Gun flash & bullets disappear

[Baltika]

Hi there, I have recently been given Track IR 4 Pro as a present and I have to say it is fantastic. I'm running the latest software 4.1.027, and am suffering the problem in Wings of War with the gun flash and bullets disappearing after a minute or two - a real shame as the implementation is otherwise great.

Any idea how to fix this?

Thanks very much.

[rodom]

The latest TrackIR software is 4.1.028.

Does this happen even with our software turned off?

[Baltika]

Sorry, my mistake - I have checked with the autoupdater and I am running 4.1.028.

The problem only appears when I am running TrackIR in native support mode - the gun flash and bullets will appear, then disappear after a minute or two. Cycling the views (from external back to cockpit) seems to bring them back but after a minute or two they disappear again. Very distracting!

I have run the 1.2 version of WoW for a while without any TrackIR software running and the problem does not appear.

Interestingly, when I run TrackIR in mouse emulation mode, the gun flash & bullets work fine. But the native support is much smoother & has the extra axes (up, down, left right, in & out) which make the whole thing more immersive.

If it helps, my specs are:

AMD Athlon 64 3400+ (2.2 GHz)
1.00 GB Ram
ATI Radeon 9800XT AGP x8 256 MB
ATI Catalyst 06.3
Windows XP Service Pack 2
Direct X 9.0c

Thanks for taking the time to look at this for me.

[ May 09, 2006, 12:03 PM: Message edited by: Baltika ]

[Baltika]

Is there somewhere I can download 4.1.027 (posted 2005/10/03) to try & see if this problem appears in that version? I have looked in your download section and although there is a version history it would appear that the old public betas are not available for download there.

Thanks

[warrenEBB]

If you'd really like to try out older software, send me an email and i will give you a link. We generally don't like to make them public, because the newer software generally fixes important bugs.

I'm wondering if the muzzle flashes are setup to only be seen from one angle (the one you start with).

You say you see them for the first minute or two? i'm just curious if you were holding still for this first minute or so, and then they dissappear when you moved drastically around the cockpit. (?).
just a though.

i will try to recreate this on our games demo machine.

[Baltika]

Thanks for replying, Warren.

I have sent an email to the forum help link as your direct link gave me an error message "either the user or forum administrator is blocking access to this email address." I hope it will be passed on as I have requested.

To answer your question, when I start the game, the muzzle flash and bullet trails are visible from all angles, even if I hunker down & look at the firing gun from off to either side while hanging out of the side of the cockpit. It really is an excellent implementation of the 6DOF!

After a minute or two of flight, first either the gunflash or the bullets disappear (although usually not both at first) then both will disappear. They then come back intermittently and disappear again, almost in a cycle. I notice that the bullet trails from all the planes in flight, as well as certain plane marker graphics on the in-flight map, also disappear at the same time as my own flash/bullets.

Looking right round so the view is out of the rear of the cockpit does not seem to have an effect on either making the flash/bullets disappear or come back again - if they are working, if I look right round quickly and then back again, they are still there. If they're not working, looking right round and back again does not make them come back.

However, I have noticed that pressing the in-game "centre view" control, does make the flash/bullets reappear if they have gone. They still disappear again after a minute or so. It is a bit distracting to have to keep pressing that button every so often, as well as making the screen "jump" which rather spoils the feeling of immersion.

Thanks for your continued help.

Baltika

PS I know there is an in-game setting which causes the gun to "overheat" after a certain amount of continual firing and stop firing until it "cools down." I assure you I am not causing my guns to overheat - the problem is something else!

[ May 16, 2006, 11:43 AM: Message edited by: Baltika ]

[warrenEBB]

Gotcha, sir.
Apologies for my email link being locked (i believe i've fixed this now. erk).

I will bring this to our programmers attention and get back to you as soon as I get their opinion.

[Baltika]

Thanks very much.

May I just say how impressed I am by the level of support you obviously provide.

Great product - great support. Excellent!

Hope your guys can sort it out.

Cheers!

[Baltika]

Just to let you know -

I raised this issue on the WoW forum over at SimHQ. rabu says he is using TrackIR 3 with Vector and hasn't noticed this problem.

Hope that bit of info might help.

[warrenEBB]

Our programmers suggested the game might be interacting with the game in an unsual way, or settings it's own processing tasks at an unusually high priority (meaning the game would process all it's business before considering any other processes that might be running).

We have a new tech support lead, vincent, who i'll ask to load the game and investigate.

more later, sir!