The traditional post here if you are up and running P3

Polovski said:
Well firstly CFS3 will greatly benefit from more CPU so before you change anything that's the first thing I'd do.

I didn't put my comment in bold as it's not the be all and end all. Quick example small improvements, turning off labels, and Z key readout for example 1-2fps. Also others find disabling read vertex and index buffers (or even write buffers) help etc.

There are various sites on improving CFS3 and I'm sure others can link to those, many settings that some will find work others not, but right now until you are familiar I wouldn't mess with cfsconfig more.

As I say try the o/c to 3.6 first and see if you can run on 4 or it feels better.
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Thanks for the clarifications. And you're right....do the relatively simple things first in hopes of the major benefit and from that point it's a matter of a couple fps here and a couple of fps there (tweaks..).

On a related note thanks for the "how to enable AA" tip you posted in reply to another question here. I didn't remember to include a comment in my initial post about it and this solved that issue.

You folks obviously have put a lot of time and effort into developing the game and the results are amazing from what I've seen so far, albeit just scratching the surface at this point.

Again, appreciate you guys monitoring the comments here and offering help or suggestions (also surprised to see I'm not the only "old" guy here!)
 
An E8400 with a GTX280 should normally run OFF much better than you are experiencing Over50. I have the same processor (not overclocked) and only a 8800GT vidcard and get 40 to 50 fps. Not sure why you are only in the 20s and 30s.

One hint is that OFF/CSF3 runs faster at higher resolutions....the opposite of what you would expect. I am running at 1920x1200 for example.
 
77Scout said:
An E8400 with a GTX280 should normally run OFF much better than you are experiencing Over50. I have the same processor (not overclocked) and only a 8800GT vidcard and get 40 to 50 fps. Not sure why you are only in the 20s and 30s.

One hint is that OFF/CSF3 runs faster at higher resolutions....the opposite of what you would expect. I am running at 1920x1200 for example.
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Thanks for jumping in here.

Just to note, I'm running the 260 216 core card, not the 280, and I'm running the latest 181.20 driver.

I can get in the 50 to near 60 fps range while airborne with the terrain and scenery set to (3) with the remaining options still on (5) and no AA cranked in. When I up the terrain and scenery to (5) about the best I can get is the upper 30's while airborne and mid to upper 20's while on the ground and panning the view (virtual cockpit).

Beats me how your frame rate is that high with the 8800GT and much higher resolution vs what I'm experiencing with the GTX 260 216 core card at 1600 x 1200... :confused:

I'm going to bump up my CPU to 3.6 to see if it helps and will post back accordingly.

What driver version are you running, as well as level of AA and AF so I can compare?
 
btw creaghorn your comments about the girlfriend cracked me up :d
Sounds like you re having a great time
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[/QUOTE]

yes i am so far :jump:
unfortunately nobodoy seems to have noticed the questions i asked :help:.
1. how can i avoid collisions with mates when not beeing leader and using warp? that cost me 3 careers so far.

2. does anybody know if the leader, after the assigned time is leading you back to your drome and everybody is landing? or is it similar to rb3d where they usually fly above till your gas tank is empty or crashing most of the times when trying to land?

3. i have a amd phenom(tm) quad core with 2.21 GHz, 3,5 GB ram and a nvidia 8600gt. as far as i would say, the videocard is the weakest spot in my rig, so i am considering to buy a better one which is compatible with the rest of the system so far, and which should rise my fps to beeing at constant 30s or higher and with higher settings. any ideas?

creaghorn
 
Polovski said:
Well firstly CFS3 will greatly benefit from more CPU so before you change anything that's the first thing I'd do.

I didn't put my comment in bold as it's not the be all and end all. Quick example small improvements, turning off labels, and Z key readout for example 1-2fps. Also others find disabling read vertex and index buffers (or even write buffers) help etc.

There are various sites on improving CFS3 and I'm sure others can link to those, many settings that some will find work others not, but right now until you are familiar I wouldn't mess with cfsconfig more.

As I say try the o/c to 3.6 first and see if you can run on 4 or it feels better.
Click to expand...

Mark,

I have tried P3 on the weekend for about 15 minutes just to see how it would run and I did not have time to explore it further. I had similar experiences like Over50. My frame rates drop down to 16 when starting on an airfield or flying low. Also terrain objects like trees and houses are flashing like mad. I have the same settings as with P2: 5-5-4-5-1
My system is not bad either: E8400@4GHz, 9800GTX 512MB and 4GB RAM. Running the game in 1920x1200 with 8xAA (via CFS3Config). Of course I have to do some more tweaking to OFF. CPU should not be the limiting factor, maybe the graphics card and its memory size is. Plain CFS3 runs with 60FPS (monitor limiting by frequency).

Maybe it would be helpful for us who have a similar system like you if you could put up screenshots of your CFS3Config screens. Just as a start for Nvidia users. So far I have set CFS3Config just like Winder had posted some time before (see here) but I think I need some more tweaking.

Maybe we should put this discussion in a separate thread.

Cheers
 
Got P3 this Friday.
Installed it on my P2 and set it to backup missions and A/C's. There I got an error and chose "skip" for both backup's. The install then finished without any other incidents.
Fired up the sim and for the first time since P1 I could actually see the videos :d.

I only had time for a short flight but evething seamed to run just fine.

I'm running it on this old system:

Mobo; Microstar KT3 Ultra2 Socket A
CPU; AMD Athlon XP 2000+
RAM; 1024 MB DDR 184 Pins PC2700
Videocard; Inno3D GeForce 6800 GT / 400 MHz / 85 Hz / PCI Express x16 / 256 MB GDDR3 SDRAM
Soundcard; Soundblaster Audigy Player Bulk
Joystick; Microsoft Sidewinder Pro1
Pedals; Simped
Track IR4
System; Windows XP Pro, SP3

Oh and pached to v1.1.
 
Up and Running.....I need to do a tiny bit of tweaking but for all intents and purposes all is well. Thanks, team for a great sim.
 
Gremlin_WoH said:
Mark,

My frame rates drop down to 16 when starting on an airfield or flying low. Also terrain objects like trees and houses are flashing like mad. I have the same settings as with P2: 5-5-4-5-1
My system is not bad either: E8400@4GHz, 9800GTX 512MB and 4GB RAM. Running the game in 1920x1200 with 8xAA (via CFS3Config).. Plain CFS3 runs with 60FPS (monitor limiting by frequency).
Click to expand...

It is obvious that people are still trying to run this sim at too high a setting in the config file in relation to the terrain and scenery sliders.

I can understand newbies making this mistake, especially when they can run CFS3 itself at very high FPS with all sliders at 5.
But for others, you have been told time and again by Winder and Pol, that
OFF does not run at the same settings as CFS3. That settings 3 for terrain and scenery, are the equivalent of settings 5 in CFS3.

Add to that, guys running at high AA settings and same with Aniso- what do you expect? I mean, Gremlin - resolution 1920 etc AND 8 AA? - why do you need AA at that res? And with that card,( which is very good but not the best, and will run OFF fine, but not at those settings )
There has to be a price for that.

Winder - I note you did ask for the stickys to be tidies up a bit - Rightly because there are far too many Having said that, this config file settings thing keeps arising and is worth a very prominent position in there.
 
Fortiesboy,

P2 was running better at those settings (around 30-45 FPS) than P3 currently and I stated I need to tweak P3 some more. And I do not use Anisotropic Filtering.

Polovski's system has the same CPU at slightly lower speed but the better graphics card. He is running 1920x1200 with 16xAA

Polovski said:
With a similar setup as you (8400 but o/c to 3.6, GTX280) I run with all on max (apart from terrain 4) @1920x1200 with 16AA and 16 Aniso, and get 30-60 fps).
Click to expand...

I should see similar results but I have to investigate that. At least they should be better than right now and I think with some tweaking its manageable.
 
Got it today, up and running no issues. Will post a story shortly. Current rig is as follows:

Sager NP8660 (M860TU)
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.53ghz
4gb Ram
Nvidia Geforce 9800M GT 512mb

hooked up externally to a 19" LCD I have here at 1440x900 4x AA

Sliders are very conservatively set at 5/3/3/4/1 and running very smoothly. Very interesting indeed, although I have yet to run into the extremely deadly AI everyone is talking about. Realism settings at about 80. AI seems to be uninterested in shooting at me, either that or I have all the right moves!

Though considering I've killed my first career pilot trying to hot-dog over the aerodrome and failing miserably, that's most likely not the case!! haha Awesome product nonetheless, feels so much more refined than P2.
 
When you first start out fps will be lowest close to all those aircraft and objects on the ground etc smoke on the ground etc.

You won't get that to 30-40 fps if you want all the eye candy on full.

We can give rough recommendations as per the web but we cannot give specifics for each person, PCs are incredibly difficult to match speed and specs and game settings and get the same result given all the other variables.
Even the tweaks for CFS3 on other sites, and ones posted by WM and Parky in the past do not work for everyone.

Could be memory quality/speed too for example.

"Running the game in 1920x1200 with 8xAA (via CFS3Config).."
I do that but then override it with NVidia settings try that for example?
yep or as Fb says try knocking the scenery back to 4 looks fab there.
 
Polovski said:
When you first start out fps will be lowest close to all those aircraft and objects on the ground etc smoke on the ground etc.

You won't get that to 30-40 fps if you want all the eye candy on full.

We can give rough recommendations as per the web but we cannot give specifics for each person, PCs are incredibly difficult to match speed and specs and game settings and get the same result given all the other variables.
Even the tweaks for CFS3 on other sites, and ones posted by WM and Parky in the past do not work for everyone.

Could be memory quality/speed too for example.

"Running the game in 1920x1200 with 8xAA (via CFS3Config).."
I do that but then override it with NVidia settings try that for example?
yep or as Fb says try knocking the scenery back to 4 looks fab there.
Click to expand...

As a follow-up, I bumped up my CPU to 3.6 GHz and really didn't see that much of an improvement (FPS). And my 3DMark06 score is what I was getting when I initially OC'd my processor to 3.6 (16,390 range).

As you've noted the biggest FPS benefit is lowering the terrain and scenery sliders. In my case setting them to (3) with the remaining sliders at (5) my frame rate does get up to around 60. And your comment that frame rates will drop when close to the ground (and activity being rendered) also holds true.

I fully understand the relationship between FPS and the degree of rendering cranked in (eye candy, AA, AF). To summarize, I can attain a upper 30's to upper 50's playable frame rate with the terrain and scenery sliders at (3) with the others at (5), no more than 4AA and 4 AF cranked in, and with what is being rendered dynamically during the game play factored in.
 
in the spirit of the thread.....up and running here, like Middle just some tweaking to do.
 
Been up and running since 2 days ago. As soon as the splash screen came up, I phased out and no one has seen me since!! Fantabulous!! Simply Awesocredible!

ZZ.
 
since it's tradition

active since ~Jan 16th.

getting hit by a lot of ground AA.

considering flying higher.
 
If you post in this thread
http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/showthread.php?t=9128
people might see it more and chip in there are also some tips in there

Interesting Over50 you saw no improvement at all. But 50-60 fps in flight and drops to 20 over the low down detailed areas with troops, smoke, a worlds going on low not bad!
Maybe the memory is slow not to compensate for O/C perhaps try a modest O/C and one or two of the other tweaks appearing in the thread.
 
up and running, took some time to get everything personally "right" with the graphics vs. framerates, but other than that quick tweaking; installed easily and has played flawlessly. great game.
 
Up and running since last wednesday.

The campaign is amazing, as is the atmosphere of the missions and the AI dogfighting skill. The only thing that's bugging me is the AI's inability to stay in formation, and even at the same altitude as the leader. I just want to ask if this issue counts as ai "navigation" that's being worked on?

I love the replay feature. $58 well spent.
 
Polovski said:
If you post in this thread
http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/showthread.php?t=9128
people might see it more and chip in there are also some tips in there

Interesting Over50 you saw no improvement at all. But 50-60 fps in flight and drops to 20 over the low down detailed areas with troops, smoke, a worlds going on low not bad!
Maybe the memory is slow not to compensate for O/C perhaps try a modest O/C and one or two of the other tweaks appearing in the thread.
Click to expand...

Found the problem! Simple matter of forcing V-Sync off in the Nvidia control panel. Now I'm seeing frame rates from the 60's to above 100 once I get to 2000 feet and above with the terrain and scenery sliders set to (3) while leaving the remaining sliders at (5) plus AA set to 4x and AF set to 8x in the Nvidia control panel. Sitting on the ground and looking forward with the cockpit view on it's a steady low 60's. Yes, the frame rate drops to the upper 30's to low 40's while panning on the ground but that's to be expected.

If there's a V-Sync option in the game I haven't seen it. Point being, you might want to include this in the next FAQ update. What a difference with it set to OFF (not Application Setting). Just a tremendous boost in the smoothness of the game! :applause:
 
Funnily enough I was going through my Nvidia settings just now and saw that was off on mine when for years I had it on for my LCD (as there is no "sync" as such) and wondered lol you beat me to it. Good stuff!
 
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