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Final Approach - B17 Flying Fortress: The Mighty Eighth
By Len "Viking1" HjalmarsonHardware Notes
When I first installed the beta I ran with 128MB on a Celeron II at 733MHz. Load times were very long, and there was a great deal of disk swapping. Moving to 194MB improved the situation, reducing both load times and disk swapping. Frame rate was perfectly acceptable on this beta, however, and will improve with optimization.
Loading the game now takes 22 seconds on my Athlon at 735MHz with 128MB. It then takes 33 seconds to get to the 3d. At 990MHz with 194MB it takes 16 and 28 seconds respectively.
My frame rate was acceptable on the Celeron at 1024x768 and 16 bit color with maximum detail. What surprised me was how good the sim looked even at low res, 640x480. That will be a boon for low end systems. In all images you see here the GeForce2 GTS was set for 3x3 AA on high detail. Recently I have moved to an Athlon at 990MHz, 800x600 at 32bit depth. The image is improved with greater color depth and I can still run AA on low detail (3x3).
16 bit Color
32 bit Color
Here are two images of the same scene. The first image is cropped from a 1024x765 at 16 screen capture with 3x3 high detail. The second image is cropped from an 800x600 at 32 screen capture with 3x3 low detail. The slight banding in the 32bit image is actually a vapor trail from the Fort. To see the difference between these two images on your own monitor you will have to have your desktop set to 32 bit color.
