Squid

The settings i suggested above (especialy 16x AF + 8xS AA + Negative LOD Clamp + Image Quality High) should eliminate shimmerings a great deal if not completely (in most cases) The only ATi i had so far was a 9600XT, the first card i owned that allowed me to really play LockOn. Although things have changed since then a lot on both camps i recall the more efficient AF and AA, with the Radeon i could had a 4x-8x nvidia equivalent AA by just using 2x. (this i guess means more resources left free for speeding fps) I really liked my Radeon, and from the reading i done so far theres no doubt Radeons rock in terms of image quality (and image quality comes as very high priority to my graphic designer eyes) but the thing with the Radeon was the very poor performance in OpenGL games (like my beloved IL2 series) and many combatibility issues with games (like the beloved again Thirdwire family of sims) to the degree that when i moved back to nvidia i unexpectedly felt a convenience relief, faced no games combatibilities issues again. I think drivers on both parties are more or less about equal in terms of efficiency and issues. With nvidia i think the case is to dedicate some time first experimenting and test driving a bunch of drivers (moded, whql, beta etc) and there are tons of them, and when find the one that does it better for you (eg image quality over speed, stability over everything etc, whatever is your favor) and just stick with it. I read from serious LockOners that for some reason LockOn is a tad faster on nvidia. Radeons though for some reason again win the 3Dmark scores (which is of negotiable real life value). if i was to go for a card now, i would certainly wait for an 8800 / R600 generation card and that because by August , the 8800GTS for example will cost about 200 not to mention the even cheaper 8600 thats about to be launched. And my main argument for this generation of cards is that anything prior to G80 / R600 is limited to 24 pixel and 8 vertex shaders (and no geometry and physics shaders) ... while the new dx10 cards have a minimum of 64 (8600) unified shaders (shaders that can do either pixel, vertex, geometry or physics shading) , the 8800 GTS for example bears 96 of those. Its a whole new arctitecture and performance and image quality leap that very soon will be very affordable. In terms of performance, they maybe will make no significant difference to the dx8 lockon engine comparing to 1950s or 7800-79xx (since lockon is content even with 6600GT / X850 - and still just wants the more CPU power you can feed it) but in terms of investment i think this isnt an advisable period maybe to get a brand new high end dx9 card

So this is how LockOn will be functioning by default without the user having to force (by task manager affinity options? or procaff?) LockOn to stay on one core? Having one core dedicated completely to LockOn and having everything else using the other core (next available) sounds like a decent behavior scheme. If i am getting it right, if it was a single core, something like a 50% of it would be occupied by graphics drivers and other services leaving about half of the CPUs potential available for LockOn? And if LockOn was written to recognize and address both cores it would actually add the utilization of the rest of free potential of the second core, something like an additional 30%? Would that have a worthwhile effect on performance or would be nearly negligible?

i got the process , what i didn't get is if thats the default multi core handling profile of Lockon (practicaly a lack of one) or you set up something yourself to have it work this way. I am not familiar with the procaff, what is it ? *blush* So if i got my english in a decent shape: you used the procaff application to fix the network (lockon online gaming?) stutter issue and it was then when you noticed that lockon is using one core and most of the second core is occupied by the graphics card drivers (and other background services) and its not that you did something to force this kind of CPU handling. moving from a single core 3200+ to X2 4800+ it nearly doubled your framerates just by that alone (without you doing somethinig else to achieve this) am i getting it right? thanks for your patience :D lol

lol :) "what" not "that" :) i would appreciate any clarification more on this. My apologies for being slow this morning :) Thanks again

and what nearly doubled your framerate?

what exactly are you saying you did here? were you able to edit the way LockOn is using the multicore CPU? how?

over the past few years I have managed to upgrade my pc twice before i had the chance to fly LOCKON again as sad as it sounds ... :( So, going from XP 2700+, 2x512 DDR333, AGP 6600 GT 128, and LO 1.02, I tried the other day FC 1.12a on the current X2 4400+ @ 2.5, 2x1Gb DDR450, PCIE 7800GTX 256 @ 470/1300 to find out that i still cant use high visibility range which was one of the annoyances of my relationship with LO due to its engine drawing the objects (and targets) too late for me to spot without the disturbing labels and to align properly on time for a weapons release Although the situation improved somehow using high range visibility, its still droping the fps to like 13 over urban areas (and keeping all other settings to medium, not even civilian traffic activated, basic haze, medium scenery density etc) I was hoping this wouldn't be a case anymore with my latest rig .... :( It seems that although in terms of Graphics there have been cards up to the dx8 lockon engine challenge since even the 6600GT (or 9800XT) level generations but in terms of CPU power LockOn is still a challenge for todays maistream (single core i guess*) CPUs? (*) from what i understand multi core CPUs arent any beneffit for LockOn?

Ι agree about the shimmerless ATi and its superiority in Image Quality Though i think the case with 7 and especially 8 series cards could be more the drivers. The architecture of 8 is so different than the previous cores, and the improvement in image quality capabilities is vast to say the least. 8800 should perform equaly the least to any ati in terms of Image Quality, as i have understood, i may be mistaken though as i am no technical depth expert. For those (like me) who are using 7 (or less) geforce series (7800 GTX) the way i have found (under lots of googling and forums poking) to deal with it is using : High Image Quality (nvidia control panel, dont overide-touch any optimizations, HQ sets them to off) Negative LOD clamp (nvidia control panel - advanced settings) 4xS (by using nHancer) or 8xS (if your card can afford it) multisampling - supersampling combo AA AF helps with those settings, set even as low as 8X if you cant afford 16X but i fly and play 1024*768 with my 19" CRT and i go to 1152*864 when the above settings cant improve the image quality enough (i prefer save my limited 256mb ram for high res bitmap texture rendering than screen resolution)

OMG thats aweome ! :D Su-25 never looked that good before wow ... Errrrr praise DARPAS flexibility and out of the box thinking for solving the issue of a need for an A-10 successor

What's the LOD ground unit patch ?

Due to limited free time, i am being in and out LockOn therefore missing info about the developments regarding my favorite sim. I recall there was a time there were rumours about a Hornet addition. I havent stumble on any other western systems developments info in LockOn since then. Are there any plans info leaked or annouced regarding developments beyond the 1.2 Black Shark? Personaly i have been seeing some areas of the western side of LockOn since the first release that had a good candidate improvement potential. For example the 3D model of F-15 (the F-4E and F-5A, and F-14 maybe) , fuel tanks of mirage 2000-5, addition of NATO airbases (maybe in Turkey?) etc

Heres an example of fine modelship for games (sims), Precision, Smoothness and low polycounts: http://perso.wanadoo.fr/gmaxflight2002/Mirage/mir15.jpg And here's the guys site: http://perso.wanadoo.fr/gmaxflight2002/index2.html

I am very certain the differences are there, no doubt about it, but as you said, to my point of view, its quiestionable if those differences are needed ... who wouldnt be happy if all the plane polycounts in lock on varied between Mig29 and F18 levels .... And your rig i think is quite good, was top notch till a year ago ;) I do spend lots of time externaly more maybe than i do in cockpit , and still i think that theres no point having extremely close up shots ... in many cases with shots like this you may end up having the contrast of an exteremly detailed piece of SU25T surrounded by poor low resolution runway and base facilities textures, absense of vehicle ground shadows, poor facility models, making you want to knock out the plane and embed it on a real life photo enviroment :) The F-18 LODing is more than welcome :P ( i am having thoughts to go dig into that annoying thread about flyable Hornet, Eagle and Hornet pits share at least the same stick wink wink ) i hope the final result will be as you describe or even better regarding performance

Well to be honest i think too this would be useful , a wish list sticky or permanent thread or something. :roll:

It's the highest polygon budget that they propose. It's also only for the highest LOD. You will not see 100 objects with the highest LOD at the same time unless you've done some incredible configuration-file tweaking :P I dread the idea of having a flight of four su-25T in an action mission .... either all AI or one being flyable .... (i like very much the MiG-29 model approach)

Just asking if i am allowed before do anything that might be annoying .

IMHO i dont see realy the reason why exceeding the polycount level of the amazing Hornet ... The F-15 has less than i would like and the F-18 has maybe slightly more than it takes to satisfy me . And i am an old scale modeller and graphic designer . What i think is that maybe the max should be set by the F-18 level. If all planes in LockOn had a polycount of slighly less than that of the F-18 and ofcourse proper LOD (unlike the F-18 ) i think that would had been a golden rule even for future image quality wishes. 50000? sorry but seems to me like exageration ... me, and others i think, would like to have a taste, access, on lockon sweet features and technologies without having to spend serious money everytime to do that , only to find that they need to do it again when the next version or update is released ... I have the feeling that everybody would embrace even more ED and the simulator if they receive improvements on performance and smoothnes, if see the devs being concerned and work on making the sim as functional and easy to configure effectively as possible :) just my 2C

wow, what are your rig specs?