Lightning stutters

[Brainless]

Hi Guys

Ive been ploughing my way thro' your great missions in BoB to change the way things work so I fly in a group/squadron rather than lead which is the default way. It's so much more interseting flying formation and peeling off into combat than always flying out front. You see much more of what's going on and in my view it's the way it should have been formated in the first place.

Anyway everything was working just great until I came across some heavy weather with lightning. This causes awful stalls/stutters when the lightning strikes. I'm getting 30-40fps in most other weather conditions but the lightning seems to have a dramatic effect on the flight making it difficult to complete a mission. Whilst the weather looks great it's all a bit of a pain trying to fly thro' it stopping very time the lightning activates.

Has anyone else experienced this and is there a cure? I've tried to find answers here but I can't seem to find a resolution so I hope someone can help.

Another little problem I have is with the SU Hurricane airspeed indicator which reads the right airspeed with the mouse pointer reading the text display but the needle showing completely the wrong airspeed. I posted the problem on the SU site a while ago but no-one seems to have the answer. Has anyone else experienced this and is there a way to correct it?

The Su Hurricane is a really great add-on, one of the best in my IMHO and a superb rendition of a WWII classic. I would recommend it to anyone. It's just a pity about the problem I have with the airspeed needle.

[Squiffy]

There is a way to remove lightning but you have to edit the mission or weather file. If it's causing stutters, you might as well edit out the lighting in the thundertsorm weather files. Change the entries from lightning to nolightning, save the file.

I got pure stutters in the P-38 Lightning escort mission. ;) I think it's Dover docks and fabulous cluds. I will edit those down on my own.

[chriseponymous]

How do you change your change your formation posistion just out of interest? :kilroy:

[flyer01]

How do you change your change your formation posistion just out of interest? :kilroy:

I would like to know that also if you would be so kind as to tell us.
Thank you , flyer01:medals:

[Squiffy]

in the briefing, choose assignments and then select the other positions not lead, right?

[Brainless]

Hi

Thanks guys. This is useful advice. I think I have another problem 'cause I've got stutters now in any weather! Maybe I need to reset things.

As to flying formation. This takes a bit of work but in my view well worth the effort.

Firstly to save time I download some of the truly remarkable and excellent mission files from here. I am currently using the two BoB sets which are superb.

Then I open the CFS3 Mission Editor ( I asume you all know about this so I won't bore you with the detail) and change the aircraft to the one I want ( usaully the one provided or a variation of it) and then alter the number in the player aircraft to one.
That's just me. Yes I know you don't have any wingmen or flight group but you don't really need them! Then I add two formations to match my aircraft and set it to the required configuration. Vic three for RAF for instance (shotai 0.30). I set one of the flights with two aircraft on the runway and another set of say six ( sometimes two sets of six depending on the mission) in the same formation but flying low over the airfield at 170ft above GL all with the same airspeed (this is very important) with three way points close to the route. One behind the airfield, another at the airfield and another 2.4NM in the direction of flight and another a few miles along the player route at the mid final altitude.

When you take off you have two aircraft in front of you. A flight leader which I name and his wingman (also named). So there is a flight leader a wingman and you (the player) make up the threesome. Sort of blue leader, blue two and blue three! You can then fly following blue two in formation and catch up with the main group a few miles along the route to the target and fly formation all the way.You need to mess with the third waypoint distance from airbase to syncronise the three flights to form a formation about halfway to the target area. A bit of a pain at first but you soon get the hang of it! Now this isn't easy, you need accurate throttle control and flight position discipline to fly formation but oh boy what a difference it will make. Once you know how to do it you'll never go back to flying out front with nothing but sky to see and you won't want to use X either!
When you get to the target area the flight will peel off to into combat and you can then either do your own thing or target and follow lead or blue two into the fight. Just like the real thing!

After the fight which, if set properly will last a realistic, time a few minutes in fact, you can then team up with the flight leader or wingman for the trip home and land. Usually in a small flight they will all land safely with you. The flight leader will circle usually at the last waypoint to 'pick up his chicks' for the flight back to base. You can join this and again fly formation back to base.

Try it and see what you think.

All the best.

Brainless

[Squiffy]

Ah yes. That's the way to do it. Now for weather, I would turn your detail settings down in game for weather, effects and scenery. Just know that the new docks are really frame killers on midlle aged systems. You can free up some rendering speed by opening each facility in question, Dover or an airfield or something, and edit out every other tree and bachelors quaters or some non essential military target building. It helps some for me. Oh yeah, cut doen on the number of parked airrcaft too, unless you are building a dedicated attack and strafe mission.

[flyer01]

Hi

Thanks guys. This is useful advice. I think I have another problem 'cause I've got stutters now in any weather! Maybe I need to reset things.

As to flying formation. This takes a bit of work but in my view well worth the effort.

Firstly to save time I download some of the truly remarkable and excellent mission files from here. I am currently using the two BoB sets which are superb.

Then I open the CFS3 Mission Editor ( I assume you all know about this so I won't bore you with the detail) and change the aircraft to the one I want ( usually the one provided or a variation of it) and then alter the number in the player aircraft to one.
That's just me. Yes I know you don't have any wingmen or flight group but you don't really need them! Then I add two formations to match my aircraft and set it to the required configuration. Vic three for RAF for instance (shotai 0.30). I set one of the flights with two aircraft on the runway and another set of say six ( sometimes two sets of six depending on the mission) in the same formation but flying low over the airfield at 170ft above GL all with the same airspeed (this is very important) with three way points close to the route. One behind the airfield, another at the airfield and another 2.4NM in the direction of flight and another a few miles along the player route at the mid final altitude.

When you take off you have two aircraft in front of you. A flight leader which I name and his wingman (also named). So there is a flight leader a wingman and you (the player) make up the threesome. Sort of blue leader, blue two and blue three! You can then fly following blue two in formation and catch up with the main group a few miles along the route to the target and fly formation all the way.You need to mess with the third waypoint distance from airbase to synchronize the three flights to form a formation about halfway to the target area. A bit of a pain at first but you soon get the hang of it! Now this isn't easy, you need accurate throttle control and flight position discipline to fly formation but oh boy what a difference it will make. Once you know how to do it you'll never go back to flying out front with nothing but sky to see and you won't want to use X either!
When you get to the target area the flight will peel off to into combat and you can then either do your own thing or target and follow lead or blue two into the fight. Just like the real thing!

After the fight which, if set properly will last a realistic, time a few minutes in fact, you can then team up with the flight leader or wingman for the trip home and land. Usually in a small flight they will all land safely with you. The flight leader will circle usually at the last waypoint to 'pick up his chicks' for the flight back to base. You can join this and again fly formation back to base.

Try it and see what you think.

All the best.

Brainless
Thank you for your reply> I am copying this on paper as not to lose it. Thank you , flyer01

[Brainless]

Hi again guys

Well I seem to have eliminated some of the worst stutters now by editing the lightning XML flie to reduce the incidence of the 'flashes. This helped a lot. Whilst looking at the CFS3 folder 'innards' and reading the posts about reducing stuttering I noticed that the 'Assests' folder had some loose dds. files in the main folder so I have moved these into the Hires.dds subfolder. However this didn't seem to make any difference to anything. I also noticed that I have two 'ScenerySheet01.dds' files. One in the scenery.zip folder (size 349,680) and another in the Assets Hires dds. Assests folder (size 8,913).

Is this right? Should I have two files with the same name and different sizes in different places?

Obviously I have other dds. files elsewhere in the ACC folder for instance but these seem to be right as they came withn the respective authors folders/files.