Battlefield Vietnam Tweak Guide
[Page 6] Advanced Tweaking
Aside from the in-game settings, there are a range of additional settings you can change in Battlefield Vietnam which affect performance and visual quality. These settings are contained in Config (.con) files, which can be edited using any text editor, such as Windows Wordpad. Before you edit any of these files, first make a backup of each one for safe keeping.
The main config files we will be tweaking are found under the \EA Games\Battlefield Vietnam\Mods\Bfvietnam\Settings\ directory unless otherwise specified. Advice for adjusting settings which can be completely changed using the in-game menus will not be repeated here.
VideoDefault.con
renderer.allowAllRefreshRates 1
By default this setting is set to 0, however it is strongly recommended that you set it to 1 so that your refresh rate can exceed 60Hz in Battlefield Vietnam. In fact if you have a refresh rate fix installed, or are using a refresh rate override on your system, BF:V will not load up - usually giving an error, crashing to desktop or stopping at a black screen - if this setting is not set to 1. There is no reason this should be left set at 0.
renderer.setFullScreen 1
If you want to start BF:V in a window on your Desktop as opposed to the normal full screen, set this to 0 to do so. You may experience problems or crashes if using windowed mode, however your performance should be improved. Note that if you want to use windowed mode, you should choose a Display Mode for the game which is equal to or smaller than your Windows Desktop resolution otherwise portions of the game display will be cut off.
renderer.fieldOfView 1
The default Field of View (FOV) is 1. Values between 0 up to 1 (e.g. 0.85) will give you a closer (zoomed right in) FOV than normal, while values over 1 (e.g. 1.5) will give you a farther FOV than normal. Experiment with values close to 1 to see if it suits you better than the default. Values below 1 can improve performance due to a reduction of what is being drawn (visible) on screen.
renderer.globalLodRadius 1
LOD is the Level of Detail. As objects get further away from the camera, the number of polygons rendered by the graphics card will be gradually reduced without any noticeable reduction in detail. This improves performance, particularly with large numbers of objects on the screen. The Global LOD Radius setting determines the radius around the character (imagine a bubble) beyond which LOD starts to reduce (at a rate based on the scale factor below). The higher this setting – given a constant (non-zero) scale factor – the higher the graphics details on objects, but the lower your fps. Increase this setting if you want crisper, more detailed objects around you, but at the cost of some fps. The default is 1, which is the lowest practical setting.
renderer.globalLodRadiusScaleFactor 5
Having set the radius beyond which the Level of Detail begins to drop (see above), the LOD Radius Scale Factor setting determines the rate at which polygons are stripped from objects the further away they are from the camera outside this radius. The default is 5. Values lower than 5 decrease LOD decay (meaning higher graphics quality), values higher than 5 increase it (meaning lower graphics quality). If you want the absolute best level of detail, at the expense of some fps, choose 0, which means no reduction in LOD regardless of distance. The default 5 is a good balance, but experiment with slightly lower or higher values (e.g. 4 or 6) to see which increases your fps at the cost of minimal, if any, noticeable reduction in graphics quality.
console.showstats 0
If set to 1, this option will automatically display a range of game engine statistics when a map in BF:V loads up. Not recommended for normal use. You can't disable the stats using the console.showstats command in the console - you will have to change its value back to 0 in the Videodefault.con file to remove it.
renderer.useTrilinearFiltering 0
Insert this line into the Videodefault.con file, and set it to 0 to disable Trilinear filtering (and instead use Bilinear filtering). Trilinear and Bilinear Filtering are methods of texture filtering which affect the sharpness of textures as they fade into the distance. Disabling Trilinear filtering will improve performance with negligible graphics quality loss, so it is recommended you set to this to 0.
Default.con
Game.useHud 1
If you don't want the Heads Up Display (HUD) - the game information around various areas of your screen - to be displayed, you can set this value to 0 and the HUD will be removed. This is not recommended.
The following files should be found and edited under the \EA Games\Battlefield Vietnam\Mods\BfVietnam\settings\Profiles\Custom directory:
Video.con
game.setGameDisplayMode 1280 960 32 85
This setting controls the resolution, color depth and refresh rate of the in-game image. You can alter this using the in-game Display Mode setting, however if you want to choose a non-standard resolution and/or refresh rate (e.g. Widescreen), set it here. Make absolutely certain your display device supports the resolution and refresh rate you are selecting otherwise you may end up with an 'out of frequency' error or black screen, and even cause damage to your display.
Note, the resolution will change for in-game gameplay as specified above, however the main menu resolution will always remain the same and cannot be changed.
renderer.vsyncenabled 0
This setting doesn't exist in Video.con by default, so you must insert it. Setting it to 1 enables Vertical Synchronization, which is the synchronization of your graphics card and monitor's abilities to redraw the screen a number of times each second (measured in FPS or Hz). In Battlefield Vietnam when VSync is enabled (which it is by default), your framerate will be a lot lower and more jerky than when VSync is disabled. If VSync is disabled, you may notice some screen "tearing" however for the most part you will notice a nice performance boost and reduction in stuttering in BF:V. I highly recommend you also check your graphics card's control panel and make sure Vsync is also set to 'Always Off ' or 'Application Preference' (or similar), otherwise this setting won't work.
game.setRenderWhenSpawnMenu 1
This setting doesn't exist in Video.con by default, so you must insert it if you wish to use it. When set to 1 (which is the default), whenever you use the Spawn Menu - the large map where you select your spawn point - the background will be rendered as normal. If you are experiencing mouse lag with the Spawn Menu, first set its transparency under the Minimap Transparency option to 0% (See In-Game Settings). If that doesn't help, you can set this setting to 0, which will stop the background rendering while the Spawn Menu is open, allowing perfectly smooth mouse movement. When the Spawn Menu is minimized again, rendering continues as normal.
Sound.con
game.channels 32
You can manually adjust the number of channels here, similar to the slider in the In-Game Settings. However you can attempt to set this to a number lower than the lower limit of the slider to see if it will work on your sound card and improve overall performance (and/or fix audio glitches). I don't believe BF:V allows less than 32 Channels, but I have not tried on all sounds cards so manually set to this to a lower number like 16 or 8 and see if it works.
game.menuMusicVolume 100
In the In-Game menus you can adjust the Master Volume for the music and sound effects. However if you want to manually adjust the menu music volume level separately (if you have it enabled), you can set it to a value between 0 and 100. For example you may want the master volume at 90%, but you can set the menu music volume to 50% to prevent annoyance during loading screens.
That about covers all the working advanced tweaks I have found so far for Battlefield Vietnam. There are a wide range of so-called tweaks doing the rounds in various guides, but having tested them all, most of them do nothing whatsoever since the commands they are using are not implemented in the game engine. Many of the commands which worked in BF1942 for example (such as the sound. commands) simply will not work in BF:V. If you know of any more tested and working commands for the .con files, Email Me and I will verify them and update this section to include them.
The next section covers working Console Commands for Battlefield Vietnam. Note once again that they are not all identical to BF1942.
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