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[SAS~Storebror]

Thanks for pointing this out Mick.
I recently had to re-enable the S3TC texture compression when I took 8K screenshots with LOD bias set to -3 on my GTX 970, it's never too late to remember the old GPU tricks

Besides that, I've read complaints about the effects on CUP a couple of times now.
How about trying one of the other effects mods which are floating around at SAS?
There's as many effects mods available as there are rats under the red square.
Just pick one of your choice and try if it helps. If you don't know what I'm talking about, the "light effects" pack from DBW (can be found in the JSGME mods which ship with DBW) might be a good starting point.

Now let me add a little bit to the confusion

Number of aircraft in the package (here: WAW) only affects initial loading speed of the game.
Game performance is affected by the number of activated aircraft only. Those which are remed out in the air.ini do not count, as they are not loaded.

No, no and no
There's three reasons in total which might trigger the loading process of an aircraft:

• air.ini entry
  The most known aicraft load trigger is an entry in the air.ini file.
  Not much to say here, as soon as you remove the regarding line from air.ini or comment out that line, this load trigger will not apply.
• stationary.ini entry
  Less known but same mechanism:
  There's the "[StationaryPlanes]" section in the file "stationary.ini" in the same folder where your air.ini is located.
  Since stationary planes are mostly just another incarnation of the "original" ones, usually an entry in that section will cause the regarding aircraft class to get loaded as well.
  Again, as soon as you remove the regarding line from air.ini or comment out that line, this load trigger will not apply.
• allc entry
  What? Never heard of that? You're not alone
  There's an encrypted "allc" list file in the "cod" folder of files.sfs, it appears just as a number file like any other file in that folder (there's more than 20.000 of them).
  This "allc" list contains all base game classes and it's parsed right in the beginning when the game starts.
  As a result, all base game classes enlisted here (and that's literally all classes of the stock game) will get loaded regardless whether or not they're listed in air.ini or stationary.ini.
  There's no way to circumvent this but to change the game's Main class (not recommended, comes with ugly side effects) or to get hands on this encrypted "allc" file.

Best regards - Mike

[sniperton]

@ Mick: I have all of them as given by you, but with no avail.
@ Mike: Thanks again ('let's look to the bottom of the thing', as Sherlock liked to put), but is there any theoretic chance that commenting out maps and ground units would bring back FPS the same way as it does with aircraft?

[SAS~Storebror]

Just to let you know, I did a short test with modified classes in order to prohibit the initial class loading from the magic "allc" file and in order to bypass the initial aircraft class loading from "air.ini".
Turns out that unfortunately the game relies on a fully loaded set of classes in many places of the stock game code.
While getting rid of the "allc" class preloading was comparably easy and brought little side effects (mostly it makes all crt checks impossible, but that's no big deal for C.U.P.), skipping the pre-parsing of "air.ini" needs a lot of sidework in other stock game classes.

I doubt we will have a quick solution here and if at all, it's still uncertain whether this really solves the issue we're trying to fight, the "imaginary air classes limit".

Nevertheless, it's something worth wasting a couple more coffee breaks on...

Best regards - Mike

[sniperton]

Thank you Mike for all your efforts and coffee breaks! 

[Chupacabras84]

@Storebror
Is it known what causes the issue exactly?
Are those classes are exceeding allowable memory or something?
I mean from the looks of it its closely tied to CPU but what does CPU has to do with all those classes being loaded?

In any case, sorry guys I tried to make air.ini for part 12 but I couldn't do it, I could get old performance disabling many aircraft but at this point it was unusable since no theatre of operation could be made even divided by time periods it was too fragmented to be of much fun.
From previous set only stock air.ini provided good fps but its not like you have WaW because you want to use stock planes.
WaW part 9 and 10 had better fps than part 12 but again, to match performance of a stock game too much planes had to be disabled.
So yeah, I am rolling back to WaW part 8 and staying there till I get a better PC.

[SAS~Storebror]

Is it known what causes the issue exactly?

Not exactly.
We know that there's an imaginary "wall" being hit when the number of loaded classes exceeds a specific limit which, despite being in the same range, isn't quite the same for every PC.
We also know that aircraft classes matter most in this case, other classes like ships, cars, weapons and "general" stuff don't seem to matter much.
This seems to be an issue within the Java Virtual Machine and we seem to be the first to face it, which makes sense because projects of the dimension like a modded IL-2 were simply unthinkable in the times where Java 1.3 was up to date.

Best regards - Mike

[Chupacabras84]

We know that there's an imaginary "wall" being hit when the number of loaded classes exceeds a specific limit which, despite being in

Sounds like memory limit decided by max available memory percentage or something like that.

[decipher]

if we are already discussing this (very interesting) topic i have a question:

does the il-2 selector memory setting have any influence on il-2 related to this specific problem? the amount of memory we can choose and also the
type of memory allocation strategy (balanced, conservative, heap only).

does that have any influence on the "imaginary wall" you mentioned, or anything else related?

[edc1]

Hi sniperton and DougW60,
Re replys #66 and 72,
I have just completed flying an increased number of aircraft on one map (nothing added except aircraft)
to see if the number of aircraft flying drops the FPS here are the results:-
 Up to 28 aircraft no change in 60 FPS even when speeding up x8
  No of aircraft........FPS normal Speed .....(.X8 ..outside......cockpit)
        40         .........      60     ................  15 FPS   .......   34FPS
        44                        60                        12                    27
        48                        60                        10                    13
        52                        60                          9                    12
        56                        60                          9                    11
Increasing the speed x2 or 4 in all cases FPS remained at 60.
So in the missions  I am building I have over 80 aircraft flying and my FPS are 60, this drops to 4 FPS when I speed up X8.
Still not sure if its my CPU,or Graphics card or the program itself that can not handle the x8 increased speed as when using in normal speed the frame rate is 60.
I only use x8 when testing a mission I feel quite lucky with my 60 FPS display, but still unsure if I should up load my missions
in case I get bad reviews about frame rates making the missions unplayable.
Cheers edc1 (stan)

[SAS~Storebror]

Sounds like memory limit decided by max available memory percentage or something like that.

No, it's not memory, it's something else.
Something's exceeding it's limits, e.g. the properties, weapon hashes etc. (all of these aircraft have plenty of, in contrast to other IL-2 objects, and that's the key).
These things are stored in "ArrayLists" and they seem to be the path to the problem's root. Seem. Nothing's for sure yet.

does the il-2 selector memory setting have any influence on il-2 related to this specific problem? the amount of memory we can choose and also the
type of memory allocation strategy (balanced, conservative, heap only).

No, unfortunately not, as the inner cause for the trouble isn't memory related.

I have over 80 aircraft flying

Absolutely unrelated.
When you have many aircraft flying, even if they're of the same type, then you will always face FPS drops, in particular when raising the game speed.
It's simply that your CPU can't perform all the plane's calculations (flight model, AI pilot manoeuvres etc.) in time anymore.
That happens on Stock IL-2 in the very same way.

What we're talking about isn't the number of aircraft flying, but the number of distinctive aircraft being available when the game is running, i.e. the number of aircraft available in the aircraft dropdown list in your QMB.

Best regards - Mike

[edc1]

Hi Mike,
Thanks for the info on my speed problem. 
 I can now put that one to bed and not worry about it, and start to save up for a better CPU then my I7 4790 @4GHz.
Cheers edc1 (stan)

[sniperton]

... and start to save up for a better CPU then my I7 4790 @4GHz.

LOL  Don't kill me with such jokes! 

My problem is still that even with Chupa's 4.12 air.ini I get very bad framerates, while considerably more aircraft in my air.ini doesn't cause such performance drop in HSFX. If it could be sorted out somehow it would be possible to create three theatre air.inis:

Eastern Front: no trainers, no prototypes or futuristic designs, no Japanese, no Western Allies (except Land-Lease);
Western Front: no trainers, no prototypes or futuristic designs, no Japanese, no Soviet
Pacific: no trainers, no prototypes or futuristic designs, no Soviet, no German or European Axis

In many cases there are several subtypes for one aircraft, but I would be happy with a few major types running smoothly as well. I simply don't need all the 109s, 190s, and Spitfires.