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Crimson Skies

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
Crimson Skies
Crimson Skies cover
Developers
Zipper Interactive
Publishers
Microsoft
Engines
GameZ
Release dates
Windows September 17, 2000
Reception
Metacritic 83
Taxonomy
Monetization One-time game purchase
Modes Singleplayer, Multiplayer
Pacing Real-time
Perspectives First-person, Third-person
Controls Direct control
Genres Action, Vehicle combat
Vehicles Flight
Themes Interwar, North America, Piracy
Crimson Skies on HowLongToBeat
Crimson Skies on IGDB
Crimson Skies on MobyGames
Crimson Skies on Wikipedia

Warnings

SafeDisc retail DRM does not work on Windows Vista and later (see Availability for affected versions).

General information

MontanaRaiders.com - A fan site for the Crimson Skies series

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
Disc check (requires the CD/DVD in the drive to play)
SafeDisc DRM[Note 1].
Windows
SafeDisc retail DRM does not work on Windows Vista and later (see above for affected versions).
A free demo version is available from Archive.org.

Essential improvements

In-game general settings.
In-game general settings.

Patches

  • The latest official patch v1.02 is available here or at soggi.org.

Modern hardware support

Use csfix[citation needed]
  1. Make sure the game is patched to 1.02.
  2. Download the Crimson Skies FOV Fix (this download includes CSFix and corrects the FOV to work with any aspect ratio).
  3. Extract to the installation folder.
  4. Ensure that DirectPlay and Windows Media Player are enabled.
Use dgVoodoo2[citation needed]
  1. Download dgVoodoo 2.
  2. Extract dgVoodooCpl.exe and the contents of the MS\x86 subfolder to <path-to-game>.
  3. Run dgVoodooCpl.exe and under the DirectX tab, tick Application controlled fullscreen/windowed state.
NVIDIA settings[citation needed]
  1. In addition to csfix, turn off AtiFix in csfix.ini to fix view circles appearing as squares.
  2. To fix FPS issues, in the NVIDIA Control Panel's 3D Settings, change these options for Crimson Skies:
    1. Maximum Prerendered Frames: 1
    2. Power Management Mode: Prefer Maximum performance
    3. Threaded Optimization: Off
    4. Vertical Sync: Fast
  3. Windows Compatibility Administrator (32 bit) may need to be used to apply the DWM8And16BitMitigation setting to fix preview circle glitching.
  4. If cutscenes run slower than the audio (causing sync issues), try enabling DisableDXMaximizedWindowedMode in the aforementioned Compatibility Administrator.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
Windows

Save game data location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\SavedGames\[Note 2]

Video

In-game video settings.
In-game video settings.
External video settings.
External video settings.

Graphics feature State WSGF Notes
Widescreen resolution
See the WSGF entry.
Multi-monitor
See the WSGF entry.
Ultra-widescreen
See the WSGF entry.
4K Ultra HD
See the WSGF entry.
Field of view (FOV)
Windowed
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Borderless fullscreen windowed
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anti-aliasing (AA)
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
High-fidelity upscaling
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Vertical sync (Vsync)
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
60 FPS
120+ FPS
High dynamic range display (HDR)

Input

In-game general controls settings.
In-game general controls settings.
In-game key map settings.
In-game key map settings.

XInput-compatible controllers

The game will not detect buttons above 11 and are practically unusable
Use XInput Plus
  1. Download XInput Plus
  2. Set the target program to crimson.exe
  3. Go to "DirectInput" and check "Enable DirectInput Output"
  4. Assign "DPAD" to "POV"
  5. Go to "Customize"
  6. Assign "Left Stick X" to "X Axis"
  7. Assign "Left Stick Y" to "Y Axis"
  8. Assign "Right Stick X" to "Z Rot"
  9. Assign "Right Stick Y" to "Z Axis"
  10. Assign "LT" to "Button7"
  11. Assign "RT" to "Button8"
  12. Assign "DPAD Up" to "POV_Up"
  13. Assign "DPAD Right" to "POV_Right"
  14. Assign "DPAD Down" to "POV_Down"
  15. Assign "DPAD Left" to "POV_Left"
  16. Assign "A" to "Button1"
  17. Assign "B" to "Button2"
  18. Assign "X" to "Button3"
  19. Assign "Y" to "Button4"
  20. Assign "LB" to "Button5"
  21. Assign "RB" to "Button6"
  22. Assign "LS Button" to "Button9"
  23. Assign "RS Button" to "Button10"
  24. Check "Enable ForcefeedBack Emulation"
  25. Press apply, this will install a DLL file in <path-to-game> (which will be automatically used when you start the game).

Notes

Edit the button layout in the in-game key map settings.
Use the HRTR control layout as a reference. [1]

Audio

In-game audio settings.
In-game audio settings.

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
Music, Effects, Voice
Surround sound
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
Royalty free audio

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
German
Japanese

Network

Multiplayer types

Type Native Players Notes
LAN play
16 TCP/IP or IPX
Online play
16 The official MSN Gaming Zone service has been shut down.

Connection types

Ports

Protocol Port(s) and/or port range(s)
TCP 28805, 28801, 3040, 1121[3]
Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) support status is unknown.

Other information

API

Executable 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows

Middleware

Middleware Notes
Cutscenes Windows Media Player
Multiplayer MSN Gaming Zone

System requirements

Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 95
Processor (CPU) Intel Pentium II 266 MHz
System memory (RAM) 64 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 700 MB
Video card (GPU) 8 MB of VRAM
DirectX 7 compatible
Sound (audio device) DirectX compatible
Other 4x CD-ROM


Notes

  1. SafeDisc retail DRM does not work on Windows 10[1] or Windows 11 and is disabled by default on Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 when the KB3086255 update is installed.[2]
  2. When running this game without elevated privileges (Run as administrator option), write operations against a location below %PROGRAMFILES%, %PROGRAMDATA%, or %WINDIR% might be redirected to %LOCALAPPDATA%\VirtualStore on Windows Vista and later (more details).

References