Framerates?

[Guest]

Hi i want to know what's better lower or higher framerates and which number is the best i have #30 right now in my game.

[John_Cillis 2,406]

I lock mine at 25.... I tried 30 for a while, but the sim had a slightly higher tendency for blurring... You also want to take into consideration your average fps... The sim can appear to "stutter" if you lock it at 30, and then a complex airport or building comes into view which lowers the framerate. I spent about a week weighing the advice of people on the forum, and measuring average framerate, and found 25 as my system's "sweet spot" given my mix of settings, aircraft and cpu speed (only a P3-800). I can actually score much higher fps--almost any system can over the more generic areas of scenery. But as mentioned before, the higher the fps lock, the more the cpu struggles to "make the grade", and the less time it devotes to keeping the scenery clear.Also, the more complex the aircraft, the more you may run into blurriness. FS devotes cpu time to keeping both the aircraft and ground scenery clear.... Until I "shrank" the C421 textures, I found that only a fps lock of 15 or so would keep the textures as clear as they normally are with my 25 fps lock.-John

[Guest]

A decent average is best.20 is good enough, much more will be useless as your eyes and responses can't follow it, much lower (on average) can get irritating over time.I've it locked at 20 and have no complaints.The more resources you put into generating higher framerates, the less are available for things like scenery rendering and flight dynamics.

[John_Cillis 2,406]

"....much more will be useless as your eyes and responses can't follow it...."This comment has appeared every time this discussion has cropped up, and I feel it's a bit misleading. People can see differences in fps on computer systems as high as 40,50 fps and beyond. Computer animation has often been compared to film and tv media, which has a lower fps. Yet our eyes find film and tv media acceptable... Why? Because film and tv media captures artifacts of motion--such as blur introduced from frame to frame. Simulations don't display such artifacts of motion, they draw each frame as a static shot. People aren't crazy or hypersensitive if they can see differences between 30 fps and say 50 fps on a computer system. But I've seen people come into these threads and say so! In my case, the differences between the higher fps vs. 25 are not enough to warrant hurting performance in other areas, such as texture updates. But for me, I can tell a pretty big difference between 20 fps and 25... -John

[virtualstuff 752]

Yep locked at 25 fps :-)awfEHAM

[Hornit 3]

I gotta agree with John on this one. I too can see the difference. I have an AMD 1.4ghz athlon, 512mb ddr ram, and a Voodoo 5. Its not the fastest card we all know that, but I like to fly in spot view a lot, so i tend to knock the frame rate back to around 25 also. This gives me nice crisp terrain and very good frame rates in the low 20's most all the time, except very heavy sceneries. John is correct, if you bump the frame rate up even a bit you will start to see blurriness, and slow loading textures. The higher you go the worse it gets, this is for all but the fastest machines out there.I would recommend watching your frame rate for a bit with it set to about 35 and then get a general feel for the average and set it right around or slightly below that. Right now I'm very happy with mine and its locked at 23.Hornit

[Guest]

Umm locking the framerates at 40 fps is a good idea. My Geforce2 MX works very well for the fact that i only use Aircrafts that are fps friendly (hint: Gmax made).

[Guest jaapverduijn]

Greetings John!"(...) FS devotes cpu time to keeping both the aircraft and ground scenery clear (...)"I've been wondering about a related issue for some time. Being almost completely uninterested in the outside of any aircraft I fly (I only see the inside from where I'm sitting: the pilot's seat), I'd like to know if complicated "outside" aircraft with very detailed and/or moving parts do have any influence on frame rates in cockpit view. In other words: does FS invest CPU cycles in the aircraft shape and livery even when these are not in the picture?If so, can I cruelly remove everything but the cockpit view from an aircraft folder? Well, of course I can (grin!), but I mean: without botching up anything else? Would that indeed open a possibility for better frame rates and/or higher slider settings in cockpit view?Be, stay, live and view well!Jaap Verduijn.

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Using the C421C as an example, my cockpit view fps was never compromised in spite of the aircraft's complexity. Most times and places, it flips between 24 & 25 fps. But since the C421C has "virtual" wings visible if you pan your view around the cockpit, until I removed the alpha channel and converted the textures to DXT1, there was a modest fps hit, especially when looking towards the engines.Although the fps weren't compromised, textures on the ground tended to blur prior to my texture conversion. It was as if FS was saying "these textures are 4 megs apiece--I better hold some steam aside in case the pilot wants to see the aircraft in spot view". Short of hacking the model, there isn't any way I know of to simplify an aircraft and drop certain parts of the rendering. If you truly flew from cockpit view and nowhere else, you could always DL an old FS98 style aircraft just for the model--keeping your panel and flight dynamics. You could just point the aircraft.cfg to the model, and enjoy a more resource friendly, yet cockpit intense flight. I "mix and match" like this quite often....

[Guest jaapverduijn]

That last option sure's worth considering. Thanks!