cfs3 stutter problems

[oswald_boelcke]

Hello all you fellow pilots
I enjoy cfs3 very much,in fact it is in the top ten category where flightsims are concerned,on my part anyways.
Flightsims i have enjoyed in the past include:ace of aces,ancient art of war in the skies,wings,eaw,cfs2 amongst others.
Only thing that bugs me with this one is that i just can`t get it running right.And yes,i am very much into setting the game settings to full throttle.
The machine i am running it on has a asus a7v motherboard,amd xp3000 prossesor,512mb ram,winxp and a ati radeon 9200se graphics card.
It is not so bad in the terms of performance but stutters just enough to make me curse it once in a while.
Any hints or tips to make it run better would be greatly appreciated.
My settins are:aircraft detail4,terrain3,scenery3,effects,1,clouds1,shadows,reflections,lighting is on.
I have the latest  drivers and directx9b,patch3.1 and no-cdpatch.
By the way,i got killed in a intense scissors dogfight by a top anglo ace today,what a trip it was.
Keep the skies clean.
best regards
oswald_boelcke

[RAAF453_Goose]

~S~ Sir. Ok, my system is roughly the same as yours. Ok. Firstly goto the CFS3 Config file. Should be Start/Program Files/MicrosoftGames/CFS3/CFS3config.
Open that up. Then goto Window, Display options. Set that at the resolution to which you have your screen set up. Infact, for the rest of this setup and more check this small readme out. It WILL add another 10 or so FPS. It's by our CO Shep.
I used it and its added more frames.

http://www.simviation.com/cfs3_misc2.htm

Scroll down to the CFS3 for all systems and run through that.
Goose

[macstu23]

Somebody with exactly the same graphics card as me  ;D, and your processor is faster (mines is an AMD XP2700+) 1g ram, though whether it actually uses the 1g of ram is debatable. It goes without saying but the latest catalyst 3.10 drivers from the ATI site are a must, though you said you already have them up to date. I had a few little glitchy graphics problems with their earlier drivers until I got those latest ones. I'm using screen res 1024x768x16,  settings are aircraft 5, scenery/terrain 3, effects 5 and clouds 1. The other thing that most people say makes a big difference is to open the CFS3 config tool like Goose says...then click on File, Custom settings, click OK, then click on Window, then Overrides. In this menu, you want to click OFF Dual pass render and click ON High res Z-buffer. I'm getting good enough frame rates in the mid 30's or higher, but saying that, I still get those little stutters now and then, especially when turning high-g's at low level....looks like its part of life with CFS3...but on the whole, its running fairly well.

[oswald_boelcke]

Hello you guys,and thanks for your helpful advice.
Went up on a anti shipping mission today and am sorry to say that the aa gunners on those british ships sure knows how to aim.
Within a short period of time my me-109 got hit by flak shells twice,the first hit thrashed my rudder so my crate got a little slow in turns,i could have lived with that.
But the second shell blew all remaining hope of having a feeding of those destroyers straight to h... i went down in blazing flames and died,end of campaign.
My favorite crate is the me-109 and i therefore wonder if any of you flyboys know of any downloads to make it more realistic both in sound,looks and performance?
By the way,i checked my fps and it is way up in the 40-50s,could my stuttering troubles be solved by adding more ram? Currently i am running 512mb.
Ok,that is it for now and i will try out your suggestions.
Remember,high and fast not low and slow

[macstu23]

I'd say if you we're getting frame rates of 40 - 50 then your doing well, by CFS3 standards at least. Its doubtful whether your going to see that much of a difference in performance to justify paying for another Ram chip. This depends a lot on your motherboard, and whether it has the bus speeds to actually utilise the Ram thats available. Like I said earlier my 1gig of ram is probably more than I'm actually using. Opinions will vary on this however. Some people say you want at least 1024mb for CFS3.

[4_Series_Scania]

With great excitement, I loaded CFS3 up today, expecting, considering the new 800fsb CPU & Mobo, PC400 Dual Channel RAM etc, my Stuttering woes from the Celeron based machine, and the 1.8p4 I've owned, would be over........


Whale oil beef hooked!....... Its no better!

Looks fantastic, really good, still stutters and struggles to better 10fps when dive bombing!  >:(

Running Nascar 2003 with 41 a.i. opponents, MAX detail and Media player 9 providing vibes, still returns an average 45fps from a "virtual cockpit" view......

Battlefield 1942 is happy at max settings, 1280x1024 with 2xAnti alaising!

CFS2.... LOL !  8)

Call of Duty looks like a hollywood blockbuster!

GP4 Fantastic!

CFS3 crap! oh well, I must need new hardware......  ::)

[Smoke2much]

That is the same story as me Scania.  All of my games look great with my GeForce 5600 card (I know you don't like it much lol!)  I am getting great FPS maxed out with all my games except M$ stuff.  CFS 3 wouldn't work at all, flashing autogen, and the FPS didn't change one bit.

I don't believe that CFS3 uses your graphics card at all, I think it is 99% processor and Ram driven...

Will

[macstu23]

Oswald, Theres an alternative soundpack for the 109 available at most of the usual sites, Sim-Outhouse, Netwings etc, but heres a link to the Netwings CFS3 sounds page for convenience ;
http://www.netwings.org/library/CFS3_Sounds/

You may also want to take a look at the alternative cockpits available here at simviation or sim-outhouse ;
http://simviation.com/cfs3panels1.htm

And I'd certainly recommend you take a look at the complete 109's available at Avhistory. Download 'em all, they look great ;
http://www.avhistory.org/scripts/Downlo ... sp?Germany

[Katahu]

[quote]That is the same story as me Scania.

[Woodlouse2002]

Maybe Kahatu if you ditched that crummy MX440 card and got a Ti then things would work better for you.

[bobc1]

Hi oswald_boelcke,

CFS3 runs fine on my old upgraded computer. I run it at 1280X1024X32 with the detail sliders at 4 except the clouds set to 2. If you think CFS3 is tough on your computer try LO:MAC. You can get the 125MB demo at:

http://www.lo-mac.com/

But LO:MAC won't run properly on those GF4 MX cards though. Something about them not really being DirectX_8.1 compliant although they are advertised to be such.

The Radeon 9200SE is DirectX_8.1 compliant but it doesn't benchmark much better than the MX series of nVidia cards.

If you possibly can upgrade to a better video card. I've had a 9700 Pro for over a year and I like it alot. You can buy one now for about $220.00.

Hi 4_Series_Scania,

How much RAM do you have on your new 800MHz FSB motherboard? And how fast of a P4 do you have and what video card did you get?


Alienware Intel D850GB 400MHz FSB with a PowerLeaped P4_2.6GHz
512MBs PC-800 RDRAM
Radeon 9700 Pro 337/348
Catalyst v.3.9
Seagate 120GB-8MB Cache HD
Audigy 2 Platinum
Klipsch Pro-Media 4.1
Sony 21" E540/B Monitor
HOTAS Cougar
WinXP_Pro w/SP-1
DirectX_9.0(b)
3DMark2003=5,198
3DMark2001 SE=14,233

[Katahu]

First off, I'm sick and tired of people telling me to ditch my video card. It's running great to be honest.

Second, my current video card is DirectX 8.1 compliant. I tried it.

Third, I don't care how powerful a video card is for as long as it averages at about 25-30FPS on most games. My eyes can adapt to a low frame rate

I played Medal of Honor: Allied Assault with all settings set to COMPLETELY MAX!!!! Still, the frame rate of MOH: AA was more than just playable. The only level that was an FPS killer was the snowy woods at Schmertzen.

I also played the demo version of Splinter Cell [110 MB]. I had to tweak it down to med-high settings, but D*MN it still looked good.

This year, I'm getting an Alien Desktop [or maybe a Laptop] that will have the latest hardware around.

However, I'm skeptical about the AMD 64 processor because most of our games and sims are made mainly for 32bit processors.

[4_Series_Scania]

Hi 4_Series_Scania,

How much RAM do you have on your new 800MHz FSB motherboard? And how fast of a P4 do you have and what video card did you get?

Did'nt you read my specs? (Under my post!)

Anyway, its a 2.6ghz with 512MB of PC400 3200 Dual Channel DDR RAM

One weird point, despite my new CPU,mobo & RAM, my 3D Mark 2001 score has gone down!
from 9000ish to approx 8500!

I'm wondering if I need to do a complete re-format & fresh install to fix this issue?

As things stand at the moment, my 3D Mark score has gone down whilst "real world" performance has gone through the roof!

With my old p4 (1.8 256k L2) and current card (FX 5600 which I really do like, although the 5700 is better....) I averaged 25fps with Nascar 2003 and about 35fps with CFS2, now with the new chip etc, the FPS rates are 45 and 55 respectavely - telling me my performance, as expected, has gone up.

3D Mark, it appears, thinks differently!  ::)

[HawkerTempest5]

First off, I'm sick and tired of people telling me to ditch my video card. It's running great to be honest.

Second, my current video card is DirectX 8.1 compliant. I tried it.

Third, I don't care how powerful a video card is for as long as it averages at about 25-30FPS on most games. My eyes can adapt to a low frame rate

I played Medal of Honor: Allied Assault with all settings set to COMPLETELY MAX!!!! Still, the frame rate of MOH: AA was more than just playable. The only level that was an FPS killer was the snowy woods at Schmertzen.

I also played the demo version of Splinter Cell [110 MB]. I had to tweak it down to med-high settings, but D*MN it still looked good.

This year, I'm getting an Alien Desktop [or maybe a Laptop] that will have the latest hardware around.

However, I'm skeptical about the AMD 64 processor because most of our games and sims are made mainly for 32bit processors.

Hey pal, I run a GF4 MX440 8X with 128 meg with CFS3 settings at 4 and 5 and just check out my screen shots to see how well I have it running. And I only have a 2 gig P4. The only problem I have is I'm a bit short of memory and I understand I can't have more than 512 meg with Windows ME.

[bobc1]

Hi Katahu,

If you were referring to me when you wrote

"First off, I'm sick and tired of people telling me to ditch my video card."

you were misdirecting your anger. When I wrote

"If you possibly can upgrade to a better video card. I've had a 9700 Pro for over a year and I like it alot."

I was merely suggesting to oswald_boelcke that HE may want to consider upgrading his video card.

If you're satisfied with the performance of your GF4 MX card good for you.  

The main problem with the GF4 MX line of video cards is that they don't support pixel and vertex shading. I don't know how important this feature is with CFS3 but it's a game killer (BSOD and CTD) with LO:MAC. As an experiment you could try turning off the Vertex buffer in CFS3 msconfig/overrides and see what happens. Maybe the Index buffers too. Who knows, you may get a FPS increase.

The basis of the whole problem is that Microsoft let card manufacturers say they support DX8 if the card has hardware T&L and texture compression. At the same time MS has not created a standard where pixel and vertex shaders are needed. But all other GeForce4 cards have pixel and vertex shading programmable hardware on the die.

The following is excerpted from a review at Beyond 3D.

http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/visiont ... index2.php

"Glaringly missing from the GeForce4 MX features list compared to the GeForce4 Ti