I've noticed that too, and it's not because my rig is generally sluggish (70-90 FPS even in the middle of a nine ship convoy. Until they discover me, that is), but the moment things start going boom it's a different matter altogether.

I had one battle where I found myself in an unescorted convoy like the one above in the middle of the night (I thought I'd died and gone to Kaleun Heaven, then I realized that I had only two torpedoes left and knew that I hadn't :03: ) and everything was running smoothly even though the weather was acting up and getting worse and there was a lot going on. When I started hitting stuff, though, more specifically when I caused explosions on the enemy ships, the sim would stutter and halt, then come back again.

Now I love my eye candy as much as the next guy, but if every boom sucks up half my rig's available CPU cycles, then it's a bit much.

Whether this is moddable or hidden in the code I don't know and I'd be the last person you'd want to ask in the first place, but it would be nice if something could be done about it. :DL

I have anti lag installed.
Was using these settings:
[config]
RenderAheadLimit=2
FPSlimit=32

But will give your settings a try.
Also good call on the shadows.

I'll will let you know what happens.

...ive allready disabled the red distress flares from FXupdate, that helps alot against explosion CTD`s but could still a bit more fluid also for the ships, settings below 50 percent particle density lack to much of ships stack and fire smoke.

It CTD once for me during this mission, I just reloaded from a save in mission and it was ok after that.

My specs....
i7-3960 six core o-clocked to 4.0Ghz
16MB ram
Dual 2GB AMD Radeon HD6950 in x-fire mode
Windows 7 premium 64 bit.

I don't have any lag on explosions and get white and red flares during an attack with no lag, so I guess the lag thing may be hardware related.

My soup is

Generic Mod Enabler - v2.6.0.157
[C:\Ubisoft\Silent Hunter 5\MODS]
Grossdeutscher Rundfunk
DBSM_Music_1_0_4
MMM p1 - Dynamic Environment v0.2
sobers see thru wake fix
sobers best ever fog V9 SH5
MMM p2 - Graphics-FX-IRAI-Weapons v0.3
MMM p3 - tdw UI v0.3
EQuaTool 01.01 by AvM - Kriegsmarine Regular Style
EQuaTool 01.01 by AvM - add-on - Large Style Ruler
MMM p4 - Sounds - Tweaked SDBSM v0.3
Stormys DBSM SH5 v1.3 optional remaining orig sounds converted to 22Khz
Wordeees' Thunder
MMM p5.1 - OHII+Lifeboats (OHII 1.7) v0.3
OH II Minefield map for TDWs Ui
TDW_Mines_Subnets_Detectable_in_hydro (OH II v1.7)
SteelViking's Bunker Fixes V1.0
Rubini_Crash_dive_fix_for MCFM 1.2.1&MCCD v1.3a _for_SDBSM
stoianm EnvWeather V1 SH5

This is again more suitable for FX update-thread, but I think that the debris particles are slowing down the game. If there is a big air attack against the ships, the sea will be full of ship debris from the airplane cannon hits. The debris stays in the water and starts to cause problems when there is too much of it. Exploding planes also create slow downs. Even white starshells cause short pause in the game.

Port air raids would be great! I wonder if they would work with the stripped down, old effects.

After some more tests I can tell it's connected to FX and IRAI.
Can anyone help?

edit:
...and something else apparently, don't know what though. I tried many different configurations. Maybe still too heavy for RAM?

:hmmm:

If the first campaign loads ok (CoastalWaters) and it drops you in Kiel, the most taxing harbour in the game -i could be mod related.

You should just try the old tests first:-
Reduce shadows
Reduce other graphics settings
Remove all mods other than OHII and make sure it works on its own

Finally, I stopped using MagnumOpus, since most of its files were already overwritten, and just installed some essentials separately. Now it is all good.
Thank You for the help Trevally!

Keep up the good work:salute:

The date: October 7, 1939. I finished Breaking the Fortress and was heading back to port with three fish left, hoping to find a straggler somewhere along the way. I bumped into a Polish freighter with a blue icon. I remembered that I received a message saying that Germany had control over Poland, but that we can still attack their ships, so I lined myself up, sent out a torp, and .. and .. and .. "huh? whuh? Oh, I'm frozen". So, I got into task manager and ended SH5, reloaded it and tried again. I figured maybe it was because I was looking through the scope and that was too much for the system for some reason. No change. Tried it again by lowering the scope and going to the navmap right after releasing the torp. No difference. I began to shiver from all the freezing.

So, after reloading again, I decided to leave this guy alone and go on my merry way. I later bumped into another Polish ship designated by a blue icon. The ship's captain refused to hand over his shipment of kielbasa, so I started hammering him with my deck gun. As soon as he began to sink, the game froze again :dead:.

The first ship was a Rongel Small Old Split Freighter. The second one was a Uekel Medium Composite Freighter if that makes a difference.

I encountered a couple of other red icon ships afterwards, and they went to the bottom without any problems. One of them was also a Rongel Small Old Split Freighter, by the way.

Was this game-freeze problem because I fired upon a ship designated with a blue icon or could it be something else? :hmmm:

You just encountered a known issue. Never, ever, EVER fire at a ship represented by a blue marker, no matter HOW much the game tells you that you can.

Thanks Misha! :up:

lol .. that message about being able to still sink Polish ships kind of reminds me of that friend everyone had when they were kids (unless you were one of them :O:) that would say "ya, ya, go ahead and do it. don't worry, you won't get in trouble for it. do it! do it!" :D

I will add a radio message to inform when to stop attacking Polish ships:up:

ROFL .. :har: (good one! I'm still laughing :D)

Actually, that would help me a lot. I was embarrassed when I overheard the Polish captain saying "Lookit! Stupid uboat kapitan gonna trying shooting us again ... heeheee .. get cameras, boys! We putting idiot on youtube!" :yeah:

great job!

Thanks and welcome to subsim Dummerkerl:salute: