LoRes B-17 F/R Problem

[_486_Col_Wolf]

OK, I have Bismark13's LoRes B-17's and when I put 16 on screen my F/R plummets to 15-16 FPS. I can get 16 of GC's Heinkel 111's on screen with 30-35 FPS, so it's not a hardware or memory problem. (3Gb RAM, virtual memory set to 10,000Mb.) I am running the image quality settings wide open but again, no problem with other MLOD planes. Anyone got a suggestion?

[Rami]

Ken,

It's not the aircraft, it's the bombs. The bombs have a high amount of detail that drag down framerates. Kelticheart discovered that by accident when he did a .dp mod for me for Operation Frantic. If you download that campaign, included are revised .dp files for these Low-res models, just make sure in whatever mission you're flying or creating that you set the payload to "AI bombs," you get more destructive power that way anyway.

With the AI bombs mod, the FDG B-17s get excellent framerates, and Pen32Win's airfile mods make them much more stable in the air.

[_486_Col_Wolf]

As always Rami... You Da Man!!! I'll give it a shot and let you know how it goes.

[_486_Col_Wolf]

OK I changed them to AI bombs but the frame rate still struggles to get over 20 with 16 of those B-17's on screen, 8 or less give me about 32 FPS. I guess that's the best I can get till I get the super gaming comp I want to build. LOL
Thanks again Drew!

[Ettico]

I have the same problem, and I've had it with multiple computers. I get great frame rates with the highly detailed FDG B-17 and the KM B-24. But low frame rates with the low-res B-17. The same problem extends to a number of other addons. The problem often only becomes apparent when formations of the aircraft are observed. It must be some kind of multi-res glitch. But it happens with planes I know are multi-res.

In missions, the frame rate hit will occur even when the offending aircraft are out of visual range. And it isn't just a slight drop in frame rates. It's a slide-show type of dropoff.

It's not the payloads, though some payloads could have the same problem. I've done extensive testing with and without payloads.

It never happens with stock aircraft.

I've had to toss out a lot of nice planes because of this group frame rate problem. When I download an addon aircraft, I have to test it in formations to see if it is workable in missions. Often, they aren't. And yet, some of the most highly detailed addons produce awesome frame rates.

I don't know why others haven't noticed this. If your frame rates suddenly drop to zilch during a mission for no apparent reason, do a check on the addon aircraft in the mission. Put 8 of them in a formation and look at them from long range spot plane view. That's where the problem hits hardest. Looking at formations from long range.

[_486_Col_Wolf]

The only solution I can tink of for this is to build myself a gaming computer with 16 GBs or RAM and an I5 processor. But I'm not sure if I can run XP with that.

I have the same problem, and I've had it with multiple computers. I get great frame rates with the highly detailed FDG B-17 and the KM B-24. But low frame rates with the low-res B-17. The same problem extends to a number of other addons. The problem often only becomes apparent when formations of the aircraft are observed. It must be some kind of multi-res glitch. But it happens with planes I know are multi-res.

In missions, the frame rate hit will occur even when the offending aircraft are out of visual range. And it isn't just a slight drop in frame rates. It's a slide-show type of dropoff.

It's not the payloads, though some payloads could have the same problem. I've done extensive testing with and without payloads.

It never happens with stock aircraft.

I've had to toss out a lot of nice planes because of this group frame rate problem. When I download an addon aircraft, I have to test it in formations to see if it is workable in missions. Often, they aren't. And yet, some of the most highly detailed addons produce awesome frame rates.

I don't know why others haven't noticed this. If your frame rates suddenly drop to zilch during a mission for no apparent reason, do a check on the addon aircraft in the mission. Put 8 of them in a formation and look at them from long range spot plane view. That's where the problem hits hardest. Looking at formations from long range.

[_486_Col_Wolf]

Ettico and Rami just needed to put thier ideas together. I've tested the FDG B-17's with the AI bombs added into the DP and my framerates went from 18FPS with 16 Lores B-17's to 26FPS with 16 FDG B-17's.

[Jaxon]

The AI planes are low-res, but have only one LOD model.
The FDG plane has a few more and a very lowres at far distance, too.

What wonders me is the waste of memory for the textures.
An AI plane should not use a texture size 1024x1024bit at all - not even two of them like the Bismarck B-17s do out of the box.

I have resized the fuselage textures as 512x512bit ones and saved them in DXT3 format incl. midmaps
- the size of the texture folder drops from 2,3mb to 250kb - what is just ~ 10%

Without bigger visual differences! But with a much faster loading time, when the texture is shown on screen.

For example, on my notebook I can sometimes even see, when the basic coloured model is loaded and some milliseconds later the texture (in another colour) is put on it finally, especially with many objects like in the Pearl Harbor Scenery.
I can`t see this anymore with the smaller textures!

I have done the same with my FDG2 B-17s planes - the texture folder drops from ca. 15mb to less then 2mb when you size the inner textures down even more. (When not needed as player aircraft this is especially for the large VC textures).

Further often large scale bitmaps are used for very small details compared to the rest of the plane.
For example an own texture for just the engine cylinder in the same size as the rest of the whole plane does not make sense.
Scaling it down to even 64x64bit compared to the 512x512bit texture for the fuselage is a much better fit in comparison..

I have noticed this for a long time now, but played with it in the last days for the first time.
It is quite impressive, that you can have a slightly less visible appearance on the screen with just 10-20% of the needed memory size.

Further, I recommend to put often used textures in the main texture folder - no need for redundant textures of the same name with the actually same picture on it!

See the "Texture hierarchy" entry in the tips section of my signature.

BTW: The bomb story is interesting, I will check that too - even, when I still can`t drop mine again...

[Rami]

486_Col_Wolf,

Actually, it looks like Jaxon answered the question. The "low-res" AI B-17 not a multi-lod model. That explains the FPS difficulty. The FDG aircraft performance is even better once you use the AI bombs as payloads.