VSK4 Graphics Settings - Best Setting for the Game

[Strait Torque II (AUS)]

I have a AMD Athon 64 3500+ System, with 1 Gb Ram, 250Gb Hard Drive 18 cache. Graphics card is a PCI slot GT7800. Internet connection of 1500/256 . A good system I believe, I run Fraps program to check frame rate. But what my issue is in the game there are numerous combinations of settings. Also the graphics card has numerous settings. What is the best settings ?

I currentlcy run Graphics card on Quality setting, Antiscropotic on X4, Antianlisanising on X4. Game set up on PC3, texture quality high, max filtering on X4, Antialising X4, shadows none & all 5 boxes ticked. I have no idea if this is correct. My framerate is around 45 - 55 fps.

Any comments ?

[sunburn]

Except shadows, you should increase all to the maximum. I'm sure you can increase "Anisotropic" for example.

[admiral 1]

he he AFAIK you can go to 8 x AF and 16 x AA look for the minimum framerate not the highest.. 45 - 55 if the framerate does'nt drop below
30 you're fine as long as you do not have to dodge bulltes that is.

I'm missing you resolution settings... I'l d go for all the eyecandy (inluding shadows), then pick the highest resolution you can get without dropping below 30-25 fps in a nordic course in a 8 boat race where you host. (you can tradeoff antialiasing vs resolution, but milage may vary)

Check if there's a difference in using the gamesettings and having the graficcard override the gamesettings.

If you don't care about how the game looks, take as much eyecandy out as you can, go to highest resolution that will keep you above 60 fps at all times. (your eyes can't go faster anyway)

All the rest of the recourses from there should be dedicated to fighting lag. Go and check your processor utilisation, don't run anything that slows down vsk or the comunication with your opponents computers. Go to the lowest resolution you can see something, use low polygon count models, small skins (don't use any at all?).

Get fastpath (disable interleafing) for your DSL connection.

[Strait Torque II (AUS)]

Wow, what a lot of information. A lot I don't understand. My game resolution is set at 1024 X 768 if that helps. So in summary do I aim for highest settings on Nordic course keeping framerate above 30. Does that include putting shadows on ?

Thanks for your comments

[admiral 1]

That includes all you can get. AFAIK 7800 series start at US$ 300 so figure the
eyecandy is worth 6 times the gameplay? (VSK4 at US$ 50) So it hink you would want to see the shadows too.. YES! FYI some folks say VSK is playable at framerates as low as 15 fps.. however don't blame me for any health issues.

For Anisotropic filtering: to avoid the blurring of vertixes at narrow angles you can turn of the use of mip maps. (Some settings to optimize performance of your graficcard, are hurting quality. Those "optimisations" may be turned off, mostly deep down in the driver configuration. ) In my experience turning off mip mapping (using the BIG quality skin to render the small boats far away in the distance, instead of a using a much smaller less quality blurred skin (a mip map)) drops the framerate by half! For that i get to read my boatname even from 2-3 boatlengths away.

- change only one setting at the time (keep a strict recored of what you did and in what order)
- take small steps (that's how you learn walking!)

[admiral 1]

One more thing. The grafic guys at the office here, mean when you spend that kind of money on a graficcard you should make sure to calibrate your monitor. NVIDIA
come with some tools to do that. As i never have to calibrate a monitor, i'm totally clueless. I'll let you know if it pays.

:beer:

[Strait Torque II (AUS)]

Thanks for all your help. I will have a fiddle now.

Cheers

[CAN uck]

Theo, what is "fastpath" and what does it do.

Is it safe to use in a none "hacker" environment such as mine where I am very dependant on my computers for business and therefore shy away from free programs that require a lot of computer savy to maintain.

Thanks,

[admiral 1]

Fastpath is a marketing name.

Transmitting data involves some checking and verification to make sure the data received is still the same as the data that was send. This is done by a process called interleafing and is part of any normal dsl connection. It just makes a more stable (less corrupt data) connection.

Now some folks really needed speed, as in SPEED! so who cares about stability, corrupt packets etc. Turn this interleafing off will ya.
If close enough to a node in the network, you can actually have a reasonable stable connection without interleafing.

Thousends of gamers heard the word, and all them got on the phone with a tech from their T-Com bagging them to turn interleafing off for their connection.

Untill here this turning off didn't cost anything, except a phonecall to get to a knowledgable technician who spoke the right language (begging for a degrade in the T-Coms service, shouldn't cost right?)

Somehow T-Com's Management got the word, and a new service was born. It's called fastpath and costs money.
Nowadays you pay 1,- € /monthly plus a 29,- € set up fee, for your T-Com to turn off interleafing.

Does it make your download faster? No it doesn't improve your bandwith. Does it make your connectione faster? Yes, your pings go up (sometimes way up i heard gains of 20-40 ms, I myself would say that under circumstances it's more).

Its good for gamers (live or die is decided in eye blinks) , bad for folks far away from the node cause if data packets are dropped, or even corrupted they have to be send again. Sending again costs bandwith, so you can expect your ISP to make sure fastpath will work for you (hey you are paying for it) or it won't let you have it. So security risks should be handled by them. If you have them give you fastpath no matter what, expect to sign some piece of paper letting them out of any liability.

Without the lawyers i'ld say it's no risk. It's not a sercurity risk. It works or it doesn't. If you keep loosing connections, experience too much data packet loss (resent automatically) then it's not for you.

[Skiffie]

Umm, is it possible for someone to esplain what each of the things do, and how they can affect the end result?

eg the PC1, PC2, PC3 setting, anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, etc.

I just got my new system set up - AMD Sempron 2600, 1 Gig RAM (DDR - PC3200), and a 6600GT AGP card with 128M RAM. Being a noob I didn't realise I needed a power splitter for the vid card, so I was using without for a few days, better quality pics but still same frame rate (around 10fps) I was getting with the old m'board with on board GPU. Now, I upped a lot of the settings (let VSK decide then did custom of shadows minimum) and I'm getting around 50fps - nearly creamed myself with the quality. :O :laugh: How I ever played before I don't know!

[Kwasi]

I just was at an exhibition, where we presented vsk4.
We had a fast and good computer, that vsk was running on. We sailed in high settings and it looked fine, BUT we could neither see holes nor puffs. Just for testing, I tuned the vsk4 settings down and I could see all windfields in PC0.
I don't have the problem at home, so it must be grafic card related (or monitor)
So, if you seriously need the knowledge whether there is wind or not, you also need to include that in the choice of your preferred settings.



Edited By Kwasi on 1138609745

[admiral 1]

pc1, pc2, pc3 afaik tell vsk what shaders to use, perform fancy operations on pixels, textures.
- pc1 very basic (no shaders, )
- pc2 middle, eg. adds transparant water, reflections, shadows?
- pc3 top, eg. adds refractions? (NVIDIA GF 5200 and up, ATI 9000 and up)

I have no clue what the relation is between shader version and vsk's pc setting, so i may be totally of the mark here.


anti aliasing straightens borders
the higher you set it the straighter the edges become
If you use a high resolutiuon the yig saws already have a sharper edge then at a low resolution. (the skins ofcourse already have to be sharp an preferbly should be made at the highest resolution possible)

anistropic filtering
blurrs details that are supposed to be further away in the distance.
(with use of mipmaps, in stead of the orginal, big sharp highly detailed skin smaller already blurred skins can be used as starting point for calculations, so less calculations have to be performed.)

With a 6600 GT you probably have a grafic solution that comes very close to the top of the range of what vsk4 was designed for (think NVIDIA 6800, ATI 800 was highest available at that time). I think you should be able to hit >> 25 fps with all settings maxed, all skins, all crews, all wakes, sea high, shadows complex, etc. etc. Try different anti aliasing at different resolutions. The NVIDIA solution uses relativly lots of recources with antialiasing.



Edited By admiral 1 on 1138624137

[Skiffie]

I think you're right re: the PC3 setting Theo - I tried it and I think while it looks fantastic, it's a little "glarey" (too much surface reflection). Going to try PC2 tonight for comparison.

So, one of our fellow Aussies with a 6600GT suggested first to set the monitor resolution up as high as possible first, what's the benefit of this? (I like to run pretty high anyway)

Also, there's a setting at the first window that talks about resolution, should this be set high as well?

[admiral 1]

I tried it and I think while it looks fantastic, it's a little "glarey" (too much surface reflection). Going to try PC2 tonight for comparison.

Maybe you misunderstood, one of the shader turned on in pc3 is the one that
introduces the light breaking effect of water. You'll see your keel and rudder under water as realistic as it gets. In PC 2 the water is transparent and reflecting, but it does not break the light. If you feel it's to glary you can tune brightness and contrast on your monitor, or adjust (calibrate) your graficcard.

The resolution of the game is set independant of your general monitor settings
The setting at the first window is what the game runs in.
Setting up the highest resolution first, asumes the balance between antialiasing (straighting the sig-sawed edges, by adjusting pixels) and high resolution (smaller pixels leeds to smaler sig-saw) is in favour of the resolution. I think it's safe you try it out for your self. Both will mean a drop in framerate. If you can max both and you like what you see and you can live with the framerates, then go for it. In the end you have to look at it, so just try out what works best for you, IMO you just don't have to waist computing power where your eyes and your brain can't follow, as long as the movie industry still seems to think 25 frames per second is enough, i rather have the game look like a movie more then having one frame per second more. (mind you i'm talking of the minimum framerate you will experience, not like most bragging graficcard owners who think in maximum framerates only)

AFAIK with an LCD you should run the game in the screens native resolution, with anything else the screen will just take the custom resolution and rework (inter- extrapolate) the pixels to fit.

[Didcot01]

Hi has anybody out there had trouble with SLI-graphics set up ,I have windows 64 professional, with an AMD64FX55 cpu ,1gig of ram, two 6600gt graphics cards set up as SLI,vsk4 doesn't seem to recognise my graphics and tries to run off the cpu , can any body help? thanks Davo