Page 1 of 2
Better Frame rates?
Posted: 19 Nov 2006, 00:33
by ivanT3
Hello all,
In the interest of speeding up my machine, I've been doing some house cleaning on the old Hard drive. I ran a good registry cleaner, deleted a bunch of old app's I'm not using, and de-fragmented my drive. I'm running an amd 1.8 ghz Processor and I have a gig of ram. My Video card is an ATI Radeon 200, It says there is 250 MB of ram but I think this may be shared? I don't know. Anyhow, It seems I can't make better than 16 Frames per second :sad: .. One thing I can tell you is that I have way to many aircraft installed. I would like to do away with a good 15 or 20 of them. I wonder if there is a program that can help me sort whether or not I've got all the related files off along with the Aircraft folders I want to delete.??
I can't help but think I can get better frame rates on this machine. It's fine the way it is if I lock it at 18, running my Favorite Trident 3 {no VC} but I would like better.
If I can depend on the machine a little more, I would like to join the VA if you need a Pilot with a few Ratings.
Thanks for any advise toward getting this old machine up to speed
Ivan............................................
Posted: 19 Nov 2006, 00:44
by Motormouse
I think Flightsim Manager would fit the bill here;
the main authors site is down,but you should be able to find it here
http://www.surclaro.com/downloads_c27_0_hitsD.html
ttfn
Pete
Posted: 19 Nov 2006, 01:26
by Garry Russell
Hi Ivan
One thing often overlooked is applications running in the background.......perhaps not taking up much but it adds up and even a small amount of drain could put you on the wrong side of the stutterline
So things like anti virus etc that are constantly scanning in the background can be turned off while you run FS.
Garry
Posted: 19 Nov 2006, 06:21
by ivanT3
Thanks Pete and Garry
Yes, programs in the background can be bad news indeed if you let to many run. One thing I did was down load a PDF file called "Tweaking Companion". It gives fine direction in shutting down certain "services" that aren't needed for any given configuration, and I found this to be helpful

.
Pete! I must say, this "Fight Sim Manager" is the cat's behind :dance: . I found a good number of unused files and some badly configured Aircraft. This helped some to be sure. However, the service that I've found most useful is the ability to, with a click of the mouse, set up the Sim for certain flying styles. WOW!!
I like to fly at night and for me, a big part of the joy I get is properly flying a Plan. I like to nail speed's and flap settings and all that. As BAD as it is, I use the ATC that' s fit standard in FS 9 so I can get better at turning onto heading's while descending, slowing to proper pattern speed's, dialing up Radio's as I fly the final portion of my flight. It helps drain my brain I guess. Anyhow, when I selected "IFR" configuration, I had between 40 and 60 frames going

:shock: .. Man alive!! I've never seen the Trident Cockpit move so smoothly. The dials look so real and the Horizon out the window moves with the slightest movement of the yoke! Very impressed .
You do, of course loose the scenery but, I don't mind so much for the night IFR stuff. The grand thing is, I can go back and instantly switch it back to VFR and still get 20 Frames for day time, in the Dove.
Great find. So, thanks for the heads up. I'm pretty new at the finer points of the Sim and I'm learning a lot FAST, thanks to this place. :dance:
Ivan...............
Posted: 19 Nov 2006, 10:48
by Nigel H-J
Hi Ivan,
Like you I needed to improve the frame rates of FS9. One way to improve not only performance but also for instance improving runway lights, VASI lights etc or removing brake message is by altering your FS9.cfg file but before you do make a
backup of it and keep it safe. Go to this link, just scroll down and decide which settings you want to change. It worked for me.
http://www.fs2004.com/forums/index.php? ... =28865&hl=
Don't add this line to your Display Device Driver:- PanelAsTexture=0 as it is a real frame killer!!!
Also look for this line in Fs9.cfg under:
(DISPLAY)
TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=40
The value of 40 is usually given, change this to say at first 80 you should notice a difference in your performance though you can actually go up to a figure of 400 though too much will cause stutters, mine is set to 300 and that is with a 2Gb processor and 128 graphic card with 512 RAM giving me 20 - 35 frames on the ground. My settings for scenery set to very dense. NB If at a larger airport this drops, you will also need to alter and ajust your settings in the main FS9 display menu and fiddle around until you get the best settings.
Hope this helps.
Regards Nigel.
Posted: 19 Nov 2006, 11:08
by ianhind
For those without a SurClaro account (or who can't remember their password :redface: )
http://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?DLID=64146
Edit: When I try to run it, I get a message that I am trying to use an old version :think: but the web link provided for updating doesn't work.

Posted: 19 Nov 2006, 14:49
by Motormouse
ianhind wrote:For those without a SurClaro account (or who can't remember their password :redface: )
http://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?DLID=64146
Edit: When I try to run it, I get a message that I am trying to use an old version :think: but the web link provided for updating doesn't work.

A message on the site before it closed said Rana Hossain (the author) had some real-life problems to attend to and wouldn't be updating until things were better.
I have the zip for version 2.8.5,(the most recent version) its @ 5.5mb; I can e-mail it to you if you like (send me a pm with e-mail addy) or maybe Otter could host a copy on his site?
ttfn
Pete
Posted: 19 Nov 2006, 15:25
by ianhind
Pete,
Thanks for that information.
Ian
Posted: 19 Nov 2006, 18:14
by jonesey2k
In order to save messing around with background programs and defragging the pc each weak I have a HDD with its own instalation of XP dedicated to FS2004 with all the usual OS tweaks to get best performace. I think I only have about 10 processes going

Posted: 19 Nov 2006, 18:45
by ivanT3
Thanks for all your help. I'll be looking into the .cfg mod's over the next couple days. It's already behaving much better.
Ivan.....................