UT Europe possible problems

[out 769]

I've been using Ultimate Terrain Europe for a long time now. I bought it right after the Eastern Europe patch was made.Generally I'm a big supporter of the idea and quality UTE presents.Flying over exact roads, rivers, lakes and shorelines is both enjoyable and educating. And the night lights are just superb!However, I have noticed possible problems using UTE may cause. I decided to describe them here hoping other simmers may share their experience with UTE. It might help me somehow.I have noticed the problems flying... outside of Europe or in Europe but outside of the covered area (e.g.over Greece). What I noticed was a clear difference. A difference of both ground textures quality and FPS. The old misfamous problem of ground blurries is well known to me. But over Greece or outside Europe I hardly get it anytime! It wasn't easy to discover for me, as I do most of my flying in Europe.What's more, the FPS are noiceably higher outside UTE coverage area. I haven't made exact notes, but I can say I get 20 and more in the cockpit, but flying over UTE Europe I seldom have more than 15 and often less than this.My yesterday's flight between Hong Kong and Shanghai and today's flight over Greek Islands were so enjoyable with clear sharp ground (wow!) and smooth performance.Are you guys experiencing similar problems or am I alone?Maybe this is just coincidence and there is something else I may heve missed?I am so irritated with the problems, eapecially the ground blurries, that I even consider uninstalling UTE.Thanks in advance!Best regards,RafalI use:AMD Athlon 64 3000+1GB RAMRadeon 9800 Pro with updated driversFS9.1 with GEPro, UTEv111 and registered FSUIPC

[Guest chris.eve]

I don't think you've got a problem as such with UTE, it's just that UTE introduces a lot more detail than the default scenery and judging from your framerate figures you're reaching the limits of performance of your machine. I'm unfamiliar with AMD processors or Radeon video cards, I use Pentiums and nVidia, but I'd recommend the usual defragging of the hard disk(s), ensure there's anough free space for temp files etc., and make sure there are no excess applications running in the background. After that, I'd suggest increasing the RAM to 2Gb.

[out 769]

Thanks for your answer! :)Yes, my machine is rather old and weak now but I'm not planning to change it in the nearest future (not this year) due to other expenses.I do regular defrag (with the O&O software) and I've got a lot of free HD space. I also have a very limited number of applications running in the background.As for increasing RAM I thought it wouldn't help my old processor/card but yes, I may reconsider it.As far as the FPS go down I agree it looks like my system doesn't handle it but I have a lot of quite heavy sceneries (mega hubs like London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam or Paris) and 100% AI. And simple flying over the UTE landscape compared to being at the airports gives me surprisingly low framerates.But the ground texture blurries are just tragic. Actually they are almost never sharp unless I leave a direct view on them and wait for a looong moment (zooming in and out helps sometimes too). Flying over Greece or in Asia I get them sharp all the time. That is something I can't quite understand and accept.Best regards,Rafal

[jfri 42]

>Are you guys experiencing similar problems or am I alone?>Maybe this is just coincidence and there is something else I>may heve missed?>On my system somewhat similar to yours I also have noticed a significant drop in fps in the UT areas (got all). But I havn't noticed any significant blurries problem. Well I have some weak memory of it Europe and a slight impression that UT Europe stress my system somewhat more than UT USA & Canada. But I'm not sure about this.My systemAMD 64 3200+1 Gb RAMNVIDIA 6600GT 256M DDR3(BTW before getting the 6600GT I had the ATI 9800 Pro and this upgrade meant a huge improvement in performence)

[out 769]

After some days of investigating and tweaking I got some positive results. I though someone might be interested.First of all thanks to chris.eve for his advice. I bought an extra 1GB RAM and there IS a difference both in FPS and ground tex load times.Next I'd like to thank Holger Seilz for his fs9.cfg tweaks advice in the following thread:http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...41195&mode=fullI did so and... voila.. it is much better now. :)I can't say I got rid of both problems but I could say it is much much better now. Enough to enjoy flying over Europe again.In the meantime two more questions came to my head I'd like to share with you.1. A well-known issue to avoid, at least as far as I believe, is not to mix two landclass files in one area. As a matter of fact UTE installs its own landclass folder. But in many European addon sceneries, both free and payware, I also have landclass files. Don't you guys think (or know) it could be a potential problem?What's more in the UTE landclass folder there is a texture folder with bmps, which seems a bit strange to me.2. And the other question is about UTE night lighting. The 3D lamp posts create a gorgeous atmosphere and flying at dusk makes an unforgettable experience. But I have an impression I read somewhere that they eat out a lot of autogen and FPS. Someone recommended turning them off while not flying at night. However I find it rather annoying to turn them on and off again and again. Moreover I often fly in the changing day times. Any experience about that?Thanks in advance for any feedback.Best regards,Rafal