Bridge Commander Central
BC Forums => BC Technical Support => Topic started by: vonfrank on March 20, 2013, 04:18:09 PM
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So I just got a new PC and installed Bridge Commander on it as well as all of my usual mods. It works, but there are a number of graphical and frame-rate errors in the game, mainly when multiple ships are on the screen at once.
The most obvious visual issue is that textures sometimes flicker between black and normal.
On top of that, I get CRAZY lag when about 10 or more ships are visible on screen at once. Many of these ships have high quality textures (1024 or 2048), but given my computer's specs, this shouldn't be a problem.
My specs are:
Intel core i7 3770k quad core @ 3.5ghz
AMD Radeon HD 7770
16gb ram
Windows 8 <-this may be the problem
Just to put this in perspective, my old computer runs BC better than my new one :idk:
My old PC's specs:
AMD 64x2 Dual Core 5000+
ATI Radeon x1600
4gb ram
Windows XP
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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Have , you checked your, in-game settings? [as well]
:D
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In game settings are exactly the same on my new pc as they are on the old one, with the exception of EAX quality sound which for some reason is not available on my new one.
On a side note, is there any way to get BC to display at a widescreen resolution (1920x1080 or 1280x720)?
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additional res can be chosen in the nanfx mutator options as i recall (depens if you use Km oder NanoFX Mod)
I got that flickering too. Mostly prominent when im using Edit Mode for Screenshots... Never actually got a solution for that...
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Yeah, the flickering is kind of annoying.... but the worst part is the lag. I refuse to believe that my graphics card is simply "unable to handle it" because, like I said, my old computer is able to handle 20+ high-quality ships with NO lag. It makes no sense that my new card can only handle 10 ships before lagging. There MUST be another reason.
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BC was originally written for WinXP. I have it installed on 2 of my systems: one with XP and the other with Win7. Both are running perfect but I'm getting much better frame rates on my Win7 machine as the specs are even more powerful than your new system. However, I did get some "issues" similar to yours when I first installed BC on the Win7 PC. I changed the graphic drivers and it fixed it completely. You might need to try doing that... just make sure you properly and completely uninstall the current graphic drivers before installing the new ones.
Also, it might help if you right click on the BC icon and select "Compatibility Mode", I think Win8 still has that feature - but don't quote me on that, then within the window, select the OS that you want BC to run in. This technique doesn't always work though but it's worth a try.
BC is a 32bit program and your OS is 64bit. Therefore, whether your running BC in native Win8 or in some compatibility mode - it's still running in emulation mode because 32bit apps have to run in a software emulator within a 64bit OS. That unfortunately, sometimes introduces "problems" of a myriad of unknown types. Win7 has a much better emulator than Win8 so BC runs great on it - especially on a fast system. But, good ol' Microsoft in there "infinite wisdom" decided to modify the emulator in Win8 and "improve" upon it. I have heard in many different situations that it in fact is crap compared with Win7's. Let me just say that you couldn't pay me enough to EVER get Win8... and I'll just leave it at that.
As far as changing the resolutions of game play, you could open up the options.cfg file and change the different res that you would like to the game options menu. But this also doesn't always work. Make sure you make a backup copy of the options.cfg file before you tweak the original. It worked for me but I've heard of others that it didn't. BC is a fickle program that is pretty individual at times from system to system.
Good luck and I hope some of this helps :D
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One of the first things I tried was running in compatibility mode, and that changes nothing. Any mode I choose has the same poor framerate with 10+ ships, and glitchy textures.
For changing my resolution, any value I type in seems to prevent the game from starting....
As for updating my graphics card drivers, I'm just so afraid to tinker around with them....I just somehow know that something will go wrong...... To be honest, I dont really know how to properly uninstall old drivers and install the new ones (I dont even know what the newest ones would be). If i get better acquainted with how to do that I may, but there's still not even a guarantee that will help anyway.
I'ts just really disappointing when I spend almost $2000 on an amazing PC only to have my favourite game (BC) not work on it very well. 2 of my other games, (SFC3 and Armada 2) dont work on it at all. :cry:
UPDATE
OK, so I figured out how to do it, and I updated my graphics drivers. As I suspected, the problem did not go away. I still get horrible framerate (5-10fps) when 3 or more high quality ships are on screen at once.
BC is now totally unplayable for me.... I'm not sure what the problem is, but I fear it may never be solved.... THIS SUCKS!!!!
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you know as well as the rest of us that the Bridge Commander game engine has a memory leak that crashes everything pretty hard.
if this PC is using Win 8, then there you go...BC, SFC, and Armada are probably TOO old to bother using on an 8 machine. for example, I was gifted with a PC copy of Test Drive 4...it's unplayable outside of Win 9x. I also lost my favorite art program for the same reason. they call for DLL's that were removed by newer versions of windows, and that may be what has happened, here.
this is why some of us hold onto older machines. PC's suffer from No Backward Compatibility, as well as consoles.
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you know as well as the rest of us that the Bridge Commander game engine has a memory leak that crashes everything pretty hard.
if this PC is using Win 8, then there you go...BC, SFC, and Armada are probably TOO old to bother using on an 8 machine. for example, I was gifted with a PC copy of Test Drive 4...it's unplayable outside of Win 9x. I also lost my favorite art program for the same reason. they call for DLL's that were removed by newer versions of windows, and that may be what has happened, here.
this is why some of us hold onto older machines. PC's suffer from No Backward Compatibility, as well as consoles.
I figured as much....
It's really too bad because all of my other games play very well on my new PC, and some of them are even older than BC, SFC3, and A2. (ex, Rollercoaster Tycoon, Star Wars Battlefront)
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Windows 8 is not the problem. I've recently bought a new computer myself differences between yours and mine are the procesor and graphics card mine being i5-3570 and HD 7850. Also I'm running on Windows 8 (64 bit) for the reference.
The thing here is that no matter how powerful your computer is BC will never use its full power. Have in mind that it uses only 1 core because the engine won't "recognize" more of them.
Now the 1st issue:
Texture flickering might be caused by driver settings.
2nd issue:
Unfortunately no matter how powerful your computer is BCs engine will never use its full power as I said especially if you're running many high poly ships. What you could do is switch the color resolution to low to get some more juice from the engine, this makes a big difference FYI.
Finally check out this thread (http://bcs-tng.com/forums/index.php?topic=4945.msg46038#msg46038), I've never tried it myself but BR says that it helps him get more juice out of the game.
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Finally check out this thread (http://bcs-tng.com/forums/index.php?topic=4945.msg46038#msg46038), I've never tried it myself but BR says that it helps him get more juice out of the game.
WOW! It looks like that actually worked! It lags a bit with about 20 high quality ships, but not that much.
I can handle Wiley's Sovereign, Wiley's Galaxy, JLS Akira, JLS Intrepid, JLS Nova, DJ's Ambassador, and about half a dozen other ships with at least 1024x1024 textures all on screen at once with no lag. Thank you SO MUCH Mario! :yay: :yay: :yay: ...I wonder if its possible to allocate even more than 4gigs of ram to BC? :P
I still seem to have some flickering of textures though..... but one problem at a time I suppose. :D
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I wonder if its possible to allocate even more than 4gigs of ram to BC?
Nope.
I still seem to have some flickering of textures though..... but one problem at a time I suppose.
Try reverting the 3d App settings to default in the Catalyst control center or set all the values to "use application settings".
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Try reverting the 3d App settings to default in the Catalyst control center or set all the values to "use application settings".
Tried that, and same thing.
It seems like this only happens if there are lots of ships on the map, and only from far away. If the ship is close to the camera, there are no problems.
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turn mipmaps off
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turn mipmaps off
No change.
It kinda looks like the .nif model is showing through the textures, because the damage textures are showing up when a ship is far from the screen.
Another issue I've been having is the lack of EAX sound mode on my new PC. Does anyone else have this problem? The low quality sound is much worse and I'd like to go back to using EAX if possible.
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turn mipmaps off in your catalist program as well.
EAX was dropped when Vista came out... you need an EAX emulator... most new sound cards/drivers have a program that does this.
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turn mipmaps off in your catalist program as well.
EAX was dropped when Vista came out... you need an EAX emulator... most new sound cards/drivers have a program that does this.
Could Mipmaps possibly be under a different name in my catalyst settings? Because I cant see anything like that.
As for EAX, how do I determine if my sound card has this capability? If it does, how do I activate it? If not, how can I get it?
Thanks again. :)
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It is still called Mipmaps and it is a slider near the bottom in the 3d application settings menu.
As for EAX I don't know what you have.
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Mipmaps can be turned off in BC's Config menu...
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Mipmaps can be turned off in BC's Config menu...
Jimmy read up^ LOL I already suggested that first.
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OK, I determinately cant find the mipmap setting. This is what my 3d application settings menu looks like:
(http://i1108.photobucket.com/albums/h419/VonFrank/NewBitmapImage_zps396aa529.png)
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odd you should have it... try switching between advanced and basic views...
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Tried both. This is the advanced view. It must be under a different name.... but either way, I've tinkered with all of the settings in here and have had no luck at getting rid of the flashy black textures from a far distance.
As for my sound card, I think its a "Integrated IDT 92HD73E Audio" card.
I dont really know much about sound cards so I'm not even sure if this is its actual name or not. :idk:
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It looks to be a bug from AMD... I'd reinstall the GFX drivers because IT SHOULD BE THERE. XD
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It looks to be a bug from AMD... I'd reinstall the GFX drivers because IT SHOULD BE THERE. XD
I just reinstalled the latest drivers, so I don't think its that.
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new catalyst control center? you uninstalled everything first?
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Yes, I uninstalled everything.
I followed the instructions on the AMD/ATI websites on how to properly uninstall old versions and reinstall new ones. I also referenced a number of other online sources. So, I'm pretty sure I did it correctly.
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Sorry for the double post, but I have additional news.
Ok, so I still dont have a solution to the EAX issue. That is something I may not solve, and its not THAT big of an issue....
I noticed this thread http://bc-central.net/forums/index.php/topic,9690.0.html which seems to describe the exact same issue I'm having with the textures in my game. Still no solution.
As far as the framerate issue, I may have jumped the gun by saying it was solved....
Even when there is only one ship on the map, even when I'm just inside the bridge, even when I'm just at the main menu, there is a definite framerate issue in the game (looks like about only 15 - 20 fps). I found this thread http://bc-central.net/forums/index.php/topic,9564.0.html which seems to be describing my same issue. Unfortunately, the solution was to downgrade to Windows 7.... and I really would rather not do that.
Any help out there would be appreciated. Thanks again. :)
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dumb question but where did you install BC?
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Well, my PC has 3 drives.... the C drive (for the operating system), the D drive (for recovery) and the E drive (the large one which was empty when it was new)
I install everything in the E drive. The BC path is "E:\GAMES\Activision\Bridge Commander".
Does putting it in a different place make a difference?
EDIT
I put the game in "C:\Program Files (x86)\Bridge Commander" and go the same results.
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Well, my PC has 3 drives.... the C drive (for the operating system), the D drive (for recovery) and the E drive (the large one which was empty when it was new)
I install everything in the E drive. The BC path is "E:\GAMES\Activision\Bridge Commander".
Yeah I think you nailed it there...there really isn't much reason to put it in the default folder with Win7 and 8 because it tends to get all glitchy
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I know its been a bit since I've followed up on this, but since the problem is still not solved, I'm not letting it drop just yet.
Here's the current situation:
Win XP PC
Runs stock BC 1.1 at a solid 60 FPS
Runs my custom install at 60 FPS
Win 8 PC
Runs stock BC 1.1 at 30 FPS even at the main menu
Runs my custom install at 30 FPS even at the main menu
From the looks of it, my new pc cant seem to run the game faster than 30 fps. Since the specs are clearly not the issue there must be some other reason that inhibits the game and prevents it from reaching the full 60 fps.
Could this be due to a 64 bit system having a conflict with a 32 bit game? Does anyone know if BC runs at full 60 fps on windows 7 (which is also 64 bit)? I know that other 32 bit games run fine on my computer, so this may not be the issue either.
Any input would be valuable help to me and the BC community. Thanks :)
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do yo have vsync on?
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I have a setting in the Catalyst Control Panel called "Wait for Vertical Refresh" with the options "Always Off", "Off unless application specifies", "On unless application specifies", "Always ON"
Is this the same as vsync?
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that is vsync. It should be set on "off unless app specifies."
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Tried that. In fact I've tried all 4 settings and there has been no difference. The game still seems to be limited to 30 FPS.
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I know I'm reviving this thread after a whole year, but it's my thread and I have finally found a solution.
Apparently, Windows 8 seems to have some issue with limiting the framerate of older games when they run in fullscreen. Therefore, the solution is as simple as disabling fullscreen mode in the options.cfg file.
[Graphics Options]
Texture Detail|2
Number of Lights|8
MipMaps|1
Display Depth|32
Display Height|1080
LOD Skip|0
Visible Damage|3
Display Device=Direct3D T&L HAL on AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series
Display Width|1920
Fullscreen Mode|1 <------- ***CHANGE THIS TO 0 TO DISABLE FULLSCREEN MODE***
Effect Detail|3
When this setting is changed the game runs at full 60fps with no jitter or lag at all.
Because the game's resolution is set to the same as my desktop's native resolution, the game still looks like it fills the entire screen anyway. So it's a win-win situation. Problem solved with no negative side-effects.
Anyone else having similar problems with Windows 8 (in Bridge Commander or other games too) can try this to solve the issues. I hope it helps! :)