=SCoRPioN=

Do Not use the latest 190.x drivers. Use 182.x or 185.x To make the cockpit texture crisp, after it's set to High in the game: In Nvidia Control Panel: Set Texture Filtering - Quality to High Quality. That will also turn off any optimizations, which degrade quality. Set AF to 16X. Mine looks very crisp @ 1680x1050 on GTX 285. I also run 4X AA.

I installed Win7 RC1 7100 x86 for now. Have a dual boot. Getting up to 2x the fps comparing to XP Pro SP2. 16X AF, 4X AA, Texture Quality on High Quality in Nvidia panel. Runs smooth with 185.81 beta driver for Win7, even on the Panzertard's server. Never goes below 25fps, where it used to go 15 and 7-9 with Shkval, which was unplayable. Mostly fps in the 40s flying around the mission. With the latest 190.38 driver it ran like crap, maybe because it has the stereocrap installed as well. So I rolled back to a beta driver, problem solved. Win7 seems to be pretty good. I even got the Gameport and my MS Sidewinder Precision Pro to work in it, with a little effort. I even ran DCS in window mode and used the WinKey Tab to scroll through the windows and it actually continued playing the game, looked very cool in a window at an angle and moving, sweet!

A true Clean Install = Clean the Registry of all signs of the game ever been installed, and not just the files. So, Deactivation is required for the Clean Install. My issue was resolved. Thanks anyway.

This is the best stick to fly anything: MS Sidewinder Precision Pro

I get little to no difference in FPS between ABRIS on or off. SHKVAL on the other hand does take a hit on FPS.

I said DOS-based, but what I meant is command prompt based. I had to recover one of my old drives with a tool like that, and even though it recognized NTFS, it could only handle 8 characters long file names. In any case, a program like that will shorten the file names that are longer with an '~' at the end. All I'm saying is that it is safer to name files, but mostly directories within 8 characters, and no spaces. It would be easier to find/recover those, if needed.

If you're going to use a DOS-based FileSystem Recovery tool, you need to avoid all spaces and directory names no more than 8 letters long. Mine is C:\GAMES\Ka-50\

Good question. Mine are also in Russian since the patch. I was able to rename the ..\Ka-50\l10n\ru folder to ru1 and that made the whole game pretty much in English, including the Tooltips. But since the patch, that doesnt work for me any more. Moreover, and I posted this earlier:http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=44116 My cockpit is all English textures now, I even had a clean install of Rus Download version + Rus Online patch, and it's still in English! Tooltips are in Russian, and all the voices of the betty female inside the chopper are gone, as well as all other voices, ground crew, my own commands to AI - Everything is muted, no voices of any kind, really strange...

Not sure if that's going to help. But basically, just fly low and set combat spread formation, or send him trailing you. He will fly as low as you are, and if you arent in danger, he should be ok also. You are right, however, the AI pilots dont see a danger in a long/medium range Radar SAMs, coz unless you mark it for him, he wont know it's painting, coz there's only a Laser Warning Receiver and not Radar.

AGREED. FSX addon is in no competition with DCS and is overpriced. An addon should not be priced at a full game price. But, the addon existed prior to DCS, so at least it was available. Seeing those missiles and not being able to launch them is a downer. FSX is Great! But it's a civ sim, not combat, never meant to be. If they think they can sell this, that's great, and I'm sure it did sell. But, it's good to have a variety of products available, so then we can also compare and have a choice! We need to go on their Forums and make a post about DCS. Take their business away? Get sued? Nah, everyone is titled to their opinion, and those who arent aware of DCS will only gain from a post like that :)

Windows 7 RC1 it is then. Thanks.

I think most tend to over complicate their controls and lose the basic usability. At the end of the day, this is still a game, and I like to be able to react quickly and easily control the chopper. Both with LockOn and DCS, I use default controls. The only thing I change are the dead zones and curves for the joystick axis. I've seen in many instances people with X-52s and other tricked out sticks having ease of use issues, and have to spend some time to adjust the stick to their preference. What happens is you end up over doing the controls. I'm sure the developer's defaults are thoroughly tested and are found to be the most logical and easy to operate with. My stick is an old gameport sidewinder, and it rocks!

When quoting FPS, please mention your hardware, settings, resolution and mainly OS. Thanks.

I have a similar system with GTX 285 instead of ATI. And on Panzer I get just over 30 fps at the start, but it gets slower when I turn towards all the mountains with units behind them, as low as 17fps I saw earlier. The problem is NOT the hardware, but the OS. Win XP just doesnt use multicore CPUs properly. Guess it's time to switch to Win7... coz Vista is a joke, even though it does run the game faster than XP. The WATER has 4 settings in the ..\Ka-50\BlackShark\data\scripts\options.lua From 0 to 3. In-game settings there's only two: Normal and High. The latter halves the FPS, coz it literally has to render the whole scene twice mirrored in the water, even when it's not there, because it's always there at the Sea Level under the ground and it wastes CPU and GPU cycles to render it anyway. Solution: Set ["water"] = 0 This just forces a basic blue texture, but in turn, it fixes the Sea Level Water bug, for elevated lakes/rivers, that have it wrongly rendered. It also improves the FPS. I dont understand why there's no Low setting for water like in LockOn. I can only image how much of a pain it can be to run the sim on a slower gfx card / computer with Normal water. But then again, maybe these performance issues are not as evident on Windows 7...

Yeah, I noticed the slow map loading on ABRIS since the patch. It seems like they put it on a lower priority than the rest of the scene, to free up the resources for other real time calculations, that's probably why we see a better overall FPS since the patch. The vertical sync is off by default, but it might seem like it is on if your FPS is high enough, or close to your refresh rate. When I force sync on, it gives me framerates which are a fraction of the sync rate which is 60Hz on my 22" LCD @ 1680x1050x32. So, I either get 60, 45, 30, or 15 fps. And not in between. I recommend setting 16X AF outside the game, so all the textures are more crisp. On my system it doesnt affect the FPS at all, but improves the graphics. I run the screens at 1024 Every Frame. If not set to that, the Shkval is lagging behind the overall FPS, which is not acceptable in a fast combat environment. I'm on XP Pro SP2 32-bit, and the affinity sets to all 4 cores now, but after testing, it doesnt affect the FPS, the CPU usage randomly jumps from one core to the next. But when set to just CPU0, it uses 100% of it most of the time. So, I'm thinking of trying it out on Win7RC1 soon. There are some benchmarks posted on this forum comparing DCS on XP to Vista to 7. And from the results, it clearly shows a huge 2-3x increase in Min FPS, but max FPS is the same. Still, it's definitely a big difference. The guy had his Min FPS on one scene @ just 7-10 on XP, and 25-30 on Win7.

Alright, cool. Will try it out one of these days. I install all my games into C:\GAMES\ Been used to that directory since DOS :)

Yeah, I was just expressing my opinion on the Sidewinder branded stuff, and that it's good stuff :)

Yeah, I would definitely want to know your specs and your minimum FPS on the Panzer midget server (lol?) Pick Viper and check FPS inside the cockpit at the start, then turn 180, where there's lots of units, FPS? Please post the results. (P.S.: In case you didnt know how to check FPS: RightCtrl+Pause/Break) Thanks!

That's cool, I did assume it was going to work. I just wanted to know how much faster it worked. What is your specs and minimum FPS in an online game?

When Installing anything on Vista or 7, Right Click and Run as Administrator. Applies to all programs. Otherwise Win may block the Installer from modifying the Registry. Hope this will help for next time. Please, take a look at my post and if you get it to work, let us all know. I'm really thinking of installing 7. http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=44132

Thinking of trying out Windows 7 RC1. Heard lots of good things about it, including 2-3x the minimum FPS on multicore CPUs. Not sure if the patch will work on it. Please post, if anyone has tested it. Thanks.

There should have been a setting for that, like the one for the trim. I'm very used to using LAlt+C constantly between two (2) modes and not 3. I'm sure I will get used to this though. The function is sweet, except when using a thumbstick to look around, eventually the mouse cursor ends up on a side, and not in the middle. I like the added switching sounds to Laser Standby when using keyboard now, and other button sounds when using shortcuts and not mouse click, including trim function. Good patch overall.

Check out my problem with the voices/radio/betty in general. http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=44116 Looks like it's related to the Regional Settings in Windows XP and has nothing to do with the key config / keyboard layout. WinXP SP2 Pro 32-bit US Layout + DCS Online RUS version + Online Patch for Rus version = English Cockpit + Russian Tooltips - Betty - All other voices - text for the voices in chat. Rearming/Refueling/AI Commands, still work, but no ATAKA BEREGIS' or any other voices of any kind, all gone. That wouldnt be too bad if I didnt have to constantly look at the Laser Warning Receiver...

I'm using an old MS Sidewinder Precision Pro gameport joystick connected to an old SB Audigy card on my super fast Phenom II system. http://www.andovercg.com/ebay/images/tdo-1786.jpg Havent had any problems in any games. I stocked up on a few of these old schools joysticks, coz they do tend to break after 1-2 years of heavy usage. Good sticks, responsive, precise, light, ergonomically perfect. Too bad they stopped making these and the newer ones are over complicated and just make things more difficult.. The best mouse outthere is a 3-button MS Wheel Mouse Optical http://www.dclstore.co.uk/images/products/microsoft-wheel-mouse-optical-usb-ps2-blk-ret-d66-00073-l.jpg Same pro's: light, easy on hand, especially when you need to lift it up, and no annoying extra buttons.

Here's another bug, that actually didnt exist in 1.0, at least for me it didnt. Water is always rendered at the Sea level, even for lakes that are elevated. Water has only 2 settings: High and Normal. I leave mine at Normal. I can only imagine how much of a hit a slower computer will take with no Low option for just a water texture. Mine is a fast Phenom II computer overclocked with GTX 285 superclocked also, and running water on High cuts my framerate in half. And on Normal it renders at Sea level, so there's no point to run it on either. Manually go into ..\Ka-50\BlackShark\data\scripts\options.lua Change ["water"] = 0 That fixed it for me, except the texture is very small, and streched out, but at least I know how high I am over water.