BOBII Performance

[buddye]

I really do not want to turn anyone away (or off) but I thought some of you who are considering purchasing BOBII and others who now own BOBII may want to take advantage of my many years as a BDG C++ coder to think about real time simulation performance. BobII is a very large complex real time simulation system (over 1 million source lines of C++ code).

BOBII is a very demanding Combat Flight Simulator as well as a BOB Strategy Commander and Single Player Campaign. It takes a good PC to run BOBII effectively (good processor and video card) and a good "gamer PC" to run BOBII at full settings (note: you do not have to run BOBII at full setting to enjoy it). BobII does need a Directx 9c compliant external video card to run. We have had almost no success getting on-board video to run BOBII and we do not recommend even trying it.

BOBII has a built in FPS counter (shift+F). The key is the minimum FPS (not the average). If you’re minimum FPS get below say 10 FPS for an extended time your game play will be affected (performance delays) and you may see some skips or jumps on the monitor.


The BOBII FPS counter is Shift+F. Try to keep your average FPS in the mid-20's to mid-30's but in the large battles in the campaign and historic Instant action with 100’s of A/C in the air may still over power your PC.

Here is a list of the big performance impacts and you may need to trade quality for performance:


horizon distance = medium (saves 15%) or low
weather = medium or low
particle density = Medium or low
Object Density = medium or low
Water = medium or low

Play with these and see if you can find the sweet spot and keep your FPS up to recommended levels.

The loading of BOBII files is a function of processor power and memory speed. On my PC (a late model Quad) the missions load fast (Historic London mission loads in 17 sec the first time). If your loading times are excessive, you may have software blocking the BOBII loading of files (virus, firewalls, spyware, etc). We have nothing but problems with Norton and it is very hard to turn off or disable for our customers.