Fsx

[Fern]

Hi,

Is it me or is FSX a "resources eater"?

I thought I had a fair machine to run FS. With everything turned to max, FS2004 gives me consistentely over 60 frames per second in normal areas and around 30 in very congested areas (scenery wise), such as Seattle.

To run a fair test I went to a place with my own scenery, that I can control. I ran FS2004, got about 65 FPS. Changed to FSX, exactly the same scenery, settings the same, and got 16 FPS. In fact, in FS2004 I had more traffic, because I had not installed some of the aircraft required in FSX.

Even in an "autogen-only" area, with not much showing on the screen other than trees, the frame rate is still pathetic, I'd say unacceptable for flying (minimum 25 FPS). This is with no ducks or cows in sight.

My machine is an Athlon 64 FX 55 with a GE Force 6600, but I feel that is irrelevant, cosidering I am doing a comparisson and the difference is so large.

Is it my system only, or is anyone else experiencing similar results?

Oh, by the way, I find the specular highlights in FS2004 significantly superior to the ones in FSX.

Thanks for any comments

Fern

 

[José Bourgoignie]

Hi,

I have the same experience.
Even with my most recent PC I fear not to be able to make scenery as it should and run an aircraft with a FMC. Very bad indeed.

Greetz. José.

-----------------My PC configuration:

- Abit AB9
- Intel Core2Duo E6600 2,6 Ghz
- 2 x DDR2 1024 mb PC6400-800
- 2 x Seagate 250GB S-ATAII
- XFX GF 7950GTX 520M 1GB DDR3
- Antec Sonata II
- NEC ND4550 Dual layer DVD-RW
- Apacer Cardreader 15 in 1
--------------------------------

 

[scruffyduck]

There is an interesting post over on AVSIM by Bill Leeming which looks at the memory requirements of FSX. It needs almost 1Gb of main memory and if there is less than 256Mb of video memory it will 'pinch' memory from your main RAM. So as I see it unless you have 2Gb of main memory and at least 256Mb (and preferably 512Mb) on your video card things are more likely to be slow.

 

[bcs112]

The biggest framerate-eater is the Autogen (from my experience). What I did was rename the "default.xml" file in the Autogen directory. This will remove all custom Autogen stuff but will leave "random" autogen I think.

So you still get autogen and at least the framerates go up significantly.

This is an old trick apparently so I by no eans invented this myself !

Björn

 

[Fern]

FSX resource-eater

Hi.

I haven't tried the renaming the default.xml file yet, but I will and report back.

My system has 1 GB of memory and 512 of graphics card memory, so... But I won't ask for my money back just yet.

I did talk to a few people and they all have the same problem, and they are all saying that the major improvement (the finer mesh) is completely obscured by the fact that they can't run FSX for lack of frames per second. The rest of the "improvements" seem to be more... errr... irrelevant stuff than anything else. I have seen birds, once and that was it.

With all the fanfarre I was major disappointed by the fact that the St. Barthelemy island is STILL in the wrong spot, so what else is bad in it?

Anyway, don't want to just knock it, I want to like it. So, I'll continue looking for that magic solution. Maybe re-doing all ground textures to 128 X 128 will help...

Fern

 

[VulcanB2]

Hi,

The biggest eater of frame rates I found are the BUILDINGS! AutoGen (even on my modest rig) has a bit of an impact, but nothing compared to a few buildings!

Examplar: I went to Heathrow, with mid settings, no AI, and sat on RW27R. Good frame rate around 22 FPS. I simply switched runways to 09L, adn the frame rate dropped to 4 FPS.

The only thing I could think of was the way reflections were being handled, so I turned al lsettings to minimum, and 09L was still killing the frame rate (now 9) vs. 30 for 27R.

There is a serious problem with the scenery in FS X I think. I think it goes beyond just being "heavy".

Best regards,
Robin.

 

[jcboliveira]

Robin

I have the same problem over here. Buildings and detailed terminals is what kills frames over here.

Removed the Seatle obx from FSX and put the FS9 scenery, the frames went up to almost FS9 values
.

José

 

[VulcanB2]

Hi José,

Removed the Seatle obx from FSX and put the FS9 scenery, the frames went up to almost FS9 values.

I just had a look through both my FS 9 and FS X installs at both Seattle and London, and found that the .bgl files are a lot smaller than their FS X counterparts (~2Mb in FS 9 vs. ~12Mb in FS X).

In FS X there are also additional files for each area, e.g:

London_Bank_Fifty.dds - 171kb
London_Bank_Fifty_lm.dds - 171kb
London_Bank_Fifty_specular.dds - 342kb

I'm having a look around the SDKs to see if there is any mention of what these files do. I'll post here when I've found out.

EDIT: .dds files are texture files (I should have looked at the file location! ).

Best regards,
Robin.

 

[VulcanB2]

Hi,

A performance tweak that I tried earlier was to alter the Shader version in use by the graphics drivers. This seems to have had a major impact, too.

If you have an nVidia card, put the following two lines under the general section for nVidia cards:

;----------------------------------------------------------------------
; NVIDIA Drivers on Win2K/XP
;----------------------------------------------------------------------
[nv4_disp.dll]
Disable=1
Shader20Plus=13
UseShaders=1
[nv4_disp.dll.1]
MinDriverRev=5.13.01.1241
Disable=2

This should tell FS to use the V1.3 shaders instead of the V2.00 shaders.

CAVEAT! A few graphical anomilies seem to present themselves with this setting (the most noteable is taxiway signage and certain, but few, textures appear to change color/become transparent when viewed in spot view). Interestingly, in tower view, these anomilies don't present themselves.

Best regards,
Robin.

 

[eriknjones]

FSX SDK "Where?"

I recently bought the Delux version of FSX, with the subsequent SDK additional installation off of disk 1.

I cannot seem to access the SDK resources on FSX, on either disk 1 or 2. Does anyone know how to acces this and use it?

Thanks,
Eriknjones

 

[José Bourgoignie]

Hi,

The SDK's install-files are probably in the FSX map and then you can install them on a directory of your choice. Look also if "Show hidden files" is checked so that FSX.cfg can be consultated.
But... these SDK's are for 3DSMax... the SDK's for GMAX will be released in a few days.

Greetz. José.

 

[arno]

Hi Eriknjones,

You can find the installer of the SDKs on your disk 1 of FsX. After you have installed it, you can find all the different SDKs on your system (terrain, autogen, BGLComp, etc, etc).

If I remember correct the installer is called in a folder named SDK on the DVD.

 

[eriknjones]

Yeah, thanks. I found the SDK files on disk one and installed them, I also found some sdk.exe files on disk two and installed them.

Still cannot find any link off of the programs/microsoft games/fsx file or any link in the game itself. At least not through the site map or index.

Is the Abacus FSDS for FS9 compatable with FSX?
By the way, have any of you folks used the SDKs in FSX yet? How do you like them? Basically, how user friendly is the default program?

Thanks guys for the replies, and sorry for all the questions. I am brand new at the SDK thing but have been flying for years.

Eriknjones

 

[arno]

Hi,

Still cannot find any link off of the programs/microsoft games/fsx file or any link in the game itself. At least not through the site map or index.

You can access the SDKs from within FsX. Just browse to the folder where you installed them and you will find all the documentation and tools you need.

Is the Abacus FSDS for FS9 compatable with FSX?

Yes, due to the backwards compatibility most parts of objects made with FSDS3 (or the GMax Fs2004 gamepack) do still work fine. There are some small problems with materials without textures though.

By the way, have any of you folks used the SDKs in FSX yet? How do you like them? Basically, how user friendly is the default program?

I think they are fine. About the same quality as the Fs2004 SDKs, but this time we got them with the release right away. So that is perfect.

I get the impression that you are thinking the SDKs are a sort of a program. That is not really the case. It is a collection of documents and (command line) tools that you can use to expand FS. They are not really user friendly if you know nothing about creating addons, but once you read them you will learn a lot about the techniques.

 

[tgibson]

Hi,

I'm not sure what you're expecting of the SDK's. In most cases they are just Word files giving you information about various parts of the sim. Often they come with utility programs, but these are stand alone programs, not to be used within the sim.

The only one I know of that will work within the sim is the TrafficToolbox SDK, and you will need to carefully read and follow the instructions in that SDK's folder (or the instructions in the main SDK folder?) before being able to use it in the sim.

Hope this helps,

 

[PakMac]

The only one I know of that will work within the sim is the TrafficToolbox SDK, and you will need to carefully read and follow the instructions in that SDK's folder (or the instructions in the main SDK folder?) before being able to use it in the sim.

Another tool which works within Flight Sim is visualfxtool.dll. You can edit the effect parameters then click show and see the changes you made.