Graphics options for CloD newbie

[LeLv30_Redwing-]

Hi guys,

 

I saw @343KKT_Kintaro writing great things about CloD and remembered I have bought the game ages ago, though never bothered to even start it up because of flying

exclusively the GB-series. Well, after 35 minutes of actually flying it I'm really excited and want to have more!

Could someone give me some advice of how to get maximum visual beauty out of it (SMAA/FXAA etc), the manual wasn't very helpful and I didn't find any topics giving answers. I have 3080ti, so naturally everything is set to "high" but what more to do for the best visuals?

[343KKT_Kintaro]

17 minutes ago, LeLv30_Redwing said:

Hi guys,

 

I saw @343KKT_Kintaro writing great things about CloD and remembered I have bought the game ages ago, though never bothered to even start it up because of flying

exclusively the GB-series. Well, after 35 minutes of actually flying it I'm really excited and want to have more!

Could someone give me some advice of how to get maximum visual beauty out of it (SMAA/FXAA etc), the manual wasn't very helpful and I didn't find any topics giving answers. I have 3080ti, so naturally everything is set to "high" but what more to do for the best visuals?

 

 

 

 

Jokes aside, welcome back to the Dover series, I'm sure you'll keep enjoying the Great Battles series all the same, which is what I and others already do... in fact. I also have installs of DCS and Rise of Flight, and I'm thinking seriously to go back to '46 equally so that I can have again a taste of sea breeze and the experience of the Japanese naval aviation... My point is that there's no reason for permanently staying in the same sim.

 

I'm no expert in such matters, the visual performances I mean. On top of that my rig is broken so I can't give you any practical advise that I could check before... For now, I'd say it's better you activate the anti-aliasing, you deactivate (in the Steam application) the Steam updates, that you empty your cache before every use of the game and that you save (in a USB pen for example) your conf.ini and controls.ini files after every change in the controls mapping and/or in the creation of missions and/or careers.

 

 

17 minutes ago, LeLv30_Redwing said:

Well, after 35 minutes of actually flying it I'm really excited and want to have more!

 

 

More you said? I f you don't own it yet, do not hesitate to purchase the add-on "Desert Wings - Tobruk", this will literally double your available flyable aircraft. There are 47 existing variants and subariants in the basic game "Blitz"... and "Desert Wings - Tobruk" will add 47 more. For the cost of one Great Battles module (Blitz is 10 dollars but you already have it, "Desert Wings - Tobruk" is 50) you'll get 94 variants and subvariants distributed in 20 main types :

 

Bf 109 (Blitz)
Bf 110 (Blitz)
Ju 87 (Blitz)
He 111 (Blitz)
Ju 88 (Blitz)
Fiat G.50 (Blitz)
Fiat BR.20 (Blitz)
Spitfire (Blitz)
Hurricane (Blitz)
Blenheim (Blitz)
Beaufighter (Blitz)
Tiger Moth (Blitz)

Bf 108 (Tobruk)
Fiat CR.42 (Tobruk)
Macchi C.202 (Tobruk)
Dewoitine D.520 (Tobruk)
P-40 (Tobruk)
Gladiator (Tobruk)
Martlet (Tobruk)
Wellington (Tobruk)

 

Tobruk will bring the above eight mentioned extra flyable types... but also new variants that are not included in "Blitz" like the Bf 109 F2s and F4s, the Hurricanes Mk.IIs, the Spitfires Mk.IIs and Mk.Vs, etc.

 

Enjoy...

 

[BOO]

11 hours ago, LeLv30_Redwing said:

Hi guys,

 

I saw @343KKT_Kintaro writing great things about CloD and remembered I have bought the game ages ago, though never bothered to even start it up because of flying

exclusively the GB-series. Well, after 35 minutes of actually flying it I'm really excited and want to have more!

Could someone give me some advice of how to get maximum visual beauty out of it (SMAA/FXAA etc), the manual wasn't very helpful and I didn't find any topics giving answers. I have 3080ti, so naturally everything is set to "high" but what more to do for the best visuals?

With a 3080ti you shouldn’t struggle with much but your mileage will vary dependent on resolution. 
 

the biggest hit I’ve found is far distant shadows. Even at 1080p this kills performance. Textures on original is needed if you want to see markings further away than a few metres.  This is the hugest setting. 
 

ssao was bugged. Dunno if that ever got fixed. 
 

Im guessing this as I’m in bed with covid but anti aliasing MSAA is the better option. Play between luma  and colour if you like but I see little if no difference. 
 

I’ve always chosen full screen over a window 

 

in the ncp there isn’t really a lot to do. Anti aliasing transparency may have an effect, gamma correction off can sometimes help with phasing graphics such as fences but there are few in clod, anisotropic filtering (poss now just an inspector setting to x16) trilinear optimisation on if applicable texture filter quality as you like, LOD the option that says it looks better (allow I think). Triple buffer NO EFFECT  it’s a ogl thing. Off. 
 

 If you use vsync try it from both the game and ncp. One of the other. 

 

 

 

[LLv34_Flanker]

S! 

 

I run CloD on a pretty modest setup at 1440p. Average FPS is well above 100 everywhere except Caen and London, latter being the worst performance wise. 

 

My settings are pretty much all on High or Very high except Distant shadows off and building detail at low, as it has basically no effect on graphics. FSAA is off as well as VSync, using AMD FreeSync monitor. I do use Fullscreen and SSAO also. 

 

Regarding Steam, disable cloud, steam controller, overlay etc. Do not use 3rd party overlays, can interfere with the sim. Also you should only have Blitz version in your Steam library. Delete the obsolete old version. Windows 7 compatability for the Launcher34.exe helps some. 

 

A few settings from me, hope they give ideas

[LeLv30_Redwing-]

Thanks guys, good stuff! I'll follow these instructions ?

[BOO]

16 minutes ago, LeLv30_Redwing said:

Thanks guys, good stuff! I'll follow these instructions ?

When you are setting stuff up have a look at the spotting mission that’s been posted on the TFS resource site. That’ll help you assess the impact of your monitors settings and any anti aliasing you apply. 
 

I think if you can see 11 or 12 of the 16 with a squint you should be fine in game. 
 

before TFS sorted the AA I used the Fxaa iin reshade as I could switch it  off to better spot dots and on to reduce the jaggles when not spotting. The new  (smaa or msaa I forget) as doesn’t seem to smudge the dots out of existence like the old basic fxaa did though and is a great improvement. 

Edited October 4, 2022 by BOO

[9./JG52_J-HAT]

Regarding spotting, offline the default render distance for dots is 12 km iirca. You would need to change it to 16 km to see all of them in the spotting mission. Or even more, even though at some point they stop rendering (25km?)

Shift+Tab while in game, then type

mp_dotrange 16

and hit enter.

 

You can add this line to the start up procedures in CloD but I‘d have to look up how. Can‘t say if just adding -mp_dotrange 16 to your shortcut / steam launch command line does it.
But what should work is creating / editing your icon.rcu file in 1C SoftClub/Clod and add the line there. So it loads on start up.

 

[kendo]

So is there effective AA now (MSAA)? Last time I tried (several years ago now) there wasn't. None of the options I tried gave a me an acceptable image.

 

Following the Truesky developments and will probably give it another try once they come out. 

[FTC_Karaya]

Depends on your definition of effective and acceptable. There's several different levels of FXAA and SMAA for choice.