Graphics freeze on some CFS1 missions

M

mcbob

SOH-CM-2023
I'm a new member and not really knowledgeable about forums so hope this is the right place and format for this question.

I am running Win 7 Home Premium 64 bit, with an i5-4670k and use the HD Graphics 4600.

Now, on some missions part of the display locks up, gun sight and all graphics except instruments. It is always at the same distance into the flight.

If I restart the mission, everything outside the cockpit is black. Restart CFS and back to normal until I get to that spot again. If I X to the next action before I get to that spot, it works. Reloaded twice and now have the program in a folder directly under C.

I did have to use the config fix to get my joy stick to work.

I never had these problems with XP 32 bit.

Any ideas?

mcbob
 
First of all; Welcome to the sub-basement of SOH.:wavey:

And, yep, this is the right place to ask a question.

I'm not sure that I can help though (still running on a puny W98SE machine), but I will try.

I need to know which missions and exactly where and when the freezing appears. I have a hunch, but will wait before putting my neck on the butcher's table.

OK?
 
hubbabubba said:
First of all; Welcome to the sub-basement of SOH.:wavey:

And, yep, this is the right place to ask a question.

I'm not sure that I can help though (still running on a puny W98SE machine), but I will try.

I need to know which missions and exactly where and when the freezing appears. I have a hunch, but will wait before putting my neck on the butcher's table.

OK?
Click to expand...

hubbabubba,

I was just in campaign-RAF-mission 16,Defend oil targets at Rochester.

It was a 22.5 mile flight to the target, at 14.6 miles to go the outside view froze up. The audio continued to work, and gun, controls and instruments. I heard that friendly's and bandits were in the area. Eventually cashed, since I couldn't see where I was going, and mission ended, with the usual incomplete because you crashed.

mcbob
 
I don't know what the features are for your graphics adapter, but I am guessing that there is some scenery that your graphics card or drivers can't handle. If I were you, I would try flying the same mission but with different graphics options selected. (Less dense scenery.) Perhaps this would help, but I am not entirely certain.

Good Luck and let us know what happens.
- Ivan.

P.S. Welcome to the very enjoyable world of Combat Flight Simulator!
 
When I have a chance, I'll go and fly that one as a single mission. If you know how, you can do the same.

Ivan's advice is a sound one. Chances are that some library object is "popping out" as you get within distance and causes an infinite loop or something of the sort.

But I can't get to my puny W98SE right now, so it will have to wait later tonight.
 
I had almost the max graphic features turned on. I turned about half of them off and that mission worked. I think it was freezing as I was about to pass through the clouds. I had all shadows and wispy clouds on before.

I didn't realize there were so many different settings. I figured with a quad processor and the built in gen 4 intel chip with the integrated 4600 graphics, I could run the max, evidently not.

I will have to start adding features and changing resolution a little at a time to see how far I can go.

How do you go back to a particular mission within the campaign?

Thanks for the advice.
 
"How do you go back to a particular mission within the campaign?"

greetings mcbob,
open the campaigns folder in the main combat flight simulator folder.
then open a .mis file with notepad,
on the menu bar click edit and select find... Ctrl+F
type [strings] in the window
this will take you to the mission title and description.

sorry, but you will have to go through all the .mis files to find it.
to limit the search, notice that there are BfE1,2&3, US and Lu missions
and BoB1,2&3 RAF and Lu missions. this narrows it down a bit.
i was was able to find the oil field defense mission. it's Bob3_1_RAF.mis
copy and paste it into the missions folder

fire up cfs, go to single missions, scroll down to the tile and run the mission.

heck, while your at it, copy and paste them all into the mission folder!

while you're in the mission folder, notice two files named
special.mi_ and team.mi_
rename each to special.mis and team.mis
fire up cfs, go to single missions and look for Camel Caravan
and then Combat Flight Sim Team Outing
these are both secret gifts from the CFS development team.

have fun
 
mcbob said:
I had almost the max graphic features turned on. I turned about half of them off and that mission worked. I think it was freezing as I was about to pass through the clouds. I had all shadows and wispy clouds on before.

I didn't realize there were so many different settings. I figured with a quad processor and the built in gen 4 intel chip with the integrated 4600 graphics, I could run the max, evidently not.

I will have to start adding features and changing resolution a little at a time to see how far I can go.

How do you go back to a particular mission within the campaign?

Thanks for the advice.
Click to expand...

I think that you're into something. Follow smilo's instructions and, by eliminination, you will find what is causing a problem much faster than me and my puny machine.

Good luck, and tell us what was the issue. We're a curious bunch here.:jump:
 
one more quick question;
do you have any add-on scenery or objects,
or are you running a basic, no frills cfs installation?

hubba, do you remember that weird, deck of cards effect
that we use to get between Ripe and, was it, Kenley?
'twas an add-on scenery conflict, right?
 
smilo said:
(...)

hubba, do you remember that weird, deck of cards effect
that we use to get between Ripe and, was it, Kenley?
'twas an add-on scenery conflict, right?
Click to expand...

It was a "buffer overflow" caused by the 19 airfields add-on. All these had a buffer zone of 60+ nautical miles and, adding Ripe in the middle, the game could not cope. This is a quirk in the "built-in Scenery Editor" that is usually overlooked by those building with it as it demands manual coding to be corrected.

What mcbob described appears to be graphic hardware specific. It never happened to me and I have an Intel Celeron "chipset" 82810E. I had other problems, but not this one:icon_lol:!
 
I am actually running on a Pentium 233MMX on my dev machine, so If my processor will handle stuff, so will everyone else's. In the living room of my house, we have two P3 866 MHz machines. One has a slightly better 3D graphics card than the other. Think Voodoo 3 2000. The lesser machine won't display some add-on aircraft in the selection screen while the other one displays everything. My Voodoo 3 3000 on the development machine displays everything. Voodoo 3s are ancient, so you don't need much of a 3D card. I know that the built-in graphics adapters on these Dell machines are not good enough for CFS.

- Ivan.
 
My graphics problem seems to be the "enable hardware accelerator" option. If I turn that off, the graphics don't freeze, the gun sight stays on and I don't get large white triangular areas flashing around. However, the ground objects have a strange sparkle and don't look real and it's not moving smoothly. Also can't use 32 bit graphics, but that might not matter. With it on, I turned most of the extra settings off and the density way down and it didn't help. I'm guessing a conflict with the onboard graphics on this generation 4 intel chip. Any ideas other than a new video card?

mcbob
 
I completely fixed my graphics problem, all it took was money. I broke down and bought a graphics card. It was the best I could find that would work with my power supply, I only have 450w to work with. I had been running off the onboard intel 4600hd. I turned on all the options, including the graphics accelerator, max density and the highest resolution possible. Great detail and not a single glitch or stutter. Very smooth action.

Thanks to all that gave advice. Now I will add on missions and aircraft, never tried that before.

mcbob
 
What kinda frame rate are you getting?
CFS doesn't need much of a 3D card. I have a Voodoo 3 3000 on one machine and it works fine. The Voodoo 3 2000 on another machine has some non display issues on some airplane models though.
Glad it all worked. (You can get a frame rate displayed by hitting <Shift>-Z three times.)

- Ivan.
 
Ivan said:
What kinda frame rate are you getting?
CFS doesn't need much of a 3D card. I have a Voodoo 3 3000 on one machine and it works fine. The Voodoo 3 2000 on another machine has some non display issues on some airplane models though.
Glad it all worked. (You can get a frame rate displayed by hitting <Shift>-Z three times.)

- Ivan.
Click to expand...
It shows 1.5-5 Frames/Sec + 1-2 Gs? It varies very fast all the time. I'm guessing this isn't too good, right? I see people write in about 200+ in modern games. Never checked it before. What is the Gs?
 
frame rate, or the lack there of, is the main reason i came back to cfs1.
the model and scenery complexity of the newer sims,
basically, dropped my frame rate through the floor,
which really degraded my sim experience.
it was either upgrade my machine,
or downgrade my combat sim.
i went with the cheaper choice and have never regretted it.

so, that said,

Gs is G-force.
just for fun, go into free flight, climb to 5000,
then, dive to around 1000, pull up hard.
notice what the Gs readout says.

as for your, 1.5-5 Frames/Sec
i'd say, you still have a problem.
at that rate, the game will be jerky and may lockup
with more complex scenery and/or multi aircraft missions.

i run and old pentium 4, with 2 gigs of ram
and a nvida geforce 7600 gs video card

in game, settings, image complexity normal
advanced display setting...all boxes checked. 1024x768x32

over the ocean, in hud view, with no clouds,
frames/sec=62.5 to 66.6

just curious, how much ram do you have?
 
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Got 5 Gs. Checked frame rates some more and it jumps all over the place. Sometimes it's 1-5 then for awhile it said 70-100 and that's with everything on and dense setting. Also there is a D or @ in front of the frame rate number sometimes. Turn frame rate off and back on and it changes again? Smooth action and no lockups. If you get close to the ground it blurs some. I think I could do better than that if I overclocked the cpu and video card but only have the stock cooler and fan. May change that at a later date.

I have 8g of ram and 2g on the video card.

mcbob
 
Hello Mcbob,

With my old Pentium 233MMX and a Voodoo 3 3000 with something like 16 MB of memory on the graphics board and 192 MB on the motherboard, I typically get 12-25 frames per second with fairly light scenery and a medium / complicated CFS aircraft (typically mine which are around 1100 polygons). 18 frames per second is considered fairly good. and the motion isn't quite smooth but is not hard to fly. With a few extra aircraft or with more complicated scenery the frame rates get so low (about 5-10) so that the game is basically unflyable. With the digital test panel up, the frame rate also gets to the single digits.

With a Pentium III 866 MHz and a Matrox Millenia graphics board, I am getting frame rates around 35-40 which is quite useable and smooth. With a few extra planes, it drops the frame rate to perhaps 25-30 which is still useable.

With a AMD Athlon 1.33 GHz and a Radeon 9000 graphics board, I typically get frame rates in the high 80s to well over 100 per second. THIS is probably what you are seeing because when the frame rate gets past 100, the display can't handle it and the numbers look garbled. Even with a half dozen aircraft and complicated scenery, the frame rate generall stays above 50 per second but the numbers will jump around quite a lot.

Recommend you DO NOT overclock your machine just to play this game. It doesn't need that much processing to run well on any reasonably modern processor.

- Ivan.
 
Ivan said:
Hello Mcbob,

With my old Pentium 233MMX and a Voodoo 3 3000 with something like 16 MB of memory on the graphics board and 192 MB on the motherboard, I typically get 12-25 frames per second with fairly light scenery and a medium / complicated CFS aircraft (typically mine which are around 1100 polygons). 18 frames per second is considered fairly good. and the motion isn't quite smooth but is not hard to fly. With a few extra aircraft or with more complicated scenery the frame rates get so low (about 5-10) so that the game is basically unflyable. With the digital test panel up, the frame rate also gets to the single digits.

With a Pentium III 866 MHz and a Matrox Millenia graphics board, I am getting frame rates around 35-40 which is quite useable and smooth. With a few extra planes, it drops the frame rate to perhaps 25-30 which is still useable.

With a AMD Athlon 1.33 GHz and a Radeon 9000 graphics board, I typically get frame rates in the high 80s to well over 100 per second. THIS is probably what you are seeing because when the frame rate gets past 100, the display can't handle it and the numbers look garbled. Even with a half dozen aircraft and complicated scenery, the frame rate generall stays above 50 per second but the numbers will jump around quite a lot.

Recommend you DO NOT overclock your machine just to play this game. It doesn't need that much processing to run well on any reasonably modern processor.

- Ivan.
Click to expand...

Thanks Ivan

Are you saying that it can not show a readout for frame rates over 100? Are the 1-5, hundreds? Maybe that's what the D and % was. I tried my old computer that I used to play on, it's a Pentium 4 2.53ghz and 1 g of ram with a Radeon 9000 video card. It runs XP. Saw frame rates about 30-40 but it does have a somewhat jerky movement. Didn't make much difference with the settings but the graphics accelerator isn't available.

mcbob
 
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