Just saw this at another forum, what do you guys think?

[Panzerfaust]

From 2005AD at SimHq Graviteam subforums. So what do you guys think, is he on to something or not?

"I have recently got back in to Steel Fury and one thing that struck me was the very short LOD distance of the trees, grass and shrubs. I am not sure if I am using the highest possible detail, as I think some of my graphics options are hidden due to an error about not having more than 128Mb of video RAM being plastered all over my graphics config screen. So I looked through the config files and found this in the config.engcfg

Do a search for "lod_dist" and you will be brought to this entry in the file.

lod_dist0 = 25.000000; <-- I changed this to 750.000000
lod_dist1 = 150.000000; <-- I changed this to 1000.000000
lod_dist2 = 0.000000; <-- I changed this to 500.000000

config.engcfg is located in "Steel Fury - Kharkov 1942\data\k42\loc_rus\config"

Now the trees and shrubs have a far further LOD change distance. Feel free to experiment with less or even further LOD distances. I have an i7 2600K clocked at 4.7 GHz with 16GB DDR3 RAM and a HD6970 and any higher than the numbers I posted and the game starts to stutter."

[frinik]

Thanks Panzerfaust it sounds like a very interesting finding!Myspecs are not as near as good as i7 2400k, 8 gbs RAM and an ATI HD5670 ddr5 but I ll try your settings.Didit lead to a noticeable decrease in fps in your game compared to before?

[Kyth]

I think the default settings were optimized for the available GPU processing power at the time of release.

"We want... a shrubbery!" 

[kapulA]

Very nice find, I'll try setting it to those values and see how my rig holds up. Will report back once I've played a couple of games.

[norm]

I think the default settings were optimized for the available GPU processing power at the time of release.

"We want... a shrubbery!" 

that's the next mod we need, a herring we can drive about in the forests knocking down trees!

[natalia99a]

This works great, thank you, hmm for this I welcome you to the castle anthrax 

[Panzerfaust]

 

GALAHAD: Oh ... will you excuse me?

DINGO: Where are you going?

GALAHAD: I have seen the Grail! I have seen it - here in this castle!

DINGO: No! Oh, no! Bad ... bad Zoot!

GALAHAD: What is it?

DINGO: Bad, wicked, naughty Zoot! She has been setting fire to our beacon, which - I have just remembered - is grail-shaped ... It is not the first time we've had this problem.

GALAHAD: It's not the real Grail?

DINGO: Wicked wicked Zoot ... she is a bad person and she must pay the penalty. And here in Castle Anthrax, we have but one punishment ... you must tie her down on a bed ... and spank her. Come!

GIRLS: A spanking! A spanking!

DINGO: You must spank her well and after you have spanked her you may deal with her as you like and then ... spank me.

AMAZING: And spank me!

STUNNER: And me.

LOVELY: And me.

DINGO: Yes, yes, you must give us all a good spanking!

GIRLS: A spanking. A spanking. There is going to be a spanking tonight.

Gotta love the Python lol

But seriously I can't take credit for this find, as per my original post it was found by 2005AD at the SimHq Graviteams forums. So no Castle Anthrax for me    

[frinik]

  I tried the settings and can't say i noticed much change except that my fps tumbled from 39 to 19/20 Halved the values given by 2005AD who's got a very powerful rig and the fps are much better but frankly I am scratching my head because I can't see much difference visually .The veg looks pretty much the same.Anubody else had a different experience?

What's that thing about Anthrax castle?

[Panzerfaust]

Hi frinik,
I have not got a chance to try it yet, hopefully tomorrow. I'm pretty close to 2005AD's computer specs so hopefully I get to see what he is talking about.

Its in the 1974 movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail, a very different take on the story of King Arthur and his Knights of the round table, classic British comedy. The Castle Anthrax sceen is from The tale of Sir Gallahad skit in the movie. Check on YouTube I'm sure there's bound to be some clips from the movie there. Also look for a movie clip about the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog and The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch from the same movie, it will leave you in stitches 

[frinik]

AHHHHHHHH Monty Python and the Flying Circus Hour!!!Reminds me of so much fun


Yeah I watched that one but it's indeed way way in the past...
Should have remembered .Killing the rabbit with a holy grenade...Hihihi...

MMMMMM trying 2005AD's specs on a 2011 pc??? Should work!

[kapulA]

I halved them as well, my rig is a Intel Core 2 6600 @ 2.4 GHz, GeForce GTS 450 & 4 gigs of RAM and I experienced general choppiness due to a noticeable FPS drop when I set them to the values mentioned in the first post.
Regarding the changes, I *think* I noticed a general increase of quality in infantry models & weapons, and an increase in the quality of trees and bushes when I first tried it, not so much when I halved the settings.

[Panzerfaust]

Well I'm glad to report that I think 2005AD is definately on to something here..... only drawback is you need a strong system (but not a monster) to really see the improvements. So I don't know how pratical these changes would be for most people running SFK42, but if you got a strong system, it worth making the changes he listed. Below are some of the observations I saw for the first time. I am not trying to say that no one has ever seen any of this before, but for me these are definate first and I have been playing SFK42 on this rig for several months now.
My system specs.
Dell Studio XPS 8100
Intel i7 870 2.93Ghz
8GB DDR-3 PC3-10600
ATI Radeon HD 5750 1GB DDR5
1TB WD HD
Win7 PHE OS
Gateway 23" WS
Running SFK42 @1920x1080x32 @60mhz. All GFX options on max.

1). Tried the Gunnery and Driving tutorials first. Was really surprised how much further and more I could see. Definately more viewable debris is thrown up from shell hits/misses. Also seemed like debris smoke and dirt plumes was thicker and tended to be viewable longer, made it harder for targeting the moving tanks in this senerio as the dirt plumes from a miss definately hid the target for a longer time. The driving tutorial was a nice one too as again I was able to see more and nothing seemed to be "popping up" as it came into view. In both these tutorials I maintained about 59 FPS.
2). Tank Gunnery Range (the one by nodlew) Again was able to see further and more detail in the background downrange, more debris thrown up from hits and longer lasting dirt plumes from misses. In this senerio there are two vehicles directly in front of you, way up on a hillside. This is the first time that after a near miss I actually seen a soldier jump out of the vehicle. Before when I had a near miss on this vehicle I never saw anything exit the vehicle (and I play this senerio alot). I was also able to spot the moving convoy from a further distance. After I disabled most of the transports in this convoy I fired a HE round at the running soldiers. This one shot was a pretty far out and was surprised to see it explode among the troops and actually saw a few "fly" into the surrounding trees from the explosion. I knew some of the trees have hit boxes but again this is the first time I seen shots that missed at a pretty far distance actually take trees down, and as they fell they took down a few others that were in a cluster with them. FPS in this senerio stayed around the mid 50's mark.
3). Rends July '43 Prokhorovka missions. Heres the real yardstick that I use to measure by. I kind of look at this mission by Rends as akin to the IL-2 Black Death track for testing FPS. Here again everything I stated above stayed true and I was able to maintain a 45 FPS through most of the mission, the lowest it dipped was to 27 FPS. Seen some crazy stuff I have never seen before. While in the Tiger I landed a hit on a T-34 in the distance, pretty close were two other Soviet tanks. My eyes almost bugged out when I saw shrapnel from the T-34 I hit shower the two other nearby tanks and was treated to a sparkley light show from the shrapnel bouncing off the other two tanks  . After the battle ended I tried to see if I could duplicate this effect on some knocked out armor that were about in the same positions in relation to what I had seen before. To my satisfaction i was able to duplicate this effect about 40% of the time.

All in all it was definately a treat playing SFK42 with these new lod distances. One thing that was weird was I shut off the bloom effects for one mission and I noticed something changed. I was seeing trees but mostly plants start to "pop up". I exited the game and went back to the file were the lod changes were made. For some reason they reset back to the original defaults. I went back into the game, turned Bloom back on, exited the game and went back and changed the lods back to 2005AD's recomendations. Played several missions after that with no problems and the changes stayed and did not default back. So I'm not sure what caused that to happen.

[frinik]

  Panzerfaust the sparks and other effects you are describing after changing the lods value as per AD2005's experiment I experience them in my game without making any changes???My question is whether something was wrong in your game prior to the changes???The changes in lods did not make any real effect to mine except greatly lowering the fps.Even before I could spot tanks clearly at up to 2.5 kliks and infantry although not as far.

[Panzerfaust]

Hi frinik,
Sorry I was pretty tired when I made my post last night and definately left somethings out that might be relevent. As for the shrapnel sparkle I have seen this before during an artillery barrage, but only at much, much close ranges. This incident with the three tanks was at a pretty far distance when I observed this effect. As for the debris from hits/misses it definately looks like to me more is being sent airborn at longer ranges, could just be a matter of perception on my part, but it seems to be more. The smoke plumes from hits/misses also seems to be visually better too at longer distances. What I observed was the plumes seemed to lasted longer and disipate slower, also I did notice the swirlling effect the smoke makes at close/medium distance was now seemed viewable at longer distances. With the gunnery range I could also see vehicles out as far as you stated, even without 2005AD changes, but the difference I noticed was I could actually see more detailed trees and terrain past them. Before the changes I could see the tanks, but beyond that I could only see a couple trees and a lot of haze and the detail was less. Now it seems more detailed trees and terrain are viewable and the haze is push back just a little farther. I'm sure 2005AD changes are not in anyway adding anything that isn't already there in SFK42, but it is allowing you to see these same detailed effects and terrain that are viewable at close/medium ranges at much farther distance then what is possible with the default settings. You are quite correct that it will cost you in the FPS department, with Rends Prokhorovka missions before the lod changes my high fps were always mid/high 50's, sometimes maxed at 60 fps, but the lows were never in the mid 20's with my current rig.

On a side note I have invited 2005AD over to talk about his changes and get some feedback. But unfortunatly he is experiancing problems joining the site. I'm going to PM Kyth and see if he can help 2005AD find a solution. Hopefully he can make it here and we can get some insight.

[frinik]

Well I 'll have to try again and see whether I see the same.But you know what plays a lot on the visibility is the weather chosen for a particulalr mission.For example going into the Mission Editor you can remove clouds, haze etc from a mission.

I am surprised about the fps you are getting with your Dh 5750.It's a bit more powerful than my DH5670 but I play at res 1680 X 1050 and I get fps near 50 to 60 only with the game 's stock missions.Otherwise I can have a similar processor i7 at 2.8 ghtz with overclocking to 2.93 and 8 gigs of RAM and 1 terabyte HD.What score do you get on the Windows experience table for graphics(windows area) and gaming graphics ?My scores are 7.1 and 7.0.

Still AD 2005 's experiemnts are interesting .Alos looking at that config folder you see lots of other places with lods set to low values which might lead to more tweaking to see whether the graphic quality of the game can be enhanced .

Cheers

[Panzerfaust]

Wow that is weird frinik. On the stock missions my FPS also hover between 50 to 60. But the last time I saw really low FPS (low 20's) was trying to run Rends or Kyths missions on my Intel 2.33 Quad, even some of the stock missions would drop in the low 30's. But now seeing anything dip below 40 FPS is rare (before using 2005AD lods) and if it does it's very brief.
Our rigs look pretty much the same, my Win Epx scores are just slightly higher.
Proccessor 7.5
Memory Ops 7.5
Graphics (window area) 7.4
Gaming Graphics 7.4
Primary HD 5.9 (the weakest link I guess  )
Wonder if it has something to do with your OC? The differences between your scores and mine are almost insignificant. I know my i7 2.93Ghz has Intel Turbo Boost and will go above 3.0Ghz when needed, is your Intel CPU the same or did you OC the CPU yourself? I'm not saying anything is wrong with OCing a CPU yourself, many do it and get fantastic increases in preformance, but coming more from a flight simulator background I have seen in some cases where some flight simulator users got less preformance with OCing the CPU or GPU then someone not OCing. The problem wasn't with OCing it was something in the game software that didn't like it, wonder if SFK42 has the same problem?

I agree there are many interesting looking things in the config folder. Unfortunately outside of a few words and the numerical values displayed the rest is gibberish as my PC does not display Crylic  But all and all it should be interesting if 2005AD can get on here. I'm pretty sure he comes from a mostly flight simulator background and those guys love messing with viewable distances.