My Windows 8 Game Experience So Far
I`ve just assembled a new A10 Rig and bought a batch of new games to load onto it.
My experience with Windows 8 is 50% failure rate (or I could say a 50% success rate)
All three of the games that are all `Steam`games and so far they don`t work.
- DIRT3,
- DIRT Showdown
- IL*2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover
I emailed Codemasters for support on Dirt3 - they did reply saying it should work but that Windows 8 is not officially supported by Dirt3 so they could not offer tech support.
I`ve emailed them about Dirt Showdown, no reply yet.
Could it be that my rural satellite internet connection is creating a Steam problem I get a whole 1.5 Mbps on a clear day, somedays it goes down to .5 Mbps. (just retested today it is 1.1 Mbps). I know that I cannot play games on-line that is why I buy DVD`s - I hate this Steam thing, takes forever to load their advertisement before I get to the `play`button, and then I press it and nothing happens (other than it reports that I`ve played my game today - but they lie, I have never played these games).
BUT there is good news the following games do work:
- Warbirds: Dogfights
- Need For Speed: Shift2 Unleashed Limited Edition
- X Plane 10: Regional North American edition*
*When I tried to install X Plane I could not read the installation screens. I checked online and there was a different downloader to be downloaded and used instead of the one on the DVD. So I did. It made no difference. Here is the screen.
I tired fiddling with various resolutions because I could kinda make out the screen but the image was just too fuzzy. On a hunch I disabled the Dual-Graphics mode which crossfires my APU & my HD6670 through AMD`s Catalyst program and that worked. Running only on the graphics card the install screens were crisp.
The game played OK using the HD6670 alone, but then I thought I`d see what happens when I re-enabled `dual graphics`mode and the game still worked just fine. I didn`t benchmark the FPS or anything to test the difference between the two modes, in game play I didn`t notice any difference. But I`m not a great pilot and was just learning to get my Cessna off the ground and land it again without crashing.
The X-Plane game automatically found my T-Flight Hotas X Flight Stick which was nice.
NFS Shift2 Unleashed did not find my Challenge Wheel, although when it was plugged in neither the wheel nor the keyboard controlled the car. I`m sure there is a way to make that happen. Windows 8 did find and identify both of these controllers (their icon shows them as Xbox style controllers but it does identify them correctly.
I have two more games on order from Ebay - the old standby MS Flight Simulator 10 the Gold Edition, and Flight Gear Pro. I`ll update this post once they arrive and I get them installed.
FKD