Framerates

[Guest hfitz]

>It seems to be the 3D clouds that cause havoc on my system.Yes that may be true, indeed the recent addition of new 3D clouds and shadows seems to have caused a whole number of new issues, some windows users are obviously not even able to launch FG anymore.>And I have a few more questions:>>I was flying Concorde and the engines shut down for no reason>after 2 minutes of flying. Why is this?Well, hard to say with such sparse information.Apart from that, such questions are probably also better targetted at developers/maintainers of the affected aircraft, simply because it is impossible to really know everything about all aircraft.So, this may be due to the Concorde's unfinished status or possibly to problems related on your side, or even both.>Is there a way to get the menu bar out of the way on the full>screen view?Yes, oress the 'F10' key on your keyboard (Docs!)>Is there a way to engage reverse thrust on jets as well as>autospoilers?For such and similar questions you may find it best to refer back to the documentation files or even the documentation integrated within FlightGear (check the HELP menu!). Besides, it's practically impossible to make any generally applicable statement here, simply because the majority of aircraft in FlightGear have vast differences between each other and are often highly customized, and of course in flux.Basically, if you want a high level of realism you will probably not want to bother using any of the pre-release aircraft, simply because they are often not yet mature enough to be really used by end-users. Thus, you can and should expect lots of things to be missing or simply plain-dead wrong in such cases. So it is a much better idea to concentrate on using aircraft that are supposed to be "pretty finished", that's also where people are likely appreciate some feedback or even criticism with regards to the fidelity of a particular aircraft's implementation.On the other hand, if you are really interested in doing some base package development, it is certainly a very good idea to slowly start improving some of the more finished aircraft, so that you can accumulate the required experience to deal with more challenging (less finished) cases.

[deltafan 1]

Nevermind, I had to reinstall it.

[Guest hfitz]

>OK, I don't have internet on my computer that I run games on,>so I have just barely been able to get FlightGear onto that>computer. It's a good computer, AMD Athlon64 3500+ processor,>512MB RAM, ATI Radeon X200 card, etc. I go to run FGFS with>low detail settings, and it runs about 1 FPS. What's the>deal?Well, depending on the resolution you are using, I would guess the hardware acceleration does not work properly for FG, your machine itself should be QUITE capable to run FlightGear. What startup settings are you using? Also, if you run another OpenGL application like X-Plane, what framerate do you typically get?However, if you are using any resolution beyond 1024x768, framerates may indeed drop significantly, even on high-end hardware. You may want to try different resolutions (i.e. 640x480, 800x600) to see if the framerates remain that low or if they normalize. Apart from that, the reported framerate at runtime does not necessarily reflect your system's (max) capabilities, rather the framerate will only show the actual framerate that you system is using .So, if you are just sitting at an airport without moving the aircraft, low framerates can considered to be "normal", simply because FlightGear does not have to do that much to render the scene.In order to get an impression of your system's capabilities you will want to use a highspeed airplane, increase visibility settings and high LOD. This will show you how much performance potential your machine still got.However, if you are experiencing such ramerates while playing, this can be considered to be unplayable (anything < 15-20fps). On a machine such as your's, you should be able to expect average framerates of about 50-140 fps, depending on your screen resolution.So, apart from your startup settings it would be also good to know if FlightGear reports any warnings or even errors to the console, if so: which ones?

[deltafan 1]

OK, I think it is a matter of expirementing which settings/features my system can handle. One, or a combination of features enabled give me this error: "Error: RenderTexture requires the following unsupported OpenGL extensions: WGL_ARB_extensions_stringReading xml ..." when I try to fly planes like the 737 or A-10. Then when I select a plane like the P-51, it runs very, very slowly. Then when I disable the feature(s), it goes back to normal. So it looks like trying different settings to see what my system will handle. I currently use 1024x728 resolution and get around 50FPS.

[deltafan 1]

It seems to be the 3D clouds that cause havoc on my system.And I have a few more questions:I was flying Concorde and the engines shut down for no reason after 2 minutes of flying. Why is this?Is there a way to get the menu bar out of the way on the full screen view?Is there a way to engage reverse thrust on jets as well as autospoilers?

[Guest hfitz]

>OK, I think it is a matter of expirementing which>settings/features my system can handle. One, or a combination>of features enabled give me this error: "Error: RenderTexture>requires the following unsupported OpenGL extensions:>WGL_ARB_extensions_stringReading xml ..." when I try to fly>planes like the 737 or A-10. Then when I select a plane like>the P-51, it runs very, very slowly. Then when I disable the>feature(s), it goes back to normal. So it looks like trying>different settings to see what my system will handle. I>currently use 1024x728 resolution and get around 50FPS.50fps at that resolution seems pretty good and should feel quite "playable", however as I said already, the average framerate you experience may not necessarily be really representative of your system's maximum capabilities. Also the framerate is likely to depend on a whole number of additional settings, like the LOD (Level Of Detail), visibility range, scenery complexity and whether recent extensions such as 3D clouds and shadows are enabled or not. With regards to the OpenGL RenderTexture error, this seems to be quite common for some ATI cards and is not necessarily critical. Concerning the performance differences between various aircraft, this is again due to the aircraft's different requirements, i.e. an aircraft with a relatively simple 3D (exterior) model and a normal 2D cockpit panel is likely to be less of a resource hog than a full featured 3D model including a fully animated 3D cockpit. Also, performance may also be influenced by other running subsystems such as the AI/ATC stuff. Apart from that, it's definitely true that you will probably want to customize your settings according to your needs, i.e. the frequency at which the FDM (flight model) is run may also need to be adjusted to your needs.Besides, I am not really sure about the exact specs of your video card, but I would expect FlightGear to run without any major problems on such a system, even though FlightGear can certainly not be considered to be particularly optimized.

[Guest hfitz]

>It seems to be the 3D clouds that cause havoc on my system.Yes that may be true, indeed the recent addition of new 3D clouds and shadows seems to have caused a whole number of new issues, some windows users are obviously not even able to launch FG anymore.>And I have a few more questions:>>I was flying Concorde and the engines shut down for no reason>after 2 minutes of flying. Why is this?Well, hard to say with such sparse information.Apart from that, such questions are probably also better targetted at developers/maintainers of the affected aircraft, simply because it is impossible to really know everything about all aircraft.So, this may be due to the Concorde's unfinished status or possibly to problems related on your side, or even both.>Is there a way to get the menu bar out of the way on the full>screen view?Yes, oress the 'F10' key on your keyboard (Docs!)>Is there a way to engage reverse thrust on jets as well as>autospoilers?For such and similar questions you may find it best to refer back to the documentation files or even the documentation integrated within FlightGear (check the HELP menu!). Besides, it's practically impossible to make any generally applicable statement here, simply because the majority of aircraft in FlightGear have vast differences between each other and are often highly customized, and of course in flux.Basically, if you want a high level of realism you will probably not want to bother using any of the pre-release aircraft, simply because they are often not yet mature enough to be really used by end-users. Thus, you can and should expect lots of things to be missing or simply plain-dead wrong in such cases. So it is a much better idea to concentrate on using aircraft that are supposed to be "pretty finished", that's also where people are likely appreciate some feedback or even criticism with regards to the fidelity of a particular aircraft's implementation.On the other hand, if you are really interested in doing some base package development, it is certainly a very good idea to slowly start improving some of the more finished aircraft, so that you can accumulate the required experience to deal with more challenging (less finished) cases.