Kevin2k

Windows XP can only allocate 2GB RAM to any game, and I have no issues. No issues as long as I keep ALL games off my slow 2.5" 5400rpm mechanical backup drive. When sure that a HDD is not causing any (sound-) precaching stutters: Another possibility is that some background process unrelated to CMFB is using system resources once in a while.

That is right, it will override any previous shader files that way. Without deleting anything. I haven't messed with the shaders since, and actually I am not 100% sure again if this does sufficiently change shadow creation. I should do some more tests, but no time for that now. Before I also tried something with the water shader file, to make the water darker. That one definitely works. Though at long distance it makes the water rather black. water_simple.frag

In the SimHQ review it was stated that the CMSF base game had rather small maps. Later it was said that with the Marines Expansion the new maps had sufficient size for maneuvers,

I am rather new to the Combat Mission games, but what I really noticed missing in Shock Force are moveable waypoints and lack of the Quick Battle Map+Force selection screens.

I believe you, but suppose I will wait it out a few years until all the ArmA 2 to 3 porting is finished. I don't even have/want a Steam account. Also AFAIK there are some important ArmA II exclusives: - Ambient Combat Manager (ACM), random mission generator and whatever is scripted with those, like the 'Flashpoint' missions by thomsonb; Great way to spend a free hour. - 'Cold war Rearmed' Total Conversion. Haven't even found the time to play this yet... It is surprising... With such a big army and budget you would expect them to obtain some practical software. When I checked out some VBS (Jcove) Lite maps I found them similarly dissappointing and unnatural. I wonder if the army makes these maps themselves, or if they pay the VBS devs too little to make them proper?

I spend quite some time on ArmA II with its Addons in 2014 and 2015; modding and playing. It is an amazing game/sim actually. The latest thing I tried was the World War II Eastern Front setting provided by the addon called 'Iron Front'. ArmA II's predecessor Armed Assault (1) is obsolete since. As to its futuristic successor ArmA III; I never played it. The VBS map in the video looks kinda unnatural, I don't think they tried very hard.

VVS? You mean VBS as in Virtual Battle Space? VBS2 used to be available to consumers, it is pricey though. I don't know any private VBS3 users. The nice thing is that ArmA II with Arrowhead contains a lot of VBS2 functionality and assets, and was arguably a more polished package. Though ArmA II is more limited regarding tactical control. There was a VBS2 Lite version freely available to active US Army personnel only. There is still freely available a VBS2 Jcove Lite package featuring the British Armed Forces. Both these older VBS Lite editions do not feature the fancy shaders of ArmA II.

I unpacked bumpmapping.frag and bumpmapping.vert from one of the .brz archives in the data folder. Then packed them back to a small mod file. See attachment. There are also files called "bumpmapping improved ati" / "bumpmapping improved nvidia" in the original data archives. That is why I am guessing these are used for improved settings. Shaders Normandy v212.brz

Don't know if it was already mentioned. But regarding the in-game panel: The special equipment icons like binoculars and such are slightly larger then their background window.

I stuck to Close Combat games since, And reverted back to the original Atomic games version, since I do not like soldier behavior introduced in the matrix games re-releases. I heard about Combat Mission, but until this year I did not go for it, because I had the misunderstanding that it was strictly turn-based... Fortunately I was wrong about that. As for the rest I am just coming to terms with this series and it seems solid.

I reverted back to the v2.12 shaders. Not perfect, but less erratic then those included in the v3.0 upgrade. On my system that is. Edit: Game graphics is set to 'Balanced'. I suspect the game switches to alternate shaders when using anything above this setting.

Rockinharry mentions he uses FireFox and Chrome already. (Internet Explorer 8 is the last IE version for XP, last update 2011, not reccomended) When I downloaded the Demo I used the latest FireFox with XP. I find it hard to imagine that all sharefile links work for him, except this demo. Beats me.

The helpdesk wrote to me about it last week: Stated OS requirements are about guaranteed support. Though it is also said that currently the CMFB engine is not changed as far as OS interfacing goes. Today I found the demo runs on XP 100%, so that is nice, for what it is worth. But there are no promises for future versions.

Thanks. You are right, though if I spread the spending a little, it SEEMS more responsable. Just checked it; I already spend about the same here as I did for all 65 non-free games in my GoG.com account. GoG sales are cheap!?

I just downloaded, installed and played the CMFB demo, from within Windows XP. That is without any issues AFAIK. https://battlefront.sharefile.com/share?cmd=d&id=sc7911c875b44fa68#/view/sc7911c875b44fa68?_k=5m7sup Surely a nice addition to the series. Though I just got introduced to combat mission past weeks, and it would be wiser to postpone more purchases for now, and just enjoy some of the earlier releases.

Recent tech support quote: "I would think that CMFB would run XP but publicly we're trying to distance ourselves from the older operating system because we don't want guarantee that it will always run on XP and, therefore, do not have it in the minimum requirements." I would say, Just try the demo if it is there.