Performance

[Noddy]

Hi all,

 

Just bought BOS after hanging back a while to let a few of the initial problems always inherent in new software to be sorted out.  I played the original IL2, online mostly on Warclouds in Hyperlobby from release until about 2007.  I tried COD with the TF and it seemed a bit flakey so I couldn't wait to get stuck into this.

 

Any threads/tips about boosting performance (especially in the sp campaign out there).  I know my machine isn't top notch but it really isn't bad by todays standards (I5 4590, GTX 970, 16gb ddr3. Win 7 64) and runs more or less anything I chuck at it from good to excellent.  Now I appreciate that the game engine is direct x 9.0c and that newer cards don't run this so well but considering it's a ROF engine the performance does seem to be poor, in fact it is the poorest performing piece of software I own by a large margin in campaign mode.

 

The standard answer "Oh well there is a lot going on behind the scenes in campaign) just don't seem to cut it when I look at the performance that I am getting in F4 BMS 4.33 or DCS.

 

What do people think ?  

[ACG_pezman]

I believe what people are referring to is the fact that the AI uses the same flight models and such as human players, so this takes up more resources than AI in other sims (no clue how DCS' AI works). That's what I have read at least.

 

As far as your PC goes, it sounds really decent. May I ask if you have a SSD? I find that the super fast read/write speeds are the biggest relief to bottlenecks with graphically intense games where a lot of textures are used. I have a nearly identical PC but with two 770's and IL2 installed on my m.2 SSD.

 

I hold generally about 60 fps everywhere, both MP and SP, however I also run it on Balanced settings.

 

You can also try going into nVidia control panel and setting the 3D performance either manually or with a preview. If you don't mind a little less detail, sliding the preview to 'performance' over 'quality' will gain you quite a few fps.

 

It's whatever you want to do.

[Noddy]

Ty for your reply,

 

No I haven't got an SSD, next thing on my list I think  

 

Balanced settings, yes I didn't actually say what settings I was using did... Ultra with 2x terrain at 2351 x 1323 with SSAO and HDR on.  Looking at that I think I am going to have to have a look at my settings because they are way beyond my setup on DX 9..  I don't know if others check out the relative performance of their gfx cards when they buy them but quite a few "older" cards seem to get significantly higher dx9 benchmarks than later cards and ofc get significantly lower one's on later variants of DX.  I was reading somewhere on these forums about the engine changing to 64 bit.  Another game I play a lot is Elite Dangerous and with the Horizons update it changed from 32 to 64 bit.  Very very nice difference.  I know completely different engines and different versions of DX but boy did the change to 64bit smooth things out.

 

Ok, ty for the advice I will go and turn things down to something more sensible and tell you how I get on... 

[SCG_Tzigy]

ultra might be fine, would turn HDR off, full screen unchecked is a must if playing at native resolution, force vsync ( i use adaptive) from NCP, search the software forum for the rest NCP settings, i use max AA from within the game, 4x distance i think, and sparse grid SSx2, -1.000LOD bias (have to be set via Nvidia Inspector), runs 40-60 fps and looks awesome..

 

http://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/20774-nvidia-config-pannel/?hl=%2Bsupersampling&do=findComment&comment=328721

 

welcome and good luck!

[SharpeXB]

Is your resolution of 2351 x 1323 coming from DSR? If so I would turn that off. It's a big performance killer and even that level of multiplier doesn't produce much improvement.

[Trinkof]

DSR Multiplier totally remove texture flickering, and work better than the native AA of the game. I have better performance and visual quality with my gtx 970 with 2500 resolution and balanced graphics in game (+ EDFX) than with ultra settings

 

And belive me, I spent a whole week testing and monitoring with all settings and tricks already suggested

 

Edit : on my Config 4 sparse grid supersampling kills performance much more than the DSR....

Edited February 16, 2016 by LAL_Trinkof

[Guest deleted@50488]

I have an i5 2500 @ 3,3 GHz, GTX 960 4GB card, 16 GB RAM and win 10 64 bit.  1920 x 1080 single LCD monitor here.

 

It runs very smooth but I do not use ULTRA ( I have it at HIGH ), no SSAO, and no HDR. Distance visibility x2, AA set to 4, although I usually run it at only 2 because it is fine for me.

Edited February 16, 2016 by jcomm

[Dakpilot]

Make sure your CPU is allowed to get to it's maxed boost of 3.7ghz, and even a modest overclock to 4Ghz can see an increase in minimum FPS

 

DX9 has high CPU overhead and only uses max two cores to provide draw calls to GPU, as BoS is also heavy on CPU compute with the FM and physics it can often get CPU bottleneck when GPU graphic demands are also intensive.

 

I cannot really tell a visual drop with Nvidia CP texture quality set to 'Performance' rather than 'quality' you will get some FPS there especially when things are busy in game. SSAO and HDR will reduce FPS, for some reason i get less FPS if in game AA is set to off and other AA NVCP are used so always leave the game at minimum 2X AA

 

DSR can be very effective, but careful testing needs to be done to see the maximum 'factor' that can be applied before 'hitting one of the walls' and it being detrimental especially with heavy clouds etc.

 

Setting distant landscape in game to 3X seems to be the sweet spot for performance/visuals, again 4X is fine most times, but when combined with many other factors can lower performance.

 

here's hoping that the budget/time can be found for DX12 and 64bit because they would go a long way to solve a lot of the issues, with a bit of jiggling I am able to get a decent image quality and more than adequate FPS on my hardware, but of course it could be a LOT better

 

Cheers Dakpilot

[Remontti]

After testing and tweaking I now use Balanced settings with 2xAA and sparse grid 4x with resolution 2560x1440.  If I use High settings my FPS drops to 35 near ground (with grass visible) but I get 50-60 at higher altitudes. A bit too much of a drop in FPS there for my taste. Watching the CPU and GPU usage monitors I have come to a conclusion that GTX 970 just can't run this game smooth all time at 2560x1440 resolution with High/Ultra settings.

 

ps. I wouldn't mind if people would tell the resolution they use when talking about performance. Makes a ton of difference if you use HD, 2k or 4k.

Edited February 16, 2016 by Remontti

[Trinkof]

After testing and tweaking I now use Balanced settings with 2xAA and sparse grid 4x with resolution 2560x1440. If I use High settings my FPS drops to 35 near ground (with grass visible) but I get 50-60 at higher altitudes. A bit too much of a drop in FPS there for my taste. Watching the CPU and GPU usage monitors I have come to a conclusion that GTX 970 just can't run this game smooth all time at 2560x1440 resolution with High/Ultra settings.

 

ps. I wouldn't mind if people would tell the resolution they use when talking about performance. Makes a ton of difference if you use HD, 2k or 4k.

Exact same result for me. Try without sparse grid, I did not found it useful, because DSR does pretty much all the job.

[Remontti]

Exact same result for me. Try without sparse grid, I did not found it useful, because DSR does pretty much all the job.

 

The ground near horizon is flickering a lot without sparse grid. I don't have DSR option available when using 2k resolution.

 

I just tested some graphic settings with Fraps showing the fps. That grass sure is a big resource hog.

-I used the free camera and looked at the ground, 60 fps, very nice.

-Move a bit closer and some grass gets rendered, 50 fps.

-Move closer to ground and get more grass, down to 40 fps.

-Move down to ground level, fps goes to 30. 

 

I wish I had option to turn the grass off. After all, it is just eye candy.  

Edited February 16, 2016 by Remontti

[Noddy]

Some good stuff here for sure.

 

For me the fm is excellent and it is just fun to fly around even without shooting anything so am leaning towards max playibilty.  My monitor refresh rate is only 60hz but 60 fps all the time is fine for me (I wish )   I have managed to get this by turning the res down to my monitors native of 1920x1080 and putting settings to high and leaving SSAO and HDR on.  Having said that someone above advised turning HD off and if it is responsible for some of the weird colours and effects like the it is in ROF it is a no brainer if I get some performance back as well.

 

I use Track IR and one thing can that be off putting are stutters when I pan around and it seems the higher the gfx settings the more the stutter, and at above settings they are very rare.

 

I am not using any terrain draw distance modifiers and have it set to normal.  This is partly because it helps fps but also it helps with the shimmering.

 

I can see a lot of experimentation on the horizon if DSR helps with the shimmering as high res and high view distance = much happiness.  All about how much detail you will have to turn off to do that.

 

It's good to get my teeth back into the IL2 series as I expect I will be spending a while getting everything just "right" before venturing online and that is so reminiscent of the original, after all I like to look my best for screenshots when bailing out my flaming aircraft

 

Btw, wrong thread I know but what is mp like ?

[Trinkof]

MP is fun, private events all week, some opened with inscription (Friday night bomber flight) some squadron exclusive.

 

Open MP is not bad, map are focused on ground attack. Sometime quite frustrating due to "kill hungry" mentality, sometime just awesome when several squads join on each side, sometime hard-core when your team is a group of solo player and the other team is full squad...

 

Server are quite well populated around peak evening hour in Europe.

[SCG_Tzigy]

ultra might be fine, would turn HDR off, full screen unchecked is a must if playing at native resolution, force vsync ( i use adaptive) from NCP, search the software forum for the rest NCP settings, i use max AA from within the game, 4x distance i think, and sparse grid SSx2, -1.000LOD bias (have to be set via Nvidia Inspector), runs 40-60 fps and looks awesome..

 

http://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/20774-nvidia-config-pannel/?hl=%2Bsupersampling&do=findComment&comment=328721

 

welcome and good luck!

 

running at 2560x1600

 

[1PL-Husar-1Esk]

full screen unchecked is a must if playing at native resolution!

Why?

[Dutchvdm]

Why?

 

It should be better for overall FPS. Tested it last week and it gave me some improvements (Could be a placebo effect  ). But for me it fixed the TR5 crashes.

 

Grt M

[SCG_Tzigy]

Why?

lot of people reported less stutters in past (applies to people using their monitor's native resolution and nvidia cards), maybe no longer an issue; i had a definite stutter and FPS benefit, this >6 mo ago though 

[Dakpilot]

Why?

 

Windows has  some sort of built in Vsync, when using 'windowed mode' (only at native resolution, there should be no difference visually from full screen mode) it is possible to turn off ingame and Nvidia Vsync with no screen tearing.

 

How much this effects performance Vsync on/off, is hard to define, but it does seem to have a real effect on microstutter and smoothness at below native screen refresh rate which is in most situations except in totally clear skies

 

If using this method setting an FPS cap (in game if possible) at screen refresh rate would seem to be the best option, I am lead to believe that Vsync off give better response/latency but do not have any figures to support  this'

 

Never fully got my head around Nvidia Vsync but i got the idea that even if FPS show a certain figure, if it drops below native refreshrate say 60hz you will only experience 1/2 refresh rate in this situation regardless of FPS shown

 

Cheers Dakpilot

[Noddy]

I have gone for the native resolution (1920x1080 at 60hz) turned HDR off and left SSAO on.  Landscape terrain draw set to x3 and have the general settings on high instead of Ultra.  4xaa Set ingame and FSAA on with x16 aniso in Nvidea control panel.  I have also stopped my self using fraps as am now very happy with the way things look and very few stutters (not enough to kill immersion ).

 

Am now setting up the map for my HOTAS and then I will be able to finally play  

[GrendelsDad]

Holy cow this just fixed every stutter I was having.  I knew it was Vsync causing the problem, I just had no idea Windows 10 has built in vsync...It works great.  The stutters were not terrible but enough to frustrate a bit.  This thread should be posted up top for all to see.  It really is a game changer.  See my sig below...FYI I am running a bezel corrected Triple screen setup at non native resolution.  3300x1920.  So not sure about the native resolution issue.  Thanks for the information guys.

[emmisofia]

Sorry for resurrecting an old thread, but didn't want to make a new one.

 

I've been playing RoF for a while now again and thought to see how BoS looks like, even if I prefer WW1 aviation over WW2. And how fortunate! It's on discount! The problem is... I'm not sure if my computer can handle this game.

 

I have Asus G750J laptop with i7-4700HQ 2.4GHz with boost up to 3.4GHz and Nvidia Geforce GTX 765M graphics card with 2Mb memory and 8Gb of RAM with a 1920x1080 screen. It should pass the minimum requirements for the game but doesn't reach recommended setup...

 

Any idea does this toaster run the game adequately even when there's some traffic around and maybe some fighting as well? And if so, do I need to lower settings to IL2 1946 level? :D 

[kissklas]

I think you should be good. Maybe clock the CPU up slightly and disable the hyper threading if you run into low framerates.

I am running the game fine on a i7-960. I turned off the hyper threading, and the game now uses about 50% of the CPU capacity at 4.2ghz clock. (Previously it only used 25% so It might not utilize both core threads. Good tip if you are seeing bad frame rates.). Also ran the game on standard 3.2ghz with decent results.

The GTX 765 should be ok. It's not a monster, but it is part of the Keplar generation of cards, which isn't that old. I ran the game previously on a single HD6950 which was fine, and that is an even older card with similar clock rate and the same amount of RAM as the 765.

You might not get by at 60FPS in crowded MP on maximum settings, but I'm sure it's playable.

 

Hope this helps:)

Best,

Klas

[emmisofia]

Thanks for info, kissklas!

 

I decided to buy the game and it works better than I feared, but worse than I hoped. :D Running it on medium with my nemesis, motion blur, turned off. Framerates are good when there's little on screen but starts to stutter when there's more going on. Need to tweak a bit here and there I guess, but not going to be too competitive in multiplayer with this machine, I'm afraid. Who am I kidding, I'm not competitive on any computer! :D

 

Playable is the word and I'm pretty happy with it atm. Maybe next year I can afford a new computer, which will be able to run this better, but for now I'm pretty satisfied.

[kestrel79]

Unchecking full screen really helped my fps too! Much smoother now than before. I run Balanced, SSAO off, HDR on, normal terrain distance, and 2x AA.

[kissklas]

 

Playable is the word and I'm pretty happy with it atm. Maybe next year I can afford a new computer, which will be able to run this better, but for now I'm pretty satisfied.

 

That's great! Hope to see you in the skies then! There is an official teamspeak channel up as well. If you see me on there, do say hello and we can go for a sortie or two:)

 

You can try what kestrel said. Remember to also turn off the Vsync in graphics, and the cinematic camera in camera options if frame rate is low (it does look lovely when turned on though). When it comes to the fullscreen/windowed borderless thing, I actually had the opposite, so that might vary from PC to PC. Maybe do a comparison.

 

Glad you took the step, and that it's running ok

 

Best,

Klas

[RoyalVengeance]

I'm getting around 22 FPS on Low with everything turned off. I'm really getting tired of this. 1080P , GTX 780 ( Non-Ti ) , only gets about 30% usage in-game, FX-8350 @ 4.8Ghz CPU . I tried EVERY setting on/off Ultra all the way to Low . This piece of software won't go higher than 28 FPS . Limiter is at 60 an v-sync is off . Playing with those didn't change a thing . I need HELP. PLEASE. 

[216th_Xenos]

Likely your processor. The game uses a limited number of cores and doesn't run well with AMD in general. I had to switch over to an i5 to get the game running properly. It is highly CPU intensive.

[Dakpilot]

Regardless of the poorer single core performance of AMD and FX-8350 compared to Intel ... a max of 28 FPS sounds unusually slow, unless you are only talking about being on the runway

 

Cheers Dakpilot

[Ala13_Kike]

Try to play in windowmode, at your screen resolution