Graphic set up

[HeerRitter]

Can any one help me I'm not sure what would be the best set up for my system I've  messed about with a few diff settings however I cant get a balance and tbh i'm not completely sure i fully understand what some of the settings are!

 

I have a GTX 1080, 6700k (but wont oc so stuck at 4.gh), 16gb ram, win 10.

I have a new 4k 120hz gaming tv 42" but I've been running most stuff at 1440 cause that's what the 1080 was really made for, correct me if I'm wrong? I play Single player right now so spotting isn't priority till i feel i have enough of a handle on the controls to move over to MP

 

right now i'm on Ultra,

Shadow - Ultra

Mirrors - Complex

Distant Landscape - x4

Canopy - Normal

Horizon - 150km

Lanscape Filter - Sharpen

Terrain Roughness - High

Grass - Ultra

Clouds - Extreme

Vsync - on

Gamma - 0.6

Target fps - off

Dynamic re - off 

Antialiasing x4

I'm unsure about

HDR- FXAA/MSAA- Dynamic Res- SSAO

 

I'd be really grateful if someone could steer me right to a good looking but stable game

[453=SGII_Wotan]

What are you trying to achieve with your settings, and what problems do you currently have with off line play?

I run an Nvidia RTX 2700 on a much smaller gaming monitor 27inch curved and I did this to improve spotting for online play which it did do.

 

I haven't got a clue  on how your system would look on such a big screen, maybe try balanced settings first to see if that improves your actual gaming issue

[beebee23]

my system: win 10 cpu 6700K gpu 1080 16gb ram
 monitor asus Proart946 59hz 1920 x1600
 with thes settings it's run smooth and good lookin'  ?

[HeerRitter]

14 hours ago, IISG2_Wotan said:

What are you trying to achieve with your settings, and what problems do you currently have with off line play?

I run an Nvidia RTX 2700 on a much smaller gaming monitor 27inch curved and I did this to improve spotting for online play which it did do.

 

I haven't got a clue  on how your system would look on such a big screen, maybe try balanced settings first to see if that improves your actual gaming issue

 

Thanks for the reply, I think i need to point out I'm not only a noob with il2 but pc gaming in general! Coming from a console for the majority of my gaming life graphic settings are severely dumbed down.

 

The issues.. when i had the screen res on 3840 x2160 there would a delay between audio and graphics, i.e firing my guns would visually show the guns firing a second or 2 later id hear them, and when they stopped firing audio would still be playing for a second or 2 after, turning the screen res setting in game down to 1440 sorted that out.

 

With my current settings, to many aircraft always causes stuttering and screen tearing, vsync helps with the tearing, if i lower a lot of the visual settings the game looks %*$@ if i have them all turned up it isn't smooth.. As i said I'm not entirely sure what all the settings are for, I'd like a game that still looks good as the gtx 1080 isn't such an old gpu that that shouldn't be possible, but still have a stable game.

I just don't really know what I'm doing via the settings to make that happen (without spending hours switching things on and off, setting things high or low without even really knowing why) If i turn one thing off what else should i be changing to balance it out. Most of the settings are self explanatory like grass, reflections, landscape, horizon ect its the ones that are not. Most what I've been googling to find out for my self is coming back with results for VR, or either much older or a whole lot newer graphics cards!

 

I understand that it probably seems like an easy thing to know, how to set ur graphic settings in game, but to someone who has no idea what antialiasing means, or what SSAO dos it a little daunting.

[BlitzPig_EL]

4K on a "monitor" of that size is what's killing you with that older video card.  A 1080 simply cannot drive a large, or any, monitor at 4K res. in this game.

 

I hate to be the bearer of this bad news, but running a flight sim with the draw distances involved is a lot harder than driving a shooter game optimized for a console. Get a real monitor, not a TV, and no larger than 27" with 2K res.  You can thank me later.

[HeerRitter]

@beebee23 Thanks for your reply I'll have a look at those settings for the ingame graphics, i thought the gtx 1080 could handle more than that though what i really need is someone to explain what the settings i don't understand actual change in game like

SSAO

Antialiasing

MSAA Vs FXAA

HDR

Dynamic Res

 

If i have more of an understanding of what settings are for I can play around and get something that works for me without just button mashing hoping to land the knock out blow, if you get my drift.

 

I gather by the other windows you've added in French which I'm guessing is your native language I should be also changing settings via the graphic cards settings?

[SharpeXB]

1 hour ago, HeerRitter said:

SSAO

Antialiasing

MSAA Vs FXAA

HDR

Dynamic Res

Some simple explanations are:

SSAO = Screen Space Ambient Occlusion. It makes shadows for indirect lighting. This is noticeable looking inside the cockpits

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_space_ambient_occlusion

 

Antialiasing. Blends pixels together so you won’t see jagged lines. Look at the straight edges of the wings to see the effect

MSAA is a type of antialiasing which samples pixels. It’s higher quality but more expensive than FXAA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multisample_anti-aliasing

 

HDR. Hight Dynamic Range. Not the same “HDR” like your TV has. Yes it’s confusing. It just produces a higher range of light and dark. 
 

Dynamic Resolution. Something unique to IL-2 that adjusts the resolution for effects like smoke, explosions etc. 

 

[kendo]

As a starter, here are some of the more important things that can have an impact on performance.

 

In il-2 settings:

Keep on Ultra and

Adjust these first

Shadows quality - this can be a big performance hit at high levels. Try dropping down a level from Ultra. You may not notice much of a difference visually.

Antialiasing - best done in game (ie don't augment with any nVidia settings). MSAA looks better than FXAA but has a bigger performance hit. You may get away with 2x MSAA, but maybe not.

Mirrors - can be costly. Try going down a level from Complex.

Horizon draw Distance - Try at 100km. Still looks good visually and you will only miss very distant mountains on the Kuban map.

 

Then maybe adjust these:

Distant Landscape: try at x3 instead of x4 if necessary

Distant Buildings: I found this can cause a performance hit on Kuban and Bodenplatte maps. Visually better with it on, but my aging system struggles.

Grass: Only visible at low-level. Try adjusting down one level. Some people turn it off completely.

 

 

In nVidia settings

general advice (from Jason no less) was to let the game handle everything - ie in nVidia Control Panel, for il-2 set pretty much everything to application controlled or OFF.

And as stated above don't augment in-game AA with nVidia AA.

 

especially important - ensure that Anitaliasing Transparency is not set to use supersampling as it is a huge performance hit. Can use Multisample or OFF. Suspect again this is handled automatically in-game too.

 

Other settings

As Sharpe XB has written, SSAO affects visuals inside cockpits. Some people use it . Others don't. I think looks better with it on.

 

HDR: again a matter of personal choice. Some don't use it. Again, I think game looks better with it

 

Dynamic Resolution afaik will dynamically reduce your screen resolution if it detects your FPS is dropping low. Suggest just to leave it at FULL.

Edited December 30, 2021 by kendo

[AEthelraedUnraed]

11 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

HDR. Hight Dynamic Range. Not the same “HDR” like your TV has. Yes it’s confusing. It just produces a higher range of light and dark.

Not quite correct and a tad confusing, so I thought I'd paraphrase you. HDR produces the exact same range of light and dark, namely (0,0,0) to (255,255,255).

 

The problem is that the human eye can see a much greater range of light and dark that a screen is able to produce. A black pixel is nowhere near as dark as the night sky (unless you've got an OLED screen and it's actually dark in the room) and a white pixel nowhere near as light as, say, the sun. If you've got a large range of light and dark on screen (e.g. a shaded cockpit), that means that the screen isn't able to show it all and you'll either have to cut off the lightest and darkest areas, or "compress" them into a lower range. Both options lead to a loss of detail and graphic artifacts (e.g. banding).

 

HDR solves this by making large dark areas lighter and vice versa, so your shaded cockpit now shows up a little lighter. This ensures that everything stays within the range that your screen is able to produce, so that no visual details are lost and no banding etc. occurs (ideally). The obvious downside is that more pixels will end up in the medium-bright range which leads to a "blander" image with less visual contrast.

 

On 12/29/2021 at 6:00 AM, HeerRitter said:

I have a new 4k 120hz gaming tv 42" but I've been running most stuff at 1440 cause that's what the 1080 was really made for, correct me if I'm wrong?

No GPU is "made for" anything, really. It all depends on the requirements of the game. And the settings inside that game, which are for the user to decide since we all have our preferences. In general, some of the biggest FPS eaters are resolution, anti-aliasing and SSAO. There's also no one-size-fits-all rule for these settings. SharpeXB and kendo have already explained what they do, so now it's up to you to find whether the advantages they offer are worth the FPS hit.

[HeerRitter]

@kendo you are a super star sir thank you, I'll be having a go at implementing this later on today and hopefully seeing a vast improvement, virtual beers on me  I am in no way taking away from the previous replies but this was exactly what I was hoping for ?

2 minutes ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

SharpeXB and kendo have already explained what they do, so now it's up to you to find whether the advantages they offer are worth the FPS hit.

 

 

Thanks for explaining the HDR in detail that makes things clearer, basically knowing more about what each of the settings do and how some people are using them I can have a better understanding of how to use them in relation to what I'm seeing in game, what i don't like, and what i want to change.. I really appreciate this thank you ? 

now I just need to play around a bit and find what works for my eye while keeping an enjoyable game. Thank you guys ?

[SharpeXB]

2 hours ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

Not quite correct and a tad confusing

Right, it’s confusing. I’m just pointing out that the HDR we have in IL-2 is not the same thing that “HDR” means today in games and video ie HDR 10 and Dolby Vision support along with a compatible display. 

[kendo]

3 hours ago, HeerRitter said:

@kendo you are a super star sir thank you, I'll be having a go at implementing this later on today and hopefully seeing a vast improvement, virtual beers on me  I am in no way taking away from the previous replies but this was exactly what I was hoping for ?

 

 

Thanks for explaining the HDR in detail that makes things clearer, basically knowing more about what each of the settings do and how some people are using them I can have a better understanding of how to use them in relation to what I'm seeing in game, what i don't like, and what i want to change.. I really appreciate this thank you ? 

now I just need to play around a bit and find what works for my eye while keeping an enjoyable game. Thank you guys ?

 

No problem. I hope you see an improvement.

 

Worth noting though that with a huge number of planes - especially bombers - you may still get slowdowns. It's a matter of tweaking and adjustment to get the trade-offs that are best. But making the suggested changes should be a move in the right direction giving more fps without any big sacrifices on visuals.

 

See how it goes, and maybe we can make more suggestions if needed.

 

[HeerRitter]

On 12/30/2021 at 5:03 PM, kendo said:

 

No problem. I hope you see an improvement.

 

Worth noting though that with a huge number of planes - especially bombers - you may still get slowdowns. It's a matter of tweaking and adjustment to get the trade-offs that are best. But making the suggested changes should be a move in the right direction giving more fps without any big sacrifices on visuals.

 

See how it goes, and maybe we can make more suggestions if needed.

 

 

Thanks @kendo