Density of frontline activity and difficulty settings

[nessuno0505]

I play in expert mode with no HUD (playing in VR I can watch easily at the airplane instruments, compass, etc) since I'm trying to have the most realistic experience. The only help I sometimes use is my airplane position on the map (on by default in expert mode) as a help in navigation.

What are the most realistic settings according to difficulty and frontline density?

What do these settings affect?

[Goffik]

Frontline density controls how many units appear on the map during missions. Higher settings mean more planes, more ground units, more AA, potentially making your life more difficult. The trade-off is that your PC may not be able to cope with simulating all those units, so your rig will determine how high you can go with it.

[Letka_13/Arrow_]

I would also like to know what the frontline activity setting really affects. There are some conflicting reports of what its doing. Some say it affects number of AAA, some that it affect number of generated flights and some that it affects only activity of frontline and the number of units is affected by difficulty settings. Some official word on it would be very welcome, but I could not find any. 

[Mac_Messer]

On 12/10/2019 at 11:51 AM, Goffik said:

Frontline density controls how many units appear on the map during missions. Higher settings mean more planes, more ground units, more AA, potentially making your life more difficult. The trade-off is that your PC may not be able to cope with simulating all those units, so your rig will determine how high you can go with it.

Well then, my pc manages to hold 70-120fps in crowded places at "medium" setting yet the game still slows down considerably.

[Goffik]

51 minutes ago, Mac_Messer said:

Well then, my pc manages to hold 70-120fps in crowded places at "medium" setting yet the game still slows down considerably.

 

FPS isn't the one and only indication of how well a game is running. Controlling large numbers of AI units, both visible and invisible to the player, is more to do with CPU than GPU.

Edited December 20, 2019 by Goffik

[Yogiflight]

30 minutes ago, Goffik said:

 

FPS isn't the one and only indication of how well a game is running. Controlling large numbers of AI units, both visible and invisible to the player, is more to do with CPU than GPU.

Oh yes, soo true. With my old PC I sometimes had the game running (well... more walking) with half speed, while the FPS were at 60, because of lots of ground/air activity.

[LukeFF]

2 hours ago, Rudolph said:

I would also like to know what the frontline activity setting really affects. There are some conflicting reports of what its doing. Some say it affects number of AAA, some that it affect number of generated flights and some that it affects only activity of frontline and the number of units is affected by difficulty settings. Some official word on it would be very welcome, but I could not find any. 

 

It affects the density of ground targets, which yes, includes AAA.

[Letka_13/Arrow_]

11 minutes ago, LukeFF said:

 

It affects the density of ground targets, which yes, includes AAA.

Thanks a lot Luke, two additional questions - is it just the ground targets or also AI airborne flights ?  And does it also affect the number of enemy ground units in the target area or only units not related to the mission?

Edited December 20, 2019 by Rudolph
Additional questions

[sevenless]

10 minutes ago, Rudolph said:

And does it also affect the number of enemy ground units in the target area or only units not related to the mission?

 

Yes it does. If you fly a bomber intercept on scattered you get 6 bombers, if you fly on medium you get 9 bombers. So the setting affects both ground and air density. 

[Chief_Mouser]

Playing on 'medium' I always came across loads of ground and AAA fire. Recently I've switched to 'dense' or whatever it's called and see hardly any. How does that work? Looking at the tracks after there appear to plenty of units but they don't fire much; perhaps they are too far apart?

 

Edited December 24, 2019 by No.322_Red_Cat

[Mac_Messer]

Not much changed with AAA on mine. Still plenty of firing units in large industrial areas.

On 12/20/2019 at 8:38 PM, Yogiflight said:

Oh yes, soo true. With my old PC I sometimes had the game running (well... more walking) with half speed, while the FPS were at 60, because of lots of ground/air activity.

So with more powerful cpu the slowdowns should go away. Thanks I was trying to determine if it was the game engine having problems or my (very old) pc.

[Yogiflight]

3 minutes ago, Mac_Messer said:

Not much changed with AAA on mine. Still plenty of firing units in large industrial areas.

So with more powerful cpu the slowdowns should go away. Thanks I was trying to determine if it was the game engine having problems or my (very old) pc.

Yes, I am meanwhile playing on a notebook with a graphic card, comparable to the one, I had in my old PC, but a much better CPU. No slide shows anymore.

[Nars]

So I was wandering what rig is capable of dealing with the "dense" frontline activity.
I recently increased it from "scattered" (everything runs smoothly) to "dense", and while sometimes performance is on point, other times the sim slows down so much that it's not playable.

After some research here in the forums I understand that the CPU is the main responsible, so just wanted to ask if you guys are able to run "dense" frontline activity in career mode consistently.

I am on a i7-7700K @ 4.2GHz, 16GB RAM, GTX 1070 Ti

[WheelwrightPL]

For me even "scattered" runs very poorly especially on Rhineland map's "ground attackers" intercept mission in my FW190-A8 (which is a pity because of those juicy, juicy jugs;)

[102.R.dd_Blade18]

So what does pre-mission-start option "Difficulty" adjust after all? Didn't find the answer above, apologies if I'm missing something...

 

Thanks

[LukeFF]

43 minutes ago, Razor18 said:

So what does pre-mission-start option "Difficulty" adjust after all? Didn't find the answer above, apologies if I'm missing something...

 

Thanks

 

Density of enemy aircraft activity, skill level of friendly and enemy aircraft flights (other than your squadron), and the density of anti-aircraft guns.