FSX ground performance issues

[Guest adam_uk_wmids]

Hi folks!I have been simming since FS2002 and have, this christmas taken the plunge from FS9 to FSX. Having installed FSX eagerly onto my system, I immediately realised my original set-up which was top-end in about 2004, just wasn't going to cope. So I then set about upgrading my system. I now have what I would consider a good spec of machine - certainly considering FSX was written upto 2006 specs... (I concede that may be they wrote it with future developments in mind...)However, I have found that with the settings set to the default Ultra high presets, I have problems. My hardware set-up is as follows:ASUS P6T Delux Motherboard with Intel i7 920, Socket 1366 (:(, 2.66GHz, Cache 8MB (4 cores with additional 4 virtual cores) and 6GB RAM (although only 3.something recognised due to XP Pro 32bit edition), FSX installed on seperate standard harddisk, 1GB NVidia GTX 280 OC2, PCI-E 2.0(x16), 2326MHz GDDR3, GPU 650MHz, 240 Cores graphics card.The default MS planes work fine. My add-ons (Currently just played with Wilco pub legacy jet, CLS VLJ, and CLS DC-10 collection) all share a common issue. Durring time on the ground, they all do the same thing. Not necessarily immediately upon loading, but at some point during the start-up (from cold and dark) they start to affect the running of the sim. I get the sim freezing then unfreezing, almost on an On-Off-On-Off-On-Off or more accurately Stop - start - stop - start. During this time, my mouse will move unimpeded around the screen smoothly, but the cursor does not change as you would expect (e.g. to a hand when something can be clicked) and clicking has no effect during the 'stop' periods, only during the start periods. This on/off or stop/start cycle sems to be about 3 seconds on, 3 seconds off repeatedly. This indicated to me that ist was an FS rather than OS issue, since I don't experience this in any other applicaton, and the mouse is working fine dispite the freezing up of FS.This occurs when the plane is stationary as well as moving.Interestigly, I do not experience it at all whilst in flight, only on the ground, which leads me to believe it isn't an issue with the add-on plane modules, since they are all running still in flight surely? I can whizz around viewing the plane with smooth switching and panning of views no problems in the air. Likewise, in cockpit and VC I get an excellent, responsive, smooth scrolling and usable flight interface. It is ONLY once I hit the ground (Yeah I mean land!), or osometimes before I take off (either whilst taxiing or during cock pit prep), that the running of FS stalls on and off alost as if on a timer , 3 secs on, 3 secs off, etc, making it unpleasurable and not really usable.Does anybody have any suggestions? I have read of reports from other simmers of their joy at playing FSX and long to experience this!! At the moment, Following removal of my FS2004 which I could play at maxed out settings on my older system with all my add-ons, I'm feeling pretty cheated at not being able to get anything playable out of FSX.One more note: I am on XP Pro 32bit edition running therefore on Direct X 9c. I updated to SP1 then SP 2 but found that SP 2 made it impossible to use VC in my add-ons, since the outside world turned completely matt blue! I therefore removed SP2 and re-installed SP1.Any suggestions would be GREATLY recieved. Sorry if this is garbled and jumbled! If I can clarify anything, please just let me know!Best wishes,AdamPS> Interestingly, I note this is not the first post here regarding FS performance when combined with a high end system... just us FSX newbies bothching things? Or is there more to it?

[Guest zonie]

My suggestion would be to switch your OS to either XP 64 bit or Vista 64 bit. You are not fully utilizing your system to achieve the best performance.

[Guest adam_uk_wmids]

My suggestion would be to switch your OS to either XP 64 bit or Vista 64 bit. You are not fully utilizing your system to achieve the best performance.

Yes - I am aware of that and upgraded with that eventuality in mind, but was trying to wait until windows 7 hits the shelves so that I could dual boot it to start with [i'm aware there might be some teething problems with it, given MS's track record so want to keep at least one stable system!). Secondly, I really just can't take to Vista! I would be willing to try XP 64bit, if anybody feels that is really worth it.What I don't get is that surely, given that FSX originates from 2006, a top end 2009 system running a stable OS such as XP pro should be able to run it at least comfortably, if not maxed out? If you look at other software I run, e.g. Battlefield 2 on maxed out settings, the graphics are both more complex and a hell of a lot faster than FSX? Sorry - that sounds almost aggressive lol - but you get what I mean? Seems odd to me. I don't think it is the flight dynamics processing that is causing the problem, since in flight it is lovely (and I particularly enjoy the human body eye point inertia effects in VC view!!).Thank you for your suggestion though :-)

[bobbyjack 61]

You are probably going to have to OC that i7. You are going to want as close to 4 ghz as possible. Nothing wrong with Vista 64 now. Reviews say Windows 7 is more like Vista than XP.Bob

[GHarrall 494]

You are probably going to have to OC that i7. You are going to want as close to 4 ghz as possible. Nothing wrong with Vista 64 now. Reviews say Windows 7 is more like Vista than XP.Bob

Based on what I have read in the hardware forums you should try turning off Hyperthreading on that i7 in the BIOS.

[Guest jaskanFactor]

1 - I have some of the wilco jets you mention, and i think i know exactly waht you mean2 - ITs generally known that FSX is more cpu hungary on the ground than when you in the sky, my frame rates are sometimes half on the ground what i get in the sky.Possible solutions1 - I always set my fsx dispaly settings using the most cpu hungary plane , like wilco jets. Dont set your display settings using default aircraft, you me be very disspaointed what frame rates you get on add on planes. UNless you want to save seperate display setting for both2 - Also you need to seperate performance issues on ground from that in the sky. Since you having issues on the ground, i suggest you decrease some of those display settings that are active on the ground, like airport detail, air/ground traffic,autogen, scenary complexity.3 - Its a lot more fun flying with lower settings that are smooth, than higher settings that look like a slide show.You loose the dynamics4 - One thing i have recently noticed, it seems that you better off leaving frame rates unlocked, i mean set frames to unlimited, works much better on my system.5 - Very Very important, always set FSX priority in task maneger to BelowNormal , or even Idle. This will help avoid lock ups, and issues such as mouse not getting its share of cpu. UNless you have a quantum CPU , dont leave fsx in normal priority6 - I use ultimate defrag, to put all the texture, scennary, and autogen files on edge of my disk, even if you have seperate HDD for FSX, this might still help, escpesially if your FSX folder is huge with addons. I find having the graphic related files on edge of disk helps.I SUSPECT WITH SUCH A HIGH END SYSTEM AS YOURS, ALL YOU NEED DO IS JUST GO TO TASK MANEGER AND SET FSX PRIORITY TO [bELOW NORMAL] OR LOW. THis wount make it run slower, but it means it will give other important tasks time to run, hence they will free your cpu up for fsx.

[bobbyjack 61]

Setting FSX priorty to below normal is a new one to me. Anyone else doing this?Bob

[Guest adam_uk_wmids]

Jaskan / and others...Many thanks for your advice - I tried the process priority setting and it DID indeed improve performance. It did not fix it, but as I mentioned above, the sim would freeze off, then on. The difference setting below normal or low priority made was that the pauses were MUCH shorter and this made it tolerable to play.I am not 100% sure the freezes are occuring independently to the user actions now either. I have found that they are definitely related to hovering the mouse over certain controls. In particular, if anybody uses the LAGO RAF Tornado (patched for FSX), I find that when I hover over the frequencies guage (in cockpit view) the whole screen sometimes turns opaq white and freezes for a few seconds (this is intermittant). I have tried reinstalling FSX from scratch with SP1 (I don't use SP2 due to not having vista / DX10 and this having a negative impact on most of my add-on craft) and this has not helped.SO... my latest thoughts are possibly that it is linked to the 'tool-tip' style pop-ups that appear when you hover over a control, as the most noticable freezes seem to occur when a tool tip for a control just opened. (Oddly, this only seems to happen on the ground). I have experimented with increasing the graphics sliders across various settings and until I hit almost completely maxed out settings, this doesn't seem to have an effect on the freezes, and they still occur on the minimum settings. Does anybody know how to disabe these tool tip type pop-ups - I don't seem to be able to find a setting! Am I correct in remembering that there was a setting for this in FS9, or was is possible to disable them in the aircraft .cfg files?Many thanks to everybody who replied - it was very much appreciated. I apologise for my belated thanks, but didn't want to reply while I was still playing with settings, trying to find a solution or until I could give more info. I'd still be very interested to hear from anybody else who has experienced similar. As I say, I think it seems to depend more now on the guages hovered over, although with it being intermittant, it is difficult to tell. However, does anybody else have a NVidia GTX 280 and experience (or not experience) this?Last thing to add, while I think about this is, is that when it freezes, the mouse moves around the screen fine. However, the mouse cursor type locks until it unfreezes (a typical freeze now being 2 - 3 seconds)... By this I mean if I have the hand cursor (showing I can operate this guage) then it freezes as the hand cursor regardless of if I move onto something non-clickable or not, although I can move this cursor anywhere on the screen, but clicking anywhere has no impact and the game becomes temporarily unresponsive.I'll see what people make of the above and see if I can find a solution still - but input very welcome and appreciated. Again... apologies for the jumbled state of the information given. Oe day I'll develop a more structured approach to writing posts... until then you're stuck with my scatter bomb approach I'm afraid!Adam

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

Does anybody know how to disabe these tool tip type pop-ups - I don't seem to be able to find a setting! Am I correct in remembering that there was a setting for this in FS9, or was is possible to disable them in the aircraft .cfg files?

Alt-Options-Display-Aircraft turn off Tooltips..Also, converted aircraft for FSX cause two issues... Inability to use SP2 and sub-par performance.You may want to re-think your hangar, install SP2, and possibly re-install FS9 in addition to FSX to be ableto fly FS9 aircraft.. :(

[Guest adam_uk_wmids]

Okay... thanks to everybody who has contributed to this thread. I had become rather dispondant about getting this issue sorted out and your interest and suggestions have kept me optimistic for finding a solution... and I HAVE!! [yay!]Firstly, the intermittant whole screen white-out I was getting in the Tornado add-on when hovering over guages sometimes WAS apparently caused by the tool tips. So, thanks Bert for directing me to the blatently obvious setting which I couldn't see for looking!! I spotted it immediately once you'd told me it was there! This solved the whiting out of the screen, but not the pauses I was getting.I then noticed the freezes came particularly when an engine was starting, a switch was being flicked, a ground vehicle approached, another nearby aircraft started up, etc. It dawned on me that all these events have related sounds (which one would encounter on the ground, but not in the air). With most performance issues being lodged with graphics settings, it never occured to me that the freezes would be sound related. One thing you wouldn't have known from what I posted origionally is that when playing flight-sim I use headphones (in England we have semi-detached houses frequently, meaning we have one face of the house adjoined to our neighbours and therefore, the rumbling of aircraft engines travels through the walls!!). The model of headphones I use come with an inline sound card which handles noise cancelling for use with the combined mic. To use the headphones, I have to switch the default sound card through that.I tried plugging standard headphones into my on-board sound jack and setting the default sound card to onboard and hey presto, my FSX stops freezing!! I can only assume, given I know nothing about the technicalities of how sound works, that there were too many channels, or too much complex sound procssing for my inline sound card to handle and therefore, when too many sounds occurred at once it froze up until it had sorted itself out!SO, when encountering freezes, check your sound card / settings and when getting shite outs, consider disabling tool tips!Once again, thanks for all your inputs and advice - is it worth my posting this in a new thread for the benefit of others, or do you think it is better leaving it here?Regards,Adam

[Guest Alphahawk3]

1 - I have some of the wilco jets you mention, and i think i know exactly waht you mean2 - ITs generally known that FSX is more cpu hungary on the ground than when you in the sky, my frame rates are sometimes half on the ground what i get in the sky.Possible solutions1 - I always set my fsx dispaly settings using the most cpu hungary plane , like wilco jets. Dont set your display settings using default aircraft, you me be very disspaointed what frame rates you get on add on planes. UNless you want to save seperate display setting for both2 - Also you need to seperate performance issues on ground from that in the sky. Since you having issues on the ground, i suggest you decrease some of those display settings that are active on the ground, like airport detail, air/ground traffic,autogen, scenary complexity.3 - Its a lot more fun flying with lower settings that are smooth, than higher settings that look like a slide show.You loose the dynamics4 - One thing i have recently noticed, it seems that you better off leaving frame rates unlocked, i mean set frames to unlimited, works much better on my system.5 - Very Very important, always set FSX priority in task maneger to BelowNormal , or even Idle. This will help avoid lock ups, and issues such as mouse not getting its share of cpu. UNless you have a quantum CPU , dont leave fsx in normal priority6 - I use ultimate defrag, to put all the texture, scennary, and autogen files on edge of my disk, even if you have seperate HDD for FSX, this might still help, escpesially if your FSX folder is huge with addons. I find having the graphic related files on edge of disk helps.I SUSPECT WITH SUCH A HIGH END SYSTEM AS YOURS, ALL YOU NEED DO IS JUST GO TO TASK MANEGER AND SET FSX PRIORITY TO [bELOW NORMAL] OR LOW. THis wount make it run slower, but it means it will give other important tasks time to run, hence they will free your cpu up for fsx.

This is about the 3rd time I have heard mention of setting FSX priority to below normal to increase performance....and they all may have been posts from you...I am not sure. Would you mind explaining where you came up with this and what is the reasoning behind it. I have read ......maybe a year or so in the past setting it to high but never to below normal. I would be interested in the theory behind this. Regards

[Guest jaskanFactor]

This is about the 3rd time I have heard mention of setting FSX priority to below normal to increase performance....and they all may have been posts from you...I am not sure. Would you mind explaining where you came up with this and what is the reasoning behind it. I have read ......maybe a year or so in the past setting it to high but never to below normal. I would be interested in the theory behind this. Regards

No, i also have seen folks recomend high priority, and some recomend low priority.I say to set it low cause1 - Unlike most applications on a computer, when FSX runs it uses most or all cpu power, leaving little left for other things to run like, mouse, hard disk, sound etc2 - The problem is, FSX takes up so much of the computer, it starts to prevent other things even FSx needs from running, like hard disk, mouse, keyboard etc.3 - By setting FSX to low, you allow all those other tasks to run, so they can get out of the way and leave the cpu to FSX. Cause low or high, FSX is still going to aim to us all your cpu anyway.4 But when its low, it creates a smoother FSX cause every task gets it s share.5 - Its is a flaw in the design of FSX software that causes this, good applications allow other taks to run, cause those other tasks could be things that it needs too.6 - I am a software engineer, and its standard in good software to free up some of the cpu so things dont lock up.7- The name for this in software speak is called Priority inversion, high priority task becomes slow cause its stopping anything else from running.

[BMG50 9]

No, i also have seen folks recomend high priority, and some recomend low priority.I say to set it low cause1 - Unlike most applications on a computer, when FSX runs it uses most or all cpu power, leaving little left for other things to run like, mouse, hard disk, sound etc2 - The problem is, FSX takes up so much of the computer, it starts to prevent other things even FSx needs from running, like hard disk, mouse, keyboard etc.3 - By setting FSX to low, you allow all those other tasks to run, so they can get out of the way and leave the cpu to FSX. Cause low or high, FSX is still going to aim to us all your cpu anyway.4 But when its low, it creates a smoother FSX cause every task gets it s share.5 - Its is a flaw in the design of FSX software that causes this, good applications allow other taks to run, cause those other tasks could be things that it needs too.6 - I am a software engineer, and its standard in good software to free up some of the cpu so things dont lock up.7- The name for this in software speak is called Priority inversion, high priority task becomes slow cause its stopping anything else from running.

Hello, When I open Task manager,I see nothing about setting priorities...Would you please show the path?? Using Vista...Thanks ..Lou

[Guest adam_uk_wmids]

I have read ......maybe a year or so in the past setting it to high but never to below normal. I would be interested in the theory behind this.

I'm running a reasonably high end system (see orignal post in this thread) so wouldn't have thought CPU being dominated by FSX would be an issue, however, setting the process priority to low worked well for me in FSX when I was suffering for my (at the time undiagnosed) sound card issue, so I can only speak from personal experience. Since the soundcard issue has been resolved however, it makes no difference.Lou / BMG50:http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/2078/vista_...ty_for_process/The link above shows how to set priority in Vista.Regards,Adam

[NismoRR 191]

ASUS P6T Delux Motherboard with Intel i7 920, Socket 1366 ( :( , 2.66GHz, Cache 8MB (4 cores with additional 4 virtual cores) and 6GB RAM (although only 3.something recognised due to XP Pro 32bit edition), FSX installed on seperate standard harddisk, 1GB NVidia GTX 280 OC2, PCI-E 2.0(x16), 2326MHz GDDR3, GPU 650MHz, 240 Cores graphics card.

Adam, you make a very interesting observation about the sound. I built a very similar system last week with a P6T Deluxe. Works fantastic! The first program I loaded is a racing sim called iRacing. Gorgeous! Smooth, etc. FPS is measured differently and I was getting 100-400 fps everywhere. Nice. I go to the grid to race the first time on the new rig, 18 others are racing, and the fps is at 19, virtually unplayable. I was 95% sure it had to do with sound. All the extra cars and their sounds killed my performance, like you on the ground with all the other sounds around your aircraft. I changed some sound settings and got a slight performance boost, but still wasn't thrilled. The Soundmax driver that came with the P6T was terrible and actually shut down all sound in Vista x64. Uninstalled the driver. This is what led me to believe sound was the issue. Anyway, I ordered an Omega Stryker 7.1 sound card yesterday. Take all the sound processing off the CPU (and motherboard!) which I'm pretty certain will take care of this sound issue, especially since you mention something very similar. There's also several topics on this at the Asus forums. I was going to install FSX over the weekend, but am now waiting for the sound card first. I wish you luck, but you may want to look into a sound card for the new system.Todd