[bsides]

First of all thank you so much for this. It's very appreciated.

I have an average desktop (core2duo, 4gb ram, 8800gt 512, windows 7 64bit etc) but I also have a notebook (core2duo, 4gb ram, ati 2400, 64bit windows 7) and in my notebook the game is slowed by a ton. I know it's not supposed to be lightning fast (it's a notebook after all) but I tried to tweak it to no success - either the graphics are too poor presented (even Tibia looks better) or my FPS drops to the floor.

Could anyone do a tweak to make it a good performance (main focus) but also not loosing so much of the looks?

Thanks in advance!

[Emasym]

cezzet said:

Thank you, but it doesn't work :cry: Btw. Aion looks very nice with some of option, but its annoying that you must optimized it every time when you launch game :angry:

It does work.. o.O. Delete system.cfg, put the system.ovr file in there, and launch the game. Only thing you should manually enable is FOV 100, which is by pressing the Pause/Break key, and typing '\g_minfov 100'

[Aleste]

bsides said:

First of all thank you so much for this. It's very appreciated.

I have an average desktop (core2duo, 4gb ram, 8800gt 512, windows 7 64bit etc) but I also have a notebook (core2duo, 4gb ram, ati 2400, 64bit windows 7) and in my notebook the game is slowed by a ton. I know it's not supposed to be lightning fast (it's a notebook after all) but I tried to tweak it to no success - either the graphics are too poor presented (even Tibia looks better) or my FPS drops to the floor.

Could anyone do a tweak to make it a good performance (main focus) but also not loosing so much of the looks?

Thanks in advance!

Thanks for the compliment bsi, its very likely possible to make some tweaking to get better performance than what you can get using the default options. But this will require that we know which settings actually work, and what values give the best performance/visual ratio.

I,m sure lots of settings will eventually float as more people start testing. As far as my personal experience is concerned, here are the things that tend to consume the most performance.

1- Shadows

Shadow effects consume ram, consume CPU power and also consume GPU power since each shadow needs to be shaded and rendered, and the there are the worse. So whatever it is an optimum setting means, it needs to start with the settings the affect shadows, and there are a lot of those.

2- Lightning effects

There are many settings to control lightning, for people who want the best performance during fortress sieges.They may want to set ' e_dynamic_light= "0" ' even though the game tends to do this automatically, but it tends to wait until your framerate is below 10. So if you don't mind flat looking player models, you can use this command while in-game.

3- Your HDD

The hidden factor, if you stutter alot and your HDD is going red frequently. You are bottle-necked either by your HDD speed or the amount of RAM you have. And its more likely the former.

4- Special effects, particles, Object\terrain LOD... etc

Finding optimum values will also require lots of testing.

So as i you can see, it will take time until a list is shaped. The more people that contribute the faster that will be.

This post has been edited by Aleste: 03 November 2009 - 02:49 PM

[ahrensy]

I just want to add some insight on a common misconception present in this thread:

You do not need to delete the system.cfg file first.

The .ovr file works in addition to the .cfg file. From my testing it appears that any options added to the .ovr take priority over any options in the existing .cfg file.

So here's what I've been doing:

1. Start by ensuring there is no system.ovr file.

2. Open Aion, and choose a basic configuration of settings from the in game options

So for example I make sure all the settings are maxed out because I know my system can handle the max settings and more. But if you need a performance profile, start by setting up lower settings that you know run ok for you (say a decent 50 FPS).

Exit Aion - this will save your (basic) .cfg file.

3. Now create a system.ovr file. Explicitly add any settings that you desire.

So for example I'll add the console command to give me console access (so that I can change the FOV ingame), add additional graphics settings to improve the look (Anisotropic filtering, contrast upped to .6 instead of .5, etc), and I'll add g_showFps = 1, so that the game shows me the FPS by default... and I'll improve the max sound channels from 28 to 120 (because my sound card has 128 channels): not certain if that part works though... etc.

But a performance profile might explicitly lower some settings such as the particle count, viewing distance, etc... (or just add console access if the settings in step 1 work fine)


4. Open Aion.

Note: The first time you open Aion after modifying the .ovr file, you'll need to exit Aion again, and then re-open... and Wallah! You're new settings have been applied.

So what appears to be happening (from my experience) is that Aion will first load the .cfg settings you created in step 1, and then apply extra any settings specified in the .ovr file. If the .ovr file contains settings that are also specified by the .cfg, they override them. Eg. If you initially chose AAx4 in step 1, specifying AAx8 in the .ovr will leave you with AAx8 when you run the game. Or if you later decide that AAx8 was too much, you might lower it down to AAx2 (by editing your .ovr file) to improve your performance (without losing all your other existing settings), and then re-open the game to apply those new settings.


PS to Aleste: When you say Lightning, I assume you mean Lighting? Lighting and Lightning are completely separate things.

This post has been edited by ahrensy: 03 November 2009 - 07:11 PM

[Elloria]

I read through this thread but I dont think anyone replied to the question. Would this get us in trouble? I don't want to edit files and loose my account because this is against the rules...

[ahrensy]

If you're concerned about the legality of accessing settings that affect only the aesthetic look and feel of the game, but that provide no advantage nor any power to cheat to get any in-game advantage to the player, read the EULA that you accept every time you play.

Don't take my word for it when I say "Of course this is not against the rules".

EDIT: Personally, I'd be happy to quit Aion if I heard that anybody got banned for changing graphics settings. However, if anyone manages to find and use any functions that do provide a competitive advantage, banning would be appropriate.

This post has been edited by ahrensy: 04 November 2009 - 03:00 AM

[Emasym]

Elloria said:

I read through this thread but I dont think anyone replied to the question. Would this get us in trouble? I don't want to edit files and loose my account because this is against the rules...

You're not changing files, you're not ripping textures or meshes, you're not replacing models by a giant pikachy. You're editting available settings directly from the Cry Engine.

[Fallen87]

Ok got a new problem now I got file to save as the ovr file now when I put the file into the aion folder and I got rid of renew_dat stuff.

I load the game as admin, login, the EULA pops up I agree to it and once I click accept it just hangs at the a blank screen and never loads to the character selection screen.

-------------------------

Fallen87 said:

Ok got a new problem now I got file to save as the ovr file now when I put the file into the aion folder and I got rid of renew_dat stuff.

I load the game as admin, login, the EULA pops up I agree to it and once I click accept it just hangs at the a blank screen and never loads to the character selection screen.

Never mind got it to work running with out the run as admin function and now it works properly.

This post has been edited by Fallen87: 04 November 2009 - 09:17 AM
Reason for edit: Automerged Double-Post.

[Arxachilleus]

I still cant open the ingame console with the PauseBreak button :( Any tips pls? I use a simple Microsoft WIred Keyboard

[Azra1L]

Good stuff there mate, indeed helpful.

Though i have some trouble with my graphic settings lately, and i hope you can help me -

My graphic settings not saving, mainly my screen resolution & detail settings (from background till shader quality). i tried any tipp available on the interwebs, to no avail.

i can't run my game as administrator, because i use windows vista home premium, the checkbox is gray
i changed my settings (on login screen and ingame), quit the game and made the system.cfg file read-only
i added the settings to my system.ovr
i added the settings to my system.cfg file and made it read-only

i use these:

Quote

r_Width = "1600"
r_Height = "1200"
r_FullScreenWidth = "1600"
r_FullScreenHeight = "1200"
r_FullScreen = "1"

whatever i try, the game just resets my resolution to 1280x960, also my detail settings to some semi-good settings that might fit for the average pc out there. if i change them, they only save until i quit & start the game again.
most of the other options do save, though.

This post has been edited by Azra1L: 04 November 2009 - 12:19 PM

[Aleste]

Hi Azrail,

First of all, don't pay attention to the detail sliders in the UI. They will always be at 80% even if you have twice the normal max setting. They do not reflect the actual settings that are running.

For your resolution issue, i would recommend setting the resolution the through the default UI. And delete anything resolution related including 'Fullscreen' settings from your system.ovr

Also make sure that you don't have 'Widescreen' setting in your system.ovr, its bugged and doesn't work properly. After you exit Aion, do not delete the new system.cfg that will be created.

See if that fix it for you.

@Arch

Make sure that you named system.ovr correctly, and not system.ovr.txt , check the description of the file, it should say 'OVR file document'

This post has been edited by Aleste: 04 November 2009 - 03:28 PM

[nexile]

Not sure if I'm doing something wrong, I read through this thread a few times now. It seems the .ovr file is working fine as I can access the console and all that but in my opinion, my game doesn't look any better. Isn't that what this was supposed to do? It actually looks worse. I'm not sure how to describe some things but when I launch my game, it doesn't look good again until I re-enable AA and use a bloom effect in the ingame menu.

[ahrensy]

Nexile, if you don't use the file to set settings above the in-game max possible settings, you won't see a difference (and it could very easily be worse). And even then, the noticible-difference will be minimal (depending on the settings you change), unless you take before and after screenshots of the exact same image in-game. But if you play with higher settings for a while, you'll notice it more if you were to try going back to the original settings.

As an example of a noticible setting however, try changing the r_contrast setting. Normally it defaults to 0.5. Try setting it to 0.9. You will notice a huge difference, however, you probably won't like it (0.9 is WAY too high). But 0.55 or 0.6 makes everything a lot less washed out, and you should appreciate the difference.

This post has been edited by ahrensy: 04 November 2009 - 09:52 PM

[nexile]

Well the contrast made this worth it I guess^^ But basically I recently bought a new pc and would love to just have best looking game I can have. I've gone through the config and made sure all the settings are at their ideal values.. I just can't notice much of a difference at all. I do notice a negative thing though, where the very edge of anything (noticed mostly on buildings and static things like landscape and such) move and it's much more noticeable when I'm moving or moving the camera as well. I'm awful at explaining it but I know someone knows what I'm talking about:p I'm unsure whether it's an antialiasing thing (because I'm not EXACTLY clear on what AA does) but I know changing the ingame AA setting to x8 makes my game look better again. So I guess that could be because it's fixing it OR because changing my ingame settings is basically cancelling a lot of other settings added from the .ovr file.

[Aleste]

@Nexile

Post your system.ovr settings here, use code tags.

[Azra1L]

Aleste said:

First of all, don't pay attention to the detail sliders in the UI. They will always be at 80% even if you have twice the normal max setting. They do not reflect the actual settings that are running.

i can assure that at least the detail settings shown in the UI are shown somewhat correct for me.
when i used my fps boost settings, with every graphic setting set to lowest possible value, it would always reset them to these default 80% crap next time i start the game, and the game looked accordingly good, with poor fps in crowed areas.
so i'd expect the details shown are accurate. what i did notice, when i change some settings, the game will tell me that it needs to restart to have these settings take effect. but it doesn't matter if i leave these settings out, or change only these settings - the game will still reset them all.

the resolution is another story - i have yet to see a difference from 1280x900 to 1600x1200, if i change these the fov doesn't really seem to get any bigger for me. i will see today what happens if i set them lower and get some screenshots.

these graphic settings issues are a pain in the *** tbh.

Aleste said:

For your resolution issue, i would recommend setting the resolution the through the default UI. And delete anything resolution related including 'Fullscreen' settings from your system.ovr

Also make sure that you don't have 'Widescreen' setting in your system.ovr, its bugged and doesn't work properly. After you exit Aion, do not delete the new system.cfg that will be created.

default UI meaning the logon screen?
if yes, then yea i tried all that, and i'd never use widescreen since i play on 4:3.

This post has been edited by Azra1L: 05 November 2009 - 03:27 AM

[Beoko]

This information is also available on Fyyre's website, but I don't recall how in-depth he went with the actual graphical changes per setting. It's good to see people actively pursuing in-game customization (wru scripting interface). I have two questions:

1) Is there a known setting that affects (corrects) the text distortion on 1920x1200 resolution?

2) Not entirely related to graphics- but is there any method (whether through settings or some other file) that shows keybinds and their saved settings?

The first question is probably not something that can be corrected on the user-end; but I thought I'd ask anyway. The second question is out of frustration to creating new characters and having to reassign keybinds/reconfigure chat tabs every single time.

[ahrensy]

Beoko said:

1) Is there a known setting that affects (corrects) the text distortion on 1920x1200 resolution?

1. To me it sounds like your monitor doesn't have a native resolution of 1920x1200.

My 24in does, and the text is not distorted at all. It's beautiful :)

-------------------------

Beoko said:

This information is also available on Fyyre's website

Wow I googled Fyyre's website, there's some very good documentation there if you know what you're looking for.

Thanks mate ;)

This post has been edited by ahrensy: 05 November 2009 - 05:50 PM
Reason for edit: Automerged Double-Post.

[djn]

nice finally a way to gank grapics down to worst possible **** ever just like in fps games <3

no1 needs super grapics want best view out there dont need see lil **** spider hangin on cord from a tree <3
details are non factor time to gank grapics down q3 style wewt!

[Beoko]

ahrensy said:

1. To me it sounds like your monitor doesn't have a native resolution of 1920x1200.

My 24in does, and the text is not distorted at all. It's beautiful :)

Unfortunately, the problem isn't my monitor (which does have a native 1920x1200). Aion is the only program with this issue. However, I did find a small work around:

AMD Game Forums - Aion + Catalyst 9.8 & 9.9 Corrupted Font

Of course, this is only a band-aid. It doesn't affect scaling outside of the game's UI (Notably, the login page's text). In game, it helps somewhat. Hopefully there will be a fix for it in the future.

ahrensy said:

Wow I googled Fyyre's website, there's some very good documentation there if you know what you're looking for.

Thanks mate ;)

You're welcome. ^^