The A2A Simulations Community

Greetings all from the USA in Mississippi.

I'm a married (happily) middle aged man who has been interested in Aviation for my entire life. Been around and "flying" various flight sims for years. I recently found BOBII WOV a couple weeks ago and have been prowling this forum scrounging what information I could before I decided to give this sim a try. My wife bought it for me as a fathers day gift! She is such a sweet heart.
Rarely does a game now a days live up to the advertised system requirements. Take for instance the advertised system requirements for BOBII wov quoted below:

"SYSTEM SPECIFICATIONS (MINIMUM):
Win98SE, Me, 2000, XP
Pentium III 800Mhz
256MB RAM
1GB Hard Drive Space
128MB DX9 Compliant Video Card

SYSTEM SPECIFICATIONS (RECOMMENDED):
Pentium IV or equal AMD
512MB RAM
256MB DX9 Compliant Video Card"

The system I have meets and exceeds the advertised (RECOMMENDED) requirements. I would hope and expect since it met the recommended that BOBII would run with the graphics maxed out. That is not the case. (I'll post some of my dxdiag report further down.) Then again the advertisement may have been right on the mark for version 2.06, but there is no warning or footnote that the latest version needs a system with better specs. Check for yourself here http://www.a2asimulations.com/bob/

Sadly this is not the first, nor will it be the last game that does not live up to the advertisements. (Then again, I never ran version 2.06, I jumped to version 2.11 right off.) FSX was another such let down.

Seriously, there needs to be more honesty in advertising products.

With that said, I must say my PC can handle BOBII wov fairly well but not fully maxed in every level, except clouds and particles are set to low.
PRO
This sim in my opinion is among the best I have flown. Visually the aircraft are pleasing to look at, and I enjoy the padlock view very much.

CON
The realistic mode is a bit over done. Real aircraft are not as fragile as eggs. (Yes I once was a real life small plane pilot for awhile, so know a little in that regard.)

PRO
I can fly / fight in very crowded skies of 100+ aircraft at a non slide show FPS. These huge air battles are simply amazing!
I also like the recording option which was one of the big selling points for me. I'm still getting used to the player controls.

CON
The player seems a bit ....cludgy, but somewhat usable for the most part. Sometimes not ALL aircraft are shown at various points when running a replay. For instance, my fighter appears to be shooting at nothing, when in fact an enemy aircraft is present, just not visible.


My partial dxdiag report below:
------------------
System Information
------------------

Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 3 (2600.xpsp_sp3_gdr.111025-1629)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: Compaq Presario 061

BIOS: Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PG
Processor: Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU 3.06GHz
Memory: 2046MB RAM
Page File: 489MB used, 3450MB available
Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
DxDiag Version: 5.03.2600.5512 32bit Unicode

------------
DxDiag Notes
------------
DirectX Files Tab: No problems found.
Display Tab 1: No problems found.
Sound Tab 1: No problems found.
Music Tab: No problems found.
Input Tab: No problems found.
Network Tab: No problems found.

--------------------
DirectX Debug Levels
--------------------
Direct3D: 0/4 (n/a)
DirectDraw: 0/4 (retail)
DirectInput: 0/5 (n/a)
DirectMusic: 0/5 (n/a)
DirectPlay: 0/9 (retail)
DirectSound: 0/5 (retail)
DirectShow: 0/6 (retail)

---------------
Display Devices
---------------
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce 8400GS
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip type: GeForce 8400GS
DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_10C3&SUBSYS_066D10DE&REV_A2
Display Memory: 1024.0 MB
Current Mode: 1366 x 768 (32 bit) (60Hz)
Monitor: AOC 831W
Monitor Max Res: 1366,768
Driver Name: nv4_disp.dll
Driver Version: 6.14.0012.8558 (English)
DDI Version: 9 (or higher)
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
Driver Date/Size: 10/7/2011 23:50:00, 4226688 bytes
WHQL Logo'd: Yes
WHQL Date Stamp: n/a
VDD: n/a
Mini VDD: nv4_mini.sys
Mini VDD Date: 10/7/2011 23:50:00, 12791488 bytes
Device Identifier: {D7B71E3E-5383-11CF-0052-612603C2CB35}
Vendor ID: 0x10DE
Device ID: 0x10C3
SubSys ID: 0x066D10DE
Revision ID: 0x00A2
Revision ID: 0x00A2
Video Accel: ModeMPEG2_C ModeMPEG2_D

-------------------
DirectInput Devices
-------------------
Device Name: Mouse
Attached: 1
Controller ID: n/a
Vendor/Product ID: n/a
FF Driver: n/a

Device Name: Keyboard
Attached: 1
Controller ID: n/a
Vendor/Product ID: n/a
FF Driver: n/a

Device Name: Logitech Extreme 3D Pro USB
Attached: 1

Catch ya'll later.

T

_________________
I was Created, not evolved.

The BOBII system requirements were fairly good for 2005 when the game was released. So if you want to run version 2.03-2.06 then your PC specs should be OK (Note: 2.03-2.06 are like night and day difference in eye candy, FM. AI, and game play compared to version 2.11).

If you want to run version 2.11 then you will need to concern yourself with tuning and control of the options.

Here is a link to help you with tuning BOBII so you can get the best performance by trading some eye candy:

http://www.a2asimulations.com/forum/vie ... 17&t=10091

Here is the warning note we have for people considering the purchase of BOBII:

viewtopic.php?f=17&t=12174

BTW, as you reported the Replay option has some bugs that we have not been able to fix. Maybe someday..........

_________________
Buddye

Intel I7 920 processor (2.66GHz, 8MB cache), 6GB DDR3 Triple Channel @1333MHz, 1.8GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295, Sound Blaster X-Fi PCI Sound Card, Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit , CH Fighter Stick & Pedals ,TrackIR4 Pro thanks to BobII crew.

Hi Throgs and welcome to the asylum! Good post.

I think you have a very valid point around the system specs. We should have a word to Scott at A2A about updating the wording.

The challenge is that A2A owns the commercial rights, and they stopped updating the game at 2.06. Everything after that qualifies as totally unofficial patches...done with A2A permission, but they really can't and shouldn't have to warrant specs for playability beyond their last official patch.

All mods and patches after that were put together by the band of Motley Fools called the BoB Developers Group (BDG), who are not affiliated with A2A beyond that A2A lets us use this forum space.

I think the language in the 'recommended specs' section should be modified to say: 'for version 2.06 or earlier' to be completely fair.

I have a nice gaming laptop, with 4GB ram, Intel i7, Nvidia 5 series 2GB gfx...and I can't run BoBII on all high settings on the 'Black' missions, with multiskin. I still get stuttering on the merge. So I do sympathise.

Do you have a suggestion though for how we could do it differently, when the company selling the game, and the team patching it, are not one and the same? Serious question, because I think you have a good point.

H

_________________
Looking for BOB missions, campaigns, and historical resources?

http://bobgamehub.blogspot.com

Heinkill, thank you for the welcome.
I think that A2A including a footnote at minimum should state "for version 2.06 or earlier" would be the honorable thing to do.

Overall, I really LIKE BOBII wov a lot! Would I like it more if I could max it all out? You bet I would. I can not say the same for most of the other flight sims I have tried.

I'm suprised I have gotten BOBII (2.11) to run as good as I have. I tested the FPS on my system a little while ago and am hitting 20-30 in a huge dogfight with everything nearly maxed except particles and weather/clouds. (Thanks to all the FSX training on tweaking I have been through the past couple of years.) Edit config much? lol.

To sum it up, honest spec requirements up front without having to dig for it. Still, I think my $20 was well spent given what this sim does!

T

_________________
I was Created, not evolved.

I guess what we should be doing, on the side of things which we control, is to state
clearly on our Patch Release announcement posts some kind of estimate of the
minimum or recommended requirements for our patch. In fact, it would probably
be a good idea to give a breakdown for a couple of older patches, as well -
there are people with older machines who have found a happy medium running
at patch level 2.09, for instance - though personally I believe it is always best
to have the latest patch, and just back off the quality settings, because we
improve lots of things with every patch that shouldn't impact performance, and
using lower detail settings should more or less get you back to an equivalent
to the earlier patch, but with lots of new goodies (such as code fixes and improvements)
still available to you.