zenTera Posted January 2, 2006 Posted January 2, 2006 Has anybody ever wondered, why the "demo-mig29-intercept" track is no longer in LockOn? I'm afraid I found the reason: anybody playing this track with AA and/or AF turned on would realize, that FC is no longer working with it as soon as it comes to overcast clouds. I posted in the "thunderstorm-thread" yesterday, that FC crashes to the desktop with a mission I made with thunderstorms. I was pretty sure this might have to do with thunderstorms and AA/AF, because I have them set on full with my new machine, whereas my old machine had AA/AF always turned off, and I had no problems with thunderstorms (except FPS, of course). So, today I wanted to find out and did the following: copied lockon.exe to lockon2.exe and created a new "Lockon2" profile in the nVidia settings with AA and AF manually disabled. And now weird things started to happen. First fired up the new lockon2. Ok, my FPS in the menu screen jump from 870 to 1250, AA and AF seem to be off. Start the MIG29-intercept-track (saved it from of the former versions, I like this track for FPS testing). Crankled lines, everything seems fine, the track runs with no problems (and no AA/AF). Run my mission I created yesterday: Everything fine, masses of rain, lightnings and fog. Just to be sure, I quit lockon2 and run normal lockon with full AA/AF. nVidia panel seems to realize it, because the menu screen gives me 870 FPS again. Run the mig29-track, it loads up to where the mission should begin - crash. FIRST FIND HERE: The problem is not related to thunderstorms, it seems to be overcast. As soon as you have thick clouds and AA or/and AF turned on, FC crashes. Well, but the story goes on: just to test it out, I start up lockon2 again. Everything fine, 1250 FPS at the menu screen. Start mig29-demo - CRASH! WTF? Load my selfmade mission - crash. Quit lockon2, start it again, 1250 FPS, load mission - crash! SECOND FIND: LockOn seems to keep something in (graphics?) memory that stays there, even after quitting or puts a pointer in awrong direction without pointing it back or something like it (I'm not a professional programmer, but from what I've programmed up to now it really looks like that). And now the strangest thing: At this point I decided to restart Windows to clear anything residing in memory. So, Windows starts again, I start lockon2 again, then the mig29-track - CRASH! What's going on here? Last try: I power down, wait some seconds, then switch the PC on again. Start lockon2 and the mig-track: everything runs fine (without AA/AF). So does my mission. Try normal LockOn again with this track and AA/AF enabled: crash again! So wtf is going on here? It really seems, that ED introduced some bug with FC (1.1 or 1.11, I can't tell) so overcast clouds don't work with AA/AF. Or does it even exist from the beginning and me is the only one who never realized it because I never had AA/AF on? Don't want to start flaming, but to me it looks as if they knew about this problem and instead of fixing it deleted the demo-track with overcast clouds and hoped nobody would find out about this bug. And chances are good that nobody finds out. I guess many of us who have LockOn from the beginning did once try to fly a mission with overcast and lightning and fog and all the goodies, just to find out that the FPS made it unplayable. So I'm pretty sure, that most of us have perhaps AA and AF on, but avoid to fly missions with overcast, because we like it better to fight with reasonable FPS in a sky with no or only a few clouds than having a nice bad weather experience slideshow. Ok, please tell me when I'm wrong! Does anybody of you, especially with newer nVidia cards, have AA and AF turned on and can still fly with overcast, rain and thunderstorms? If so, maybe you have anything else turned down (haze or I don't know what) and can give me a hint? My system specs: AMD 4000+, XFX GeForce 7800 GTX 512 MB with 81.89 drivers, 2 Gigs of OCZ-RAM and Soundblaster X-Fi. In LockOn everything maxed out despite water on high, visibility range on medium and shadows to all planar. Clean installation, no mods or something. As described above, I have made a nVidia profile for LockOn with AA at 8xQ and AF at 16x. Works flawlessly, nice FPS, nice eyecandy - as long as it doesn't come to overcast. So, if I'm wrong and somebody can tell me where my mistake is and how to work around it I would be thankful for any hint and would then apologize to the devs in advance for this thread. But if not (and I'm afraid ED is aware of this problem and wanted to cover it instead of fixing), then I really excpect ED to look into this problem. Frustrating to have the top-end of graphics card and then have to go to crappy graphics again just to be able to fly. Oh, before I forget: I know that mig-track is not compatible with 1.11 but this cannot be the problem. Tried different missions, too, (e.g. the how-to-land-in-bad-weather-track) as well as new self-created: the crashes occur everytime when you use bad weather or overcast together with AA/AF. I would appreciate any word of the devs here!
zenTera Posted January 2, 2006 Author Posted January 2, 2006 Scrolled through the forum again and found one hint I overlooked the first time: start Lock On, when in the main menu exit immediately and start up again. Very crazy, but I just tested it and it seems to work. Will do some more testing - fingers crossed. Still a bad bug, but who cares, if the workaround is that easy.
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