How to get a lag free flashpoint?

[Airwolf 50]

Alright, first i'll start with my specs since thats what people always ask.

Pentium 4 3.0ghz 800FSB

1024mb Corsair 400mhz duel channel ddr

Asus P4P800 deluxe motherboard with latest bios and chipset upgrades

BFG Asylum Geforce FX 5900

Audigy II Platinum

Alright, now on to my problem, with this system and the money i spent on these parts i really think i should be getting a lag free flashpoint, but im not. I get around a 5600 score in 3dmark03 but flashpoint seems to dissagree. I still get bad fps when turning to the side or looking around, and i still get jumped frames every now and then, i bought all of this so i could play flashpoint at its greatest.

My current flashpoint settings:

resolution is at 1600x1200

terrain detail is set at high

viewdistance is anywhere from 1200 to 1500, get the same lag either one.

texture resolutions are set at 1024x768

HL texture and lighting is enabled.

if theres any specs i missed, please tell me.

Can anyone help me to get my flashpoint to play nice and smoothly? i believe the amount of money i poured into my computer should atleast make flashpoint run with no lag!

Thanks.

[Guest]

resolution is at 1600x1200

terrain detail is set at high

viewdistance is anywhere from 1200 to 1500, get the same lag either one.

texture resolutions are set at 1024x768

HL texture and lighting is enabled.

Turn down your terrain detail first...see if that helps. Then try your resolution. Texture resolutions are 1024x1024 (I'm guessing) not 1024x768 HWT&L won't make much difference (if any). OFP is a very system heavy game...that's all there is to it!

[Airwolf 50]

i want my terrain detail high like that, i have seen many screenshots on this forum of high terrain detail and i want my ofp to play like these people's ofp can. If i turn off HWTL, the lag only gets worse.

[Hit_Sqd_Maximus 0]

I think they only do that to take pictures, I doubt they play ofp all the time like that.

[=MH=FritzDaKat 0]

In the prefrences utility, did you remember to tell the game you had that much memory? Have you tried adjusting any of the other setting's in there as well?

I only run 384 Mb of 800Mhz Rambus, but I lied to the game and told it I had 512 in the pref. setting's, hoping it would then rely on my vram cache, which it seem's to rather nicely, I'm sure it would work even better if I tossed in a small, high spin scsi drive with a nice, low access time.

Also, I recall there being a recent update to the Intel Application accelerator, mabey it could help to check that as well (I run a 1.5 Ghz P4, so it's a different App accelerator being as this CPU dosent support hyperthreading {not that it would make a big difference for the game} but I did note an increase in performance when I first set the program up.

And if your running windows XP, have you applied one of the various patches or utilities for unlocking the windows XP 60Hz refresh rate / whats your monitors refresh rate currently set to? Also, how about AA, antisoptric filtering, Performance and quality slider, ect for the FX set at? (Or is Flashpoint an OpenGL deal? Im a noob here but figure these are applicable nontheless) I'll see what other ideas I can come up with (BTW, what driver version are you using for the FX?)

[Airwolf 50]

i'm using the latest driver from the nvidia website, dont know what number exactly, but i checked last night, its 45 something, my monitors refresh rate is set at 100hz, i dont know anything about patches. And does the intel application accelerator work with asus motherboards?

[Dauragon 0]

get a 3.6 ghz if that helps, i get 50-70 FPS with 1600x1200 terrain on high viewdistance 1400

[=MH=FritzDaKat 0]

i'm using the latest driver from the nvidia website, dont know what number exactly, but i checked last night, its 45 something, my monitors refresh rate is set at 100hz, i dont know anything about patches. And does the intel application accelerator work with asus motherboards?

As far as the intell App accelerator, the one for your chipset was last updated in July of 02', but that shouldnt stop you from searching for if it was ever installed in the first place. For starters, check the list of Program files on your C drive off the start menu. And yes, it works with any motherboard using an Intel chipset

http://appsr.intel.com/scripts....t=Go%21 <--- If your running XP Home, Im sure you can find your way from there if not.

http://www.voodoofiles.com/type.asp?cat_id=33 <--- Site with a number of utilities for a number of things, the 60Hz refresh rate bug being one of them. I've read where even when you set your adapter rezolution to something other than, it still work's at 60Hz Weird huh? be carefull with any of the utilities, make a restore point before running them ect. just in case (Always better safe than sorry right?)

And again, have you used the flashpoint prefrences tool to adjust anything? Are you running in Direct3d or HW T&L mode?

And what were those setting's you had in the settings under the display properties window? Some sound like they might help, but in alot of cases, they end up being more of a problem when cranked up too high, turning them down a hair wont cause any suferage on your game or the graphic's more than likely (As far as the Anti-Aliasing and so forth are concerned) V-synch seems to cause more issues than it's worth in some games (In Ghost recon for example, disabling it cause no loss of visual quality while in fact increasing my fps by about 10-20 pts.)

[theavonlady 2]

A terrain detail set to high will definitely cause these problems. Even BIS' Ondrej Spanel has told me that the high setting is not practical with today's systems - and he should know!

[blackdog~ 0]

Turn down the shadows lod really low... no point in having it overdetailed.

[theavonlady 2]

Turn down the shadows lod really low... no point in having it overdetailed.

With his specs, I don't think he needs to bother.

[sanctuary 19]

I get around a 5600 score in 3dmark03 but flashpoint seems to dissagree. I still get bad fps when turning to the side or looking around, and i still get jumped frames every now and then, i bought all of this so i could play flashpoint at its greatest.

From what i read everywhere, and experienced in the Resistance demo AvonLady is right , the High terrain is very very heavy and can make your game suffer from those video "lag".

The default viewdistance is 900 if i remember well , try to set your viewdistance to this default setting to se if that helps (as the more you see, the more your system will have to calculate)

Now, just a hint when playing a BIS mission :

Too much viewdistance can cause problem in some official missions , with triggering some event too early or make you being shot from armor that isnt supposed to see you yet as most of the missions are made with 900 viewdistance in mind.

Maybe you can try to lower the texture resolution a bit , but not too much , as your system seems good enough in general for high quality textures.

About the benchmark utilities : prefer to judge your system and driver by videogames but not by those benchmarks , i read on some nvidia forum that some people get high score but have some bad performance in game and vice/versa.

And , as nvidia and ATI were caught cheating with benchmark utilities (by lowering options when the benchmark is in use)

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,1105259,00.asp

I will not believe any benchmarks results to be reliable on what is your system capacity with specific drivers

[ExtracTioN 0]

Does your monitor support such a high resolution

[=MH=FritzDaKat 0]

Also, In some other games there have been issues where performance sufered if the game didnt just crash outright in cases where the Monitor resolution varied from the in-game setting, something about the changeover in resolution not setting up properly, most likely related to the Monitor timing standard set on your system compaired to the calls used by some games to establish such a switch having compatibility issues perhaps? (Is'nt guessing off the extreme end fun sometimes.   )

 I mention this from your stating the resolution was 1600x1200 and the in game setting was for 1024x768

I run details to high (Not very hgh, just high) at the same resolution / refresh rate) Visibility to 1200 (c'mon 3' away from a 19" screen    )  In the prefrences as I mentioned I set the slider which shows system ram under the advanced settings a tad beyond what I really have and it seems to pass on to VRAM well enough with the stock missions at least. but my other settings are about the same and it runs very well for me in SP. The prefrences setting's "benchmark" tag's me at 2350something

And I'm only running a

1.5 Ghz P4

850 Tehama chipset in a POS ECS mobo (Nice chipset thou)

384 Mb 800Mhz Rambus

WIndows on C drive 5400 RPM 20 gig Samsung

Flashpoint on D ( 40 gig 7200 rpm maxtor)

Visiontec Gf4 Ti4400 4x agp

Keep in mind I run 98se here and have gone thru the registry tweaking drama of getting this box to hum a little tune for me when I need it to.  

 You COULD possibly beneft from TweakXP which is a similar tool to the tweakUI tool that Microsoft let out for 98/se ect

I believe theres a link to it here somwhere

---> http://www.winguides.com/ and if not, there are more than enough tweaks and tips to make it run like it was there.

[toadlife 3]

Dude, there is NO system on the planet that will run Flashpoint with every setting turned up to the max and give a geat framerate.

I'm sorry you expected such.

Turn down your settings a bit and join the rest of us.

[=MH=FritzDaKat 0]

Still no reason to not looking into squeezing every drop of performance possible from his machine thou, at least he can then be sure he's getting every last penny's worth.

[john_mcclane 0]

I've noticed a definite speed increase since using the 1.92 beta .exe.

Below are my system specs and the OFP settings I use for a smooth, good looking game.

XP 2200 @ 1925MHz

AOpen Aeolus GeForce4 Ti4200S 128MB (300/550) AGP 4x

Nvidia 45.23 drivers, DirectX 9.0b

ECS K7S5A

512MB PC2100 DDR

Turtle Beach Santa Cruz

Nvidia Performance & Quality Settings:

Image Settings: Performance

Antialiasing: Quincunx (4x) AA

Anisotropic Filtering: Application

Texture Sharpening: On

OFP Resistance Settings:

CPU Benchmark: 4850

HW T&L

1024x768x32-bit

1024x1024 Textures

Frame Rate: 20..40

Visual Quality: 11..23

View Distance: 1110

Terrain Detail: Normal

Audio Hardware Acceleration: On, EAX: Off

FSAA makes Flashpoint look wonderful. I'm not noticing much of a performance hit with it on either. Be sure to use Digital Vibrance if you have an Nvidia card. Really brings the colors to life.

Also, check your audio drivers and settings. This can cause lag as well.

[=MH=FritzDaKat 0]

Be sure to use Digital Vibrance if you have an Nvidia card. Really brings the colors to life.

Not to mention the text in most places legible.

[toadlife 3]

Still no reason to not looking into squeezing every drop of performance possible from his machine thou, at least he can then be sure he's getting every last penny's worth.

Not arguing that - just pointing out how scalable OFP is. ;)

He'll definitely be squeezing more performance out of his machine than mine. :P

[=MH=FritzDaKat 0]

Yea, here we are with lemon juice and he's pumping Tropicana by the Gallon.

[Acecube 0]

Hi all!

I got my new hardware a couple of days ago and nearly finished configureing OFP properly. After all it was a lot of work and so I came over this thread. It in deed is a little dissapointing to see that even the most recent (and bloody expencive) hardware is not able to perform OFP properly.

Now the system specs:

ASUS P4P800 deLuxe

P4 2,8gHz FSB800

1GB DDR 400 CL 2,5

Sapphire Radeon 9800 PRO 128MB

Seagate SATA V 120GB

The settings I found to be o.k. are:

BIOS Video aperture: 265MB

Direct3D: 4X AA; 8X AF

OFP Preferences: 1152x864x32; all textures 1024x1024; Effects to the max; Objects LOD: 0.019; Shadows LOD: 0.050

In the Game:

-Refresh 70Hz

-Everything enabled except W-buffer

-Terrain Detail: High

-Visual Quality: 6...18

-Visibility: 2347

As far as I tested this seems to be the maximum I can configure to have an acceptable frame rate. The really STRANGE thing is that suddenly I can have WAY less addons installed with the new hardware then with the old!!!!!

Anybody have an explanation for that?

[kegetys 2]

The really STRANGE thing is that suddenly I can have WAY less addons installed with the new hardware then with the old!!!!!

Anybody have an explanation for that?

If you used to have a video card with less memory on it (and especially a non-ati one) then thats why. 256MB AGP Aperture is also quite too much, its quite useless feature anyway and its only eating mapping space from ofp to use.

[shinRaiden 0]

AthXP 2100 (oc -> 2400)

Asus A7N8X-DLX 2.0

1gb ddr-400

Audigy-2 Platinum

Asus 9280 GeF 4 ti4200 128mb 8x

XPproSP1

--------------------------------------

Another thing to note is the Aniostropic (and anti-aliasing?) settings. I believe BAS warned that higher Aniostropic filtering levels could significantly impact lag (particles and textures?). Above all, make sure you have the latest reference drivers. Texture sharpening also adds a bit of a 'hit'.

I normally set my OFP resolution identical to the desktop since I often do a lot of alt-tabbing for scripting and testing. I normally use 1280x1024x32 w/ HWTL, and AA and AS turned down to one step above off.

For a good framrate proggie and video grabber, try fraps from http://www.fraps.com. I'm using the 1.9d version for framerate checking mainly.

I also use Rivatuner from [utrl]http://www.guru3d.com/rivatuner[/url] for Video card tweaks.

EAX on the Audigy 2 does touch somewhat on the CPU. I noticed a few frames lower due to the CPU take from the Audigy 2. Now I run the audio through the Nforce2 soundstorm in EAX, pass through the SPDIF to the Audigy 2 Platinum's SPDIF in (Make sure you enable 'Digital Out' and disable the 'Dolby digital encoding' in the soundstorm control panel. After 30-60 seconds of gameplay, the digital sync gets lost between the 2 if you don't) and then headphones out from the Audigy 2 with NO EAX or effects or anything from the Audigy 2.

The FPS lag from axial rotation appears to be a caching issue, have not determined whether it is OFP or the Video card yet. It is more pronounced in airborne 3rd view than tanker commander 'gun' view.

I normally play low or normal terrain res. My understanding is that the terrain models are fractally generated from the reference points in the WRP. In that case, the cpu has to do some crunching to generate the terrain, then map it, then hand it off to the 3d card.

One problem with view distances above 1200 is that some addons such as the SIGMA-6 tanks can engage targets that are not visable due to LOD limiting. This is fine for cutscenes or NPC action, but it can suck in terms of gameplay if you want to return fire, or manually spot somebody. I also saw a note that said to turn the framerate slider as low as possible then set the quality to what ever.

If you play RL style in veteran mode, a lot of the laggy spots even out. There is a bunch of stuff you can do in the prefs app too. I set my available memory to 150mb LESS than total physical to allow for the OS, and everything seems to be happy. I have 1024x1024's for textures, 128x128 for effects, and none for auto-dropdown, sometimes 2x if I play 1280x1024.

[Airwolf 50]

what does auto drop down do anyways? does it have any kind of performance hit?

[Guest]

It in deed is a little dissapointing to see that even the most recent (and bloody expencive) hardware is not able to perform OFP properly.

I DO NOT understand why you think High Terrain Detail means that you are running OFP "properly". In fact I just don't understand you guys at all!