No you tried it wrong. ;)

cycles=fixed 100000

The "fixed" is important. Otherwise it just falls back to auto or max. Not sure wich is the default.

@ Hatman: thanks for the fix! works like a charm. :-)
cycles=fixed 100000 !

Yes, I did miss the 'fixed'. I just tried that, with core set back to auto. I still think that the video was just a tiny bit stuttery versus what I had changed my settings to, but parts of the gameplay were better this way. Taking off from the Victory, for example, was completely smooth, versus running very slowly with the settings I used.

I tried it and its little better but still inside Victory or near attacket fighters its reaaaaaly choppy :(
Any Ideas? If i set cycles on fixed 100000 then i have choppy movies...

Open the "dosboxwc3.conf" file in the WC3 folder with Notepad and search for the "cycles=" line, and replace the value with "fixed 100000". (No quotations)

@mozzington

Go to your WC3 directory. The default location is C:\program files\gog.com\wing commander 3.

Find the file dosboxwc3.conf, open it with Notepad or Wordpad so you can edit the text.

Scroll down until you find the section [CPU] and just below that you will see Cycles=(whatever) and edit that to cycles=fixed 100000 then Save. That's all there is to it. Hope this helps.

Hmm, odd. It will not let me save the ammendment.

I made the alteration, click SAVE, it says overwrite, I choose YES, It says the path cannot be found. Even though I am trying to save directly over the top. Any ideas?

"Cannot create c:\program files\gog.com\wing commander 3\dosboxwc3.conf file.

Make sure the path and file name are correct"

It can be a permissions issue. I had the same thing. I right clicked on the file, went into the security settings and added myself as admin (even though I am a member of the admin group). This solved it for me.

Tried reinstalling it in my non-admin Users subdirectory so that I could affect the DOSBOXWC3 file. Set cycles to fixed 100000, and the opening cinema is actually choppier than it was before. Any other ideas?

(ETA: Wow, that sounded unnecessarily jerky and demanding. Sorry, such was not my intent. Rather, since I have about as much understanding of DOSbox as I do high-level astrophysics, I was genuinely hoping one of the more knowledgeable persons might have another idea that could improve my video syncing.)

It seems to be just me, but I found that changing from:
core=auto
to
core=normal
really helped at first. But that makes for some slowness when inside capital ships. Right now, my CPU section looks like:

core=auto
cputype=auto
cycles=fixed 100000
cycleup=1000
cycledown=1000

In my case such settings helped:

core=dynamic
cputype=auto
cycles=auto
cycleup=1000
cycledown=1000

No video choppinnes, no slowdowns in spaceflights.
100000 - that's one hundred thousands cycles - can be simply too much for some configurations.

Have you guys run the built-in benchmark?

You can access it through WC3.EXE -i as per readme.txt

Here you can also check and test all the sound options. So if you want FM music you got it :)

It assesses the video and CPU performance.

The choppy videos has to do with the CD-Rom speed. It's simply way too fast. The benchmark complains about this specifically and it's a know issue on "real" vintage PCs.

A lower speed setting should improve the video performance.

core=dynamic
cputype=486_slow
cycles=fixed 24000
cycleup=10
cycledown=20

Gets me smooth video, but the gameplay is choppy :) So you need to ramp up the speed by pressing CTRL+F12 and then slow it down again.

GOG simply haven't addressed the issue with the CD-Rom drive speed...

Thankyou! I'd almost given up getting the blessed thing to run after trying the other configurations on here - guess it pays to keep playing around with it depending on your setup.

Like i mentioned in my initial tip, core/cputype should be set to dynamic/auto. Otherwise changing the cycles would actually make things worse. At least on my system. And 100.000 was only the number that worked best for me. If it doesn't for you try anything from 50.000 upwards.