I dont have any broblems with shkval,

Use cocpit: 512 or 1024.

512 every frame and 1024 every fame drops frame rate down.



I have intel e8400 (3.0ghz)
4g of ram
Radeon 4850 512mt
24" tft 1920x1080 2xAA 8xAF
All settings high. (exp.water and visiblity medium)
Cocpit res: 1024
avarage fps in cocpit is about 25-40 in combat.

Easy enough to test the veracity of this claim.

1 - turn off sound (to remove any of that processing, historically the LOMAC sound engine has been very bad when it comes to CPU utilisation).
2 - create a mission where your aircraft is off.
3 - launch the mission and record your framerate - no systems or flight physics are being processed.
4 - start your aircraft up and hover
5 - how many FPS did you lose?

Now do the same with simple flight modelling. What's the difference?

Not so simple as that Bard, unfortunately. The whole program has been optimized for other things than "eye candy", so even while no specific flight and systems modelling is performed, the whole structure of the program is still the same, i.e. built to perform those operations.

To be honest I don't really see the relevance of your test to my initial statement.

There is a heck of a lot of Lock On in Black Shark.

I remember reading somewhere that BS only uses DX8 textures, maybe someone will drop in to confirm this or not. It would explain why newer video cards don't offer much advantage. I do wonder if ED has another 3D engine on the burner, the way Maddox have kept IL2 alive while developing the core of the flight model for the BOB sim. ED have got away with this engine in Black Shark, most people get playable framerates and decent looking terrain, but I don't see this engine as something that can be built on in the future.

Apparently ED are developing a new engine for the DCS series - It has been mentioned on the ED forums.

Thanks for the info, that does make a lot of sense.

The whole idea that BS's bad framerates are being caused by systems and physics processing would be the reason for my post.

That subroutines not being used still use processing cycles is .. clearly.. nonsense

Such claims are very easy to confirm or deny by removing them from the equation and comparing. Then such claims can become statements of fact based on empirical data rather than opinion (informed or not).

Too often the simulation community suffers from spurious and nonsensical claims that are used by jingoistic supporters to excuse what is usually nothing more than simple bad programming, bad design decisions or simply no effort (through choice or time constraint) being made to optimize.

I like data to be the basis of a conclusion

Oh that'll never "fly" around here...you must not sleep well at night with that attitude...

I like the exchange of views to be civil, without calling other parties nonsensical and jingoistic, but that is obviously not a point of view shared by all. Thanks for the discussion, I stand by my point re: BS.

I think the optical illusion with the water has to do with textures.

What we're expecting to see is cues at the banks to indicate where water meets land; however, it appears as if the large water textures lay beneath the entirety of the land textures with One Big Texture. On replay of a track, for instance, a water texture will load, then the land, then the cockpit (in that order) at the start sometimes. The "wave" texture runs right underneath the banks, which confuses our eyes.

A translucent texture that extended from the banks a short way that would lighten the color of the water would probably eliminate the effect, but might be very difficult to accomplish.\

On graphics overall, the reliance on CPU vs. GPU to handle them will invariably cause performance hits (both in appearance and run speed) for flight sims. First person shooters have the luxury of very limited processing cycles needed for what the players and AI need. A gust of wind is cosmetic in a FPS, and only relates to textures (foliage) moving and some straight forward ballistics (for the fancier ones). In a flight simulation it sets off a huge family of calculations.

I don't envy flight sim programmers in the challenge. If they make graphics really GPU dependant they're at the mercy of two (ATI and nVidia) architectures and the vagarities of drivers and models. DirectX has too many limitations and OpenGL is too evolutionary to maintain a true standard.

Let's pick on trees, as they represent the ultimate dichotomy of design. Everyone wants to see trees, as they exist in great numbers in the Real World. Rendering trees is tough because there's a lot of them; if one lets the GPU handle them exclusively, they become the meaningless sprites of Black Shark, pretty but irrelevant. To give them dangerous implication, they have to be given a solid spine and put into the solid world that is the domain of the CPU. While it may not seem like it would take much to make a single pole in the GPU world for collision purposes with a GPU sprite around it, the sheer numbers of little poles and the instruction to the GPU to paint around them would be costly.

The IL-2 series made a three way compromise on the problem, with mixed results.

The first was to make large forests a set of "potato chip" hard textures that look very good from above at medium altitudes but invisible straight on (and ugly down low). Lots of people complain about this, as crashing into an invisible forest stinks.

The second was to make a "block" texture of trees that are used around towns. It might look like a stand of individual trees, but it's really a cube (or elongated into a rectangle) with nifty texturing. These are the best trees in the simulation, as they matter. And look darned good. However, they each demand collision detection and eat CPU cycles. The AI treat them as solid objects as well, which is really cool. One can actually hide behind a stand of trees from a tank or gun.

The third is the cosmetic trees and bushes that litter the landscape to make the place look better. They're sprites and are largely placed randomly on the map. One can even change how many appear as a settings option. For a WWII sim they're okay, as it's only the nutters like myself that routinely fly below 15 feet altitude and fly through them.

I do wish that they would have some of the second type of trees in Black Shark. The one thing I really wanted to do is hide behind trees in a clearing, edge to the left or right, kill stuff, and then slip back behind the trees if there was return fire.

This can be done in Gunship!, which of course isn't the high-fidelity sim that BS is, but it's also a lot older. You can play multiplayer in it with players as pilot and CP/G in the same helo, too.

I guess I just kinda figured that if a sim as old and as under-developed as Gunship can do that, it shouldn't be that tough to do it with a newer sim. I didn't realize BS was like that until discussions after I bought it. I would have still bought it, but it is still disappointing.

Hey all!

First I want to say that I mean no offense, since everyone is free to discuss and criticize what they want to. However, I can't help but notice how much info I see at SimHQ has already been discussed to death over and ED's boards.

It might be a good idea to look over the stickies here:

http://forums.eagle.ru/forumdisplay.php?f=72

Take this in the spirit it is given. You will be surprised at how much ED has already answered. I can tell you that EVERY SINGLE QUESTION I ever posed in the old FAQ thread was answered promptly by Wags, EvilBivol, or a tester. Furthermore, there tends to be a great deal of discussion about it from the community members too. I have seen some discussion that actually addressed engine limitations but also changed some preconceived notions I had about how those limitations would effect realism.

A specific example from this thread is the trees. The trees in BS are actually one big block of terrain. If ED made them a solid block you could collide with and hide behind, it would hinder the AI's ability to travel around wooded terrain. Its a limitation they're aware of and hope to fix. Now, on top of this, there was some discussion about the actual tactics used by Ka-50 pilots. Turns out its a lot more flying as high as possible and attacking with strafing rather than pop-up from NOE and firing while hovering. I started to see that trees, at least in terms of a hiding place for the player, may not be as big of a factor.

This is just one example. I can tell you that there's been 2 years of intense discussion about very specific details (including trees!) prior to the sim even being released.

Again, just some friendly advice, you may want to start keeping up with those boards. Go one step further. Register, do a search, and if you can't find something, ask!!! You'll be answered. The transparency of development and the willingness of EvilBivol, Wags, and others to address even very specific and obscure details is second to none.

EDIT: Bolded the important crap.

Uh, Tiger, I hunted around ED's forums for a good half hour and didn't find the thread you referenced.

I like folks that frequent multiple boards and help out equally on more than one!

However, discussion here doesn't hurt anything. And RTFF isn't really a helpful response, any more than RTFM is.

SimHQ is for the "lighter" questions and pared down suppositions in many respects. The ED forums are like the authoritative Wikipedia of Black Shark. SimHQ is more like the blog that cherry picks from them. Or, more charitably, the Cliff's Notes of the Wiki.

Besides, the ED forum is populated by guys that live and breathed BS from announcement. Pretty intimidating place to post about windshield wipers not automatically going back to the "start" position. While I wouldn't characterize it as n00b unfriendly or anything (it's one of the most civil forums in existence, meaning it's one of the best run), those folks are light years ahead of the rest of us.

The thread where I asked a bunch of questions or the one on trees?

I'll assume you mean the former. Yeah, that thread doesn't seem to be around anymore. It was kinda slimmed down to the current user FAQ. It is unfortunate that it wasn't kept in its original form since it was pretty much like the DCS/Black Shark bible that eveyone was referred to. There's still a bunch of info to be found considering that I have yet to see a major concern about something specific that wasn't discussed at some point.



True. Really, I guess one of the reasons for providing that was a big fat *hint* that if you're interested in any type of PC game in development, especially ones you need to ask questions about, the best bet is -always- to lurk the forums and search, search, search, read, read, read.

If I see someone saying something like...oh...maybe..."Why the hell is the water rendered underneath the terrain!? No wonder the frame rate is low!". I can't help but shake my head a little and think "Yep, and had you been reading the official boards, you would have known this was the case, since this was discussed multiple times, all the way back to LOMAC". You would also know exactly why this is the case and why ED does not do anything about it.



Point taken. Another big fat *hint* I was trying to drop is that DCS: "Hog" is next. Interested? Well, time to head to the ED boards get started.

(Well...maybe not YET. Not much is being talked about with regards to the next module. There's a ton of new guys who seem to be enthralled with the Ka-50. I'm happy ED has new customers, but I'm more looking forward to a future of Eagles, Vipers, and Flankers!)

Presumably, the thread in question is the 72-page monster full of OT-free pre-release discussion - the "Ka-50 Black Shark Q&A". It's still there. We just unstuck it when the product went live, because we figured it would be too unwieldy for new users to navigate and it would be easier to start a new, closed FAQ, which has now become our famous "User-FAQ." If interested, you will find the original Q&A thread here:
http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?p=410009

One can only gasp at the task of sim dev. Ideally, I guess you'd get a big crew together and do it as fast as possible before the hardware and OS evolves. F4 I believe was done like this, but the company went down. In came the smaller houses like 1c and ED. SOW began development BEFORE vista, if I'm not mistaken, and may FOLLOW the release of Win7!

I truly believe the market is there to support well done study sims----when you look at the life of F4: alot of money could have been made by regular upgrades and releases of that sim.

Hat's off to ED for coming through with something that has many fine aspects, when nobody else is even making the effort.

Yes, I'd like better ground textures, solid trees, more icon options, smarter AI, evolving weather, and god knows we'd all like a dynamic campaign. And I'd prefer it ran a bit smoother. Not to mention some more stuff to fly.

Some of that stuff and much more I don't even know about is on their minds now, I'm sure. If they can sort through the feedback and deal with what's possible I think there's good business to had.

The mission editor has come along way. One of the most important aspects in success is to get the community really involved in mission creation. New and interesting missions will drive this sim, just as the lack of same will flatten sales.

Frankly, one or two paid staff making missions would pay for themselves with increased sales--I believe anyway.

Never crashed on me. Get decent frame rates,(3-19" Acer LCD Monitors and TH2Go). Also using Natural Point Track IR and can't imagine flying without it. The cockpit is superb. Flight model and physics are great. Hands down the finest Sim I have ever flown. Mind you this is only version 1.0! The folks at ED have done an outstanding job on Black Shark. Is it perfect? No. Nothing in life is.

>The folks at ED have done an outstanding job on Black Shark. Is it perfect? No. Nothing in life is.

+1. Yep, when you start to doubt that then do what I did and pay money for Enemy Engaged 2 - Desert Operations, then select the Ka-50 in that and fly around for 15 minutes. After the immediate urge to sprint back to the shop, receipt in hand, settles down then it really highlights how good DCS is today. I literally can't wait for the A-10 too.

(I'm not flaming EE2, but, damn - that's a different world of model/graphics)

Funny you mention EE2! I have it. I re-installed it a few weeks ago along with a bunch of mods. After about 5 minutesI shut it down and removed it from my computer! I couldn't wait to fly Black Shark! And that is how I always feel about it. I have never enjoyed ANY sim as much as I do Black Shark!