"Setting shader values to 0 in the FSX cfg will result in white ramp signs, but using rivatuner to disable shaders will not do that?"I disable the shader on the card and the ramp signs are definitely there. I will test if it works the same by just disabling from the cfg file.Renaming or removing default.xml increases performance. It doesn't reduce polyon count, rather it removes custom buildings and trees around the airport. The increase in performance is considerable to a point with the shader hack. Now I am choicing this one since I want to get the crome, wet runway, and 2x water effects.In the end, IMO, all you need is two hacks. 1. Getting rid of default.xml2. Reducing the cloud textureand maybe reduce the number of autogen trees and houses through the cfg hack.

>Great tips in here, I think the default.xml->default.bak one>was one key thing... To sum it up I just got an FPS increase>of at least ten thousand per cent or so and have now plenty of>settings maxed (including scenery complexity, AutoGen>(@6k/6k), road traffic, global texture size), on a mid-ranged>system, and my frames dead locked at twenty and freezed. I>consider myself a happy camper. :-hah>>Thanks for all the most valuable help. Cheers! :-beerchug>Etienne :-wave>>EDIT>As I see this thread still (fortunately!!!) continues to grow>- any added hint will be greatly appreciated for an even>smoother experience. :-smoochAfter hours of testing and re-testing...... discovered the following :The best tweak is to rename default.xml->default.bak and then at fsx.cfg [TERRAIN] section add :TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_TREES_PER_CELL=800TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_BUILDINGS_PER_CELL=3000Its important to try different values for the AutoGens, the results will vary depending on your system, the maximum value its said to be 6000Then to experience the fully power of FSX go to game options and place sliders of Scenery and AutoGen both at MAX, if you experience slow frame rates try with different Scenery settings but leave AutoGen at MAX ( it wont hurt )And thats ALL, no texture replacements or other stuff needed, already tried to compare fps between FSX with reduced textures and FSX fresh install and both are almost the same.

okcan someone explain what riva tuner will do to the game if you use it? I am a complete noob at this type of deal.also it seems like peoples questions arent getting answered in some replys and i too would like to see the answer. so if you do use the tuner, will there be white taxi signs and the loss of the chrome effects and others?thanks

Hi all,Please don't take this as negative, but all of this reminds me of my fling with Falcon 4.0 - all the things we had to do to get it to run properly and stop CTD'ing every other mission. We (me and thousands of others around the world) had to install fresh on a defragged HD, install patches (very confusing which ones BTW), tweak this, turn off that, turn up the other thing. OMG, it was a nightmare. I will be glad when all this gets sorted out and posted for all to see.dolph

AeroMX - have to agree with you.I did a clean install of FSX this afternoon. Numerous different types of testing with the sliders at both major and minor airports.I am getting about 22 FPS at KSEA and 26 FPS at KORD for example. This is all with default textures and renaming the default.xml file. Quite impressive! I did this all because i could not nail down where the huge hit was coming from at major airports and cities. Well, from what I see, I can run Auto-Gen and Scenery Complexity - which has more of a hit than I thought - at Dense with these types of results. I have not gone nuts with the other sliders, but they are all above average setting excluding water.I am about to insert the limiting lines of code for the Autogen now and reboot and re-start FSX to see what sort of FPS I will get.Once I get past this next test, I am going to play with RivaTuner and see what it's affect is and what goes missing. I will update here.duttonhttp://dutton.fsblogger.com/

Do these tweaks work with ATi video cards? I have an ATi All-in-Wonder 128 Pro, and I'm getting rathder low FPS and I cannot get the new reflections to show up (window reflections, wet runways, new water reflections, etc).

If that card is the one I think it is, it's a really old card and likely does not have full DX9.0 and Shader Model 2.0 support, which would be why you don't see those features and likely one reason why you have low framerates. FSX was designed for DX9.0 cards that support hardware shaders. Of course, I could be wrong, but searching ATI's site for "All-in-Wonder 128 Pro" turned up a 1999 press release announcing the then new All-in-Wonder 128 Pro video card."Let me help you out. You're cleared to taxi any way you can to any runway you see."

I have a good question, I think. What would be the result of disabling either one or the other of these two shaders. For example, I (and I think a lot of folks here, not to speak for anyone) could definitely live without the VC window reflections, but it would be nice to still get the wet runway and the incredible boost in performance. Is this possible?Thanks,Jeff

Hmm, an interesting approach, making FSX behave like FS9 :) Remember, to get FSX autogen down to FS9 levels, set:TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_TREES_PER_CELL=600TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_BUILDINGS_PER_CELL=300That along with disabling DEFAULT.XML would pretty be all you need to do on a decent PC.Setting TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_BUILDINGS_PER_CELL=3000 to such a high value adds potentially an EXTRA 21,600 polygons per square kilometre rendered frame in FSX compared to FS9.The math is simple: FS9 has a maximum of 300 building per square kilometre (ie. 1024m x 1024m cell). Each basic autogen building no matter its size or height, has 8 surfaces (polygons) to render. So in FS9 with autogen maxxed you are rendering 300 x 8 = 2,400 polygons of autogen buildings per sq. kilometre.In FSX, even with a reduced autogen limit of 3000, you will be rendering 24,000 polygons *per square km*. Now you can see why in cities the frame rates are choking.

Well...as far as I am concerned..this is THE tweak. My FPS have shot up by 75% in some cases.I have an ATI card which I could not find on the list of cards..so I entered the two lines in ALL the ATI video card sections.If there are any ATI experts out there that have some additional suggestions I would love to hear themYes, I have lost the runway reflections but I can see the taxiway signs.Bring them add-ons on...time to have some real fun...:-)

It also appears to be "the tweak" to me-but can someone explain how to disable it on the video card (I seem to have no settings-I have riva tuner)-when I disable it with the display config I lose my taxiway signs which I am not willing to give up.The water and runways reflections I don't care about...Thanks!http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpg

WOW!!!I disabled the shaders via the display.cfg file and noticed a MASSIVE increase in performance. It didn't look quite as good, in fact it looked a lot more like FS9 however the autogen trees were still looking a lot more voluminous and were still as diverse.With FULL autogen I was getting 15fps, and that's far more autogen than I could ever get with FS9.For me that's proof positive that the engine is better written than FS9's engine, in terms of performance efficiency. Nice find!James

ROFLPlay a bit of FSX and you'll find that the feel of flight is far improved.James

If you run RivaTuner, click on the little square which has a little triangle in it under Driver Settings. Six icons will show up; you then click on the second one which looks like a four blade prop. It will popup the Direct3D tweat dialog box; select the shaders tab. The rest is self explanitory.

Maybe that is the problem-I don't have 6 icons.. or am I looking in the wrong place?http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/159148.jpg