Magic spotting settings?

[Tipsi]

Hi Guys,

 

I've been trawling the threads for any information how to improve my spotting ability in il2 - Finally, now I believe I have found the best settings after many days of testing.

 

I know that all spotting results changes on an individual basis, with each person having different computers specs, but if you are having issues, please try these! CREDIT TO THERION for the first few steps:

 

Please try this for yourself:

 

1. Launch the game and go into graphic settings: Set "Landscape Filter" = OFF. After this quit the game.

2. Open your "Startup.cfg" file and edit:  

gamma = 0.70000

land_anisotropy = 16

land_tex_lods = 7

msaa = 1

multisampling = 2

3. Save and close your "Startup.cfg" file. Set the file to read-only. (note changing your settings in-game will never change if it is set to read only)

 

I have also the following settings enabled in-game:

HR ON (hdr_enable = 1)

SHARPEN OFF (post_sharpen = 0)

SSAO ON (ssao_enable = 1)

 

GEFORCE SETTINGS (mine are default):

AA-Mode: Application-Controlled

AntiAliasing Setting: Application-Controlled

 

I can now see contacts very well at a distance, against clouds. land_anisotropy = 16 and land_tex_lods = 7 has greatly reduced long distance background flickering (trees/rivers/lakes/cities).

 

Please let me know what you think and if this works for you. It has made multiplayer much more enjoyable for me now that I can actually find planes in the distance.

 

My Specs:

Intel i7-8700K, 16GB RAM, GeForce GTX 1660Ti

 

Tipsi

 

Edited August 20, 2020 by Tipsi

[THERION]

16 minutes ago, Tipsi said:

Hi Guys,

 

I've been trawling the threads for any information how to improve my spotting ability in il2 - Finally, now I believe I have found the best settings after many days of testing.

 

I know that all spotting results changes on an individual basis, with each person having different computers specs, but if you are having issues, please try these! CREDIT TO THERION for the first few steps:

 

Please try this for yourself:

 

1. Launch the game and go into graphic settings: Set "Landscape Filter" = OFF. After this quit the game.

2. Open your "Startup.cfg" file and edit:  

gamma = 0.70000

land_anisotropy = 16

land_tex_lods = 7

msaa = 1

multisampling = 2

3. Save and close your "Startup.cfg" file. Set the file to read-only. (note changing your settings in-game will never change if it is set to read only)

 

I have also the following settings enabled in-game:

HR ON (hdr_enable = 1)

SHARPEN OFF (post_sharpen = 0)

SSAO ON (ssao_enable = 1)

 

GEFORCE SETTINGS (mine are default):

AA-Mode: Application-Controlled

AntiAliasing Setting: Application-Controlled

 

I can now see contacts very well at a distance, against clouds. land_anisotropy = 16 and land_tex_lods = 7 has greatly reduced long distance background flickering (trees/rivers/lakes/cities).

 

Please let me know what you think and if this works for you. It has made multiplayer much more enjoyable for me now that I can actually find planes in the distance.

 

My Specs:

Intel i7-8700K, 16GB RAM, GeForce GTX 1660Ti

 

Tipsi

 

 

Thank you very much for the laurels, but I'd like to clarify the following:

 

The idea of these settings were found by @LizLemon some days ago. My contribution to his findings was to precise it in a cheat sheet with the 3 steps like above,

 because I thought it might be not 100% clear to others. That's all.

 

Cheers

Edited August 20, 2020 by THERION

[Guest deleted@134347]

I noticed that specifically for spotting having MSAA x2 is a major improvement over FXAA. It takes away majority of the shimmering within the landscape making the plane shimmer a lot more visible. I'll give the land_ settings a try to, may be it'll take it to the next level.

[RedKestrel]

What is the performance impact when comparing 4X FXAA to 2X MSAA? Is it roughly the same, or does MSAA take more processing power?

[THERION]

5 minutes ago, RedKestrel said:

What is the performance impact when comparing 4X FXAA to 2X MSAA? Is it roughly the same, or does MSAA take more processing power?

 

MSAA is always heavier on performance. If you take 4x FXAA, to me it seems better than 2x MSAA and the performance is better too.

[Tipsi]

32 minutes ago, RedKestrel said:

What is the performance impact?

MSAA is more GPU taxing

[=EXPEND=Capt_Yorkshire]

Hi dude  i'll give it a try . 

 

[JimTM]

My Landscape filter setting always reverts to Blurred for some reason. I set it to Off, quit the game, changed startup.cfg and locked it. I wonder if there is another setting that is affecting the Landscape filter setting?

[LLv24_Zami]

7 hours ago, JimTM said:

My Landscape filter setting always reverts to Blurred for some reason. I set it to Off, quit the game, changed startup.cfg and locked it. I wonder if there is another setting that is affecting the Landscape filter setting?

Same here but the edited lines in startup.cfg remains. So I think it`s working.

 

After a few test flights I will keep these settings for now. It seems to improve my spotting at a first glance. Thanks guys! 

Edited August 21, 2020 by LLv24_Zami

[THERION]

8 hours ago, JimTM said:

My Landscape filter setting always reverts to Blurred for some reason. I set it to Off, quit the game, changed startup.cfg and locked it. I wonder if there is another setting that is affecting the Landscape filter setting?

 

It is working as intended. The first step, when you set Landscape filter to OFF, is to make sure the value in the startup.cfg file is set to 0. You could also do this directly
by editing the file manually. As long as you know, what you are doing, everything is fine.

 

All values greater than 1 in Landscape filter result in "blurred" status, if you check your game's graphic settings. The game reads the startup.cfg file when launched and
as the game only recognizes the value 0, 1 and 2 for the Landscape filter, all value greater than 1 will be set to "blurred" as the value 2 actually means "blurred", if you
set this in your game's graphic settings.

 

Now the values we actually set manually (land_tex_lods) that are greater than 2 are not documented officially anywhere here and this was discovered by @LizLemon
who is one of the modding guys here on our forum - these guys go deep into things to understand the game's "hidden" opportunities and to be able to create some
mods.

[Vyllis]

Improved close-mid range contacts at high altitude against ground/sky. I'll keep these settings now.

[ktriggerk0ld]

On 8/20/2020 at 2:05 PM, Tipsi said:

Hi Guys,

 

I've been trawling the threads for any information how to improve my spotting ability in il2 - Finally, now I believe I have found the best settings after many days of testing.

...

 

1. Launch the game and go into graphic settings: Set "Landscape Filter" = OFF. After this quit the game.

2. Open your "Startup.cfg" file and edit:  

gamma = 0.70000

land_anisotropy = 16

land_tex_lods = 7

msaa = 1

multisampling = 2

3. Save and close your "Startup.cfg" file. Set the file to read-only. (note changing your settings in-game will never change if it is set to read only)...

 

My Specs:

Intel i7-8700K, 16GB RAM, GeForce GTX 1660Ti

 

Tipsi

 

Unfortunately, for me it killed my FPS. Brought it down from 36 to 9-10.

land_anisotropy = 16

land_tex_lods = 7

These 2. The rest of the settings are the same (or so I think  )

i7-6700, 16GB RAM, GTX 2060, Oculus Quest.

 

Did I miss something?

Edited September 4, 2020 by ktriggerkoldako

[Tipsi]

"land_anisotropy = 16" and "land_tex_lods = 7" requires more power from your GPU, so that may result in FPS decrease.

 

I unfortunately haven't had the pleasure of VR so my FPS remains high!

[LLv24_Zami]

6 hours ago, ktriggerkoldako said:

Unfortunately, for me it killed my FPS. Brought it down from 36 to 9-10.

land_anisotropy = 16

land_tex_lods = 7

These 2. The rest of the settings are the same (or so I think  )

i7-6700, 16GB RAM, GTX 2060, Oculus Quest.

 

Did I miss something?

Probably because of the VR. I have 1080 GPU and I did not notice performance drop on 3440x1440 resolution.

[THERION]

8 hours ago, ktriggerkoldako said:

Unfortunately, for me it killed my FPS. Brought it down from 36 to 9-10.

land_anisotropy = 16

land_tex_lods = 7

These 2. The rest of the settings are the same (or so I think  )

i7-6700, 16GB RAM, GTX 2060, Oculus Quest.

 

Did I miss something?

 

You definitely shouldn't use these settings with VR - too taxing. With my rig (specs in the signature) and a 27" flat screen capped at 58 I do not have

any issues in performance, but my GPU is working hard.

[Retnek]

Just a short note on the "16 / 7" -setting. Haven't tested it in-deep now, but for the Kuban- (on-line und off-line) and for the Stalingrad- & Moscow-map (off-line) it is still the optimum setting (MSAA x2) to avoid flickering along horizontal lines. Not checked the influence on contact detection. My impression on this for long- to mid-range is somewhat mixed with the new patch. Up to 3 or 4 km the patch for spotting purposes is certainly a step into the right direction.

Edited September 19, 2020 by Retnek

[RossMarBow]

"Hello I have been told this 
 

Also land_anisotropy = 16 does nothing and forces this to 0 or Off as its an invalid value
(Its only options are 0 and 1. to control the amount of Anistropy its located here.)
:\IL-2 Sturmovik Battle of Moscow\data\graphics\filtersettings.inc

Default 
MipFilter=LINEAR;
MagFilter=LINEAR;
MinFilter=ANISOTROPIC;
MaxAnisotropy=8;

My settings:
MipFilter=ANISOTROPIC;
MagFilter=ANISOTROPIC;
MinFilter=ANISOTROPIC;
MaxAnisotropy=8;
(This file and ONLY this file must then be set to read only) "

I see your method is a way to get around the 0 or 1 or 2 option.
But do I need to do it if I just want lods 7?

But if I'm running 
MipFilter=ANISOTROPIC;
MagFilter=ANISOTROPIC;
MinFilter=ANISOTROPIC;
MaxAnisotropy=16;

Do you know what effect blurred or sharp will have?

Edited November 5, 2021 by brahguevara

[1Sascha]

Sadly MSAA, even on 2x, and probably some of the other stuff isn't an option for the GPU-challenged such as myself. Running the game in 1440p on a 1060 3GB. The card does quite well for what it is with less ambitious settings, but with these ...

 

I did reduce some of the not-so-relevant-for-spotting stuff to compensate (clouds from high to medium for example), but I still took a 50% hit in FPS. From 80 to over 100 in a 16 plane QM over Kuban to 40 to 50 or so. Still playable in the QM, but I've yet to play a busy offline career mission like this or hop onto a busy MP server.

 

I did some playing around with spotting ability in mind over the weekend, and if you don't mind the game to look a bit, errr, "retro" shall we say?, I found that the following had a pretty huge effect for me:

 

1. Preset from Ultra to low

2. FXAA: OFF

3. Gamma slightly reduced to 0.8 or 0.9 (anything lower gets so dark that it'll render my instruments useless).

4. Hadn't used any of the filters in the right column yet, only 4K textures were on over there, but I was still fiddling with those filters.

5. Also have my "scenery" value in the game-section reduced to 50km and horizon draw distance to 70km, but those, I think, are more about raising FPS. Not sure.

Generally speaking, I was looking for any setting that would make planes stand out more against any backgrounds by trying to get objects in game look less smooth and, well, more crappy, I guess?

 

Ended up with a landscape that looks distinctly 20th century flight-sim. Especially rivers looked pretty terrible from altitude.. ?

 

The most important bit however for me was to follow the advice of a squaddie and, after all the changes, to set my monitor into one of its gaming modes. On my Iiyama G-Master Red Eagle, there are multiple sub-modes, of which "FPS" seems to work best. It'll give the game a very "sharp" but artificial, cold and hard, look, but once that's active with the right in-game settings, planes have almost like a halo drawn around them against certain backgrounds. Seems to work best when you view them against clouds or the sky - sometimes works well against the landscape too, but not under all circumstances. Probably depends on the color and texture of the landscape you're looking at.

 

Had to use my phone to actually capture the effect, since a screenshot wouldn't show it. These weren't even the best in-game settings, I did tweak them a bit and found better ones after I took the pic. With the better ones, most planes look like the one on the far left here against lots of backgrounds.

 

Not sure if I'll even keep using this, since it does make the game look a bit weird and I almost feel like cheating. But then again, in a game where I'm forced to find all these work-arounds, instead of being able to simple adjust labels/icons to my liking, what else is there to do...?

 

S.

Edited April 19, 2022 by 1Sascha

[Cariboual]

i know this an old thread but these setting helped me see ground targets.  It took me forever to find this information and my fps is 75 or higher.

 

i5 9600 k

gtx 1650 super

32 gigs of ram

[Stonehouse]

On 11/5/2021 at 2:07 PM, RossMarBow said:

Also land_anisotropy = 16 does nothing and forces this to 0 or Off as its an invalid value
(Its only options are 0 and 1. to control the amount of Anistropy its located here.)
:\IL-2 Sturmovik Battle of Moscow\data\graphics\filtersettings.inc

I was a land_anisotropy = 16 user and just rechecked this. Seems like valid values are 0, 1, 2 corresponding to off, sharp and blurred in landscape filter. I'll have to try the filtersettings.inc tweak. Thanks

[RossMarBow]

On 12/19/2022 at 1:11 PM, Stonehouse said:

I was a land_anisotropy = 16 user and just rechecked this. Seems like valid values are 0, 1, 2 corresponding to off, sharp and blurred in landscape filter. I'll have to try the filtersettings.inc tweak. Thanks

I don't know if filtersettings.inc actually does anything
also blurred is still going to be better for spotting 
as rising ansio even if it does work is just going to make spotting harder cause it will make textures have more detail

if it does work textures should have more detail and gpu use will be higher / fps lower