Observations, Experiences, Questions, Re-install???

[Venator]

Hello all,

First off, I will say that I have not been long in this forum community, though I had a chance to play OFF2 during the final heady countdown to OFF3, and now I AM HAVING FUN when OFF3 is letting me.
From what I can see, everybody here is rightly very supportive of the development team, as well as very defensive of them and the game. I do not wish to offend anyone, at all, but I'm going to be more critical in order to point out deficiencies I've encountered (perhaps unique to my system/install), hopefully get answers/solutions, and overall increase my enjoyment of the game, if not for somebody else as well. OK?


Oh yah, I've read and have a hardcopy of the FAQ page and the TIPS sticky, as well as try to read the relevant threads when I have time, so if anything is repeated here or answered elsewhere, I APOLOGIZE. I can't see, or make stick, everything I read.


WinXP
2.66 GHz quad core Intel Xeon
nVidia Quadro 4500 512 MB vRAM (basically equivalent to nVidia GeForce 7800 GTX 512 MB)
4 GB RAM
TIR4, CH pedals, Logitech Wingman ForceFeedback stick

1) From the system specs listed above, I have to have my game settings on 2's in order to get acceptable frame rates hovering at near 30. I HAVE made the recommended config changes. My system is "mature" but still strong, and I will be fully honest, I'm a bit disappointed.

2) The first few missions I flew I did not get the post-mission report screen coming up at all. That seems to have resolved itself (???). However, I completed a ground attack mission, launched my 8 rockets and hit one hanger (yeah!). I did not see a report screen post-mission (is there a ground attack report?), and did not get credit for the kill even though in the mission stats window it said I had 2 hits (or kills?).

3) In that ground attack, I was flying by rank. The flight lead attacked the wrong airfield according to the "radar" and waypoint indicator said it was the next one about 2-3 miles away (I could see it). Should I have followed FL or gone off and done my own thing? In combat mistakes are made, so I wrote it off as such with a smile. Errors in war; at least it was an enemy airfield.

4) I've tried to set my anti-aliasing to anything but 'none' by closing the window outright (not OK'ing it) as Povloski told me in another thread, but they are still not sticking.

5) My Flight lead decided to take a dip in the ocean (flying RNAS-1 N11's right now, great fun!), and made a BIG splash. The very next mission he was on the roster and leading my flight. Is this a bug?

6) I love to capture the action!!! and tried to pause to get good screen shots. Is there a free zooming camera that can move about and away from your aircraft, rather than just around it? How do you get rid of all the other paused windows that appear to get the screen shot?

Also in general, my game hangs every now and then, mostly when I pause it and move my head with TIR4 while reading my hardcopy of the FAQ or TIPS THREAD, and have to 3-finger salute it... Should I just delete and re-install given some of the issues I seem to be having???

And if possible suggestions are being entertained:
a) Can you please shorten the target labels a smidge? Aircraft recognition should be part of our training
b)Is there any way to have target labels only show up for aircraft, or toggle between just aircraft and just ground?
C)Having "Smoke" labeled as a target may be a limitation of CFS3, but is still ridiculous, and damn annoying...

 

[Polovski]

1) I'm not familiar with the Quadro at all so can't really say but firstly make sure your game is running at the MAX resolution your monitor allows. (Don't lower it to increase speed). There are various tips on improving OFF and CFS3 generally in other threads here for example http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/showthread.php?t=9128

Like all PC software sometimes what works well for one does not necessarily produce the same magic elsewhere. Update your drivers? Check the driver settings, try Vertical Sync On or OFF for example in the display driver settings.


2) There are not always post mission reports - it depends on what there is to report, we try to keep it fresh and varying. Sometimes you may see two lots of info. Sometimes you will get news, sometimes not for example

You can turn on player stats (workshop) and see various stats on your player "% Hits" ground targets hit etc. But ground hits are not "kills" and not registered as such. You can kill a ballon if you have been on a specific mission to take out a balloon and you get the right one you'll usually be given the opportunity to claim.

3) Yep quite right, errors of war, confusion, priorities changed by leader etc. This is also explained in the FAQ, under "1.2) Game Play Hints"

4) Try override the application AA settings in your NVidia control panel?
Try setting it to say 2X in cfs3config then say 4X in Nvidia panel.

5) No, sounds like he is a good swimmer and survived. Crash does not equal dead of course.

6) Nope CFS3 does not have that view but you can view other craft by zooming away your craft and panning another into close view. Or use Ctrl+F6 and hat controller to get some good views. Use shift+f7 flypast etc.


Check for overheating in the case? Video card fan OK cand clean etc? CPU are pushed way now with the high res terrain, settings, skins and numbers of ground objects/aircraft.
Alt tabbing can cause hangs too.


a) Possibly it's not that simple for some names though as the manager relies on the names in squads, and internal campaign data etc.
You can turn them off ctrl+shift+L (or assign another key, I bind to L key) and only toggle them on when close to read the aces names

b) Not that I know of.

C) Usually if you investigate closer (at a risk ) there often will be soldiers or vehicles around, or even crashed craft and pilot, or some that have been destoryed by barrages etc. Hence it is a target area (and why there is smoke)

 

[Venator]

Thank you for reply

Pol,

I cannot send a PM to you, but still wanted to thank you for spending the time to answer my (what I imagine are) becoming annoying questions. Man this forum is busy!

Before I had time to read your response, I did manage to set AA in the nVidia manager. It Works!!! I had no idea it would override the game settings, I didn't think it was supposed to.

I also managed to alter some settings (thought I was trying just about anything, so couldn't attribute what did the trick!) that allowed me to get 40 to 50 fps (though other times it drops into the 20's ???) so I did manage to up some graphics sliders a smidgen.

Bottom line, I've had a lot of fun so far, though some frustrating moments. Sound familiar??? :wave:

 

[Polovski]

Thanks Venator, glad you got sorted.

Well the sim has a LOT in there, we have knocked on the head MANY issues CFS3 itself had, and now dramatically improved it.

Still with something like this bound to be questions, and issues like any PC sim or game on the planet (some a lot more than this too). A lot of it is down to personal settings etc, other issues we are improving soon with the next patch. Many PC games only get patched months after release (or never ahem).

We have a patch coming soon and one was out before release (!) - so soon it will be even better to remove many of those questions/annoyances that have cropped up, and already adding more features.

Many people are installed and up and running very quickly smoothly,of course most people only post when they have something to say. We have a fair few "Wow" and "installed up and running smooth" posts too?
So far par for the course I think

 

[middle]

You can get screenshots by hitting "cntrl+;"...it's a built in feature of all cfs3 based sims. I'm glad to see you're starting to have some fun. I have a Hewlett Packard with a 3GHz Intel Dual core, 2Gigabytes of RAM and no real proper vid card at all,,I'm using the Intell chipset that came with the computer and for all intents and purpose it works pretty good. However, I had to set the scenerry/terrain sliders back to 3's.

 

[Aussie Pilot]

Hello all,



WinXP
2.66 GHz quad core Intel Xeon
nVidia Quadro 4500 512 MB vRAM (basically equivalent to nVidia GeForce 7800 GTX 512 MB)
4 GB RAM
TIR4, CH pedals, Logitech Wingman ForceFeedback stick

Hey Venator,

How do you get on with using your Trackir4 and the Logitech stick?

I remember sometime back that people had a hard time getting their trackir to work and that Natural Point said that logitech products caused issues and thay had no answers or fixes. I'm just curious, thats all.