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Author
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Topic: Blocky clouds and smoke
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ArthurQ
Pilot
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posted 08-03- 10:35 AM
   
Just curious if anyone has ever been able to play "The Gabes Bridge" mission in Africa with the clouds on and not experience the blocky clouds, explosions, and smoke effect?
I had been blaming my lack of video ram with my Voodoo3 2000AGP with 16 megs of video ram on my older computer. But now I've upgraded to a new Athy 800 with Voodoo 5500 with 64 megs of video ram and still get the same thing. Glide or D3D doesn't matter.Single chip,fastest performance, 2xFSAA, 4xFSAA,-- no difference( of course glide seems to only work in 4XFSAA right now). I've also got 192 megs of ram on my motherboard.
Just curious if any machine can run all those bombers with clouds and no blocks in the sky.
AQIP: Logged |
Yardstick
Pilot
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posted 08-03- 10:43 AM
Have you tried upping the allocation of ram to the game. I forget the command line but it's in SDOE control.------------------
Yardstick painted this
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ArthurQ
Pilot
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posted 08-03- 07:28 PM
Thanks for the reply Yard. I believe you're talking about Texture Cache which in SDOE Control is defaulted to 10MB. I just upped it to 40MB and saw no difference.
What's funny is that I'm getting great framerates in this bomber filled mission but still blocky textures on all clouds and explosions. Just curious if anyone else has this problem and really curious if others don't.
AQIP: Logged |
Spyder
Pilot
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posted 08-03- 07:45 PM
How many squadrons are there in the mission?
There seems to be a problem when using a few squad names rather then many planes in say two squads.
I found the same problem going from a voodoo2 8mb to a geforce 32mb, the same mission causes the blocky explosions.
If you keep the amount of squadrons down to 3 or 4 it should be ok.------------------
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Tailslide
Pilot
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posted 08-03- 07:54 PM
Hi Aurthur it works ok on my TNT 2 ultra I think it has 32 megs of ram. I have noticed the farther out you have fog set the more texture memory used though. Mine is at 9 TS
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Nat
Pilot
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posted 08-03- 09:00 PM
Hey Arthur, well, it's a good question, and I have to say that the minimum system specs for the game should have had a not that says "the min system spec means that you can only use a single fighter with texture and object detail set to minimum"SDOE in reality needs at the least 500 mhz, 64mb ram 16mg G/card, and even those of use with that type of system and higher have seen this problem. Having said that, my spec is currently:
K6-2 500
V3 2000 PCI 16mg
160mb SD-Ram
but I rarely have blocky textures, when I do get them it's usually dues to me having run a major 3D prog or some such before hand, a quich reboot and everything is fine again, I think it's just some progs don't clear out of the ram properly all the time. Best bet if set fog down to 5 miles and try that, other than that you have a higher spec than I do so you should be running OK. ~Nat~
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JV44 "Naturlich"
If you can't out run em.. <B>OUT GUN EM!</B>
<B>Nats FS-SDOE Site</B> IP: Logged |
nealg
Pilot
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posted 08-03- 09:14 PM
I get it on mine, too; Voodoo2 12meg, P3 500E, 128 M SDRAM, 17 inch monitor, running 640x480 with some detail reduced, fog at 5 miles. Great frames for the most part, but I do see this occasionally.I think Spyder is correct about the squadrons....at least, it seems to make sense, tho there may be other things too.
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nealg=FC= IP: Logged |
Nat
Pilot
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posted 08-03- 09:33 PM
didn't think about the resolution, but it might be part of it, although I run SDOE at 1792x1344 21" mon. offline (have to lower it for online play.. I start to notice the lag)IP: Logged |
Hawk
JAG
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posted 08-03- 10:57 PM
Have you deleted your sdoecache.dir and sdoecache.tex located in your media file? This cures most blocky smoke and cloud problems for awhile.------------------
Hawk
http://rcwarbirds.com/
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ArthurQ
Pilot
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posted 08-04- 08:31 PM
Well guys-thanks for all the ideas and replies.
Spyder-I checked on this mission and its got 5 squadrons overall in it. Its a canned mission so I don't think I can edit it as it won't show up in the mission editor. This sounds like an interesting idea though.
Tailslide- I've got my fog set at 9 also and have twice the ram on the video card (actually I read somewhere that the 64 megs on the Voodoo 5 is sort of misleading though since it's dual chip or something like that).
You know, how come everything works for you Tail? Especially your machine guns!!! 
Nat- not running any major 3D programs. As a matter of fact I use End-it-All before running my flight sims and have tried rebooting just to see if it makes a difference. Tried setting fog to 5 miles but no joy again.
Hawk-just tried your suggestion but no change.I thought it might be too good to be true that it would be that simple. But I was hopeful anyway.
Oh well, maybe Spyder has got the right idea, but I can't seem to edit the canned missions. Am I missing something here?
You guys continue to be the greatest. Thanks for the suggestions. Its why I continue to lurk around here after a year and a half.
AQ[This message has been edited by ArthurQ (edited 08-04-2000).] IP: Logged |
Spyder
Pilot
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posted 08-05- 09:24 AM
What's the name of the mission?
There should be 3 mission theatres plus the multiplayer folder to look for it, even the included missions should all show up.
The squads thing I thought was general knowledge now.
It only happens to me in particular missions and isn't a random event.
Going from 8mb to 32mb video you would think rules out a texture mem problem.
All I can gather is that 5 squads means 5 separate allocations of video memory than say 3 squads with even more planes, maybe inertia can clear that one up.
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Tailslide
Pilot
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posted 08-05- 12:28 PM
Spyder we're all running the same mission it's the Gabe's bridge mission. For some reason it's working on some computers but not arthur's.IP: Logged |
ArthurQ
Pilot
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posted 08-06- 11:29 AM
Spyder,
I've definitely got this mission as it came with the game. But the only missions that show up in my missions folders are the custom missions as far as I can tell.
I would like to know what Michael or Mighty think about this as I'm not the only one.
I'm not really complaining (I think) as I can always run this mission with clouds off and can tolerate the blocky explosions; I just figured after this system upgrade that it surely would fix this little annoyance.
But to all who think upgrading is going to solve all of their flight sim's quirks- I've found out it just isn't so.
I still won't trade back though
Especially the FSAA. Makes quite a difference.
AQIP: Logged |
Mighty
General
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posted 08-06- 11:19 PM
The four things that jump to mind are: - Texture memory
- Cache files
- Video drivers
- Chip getting hot It looks like you've addressed the first two. How about the others? IP: Logged |
Aladar
Pilot
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posted 08-07- 12:08 AM
The reason you cant edit the mission is because they are in a par file. Go to Sv's webssite and click on OPS tools and then Parsoft tools. These will alow you to extract the parfiles. Good Luck!! Here is the URL ... http://www.schoolmusic.com/chickencoop/se5a/files/tools.htm ------------------
"Don't move, if we scatter, he'll pick us off! Stand Together!"~~Aladar Thats 24 times to see Disneys Dinosaur and counting!! IP: Logged |
ArthurQ
Pilot
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posted 08-09- 05:56 PM
Mighty,
Thanks for the reply. I don't think this is a hot chip problem as it happened on my older machine which never seemed to have any cooling probs. My new box has lots of cooling. As a matter of fact , I've drilled a 2" hole in the side of my case and mounted a "3dfx Cool" fan sucking cool air from outside and blowing right on the Voodoo 5 and the motherboard. Temps seem reasonable.
Could be 3dfx driver problem, but I had up to date drivers on my Voodoo 3 and the Voodoo 5 is brand new ( I haven't installed the very latest drivers cause I've heard that Glide doesn't work in SDOE with them)with the drivers from the CD that came with it installed. Could be just a Voodoo in general prob.
Aladar- I'm downloading as I type to see if editing that canned mission will fix my problem. Thanks.
AQ[This message has been edited by ArthurQ (edited 08-09-2000).] IP: Logged |
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