Credit for this article must go to Mac 4.0. Not only has he been a regular member of our forums, but he created the original thread which inspired me to create this article. The thread can be viewed in our forum here.

When Falcon 4 was released in 1998, one of the biggest moans about the sim was poor frame rate, the all important commodity that is essential for any 3D application. Since then F4 development has progressed, and we have seen more and more features added. In the last few months we have seen the release of 3 patches that for many are making people wonder "why is my FPS so bad???". These are BMS, SP4 and FreeFalcon3. With the incredible advances that these patches bring us, they also bring new features that can bring your CPU to it's knees such as advanced lighting, aircraft spawning, high resolution textures etc. This article will not provide advice on improving one particular patch, but will try and boost your fps regardless of your Falcon 4 flavour.

Regardless of the sim/game, there is a crucial balance to be achieved between visual appearance, and performance. For me it is unacceptable for my FPS to drop below 25, but at the same time if it is high at 50, it would suggests to me that my CPU/GPU are not working hard enough to deliver the best visual experience. The measure I suggest below do not all have to be used. It is up to you to pick and choose for the best results.

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Graphics Card

Falcon 4 used to be heavily dependent upon the number of cycles your CPU could kick out to generate the graphics you see on your screen. Although this is still the case, F4UT and BMS and worked hard to offload many of the graphics calculations from your CPU to your GPU. The main purpose of this was to free up the resources of your CPU so it could concentrate on the complicated mathematic equations that are required to control the AI, avionics and other essential features of the sim.

I cam only experienced with nVidia based graphics cards, so I apologise to aTi users if you feel left out, but I'm sure many of the recommendations I make below are still relevant to you.

Like all other parts of your PC, your GPU is highly tweakable. It is possible to change many of the settings through your control panel, but I would recommend installing RivaTuner as it will give you more options to play with. The latest version of this program can be downloaded from Guru3d.com.

Install and run the program. On the 'Driver Settings' section, click the small tab on the left next to 'Customize'. A new menu will then open, click the DirectX logo as shown below:

This will open up a new menu from where you can make adjustments to the DirectX settings for your graphics card.

You can navigate the sub-menu by clicking the appropriate buttons on the top.

Below is a list of settings that you can adjust to improve performance in Falcon 4. Just remember that any changes you make here will change the appearance of other games that use DirectX. As previously said, you do not have to make all the recommended changes, but you should experiment to get the best visual quality you can with the optimal performance. For each recommendation I will give a very brief explanation.

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MipMap LOD Bias Adjustment

This setting adjusts the crispness of textures at distance. A high positive setting will yield most performance at the cost of making them look blurred, whilst a high negative value will slow down the sim but make things look most crisp. I recommend experimenting between -1 (for a fast PC) and +1 (for a slower PC).

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VSync

Performance can be gained by turning off Vsync. However, if turned off it is also known to cause some graphics 'tearing'. If you see this ingame, you may wish to turn it back on. If you do leave it on, then a pre-render limit of 3 is a good balance.

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Textures

Under this tab there are 2 options you need to adjust to get a performance boost. The performance box will give you 5 options. I would recommend selecting performance, although here you should again experiment. The degree of anisotropy will determine how good textures look at distance. The best setting to have is to force level 8. However this comes at an FPS cost. If you decide to turn this feature off, you can do so by forcing level 1. This will yield most performance at a small visual cost.

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Anti-Aliasing

Your computer screen can only draw straight lines. All 3D models used in F4 are built from a series of connecting straight lines. Due to this, the image on the screen can often appear as jagged. Anti-aliasing is a method used by your graphics card to fool the eye by 'blurring' the jagged lines to make them appear more smooth. What methods of anti-aliasing are available to you will depend on your system. The most common methods are 2x, 4xs, 6x and 8x. All require more GPU/CPU time the higher the number. It is up to you what you use, but for performance I would recommend turning anti-aliasing off, or to 2x.

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Configuration Settings

I will assume that you know how to run the ConfigEditor / F4Patch. From here, there are several settings that can be adjusted to improve performance.

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Advanced Settings

Unchecking the 'Display Trees' tab will stop F4 from displaying 3d models of tree. This will boost performance as your system does not have to spend as much time drawing the 3d objects.

Checking the 'Realistic Attrition' box will improved performance. There is still a bug in Falcon4 where when an aircraft is destroyed it is not necessarily removed from the campaign. Checking the box will fix this, thus reducing the number of aircraft in a campaign over time, and it will also make the sim more realistic.

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BenchMarkSims Settings

Unchecking the above two settings may improve performance. I haven't tested either, but I have heard reports that it will. It is up to you to experiment.

I do not use the 3D clickable cockpit, so I do not see a reason for my CPU to waste it's time calculating it. Therefore I have left the box unchecked. Also, I do not need to use the auto-scaling feature, so I turn it off.

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Hardware Settings

Using 3D sound will incur an FPS hit due to the extra CPU workload. Although it adds an extra degree of realism to the sim, unchecking the box will improve performance. It has also been reported that using the old (simpler) sound algorithm will boost FPS

�Aircraft Spawning

Since the first FreeFalcon patch and SP4, we have seen a new feature in Falcon4 that was made possible in the SP3 executable which means aircraft 'spawn' at their airbase a while before takeoff, and remain parked up for a time after takeoff. This makes airbases look a lot more lively and realistic. However, this is very CPU intensive, as your system is doing many calculations for them. Turning them off will yield better performance.

This option is not currently available from the ConfigEditor/F4Patch, so will have to be done manually. To do this, go to your main F4 folder and open up falconbms.cfg or falconsp.cfg (depending on what version of F4 you are using) in notepad or any other text editor. About 20 lines from the bottom of the file you will find the following two lines:

// AB A/C spawn-> delay before taxiing (min.) set g_nReagTimer 10

// AB A/C despawn-> delay before disappearing (min.) set g_nDeagTimer 10

Change the value to 0 so they read as following:

// AB A/C spawn-> delay before taxiing (min.) set g_nReagTimer 0

// AB A/C despawn-> delay before disappearing (min.) set g_nDeagTimer 0

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In Game Settings

The next settings to play with can be found from the menu of Falcon 4. I assume everyone knows where that is. Here there are two main things to adjust: sound and graphics.

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Graphics Settings

The first recommendation is on the main graphics menu. I am assuming that you are using a version of BMS.

The Advanced Lighting requires some additional calculations by your CPU/GPU as the new executable introduced a feature that adds more lighting to the F4 terrain. If enable you will see better shadows and lighting on hills. However, I suggest turning it off to get more FPS.

The 3D clouds look magnificent. However, some may experience and FPS drop when flying near/through them. To get rid of this, turn them off. If you do choose to use the clouds, then I recommend turning off the Cloud Shadows. This can again incur and FPS hit due to the extra workload.

In the advanced settings I would recommend turning off the below two settings. Doing this will make the F4 world 'shimmer' a little, but you will see a definite FPS boost.

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Sound Settings

Below are the sound settings that I recommend switching off. BMS introduced a whole new sound engine into Falcon4 which make it a lot more realistic. However, with it came and FPS hit as is requires more work from your CPU. Turning the features off will boost performance.

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If you have any comments regarding the article, or wish to make a suggestion about additional information it should include, you can post in our forum here. Guests welcome.

ViperMan.

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