Getting the Best out of Fighter Squadron tutorial

To get the best out of Fighter Squadron, please consider doing the following:

1. Check that 'Engine Sound linked to RPM' is checked in Options - Sounds menu from within the game. Aircraft engines can sound better with this option checked.

2. If you want to increase your visual range, check that FarClip=15 and FogNearClip=8 are in your sdemons.ini file located where the 1.6.x.x Patch is installed. This will give you greater viewing range at the expense of FPS, however. If you have a slower computer, this is not recommended. Try lowering these settings if your FPS is lowered too greatly. If you also see any visual artifacts at a distance (Terrain tiles clipping in and out) you may need to tweak these settings.

3. Check that 'Enable Realistic Sky' is checked in Options - Display menu from within the game. This will give you dynamic lighting in SDOE as well as day and night.

4. If your system can handle it, please use the 1024x1024 texture size option in the game under Options - Display menu. If not, at least use 512x512. Some hi-res schemes do not look well at 256x256.

5. Be sure that you are using 'Bullet Penetration' and 'Alternate Explosive Damage'. These can be found in the game under Options - General menu. These allow for bullets to pass thru parts of your aircraft to cause specific damage in some areas.

6. If you have very fast computer, try setting the DesiredDisplayRate entry in your sdemons.ini file located where the 1.6.x.x Patch is installed to a higher number to increase FPS. For example, mine is set to DesiredDisplayRate=120. I can get up to 110 FPS max. This may cause in-game textures to load slower on some computers, however. If your textures load slowly, decrease this value.

7. If your textures load slowly or reload themselves, set the TextureCacheSize setting in the sdemons.ini file located where the 1.6.x.x Patch is installed to 116000000. If the entry is not there, just add at the bottom of the file: 'TextureCacheSize=116000000'. You may also try tweaking this number to fit your computer better. This is the ammount of hard drive space allocated to the game's texture cache where it stores and loads the textures from (In bytes).

8. If you are running Windows XP, set the compatability mode to 'Windows 98 / Windows ME' and disable 'Visual themes' (This can be done by right clicking the shortcut or EXE file that launches the game and going to properties - Compatability).

9. SDOE looks and functions best in the OpenGL32 renderer mode. However, not all graphics cards support or can run OpenGL32 properly. For NVIDIA cards it is best to use OpenGL32 and for ATI cards it is best to use D3D T&L HAL. Try the different renderers available until you notice improvement. These can be found in the Options - Display menu.

10. If you run Windows 2000, be sure to install Service Pack 3. You will need this update from Microsoft to have Fighter Squadron compatable with Windows 2000.

11. If you want to change up your keyboard, mouse or joystick commands there is a file called keyboard.inp located where the 1.6.x.x Patch is installed. Open this up using Word (Becareful not to save it as a Word document) and read through it carefully to change your keyboard, mouse and joystick commands.

**Joystick Throttle Issues**

If you can't get Fighter Squadron to recognize your joystick in the 1.6.x.x Patch, please do the following:

Open up the keyboard.inp file, located where the 1.6.x.x Patch is installed, in wordpad and find the lines:

inpThrottleAnalog = JoystickSlider1 : 0
;inpThrottleAnalog = JoystickAxisZ : 0

Once you find those, switch around the semicolons so it reads:

;inpThrottleAnalog = JoystickSlider1 : 0
inpThrottleAnalog = JoystickAxisZ : 0

When you have made those changes, save the file. Make sure you do not save the keyboard.inp file as a *.txt file or a word document! Yours may be the other way around, if so do the same only reversed. Also, launch the FSSDOEJoystick.exe program located where the 1.6.x.x Patch is installed. This will help you assign axis of your joystick.

**Auto-zooming and padlock features**

First, in order to make adjustments to the game's padlock auto-zoom feature, or to change your in-cockpit view perspective (set-back), you'll need to change (text edit) the values in the sdemons.ini file which is in the SDOE Patch 1.6.0.6 folder, or the FS-WWI 1.6.0.6 Patch folder (whichever approved Patch you're currently using).

OK, there are two cockpit modes in SDOE, "normal" and "padlock". For each of these modes there are two lines in the sdemos.ini file which allow you to adjust the degree of zoom differential between the default distance and the zoom distance. One thing to remember is that in your "normal" view you can zoom your viewpoint distance between your assigned values using the bracket keys [ and ]. Now when in the target padlock mode, the zoom function is done automatically by the game itself. When you get physically closer to your selected padlock target in the game the zoom will automatically move your viewpoint closer towards the target, and when your distance increases away from your target the zoom will relax backwards towards the "default" setting. This automatic zooming can get a bit disorientating when maneuvering, but it can also be easily "deactivated" within the sdemons.ini file by making the appropriate settings equal in their values. This way there will be no differential "room" for the zoom to change between. Of course you can also change the values to limit the amount of zoom differential to as small (none), or as large a distance as allowed, but there are functional limits within the game itself.

Now here are the lines to look for in the sdemons.ini file for the "normal" viewpoint adjustment (again, this is the ini file in your Patch folder, not the one in your game's root directory). There's lots of lines in the ini file, so scroll through them to search for these, and add them if they're not present (which is often the case):

MinFOV=X.XX MaxFOV=X.XX (X being numeric values of distance -feet?)

For example if you were to edit the settings to something like this:

MinFOV=1.5 MaxFOV=2.0

Then you would be able to zoom with the bracket keys something like a half a foot of distance (even this little bit of differential is noticeable). Of course you can experiment with the custom values you like.

Now the "padlock" viewpoint adjustments are made by modifying these following lines:

CurFOV=X.XX CurPadFOV=X.XX

Again, the "X" values denote the viewpoint distances which will form the default distance and the zoom-to distance, but in this case the game will auto-zoom for you.

The CurPadFOV values is the minimum distance setting, and the CurFov is the default or maximum distance setting.

Again, equalize the values to deactivate the zoom altogether, or modify to your liking for as much or as little zoom differential as you prefer.

Of course after modifying these settings in the sdemons.ini file, save them (using wordpad or notepad here), check your new settings out in-game, and modify them more if need be, so they're to your liking.

**Mouse panning**

In the keyboard.inp file where the 1.6.0.6 Patch is installed find the lines

;inpviewPanXAnalog
;inpviewPanYAnalog

and delete the ; so that the mouse now pans in-game.