Hi all,

after all this years of playing the straight stock game versions i'd like to try with modding now.
Having updated my stock game to 4.10.1 lately everything seems to run well.

I now got IL-2 selector from SAS. My first question after reading the tutorial was:
What is the sense of this RAM-adjusting? Over in some sas forum posts i red it is made for optimized virtual RAM use,
others and the tutorial are speaking of physical RAM use.
It isn't clear to me now why my system (windows 7/64, i7 870, 8 GB RAM) status appears to be 'critical' when setting the IL-2 selector to more than 1024 RAM use.
Do i need these RAM adjustments really?
My il2fb.exe once was patched to '4GB RAM' use but i never discovered any difference in gameplay.

ATB
Armin

Hallo Armin,

I'd say if everything works okay with your current settings, then don't mess with it. I have not checked lately, but I think I'm running DBW with the 1024 setting, and never had any problems.. I'll try to confirm that setting when I get home.

My understanding of the RAM setting, is that it's not so much whether it uses virtual or physical RAM, but how much RAM can be addressed by the sim's exe. For example, there is a little program (can't recall the name now) that will make Flight Simulator 2004 'large address aware', so those with large amounts of RAM can make full use of it.. as much as the program can handle. Although I think FS2004 is setup to handle a bit more than the programmers for IL2 ever thought about.. understandable, since IL2 is an older title. FSX on the other hand, does not even have that problem.. it's ready to consume whatever we throw at it.

Although if you can't resist temptation; you might experiment with higher settings using the selector.. I don't think you'll break anything. Worst case, the sim might crash; but if it does, just keep lowering the setting until it plays nice.

I run DBW with 1024MB RAM as well and have seen no problems. I've heard the same about the RAM settings. It's worth remembering the IL2FB engine is about 10 years old, back when most computers only had 32-64MB of memory and "monster" rigs had 128MB.

Another thing to bear in mind is that the RAM setting is sometimes counter-intuitive. It is related to the way in which the old game engine allocates its resources and not as simple as whack up the RAM=better performance.

Sometimes a higher RAM setting can prevent a mission from loading (the paratroopers error). This can happen in the case of big scenery intense missions with a lot of content, like in my campaigns.

I run fine with a 512 RAM setting but do play a lot of BIG missions.

Good to hear you have made the plunge Armin. DBW 1.71 is the way to go and you will soon be flying your own Ju52s and Gigants! The big Luftwaffe transports are great fun to fly in DBW, like proper heavies you have to plan your manouvres some time in advance!

Well I believe the RAM settings that you can fiddle with in Storbror's selector has to do with the amount of RAM allocated to the JVM (Java Virtual Machine) and according to Storebror himself most of us (95%) should be OK with 256 Mb (stock game only allocates 96Mb ...)

Only guys working on very big maps with big actors.static should experiment with values around 512Mb and above ...

QUOTES:

"For any system the best RAM setting is the lowest one working well.
It would make me wonder if anyone really needs more than 256MB (keeping in mind that stock IL-2 gets along with 96MB), so that's where I'd start with on a 32 Bit system.
Maybe map builders need more for the fmb, don't know since I ain't a map builder."

"On 32-Bit systems, apply these warning levels:
<= 256MB green
257-512MB green-yellow
513-768MB yellow warning
769-1024MB orange warning
>1024MB red warning
On 64-Bit systems, apply these warning levels:
<= 512MB green
513-1024MB green-yellow
1025-1536MB yellow warning
1537- max. virtual free process RAM orange warning
>max. virtual free process RAM red warning"

"Honestly I've never faced any situation with this new selector where I needed to select more than 256MB RAM.
However on Win7 64 Bit I haven't had any issue with 512MB either.
I'd recommend to stay within these limits, should work for 95% of us."

We should bear in mind that when IL2 was released, way back, most GCs had nothing more than 64MB, so a lot of work was given to the CPU, and today it is the CPU that is the bottleneck in most cases ...

Just read this ...

http://www.battle-fields.com/commscentre/showthread.php?21804-IL2-hardware-and-UltraPack-Performance-Analysis

http://www.battle-fields.com/commscentre/showthread.php?21901-Want-to-buy-a-new-videocard-for-IL2-Think-again...-%28and-testers-needed%29

Hi all,
thank you very much for your helpful replies.
Taking a bit more of my time currently to look for mods of my interest
i already saw amazing things like a stunning desertmap (redko remade v1 at sas).
Fw190A8 droptank option and the TBD-1 are of my very interest too.
It seems there are still some carrier take off & torpedo run issues with the the mod version of the devastator (posts at sas).
Have to figure out how to implement these single mods exactly...

Surely will come back soon with new questions.

Again thanks a lot for your support

ATB
Armin

Armin

are you familiar with JSGME? Because with DBW 1.71, you will be able to have any mod you desire with a single click in JSGME. We are making up aircraft packs for everything flyable and special object and effect packs for my campaigns. The new Claymore FW-190s are coming, I have them as a JSGME pack and I'm flying them now, and anything else you see or want will be supported if you have DBW 1.71 working.

Simon (Monty27)