just some feedback...

[Guest rmk80]

Hi,yesterday i tried the second beta 7 preview for the first time and i have to admit it's working like a charm!!!! This addon is awesome!!!I can't thank you enough for spending this much of your time on this application and sharing it with your fellow simmers. My appreciation is immense!!!I just did a fresh install of vista home premium (32 bit) a few days ago as well as a fresh install of FSX/SP1/SP2.(dualcore 6420, 4gb ram, 8800GT). I did NOT encounter any problems installing your software, and after setting up the .INI it is working like a charm. I already tried different services and the only one that didn't work for me was the acme global one (gave me black tiles everywhere). My aim now is to further reduce the blurries during flight and this is what helped me do this so far:* lock your framerate on a setting which your system can keep up(as i understand setting it to unlimited, makes the TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=400 setting useless)* I removed the FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION=0.66 setting because i get better performance regarding the blurries leaving it out.* I also removed the MipBias=6 setting because this causes graininess which can be overcome by setting anistropic filtering to 16x but that is costing me too much fps.* in the .INI file i set both the number of .BMP as well as the RAM concerning the .BMP's to unlimited (rsp. 100000 and 100000000 by default). This made a huge difference for me in reducing the blurries.By applying these changes i have improved the performance on my system significantly, but this might not work on every system so see for yourself.Thanks again for releasing this amazing piece of software.Remko

[Guest cbuchner1]

The graininess with MipBias=6 is removed by setting "negative MIP bias" to "Clamp" in the nVidia control panel. By default it is on "allow". The mipbias has the nice effect of using higher mipmap levels further out in the distance, maximizing the crispness of the terrain.> in the .INI file i set both the number of .BMP as well as the RAM concerning the .BMP's to unlimitedThat one is a bit dangerous, as it will starve you out on memory after a long haul cross country flight. And when that happens, your system will start using the swap file - slowing down everything, including the Flight Simulator.Allowing much RAM for BMP tiles can be useful when you return to a spot that you've been before (i.e. flying in circles). But how often do you return to your exact starting location in one particular flight?You can also play with the detail radius setting in FSX. I would recommend "Medium" on your machine.Christian

[Guest rmk80]

thanks for your reply.I tried the "negative MIP bias" setting and that indeed solves the graininess for me. I also tried the medium setting but i get the feeling my system can't keep up the highest lod setting, so i use low instead.

[Guest rmk80]

ok, after reading the manual a lot of questions i had have been answered, also the other "problems" like graininess are explained so sorry for asking you this before actually reading the manual!!But there are still some things i don't quite understand. For example what is the diiference between the .bmp tiles and the "caches". In another post you say it's safe to clean/delete the .bmp tiles stored on your hard disk because they can take a lot of data, but isn't it faster reading them from your disk instead of getting them online? Or are they not being used? What exactly are these "caches" and how are they being used?My second question is about the RAM usage, i made a flight for like 20 minutes using the default .INI settings and a "large" radius in scenery settings. Also i was flying the PMDG 747 which takes up a lot of RAM. While flying i noticed the usage kept rising and rising until after 20 minutes i already had 2,11 GB used. Will this amount keep rising forever, or are the tiles which are no longer visible being "unloaded" so the usage will reach a certain maximum which it will not exceed? Or should i change my settings in such a way that the RAM usage will not exceed the "paging" maximum, before the end of my flight?The service viewer is a very handy tool cause i can see which lod level on my flight path is fully loaded and which is lacking. Although i had the program crashing several times when using the level zoom buttons.Last remark, the cars travelling the photorealistic highways is absolutely stunning!!! God, i love this addon...Best regards,Remko

[Guest cbuchner1]

there are 4 layers of caching for the tiles. Some in my opinion have become quite obsolete over the course of development and need to be replaced or removed.1) Kernel memory (that's the fast RAM disk introduced in Beta 7)2) regular memory cache (ProxyUser.exe keeps a BMP data cache as well)3) Tileproxy Photoreal World folder (.BMP and .FLAT files on disk)4) Service Caches (JPG files on disk)I think I may completely redesign levels 2) and 3) in future versions - the overhead of managing individual BMP files is too big. I think I can do without storing them on disk.The sizes of layer 3) and 4) are currently not managed, so your disk may run full if you don't watch it ;)It is safe and reasonable to set the size for the cache # 2) to a relatively small value, say 50-100 MB. Larger values really only make sense if you intend to fly a lot of circles.The world folder can be cleaned up regularly, as its contents can be recreated from JPG files relatively quickly without re-downloading.Christian