Hah; MSAA is off completely; this box was built in 2007 for about 2k then (so, 50 cents now?)
Core 2 Duo is the worst thing for me; I only have two cores at about 2.4ghz; so even though I could update my video card (9800 GTX), my cpu is still my bottleneck.
I suck so bad at this game. I thought i was good at video games, specially shooters. No longer, i now know i am a horrible noob at this game. Beautiful game though.
The best way i can explain it is that there is A LOT going on. The camera shakes, your vision gets blurry, you start sucking breath, dirt gets in your vision. Then I’m dead before i know what happened.
So I hoped in to our private server for a few minutes.
The xbox 360 game pad makes flying the choppers a freaking joy. I was able to take off, go full tilt across the map, and set down easily. I also able to keep any part of the aircraft oriented towards a particular target.
The jet planes, too go from (IMHO) uncontrollable with mouse and keyboard, to at least a lot more functional with the gamepad.
Didn’t have time to play with them much though.
So if you have a gamepad, use it for the vehicles (well, the aerial ones at least). If you have wireless game pads, make sure they are turned on before joining a server, as the game won’t recognize them if turned on during the game.
I would recommend a gamepad overall for Pc gaming. We’re getting a lot of platformers, fighting games, sports games, arcade racing games now a days, and the gamepad is usually a better interface for these types of games.
For BF3 specifically, if you want to take full advantage of the aerial vehicle,s yeah, I’d recommend it as well.
The xbox 360 controller is your best bet since most games work with it out of the box.
You can use a wired xbox 360 controller, just by plugging in the USB, a wireless one by purchasing a PC receiver for it, or you cna also purchase one that can be used by both the PC and console right out of the box (they tend to cost more though).
It’s easier to switch back and forth from Mouse and Keyboard and gamepad than m&k and jostick as well.
Any wired xbox controller off the rack will work with a PC, yes. If you have windows vista/7 all you have to do is plug it in. If you’re on XP you might have to download a driver (it will prompt you to).
If it’s wireless you’ll need a special receiver for the PC, which you cna pick up from amazon or your local best buy for $20-$30.
And as I mentioned, another option is to pick up a specifically branded xbox gamepad. I forget what Microsoft calls them, but they say on the box that they work on both PC and xbox.