Newbie query!

[red1 0]

:-( Do you guys think 70-80fps with all sliders far right but no add ons is fair performance or should I still be searching for more? I could O/C the CPU a little more if I disable Hyper Threading which I beleive is of little use in FS9?

It's irrelevant what you get in default. Load some addon weather, aircraft, and airport with addon traffic and see what you're getting. In the worst of situations, I get around 30fps and otherwise am locked at 50fps with my system...you should get a bit higher, but not much.p.s.-- 24fps max for human eye?...BS, to be frank. Research the mechanism and anatomy of the eye.

[Guest stranex]

Ok, thank you all.....hopefully my system will allow me to run FS9 with all the bells and whistles!When you guys talk about fps, are you talking on the ground at a high detailed airport or airborne over scarse scenery or what? Just tried a quick flight out of KSEA and with some of the sliders scaled back a bit I was getting 125+ fps (just airborne from KSEA, 70-80fps)Wll need to do some research now as to the best add on scenery/planes etc! Any tips?!?

[Benjamin J 751]

@ january/red1: I think you misunderstand me bigtime. @ red1: thanks, I shall study eye anatomy AGAIN, although, as a biology student, I think I have studied it often enough, both from text books and animal bisections.@ january: now you are talking about something which I think is different than what I was hinting at. What I was talking about is one specific thing (a movie, for example), where actors and objects move with a certain speed. You can have variants of this same movie with more or less frames, for example 10FPS or 30FPS. The 10FPS movie for the human eye seems somewhat choppy. The 30FPS seems a lot like fluid motion. You can of course add more and more frames to the movie, and while you will see some degree of fluidness increase, you will not see a difference as such, that at 30FPS you saw single frames and at 60FPS you didn't. So, it's not like you didn't see fluid motion at 30FPS and at 60FPS, you did. You saw various degrees of fluid motion in that movie, yes, but you did not see the difference you saw between 10 and 30FPS!Now, the important thing about what I'm talking about, and it's a crucial thing: I am talking about a movie that, regardless of the amount of FPS, runs at a specific speed. This means that, when you play it with a lesser FPS, parts of the motions in the movie are "missing", and that is why you see it as a "slide show". If you now increase the FPS rate, it means you "fill up" the holes in the 10FPS movie, so that you eventually get a 30FPS movie. All the necessary holes are now filled, and you will see fluid motion. You can now add more and more frames between the already existing frames, but this will not have such a major impact. Now, let's get back to what you said:The problem you propose, is sort of related to what I said above, but it's more related to the time in which 1 motion is completed. Let me give an example:Say, the screen is fixed on 60FPS (well, for most people anyway). If I move my mouse over it normally, there is no problem: this is one motion to my eye. If I make it "shoot" past my screen, I see three cursors, meaning the speed of the cursor was probably 20 times higher. Your hockey puck example is the same kind of thing. So: these examples deal with the amount of time passed before a motion is completed. In the first cursor example it took, say, 10 second for the cursor to move to one edge of the screen, while in the other it took 0.5 seconds. Now, picture this:We again use the movie I discussed earlier. We run it at 10FPS. Now, we cut the holes, and stick all remaining frames right next to each other. The movie will have reduced in length approximately threefold, and the motions will also be three times as fast. THIS is what you are talking about: an amount of frames played in a shorter amount of time, which is related to the speed at which movements are made. It should be obvious this is not what I was talking about previously!So, let me summarize:- A movie running at 10FPS looks choppy because elements of a movement are missing.- If you add additional frames, you can fill up the holes, and so you see fluid movement.- If you now take out the frames again, and stick the remaining frames together, you get a heavily sped up movie.- Because the movie is much faster, movements will also be faster: again we miss frames, or, in other words: there are again holes in the motion. Therefore we see it choppy.- When you move your cursor fast over the screen, you see several cursors on the screen before the cursor gets to the other side of the screen, or you see several hockey pucks before the actual puck reaches the other end of the screen. So, this is because frames are missing, like in the movie example.Conclusion: the faster a motion is over a set distance, the more FPS are needed to make it seem like a true motion. My 24~30FPS can be exceptable, but it depends on the speed of the motion and the distance over which it happens. Make the motion faster, and you'll need a higher FPS to compensate. I therefore think that what i said previously, and what you said afterwards, are not at all in conflict.I hope to have been as clear as I can. By the way, you may disagree with me, of course you can! But if you do, please refer me to actual scientific papers, otherwise I will stick to what the professors at university told me.

[WingZ 547]

125 fps is cool but I don't imagine has any relevance to the viewing experience.I'd like to know if there is a documented limit to what the human eye can discern - I've heard stories of 60-70 fps.Of course the medium is important too.A movie shot on film will have individual frames slightly blurred, which aids the illusion of movement.Digitally produced media like flightsims don't, and so I would imagine need a higher fps count to appear fluid.The sales pitch for watching sport on TV tells us 100Hz is a minimum - but the broadcast signal is only 25 or 30 fps!?

[red1 0]

Thralin:If you want to start comparing education, I'm in the 4th year of doctor of pharmacy program.I don't want to start another discussion on this as it has been covered SOOO many times, but (from my research and education) the eye does not see 'frames'. If you really want to discuss it in term of frames, the human eye can detect differences well into the 100s. Again, this is what I have come away with.Stranex, just turn vsync on and limit fps to 60. My 'worst' case is the lowest fps I see, which is usually in something like the PMDG 747 taxing past 100+ ground AI at an addon airport like KJFK with heavy overcast HD clouds. Keep in mind this is running 1920x1080 resolution with 8xS AA and 16xAF. Your computer should do a bit better, but expect some low downs in the worst conditions.

[january 19]

@ january/red1: I think you misunderstand me bigtime. ---------------I hope to have been as clear as I can. By the way, you may disagree with me, of course you can! But if you do, please refer me to actual scientific papers, otherwise I will stick to what the professors at university told me.

Thraini- I don't think we are in disagrrement at all- amount or speed of movement determines what frame rate is needed to fool the eye & brain!Very slow movement = low frame rate. No movement = zero frame rate. And fooling the brain is what it's all about with 'puters, TV & Movies.But the eye/brain is remarkably perceptive in detecting where there SHOULD be motion, even though it isn't readily apparent.Visualize the case of an aircraft in Final Approach: looking straight ahead toward touchdown point, the amount of scenery/runway movement per frame is not great, so a low FPS looks pretty good. But a real pilot also sees out to the side- where the movement is very substantial- hence a higher frame rate is desirable. (The human retina is uniquely built to detect motion & shadow out of the corners of our eyes- not a big deal with the FS 45

[Benjamin J 751]

Alex, if you don't think we are in disagreement, then what's the problem? When I read this last post of yours, I saw reasoning that was logical, coherent, and completely compatible with all that I said... Moreover, you completed my reasoning by relating it with FS, and I think your reasoning is spot-on!red1: I did not mean to offend you (if I did, then sorry), I only reacted in a way that I deemed reasonable. I did not mean to "compare education", but you told me to go "look up eye anatomy", like some poor kid that got lost and ended up somewhere where it shouldn't belong, and so I saw good reason to state I hadn't got lost at all.Concerning your research, I don't think we disagree. I did not talk about the eye "seeing" FPS as such, rather, I have been talking about how the on-screen FPS that is detected by the human eye is handled by the brain (I know the eye sends out a continuous signal. I'm required to know such things...). True, I never said it in such a way and I acknowledge it could have caused misunderstandings, but in that case I'm saying it now: that's not the way I meant any of it. So, I also don't see how what you said about the eye being able to detect over 100FPS is conflicting with anything I said. Moreover, I have said things in my previous post that are in complete agreement with it!Have you read books by Oliver Sacks and Ramachandran by any chance? They deal with these subjects. I can recommend them if it interests you, it's truly fascinating! By the way, thinking about this subject and writing about it here, on this thread, does fill me with a kind of joy. I truly like this subject. May I know what research it is that you are doing, red1?

[Guest simmer9304]

I'm not really up to date on what people can and cannot distinguish in terms of frames but my solution on frame rates is this:Press Shift+Z a few times until you get the frame rates window up.Now press it again for that it goes away!If you don't know what the frame rate is then you don't have to worry about squeezing out 10 more frames :( But that's just my opinion and as long as you're satisfied with how the game looks then it doesn't matter if your frame rate is 10 FPS or 100 FPS

[WingZ 547]

... I truly like this subject...

It is truly fascinating, and having a couple of bio scientists in the discussion might just clear up a few things.For instance, if the optic signal is constantly fed to the brain (is it? I thought the rods 'n cones fired "digitally") then the brain must be rejecting some of that signal to avoid overload, hence a "movement threshold".That is quantifiable, surely..has it been identified?Is it the same no matter what circumstances of lighting, movement, position in field of view etc?All of this has bearing on what makes you comfortable in setting up your fligtsim software btw so is not too fat OT ;)

[neumanix 113]

Stranex, if you could test the following, I'd be happy:Make sure vsync is on and lock the frames to 30. Does it seem as smooth as when set to 60?I (and lots of others) get bad stutters when locking at anything other than 60.It's a strange phenomenon, because when flying straight (and locked at 30 fps) it looks smooth, but when banking and turning those horrible stutters appear.

[flyinpilot212121 724]

125 fps is awesome. however once you figure out what your system can do when it comes to payware aircraft, heavy scenery, ai, and weather, turn that fps counter off and just fly and enjoy your experience with the sim :( It can be such an awesome experience, enjoy.

[Benjamin J 751]

It is truly fascinating, and having a couple of bio scientists in the discussion might just clear up a few things.For instance, if the optic signal is constantly fed to the brain (is it? I thought the rods 'n cones fired "digitally") then the brain must be rejecting some of that signal to avoid overload, hence a "movement threshold".That is quantifiable, surely..has it been identified?Is it the same no matter what circumstances of lighting, movement, position in field of view etc?All of this has bearing on what makes you comfortable in setting up your fligtsim software btw so is not too fat OT ;)

I'll deal with each of the points in the order you asked them.1) In effect, the brain always gets information from the retina, as long as the nerves are actually connected to the retina. Assuming that is the case, rods and cones can either fire or not fire, depending on various factors. However, the brain will always get info, whether they fire or not, because it always builds a picture from the info it received, or doesn't receive. In that sense, the information stream is continuous.2) The movement threshold, I think, is not so much a rejection of information in the direct sense of the word. I think it's more in the way of a limit on the computational power op the optic centers in our brain. For example, flies' movement threshold is at 100FPS. If they see a screen with a framerate lower than 100FPS, they see a flicker. Hence why, when you want to squash a fly, you always have to approach it slowly, and only at the very last moment should you "slap" your hand onto the fly: the fly will not notice your hand moving towards it exactly because its movement threshold is so high. Fast movements however are that much more easy for the fly to spot.3)For as far as I understand, the threshold depends on the how fast the movement actually is, but at a certain point you'll be seeing motion blur. This is mostly because the brain 1) tries to complete movement it knows[/is] should be there and 2) the eye simply can't accommodate that fast. I have seen mutliple figures to the movement threshold, and it is my understanding that at, or around, 30FPS, the choppiness of regular films goes away and you start seeing fluid motion. This does not mean that you always see true motion, because, indeed, try to move your cursor with great speed across the screen and you'll see that you don't see true motion, rather multiple cursors. This is because the screen runs at 60FPS, meaning you actually need more FPS before you get the illusion of true motion.4) Actually, I'm not sure how big the influence of lighting and such is, but what is true, of course, is that rapid changes of lighting don't at all help. Stroboscopes in discos are excellent examples of that fact: it'll seem like you "miss FPS". Honestly, I don't know too much about this particular thing, but it's an interesting thing you raised.

[Guest stranex]

Stranex, if you could test the following, I'd be happy:Make sure vsync is on and lock the frames to 30. Does it seem as smooth as when set to 60?I (and lots of others) get bad stutters when locking at anything other than 60.It's a strange phenomenon, because when flying straight (and locked at 30 fps) it looks smooth, but when banking and turning those horrible stutters appear.

I will indeed try this out when I'm home again(away on business presently). I gave already noticed that even at 120fps, when turning sharply there is an slight "stutter" compared to when flying straight and level or turning slowly.

125 fps is awesome. however once you figure out what your system can do when it comes to payware aircraft, heavy scenery, ai, and weather, turn that fps counter off and just fly and enjoy your experience with the sim :( It can be such an awesome experience, enjoy.

Yes, the reason for wanting to know what my performance is NOW is to establish how future add ons will effect the performance. Last night I quickly added a British Airways AI traffic file from woai and went to egll, ai traffic 100%, some bad wx and sliders mostly all to the right and I definately noticed a hit on fps to around 100 but more importantly, tight turns in the c172 resulted in "stuttering" as mentioned above. I've played around with the settings so much I'm now unsure as what they should be so will reinstall fs9 at some time and set up properly. I hope to maybe document my progress in fps and "viewable" performance as I progress to help other newbies like me see what the effects of adding 3rd party add ons does? I'm quite happy this thread has gone a little "off track" with all the talk of how the eye and brain interpret frame rates and indeed find it interesting and intriguing. Can I politely ask though that any further posts on the subject are made in a separate thread?Going back to newbie type questions.....what are the best add ons available for photo realistic scenery (especially in the uk) or is it just a question of personal preference?Once again, thanks for everybodies help and comments and apologies if my request above is taken the wrong way!!

[red1 0]

'Stutters' and FPS usually have nothing to do with each other. Many topics on here about stutters if you want to take a look.

[Guest stranex]

There is so much information available on stuttering, blurries, performace, NHancer setups, system setups etc etc that it is taking an age and lots of cross referencing to collate all the information!Is there a guide available for FS9 similar to that excellent guide NickN produced for FSX which lists tweaks, setups and Nhancer settings in one, easy to follow post? Is it ok to copy most of Nicks FSX guide leaving out those bits which don't appear in FS9? Or is it just easier for me to migrate over the FSX? (Shouldn't really be asking that in the FS9 forum I guess!)