Sorry Peter... FSX tweaks (large image)

[TSR2]

After all of the chat re performance of FSX, I decided to spend this evening trying to get the best out of my setup (which is fairly decent.)

I've been getting on average 20 - 25 with no visable traffic about which was OK, but thought it was time to try out some of the setting metioned here and elsewhere. To assist with this, and clear out any setting I may have changed i the past, I uninstalled my NVIDIA drivers and reinstalled them, so that the setting were back to factory default. I made 3 changes to my fsx.cfg

Added...
[Display]
MipBias=6
TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=50

[BUFFERPOOLS]
Poolsize=4000000

Then as Peter McC suggested, enabled Application controlled AA and Antistropic filtering and pushed all of my texture & water setting sliders (in the left hand pane of the scenery tab) fully to the right.

Disaster = I got some horible checkerboard over the display and could only just make out the menu at the top.... BUT then I though, maybe I should try this in full screen mode, like the way I ran it in FS9.....

Bl00dy H3ll what a difference, between 50 - 70 fps in the Lakes using the Horizon GenX scenery with a new DDS painted FSX model.... 80 -= 115 over the Irish sea!!!! (Yes that does say 115)
Then I tried with an older model, the old trusty meatbox. In the same valley before I had changed the settings I was getting between 15 - 20 fps... now its 35 - 40!!!!

So thank you Peter for your advice! My past problems with AA set in the application must have come from a conflicting setting in the NVIDIA drivers!

Another thing to note, in FSX models where the exterior and interior models are separate (eg. the Scimitar) I would get the higher frame rates (also the DDS texturing seems to make a difference here) In older FS9 style models where the VC and exterior model are all part of the one file, the lower figures were the norm, but I'm sure you will agree, thats one hell of a jump! :prayer:

[basys]

Hi Folks

Ben.

Please post specs & screen res.

Try locking FPS to 25 or thereabouts, (you'll get improved tile updating),
then dive into those valleys,
and practice grass cutting at 600kts.

ATB
Paul

[TSR2]

Hi Paul,

Specs are bellow....

Intel Core 2 Extreem QX6700 @2.66
4GB Corsair TwinX DDR2 6400 C4
ASUS P5WDG2 WS Professional Motherboard
HP Smart Array 642 PCI133 RAID controller with 64MB Cache
HP ULTRA 320 SCSI 146GB x 3 (Raid1 + Spare) System Drive
HP ULTRA 320 SCSI 300GB x 1 FSX Drive
HP ULTRA 320 SCSI 300GB x 1 GenX Scenery drive and page file
Nvidia Palit 8800GTX,768MB, PCI-E (x16), Mem 1800 MHz, GDDR3, GPU 575 MHz, 2 x Dual Link DVI-I

FSX SP1, Horizon GenX, FSUIPC... all other addons are only aircraft

[petermcleland]

Then as Peter McC suggested, enabled Application controlled AA and Antistropic filtering and pushed all of my texture & water setting sliders (in the left hand pane of the scenery tab) fully to the right.

Heavens! Ben....PLEASE do not use any of my recommended settings for FSX...They are only for FS9. I do not run FSX and know nothing about settings for it :think:

[TSR2]

Well Peter, they work a treat, so thank you!

[basys]

Hi Folks

Ben -
"Fairly decent" == understatement
Very nice.
What res monitor(s) ?

I'd be interested in how FSX views your system -
ProcSpeed
PerfBucket

At a guess the improvement is due to your driver changes.

MipBias=6
It will increase the loaded texture's MIPs,
which would make your processor do more work,
but unnoticeably on your machine.

For FSX SP1
poolsize=4000000
Is the builtin default setting, and will have no effect at that value.
As you've a high spec video card, you could raise this.
See Phil's FSX:Tweak of the Week ( or 2 )

What happens after being in fullscreen mode,
if you revert to windowed mode ?
Does the checkerboard effect reappear ?
Would be interested to see a screenie of the effect.

I find with FSX runing in windowed mode,
having the mouse cursor positioned anywhere in the FSX window's area
knocks hell out of my FPS.
With the cursor off the FSX window,
FPS performance is only fractionally less than fullscreen mode.

HTH
ATB
Paul

[TSR2]

Hi Folks

Ben -
"Fairly decent" == understatement
Very nice.
What res monitor(s) ? 1280 x 1024 HPL1940T

I'd be interested in how FSX views your system -
ProcSpeed it takes as much as I'll let it.. on each core, which is pretty much everything, but If I flick between the sim and say IE or Outlook its fine, seems to work a bit like appsense in a Citrix environment... i.e. uses less resources when minimised... no idea how / why
PerfBucket ??

At a guess the improvement is due to your driver changes. Its the same driver, just reset to factory defaults.. oh appart from "Texture Filtering - Negative LOD Bias which is set to clamp

MipBias=6
It will increase the loaded texture's MIPs,
which would make your processor do more work,
but unnoticeably on your machine.

For FSX SP1
poolsize=4000000
Is the builtin default setting, and will have no effect at that value.
As you've a high spec video card, you could raise this.
See Phil's FSX:Tweak of the Week ( or 2 )

Just set this to 6000000 and I'll se how it goes

What happens after being in fullscreen mode,
if you revert to windowed mode ?
Does the checkerboard effect reappear ? Yes
Would be interested to see a screenie of the effect.



It seems to revert to some sort of badly interlaced 800 x 600


I find with FSX runing in windowed mode,
having the mouse cursor positioned anywhere in the FSX window's area
knocks hell out of my FPS.
With the cursor off the FSX window,
FPS performance is only fractionally less than fullscreen mode.

HTH
ATB
Paul

[basys]

Hi Folks

Ben -
Cheers for the screenie.
Never seen that before.

Note the cropping & wrapping of the CTRL+Z info.
Does the banding still happen with CTRL+Z info turned off ?

Have you tried letting FSX rebuild the fsx.CFG ?
If not, rename your current to FSX_OLD.CFG.
Reboot FSX and let it build a new one.

If that doesn't work,
suggest posting question & info at AVSIM.

ProcSpeed & PerfBucket are two entries in your fsx.CFG [Main] section.
Each time you boot FSX,
it performs some tests,
then calcs those numbers.
They're only used for setting your sliders when you click 'reset to default'.

HTH
ATB
Paul

[TSR2]

Hi Paul,

the CFG is a rebuilt one (other than the mods mentioned here) and yes, it does happen without the CTRL +Z, Its always been that way to be honnest, even pre SP1, so I don't think its an FSX specific thing.

ProcSpeed=7532
PrefBucket=7

Hope you can make some sense of that paul.. all double dutch to me. ;-)

[DaveB]

Funny you mention interlaced Ben as this is how I see FSX redraw anyway.. not as bad as you have it there with the thick blue lines but it seems to refresh from the top of the screen and wobble its way down.. this in either fullscreen or Windowed. No such problems from 'old faithful' ;-)

ATB

DaveB :tab: