Insane Ring Tweak....Where is this??

R

rouge34rtw

Charter Member
I searched here for Winding Man's Insane Ring Tweak.....and the links I found to it dead end with a note that the site might be for sale??? Where do I find the directions for this gem?? Any help would be appreciated....

Thanks
 
Many thanks Old Crow....thats what I am looking for.....my guide to processor, memory, and graphics overclocking and tweaking is simple.....

1....Spend the money, you'll thank yourself later!

2....Crank it up till you hear something snap, then back it off 1/4 turn and voila....you are there....

Now I want to learn how to adjust the application to challenge the hardware running it....

I'll play with these for the next few days and see what I can do. I have a huge over-abundance of FPS to spend on beauty and detail....right now I run the sim with all my sliders on 5, nHancer keeping all my AA settings at max high-quality settings, and FRAPS is always showing me between 70 and 120 FPS in the corner of my screen......
 
rouge34rtw said:
Many thanks Old Crow....thats what I am looking for.....my guide to processor, memory, and graphics overclocking and tweaking is simple.....

1....Spend the money, you'll thank yourself later!

2....Crank it up till you hear something snap, then back it off 1/4 turn and voila....you are there....

Now I want to learn how to adjust the application to challenge the hardware running it....

I'll play with these for the next few days and see what I can do. I have a huge over-abundance of FPS to spend on beauty and detail....right now I run the sim with all my sliders on 5, nHancer keeping all my AA settings at max high-quality settings, and FRAPS is always showing me between 70 and 120 FPS in the corner of my screen......
Click to expand...
Let me know how it goes. I'm running everything on 5 with a few addon enhancements. I can make my FPS drop down to about the mid 30's with those Insane Ring Tweaks. The problem is the stuttering. I backed off a bit on the Scenery part and got it running smooth at about a constant 60FPS(my game is capped at 60fps for some reason). Let me know if you want to try my settings. They look great still, but don't make my sim stutter.

BTW, I'm running an Intel E6600 (2.4Ghz) with 4Gb HyperX PC800 RAM, Dual 8800GTX SLI & Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatality
My Nvidia settings are AA-AF@ 16x and all others maxed out.
 
Sounds like your rig is very similar to mine in hardware. I have only one GF9800GTX 512Mb GPU, but the one I have is overclocked about as far as one can stretch......and running beautifully too. I run my E6600 at 3.2Ghz 24/7 with 4 x 1Gb OCZ Platinum Rev2 DDR2 800 (FSB @ 3200Mhz and DRAM @1600Mhz keeps my ratio at 1:1) I have my DRAM timings tightened up 4,3,3,9 and everything that can be watercooled. Built exclusively to run CFS3, its the only 3d app I run. I would be happy to try your settings. You can send them to me via PM (zipped or RAR files are no prob), or post them here....I haven't done much with exploring the rings yet, been a little busy with work, and have a question....do I play with the files in the ETO expansion (or PTO and Korean Skies), or in the main CSF3 folder? Have you checked out the beta drivers available for our GPUs? The 185.66 for Vista x64 is really showing me some incredible gains in detail without giving up any performance and I love the ambient occlusion option.....

Thanks
 
Wow....somebody stomped on those pages you sent me already.....I didn't think to copy them earlier....and now I just get a 404 error page not found when I try to get there....so, please most definitely send me your settings......

Thanks
 
Weird, I wonder why those links fail all of a sudden.
Here's the Insane Rings Settings. These make my sim stutter. Try these first and let me know how it goes. I'll dig mine up if you need 'em. They are inferior to these but run smoother (no stutter)on my rig.

SCENERY:
<Budget Name="Five">
<Rings AboveGroundLevel="0" MaxDistEyeInnerRing="0">
<Ring PatchWorldDim="1024" RingDim="23" LOD="10" MajorDensity="0.00015" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="512" RingDim="23" LOD="10" MajorDensity="0.00055" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="256" RingDim="19" LOD="70" MajorDensity="0.00055" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="128" RingDim="15" LOD="250" MajorDensity="0.00055" />
</Rings>

TERRAIN:
<Budget Name="Five">
<ImageQualities>
<ImageQuality PatchWorldDim="16384" ImageQuality="0"/>
<ImageQuality PatchWorldDim="8192" ImageQuality="0"/>
<ImageQuality PatchWorldDim="4096" ImageQuality="0" />
<ImageQuality PatchWorldDim="2048" ImageQuality="0" />
<ImageQuality PatchWorldDim="1024" ImageQuality="0" />
<ImageQuality PatchWorldDim="512" ImageQuality="0" />
<ImageQuality PatchWorldDim="256" ImageQuality="0" />
<ImageQuality PatchWorldDim="128" ImageQuality="0" />
<ImageQuality PatchWorldDim="64" ImageQuality="0" />
</ImageQualities>
<Rings AboveGroundLevel="0" MaxDistEyeInnerRing="0">
<Ring PatchWorldDim="16384" RingDim="7" MinMaskRadius="49152" UseMips="y"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="8192" RingDim="7" MinMaskRadius="24576" UseMips="y"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="4096" RingDim="7" MinMaskRadius="12288" UseMips="y"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="2048" RingDim="9" MinMaskRadius="6144" UseMips="y"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="1024" RingDim="9" MinMaskRadius="3072" UseMips="y"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="512" RingDim="9" MinMaskRadius="1536" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="256" RingDim="9" MinMaskRadius="768" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="128" RingDim="9" MinMaskRadius="384"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="64" RingDim="9" MinMaskRadius="192" DetailTileCount="16" />
</Rings>
 
Here's my settings. I'm using the stock Terrain textures due to I like the way they look and run. I only modify my Scenery right now.

SCENERY:
<Budget Name="Five">
<Rings AboveGroundLevel="0" MaxDistEyeInnerRing="0">
<Ring PatchWorldDim="1024" RingDim="31" LOD="2" MajorDensity="0.00015" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="512" RingDim="21" LOD="10" MajorDensity="0.00025" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="256" RingDim="17" LOD="20" MajorDensity="0.0005" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="128" RingDim="13" LOD="250" MajorDensity="0.0005" />
</Rings>
 
Thank you sir....I have them copied to a txt document so if anyone puts the kabosh on this thread......I still have em....
 
OK, I started with your scenery settings which made a very nice improvement in scenery quality and detail, but it didn't touch my performance, FPS remained steady from 70 to 120+ depending on the circumstance....(lowest fps is night time with clouds)....so, I added the terrain settings you sent me, but I split the middle between stock numbers and the insane ring numbers you sent....just to be sure I didn't overload anything and give my rig a stroke.....wow!! the improvement in detail and visibility is remarkable.....but....hasn't even nicked the performance yet....fps still 70 to 120+, no stutter, no problem...so I am going to tweak to the terrain settings as shown tonight, and see what that does....

Now, a couple of curiousity questions.....

1) In both scenery settings you sent, the third line changes the ring patchworldDim from 2048 stock to 1024, why and what exactly does that number adjust from the cockpit perspective?

2) I noticed I cannot move my veiw as far back in the cockpit as I could before the tweak....does this have to do with question 1 above?

3) For LOD the closer to zero (or below) the number, the higher the level of detail rendered becomes correct? Image quality works the same way??

4) what does the major density number represent, or affect?


Thanks so much for the help this far Old Crow....If you are into sticking around a little longer, I want to learn a little about the why's and wherefor's of tweaking the visuals, not just be handed settings that work without any questions....any more info you can share with me will be greatly appreciated....
 
rouge34rtw said:
Now, a couple of curiousity questions.....

1) In both scenery settings you sent, the third line changes the ring patchworldDim from 2048 stock to 1024, why and what exactly does that number adjust from the cockpit perspective?

2) I noticed I cannot move my veiw as far back in the cockpit as I could before the tweak....does this have to do with question 1 above?

3) For LOD the closer to zero (or below) the number, the higher the level of detail rendered becomes correct? Image quality works the same way??

4) what does the major density number represent, or affect?
Click to expand...
OK buddy, I'll do my best to answer from what I've learned.

1)I've checked and checked again, but my stock "patchworldDim" is also set at 1024. That number wasn't changed on my sim. I have the sim loaded in 3 different locations. All say 1024, NOT 2048. I have no idea what you got going on there.
I'd like if someone else chimed in on that one.

2)No clue on that one either. I never move the cockpit zooms around so if it did affect it, I wouldn't know.

3)I think it's the other way around. Higher is better. I tried to raise all the LODs to 250 and my system about exploded! Set them all to 2 and see how weird it looks.

4)This one I do know for sure. It's the amount of scenery objects(trees, buildings,etc.) will appear in a givin ring. The higher the number, the denser the scenery gets. On the outer rings, I had to back down this number or else choking would occur.

I've not overclocked my system anymore because I need it to survive. So I'm running a stock system, but when I have OC'ed it, though at a safer level, I really didn't see too much improvement honestly.
My PC's reliability and longevity are more important than a few FPS. So you may be able to stretch those settings a bit further than I could for sure.

IMO, you should just load all the Insane Rings settings and see where your at, then back down from there.

Also, be sure that everytime you edit those files, you delete the scenery.zx and terrdata.zx files. I guess the game won't change the settings unless you do so. CFS3 will make new ones when restarted.
 
<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="2" MajorDensity="0.0001" />
</Rings>
<Rings AboveGroundLevel="0" MaxDistEyeInnerRing="0">
<Ring PatchWorldDim="2048" RingDim="15" LOD="5" MajorDensity="0.00005" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="512" RingDim="21" LOD="5" MajorDensity="0.00015" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="256" RingDim="17" LOD="5" MajorDensity="0.00025" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="128" RingDim="13" LOD="5" MajorDensity="0.00025" />
</Rings>
<Rings AboveGroundLevel="250" MaxDistEyeInnerRing="0">
<Ring PatchWorldDim="256" RingDim="7" LOD="20" MajorDensity="0.0001" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="512" RingDim="13" LOD="2" MajorDensity="0.0001" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="1024" RingDim="13" LOD="2" MajorDensity="0.00005" />
</Rings>
<Rings AboveGroundLevel="500" MaxDistEyeInnerRing="0">
<Ring PatchWorldDim="512" RingDim="13" LOD="2" MajorDensity="0.0001" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="1024" RingDim="13" LOD="2" MajorDensity="0.00005" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="2048" RingDim="13" LOD="2" MajorDensity="0.000025 " />
</Rings>
</Budget>
<Budget Name="One">
<Rings AboveGroundLevel="0" MaxDistEyeInnerRing="0">
<Ring PatchWorldDim="1024" RingDim="13" LOD="5" MajorDensity="0.00002" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="512" RingDim="19" LOD="5" MajorDensity="0.00005" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="256" RingDim="15" LOD="25" MajorDensity="0.00010" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="128" RingDim="11" LOD="250" MajorDensity="0.00015" />
</Rings>
</Budget>
<Budget Name="Two">
<Rings AboveGroundLevel="0" MaxDistEyeInnerRing="0">
<Ring PatchWorldDim="1024" RingDim="13" LOD="5" MajorDensity="0.00005" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="512" RingDim="19" LOD="25" MajorDensity="0.000015" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="256" RingDim="15" LOD="25" MajorDensity="0.000025" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="128" RingDim="11" LOD="250" MajorDensity="0.000025" />
</Rings>
</Budget>
<Budget Name="Three">
<Rings AboveGroundLevel="0" MaxDistEyeInnerRing="0">
<Ring PatchWorldDim="1024" RingDim="15" LOD="5" MajorDensity="0.00005" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="512" RingDim="21" LOD="25" MajorDensity="0.00025" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="256" RingDim="17" LOD="25" MajorDensity="0.00025" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="128" RingDim="13" LOD="250" MajorDensity="0.00025" />
</Rings>
</Budget>
<Budget Name="Four">
<Rings AboveGroundLevel="0" MaxDistEyeInnerRing="0">
<Ring PatchWorldDim="2048" RingDim="15" LOD="5" MajorDensity="0.00005" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="512" RingDim="21" LOD="25" MajorDensity="0.00010" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="256" RingDim="17" LOD="25" MajorDensity="0.00020" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="128" RingDim="13" LOD="250" MajorDensity="0.00025" />
</Rings>
</Budget>
<Budget Name="Five">
<Rings AboveGroundLevel="0" MaxDistEyeInnerRing="0">
<Ring PatchWorldDim="2048" RingDim="15" LOD="5" MajorDensity="0.00005" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="512" RingDim="21" LOD="25" MajorDensity="0.00020" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="256" RingDim="17" LOD="50" MajorDensity="0.00025" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="128" RingDim="13" LOD="250" MajorDensity="0.00025" />
</Rings>
</Budget>
</Budgets>


That is the compositescenerybudgets.xml that installed stock in my CFS3 and in the ETO....I copied it and renamed it for safe keeping....check out the budget 4 and budget 5....there is the 2048 I was talking about. I used the insane rings terrain budgets as given, and your scenery budgets....looks absolutely beautiful, and it holds steady between 60 and 80 fps untill I get down below 1000' altitude, ecspecially over airbases or cities, or anything busy....then it drops to between 15 and 30 fps.......I'm not sure exactly what to tweak to back off just the 1000' and lower details....but oh boy, what a difference it makes up higher....flying through clouds looks almost real, I swear I can see the moisture in the whisps as the envelope me......and the reflection of the inside of the cockpit off the canopy is remarkable...
I will put the 2048 back into my xml and see what that does, and play with the LODs a bit too....thanks for all the help with this, I really appreciate it.
A very large part of the wear and tear on components, ecspecially overclocked parts, is the heat being generated by the electrical current. Being water cooled, my temps stay far below where they would be running stock settings with stock air cooling. My Core2Duo running at a 50% FSB overclock never rises above 32'C, even under full load....and my GF 9800GTX at a 23% overclock stays below 35'C after hours of CFS3, they have been there for almost a full year now, 24/7, and still holding steady. I do have the good furtune of having a decent notebook for backup if my desktop grenades on me, but I still watch it very closely for signs that the end might be near....and haven't seen any yet...the only point I am getting at being that the BFG mainboard, XFX GPU, Intell CPU, and OCZ RAM are proving to be very strong and dependable components even under extreme conditions, and that keeping things cool is the best thing you can do for your PC. And I see a tremendous difference in both quality and performance between stock and OC'd settings....besides, if fighter pilots don't push the envelope....who the heck will??
 
^ Wow, that's something. I'm going to insert the 2048 and see what it does. As matter of fact, all of those stats are different than my stock scenery. The LOD's are way different! They look really high and will probably choke me up.

I think your getting about the same performance as me on those insane rings settings. I'm biggest gripe is the stutter i'm getting when I can see the ground below me in a high speed turn. And while there's a huge ground fight going on or a factory is burning sometimes.

I've heard CFS3 doesn't like our CPUs because it only uses 1 core.

And you're very welcome for the help. I'm learning from you too. Anytime there's something I can finally help someone with, I'm there. Lord knows how much help I've gotten from the generous-genious' on this site. These guys are great here.
 
Here's what I have as my stock settings for budgets 4&5.. I'm starting to think some add-on a few years ago changed them or something, I don't get it. I should reinstall a clean version since mine was once a firepower version. Maybe Firepower changed them?

<Budget Name="Four">
<Rings AboveGroundLevel="0" MaxDistEyeInnerRing="0">
<Ring PatchWorldDim="1024" RingDim="13" LOD="2" MajorDensity="0.00005" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="512" RingDim="19" LOD="2" MajorDensity="0.00025" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="256" RingDim="15" LOD="20" MajorDensity="0.00025" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="128" RingDim="11" LOD="250" MajorDensity="0.00025" />
</Rings>
</Budget>
<Budget Name="Five">
<Rings AboveGroundLevel="0" MaxDistEyeInnerRing="0">
<Ring PatchWorldDim="1024" RingDim="15" LOD="2" MajorDensity="0.00005" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="512" RingDim="21" LOD="2" MajorDensity="0.00025" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="256" RingDim="17" LOD="20" MajorDensity="0.00025" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="128" RingDim="13" LOD="250" MajorDensity="0.00025" />
</Rings>
 
I wouldn't even want to speculate on what add on might have changed what setting....thats way too much guess work for this brain tonite. I do know I have an un-modified cfs3 install, and I just re-installed ETO three or four days ago due to messing up something using some add on aircraft. So, hopefully I have accurate original xml files.
So, I am toying with both xml files tonite, trying to keep the awesome detail at higher elevations, and ease up a little on the down-on-the-deck stuff, I get down into the 20s and even the high teens for fps, but I can't seem to find the right combination....what do the ring dim numbers change in the texture budgets? What do the patchworlddim numbers change?
 
rouge34rtw said:
....what do the ring dim numbers change in the texture budgets? What do the patchworlddim numbers change?
Click to expand...
OK, I think that the RingDim might be with the ring Diameter. Like how far out it stretches from you, and I think they overlap a bit.

PatchWorldDim...I don't know. I changed mine to 2048 and noticed no change.
 
I have a Firepower CFS3 install on here too, and the 2048 number is showing up there as well. I put the 2048 back into my ETO scenery budgets and I have the backward zoom I used to back in the cockpit view. When I am taking off, landing, or not engaged in combat, I like the 3D cockpit, and I like to pan back as far as I can without the view shifting to the back of the seat. Somehow the 2048 to 1024 difference modified my range of depth there. I think I have eased off the low altitude settings to be a better balance of performance to quality now.... settings are this:

Scenery:

<Budget Name="Five">
<Rings AboveGroundLevel="0" MaxDistEyeInnerRing="0">
<Ring PatchWorldDim="2048" RingDim="21" LOD="5" MajorDensity="0.00005" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="512" RingDim="21" LOD="25" MajorDensity="0.00025" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="256" RingDim="17" LOD="50" MajorDensity="0.00025" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="128" RingDim="13" LOD="250" MajorDensity="0.00025" />
</Rings>


And texture:

<Budget Name="Five">
<ImageQualities>
<ImageQuality PatchWorldDim="16384" ImageQuality="0"/>
<ImageQuality PatchWorldDim="8192" ImageQuality="0"/>
<ImageQuality PatchWorldDim="4096" ImageQuality="0" />
<ImageQuality PatchWorldDim="2048" ImageQuality="0" />
<ImageQuality PatchWorldDim="1024" ImageQuality="0" />
<ImageQuality PatchWorldDim="512" ImageQuality="0" />
<ImageQuality PatchWorldDim="256" ImageQuality="0" />
<ImageQuality PatchWorldDim="128" ImageQuality="0" />
<ImageQuality PatchWorldDim="64" ImageQuality="0" />
</ImageQualities>
<Rings AboveGroundLevel="0" MaxDistEyeInnerRing="0">
<Ring PatchWorldDim="16384" RingDim="5" MinMaskRadius="49152" UseMips="y"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="8192" RingDim="5" MinMaskRadius="24576" UseMips="y"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="4096" RingDim="5" MinMaskRadius="12288" UseMips="y"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="2048" RingDim="6" MinMaskRadius="6144" UseMips="y"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="1024" RingDim="6" MinMaskRadius="3072" UseMips="y"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="512" RingDim="6" MinMaskRadius="1536" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="256" RingDim="7" MinMaskRadius="768" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="128" RingDim="7" MinMaskRadius="384"/>
<Ring PatchWorldDim="64" RingDim="7" MinMaskRadius="192" DetailTileCount="16" />
</Rings>
</Budget>
</Budgets>

Now I am seeing 50 to 75 fps down on the deck, attacking ground targets, low light, overcast, rain, busy airfield, over cities, etc....and about 70 to 120 fps for anything I do over 1000 feet up....dogfights, large formations, clouds....I was seeing the stuttering when I was pulling down into the teens and twenties, but its gone now. Image qualities are excellent and details are sharp as far as I can see....now, I need to see what these settings are going to look like over the Pacific Islands, and Korea.....WOOHOO!!! Somebody Stop me!! I dare ya too !!!!:woot::woot::ernae::wiggle:
 
Sweet!

So you backed off on the MajorDensitys? Man, I like the high Density. Paris and London look amazing, but it is hard to not choke the system.
 
I liked the higher density too, but it is a major hit on performance for me....Overclocked or not, there's still only one 512Mb GPU rendering graphics on my system....so I trade seeing 250,000 houses neatly packed into a city for being able to count the tiles on the roofs of the 100,000 I do see. Have you ever looked at the CFS3 Terrain SDK ffrom Microsoft? I downloaded that tonight, and while it doesn't just give you the equation and solution on one easy to read page, it does explain alot of the things we have been tossing back and forth here. It defines each of the properties of the Scenery and Terrain Budget XML files, provides bits of knowledge like the figure used for RingDim must be an odd number...and much, much more. I think I will spend a little time playing with the Terrain SDK and probably be able to quit guessing and experimenting when modifying the scenery or terrain budgets.....the terrain SDK is available from Microsoft Game Studios here: http://www.microsoft.com/games/combatfs3/cfs3_sdk.aspx
 
Thanks bud, I'll check that out! I'm tired of guessing too.

You are right about the density deal. You're right about the density performance hit too. I'm more concerned about viewing distance instead.
 
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