Don't miss this one: a NEW FSX optimizer

[Noel 4,487]

Thank you very much :( , really the most useful trick I

[Gumps 0]

Are you folks running FSX in 'windowed' mode? Anyone else doing this with multiple monitors?I noticed when in full screen, my FPS are down around 8 FPS! I suppose it lives up to it's name of "Frame Limiter", but that's not what I had in mind! :-)I followed the directions in this thread, launched the *.bat file, FSX launches, but is a slide show. It seems that the applet is having an effect, but not the correct one.My OS and FSX are tweaked per Nick's guides. With unlimited in my test scenario, the FPS bounces between 40 and 60 without the applet...hangs around 8 with it running. (??)Anyone else seeing this?Noel WBrisbaneC2D E6850@3.8WinXP SP2FSX SP2

[Noel 4,487]

Are you folks running FSX in 'windowed' mode? Anyone else doing this with multiple monitors?I noticed when in full screen, my FPS are down around 8 FPS! I suppose it lives up to it's name of "Frame Limiter", but that's not what I had in mind! :-)I followed the directions in this thread, launched the *.bat file, FSX launches, but is a slide show. It seems that the applet is having an effect, but not the correct one.My OS and FSX are tweaked per Nick's guides. With unlimited in my test scenario, the FPS bounces between 40 and 60 without the applet...hangs around 8 with it running. (??)Anyone else seeing this?Noel WBrisbaneC2D E6850@3.8WinXP SP2FSX SP2

[Guest napamule]

Noel,Noel means 'Christmas', doesn't it, and you sure gave me a present with this little jewel. I am getting smooth enough frames to run FRAPS and make good videos. That is the tweak of the year (2 years?). Thanks again.I can now (for some reason) run without the Limiter and get 24 FPS, with dips to 16 sometimes, but no stutters. I have all the cfg tweaks. Seems I changed them 50 times this year. Constant hammering. But now am set. Of course the AG is down to sparse (no biggy). Being things are running smooth I may never touch that slider again, ever. I installed, then went to where bat was, made window small, and draged it to desktop, and clicked 'Make ShortCut Here'. I did not change the old FSX icon. I dbl click on Limiter icon and it launches FSX. Artifacts (green text) doesn't bother me. I do find that occassionall there is some delay somwhere that locks up FRAPS, but not often enough to complain. I just have to slow down the mouse clicks (heehee). Everything looks 'intact' and it does not effect XP, as far as I can tell. I did not 'activate' Java in explorer, like it was mentioned. It works seamlessly in background, as it is designed to do. Cheers.Gumps,I run FSX in windowed mode, even when changeing FRAPS's settings, and when editing cfg for aircraft. No problems switching back and forth for me.Chuck BNapamuleP4 3.2 Ghz, HT, dual core, on Via P4M80, socket 478, 1 Gig Kingston DDR400 Ram (dual channel, matched pair), ATI Radeon X1300/X1500, 7200 RPM EIDE WD hard drives. No overclock to anything. Processes are not reduced. I built rig myself. Only running progs on task bar are Volume control and Avast (free edition) AV.

[Guest UlfB]

b. A very high end i7 clocked may or may not see advantage with this. I am seeing some positive and some neutral results. Because i7 clocked places a huge overhead on the system, moreso that DDR3 QX, using the frame lock in FSX may accomplish the same goal as this app. I am seeing scenery areas where the app does help with i7 and others where there is no difference.

Nick,After some test flights with FPS Limiter I may confirm that on my system this utility makes no difference.@Gizmo: What an excellent utility :(

[newtie 533]

I noticed when in full screen, my FPS are down around 8 FPS!

I have the exact same problem. I installed the program and it runs fine except that when in full-screen mode, the frame rate drops to 15 vs. the default 30 which appears in window mode. I've tried adjusting AG from full on to full off with no effect.Mark

[Noel 4,487]

I have the exact same problem. I installed the program and it runs fine except that when in full-screen mode, the frame rate drops to 15 vs. the default 30 which appears in window mode. I've tried adjusting AG from full on to full off with no effect.Mark

Interesting. Are you using XP? I am using XP and Vista and since Vista doesn't handle windowed without frame rate loss I run full screen, so never checked out this issue. I also run XP and run this in windowed mode since XP handles this well, and the gizmo (thanks Gizmo!) works well in Windowed mode in XP.Noel

Nick,After some test flights with FPS Limiter I may confirm that on my system this utility makes no difference.@Gizmo: What an excellent utility :(

Ulf, does your system show surges/spikes when in UNLIMITED mode? Improving this is pretty much the main purpose of this utility . . .

[Guest UlfB]

Ulf, does your system show surges/spikes when in UNLIMITED mode? Improving this is pretty much the main purpose of this utility . . .

Yes I get some autogen spikes over extremely dense areas when flying with unlimited fps. I normally fly FSX with fps limited to 27 and 30 fps. With this setting I get smooth FSX flights over both dense urban and rural areas.I ran FPS Limiter with the limit set to 27 and to 30. FSX fps set to unlimited. This gave me the same flight experience as when I run FSX with limited fps. I couldn't notice any difference in behaviour. I'm sorry, but this utility is not for my system.Edited: The big improvement of my orignial Core i7 computer build, occurred when I replaced my 8800GTX card with an OC:ed GTX285. BIG improvement.

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

Yes I get some autogen spikes over extremely dense areas when flying with unlimited fps. I normally fly FSX with fps limited to 27 and 30 fps. With this setting I get smooth FSX flights over both dense urban and rural areas.I ran FPS Limiter with the limit set to 27 and to 30. FSX fps set to unlimited. This gave me the same flight experience as when I run FSX with limited fps. I couldn't notice any difference in behaviour. I'm sorry, but this utility is not for my system.Edited: The big improvement of my orignial Core i7 computer build, occurred when I replaced my 8800GTX card with an OC:ed GTX285. BIG improvement.

Just an observation.. on my system, the fps limiter utility throttles down the utilization of the CPU which may well be welcome news regarding cooling etc.Normal operation on my Q6600 with three cores enabled for FSX is Core 0 lightly loaded, Core1 pegged at 100% and Core 2 and 3 swinging with scenery loading.Running the fps limiter reduces my Core1 so it is running at anything from heavy to light loads, depending on the scenery.I kind of like this, because I believe it will help me keeping my OC Q6600 at 3.4 GHz (with factory heatsink, but good case fans) even when we get intosummer, and room temperature goes up about 10 degrees... We'll have to wait and see, but so far, I like this new utility.

[newtie 533]

Interesting. Are you using XP? I am using XP and Vista and since Vista doesn't handle windowed without frame rate loss I run full screen, so never checked out this issue. I also run XP and run this in windowed mode since XP handles this well, and the gizmo (thanks Gizmo!) works well in Windowed mode in XP.

I'm running Vista 32. It runs fine in window mode but vertical sync is disabled.

[Noel 4,487]

Yes I get some autogen spikes over extremely dense areas when flying with unlimited fps.

Seems like we are talking about two different "spikes." I am referring to surges in the video while flying. It is most noticable when you are close to other objects, such as clouds and runway for example. The video will "lurch" forward as if it were hung up then suddenly let loose to catch up. This happens in certain situations in UNLIMITED mode--even with FS9 and a totally different PC. FPS_Limiter fixes this in my configuration, whereas limited frames puts total performance BELOW that of unlimited, and does eliminate surges as well. The benefit for FPS-Limiter is to allow me to run in UNLIMTED but removes surges, so definitely improves overall performance.

[vgbaron 3,504]

Running XP64 - I have same problem as some others - if I run in fullscreen, my fps drops to 1/2 the limited setting. I have it set at 30 and it drops to 15. If I set the limiter to 60 it goes to 30. If I disable the limiter and lock at 30, it stays at 29.5 in FS or windowed.Doesn't seem like a winner on my system for whatever reason.Since my systen seems to stay at 30 no matter what and I don't get stutters, I'll probably pass on this one but I'll test a tad more just in case.Vic

[Gumps 0]

Running XP64 - I have same problem as some others - if I run in fullscreen, my fps drops to 1/2 the limited setting. I have it set at 30 and it drops to 15. If I set the limiter to 60 it goes to 30. If I disable the limiter and lock at 30, it stays at 29.5 in FS or windowed.Doesn't seem like a winner on my system for whatever reason.Since my systen seems to stay at 30 no matter what and I don't get stutters, I'll probably pass on this one but I'll test a tad more just in case.Vic

Dang, maybe it's "misery loves company", but I'm glad I'm not the only one.Sounds like a good tweak but for some reason, my rig does not respond correctly.I fly locked at 40 and things are smooth most of the time anyway. But, smoother is always better!Great thread.Noel WBrisbane

[planenut 19]

At least new to me! First, super thanks to Omzig, whoever he/she is. I posted a question "Is there a driver-level frame lock utility for nV GPUs?" in the Video Cards & Drivers section on Feb 15th, and until today, no replies. Here is the issue I posed:"I am looking for a driver-level method to lock frames in FSX. As we know, sometimes running UNLIMITED can lead to frame rate surges and jerky video at times. There are also priorization benefits in running UNLIMITED that limiting frames in FSX seems to override, or at least adversely affect. It seems to me a driver level frame rate limiter would solve this conundrum. Any thoughts?"Omzig sent me a link to the freeware applet that does just this. Seems super low overhead. And I have very good news! It works perfectly to REMOVE the surges that can come when using UNLIMITED. This is really a nice benefit I have already discovered. One can set the desired FPS limit in the applet by way of a batch file that autoexecutes FSX.exe (or any other D3D 9.x or 8 or Open GL app). This approach eliminates FPS "spikes" as Nick and other have noted is unfavorably associated with UNLIMITED frames in FSX under certain conditions. There may be optimal places to set the frame lock on this. But already, I'm seeing it works as theorized. There are quite a few posts in other game forums re the value of this tool in minimizing . . . "micro-stutters." I'm not sure this is true, but it certainly solves frame surges, which can ruin the optimization and higher baseline framerate that UNLIMITED offers.Here is a picture of the Java run applet interface:A screenshot of FSX using FRAPS to display actual FPS, with FSX's frame limiter set at UNLIMITED (note: without FPS_Limiter, this scene runs at ~40fps UNLIMITED:Here is the link to get the applet: http://rapidshare.com/files/16064218...imiter_0.2.rarYou will need to rename .rar to .zip to open it, or download shareware winrar.You will also need the Java applet enabled on your machine/browser.From there, expand the .rar file into a folder, and click on the .jar file. This generates the GUI interface you see above. From there, just navigate to FSX.exe and the GUI will create a batch file to run FPS_Limiter and autoexecute FSX.exe. From there, you're good to go!I think this will turn out to be a significant technique to use. Enjoy!Noel

I guess there is always one person that just doesn't get it and that would be me.Downloaded the applet; downloaded winrar; downloaded java.I generated the GUI interface.Navigated to FSX.exeCreated the bat file.When I select the bat file I get a message that says "Cannot find C:\Users\Admin\Documents\Downloads\Compressed\FPS_limiter.exe"What am I doing wrong here? Been at this for three days and can't get it to work. I guess I are not smart.Jim

[Guest napamule]

If you go right click the SHORTCUT ICON (not the exe file, or the batch file, itself), then click 'Properties', you will see a dialog window, with a 'Options' tab. In there is option to run in Windowed, or Full Screen mode, but it's probably for the Limiter prog, not FSX. Default is Windowed. Just want to show I am doing some leg work (stricktly 'mechanical' in nature, of course-heehee). Never know what may turn up.I find that I am getting 20-30 fps (jumps around, but avg 24) without limiter running. Can't explain it (yet) but I like what happened. AG and Sncry sliders are 'Sparse' (and staying there). Level of Detail Radius is LARGE (that's staying there too). No AC shodow. No lens flare. To prevent FSX sound from stuttering, I run FRAPS 'half size') and that works. It is actually FSX that does stutter. Use hat switch to pan around A/C to get sound stuttering, with no FRAPS running. When snd stuttering starts, I 'Reset' flight and go exit and restar FRAPS, because it will never stop once it starts unless you do this. When running Limiter, FRAPS recording show 30 fps, and I get smooth videos (as long as the snd doesn't start to stutter). Still working (hammering?) at it. ('Don't force it..get a bigger hammer').Chuck BNapamule