Milviz

[DaveB]

I don't want to hijack this thread but I downloaded and installed FSX Booster last night.. for £7.66-£7.80 (can't remember exactly what it was after the exchange rate had been re-calculated) it seemed viable enough to give it a go

Having tried it a couple of times late last night, it certainly does some of the things it says it will do. I'm not particularly after extra frames.. my setup will run it at pretty much what speed I want it to run at and as this seems to be the 'thrust' of the program, perhaps I'm not the best end user. What I didn't see was an overall lessening of stutters which is one of the things I was looking for. Also, I still see tiles flash black (fail to load) on occasion and I hoped to see an end to that. Maybe I'm expecting too much

I did select to have it load VC textures faster and this, by and large, appears to work. However, it may be at the expense of external textures as I popped outside in the Bronco to see the front fuse and wing textures missing.. something I'd not seen happen before. No gain without pain!

'Local' ground textures appeared to stay sharper for longer. While on approach to Lands End (this time in the MD902) I have to say the airfield looked better than I'd ever seen it before. Some of this may be down to selecting 'Windows Aero' (apparently turned off by default in Win Vista onwards and I reckon WinXP too though I didn't see this mentioned). This function allows VSync if you run in 'Windowed mode' and gets rid of the horrible ripple I've always seen in FSX. A huge thumbs up for that!

What else? Well.. I took the Carenado Archer II from Lands End to the Scillies next. No apparent loss of external textures and again, the VC loaded quickly though at times, without the windows being transparent.. this in the MD902 also. It's nice having the VC load up quickly but important to be able to see where you're going! I lost sea tiles a couple of times and when outside goofing, the FR was erratic and the whole experience was far from silky smooth. The scenery looked ok when I got there.. generally sharper for longer.. noticeably so.

I fear the acid test will come when I run ASNext. This can really cause stutters.. horrible stutters every couple of seconds.. when there's a lot going on. That's something for the future

Some of the sliders (and consequences there of) are not as obvious as they could be. The frame rate indicator seems to remain inactive unless I physically put the cursor on the FR slider and click it once. Then.. the FR indication box becomes active and shows the line indicating you are in the green or otherwise. I have the latest version installed (the one I downloaded from FSPS was one behind) and this kinda worked painlessly once I'd sorted what Win7 was doing. I was waiting for the download and it had already come down. My BB must have been on steroids!

All in all.. the jury is out. It has done some good things but hasn't got rid of other issues. There are a number of different settings I can try though for many of us, the consequences of fiddling with such things are not immediately obvious. A help box displays when you hover the cursor over any of the 'change' options which is a bonus. I'll battle on with it for now to see if I can make the improvements I was looking for. If I can't.. I've not lost a shed load of cash trying

ATB
DaveB

[J0hn]

Thanks for the review Dave - I normally avoid this kind of prog and just do a DIY job on the bits I need doing, but my interest had been aroused.

So I won't bother with this - thanks for saving me a few pennies

By the way - it didn't mention disabling Aero on XP because Aero was introduced with Vista

[DaveB]

Okey doh mate.

As far as I've been concerned, the horrible ripple down the screen has always been part and parcel of FSX and one of the things I've disliked about it. You can, every now and again, forget it's there but by and large.. it's been one of those things you have to accept. Running FSX on anything other than WinXP is comparatively new to me. I never considered it might disappear and until yesterday.. it hadn't.. having ticked Windows Aero of course

The bottom line is.. at a bit less than £8.. it may bring some positive results. Unless the end user was part of the Aces team and knows FSX inside and out, it's more likely (rather than unlikely) that one of the tweaks FSXB does will provide a positive result. In the final analysis.. it's a balancing act. FSX is stuck as a 32-bit prog and as such, will only ever be able to do what is possible within this constraint. For sure, FSXB makes it easier for numpties like me to change settings and not be completely sure what I'm doing but be able to see the results in short order. If you don't like what you see, it's easy to change back using the simple GUI.. a lot more so than continually navigating to your FSX.cfg! The program itself is dynamic and as such, the user is advised to run FSXB before every flight in case something as simple as a windows update has made a significant (though unseen) change to your system. You then start FSX from FSXB or choose the run from external program button and off you go. When you've finished, you close the sim then close FSXB until the next time. This seems laborious but in reality, FSXB is very fast to load and adds only a few seconds more to your overall 'click to in sim' time. If you don't like anything it's done, you can leave it as-is and go back to your backup cfg.. no harm done.

While not being 100% positive about FSXB, I don't want to write it off as rubbish either because it obviously isn't. A lot depends on what you want to see and to be honest, much of what you want to see is probably just not possible. The sort of constant smoothness we all want from our flightsims is still, I fear, the reserve of X-BOX and Playstation

ATB
DaveB

[DaveB]

Dear me.. the hijack continues although it is ultimately for (I hope) the benefit of any prospective FSXB users. Thank Chris Trott.. it's all his fault!

This shot taken during a quick test of how FSXB performed while running ASN..


I like this model a lot and fly it often.. it's the AF Corsair. OK.. it's not the most demanding model I have but it's the one I wanted to fly for this test. I have to say I was very impressed with FSX and how it ran with ASN. A completely off-the-wall FR setting of 37fps was chosen (from within FSXB) to give maximum textures while keeping the other 2 sliders in the green and it worked very well. Stutters were reduced to occasional micro-stutters (very micro they were too) and I got the odd jolt as I moved from one area to another as the cache emptied/filled (this is unavoidable IMHO) but I have to say that flight, with weather, is probably the smoothest I've ever seen. In fact flying without weather has rarely been as smooth overall. I may have hit a sweet spot

EDIT: Something I forgot to add.. some of my cloud textures looked a little flat/squashed. I'm not sure if this is a consequence of FSXB or if that's how the clouds were depicted by ASN.

ATB
DaveB

[Chris Trott]

Flat/squashed is an ASN thing. I get it too when there's an odd layer depiction indicated and it's on the extreme low end of what it can do for a proto-cumulus cloud (which is to say, it can't).

I'll screenshot my FSXBooster settings tomorrow when I have a few moments to give an idea of what I've done, but as I said, my reason for liking it is less for any FPS improvement and more for the fact that it alone has fixed all of my memory issues which no tweak to the CFG has ever been able to do.

[DaveB]

Cheers Chris

No.. I've not been chasing frames either. Of late, I've been at half the monitor refresh (30hz/30fps) which is one of those 'rule of thumb' things.. something I've never been particularly happy with and for ASN, I've tried 60fps and unlimited. I did actually see an improvement in the ugly stutters I was getting every 2 secs but like everything else.. this framerate setting is only good for certain situations. Try landing on a carrier.. Clemenceau, Ark Royal, Victorious, and the deck textures will 'shiver' at anything above 30fps. What I've been looking for isn't an increase in FR's but an overall 'general' improvement in performance and for now, I have to say I've been surprisingly pleased with what FSXB has done. I'd like it to be more 'fire and forget'.. choose/find a setting that works and leave it rather than have to fire up FSXB before each flight and I read that this can be done but any performance increase cannot be guaranteed. We'll see how it goes. As I said earlier, the prog really is very fast to load and accept so it's not such a massive hardship. Hopefully.. I'll get an opportunity to try it some more over the coming days

ATB
DaveB