homepage Forums Air Combat & Civil Aviation Wings: Over Flanders Fields Wings: Over Flanders Fields - FAQs & Reference DirectX 8 to 9 converter (August 30th) - USE AT YOUR OWN RISK

This DirectX 9 mod is now included as a part of WOFF 2.0 Expansion [edit Polovski: and now updated versions included in WOFF3 and further in WOFFUE]

Only use it wiith WOFF1.

If you have WOFF2, WOFF3 or WOFF UE you should NOT replace its files with any existing versions of my converter. They aren't compatible for now.
If you accidentally do it you will most likely need to reinstall the expansion to repair the DX 9 shaders.[/b]


Updated on August 30th.
A new version. Hopefully stable this time
If you are not into testing, crashing your game and losing your pilots then just want to try previous version from March which is available below. And for those who like the risk here is download options:
Installer: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2918136/cfs/WOFF_DirectX9.20140830.Setup.exe
JSGME: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2918136/cfs/WOFF_DirectX9.20140830.JSGME.7z
Plain zip: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2918136/cfs/WOFF_DirectX9.20140830.zip



Please report any issues in this thread, even if I don't answer immediately I'm still reading everything.

Previous stable version (March 25th) is still available at:
Installer: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2918136/cfs/WOFF_DirectX9_Mod_Setup.20140325.zip
JSGME: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2918136/cfs/D3D8%20Self%20Shadowing%20Mod%2020140325.7z
Plain zip: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2918136/cfs/WOFF_D3D9_Extended.20140325.Beta.zip

Installer will automatically detect the folder where WOFF (or OFF, or CFS3) is installed or you can specify another folder, but it has to be the one where CFS3.exe is located.
Then it will ask whether you need SweetFX compatibility - this option is turned off by default but you can always edit d3d8.ini manually to change it after installation.
Finally, it will suggest to open DirectX 9 download page. If you are installing my mod for the first time - it is recommended to download and run DirectX installer from that page. If you already have this mod working - you may uncheck the option to skip this step.
You can always uninstall the mod via Control Panel -> Remove Programs. It is called "DirectX 9 Mod for Wings: Over Flanders Fields (version NNNNNNNN)" there.

Very Important!
If the game fails to start a mission while using this converter, make sure you have the latest DirectX 9 installed.
Download automatic DirectX installer here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35
It will check whether you have the latest version. You see, there are probably 20 versions of DirectX 9, and even though it stopped being updated few years ago you may still happen not to have the latest one.

With this version you can use numpad "0" to switch extended graphics on and off while in game. This is debugging feature useful for comparing the image quality and checking FPS difference.

Additionally a simple version of the D3D9 converter (January 1st) is still available here:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2918136/cfs/WOFF_D3D9_Converter.20140101.zip
This version does not enhance graphics on its own, but provides a good FPS boost over the original WOFF rendering.

Important Note:
To be able to use SweetFX with any of these versions you should edit d3d8.ini with a notepad (Windows often shows this file without the .ini part just as "d3d8" with a type "Configuration Settings") and change
NoMultisampling=0
to be
NoMultisampling=1
This will turns off ingame antialiasing which seems to be incompatible with SweetFX.
Please note that I'm not providing support for SweetFX installation and settings, I just made it work with this game and now you are on your own.

-------------------------------------------------

Hi AnKor, please keep up your exploration, using SweetFX in WoFF would be awesome.

Dirk.

Hey Ankor. Blackjack you say? Sounds intriguing... I'm in for testing. Thanks for your work.
Btw, what's a DX9 ENB Series tool? Just asking. I would love to see some SweetFX options working with WOFF.

Update: I'm only getting a "Game terminated prematurely" exception error when WOFF tries to launch CFS3.

Here's what the log says:

2013/12/22 18:15:38 PatchMemorySync: Launching game
2013/12/22 18:15:38 EXE 'C:\OBDSoftware\WOFF\OBDWW1 Over Flanders Fields\CFS3.exe'
2013/12/22 18:15:38 DIR 'C:\OBDSoftware\WOFF\OBDWW1 Over Flanders Fields\'
2013/12/22 18:15:38 CMD 'cfs3'
2013/12/22 18:15:38 PatchMemorySync: waiting for sync
2013/12/22 18:15:38 EXCEPTION Game terminated prematurely
2013/12/22 18:15:38 TellUser Game terminated prematurely

ENB series is a graphics "improver" similar to SweetFX which predates the latter for several years.

I think I figured out why SweetFX didn't work - it requires multisampling to be off, but the minimum value in WOFF settings is 2 so it is always enabled.
I will add an option to override it in the converter, but I'm curious why WOFF devs restricted it this way.

If the game fails to start try installing the latest DirectX. If it doesn't help then perhaps I screwed something. The next version will have an option for writing a diagnostic log.

Has anyone else tried this converter?

My DirectX is up-to-date. Let's wait for the log option. Thank you

You can force your driver to override application settings though so doesn't matter what WOFF is set to.

Updated the download. Now it should work for everyone.


Yes, it doesn't matter for end result, the problem is that SweetFX inserts itself as intermediate layer in the rendering and doesn't work if a game has multisampling enabled.
So this config doesn't work:
Game (MSAA: ON) -> SweetFX -> GPU Driver (MSAA: OFF - Override)
but this one works:
Game (MSAA: OFF) -> SweetFX -> GPU Driver (MSAA: ON - Override)

It applies to any game, not just WOFF.

Did you edit the ini file and set NoMultisampling=1 as AnKor says at the start?

Hi Ankor,

I'm getting the same error even after making the adjustment in the ini.

Hey Ankor! It's now working perfectly with SweetFX! Thank you so much for this little miracle. S nastupayuschim Novym Godom!

@Rover,
Then it's my settings that I may have messed up somewhere. Would you mind telling me a step by step how you did it? What version of SweetFX are you using?

Nvidia inspector is 8xQs with 2x SGSS & in workshop I have aa set to 8.

Hey yaan,

I just copied the files to the same folder cfs3.exe is in and changed the NoMultisampling=1 as Ankor said.
Then I opened FlightFX (I got it here), created a new profile for cfs3.exe, ticked Enable SweetFX option on the right panel and proceeded to tuning in the adjacent tab. Looks like that's it.

Good luck,

Rover

Updated: And I have sadly admit I have to disable it because it leads to about 15-20 fps loss (which is critical for me). Even without sweetfx. But that's probably my system.

If you get errors, try following options

0. If you downloaded the very first original version, make sure you don't still have it. Correct d3d8.dll is 18.5 KB in size (18944 bytes to be specific) and the older one was just above 20 Kb.

1. If you already installed SweetFX or ENB Series try removing their d3d9.dll from the game folder to see if it helps. If it does then something is wrong with their config and no with the converter.

2. Try setting WriteLog=1 in d3d8.ini so it will write d3d8.log when the game is started.
If the log is short (less than ten lines) and ends with something like "Create Device RESULT = <some number>" where the number is not 0, then for some reason my dll can't set requested screen resolution. Try changing resolution in workshop to see if any of them works. Note that 16 bit modes are not supported by the converter, only 32 bit ones work, but I doubt anyone really wants to use 16 bit colors.

If the log is a large file then something else didn't work and it will difficult to figure out
I had some free time over weekend to make this tool, but now I don't have any to support it. Sorry.

Rover_27,

This is odd. I specifically tested to see if there are any performance changes, but haven't noticed any.
Though this may really depend on your system. I have an old GTX 285 (though even being old it has a bit faster memory bus than GTX 660 for example ) and run at relatively low resolution 1680*1050.

Mine is GTX 560Ti with 256 bit bus Width. The resolution is 1920x1080.
I'll try that again later with different settings

Upd: Looks like your converter's eating away 1 GB of my memory (don't ask me how)

Look



Now it says 909 virt while usually it shows around 1800-2000. Btw, what these numbers after fps mean?

Well, maybe a bit less but it will grow eventually.

Note the same setting (planes, graphics, terrain) without converter

Wow, this is very interesting!

Thank you very much for your work, AnKor!






Will need to play around with the settings some more. Couldn't see any FPS loss. (core i5-2500k@4GHZ, GTX 470, 8 Gig RAM Win7 64 bit).

Rover_27, interesting observation, will take a closer look a bit later (and I don't really know what those numbers mean too )

Para_Bellum, if you make a good looking preset -- please share it

yeah I need some settings please;)

I have. I made a few videos using it with SweetFX and posted them in the forums. Here's the link. Great stuff AnKor! Thank you very much for doing this.

http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/3882857#Post3882857

So what's involved with setting it up?
Putting the converter and SweetFX into the WoFF directory?

I set up SweetFX for RoF, but used the FlightFX program that Jason had Laser make....

Try creating a profile for cfs3.exe in Flight FX