Benchmark Scores
The test option of High Quality represents scores with both 4x AA and 8x AF enabled.
Lock On: Modern Air Combat was tested using the MiG-29 Intercept demo. In-game settings were at their highest options, except for several features such as water and heat bltr which were set to low and turned off. The demo was run for three minutes and scores were recorded using Fraps.
LOMAC scales well with graphics options and resolution changes, displaying a roughly 20% frame rate loss from 4x AA and slightly over 30% for 8x AF; neither feature allows for playable frame rates at 1600×1200 however. With both features combined, the simulation is barely playable at 1024×768.
Microsoft’s Flight Simulator 2004 was tested using SimHQ’s in-house dusk flight over the city of Hong Kong, with an external camera view set behind the plane. Frame rate recording is stopped once the plane lands.MS2004 was configured with ultra high settings across its four hardware panels.
Another simulation that scales with changes to the graphics sub-system, FS2004 incurs a much sharper performance hit from anisotropic filtering than from anti-aliasing in SimHQ’s test flight video. 4x AA drops the frame rate by 20-30% across the tested resolutions, while 8x AF performance is closer to 40-50% lower than the baseline scores. And High quality isn’t a viable option at any of the tested resolutions with the title’s in-game options configured with ultra high settings, except for perhaps 1024×768.
IL-2: Forgotten Battles – Aces Expansion Pack represents SimHQ’s non-modern flight simulation test. Using OpenGL, the landscape option was set to perfect and all other graphics options were at their highest settings. Testing consisted of using the Black Death track.
IL2: FB AEP takes the least performance hit from anti-aliasing among the flight simulations tested for this review, losing less than 10% at 1024×768, roughly 15% at 1280×960, and increasing to almost 20% at 1600×1200. As in the past, the simulation incurs a much sharper loss from anisotropic filtering, with frame rates dropping by around 30-50% across the resolutions and leaving the game unplayable at 1600×1200. And as with the above titles, high quality isn’t a viable option at the higher resolutions.
