Reasonable Expectations?

[VegasGeorge]

Hi everyone.

I'm a new member of this forum, Vegas George, from Sin City in the great Mojave!  Now, I don't want anyone to be feeling sorry for me here, so please understand that I'm in no great distress.  However, I do want to know what I should reasonably expect from CFS3 in terms of performance.

I just bought a new computer, a Dell 8250, 3.06 Ghz, 1 Gig RDRAM, ATI Radeon 9700 Pro video card.  I'm playing CFS3 with everything set to the highest values, and at 1280X1024.  I have the patch, I've set the disk cache to 1024 max/min, and I did the recommended CSF3config tweaks.  I've disabled virus scan, and I've tried running the game from a clean boot.  Regardless of all this, I still get a little bit of video stutter.  I set the Display Options back down a notch, and it didn't make any difference.  So, this is my question:  Is it reasonable to expect CFS3 to run perfectly smoothly, or is a little bit of video stutter simply unavoidable?

Incidentally, I've notice a recurrent chop in the video.  It always seems to happen as I roll into the first turn on climb out following takeoff.   Other climbing turns later in the game seem to be OK.  So, I'll be very interested in reading your comments.

Happy Landings to All!

Vegas

[ozzy72]

Vegas, welcome to SimV, out of curiosity how much RAM have you got, as this seems to make a difference with CFS3. Sounds like you have a great rig though, I'm jealous.

Ozzy

PS. Have you got DirectX 9.0 from M$?

[Vegas George]

Hey Ozzy!

Thanx for the reply.  I love your Spitfire avitar.  Been trying to learn to fly one.  Great plane in the air, just awful on the ground!

I've got 1 Gig of RDRAM.  I've got DirectX 9.0a.

I'm still curious if anyone gets CFS3 to run smooth as silk.  If they do, it seems like I should be able to.

Vegas

[Oso]

Mine is usually pretty smooth and I have a lot less puter and card than you. But when it does start getting choppy it is usually at the same point - when I get close to a target. No this is not an excuse for poor marksmanship. I freely admit that. But if I have something targeted and get within firing range, not limited to, but especially a ground target it gets real choppy and plane bucks frome side to side. And on the ground targets it is usually so bad that I lose control of the plane and crash.

Basically it is a copy of FS2002 - I can't shoot anything. So I pretty much fly my FS2002 Pro. The scenery is a lot better.  ;D

[george roberts]

Hey Oso!

Yeah, I love my FS 2002 too.  Flying around my home town is a visual treat.  Did you realize that they even have the water fountains in front of Belagio working in the sim?  Incredible!  One funny thing happened.  I was flying the Sopwith down the Strip at low level, and I got distracted for a moment.  I wound up with the plane stuck in the big sign out in front of Circus Circus.  Half the plane showed on one side of the sign, the other half showed on the opposite side!  What a sight!

[Oso]

LOL I made that flight too!  Try it at night - they even have the light column from the pyramid.  ;D

The most fun I had was in Japan. I spent a couple years there a long time ago. So I got in my Zero and made the flight from Nagasaki to Sasebo, Fukuoka, Beppu-Karatsu, Hiroshima. And I did it by dead reckoning from 30 year old memories of driving the area. A lot different perspective from the air. That was a hoot!

I also did Subic Bay in the Phillipines. MS did not do the Bar District justice though. Wunner why?  ;)

[ozzy72]

Oso, you don't perhaps think that that helmet you wear in CFS3 is causing problems do you? Or that that umm interesting fighter pilot/bondage gettup is perhaps limiting your movement in the cockpit?
Oh and as for the Vegas run, well I did it straight out last night in the new Gazelle no problems, including some dumb stuff (check the Raw Screenshots Forum for 'Golden Gazelle')!!!!!!!!!

Ozzy

[Iroquois]

CFS3 usually run smoothly for me. I have an AMD Duron 950, Geforce2 MX400 with Vers 30.82 drivers, 512MB PC-133 SDRAM, and DirectX 9.0. I can get CFS3 to run fine with with many above the level at which my card operates at. Truth be know, I get more shutters in FS2002 than CFS3, but that's only because I download high-res scenery and aircraft.

I like the strip a lot, very well done, I believe there is an upgrade for the strip scenery available at avsim.com.

[VegasGeorge]

Hey orenda635!

Thanks for the tip re the Strip mod.  I downloaded and installed it and it looks FINE!

One thing though, if you want to use it you need to correct a spelling error in the text for the .inf file.  It reads "VEGS" when it should be "VEGAS."  Also, be sure that the folder name for vegas2002 is exactly the same as the name in the .inf file. My unzip program changed the folder name, and it took me a minute or two to figure out the problem.

[RAAF_Tony]

Well Vegas....you have a great system...your machine should run just about anything..including FBI files on Iraqi spies....all of us who have lesser set-ups feel better/vindicated now..we know know that Microsoft has stuffed up with this Sim....hey you guys at Microsoft..listen to Vegas...your Sim is crap....you need to fix it NOW!

[Smoke2much]

I had to down grade to ME fom XP home and I have noticed a huge drop in performance. I get a stutter the first time I fire the guns, the best thing I have found is to do a brief test fire after takeoff and when coming out of warp.  This seems to fix it.

Will

[VegasGeorge]

Hey Smoke to Much!

Why on earth did you go from XP to ME?  As you intimated, that's bassackwards!  I (thankfully) was spared the ME experience, having progressed from 98, to 2000, to XP Pro.  But, I have a lot of friends in therapy over their experiences with ME.

Re your message: "There is low level, and then there is silly."   The other day in FS2002, I was in my trusty 172 and went to lower the pilot's seat (Shift + Backspace, I think).  Anyway, it lowered the seat right out of the bottom of the airplane and onto the tarmac!  In fact, it went below the tarmac, but that sight was just too gruesome to discuss!

[thehawk]

In case you weren't already aware of this latest patch, Microsoft has released a patch that addresses this stutter.  You can get it at

http://microsoftgamesinsider.com/CFSIns ... _Notes.htm

Try that one...let us know how it works for you...

[Iroquois]

I wonder why CFS3 works for some and not others? Any hypothesis on this?

[VegasGeorge]

NEWS!  I now have CFS3 up and running pretty darn good using the new Omega drivers.  Go to http://www.omegacorner.com/ and try them out.  I think you will like what you get, and if you don't, they will uninstall cleanly using Add/Remove Programs.  My CFS3 now runs with VERY minor stuttering whereas it was quite troublesome before.  And, my other sims (CFS2, FS 2002, B-17, Il-2) all look and run better too!