homepage Forums Air Combat & Civil Aviation Battle of Britain + Battle of Britain II Hi all, I’ve put together a companion app for BOB2 2.13 aimed at making the game easier to run on modern PCs. It tackles: T

@postman, thanks regarding the manual engine management setting. Is it actually OK to change settings via the in-game options menu then? The readme says:

And:


Maybe I'm misreading something or using the wrong search terms in the all settings list in the launcher, but several like the one above seem to be unavailable there and can only be accessed via the in-game options menu.

Notes on 1.6.26:
- This is something I noticed this occurred with 1.6.24 as well as 1.6.26, sorry I didn't mention it before - when initially completing the 6-step setup wizard process via the launcher, the play option is not selectable, despite the launcher saying the game is ready to play after applying the fixes. I find I have to go into setup wizard again, but at the second step (the one with the screen titled "Get the game running on Windows 11") I have to click on the open install and repair button in order to access the screen titled "How should the game talk to your graphics card?". Then I can proceed to the steps for menu sizing, joystick checks and the frame rate settings summary. After going through these steps, the play option becomes selectable. Because these three steps are not presented during the first run of the setup wizard, other users could miss them altogether unless they go back into the setup wizard or use the install and repair option. Again, I might have missed an instruction in the readme about all this so if so please ignore it.

- Regarding the modern fix launcher desktop shortcut still not appearing: there is another shortcut on the desktop but it's the same style as the original BOB2 one (half roundel / half cross), not the full modern fix RAF roundel one I saw in an earlier release. When trying to load it I get an error message saying the item BOB2.bat that this shortcut refers to has changed or been moved.

- After my first run of the game under 1.6.26, I noticed he Windows 11 flag for HIGHDPIAWARE became visible after checking the install and repair screen again, but clicking on the fix button resolved it, so this seems to work now.

- EDIT: I can confirm seeing the same issue 33lima posted regarding the fix versioning discrepancy on the main menu. Also I've made a correction to the comment about the launcher shortcut above.

Loji, 33lima one more update, and a simpler way to install it.

First, an apology to you both: the last few releases churned more than they should have, and some of what I shipped was fixing my own earlier mistakes. Your reports caught real bugs 33lima, yours yesterday caught one that would have affected everyone updating from an older version.

Please go to v1.6.32, and use the clean method:

1. Delete your old BOB2-Win11-Fix folder entirely (it holds nothing of yours backups and joystick settings live outside it).
2. Extract the new zip in its place.
3. Run BOB2.bat → Install and repair → press Fix on anything flagged.

That last step matters: it now checks things it previously trusted including the dgVoodoo version in your game folder. 33lima, that's your corner-screen fix: old packages shipped a dgVoodoo build that can't take fullscreen, and until now updating didn't replace it. Install and repair will flag it and swap it for the working one.

This should be a stable version to test. Thanks for the patience every fix in it traces back to one of your reports.

https://github.com/malawicob/bob2-modern-fix/releases

Big improvement - thank you!

Here's what I got from the wizard:



The 3d display is still windowed - but much bigger and centred, so playable, tho antialiasing does not seem as crisp as I remembered it. The black border is on all four sides - for some reason, when I did PrtScr and then pasted into Paint, the side borders were not there.



I next ran DGVoodoo.cpl and resolution was set to Unforced in both Glide and DirectX tabs. Changing both to 1920x1080, no change. Using BoB2_setup.bat to change the resolution to 1920x1080, no change.

Thanks for the screenshot, that showed me exactly what I needed to see.

One important question though. Did you press the Fix button on the Graphics translator row before you flew? In your screenshot it's flagged but not yet fixed. Your dgVoodooCpl showing Unforced on both tabs tells me the same thing, because applying the fix also writes a fresh dgVoodoo config with the DirectX resolution set to Max. So press Fix (or Fix 2 things), check the bar at the bottom of the launcher says dgVoodoo2 2.8.6.5, then fly. The black borders on all four sides are the game's small image being centred with no scaling at all. The fresh config stretches it to fill the screen.

That odd 67110784 x 1080 in your Campaign resolution row was a bug in the mod, my fault entirely. The check reads positions in the settings file that matched my own install, and yours clearly has a different layout, so it printed nonsense. Nothing on your machine was touched, the check only ever reads the file. Newer versions now say plainly when they don't recognise the layout and just leave it alone.

One more thing, please don't use BOB2_setup.bat or dgVoodooCpl to change resolution. Once the fix has run, the game picks the resolution itself and dgVoodoo scales it up to fill the screen.

I've just put up 1.6.34 with that resolution check sorted. Same clean update as before, delete the old BOB2-Win11-Fix folder, extract the new one, run Install and repair. https://github.com/malawicob/bob2-modern-fix/releases

If anything still looks wrong once the Fix has run and the bottom bar shows 2.8.6.5, post another screenshot of the Install and repair screen and I'll take a look. Thanks again for testing this so patiently.

Yes I applied the two fixes before flying, no problem there, and it reported all good afterwards.

After a clear re-install with the new 1.6.34, and running Install and Fix again, the only fix needed was a ref to the previous version of the mod, which I applied.

Still getting the black border when flying (and in the loading screen with the red status bar).

dgVoodooCpl.exe is only in the subfolder dgv2865 of the Fix's folder, not the main game folder (Battle of Britain II), if that matters. It now reports resolution as 1920x1080 in both the Glide and DirectX tabs. If a failure to scale is the possible issue, the entries in the Appearance section of the General tab in dgVoodoo.Cpl may be relevant.



The Install and Repair screen now looks like this. As you can see, it reports a resolution issue, but for the campaign, related to a file Settings.cfg.



Your patience is greatly appreciated!

Thanks for the thorough retest, 33lima. That green board is exactly what I was hoping to see.

The black border is nothing to worry about, it's an aspect ratio thing rather than a fault. The fix tells the graphics translator to scale while keeping the correct aspect ratio, and your game is almost certainly still rendering at a 4:3 resolution like 1024x768. Put a 4:3 picture on a 16:9 monitor and you get black bars either side. The reason it's still stuck at 4:3 is that row you spotted on the repair screen. Your settings.cfg is laid out differently from the installs I've seen, so the app deliberately leaves it alone rather than risk mangling it.

The good news is you can sort it from inside the game. Go into the game's own options (takes a while to load) and set the resolution to 1920x1080 at 60Hz, and do the same for the campaign screens if it offers those separately. The game then rewrites its own settings file and the bars should vanish.

On dgVoodooCpl, that control panel edits a default config sitting in your AppData folder unless you point it at the game folder, so what you saw in there isn't what the game is actually using. The game reads the dgVoodoo.conf the fix drops straight into the game folder, and that already has all the recommended settings in it, scaling mode included. That's why the Cpl isn't copied over, there's nothing that needs fiddling with by hand.

If the bars are still there after setting 1920x1080 in the game options, let me know what resolution your monitor runs at and I'll dig further. Thanks again for your patience with all this, your reports have improved this thing more than anything else.

The black border is still there, even with in-game settings looking like this:



Changing to 1920x1080x32@144 (144 Hz I think being my display's refresh rate), no difference.

My monitor is running at native resolution ie 1080p 1920x1080.

BoB2.exe is set to XP SP3 compatibility, run as admin.

When I went to Windows to use the snipping tool to get the pic of the GFX menu ie while BoB2 was running, I could see the desktop resolution was definitely lower than 1920x1080.

PS I've been looking at driver settings for my GTX770 that are related to scaling, and checked out some Youtube vids about black borders. Amongst other things I tried these:



These settings did lose the black 'frame' around the menu screens, which was not really a problem. For the 3d, they stretched the display laterally, so that it is distorted and the black borders are top and bottom.



Looking at this, I can tell that the image is lower resolution that my monitor's native 1920x1080 which is also the value selected for both campaign and 3d in the sim's GFX Options.

So while this was not successful, it does seem to show that the problem is not scaling, but that the 3d is simply refusing to display in 1920x1080.

Scratch my last reply about refresh rates. I went back through my notes from when I fought this same problem on my own machine, and the real answer turns out to be much simpler.

The game's 3D Resolution dropdown does nothing at all. On my machine my selection was never even written to the settings file. The sharp picture comes entirely from the dgVoodoo.conf file the fix installs in the game folder. There are two important lines in it, a scaling mode that keeps the aspect ratio and a forced maximum rendering resolution. With those two lines in place the game can ask for whatever mode it likes and you still get a full resolution picture. Without them you get exactly what your screenshots show, the game's real low resolution output sitting unscaled inside a black border.

I think yours lost those lines. The dgVoodoo control panel you were experimenting with rewrites that config file with plain defaults if it is ever pointed at the game folder and Apply is pressed. My installer created the file when it was missing but never checked the contents of an existing one, so the repair screen showed all green while the config was actually wrong. Your screenshots are what exposed that gap.

I have just released v1.7.1 which closes it. So here is what I would do. Put your NVIDIA scaling settings back to how they originally were, delete your old BOB2-Win11-Fix folder, extract v1.7.1 next to Bob.exe and run Install and repair once. It will spot and restore the config by itself. Then fly. I would expect the borders gone and the picture sharp at your monitor's full resolution.

If it somehow still misbehaves, the refresh rate test from my earlier post is the next thing to try, but I do not think we will need it. Thanks for the screenshots, they hopefully we cracked this.

Still no joy, same low res 3d in a black frame.

One thing I noticed was AFTER deleting the old fix folder, extracting the new 1.1.7, and running install and repair and fising the dgvoodo conf issue reported, the dgVoodo.conf file on the main game directory was still showing yesterday's date (Date modified). I deleted it and repeated the whole process, but while dgVoodoo.conf is now showing today's date, still get the lower res 3d inside the black border.

I notice the readme says the mod installs all these files into the main game folder:

DDraw.dll - dgVoodoo2 wrapper
D3DImm.dll - dgVoodoo2 wrapper
D3D8.dll - dgVoodoo2 wrapper
D3D9.dll - dgVoodoo2 wrapper
dinput8.dll - Crash guard DLL (from this fix)

Apart from dgVoodoo.conf and dinput.dll which show today 24 August as Date Modified, all the other files show yesterday's date 23 August. Deleting the fix folder doesn't delete these files obviously, so it just seemed odd that after deleting and replacing the fix folder, running 'install and repair' seems to have left me with these day-older files untouched. The same files in the fix's subfolder dgv2865 DO have today's Date Modified. I may be barking up entirely the wrong tree but the impression I get is that Fix and Repair left these day-older files in my game folder when maybe it should have replaced them with the ones in the dgv2865 subfolder. Maybe they're the same files and the Date Modified being different signifies nothing. Should I copy over these 24 August version files from the dgv2865 folder into my game folder, over-writing the day-older 23 August ones?

Hi 33lima

Sorry this must be incredibly frustrating for you. I am doing a full audit to understand why mine works in full screen and yours does not.

Already seeing some differences between our respective DGvoodoo setups:

Hi 33lima, found it in the game's code. BOB2 doesn't save your resolution as numbers, it saves it as a position in the display mode list. Every wrapper config change reshuffles that list, and when the saved position no longer matches, the game quietly drops back to 1024x768. That's your low res 3D, and it's why each experiment seemed to undo the last one.

The fix, in this order. First update to v1.7.2: delete the old BOB2-Win11-Fix folder, extract the new one, run Install and repair, and press Fix on anything it flags. Then delete C:\Users\your name\AppData\Roaming\dgVoodoo. Start the game and re-select 1920x1080 at 60 in the GFX options for both 3D Resolution and Campaign Resolution, even though they already look selected. Quit properly, then fly on the next start. After that, leave the dgVoodoo control panel and config alone, as any change there invalidates the selection again.

Here are some screenshots, I have added Reshade (optional in the mod) also found the Dunkirk map so busy putting some missions together for No. 92 Squadron missions.

No change with that solution I'm afraid. I didn't change my DGVoodoo.Cpl settings to match yours, before running the solution, should I do that and start over again?

No, don't match your control panel to mine, that would send us the wrong way. Your control panel is pointed at a config in your AppData folder, and that's a separate file from the one the game actually uses, which is the one in the game folder. Editing the AppData one won't help.

Your screenshot is a real clue though. It shows that AppData config sitting on unconfigured defaults, and those defaults would give you exactly the low resolution picture in a frame that you're seeing. My hunch is that your game is reading that AppData config instead of the right one in the game folder. If that's what's happening, the fix is easy.

So two things. First, delete the whole folder at C:\Users\your name\AppData\Roaming\dgVoodoo. That gets rid of the wrong config completely and forces the game onto the correct one. Second, so we know for sure which config the game is reading, open dgVoodoo.conf in the game folder with Notepad, find dgVoodooWatermark = false and change it to true, save, then fly. If a small dgVoodoo logo shows up in the corner of the 3D view, the game is reading the game folder config and we're close. If no logo turns up, the game is reading from somewhere else, and that tells me exactly where to look next. Either way, set the watermark back to false afterwards.

That watermark check is the one test that'll finally tell us what's going on, so it's worth doing even though I keep going on about it.

One extra option, click into the config-folder box on your control panel, point it at your game folder the way I pointed mine at D:\Battle of Britain II, and confirm it shows Direct3D 11 and "Stretched, keep Aspect" like mine. That proves the game-folder config itself is correct, which I believe it is; the watermark then proves whether the game is reading it. But the two steps in the reply are enough on their own.

Right I did the two steps in the first of the two posts immediately above. Did NOT run Install and Repair from BoB2.bat, just went for 'Play'. Yes the dgVoodoo watermark is showing, bottom left, first when the game switched to the loading screen with the status bar, and it is there also when the mission loads up ready to fly (still with the black border).

Running dgVoodoo.cpl (the one in the game folder, not in the fix subfolder) and it opens like this, without me touching anything:



The path to my game folder is correct.

IDK if it matters, I have a second BoB2 install in my G: drive, which is the one I have been using when I boot into Windows 7. This changes drive labels - In Win 7, G: is what Win 10 labels C: and where the BoB2 version we are working with lives, if that makes sense.

Thanks, that screenshot and the watermark pretty much explains it.

The dgVoodoo logo and the black border are actually caused by the same thing. The fix installs its own dgVoodoo configuration, which turns the watermark off and reports enough video memory to stop BoB2 falling back to a low 4:3 resolution.Because the watermark is still showing, we know that configuration isn't being used. That would also explain the black border.

I think the reason is simply that you went straight to Play without running Install and Repair first. That is the step that puts the correct dgVoodoo configuration into the game folder.

So, run BoB2.bat - Install and Repair once, let it finish, then hit Play.

Just make sure you're repairing the same BoB2 installation that you're launching. Since you have separate Windows 7 and Windows 10 installs and the drive letters swap between them, it would be easy to repair one and accidentally launch the other.

There's also an easy way to tell if it worked: if the dgVoodoo watermark disappears, the correct configuration is being used and the black border should disappear with it.

If the watermark is still there, then we're probably repairing one installation and launching the other.

Please update to the latest version 1.7.3: Click Here

Before running install and repair again, I re-deleted the Appdata DGVoodo folder and re-ckected the entries in the General tab of DGVoodoo.cpl. Then ran Install & Repair, which reported all well (apart from that 'conf file not touched' warning) the correct, C: install is being used. Turned the watermark back on. After selecting Play and in game, Fly, the watermark is on the 3d loading screen and in the game, still with the black border and the lower res 3d screen.

Updating to 1.7.3 now - I will delete the old fix folder, extract 1.7.3, delete the DGVoodoo ApData folder, re-run install and repair and try again.

EDIT - no change, black border (+ watermark) still there!

I believe you settings.cfg is damaged, and the game applies whatever resolution is stored in there without checking, so it chokes on the values. Update to 1.7.6 and press Play, the launcher will spot the damage and offer to fix it for you (your old file gets backed up automatically). Let me know how you get on.

Click Here

Hi postman, I've installed 1.7.6. Got the settings.cfg damaged message, the fix repaired it.

I've realised that the launcher's desktop shortcut is pointing to "D:\Software\Games\Battle_of_Britain_II_WoV_files\BOB2_modern_fix\BOB2-2.13-Modern-Fix-v1.6.21\BOB2.bat" which is obviously wrong (it's a path to an external drive, not one the game is installed on). Also I'm not sure why it's pointing to an older version of the fix - could be due to me uninstalling BOB2, then reinstalling and then adding an updated fix and not realising the old shortcut was still there, and that it hadn't been overwritten when running the new BOB2.bat (which to me suggests the launcher shortcut just isn't being created when running a new version of the fix).

What I said in a previous post about the window shrinking slightly during the loading screen and in-game action is no longer happening, the window fits my screen now.

However, window shrinkage (to ~80% of the screen) upon return to the menu screen is still happening.

I also find that before starting a mission, in the options screen the word "continue" at the upper right is cut off (like in 33lima's earlier post), but I can still select it. Also happens after leaving a flight and returning to the shrunken menu window.

I really need to find a way to upload screenshots, but I hope all this is descriptive enough.

I was looking through the in-game options, and on the more GFX menu, I tried setting "use desktop resolution (not for widescreen)" to off, and beneath that, 3D resolution to !1920x1080x32 @ 144!. Then I tried instant action and found that the text on the loading screen, the flight info text (airspeed, altitude etc. readings), comms messages, instrument panel tooltips (in interactive cockpit mode) and in the map menus is now readable. I'm not sure if I should be dabbling in the options to change such settings, but maybe this offers a clue to resolving the unreadable text issue. It's certainly made an improvement.

I've compared my dgVoodoo.cpl in the game folder to that of 33lima's and it's showing the exact same settings (reminder that I'm using Windows 11).

By the way, I've noticed a possible bug in gameplay but this might just be the way the sim is (maybe it's due to a certain setting I've enabled). It happens rarely, but when taking damage the plane can suddenly speed up and the outside view (terrain and sky) suddenly starts jerking/shaking rapidly, followed by the aircraft plummeting to the ground. It seems to happen when taking damage that renders the plane unflyable but that also can happen without this weird effect. Maybe it was due to damage to the throttle/engine, causing RPM to speed up uncontrollably and this effect simulates the airframe vibrating due to the engine damage, not sure though. Just thought I'd mention it.