doesn't crash but for me it didn't remove stutter

There is a chance that the team were/are aware of these fixes, but they have chosen to not implement them yet. Why? For compatablility reasons. Clearly, this has not worked for everyone, and the team would need to make sure that a patch would be professionally executed, in order to ensure that nearly everyone benefits from it.
one can draw parallels between this and mods in il-2. Many improve the game, but eat at the fps due to large textures. TD wouldn't include such mods in their patches because of the huge texture sizes. The same is true for mods which may cause console errors as well; performance issues may not be noted, but if the console is brought up, one can see that the mod is not working 100% efficiently with the game.

The team is under pressure to really improve the game, but I think it's unfair to assume that they aren't trying to do this.

Nomipmapmod eliminates my stutter about 90% but buildings is so ugly with it, i removed mipmapmod.

Thanks Echo: That cured it for me as well. London-mission loaded up fine, flew around there for 5 mins then crashed (my plane, not the game)

While nowhere near "smooth", it now ran decently enough to do some stunt-flying. Still: I'd hardly call London enjoyable (in CoD). Especially when the game needs to load up landmark-buildings like Tower Bridge or Houses of Parliament, I'm getting short, but huge, FPS-drops. They still need to work on performance over big cities.




Thanks again for the heads-up!



S.

"Finally use -mod=nossao commandline parameter to enable the mod for launcher.exe."

How do I do this?

Go to your game directory: (Default would be c:\program files\Steam\SteamApps\common\il-2 sturmovik cliffs of dover

In there is "Launcher.exe". You can right click and select create shortcut in the popup window (or right click, sendto -> Desktop) Then right click on that shortcut, select properties from the pop up window, and in the target section after the last quotation mark add a space and then add any command lines.

eg for mine (I have a non-default path, but the command line bit is the same)

"D:\Games\Steam\SteamApps\common\il-2 sturmovik cliffs of dover\Launcher.exe" -disablecomposition -mod=nossao -mod=lowtex -mod=nomipmaps

What's the -disablecomposition one?

Disables Aero in Vista/Win7. Not sure if it makes any appreciable difference, but figured it can't hurt, turns back on automatically when exiting the game. Can just as easily do it in the compatibility tab of course. I was entering the mod lines when I added though, so just did it that way.

Would be nice if Kegetys could check up on this. If it's a corrupted file or if the game itself is making it crash.

I use Steam's launch options. Right-click on CoD in your "Library" in Steam. Select "Properties". Then click "Set Launch Options" to edit them (see my screenshot).





When you start CoD from Steam's library (right click on it, select "Play Game" it'll use these launch options, thus enabling the mods.



S.

I dont know the reason for the crasing, probably the engine cannot handle some situation when the mipmaps dont exist. It seems to happen completely randomly. If you remove the tep files then it will of course fix/reduce the crashing but then you will get more stuttering as well. Hopefully there will be an official fix for the issue in the near future so it wont be an issue for long.


(Big thanks for donations )

nossao worked wonders for me as well, in case further confirmation was needed after 13 pages

Kegetys, that is the second of my favourite gaming addictions (ArmA and CoD) that your contribution has made even more enjoyable for me, and I could never thank you enough for that.

Cheers

Nico

Ok, much appreciated. Most important thing this mod has done for me is prove that it is actually possible to make it playable in the future.

You're awesome man!

Well Ive also tried these mods (other than midmaps one) and its amazing how smooth the game has become even over land now its fully playable on medium settings. Hope now the developers will take this on board an issue a fully optimised official patch. Ive noticed that the planes gun patches dont seem to break unless you are watching them fire so they look like they havent fired at all sometimes - this might be a coincidence of the mods fixes but its a very small downside. Great stuff anyway, thanks very much.

Significant improvement for me again, I can now fly cross country without it becoming a slideshow after a while, will try the mipmap one later too.

cheers,m6 added 10-15 over still stutters(didn't use mipmap mod),but a nice improvement thanks.

Great work

With NOSSAO and LOWTEX it's very enjoyable atlast

Hi kegety, do you have plans to make antialiasing working? Now with your great mod we have smoother gameplay, but without fully working aa something is missing.

Using all three mods stutters are almost completely gone now. Just the odd stutter now and then. FPS is now stabilized and improved some (5-15 fps), and is not so alarmingly up and down as it previously was. Playability has improved but at the cost of IQ.

I'm amazed that it took the skills of Kegetys and not the dev team to improve performance to this extent.

It also makes me wonder exactly how NEW this IL-2 CoD engine is? Would Kegetys have been able to get inside so quickly after release if it was brand new as claimed?

Many thanks Kegetys

can someone post a screenshot with the no mipmaps mode to see how bad the shimmer is?

i think the shimmer effect you can see only in video, not screenshot.

I *think* you can just spot it here on the cliffs..




..but looking at the screenshot again, I might be imagining things ... it's definetly noticable in motion, but I wouldn't call it butt-ugly. Besides: I'd rather live with a bit of ugliness for now than with an unplayable game ..

They haven't sourced out the fix this is someone with skill finding a fix, happens in games of this type all the time, no obligation to try it out and for all you and nuggetx know the devs may well be working on it now, don't forget this is untested.

IMHO is looks like TV when it is not tuned to any channel (that "background noice"). It is very disturping.

Hi
I've installed this mod and I'm not getting any tracers, I mean nothing when I fire my weapon, the only way I've known I've fired are when the rounds hit the floor. Does one of the mods remove them, or is it to do with my settings?

thanks

All planes or just the Spitfire? I ask because the QMB for the Spit seems bugged in giving you ammo with no tracers, so you might be seeing that. I used the mods and haven't noticed a lack of tracer effects.

Probably bug #123,512,001 found though - Luthier has aged badly recently, and the QA guy is getting tired...

I havn't tried with other planes, should I expect to see trails and tracers? I mean from all the vids I've seen you can deffinatly "see stuff come out"

This should be stickied until 1C release their own official version.

These have a HUGE impact on the game - the difference between smooth gameplay and unplayability. There are some people here that don't even know about these mods. IMO they're a essentials.

Its because in the Quick mission builder the Spitfire Ammunition loadout is Std .303 ball rounds with no tracers in the mix. Hence no FX. Its not really a bug just different loadout. Try some of the other aircraft/missions and you get a mix of different ammo.

Once the beta-patch is out, it would be nice to have some info on compatibility of the mods with that patch.

If they don't work together, I wouldn't want to ruin my install by patching the modded version ..


S.

We should be ok in that (and Kegetys can correct my understanding here if I'm way off) that the kegetus.dll is effectively a bootstrap loader that replaces files/resources for COD, i.e. Launcher.exe starts up, goes looks for a texture file but we've already hooked into redirecting that to /lowtex mod directory and will load that one instead.

Put another way, the mods have only added to the install directories and not changed any existing files. A patch should just update the original files ok, although if the patches references newer files etc then the mods will start to atrophy and not work.

As Luthier mentioned, this would break the Valve MP VAC anti-cheat in that one of the checks it uses is to 'checksum' files referenced in the main image to makes sure things like this haven't been done. I guess Steam and Maddox Games are going to have some phone calls soon, as practically everyone playing online last night was using a (vital) mod and 'by the rules' will get MP banned now (eventually, the incident and the ban can take a while to bubble through). What we need to do for this is run the current MP servers with disabled VAC - I hope SYN etc are looking at that (it should just be another secret cmd line parameter to the launcher when running -server but I could take a look.

Ahh.. so I guess as long as I startup the launcher.exe without the mod-parameters, I should be fine?


S.

Glad I didn't bother installing these now, though they seem to have done a lot of good for most people. Rather just wait for the 'official' job, don't need the hassle, lol.

Yes, you should.

Michael

Actually, to be really safe in terms of VAC it would wise to remove the entry in Launcher.exe.config as part of the Mod's install instructions - that way nothing is loaded/altered.

i.e. just remove these lines:

<setting name="nativeDLL" serializeAs="String">
<value>kegetys.dll</value>
</setting>

Shado..great Pics there mate..

Strange, it made my game completely unplayable.. :P

I say give Kegetys a medal.

This weekend I'll be playing a game that I spent last week learning . I couldn't have done that learning without Kegetys' mods. Thanks mate. Salute

This weekend you'll probably be playing a new patch that incorporates what Kegetys found out. Read the notification carefully about using mods online. You wouldn't want a Steam ban on your account.

If I were you I'd just wait for the beta patch to arrive on Friday and use that instead of Kegetys mod. Even though Luthier said that the nossao mod won't attract a ban - there's no word that Steam won't be so diligent in seeing which mod was applied where.

Dear Kegetys,

Now that the beta patch is out and I see that your results have been put inside, one TRILLION thanks for the work you did, it made the difference! (I do not believe they would have put all this in the patch had it not been you!

~S~

I still wish they'd also included the nomipmaps-option in the patch. I didn't see any real difference in visual quality but it sure improved my framerate even further.



S.

Agreed 100%, without you Kegetys who knows how long this would have taken, well posted GRAthos

Hmm.. is that thing smart enough to calculate GPU-performance based on the CPU that's present in your system? I'm asking because it rates your GFX-card's performance quite a lot higher than mine ..

I'm running 2 GTX 260's in SLI and they each have 1.8GB of mem....so I guess it recognizes that (hence the chart) but doesn't advise as such in the stats.

^ Ah... ok.. that would explain it..

I did a few more performance mods for some parts that I found annoying still in v1.00.14101 (nothing major though):

lowclouds: Simplifies the clouds and smoke effects to reduce the framerate hit from them. Esp. visible when flying into clouds and with runway dust when taking off etc.

lowgrass: Simplifies the grass pixel shader for reduced FPS hit, especially from the high grass. Makes the grass a bit ugly though as it will lose the gounds based coloring.

lowshadows: Simplifies the shadow mapping, it does't have a huge effect, but maybe useful as a middle ground between keeping the shadows on or off for lower end video cards. Makes the shadows lose the softness but reduces the fps hit a bit.

All three are downloadable here: http://junk.kegetys.net/lowcgsmod.zip

Use is the same as previousy, with:
-mod=lowclouds
-mod=lowgrass
-mod=lowshadows
commandline parameters when sfsMod is installed. (sfsMod readme has more info)

Cool - thanks, will give them a go.

Expect to see them in Luthier's release notes for this coming Friday

I'll definetly try the lowclouds-mod, because even medium-sized formations of standard clouds (the ones controlled in "mission parameters", not the "local weather" ones) tend to give me huge FPS hits.


It's really great that you're still helping them out on your own time, Kegetys. You wouldn't know by any chance why the industrial areas/docks have become such a huge show-stopper?


Oh and BTW: Any sense in still using any of your older mods? For example: I don't remember the plane-skins looking as ugly as they do now (even on "High Textures") when I was using your low-tex mod.




S.

I think v1.00.14101 patch addressed issues with textures and SSAO which Kegetys pointed out so those mods are probably not essential anymore, lowtex probably causes the texture settings in the game menu to have no effect. Mipmaps though can still be useful.

With these new mods however I noticed significant FPS boost, especially with the clouds and shadows mods.

Same here, Kegetys vs. CoD-Team 1:1 now Kegetys´ turn (go for it, hey-ya hey-ya)

I'd guess the lowtex mod still works, but I haven't checked if any of the textures there have changed in the patches. Nossao is useless since the video options setting now does the same thing...

Nomipmaps still fixes the stuttering for me which the patch did not. (And unfortunately causes crashing as well. As someone else discovered, the crashing can be reduced/fixed by deleting the nomipmaps\$core\painters\LandDefault.tep file. It will cause a bit more stuttering that way but should be more usable)

I thought instead of just saying thank you, I donated 5 bucks - anyone else not on a too tight budget willing to join ?

I mean, you'd totally deserve royalty rate from UBI to keep their customers at bay ...

Thx,

Michael.

I think the new patch changed something as now mods do not work.

Do any of these mods still improve performance since the patches?

No

Yes I still use the smoke and dust mod he made.

Don't forget to disable any mods for online play. The VAC stuff bans will eventually get turned on.

Thanks mate. I'll give that one a go. I switched the mods I was using off (ssao and no mipmap) after the last patch as it made big improvements for me.

Without the smoke mod I was getting a bit of stutter if I followed a taxing plane's dust or got into some heavy smoke but after that mod all is smooth. It says it effects the clouds also but they look the same to me.