A Few Tips for AI

[Guest Milio_B]

Well, these do work for me at least...I love having all AI airlines of PAI's wonderful packages, but I found that having AI set at 100% was degrading performance waaay too much. FPS ever drop below 10 but then again I do get some stuttering and I like playing a smooooth FS :(So this is what I recently did in order to improve FPS with AI on...I realised I don't really care for reflective textures on AI planes, they look great without them, so I changed all textures to DXT1, cutting down their size in half.Second, I'm not a big AI GA fan, mainly because the planes, being that detailed and that many around the world, tend to degrade performance more than PAI planes. And also, if you want to turn reflections off, you would have to edit the textures, which means you'll have to make backups and edit the textures whenever you want to use some of the MS default planes...and I figured what I liked to see in airport were the big airliners hehe...Sooooo...using TTools I erased all GA flight plans. I had 18000+ before, now I have 3000+ and those are all I really car for...GA Flight Plans are the one that have AC#x (with 1:PHope it helps ;)

[brucek 38]

"so I changed all textures to DXT1'Hi,How do you do that?Thanks,Bruce.

[Guest]

Gday well I guess Ive done the same thing and now im havin a ball with it. Its taken me months to figure it out also. Ive been using the pai aircraft and other add ons whcih i had to repaint to use minimun textures. I also found out that if the aircraft have minimal moving parts eg:ailerons and rudder except flaps, this makes it move alot smoother also. The problem is trying to figure out how to do it. hehehe. If you got any more pointers let us know and we can work together on it as two heads are better than one. The more AI the better for me. I too like a smoother FS than a stuttering one. DXT 1 is great also. Ive been doing it for well since i started repainting i guess hehehe thx for the tip as at least Im doing something right.CheersDave

[Guest Coneman]

Great tips Emilio :-) I have been thinking of going to DXT1 myself. Are you saving with mipmaps?Thanks,Todd

[Guest]

This is a great thread , guys.... but I refuse to believe I am the only one who has no idea what DXT1 is?????????Can someone please provide us non - painting AI lovers, a little insight into changing to DXT1 ?????????? "saving with mipmaps"???Thanks...

[Misha_K 0]

Textures for GMAX aircraft are usually saved in either DXT1 or DXT3 format or in 32bit color with 8bit Alpha Channel. All of these exept DXT1 have an alpha channel which controls the reflections that you see when you enable aircraft reflections. Saving a DXT3 texture in DXT1 is a simple way of eliminating the alpha channel and thereby reducing the filesize and making the aircraft more framerate friendly. Along with alpha channel you can save various levels of mipmaps wit this texture files. Mipmamps are low resolution versions of the same texture which are applied when the aircraft is at a large distance or if you are looking at the aircraft from certain angles. I personally prefer turning mipmapping off and not creating mipmaps with the textures I make, because it guarantees a crisper image, but on the other hand, mipmapped textures can be easier on the eye at lower screen resolutions and can yield a slight increase in framerate performance. All this formatting is usually done in DXTBMP or similar texture format editors. Hope this explains it a bit.Misha

[Guest Milio_B]

Hi,Sorry it took me so long to reply, stupid school!!! :(Anyways, the easiest way to change textures to DXT1 is by using Imagetool. It's a small program that's included with FS2002 Pro and you can chose the pic format and also mipmapping there.BTW, some planes just won't allow you to turn mipmapping of. I believe they're the 737s and maybe the A32Xs, they appear as "bare metal" planes with no textures at all.Also, taking out GA planes from your FS World can help the go-around things....I mean, all AI schedules won't be modified, but there wn't be any AI planes landing in the same time AI airliners do....

[Guest]

Thank you Misha and Milio for your responses...I think I will give it a try. If it helps with the FPS at large airports with tons of AI, I am all for it!!!!!!!

[Guest Jack]

VJCarlo,You weren't the only ignorant one! Thanks to Misha and Milio for educating the masses.JackD

[Guest GabrielR]

Very nice tip. DTX1- good.This is what I did, (another solution) Using AITM I randomized the % of all flights, and then I run the AI at 40-50% and I am happy with the results, I see every airline installed well represented.Is not enough just reducing the percentange, a lot of representative flights will not be there.