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

OK replaced the fix subfolder with 1.7.6, ran BoB2.bat and got this...




Selected 'Play' (NOT Fix and Repair first) and got this - still lower res but the black border is left and right edges only (a bit broader than it appears in this screenie)...

Two things jump out:

First, the border all the way round is gone. The picture fills the full height now with bars at the sides only, so the scaling is finally doing its job.

Second, and this is the important bit, the repair message says your settings file was 1800 bytes. On the working install it's 1786 bytes. So your game is writing a longer settings file with a genuinely different layout, which explains why everything we read from it came back as nonsense at the offsets we mapped. I suspect the dual-boot setup writing to the same install from two environments has something to do with it.

What's left is that the game is rendering a 4:3 mode instead of your monitor's 1920x1080, because the resolution values in the file we installed sit at positions your game simply doesn't read from. Two things should finish this off.

First, try the game's own graphics screen. Set the resolution to the highest it offers, exit properly through the menus, then fly again. Since your game writes its own layout correctly, that alone may sort it.

Second, whether or not that works, could you attach two files from your SAVEGAME folder to your next post? settings.cfg (as it is now) and settings.cfg.before-knowngood (your original, which the repair kept safe). Once we have your 1800-byte original we can map exactly where your game keeps its resolution and make the repair write to the right place for your layout rather than ours.

One more thing while you're in there: run Install and Repair once, as the status bar shows the older version still sitting underneath.

Thanks for sticking with this one

Back to the black border all around with the lower-res 3d.

Before and after with Install & Repair:






Attached are those files, .cfg is blocked so had to fiddle with the extensions, hope that's ok.

Thanks 33, thanks your hard work and passion and contributions for this sim.

Agree, hope we can get it up and running for everyone.

Hi Lima

Thank you for your patience and the files. They tell me the repair did what it was meant to, and also that it was aimed at the wrong thing. The four values Install and Repair fixes only set the map screen mode. The 3D view uses a separate saved value, which turns out to be a position number in the list of modes dgVoodoo reports, and that list gets renumbered whenever the wrapper config changes. Yours was saved before the last config changes, so it now points at a small mode, and dgVoodoo dutifully letterboxes that inside 1920x1080. That is your black border.

Nothing outside the game can put the right number back, but the game can. Please do this, changing nothing else:

1. Start the game.
2. Options, then Graphics. Look at the top Resolution list, the one with the exclamation marks. I expect it will not say 1920x1080. Tell me what it does say.
3. Pick !1920x1080x32 @ 144! (the exclamation marks just mean widescreen). Leave the lower map screen list alone.
4. Press the tick, then quit the game from the menu so it writes the file.
5. Fly.

If it already says 1920x1080 and the border is still there, I am wrong, and I would like your SAVEGAME\settings.cfg.before-resfix and a screenshot of that Graphics screen.

One rule for the future: any change to dgVoodoo.conf means picking the resolution in that screen again.

Sorry but I messed up!

We may need to start over here.

I wanted to fly BoB2 in Win7 so I booted into that, where my second and separate BoB2 install resides. At some point I must have tried the fix on that Install, as the fix was there (as well as in my separate Win 10 BoB2 install) and when I ran Win 7 install BoB2, I had the black border. I realised what I had done when I saw the GFX screen listing the DGVoodoo wrapper. I uninstalled the fix manually by deleting the files named in the readme.

My second big mistake was deleting them in the Win10 install first!

Long story short - I ran Install and Repair on my Win 10 BoB2 install and it identified and fixed both no DgVoodoo and no crash fix. Flew, corrected the GFX 3d resolution from the very low figure that was there...



.... to !1920x1080...



...and flew - the black border still there. For some reason when I PrtSc from the sim then after quitting BoB2, paste it into Paint, the side borders are not there but all four borders are black, in-game.



Current Win 10 settings.cfg (from the Savegame folder) attached.

I have stock Battle of Britain II v 2.13, no mods. I am able to play 1920 X 1080 @ 144mhz, all settings high, no black borders, runs very smooth. Running Windows 10.

Without using this fix, and with no CTDs when you Alt+X to quit, or randomly in flight?

Lima, Alt-X takes me right to the desktop w/o issue, no CTD's either.

As in, Alt+X during flight goes to the BoB2 main menu instead of taking you right out of the game? Have you applied anything fancy to BoB2.exe's compatibility settings or used something else suggested over on A2A?

Lima, thank you for the screenshots and the settings file. That black border is a bug in my fix, not anything you did, and I have just released v1.7.8 which cures it.

What was going on: before it enters the 3D view, BoB2 switches the Windows desktop to 1024x768 for its briefing screens. The dgVoodoo wrapper then built its fullscreen picture from that 4:3 desktop, so your 1920x1080 flight view was squeezed into a 4:3 box, and your card kept the box's shape on the screen. That is why you see black on all four sides in the sim but only top and bottom in a PrtSc. Whether it showed at all depended on which screen came last before you flew, which is why it looked random and why it hit me too this week, on a completely different PC.

The 720x576 you found in the 3D Resolution box is a cousin of the same thing. The game stores that setting as a position in the list of modes, and installing dgVoodoo changes the list, so the saved position lands on something silly. Picking 1920x1080 again was the right thing to do.

To update: delete the old BOB2-Win11-Fix folder, extract the new one from the link below beside Bob.exe, open the launcher and run Install and repair. The Graphics translator row and the Windows 11 flags row will both be red. Press Fix on each. The second one may ask for administrator permission once, that is it removing a compatibility setting Windows puts on Bob.exe by itself which stops the game getting a real fullscreen mode.

One more thing, since you mentioned the Windows 7 install: leave the fix out of that one. dgVoodoo's output there is a different story and I have not tested it on 7.

Extract over the old folder rather than delete it: Click Here

Tally Ho!



That did the trick! Briliiant!

Many thanks for your initiative and perseverance!

Not sure I'm getting my antialiasing or aniso filtering settings but I'm reluctant to fiddle as the screen res is definitely sorted and there's no black border in 3d!

I'll play a few missions to check the CTDs are gone and report back, after which I will start a new RAF campaign.

Thank you!!!

Lima when I hit ALT-X it brings me to the desktop not main menu. I have kept BOB II completely stock, no mods of any kind. Nice screen shot Lima.

Ah, I see. Alt+X when flying should only quit from the 3d world to the relevant menu or campaign screen, not exit the sim to the desktop. The main disadvantage of that - apart from having to re-start the sim over if you want to do something else in the sim - is, if I recall right, that in a campaign, the results of that mission are lost. Been a while but CTD on Alt+X is one of the bugbears I recall from playing BoB2 in Win 10, the other one being random CTDs during a mission. Hopefully a thing of the past with Postman's new fix.

Hi Lima, glad to hear it, and thank you for sticking with it through the border saga. It turned out to be the same fault on your machine and mine (after in updated my NVidia drivers) , so your screenshots were worth more than you knew. If anything else looks odd, the Install and repair screen shows the state of every part of the fix, and a screenshot of that tells me most of what I need.


Stunning screenshot.

I am at an advanced stage with some new additions to the mod:

New in the Modern Fix next update:

•The Squadron Room. Your own RAF pilot, posted to a real 1940 squadron with a roster of the men who actually flew in it, rank badges and ribbons as you earn them, and a morning paper carrying genuine 1940 headlines for every day of the Battle. A logbook that reads the campaign itself. Until now the game kept your career to itself. We have decoded the campaign save file and found the pilot's own Log Book inside it, sortie by sortie: how each flight ended, and every victory credited to you, by type of aircraft. The Squadron Room reads that record directly, so when you land from a scramble your Stuka or your 109 is already in your logbook, with the date, with no typing and no guesswork, and the count always agrees with the game's own Log Book because it is the same data. The same source gives the Room the campaign date, your squadron and your station, so the dispersal you walk into is the one you are actually flying from.

•The Dunkirk mission pack. Four Battle of France missions over the evacuation beaches. Dunkerque has been added to the game's map, the harbor and beaches are dressed, and the little ships are in the Channel.

The Flight Training Module. The Tiger Moth flies.

Briliant! Really looking forward to the next update!

I hadn't checked out the new launcher with its revised set of options...



...but I just had a peek at the Squadroon Room option and it's looking great already - it seems to be a new, improved and modern route into creating an RAF pilot campaign, with marvellous extra features!



So Sgt Richard Kennedy is now on ops with 601 at Tangmere for the Chanel battles! You should have seen me grin when I saw this - as indicated, my allocated aircraft markings were provided on the second visit, but I wasn't expecting the profile of my kite - a lovely touch!



Minor gripe - could the serial numbers on the profiles be made smaller?

I didn't get a screenie of the campaign and squadron selector for this post so I went to 'new pilot' to get to there - the pop-up said Sgt Kennedy was saved so I'm hoping I can get back to him in game, tho not sure how. A way of selecting from previously-created pilots there may be, or choosing your rank or appointment, so you could start as a flight or squadron leader.

And I checked out the training option and took the Tiger Moth for a spin...not literally!



At present I can go to Instant Action (not quick missions as in the pop-up) and select the Moth from the A/C list, tho for now there's just the stock five missions. EDIT - just found the six training missions - I needed to select them from the drop-down list at the bottom, NOT use the existing 'Training' option and change aircraft type to the Moth.

Really great to see this classic sim get these new features, and enabled to run properly in more modern systems! I'm sure the latest news will create a stir over on the A2A BoB2 forums when you add to your post on the fix, which no doubt many old hands still visit.

Looking forward to the new update!

Bravo!

Hi Lima

Really glad you are enjoying the mod. I hope it will re-ignite a renewed interest in this amazing game. I have quite a few plans. Once the "British Squadron room" is complete I will start working on the "Luftwaffe Squadron room".

Here are some screenshots of the new version. I have adjusted the serial numbers. Doing some final tweaking.

WOW!

Still running fine here. The periperal vision icons which I had turned off reappeared, but I was able to turn them off in the Sim options in the usual way.

I'm fairly sure I'm not getting antialiasing and possibly not aniso filtering either. I tried resetting the former in both Nvidia drivers and then in an Nvidia Inspector profile for the sim, with no apparent change.



I'm thinking that as DGVoodoo is being used, I need to set those in its own driver control panel, but I'm hesitant to mess about there for fear of causing problems. Do you think it would be safe to try setting AA and AF in DGVoodoo.cpl?

Hi Lima

Glad it running well.

I wouldn't recommend you change any settings.

Version 1.8.3 is up.

The main thing this time is the menus. If you have ever had the briefing text sitting on top of the tab row, or the view coming up far too big once you are flying, it turns out those were the same problem wearing two hats. Bob.exe carries a manifest inside it that says nothing at all about how the game wants to be scaled, so Windows makes its own mind up, and on a high resolution screen it decides wrongly. It also writes that decision back in the moment the game starts, which is why taking the setting off by hand never stuck for more than one launch.

The fix puts a small manifest file next to Bob.exe that states plainly the game does not do its own scaling, and it tells dgVoodoo to render the desktop the game is actually handed rather than the full size of your panel. Both halves are needed. With only the first you get correct menus and a cockpit half again too large. Menus and cockpit now come out right together, and it holds across a flight, which is where every earlier attempt came apart.

The other half of the release is the Squadron Room. The sector map has been redrawn so that forty one squadrons no longer sit on top of each other in the London approaches. Each airfield now carries one plaque with its squadrons on it, and the crowded ones are docked out over the North Sea and the Channel with a line back to the field. Point at a squadron number and you get its card, meaning the aeroplane it flew, its station and sector, what the order of battle made of it, and the three highest scorers on its strength that morning.

You can also now join a squadron as a sergeant pilot or with a commission, which is not just flavour because it decides whether you are put up for the DFM or the DFC, exactly as the RAF did it. The Victoria Cross is in, along with a Bar to the DSO, and the Polish and Czech squadrons are decorated by their own governments as well. A new career starts empty now instead of inheriting the previous pilot's war, and the Polish and Czech names in the rosters come out properly rather than as mangled characters.

There is a new option in the setup, number 13, that turns on antialiasing, anisotropic filtering and ReShade together. It is off unless you ask for it, and pressing it again takes it back off. If you are on older hardware I would try the antialiasing on its own first and leave ReShade until you know what the rest is costing you.

One thing I should be straight about. The fix sets a Windows setting called PreferExternalManifest, which is machine wide rather than just for this game. It makes Windows read a manifest file sitting next to a program in preference to the one built into it. Almost nothing else on a normal machine ships a loose manifest file, so in practice it affects BOB2 and nothing else, you should know it is there. It comes straight back out if you remove it.

Here is the latest version for you to to test: Click Here