A huge increase in frame rate??

[Mizzy]

Well am I dreaming or is it true that you can store aircraft skins in 256 colour rather than 16 bit and play the game or does the engine automatically convert the skin to 16 bit?

 

If not, I notice a real frame rate increase changing some of my skins to 256 using 'BRIGHT' so no difference in appearance.

 

Can someone say is it true or was it my imagination. If not I am converting as many skins and graphics to 256 using Bright.

 

Any comments!

 

Mizzy

[Bungle_uk]

I would think that it would make more of a difference within large formations than small flights. Given the fact that most missions (I personally have played) are 2 ship formations, not sure how much of an advantage it is but if there is no loss of quality in the skins then I guess you have nothing to loose.

As for if the game converts the file to 16 bit again, well I really cant comment on it. There is also the possible result of the skin not showing at all.

[Mizzy]

I would think that it would make more of a difference within large formations than small flights. Given the fact that most missions (I personally have played) are 2 ship formations, not sure how much of an advantage it is but if there is no loss of quality in the skins then I guess you have nothing to loose.

As for if the game converts the file to 16 bit again, well I really cant comment on it. There is also the possible result of the skin not showing at all.

 

The skins show when I convert to 256 colour no mistake and there is a frame rate increase ;)

 

But..... and it needs formal clarification, would the game run much much faster converting to 256 colour converting the 16 bit graphics using BRIGHT . There is no noticable difference in graphic quality as many IL2 skinners and fans will tell you! :)

Just a thought as it seems to work for me :D

 

Mizzy.

[504MrWolf]

share a link to "BRIGHT" download ?

[Mizzy]

Sorry Wolf no but you can fins out about where to find Bright on any IL2 forum ;)

 

BTW. I am converting all my graphics into 256 using Bright ( there really isn't any loss of quality after treamtment believe me!!!) and finding that the game load time is getting less and less :) but of course (I thought) converting graphics makes the file only a third of its original size i.e. a 3 meg file is converted to a 1 meg and so the graphic load is much less, again without loss of quality to the graphics.......... it really is amazing.

 

The game is running much smoother and my old 9700 pro card has had a new lease of life :D

 

Its a shame ED can't give us an easy graphics extraction toole for large batch conversions!

 

You lot really want to try this, especially the online flyers, its becoming an INCREDIBLE difference!!

 

Mizzy.

[Yellonet]

Hmm... seems to be quite good, can't really tell the difference between the old and the new converted images.

 

But how do you extract the textures? LoMan? Seems to be quite a lot of work to extract all textures as you apparently can only extract one texture at a time :(

Not to mention that a lot of textures aren't in bmp format.... argh....

bright183.zip

[Mizzy]

Hmm... seems to be quite good, can't really tell the difference between the old and the new converted images.

 

But how do you extract the textures? LoMan? Seems to be quite a lot of work to extract all textures as you apparently can only extract one texture at a time :(

Not to mention that a lot of textures aren't in bmp format.... argh....

 

Well done yellonet.

 

And thank you for sharing a link to Bright!

 

Yep its a real ball ache extracting all textures but maybe this could be a community project....... hint hint :)

 

Yes its only bitmaps that use Bright but if all bitmaps in lomac were converted, the load time, frame rates and game play would be greatly enhanced I am sure.

 

Well come you Guys, lets make it a community project, maybe I can do aircraft skins, someone else do the weapons and someone do the ground etc etc.

 

Well its just a thought, nite nite.

 

Mizzy

 

PS I have a great picture of me getting my first air to air aircraft kill, a very proud moment. The pilot bailed out and was safe, I know its a game but that part is really important to me!

[Gazehound]

PS I have a great picture of me getting my first air to air aircraft kill, a very proud moment. The pilot bailed out and was safe, I know its a game but that part is really important to me!

Cool lets see it!

[Yellonet]

I found a program that can extact the textures all at once... now I guess we need some other program to put them back in the cdds files.

uLOm1.zip

[D-Scythe]

I found a program that can extact the textures all at once... now I guess we need some other program to put them back in the cdds files.

 

LOMAN/MODMAN? That does it for you. Can anyone confirm if this works? If it does, I'm willing to go large-scale on this stuff :)

[Weta43]

But surely the OS still runs full colour anyway - ?

[Yellonet]

But surely the OS still runs full colour anyway - ?

So?

[Mizzy]

My point is that the graphics load on your card (mine is only 128 meg) is VASTLY reduced, in fact if all graphics are converted from 16 bit to 256 (using Bright of course) LOMAC only uses a third of its present graphics load.

 

So say LOMAC needs 600 meg to load graphics it now only needs 200 meg for graphics and with no noticable loss of graphic quality ;)

 

As I said it's giving my old graphics card a new lease of life!

 

Mizzy.

[Yellonet]

My point is that the graphics load on your card (mine is only 128 meg) is VASTLY reduced, in fact if all graphics are converted from 16 bit to 256 (using Bright of course) LOMAC only uses a third of its present graphics load.

 

So say LOMAC needs 600 meg to load graphics it now only needs 200 meg for graphics and with no noticable loss of graphic quality ;)

 

As I said it's giving my old graphics card a new lease of life!

 

Mizzy.

So you have already converted all the textures? :o

[Weta43]

So...

So in the game you decide how many bits it will use for each colour at the options screen - not at the .BMP stage. FC will find the 256 colour .bmp, convert it to either 16 or 32 bit (whichever you have the game set to) and work with it at that level.

At present turning the colours down forces files that are capable of 32 bit rendering to be rendered at 16 bit. presumably it also forces files at 256 colours to be rendered at 16 bit (or 32)...

There will only be 256 colours on your skin, but each colour will be rendered at 16/32 bit.

[Yellonet]

So...

So in the game you decide how many bits it will use for each colour at the options screen - not at the .BMP stage. FC will find the 256 colour .bmp, convert it to either 16 or 32 bit (whichever you have the game set to) and work with it at that level.

At present turning the colours down forces files that are capable of 32 bit rendering to be rendered at 16 bit. presumably it also forces files at 256 colours to be rendered at 16 bit (or 32)...

There will only be 256 colours on your skin, but each colour will be rendered at 16/32 bit.

I'm not sure what that has to do with the OS, but are you sure that it works like that?

And the memory usage should be smaller with smaller files...

[DayGlow]

screen shots?

[Weta43]

OS was sloppy typing/speaking - just meant the program running.

No - I'm not SURE that's how it works, but either there are separate files for each & every object at 16 & 32 bit, or the game takes a file capable of 32 bit & forces it to the set bit rate during or before rendering. Presumably it would do this with all the textures & would use 16bits to describe eack of the 256 colours in the new skins.

But yes, there would definately be smaller files to open.

[Force_Feedback]

Ok, so how do you do it?

 

 

bazar/world, then what? will the ccds will be onverted to bmps and thus needing convertion back from bmp to ccds with loman?

[Mizzy]

screen shots?

 

 

 

 

All the above are 256 colour converted from 16 bit using Bright. There is NO noticable difference in quality and your graphics card will have only a third of the load doing this method.

 

The Mig 23 is my new heavy weather skin embossed. Anyone interested in it please let me know.

 

Mizzy

[D-Scythe]

There is no FPS gain with using Bright.That being said, since the files are smaller, textures exported by Bright tend to produce far less stutter. So it would be worth using Bright on textures that cause lots of pauses and stutters in the game, like clouds, trees, smoke, buildings, etc.

 

On a simple test of a Ticonderoga sitting out in the ocean, FPS for both non-Bright and Bright images was 62 to 64.

[Mizzy]

There is no FPS gain with using Bright. Screens below.

 

That being said, since the files are smaller, textures exported by Bright tend to produce far less stutter. So it would be worth using Bright on textures that cause lots of pauses and stutters in the game, like clouds, trees, smoke, buildings, etc.

 

Yes your right but until we have all of the graphics done this way, there is no way we can comment about frame rate as yet ! ;)

 

One other main benefit which has not been mentioned yet is you can have much higher resolution textures like 2048 x 2048 but with only a third of its load in 256 colour.

 

It does help my old card that's for sure.

 

Remember this quality using 256 colour is only any good using BRIGHT. Do not use paintshop or photoshop as the converter, the graphics look shite this way!!

 

Mizzy

[Weta43]

By way of a test that won't prove it's working, but should show if it's not. - if you zoom in on a 256 colour skin till basically there's only skin in frame & get the FPS, then change the setting in graphics from 16 to 32 or 32 to 16 & get the same view again. If there's any FPS change, the game is forcing the colours to the set bit-rate.

[D-Scythe]

Yes your right but until we have all of the graphics done this way, there is no way we can comment about frame rate as yet ! ;)

 

No, actually, we can ;) In a simple mission with just a Ticonderoga sitting in the middle of the ocean, with Water on Low, and it is filling the entire screen, there is no point in skinning everything, because nothing else is in sight. That being said, there seemed to be a slight increase (the FPS counter was jumping between 62 and 63 in my case, while for the normal image it was just 62) but it's negligible.

 

But as I said before, stuttering would seem to be down, so it wouldn't hurt to export future skins with Bright.

[Yellonet]

Ok, so how do you do it?

 

 

bazar/world, then what? will the ccds will be onverted to bmps and thus needing convertion back from bmp to ccds with loman?

The cdds files contain compressed textures in different formats, so you'll have to extract the textures, convert them to bmp (if they aren't already), convert to 256 colors with Bright, convert them back to their default file type and then put them back into their cdds file.