FSX is broken...

[Geofa 108]

Something seriously wrong there - and I hope I may know what it is.Check under the Aircraft/Aircraft & Situations and turn the number of aircraft down to 1. Did that help?At present AFAIK X-Plane actually models the other aircraft (CPU intensive) where MSFS uses its usual look-up table (Low CPU). X-Plane also does it all in a single thread which of course means only using one processor. Since X-Plane is largely CPU bound these days it's a killer. My own iMac (3.06GHz Core 2 Duo, 4Gb, ATI HD 4850 512Mb) gives around 30fps at much higher settings within X-Plane with no AI aircraft, and something very similar to what you're getting with 20 other aircraft out there. I'm wondering if this is a common problem with people who are using X-Plane from an MSFS background and having problems with frame rate.Setanta

Just checked-the number of aircraft is one. Maybe Xplane doesn't get along with Windows 7 64 bit? However, I got even less fps on my dual core machine.

[ryanbatc 12,857]

I'm guessing you're running higher than 2X AA. That's a really low value. In FSX I run 8x. If I had a better GPU I'd run 16x

[Geofa 108]

I'm guessing you're running higher than 2X AA. That's a really low value. In FSX I run 8x. If I had a better GPU I'd run 16x

I am running AA 2x from the nvidia driver and 16x anisotropic.

[bsupnik 23]

This does look to me like extra-X-Plane issues, e.g. something in the NV control panel. But also, there is one place to cheat: turn water reflections down to something less than "complete". The highest water settings burn a lot of CPU for only the tiniest improvement visually. Geof, If you set water to "none" what fps do you get? If still very low, the other thing to look at might be 16x aniso, then give it a reboot. If that is STILL slow, it's almost certainly a control panel/card/driver issue.

[tf51d 284]

I'll bite.This is my new computer from 1 month ago-a Intel core i7 920 @ 2.67 ghz, 12 gb ram, win 7 64 bits, nvidia 8800gt 1920x1200.Here are my rendering settings:and here is what I see and get performance wise at my home airport of kptk (at innsbruck I get twice this) :Now-with my prior computer-a dual core-I also got similar results although they were even lower.Running latest certified 195.62 nvidia drivers with same settings I run fsx-16x anisotropic,2x antialiasing, high quality texture filtering and vertical sync on.

Geof, I agree, I think something is wrong there. (Could be Nvidia Win 7 OpenGl drivers?) At KPTK on runway 9R, I get 51FPS at my current res of 1280x768x32, and when I try your resolution I get 34FPS. That is with AA at 8Xs and 16XAF (at the driver) You said you already tried deleting your preferences and let the sim go back to default before reseeting them. (Which was my problem) and that didn't help, so I don't know what else it could be? I'm running a E6850 @3.0Ghz and a 9800GTX card. Some of it is probably the lower CPU clock, and possibly GPU or Video memory bandwidth difference (the 9800GTX is 70gbs vs 50gbs (I think) for the 8800GT), but I wouldn't think it would be that quite severe!

[Geofa 108]

Geof, I agree, I think something is wrong there. (Could be Nvidia Win 7 OpenGl drivers?) At KPTK on runway 9R, I get 51FPS at my current res of 1280x768x32, and when I try your resolution I get 34FPS. That is with AA at 8Xs and 16XAF (at the driver) You said you already tried deleting your preferences and let the sim go back to default before reseeting them. (Which was my problem) and that didn't help, so I don't know what else it could be? I'm running a E6850 @3.0Ghz and a 9800GTX card. Some of it is probably the lower CPU clock, and possibly GPU or Video memory bandwidth difference, but I wouldn't think it would be that quite severe!

Well I am running at 2.6 ghz and an 8800gt at that resolution so that could be the difference. I'll try the different water settings.

[Geofa 108]

Well I am running at 2.6 ghz and an 8800gt at that resolution so that could be the difference. I'll try the different water settings.

I unistalled my video drivers, ran driver sweeper and reinstalled the nvidia 195.62. Now with the above settings my fps are 27 fps-better.Taking water to zero I go up to 34.

[Guest Setanta]

Just checked-the number of aircraft is one. Maybe Xplane doesn't get along with Windows 7 64 bit? However, I got even less fps on my dual core machine.

Well dang - I thought I'd hit on it :(Ben is obviously the expert here and given that it wasn't the number of aircraft I'd tend to agree that it's almost certainly something outside of X-Plane. (Didn't know that about the 'complete' reflections setting - gonna change that myself).Just in case though, try setting the world detail distance to a lower value and see if it helps - for some reason 'default' is the highest possible setting. This should mean fewer objects get rendered and a reduction in CPU load.Also try not using your own settings external to X-Plane for FSAA etc. I've read very mixed reports on the effect this can have from Windows users.And finally, try changing your screen resolution to something else and then back again. It may be a quirk with my particular setup but I've noticed this can result in a big gain in FPS at times.SetantaPS - Unintuitively enough I just noticed that raising the lateral field of view also increases frame rate (I normally use about 65 degrees rather than 45)

[Geofa 108]

Well dang - I thought I'd hit on it :( Ben is obviously the expert here and given that it wasn't the number of aircraft I'd tend to agree that it's almost certainly something outside of X-Plane. (Didn't know that about the 'complete' reflections setting - gonna change that myself).Just in case though, try setting the world detail distance to a lower value and see if it helps - for some reason 'default' is the highest possible setting. This should mean fewer objects get rendered and a reduction in CPU load.Also try not using your own settings external to X-Plane for FSAA etc. I've read very mixed reports on the effect this can have from Windows users.And finally, try changing your screen resolution to something else and then back again. It may be a quirk with my particular setup but I've noticed this can result in a big gain in FPS at times.SetantaPS - Unintuitively enough I just noticed that raising the lateral field of view also increases frame rate (I normally use about 65 degrees rather than 45)

Strange-I just tried all your suggestions-turned off my own external settings-no difference. Turned world distance down-got about 5 fps. Changed the lateral view-no difference. Haven't tried changing my screen resolution-but anything less than I have would look bad on my monitor. I'll try a few more things tomorrow-but still wonder if windows 7 64 bit doesn't play nicely with xplane. <edit> tried changing the desktop res to 1024x768 and ran-picked up 5 fps.

[Guest Setanta]

Strange-I just tried all your suggestions-turned off my own external settings-no difference. Turned world distance down-got about 5 fps. Changed the lateral view-no difference. Haven't tried changing my screen resolution-but anything less than I have would look bad on my monitor. I'll try a few more things tomorrow-but still wonder if windows 7 64 bit doesn't play nicely with xplane. <edit> tried changing the desktop res to 1024x768 and ran-picked up 5 fps.

Curiouser and curiouser :(I went and checked a few benchmarks and stuff to compare your setup with my own and I reckon we should get pretty similar performance. My CPU speed is a bit quicker but Turbo mode on the i7 should more than make up for that, you have a lot more memory memory but we probably both have enough for X-Plane and when it comes to the graphics cards, the 4850 has the edge, particularly when it comes to OpenGL, but the version in the iMac is (probably) a mobility version so it should work out about equal with the edge on your side.That said, with the exact same setup as your original (I think - 4xAA, 16xAnisotropic, 1920x1200, the rest as your post, weather CAVOK, time midday, other aircraft 0) I was getting 26fps. Sounds like the driver re-install may have largely solved your problem. Now it's about tuning things to improve frame rate, so I did a few tests on my own system.Turn off reflections - 33fpsTurn off shaders altogether - 45fpsSet detail distance to high (shaders/reflections back on) - 46fpsMy own personal preference is detail at high and objects set at 'a lot' where I get about 29fps.As to the other settings, most of them affected my fps by less than 1, the exception being objects which are a killer. With detail distance at high I saw no difference from changing the FOV angle, but at high/a lot I got about 2fps changing up to 65 degrees. I normally look for about 30fps in a spot like your home airport, and expect 40-60fps once in the air at typical GA altitudes.Whoa, just went back into X-Plane and got a shock. At my own settings I'd forgotten to turn off the 'birds and deer' - Turning them off gained me an extra 10fps! This despite there being none visible! When I tried this at your original settings there was a flock of birds visible and I lost 2 or 3 fps so I assumed that it would happen only when they appeared. More fool me - I should know better!Another note which springs to mind is the 'compress textures' option. Most people tend to use this to keep the figure at the bottom of the rendering settings screen below the amount of memory in their graphics card, which makes perfect sense. However, it's my understanding that this figure isn't how much graphics memory the textures use, but the total size of the textures loaded by X-Plane itself, which includes many which are not being displayed by the graphics card (distant objects, other aircraft, occluded objects etc.). While it may not give any performance boost it can make a big difference at times with graphics quality to turn this off (despite Austin's assertions). I've seen my own figures at well over 760Mb on a 512Mb card with no noticeable degradation in performance. When it does hit and your system starts to swap textures from main memory to graphics memory it is slide show time. YMMV of course but I've always worked to the guideline that I can get away with about 150% of the graphics memory.Hopefully this might help in getting your settings working a little better for you, and help out anyone else with frame rate problems with X-Plane too :)I've included a couple of screenshots of my settings for reference.Setanta

[Geofa 108]

Curiouser and curiouser :( I went and checked a few benchmarks and stuff to compare your setup with my own and I reckon we should get pretty similar performance. My CPU speed is a bit quicker but Turbo mode on the i7 should more than make up for that, you have a lot more memory memory but we probably both have enough for X-Plane and when it comes to the graphics cards, the 4850 has the edge, particularly when it comes to OpenGL, but the version in the iMac is (probably) a mobility version so it should work out about equal with the edge on your side.That said, with the exact same setup as your original (I think - 4xAA, 16xAnisotropic, 1920x1200, the rest as your post, weather CAVOK, time midday, other aircraft 0) I was getting 26fps. Sounds like the driver re-install may have largely solved your problem. Now it's about tuning things to improve frame rate, so I did a few tests on my own system.Turn off reflections - 33fpsTurn off shaders altogether - 45fpsSet detail distance to high (shaders/reflections back on) - 46fpsMy own personal preference is detail at high and objects set at 'a lot' where I get about 29fps.As to the other settings, most of them affected my fps by less than 1, the exception being objects which are a killer. With detail distance at high I saw no difference from changing the FOV angle, but at high/a lot I got about 2fps changing up to 65 degrees. I normally look for about 30fps in a spot like your home airport, and expect 40-60fps once in the air at typical GA altitudes.Whoa, just went back into X-Plane and got a shock. At my own settings I'd forgotten to turn off the 'birds and deer' - Turning them off gained me an extra 10fps! This despite there being none visible! When I tried this at your original settings there was a flock of birds visible and I lost 2 or 3 fps so I assumed that it would happen only when they appeared. More fool me - I should know better!Another note which springs to mind is the 'compress textures' option. Most people tend to use this to keep the figure at the bottom of the rendering settings screen below the amount of memory in their graphics card, which makes perfect sense. However, it's my understanding that this figure isn't how much graphics memory the textures use, but the total size of the textures loaded by X-Plane itself, which includes many which are not being displayed by the graphics card (distant objects, other aircraft, occluded objects etc.). While it may not give any performance boost it can make a big difference at times with graphics quality to turn this off (despite Austin's assertions). I've seen my own figures at well over 760Mb on a 512Mb card with no noticeable degradation in performance. When it does hit and your system starts to swap textures from main memory to graphics memory it is slide show time. YMMV of course but I've always worked to the guideline that I can get away with about 150% of the graphics memory.Hopefully this might help in getting your settings working a little better for you, and help out anyone else with frame rate problems with X-Plane too :)I've included a couple of screenshots of my settings for reference.SetantaThanks for all the work! I will give your settings and trials some trials on mine and see what I get.I guess a big question for me though is why one can get much higher fps at innsbruck which is much more detailed, and this-a generic airport with no detail is so hard on the fps?!

[Geofa 108]

Setanta-Using your settings I get from 28-35 fps which is an improvement. The deer/birds seem to make no difference on my machine and as they are 80% of the time something one sees/avoids where I fly I like leaving them on. The compression of the textures seems to make no difference either.I have to be honest though-the area where I live looks a little like a nuclear disaster happened with these settings. :( I think xplane looks great and superior to fsx in mountains but the cities really need some work.

[Guest Setanta]

Setanta-Using your settings I get from 28-35 fps which is an improvement. The deer/birds seem to make no difference on my machine and as they are 80% of the time something one sees/avoids where I fly I like leaving them on. The compression of the textures seems to make no difference either.I have to be honest though-the area where I live looks a little like a nuclear disaster happened with these settings. :( I think xplane looks great and superior to fsx in mountains but the cities really need some work.

Glad it's an improvement anyhow :) And yeah, I'm not wonderfully happy with some of the artifacting around built up areas myself though I'm experimenting with a solution/workaround posted by Ben on another board (-- no_autovary) which helps. I don't know what was happening with those birds *laugh* but I'm not going to argue with the fps increase I seem to have gained somehow :) My setup can be a little quirky at times (I'm guessing the Mac 4850 drivers) so it may disappear again.As to why LOWI gives better frame rates - my best guess is the limited visibility around the area. IIRC X-Plane does occlude objects which are hidden behind the landscape so all it has to deal with are the airport buildings. In a flat area like your home airport it has to render everything within the detail radius.Setanta