Comrades in Arms Discussion Board

Hi, guys,

Do any of you know what the texture and file heap settings in flashpoint.cfg do? I've looked and haven't found any substantial explanation of what they do. I haven't found any real justification for adjusting them.

And, if any of you have any settings tweaks to pass on, let's hear from you! I'm, uh, going through a bout of 'OFP-tweakitis', at the moment. . . (like an idiot)

Don't know about many in .cfg. Most important is to keep "Terrain detail" on normal I guess, push it higher ant good 'ol OFP max out even the hairiest gaming PC today. Bad coding or demanding game? Don't know, but it's for sure a good way to lag your box

Hey Anguis,

That file is generated by the "Flashpointpreferences.exe" file. The entries are based on your system performance. If you run that file then go to advanced button then perforamnce tab you'll see silders to change settings. Here's what I have:

Total Memory: 2048 (max OFP can use)
Texture Heap: maxed at 16mb
File Heap: maxed at 16mb
Geometry Performace: Better than half way at 6410 (determined by cpu and mem speed) in over clocking I had this over 7000 but things got too hot  

It's best to just hit the Auto Detect button on the first page and leave it at that.

What Overlord is talking about is the in game option settings under Video Options. Of course the better machine you have the higher you can set things. Normal Terrain is best for ground cover, don't go beyond this. Frame rate and visual quality I have maxed out and I can set view distance pretty high without servre lag, but I keep it around 1200. All shadows, cloudlets and blood are turned on also. As Overlord noted no PC can run all settings maxed out, funny for an 8 year old game...hehe

Check out this OFP tweak guide, it explains all the settings:
http://www.techspot.com/tweaks/opflashpoint/

Quote:Texture heap. This slider determines amount of memory to allocate for the texture heap in Operation Flashpoint. Unless you have a Graphics Card with a low amount of video memory, or a low amount of RAM (64MB or less) then set this to the maximum amount available – 16 MB.

File heap. Similar to the Texture heap setting you should set this to 16 MB unless you have 64MB RAM or less installed, in which case reduce this value accordingly, e.g. those with 48MB RAM should set this to about 6 MB.

Thanks, guys,

I had seen the techspot guide - the question still remains, though: what is a texture heap? a file heap? Is there any benefit to manually setting them to, say, 32 or 64, given larger amounts of video ram? I've seen a post in the official forums (I think I asked the above questions there, a while back) indicating that reducing them to 0 alleviates lag (?). Has the -nomap switch changed the use of the file and texture heaps?

I have total memory at 1024, but I'll bump it up to 2048. My geometry setting is above 54000, I think (slider all the way to the right) - I'll have to see what setting it lower looks like. I do run with terrain at high, VD @ 1200.

By the way, the benchmark I use is the Eastborder cutscene in FDF (frickin' Battlefields just reduces me to tears. . . This 8 year old game is unbelievable, sometimes. . .) w/ dxdll used solely for fps display (no pp, no reflections).
The things nagging at me to 'fix' are the tiny pauses that occur, even when things are running @ 75 fps (little, intermittent 2-3 fps dips during the scene). Like I said, above, "like an idiot". . .

Update: A Tale of Two Configs. . .

Autodetected config:

Quote:Product="Resistance";
Language="English";
HW_Type="Direct3D HW T&L";
Adapter=0;
3D_Performance="6849";
CPU_Benchmark=6849;
Resolution_W="1024";
Resolution_H="768";
Resolution_Bpp="32";
LOD=7.500000;
Limit_LOD=0.019000;
Shadows_LOD=0.050000;
MaxObjects=256;
Cockpit_Textures=2048;
Landscape_Textures=2048;
Object_Textures=2048;
Animated_Textures=64;
Textures_Drop_Down=4;
Texture_Heap="16";
File_Heap="16";
Total_Memory="2048 MB";
MaxLights=32;
Light_Explo=1;
Light_Missile=1;
Light_Static=1;
Frame_Rate_Pref=500;
Quality_Pref=500;
refresh=75;

Older, adjusted config:

Quote:Product="Resistance";
Language="English";
HW_Type="Direct3D HW T&L";
Adapter=0;
3D_Performance="54308";
CPU_Benchmark=7389;
Resolution_W="1600";
Resolution_H="1200";
Resolution_Bpp="32";
LOD=0.005000;
Limit_LOD=0.005000;
Shadows_LOD=1.000000;
MaxObjects=256;
Cockpit_Textures=1024;
Landscape_Textures=2048;
Object_Textures=1024;
Animated_Textures=128;
Textures_Drop_Down=4;
Texture_Heap="16";
File_Heap="16";
Total_Memory="2048 MB";
MaxLights=32;
Light_Explo=1;
Light_Missile=1;
Light_Static=1;
Frame_Rate_Pref=500;
Quality_Pref=500;
refresh=75;

For whatever it's worth, the older, adjusted config provides roughly "the same as/better than" fps as in the autodetected config (looks better, too). High terrain detail, 1200 VD, FR@75 and VQ max in both. Intermittent lags still present.
Insane game.

In case you don't know: the VD slider is useless for multiplayer, it's merely for singleplayer and the main menu cutscenes. All multiplayer maps have the standard VD of 900m unless changed by mission parameters. And I'm pretty sure (though I don't KNOW) that it's the same with the terrain detail since in multiplayer dumbed down versions of the islands are used to (most likely) reduce lag. And I've never seen a difference between the settings. Apart from those 2 settings I've had all settings maxed for years and I 've never had problems, and never had a "top rig" either.

Yeah, view distance is the one that I'm always wanting to increase (very high terrain detail doesn't look right, to me) - this game looks really good at max VD, even given its age. I can't do much better than 1200 w/ high terrain detail. Everything else maxes nicely.

Quote:In case you don't know: the VD slider is useless for multiplayer, it's merely for singleplayer and the main menu cutscenes. All multiplayer maps have the standard VD of 900m unless changed by mission parameters.

I read also some severs reduce terrain detail to low to reduce lag.

(12-09-2009, 02:15 AM)Zulu1 link Wrote:I read also some severs reduce terrain detail to low to reduce lag.

Or you can set VD in e.g. missions description.ext.

(12-09-2009, 07:46 PM)Overlord link Wrote:Or you can get VD in e.g. missions description.ext.

Fixed. I didn't know that was modelled.

I wonder how the terrain detail is compensated between clients in multiplayer...
I guess it can be set on server side via flashpoint.cfg or userinfo.cfg. Just like disabling 3rd person view, crosshair, etc. globally for everyone.

But in singleplayer, it's huge difference between "Normal" and "Very high" terrain detail - it's not only visual thing, you also get more ground cover (->>realism) by maximizing it. At least in the default OFP islands.

Here's screenshot near Montignac, Everon, with settings Normal/Very High:

(12-23-2009, 03:29 PM)Osku link Wrote:But in singleplayer, it's huge difference between "Normal" and "Very high" terrain detail - it's not only visual thing, you also get more ground cover (->>realism) by maximizing it.

More cover true but it doesn't look very realistic.

Yeah, I think Hawle's post above sums it up nicely. I've got VD @ 1200 and TD @ High - all that is gone when I get online. I think my other settings are still effective, but I'm not ever sure (at least my resolution is maintained).

(12-23-2009, 04:38 PM)Anguis Viridis link Wrote:I've got VD

Tsk tsk tsk.

Sorry, I can't resist milking that one. ;D

Seriously, yeah I've wondered about that very high terrain detail. "Very high" is too much for my PC to handle for very long even in SP, but I always wonder what combat is like with that very high setting on. Has anyone tried it? I wouldn't be surprised if enemy loons can see through those little bumps in the ground.

As for me, I usually have it on low or very low.

(12-23-2009, 04:45 PM)RKDmitriyev link Wrote:[quote author=Anguis Viridis link=topic=1988.msg11019#msg11019 date=1261579106]
I've got VD

Tsk tsk tsk.

Sorry, I can't resist milking that one. ;D
[/quote]

Damn - I walk into those more than I care to count. . .