R-77 and FPS

[iwhiskey]

I was attempting to tweak my graphic settings to improve framerates and was not succeeding very well. If I looked in one direction, the frame rate always dropped, even if there was nothing but a hill. After some fiddling I began to suspect the MIG was causing my troubles. So I set up a FBP mission with 4 MIG 29S and watched my framerate plummet. A little further fiddling, and it would seem to the R-77 missle was the real culprit. Not that the MIG model didn't have its effect, but the missle was way worse(I'm guessing that its the way the tail fins are modeled - too many objects.). Even if I zoomed way out, so the planes were small dots, there was no increase in frame rate (I zoomed out from underneath so that only sky was being rendered in the background). Do the same with a Su-33, Su27, or F-15 and after a certain distance frame rates jump up. Its as if the missle model never clips(?), its always rendered (at full quality) regardless of distance and line of sight. I did this at a variety of graphics settings to the same effect.

 

So, a little more digging and I found the R-77.lom file which seems to be the model. I found that you can replace it with a different model file (like the 120) which improved my performance. You can delete it altogether, the missle still works in game, its just not visible.

 

So my question is, does anyone know of any ill effect to doing this, or is there a better way to improve rendering performance of models like this? Also, are there other models that could be replaced to improve performance?

 

Thanks

 

 

System:

AMD XP2600(333fsb)

1GB RAM

ATI 9600XT 5.6 Cat drivers.