Screen Resolution

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Dataman

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To All,

My apologies if these questions have been asked before.

I have installed CFS1 on my laptop running Windows XP and I have not enjoyed this game in many years.

I have a few questions and I am hoping someone might be able to provide insight.

1) What is the maximum screen resolution this game will support? (I seem to be able to get up to 640 x 480 x 32)

2) Is there a way to have the game windowed or only in full screen? (My default at the moment is full screen)

3) To better tweak game settings, is this accomplished through the "COMBATFS.CFG" and if so is there a document explaining what the line entries represent?

4) If I am only playing offline, do I need to find the "Head-to-Head" collision bubble fix?

5) Besides the "no bullet holes" and "all weather gunsight" files, any other simple files I should search for to make things a little easier?

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

KC
 
Hello Dataman,

I usually run at 1024x768 but I can't remember the number of colours. I have pretty minimal 3D video cards on a couple machines but they are sufficient. (Voodoo 3 3000 on one of them)

The Collision Bubble fix is useful even if you fly against AI. I usually set my aircraft to have a size 2 for a single engine fighter and 3 for something like a medium bomber. Keep in mind though that some aircraft (like mine) already have that done before release. If you want to know what the numbers actually mean, I can go back to my notes from when I tested this several years ago.

I usually fly full screen, but you can switch back and forth with <Alt><Enter> as I often do when taking and processing screenshots or doing minor editing of textures.

Have Fun!
- Ivan.
 
Dataman said:
To All,

My apologies if these questions have been asked before.

I have installed CFS1 on my laptop running Windows XP and I have not enjoyed this game in many years.

I have a few questions and I am hoping someone might be able to provide insight.

1) What is the maximum screen resolution this game will support? (I seem to be able to get up to 640 x 480 x 32)

2) Is there a way to have the game windowed or only in full screen? (My default at the moment is full screen)

3) To better tweak game settings, is this accomplished through the "COMBATFS.CFG" and if so is there a document explaining what the line entries represent?

4) If I am only playing offline, do I need to find the "Head-to-Head" collision bubble fix?

5) Besides the "no bullet holes" and "all weather gunsight" files, any other simple files I should search for to make things a little easier?

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

KC
Click to expand...

Hi Dataman :wavey:

I always play CFS1 at full screen, but this is, like No Dice says, a question of preference. I know that some graphic "chipset" do not react kindly to windowed mode, as it kill Hardware acceleration.

But it is for you to try. Under SETTINGS>Advanced display settings...>Full screen resolution, you will find a drop-down menu with all the choices offered. I don't know if the list "adapt" to each installation (I doubt it very much...) but, on my new W7 machine, it goes from 640x480x16 to 1024x768x32. Smaller resolutions will confine you to the low-resolution panel and limit the peripheric view. Higher resolutions will bring a more "crisp" panel and a somewhat larger panoramic view. I tested them all and, actually, have two games with different settings for comparison.

The "Head2head" is a MDL tweak that actually reduces the collision bubble of all stock a/c in all game modes - as long as your multiplayer opponents have it as well. Not to be mixed with the CFG tweak "COLLISION_SECS=x" which only works (if it works...) in MP games.

CFOWeather, by Bill Potvin, is a must, imho. TG2 is also very useful, especially in MP games or if, like me, you like to fly a bomber in QC and shoot "bandits" along the way.

That does cover the basics, I guess.

Have fun.
 
Thank you No Dice for your response!

For some reason, when using the in-game menu to select the screen resoltuon, the most I could get was what I selected ..... I might have not had my eyes properly open, so I will check again, but if I was correct, and the in-game menu does not allow more, is there a way to edit this in the "COMBATFS.CFG" file?



Thank you Ivan for your response!

I will check out the site and then definitely install the "collision bubble" fix, as I thought it was only good for online play.

I appreciate the tip for "ALT" + "Enter" to get out of full-screen mode ..... I do mind it that much, but under the current low resolution, if I am unable to fix that, then playing in a windowed screen might be better and more pleasing on the eyes.


Lastly, just saw your post, thank you Hubbabubba for responding!

I will look for the "head-to-head" fix at the freeflight web site and also make sure I did not miss anything in the in-game menu.



This truly is a great community here at SOH and so many people have helped me on many platforms ..... I am so very grateful!:applause:
 
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Hi Dataman,

In my opinion, Hubbabubba's tutorials are more for the folks that really want to get into the guts of Combat Flight Simulator.
What No Dice may not have mentioned is that Hubbabubba built a really great Messerschmitt 108 AND a couple great looking AND drivable Jeeps for CFS.

If you are really interested in some of the best add-ons available for CFS, stop by No Dice's site. He hosts a pretty comprehensive collection and it all seems to be at least "good" to really excellent.


No Dice,
I figure you actually have about 90% of the aeroplanes I have released for CFS. There are a couple I don't believe are available for download anywhere any more and there is also a pretty good FW 190A here that I don't think you have yet. There will be an updated version of that 190A soon.

Take Care.
- Ivan.
 
hello KC,
here are a few answers to your questions;

1) What is the maximum screen resolution this game will support? (I seem to be able to get up to 640 x 480 x 32)
fire up the game, click SETTINGS, click the Advanced display settings... button,
click the down arrow next to the Full screen resolution window.
the list on mine goes from 320x200x16 to 1280x800x32
or, open combatfs.cfg with notepad.
from the menu, select Edit, then click find...
type in hardware, then, click the find next button.
you should see Device= your video card
and Mode= whatever you have selected
this option is for full screen mode only.

2) Is there a way to have the game windowed or only in full screen? (My default at the moment is full screen)
ALT+Enter
i run my game in full window mode, not full screen.
mainly, because i use 2 monitors and have found that i can not mouse
on the secondary monitor in full screen mode.
plus, i like the menu bar visible in window mode.
there is also a multi-player benefit that i won't go into right now.

3) To better tweak game settings, is this accomplished through the "COMBATFS.CFG" and if so is there a document explaining what the line entries represent?
sometimes, yes. sometimes, no.
somewhere, i have a an incomplete list of combatfs.cfg entry descriptions.
i will post it when i find it.
the keyboard and joystick settings are listed in another document.
if you are interested, i can pass that along, too.
 
the list on mine goes from 320x200x16 to 1280x800x32
Click to expand...
This had me look at my notes...:icon_eek: you see; when rebuilding my new PC, I made a "fresh install" of CFS1 and tested all the resolution I could get in the drop-down menu. The list is different from the one I gave above, which is from my old AAC game. It starts at 640x480x16 but goes up to 1074x768x32.

So I stand corrected; CFS1 does adapt to your specific graphic power (and limitations).

In light of this, I have a suggestion for you;

1- Remove COMBATFS.CFG from the game folder and place it somewhere safe;
2- Start the game, go in FreeFlight, QC, whatever, and then exit;
3- Re-start the game and go have a look at the drop-down menu and tell us what resolutions you get now.

When COMBATFS.exe does not find its cfg file, it creates a new one and, concerning screen resolution, it presumably check your graphic possibilities.

You can return to your old CFG file in a "worst case scenario"...:encouragement:
 
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as always, i agree with hubba 99.99%

if you don't want to
"1- Remove COMBATFS.CFG from the game folder and place it somewhere safe;"
you can always leave it where it is and just rename it.

here's another little trick;
within the Combat Flight Simulator main folder,
scroll down, find the COMBATFS.exe
copy/paste it into the main cfs folder.
now, rename the copy to, say, COMBATFStest.exe
click on it and cfs will start up.
when you shut down cfs, a new COMBATFStest.cfg will be created.
you now have a separate cfs install
to test sceneries or aircraft or whatever you want.
if something goes wrong, you still have a clean COMBATFS.cfg and exe
 
smilo said:
as always, i agree with hubba 99.99%

if you don't want to
"1- Remove COMBATFS.CFG from the game folder and place it somewhere safe;"
you can always leave it where it is and just rename it.

here's another little trick;
within the Combat Flight Simulator main folder,
scroll down, find the COMBATFS.exe
copy/paste it into the main cfs folder.
now, rename the copy to, say, COMBATFStest.exe
click on it and cfs will start up.
when you shut down cfs, a new COMBATFStest.cfg will be created.
you now have a separate cfs install
to test sceneries or aircraft or whatever you want.
if something goes wrong, you still have a clean COMBATFS.cfg and exe
Click to expand...

CLEVER!!!:jump: That one, I will try for sure.
 
Thank you Gents for your continued support and responses.

I feel very foolish as I did see that the in-game menu would allow for more resolution combinations than I had originally realized ..... There was this thing called a "scroll bar" which I failed to utilize! :banghead:

I went to the CFS1 Utlities link and tried downloading the 'head2head' file but regrettably the zip file was unusable.

Would anyone here happen to have that file?

On full screen vs windowed, I noticed that the "all weather" gunsight only works in full screen, even if I do a full window ..... I like that gunsight but remember there were many others (very cool ones back in the day), but I did not seem to see them at the utilties site.

I am unsure what I will chose.

Lastly, I think I will leave the combatfs.cfg file alone, as so far, apart from tweaking the keyboard assignments, the only things I have changed from the original files have been the gunsight and the no-bullet-holes canopy ...... I'll have time to be adverturesome maybe later. :biggrin-new:
 
I feel very foolish as I did see that the in-game menu would allow for more resolution combinations than I had originally realized ..... There was this thing called a "scroll bar" which I failed to utilize!

welcome to the club.

On full screen vs windowed, I noticed that the "all weather" gunsight only works in full screen, even if I do a full window ..... I like that gunsight but remember there were many others (very cool ones back in the day), but I did not seem to see them at the utilties site.

i am curious about this "all weather" gunsite you speak of.
would you mind sharing it?
as i recall, there was a gunsight installation package at the RAF662 site.
don't know if it's still there, though.

edit...never mind. i just found both.

Lastly, I think I will leave the combatfs.cfg file alone, as so far, apart from tweaking the keyboard assignments, the only things I have changed from the original files have been the gunsight and the no-bullet-holes canopy ...... I'll have time to be adverturesome maybe later.

yeah, but, tweaking the game to your preferences is part of the beauty of cfs1.
for example, would you like to disable that opening movie?
hide the menu when in full window mode?
would you like to build scenery in game using stock objects?
or even add a moving cross on the ground for bombing practice?
all can be easily done in the combatfs.cfg
and that's just for starters.

after a lot of searching, i finally found
the combatfs.cfg entry descriptions.
unfortunately, it is very limited.
way back when, i made several additions,
but, that file has moved to the great beyond.
if there is interest, i could revisit the list.
hmmmm, this might call for it's own thread.
 
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Smilo,

Here is the gunsight I was referring to ..... Nothing fancy, but slightly more comfortable for me to view.

I did find the RAF662 install package you mentioned and extracted a few gunsights that I will try, but the question will remain if they will work only in full screen mode or will they still show up for a windowed mode?

Concerning the combatfs.cfg explainations, not a problem at all ..... Sometimes some things are best left alone as I have a bad habit of over-tweaking! :a1310:

I know that there are so many improvements that have been made by many talented individuals for this game, and maybe in time I'll make updates and use the modifications / enhancements, but for now, I simply wanted to get things back to where I had them when I last flew.

I think the only thing left for me to try is that I notice the action seems to be a little slower paced in CFS1 thatn it does for CFS2, so I might try speeding things up a bit (I seem to recall there might have been a keyboard assigment for such a thing and I'll search later on).
 

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thanks, i just found it on an old hard drive.
along with the RAF662 gunsite swapper.
i also dropped your site into the texture folder
and ran a few tests. oddly, it works in all modes,
maximized window, reduced window and full screen.
of course, this test was done in my modified cfg version.
next step will be to try it in a "clean" version.

you are absolutely correct about tweaking the game.
to each his own.

as for the "slower pace".
do you mean the simulation rate?
if so, the add on, CFO, has a simulation rate option.
with it, you can go from very slow to normal, 2x, 4x, up to 64x+
you can get CFO at the free flight site
or, if you prefer, i have a trimmed down version.
 
Smilo,

You are a very good man indeed Charlie Brown!

Thank you for testing things, especially because I am a problem child! :jump:

I'll be curious to find out if you get the same results as I did.

As for the pace of the game, I believe your verbiage is correct ..... The simulation rate seems to have the airplanes flying somewhat slower than CFS2, but that might be my own mis-perception.

I will search for the "CFO" program at the website listed above.

What did you think of the gunsight?
 
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