Playing iL2 on iMac, best settings????

[Bussta]

Hello,

I am new to this forum and would like some advise.

I have recently bought a brand new 20" iMAc and am running XP through bootcamp.

I have bougght and loaded iL2 onto my machine, it runs, however, I am fairly dissapointed with the graphics, when looking out on the wing it doesn't look as smooth as I had hoped. And externally looking at the plane it doesn't look as good as I hoped. The spec of my mac should be more than capable of handling it ( I have addded the spec below)

I am running the Complete edition which has Forgotten Battles, Aces Expansion & Pacific Fighters all on it.

Is there anyone on here that plays iL2 on a mac and can let me know the best settings to use as I really want to be amazed by this much hyped game!


I have added my spec below for you to see, any ideas?

20" iMac intel Core Duo 2
2.16 ghz
2 gig Ram
256 mb ATI x1600


Thanks in advance

[na85]

If you're running windows XP on your mac, then it shouldn't be any different than a PC.

Try running IL2setup.exe, located in your main IL2 folder. My computer is much crappier than yours, and the game looks pretty good for me.

My IL2setup.exe options:

res - 1024x768x16 <----- yours can be much higher, and with 32 bit colour instead of 16
Use Stencil Buffer - checked
Provider - OpenGL

You can also go ingame to the Hardware Setup menu, and under Video Modes (i think) make sure "Object Detail" is set to "Excellent"

Hope this helps.

[Bussta]

Thanks,

I have set it to those settings,

Perhaps I am forgetting that the game is a few years old, but some of the screen shots that I have seen it looks a lot more polished to what I am getting, especially the external views of the plane e.t.c

I think I have to do some more tweaking, the main problem seems to be that the iMAc has a native screen res of 1600 x 1050, which isn't an option in the games setup.exe and the other resolutions make it look stretched or odd.

Anyone?

[na85]

Interestingly enough, my laptop has native res of 1400x1050, and that option appears in the in-game Video Options menu but not in il2setup.exe.... weird.

Here's a screenshot of what my game looks like at 1024x768, for reference's sake

[Bussta]

Ok Thanks ma85,

I'll try and do a screen capture when I get home to show you how it looks, just off hand how do you do one while in game??

Bussta

[na85]

printscreen to take a screen

[IV/JG1_Oesau]

Printscreen will take a screen capture in tga file format. It can be found in the root directory of IL2.

What video card settings do you have? AA and AF settings play a huge part in the way it looks.

These shots are from 2005, and I think that they look pretty good: http://www.airwarfare.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=420

[Bussta]

Thanks IV/JG1_Oesau,

I have got a 256mb ATI Rage x1600 Card in it.

I have got the settings to excellent in game, how do you change the AA & AF??

The main problem that I seem to be having is using the catalyst drivers in xp on the mac as for some reason it doesn't seem to recognise the card, am not sure if that helps?

I will add a screen shot for you to judge, I was playing it yesterday, it does look ok, but am sure it could be better, also the sound seems fine, except when I fire the guns and it seems to focus only on the machine gun sound which is a bit muffled then go back to the main sound after, is this the same for you?

[IV/JG1_Oesau]

You can change this in the ATI control panel, however as you are having issues with the drivers not being recognised not to sure how you can control the AA and AF settings.

There are some other apps you can use, will have to find the one that I use at home (at work at the moment and can't remember what it is, maybe Max might now). This goes directly to the card which you can control the settings.

I think you'll fund once you get these tweaked it'll look great.

[MaXMhZ]

If your card is not recognised by the Catalyst drivers, you might have more success with ATITrayTools, or just right-click empty desktop space, properties etc.
New graphics drivers from the system's manufacturer might do the trick too.
Whenever possible select native screen resolution. There are entries for "width" and "height" in conf.ini. changing those will adjust the resolution the game is run in.If it's a widescreen display, set SaveAspect=0 (this will clip regions from top and bottom, but will keep the screen filled without black bars. All these settings are under the [window] section in conf.ini - take care conf.ini is case-sensitive and if editing with notepad, don't let it add .txt extention.
To get the best looking picture, you need OpenGL, use stencil buffer, 32bits colour and manual select Landscape Detail as "Perfect"under video options in-game.
AnIsotropic filtering will make textures that are slanted towards the viewpoint (runways e.g.) look a lot better - Anti-Aliasing will make non-perpendicular lines look less "jaggy" This can be done by increasing the resolution too without much impact on FPS. ATI is very good at AnIso and Anti-Alias though - It should not have much performance impact.
I would fiddle around a bit with sound settings too. (il2setup.exe) This can have a big impact on performance.

[Bussta]

Thanks for your help! will give that a go!

[MaXMhZ]

I didn't find much on the Rage X1600, but If it's a fairly modern X1600Pro GPU you can expect ecellent performance with everything maxed out; this means high FPS, reflective water with gorgeous waves and all the other eyecandy. check out the section about conf.ini in the Community Created Manual - especialy try
water=4
TypeClouds=1
Forest=3

There are some really great custom skins available from our sister site http://www.mission4today.com in the Skins section over there.

[MaXMhZ]

HMS Illustrious in the bay of Napels (4.08m)
ATI Radeon 6900, water=4, screenshot with ATITrayTools, resampled (smart resize) with PSP X: