The CFS-2 Flight Deck

Getting Started:

To proceed I will take for granted that your installation of Combat Flight Simulator 2 is a FULL install, meaning , that nothing runs in the game directly from the CD, & CFS-2 is located where MicroSoft's install CD will put it by itself... C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Combat Flight Simulator 2; if it is not there, I will take for granted that you know where it is.

Next we are going to be sure that you see what I see when opening your Combat Flight Simulator 2 game folder...

 - Open MS Explorer; once open under Tools at the top select Folder Options; once within, select the View tab, & from within it, un-select or un-check Hide extensions for known file types. After that press OK or Apply & then OK.

CFS2.cfg Edits:

We are now ready to look at & begin editing your Combat Flight Simulator 2 configuration file (cfs2.cfg). I will only explain the values we are to set or edit...

 - Keeping Explorer open go to your CFS-2 game folder, C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Combat Flight Simulator 2 find & make a back-up copy of the cfs2.cfg.

 - Using Notepad (preferred over Wordpad for safety) open the cfs2.cfg.

Within the [MAIN] heading... Note: 0 = No / 1 = Yes

 - Showlogo=x ... Set x to 0 to disable the intro movie when loading CFS 2, for the shortest possible load time.

 - ShowMovie=x ... Set x to 0 to disable the intro movie when loading campaigns, although text is displayed beneath & audio is played as per usual.

 - HideMenuNormal=x ... Set x to 1 to hide the in-game menu (Flights, Aircraft, etc.) when in windowed mode. Pressing the ALT key will give you access it.

 - HideMenuFullscreen=x ... Set x to 1 to hide the in-game menu (Flights, Aircraft, etc.) when in full-screen mode. Pressing the ALT key will give you access it.

Within the [MULTIPLAYER] heading... Note -1- of 2: In general > 0 = No / 1 = Yes < however more values are enabled here than 0 & 1. Note -2- of 2: ALLOW_PLANE_MODEL_SEND=x; ALLOW_PLANE_MODEL_RECEIVE=x; ALLOW_TEXTURE_SEND=x; ALLOW_TEXTURE_RECEIVE=x; all seem not to function during TCP/IP games, or in other words, they do not work unless 'on the zone', which of course is no more ... or in serial connection, hooked to another computer directly, not over the internet.

 - COLLISION_SECS=x ... Set x to 0. Later, using a utility named MDL-Edit we will set the collision bubble to 2 & compleate our collision settings.

 - ADF_TRACK=x. Set x to 0 to disable the ADF (Automatic Direction Finder, 'The Cone'). This can show you where other aircraft (or players) are located. Hitting the I key (Default CFS-2 Commands) during play will restore The Cone/Pointer the one time.

 - DISTANCE_DISPLAY=x. Set x to 1 to default the display of the player ID lables, your distance from the other players. When set to 0 only the other players name is displayed when your lables are on during play.

 - AUTOPILOT_LOCK=x. Set x to 0 to disable the use of the autopilot to fly to other players online. While participating in Shooting Games at The Deck, enabling Autopilot Lock is not allowed.

 - SP_DISPLAY_CHEAT_WARNINGS=x. Set x to 1 to display a message should any users be entering a suspended state in flight; which can mean that there is cheating in the game. Enabling the warning helps remind players to disclose why they have entered a suspendede state.

 - SP_PLAYER_NAME=x. Set x to your Ventrilo 'call sign' ... As example: VF-6_JJGoldberg. Once set here, you will not have to set it again. If this line does not appear in the [MULTIPLAYER] section of your cfs-2.cfg, add it, copy & paste it from here to your cfs2.cfg.

 - SP_SESSION_NAME=x. Set x to your session name ... As example: The CFS-2 Flight Deck. Once set here, you will not have to set it again. If this line does not appear in the [MULTIPLAYER] section of your cfs-2.cfg, add it, copy & paste it from here to your cfs2.cfg.

 - SP_SESSION_NOTES=x. Set x to your session mission ... As example: ...Time To Fly!!! Once set here, you will not have to set it again. If this line does not appear in the [MULTIPLAYER] section of your cfs-2.cfg, add it, copy & paste it from here to your cfs2.cfg.

Within the [SOUND] heading... Note: In general > 0 = No / 1 = Yes < however more values are enabled here than 0 & 1.

 - SamplesPerSec=x. X sets the sample rate for audio. Options available are 11025, 22050 & 44100. Use 11025 for x only if you have an old ISA sound card. 44100 will yield CD quality audio playback, although performance may be reduced. The use of  22050 is recommended.

 - BitsPerSample=x. Set x to 16 to enable 16-bit sound which gives improved audio quality. A setting of 8 may improve performance a little but will reduce audio quality. it should only really be tried if you have an ISA based sound-card, or have other sound incompatibilities. 

 - Channel=x. Set it to 2 to enable Stereo sound for optimal sound quality. Setting x to 1 will disable Stereo sound & Mono will be used. You should only do this if you are desperate for a slight performance boost.

Between the last line of the [Free Flight] section & the [JOYSTICK_MAIN {Your Stick's Game ID #}] add the following very cool CHEATS -good word choice MS- MicroSoft put into the game but left hidden ... Copy & paste to your CFS2.cfg as shown below to...

[CHEATS]
DAMAGEMSGS=1
bomb_trainer=0

 - DAMAGEMSGS=1. Enables & displays a hit message in Quick Combat when your bullets strike an object or aircraft.

 - bomb_trainer=0. Enables but does not display the Bomb Trainer built into your game. The 'bomb-sight' will be active & will appear in all games & views when set to 1.

Close & save your custom CFS2.cfg file. Before doing anything else, copy it & rename the copy custom cfs2.cfg back-up.

General Vision Settings:

Load CFS2 & select the settings button…

Overall image quality. This slider bar may be used to select from a variety of pre-defined graphics configurations. Slide the bar to the Left for a more performance oriented setup (i.e. Many visual effects disabled or lowered to improve frame rate) & slide to the Right for an image quality oriented setup (i.e. More visual effects enabled or increased to improve visual quality). I’d recommend ignoring this slider & instead using a Custom setup, which will be covered in the Advanced visual quality page settings below. If you choose to use this slider, for online gaming at The Deck, settings less than 4 are not permitted. 4 is the minimum allowed, 5 or better is preferred.

The Auto-performance setting can dynamically adjust the LOD (Level Of Detail) displayed in the game to maintain a constant frame rate. Visual quality can be reduced in order to maintain this target frame rate or LOD will be increased when above the target frame rate. When Unticked CFS 2 cannot adjust the LOD, which means performance can be greatly reduced during heavy battles & such, although visual quality will remain constant. I’d recommend using this setting only if using the overall image quality slider, if using advanced image quality settings leave this unchecked.

Now select the Advanced settings button...

Hardware page > *Device. This field contains information regarding the graphics card to be used for rendering CFS 2. This isn’t much use unless you have multiple video cards installed. *Enable hardware acceleration. Tick this setting to enable CFS 2 to be rendered using your 3D graphics card. If you do not have a Direct3D capable 3D graphics card leave it unticked. Today, as opposed to 7 or 8 years ago, it is very likely your video card can support direct 3D rendering. Advanced 3-D hardware options > *MIP mapping. Mipmapping can help improve performance & quality, by allowing the resolution of a texture to scale with the viewpoint. Tick this setting to for improved performance THIS SETTING MUST BE USED FOR FLIGHT DECK VAULT II AIRCRAFT. *Anti-alias. Untick this setting as modern video cards apply much more effective filtering on thier own. *T and L enables the use of Hardware Transform & Lighting unit information. This can improve performance/graphics quality. *Trilinear filtering interpolates between the mipmap levels as well as the weighted average of the texels around it. Select this option for best visual quality. *For improved performance at slightly reduced visual quality you should select Bilinear filtering. *You shouldn’t select No filtering for any reason. Resolution > *Set your game resoultion to your monitor's native resoultion size. If having problems; selecting a lower setting will improve performance & should maintain a higher frame rate. You also set the colour depth with this setting, set this to 16 bit for optimal performance (introduces banding in graphics), you can select 32 bit for best image quality (preventing banding), although frame rates will be reduced as a result.

Quality page > *Overall image quality. This slider bar is a copy of the slider bar discussed above, & although it may be used to select from a variety of pre-defined graphics configurations, I’d recommend ignoring this slider & instead using a Custom setup. As stated above if you choose to use this slider, for online gaming at The Deck, settings less than 4 are not permitted. 4 is the minimum allowed, 5 or better is preferred. *DEM density level. The world of CFS 2 is constructed from digital elevation mesh (DEM). The DEM density level sets the maximum resolution of the DEM to be displayed. Slide this bar to the Right to increase the level of complexity of scenery in the game (Less distance between vertical points used to shape the terrain). This will improve visual quality (more realistic terrain), although performance can be reduced as a result (More polygons needed to be rendered). The further the slider bar to the Left the simpler terrain textures will appear (Less complex shapes due to a greater distance between the vertical points used to shape the terrain), although performance will be improved as a result. For play at The Deck, we accept medium, but prefer high. *Max. terrain texture size. Moving this slider to the Right (Higher) will allow the use of sharper textures for terrain in the game, although performance can be lowered (Especially on low memory graphics cards). The Lower this setting the more blurred textures will appear in the game. Selecting a lower setting can improve performance on graphics cards with low video memory. For play at The Deck, we accept 128, but prefer 256. *Terrain complexity level. Sliding this bar to the Right will increase the complexity of the outer lines of scenery shapes. This will improve visual quality (more realistic terrain), although performance may be reduced as a result. The further the slider bar to the Left the simpler terrain textures will appear (Less complex shapes), although performance will improve in such areas. For play at The Deck, we accept values from 68, but prefer 100. *Maximum visibility level. This setting controls the maximum viewable distance in CFS 2 in Unlimited visibility situations (Obviously depending on weather conditions in missions this can be reduced substantially). Moving this slider to the Right will increase the amount of visiblity, which can improve visual quality & improve your visibility, although it will lower frame rates. Move this slider to the Left for improved performance with reduced visibility. 25 – 35 miles should provide a great amount of visibilty while not impacting too heavily on performance on all but the oldest graphics cards. *Aircraft shadows. Tick this setting to enable ground shadows for aircraft. Unticking it will disable the plane’s shadows. Shadows may come in useful for landing’s, although you will spend most time in the air so I’d recommend Unticking this setting 3rd for a performance boost, if needed. *Ground scenery shadows. Tick this setting to enable ground shadows for buildings & dynamic scenery. Unticking this setting will disable these shadows. As they serve no really useful purpose (unlike Aircraft shadows which can) I’d recommend Unticking this setting 2nd for a performance boost, if needed. *Detail texturing. A detail texture is a very small, fine pattern which is faded in as you approach a surface, for example wood grain, or imperfections in stone. Tick this setting for improved visual quality, although it may cause a severe performance hit on some graphics cards, particularly with older, graphics cards. Untick this for increased performance. As it serves no really useful purpose (unlike Aircraft shadows which can) I’d recommend Unticking this setting 1st for a performance boost, if needed. *High detail virtual cockpit. If you intend to use the Virtual cockpit a lot while playing CFS 2 then you should Tick this setting for an increased LOD (Level Of Detail) in the cockpit. If you don’t use the virtual cockpit then leave this Unticked for optimal performance. *LOD target frame rate. Set this to equal to whatever you feel is the minimum for a playable game. 20 should be the ideal minimum frame rate for most users. This specifies the frame rate threshold below which CFS 2 will start dropping detail - reducing model detail & not drawing optional effects. If this is set higher than your normal frame rate, then you will never see reduced graphics almost always, but get the best possible performance. This setting should be about 10 frames below your average frame rate.

Select OK to save the settings, retart the game to set the settings.

Scenery Library Settings:

Load CFS2 & select the settings button… then the Scenery Library button… Note: It is very important to close then restart CFS-2 before running any change made here.

Areas list > *This section controls the scenery areas to be loaded, & in what order they get loaded. You can disable the loading of scenery areas by Unticking them. Tick them to enable the loading of a scenery type/area. Using the Move up & Move down button you may adjust the priority of scenery. The higher the priority of a scenery area the quicker it gets loaded. Please take note... The game came with 11 areas, sequenced as MicroSoft prefered its loading. The Deck strongly reccomends this order be maintained. Terrain, will allways remain at the bottom & can not be moved. The Deck strongly reccomends that added areas are be placed between the Terrain area & the Default Scenery area. *Edit area. Using this option you can choose to run a scenery area from the hard drive, or to cache it. Caching a scenery area especialy if it is normally run from the CD, can improve performance when flying in that area. *Cache size. This sets the cache size (MB’s) for the scenery library. The cache size is the amount of hard drive space the scenery library uses for caching scenery data. 10MB is default & the smallest value permitted, however a large cache file (50MB is The Deck's recomended minimum size) can improve performance, especialy for those who didn’t do a full installation of CFS 2 (which you should do if playing on-line). *Empty cache on exit. Tick this setting to have the contents of the Cache folder deleted upon exiting CFS 2. This will free up hard drive space, although data will need to be re-cached the next time you load CFS 2. You should leave this setting Unticked if you intend to fly the same areas/missions the next time you load up so no time is wasted re-caching them. *Scenery object density. Moving the slider bar to the Right will increase the amount of scenery objects, which will result in more diverse appearance to the scenery in the game. Sliding the bar to the Left will decrease the amount of scenery objects, which can improve performance. Evey computer system is different, The Deck suggests stating with Extremely Dence, & then step by step reducing the load until the game runs smoothly. As noted above be sure to close & restart the game before running any change made here.

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The CFS-2 Flight Deck Wishes to Thank Thomas McGuire who authored the paper I used as reference to create the info above.