What I Changed to Get Better FPS

[gman! 1]

Yesterday I was flying in heavy areas and my FPS was not where I wanted it to be (18FPS). I already knew most tweaks made FSX performance worse or only helped a little bit but had sideffects. After much reminiscence and thinking I deleted my FSX.CFG. I tried the affinitymask line I used when I had Tileproxy installed that gave me great performance while keeping other cores free for Tileproxy to download and convert its tiles. I set my FSX.CFG like this (You can access it by going to Windows Explorer and in the Address Bar type "%appdata%/Microsoft/FSX" without quotes.):

[JOBSCHEDULER]AffinityMask=12

In Hex (You can check in the Windows Calculator or Google) it is equal to 1100, and is read backwards by FSX because it is Hex. So the affinity is really 0011. This means Core 0 and Core 1 are unused while Core 2 and Core 3 can be accessed by FSX. Keep in mind this is only for quad core processors. I do not like to speculate, but I know the OS primary cores are Core 0 (1st Core) and also has some processes that use Core 1 (2nd Core), so this maybe why FSX runs so well on the last two cores. Also FSX was designed in the era of dual core processors (2005) so this may be why it utilizes two cores more efficiently than 1. The bad part about this tweak is that it may cause scenery to load slower on some computers but this can be overcome by using the Fiber Frame tweak and setting it to 0.66, which will keep fibers (which are like threads of a process) in line making FSX donate more time loading ground/scenery textures.The Fiber Frame line should be entered under the [MAIN] section in the FSX.CFG file, an should be entered like this

FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION=0.66

You can also try setting it to 0.33 instead of deleting the line in the FSX.CFG because even though FSX default value is 0.33, the frame rate slider modifies the fiber allocations when it is not set in the CFG (PTaylor said this).Lastly, I added the MipBias line recently today after much testing even though I had problems with this before (Was never tested on an ATI card, and Nvidia uses had problems with this line, but there is a workaround).Setting MipBias prevents scenery being replaced with Mipmap textures when they are far away and then being replaced with the full resolution textures when you are near. MipMaps are the smaller versions of textures that are made to help performance by replacing textures far away with low resolution textures instead of full resolution to reduce load on the GPU. When you become closer to the object/area, the mipmap (lower resolution texture) is replaced with its full resolution texture. We are setting the MipBias line so that mipmaps under a certain resolution will not show up in FSX so that things will be clear and scenery will not appear blurry. This has no performance hit for me, and that is probably because when you as many Mips as FSX, they constantly have to be redrawn as the textures are redrawn an there many different resolution of mips and can cause stuttering or slow downs (This is why when your flying and see blurry textures ahead become clear when you draw closer, your game "jumps" or "jitters" or whatever you like to call it.) With this tweak FSX will be drawing above a certain resolution and will not have to redraw/render textures as many times as before, making it smoother because FSX does not have to recall textures from memory or the HDD as many times.So, alas, he is the line. Enter it under [DISPLAY.Device.xxx]

MipBias=6

I recommend setting the Frame Rate Slider in FSX to "Unlimited" at some point during testing just so you can see which setting suits you.---------------------The last thread was a disaster, so I ask that people that are not interested, be mature and leave the thread alone and let people that actually want to try and improve performance in FSX read and not waste time reading senseless, mindless, posts. ... And before you shoot it down. TRY IT.... And no fiber_frame was not taken out after SP1. Look here for more information:http://forums1.avsim.net/index.php?showtopic=263132Good Luck and Safe Flights!

[gman! 1]

Forgot to add.If you get Shimmering or textures anomalies with MipBias:NVIDIA:Turn on "Nevgative LOD Bias/Clamp" ATI:I am not exactly sure how I got the problem to go away this time because when I put it in the CFG many months after Tileproxy, I did not get shimmering. But I can tell you I have ATiTrayTools, have a profile automatically activated for FSX when it starts. My settings in ATiTrayTools under 3D are:4xAANo Adaptive AA, No AF, Texture & MipMap Preferences are set to "High Quality". In the additional tab under 3D > Settings > Additional, under Temporal AA the Multiplier is 2x. Frame Threshold is set to "Default""Support DXT texture format" is checked "Support Bump Mapping" is checked"Alternate Pixel Centers" is unchecked"Anisotropic Filtering Optimization" is unchecked"Trillinear Filtering Optimization" is unchecked"Geometry Instancing" is checked <--Improves performance http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems2/..._chapter03.html"Catalyst A.I." is Low"Texture LOD Adjustment" is set to 0. <------ If these settings don't work for you try adjusting this first"Flight Queue Size" is Undefined.If have test some more to find out what specifically stops the problem. :(

[Mike_CFII_MEL 788]

Hi GMAN,You may not see this in the other forum topic, so I'll add it here.I have, along with many others tried the tweak you suggest. In regards to FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION, read the following.On multi-core machines in SP1, Aces moved many of the fiber jobs off of the primary thread and onto secondary threads. Since FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION only affects scheduling of jobs on the primary thread, it will have less of an impact on the performance of Flight Sim on multi-core machines. In fact, Aces moved so many jobs off of the primary thread that there probably isn't enough fiber work left to soak up the full time allowed by the default value of 0.33.Therefore, on multi-core machines, there is very little reason to tweak the fraction because it really only impacts performance of single core machines.So if there is not enough work for 0.33 why change this to 0.66?.

[John_Cillis 2,406]

I've already done the affinity mask tweak (I posted about the tweak last year, I don't know if I was the first). I feel it's worked well for me and like you I did it to help with Tileproxy. I've left FIBER.FRAME.TIME.FRACTION alone, played around with it but decided not having it in my cfg worked the best. I will give the MIP BIAS a try. I don't think I've tried it.One thing about tweaks and the attitude of the "experts" in the forums. Whether something proves to be Snake Oil or not, blabbering about like a know-it-all claiming people are wasting their time is really no one's friggin' business. People can try suggestions or not. Short of someone coming in and suggesting: "Reformat and reinstall FS-X every six months" or something similar, most of these tweaks are harmless and can be backed out easily enough. Lately it seems whenever a tweak is posted, someone has to write "Let's see what "Mr. X" says". And if "Mr. X" disses the tweak, suddenly everyone hops on his bandwagon and turns against the OP. So whether this works for someone or not, whether it works for me or not, I for one appreciate the time you took to write it. Regards,JohnEdit: I should have read the other thread first. I stand behind my take on tweaks, but I don't approve of your opening another thread and not taking responsibility for your own behavior. I have lost my cool enough in these forums to know there's nothing gained by it. Next time walk away, instead of using thinly disguised profanity.

[Guest firehawk44]

I've already done the affinity mask tweak (I posted about the tweak last year, I don't know if I was the first). I feel it's worked well for me and like you I did it to help with Tileproxy. I've left FIBER.FRAME.TIME.FRACTION alone, played around with it but decided not having it in my cfg worked the best. I will give the MIP BIAS a try. I don't think I've tried it.One thing about tweaks and the attitude of the "experts" in the forums. Whether something proves to be Snake Oil or not, blabbering about like a know-it-all claiming people are wasting their time is really no one's friggin' business. People can try suggestions or not. Short of someone coming in and suggesting: "Reformat and reinstall FS-X every six months" or something similar, most of these tweaks are harmless and can be backed out easily enough. Lately it seems whenever a tweak is posted, someone has to write "Let's see what "Mr. X" says". And if "Mr. X" disses the tweak, suddenly everyone hops on his bandwagon and turns against the OP. So whether this works for someone or not, whether it works for me or not, I for one appreciate the time you took to write it. Regards,JohnEdit: I should have read the other thread first. I stand behind my take on tweaks, but I don't approve of your opening another thread and not taking responsibility for your own behavior. I have lost my cool enough in these forums to know there's nothing gained by it. Next time walk away, instead of using thinly disguised profanity.

Well stated John! I totally agree. I try to write as if I'm face to face with the individual. Effective written communications is difficult as people read what they want and often misinterpret. Face-to-face communications is easier as you can stop the person and say, "huh? what did you say?" and get an immediate response.Actually, none of these posted tweaks are new and have been talked about over and over in the FS community. I guess they are good reminders and useful to those who have just entered the FS world but personally I don't use any tweaks whatsoever and still have excellent FPS most of the time. (Now, back to watching another major snowfall out my front door here in Northern Virginia - LOL).Best regards,Jim

[TheDanger 182]

Well I have been reading all these tweak posts over the last few days.I have entered the Bufferpools=0 and fibrefraction=0.33 tweaks.On my E6850 @ 3.4ghz, 4gig ram, 768mgb GTX260 things seem a bit smoother, my fps have increased by around 5 and textures may seem a bit clearer (but that could also be a placebo effect!).I haven't tried it on a long flight yet only circling an airport but the Bufferpools=0 doesnt seem to have deteriorated my performance as some have said it may do elsewhere ie not having 1gig ram on GPU. I am sure I will find out if that is the case on a long flight which I will try later today.Going to be upgrading soon to an i7 920 with new motherboard/ram/psu etc a whole new system sat side by side with my current one. Maybe these tweaks inc. Affinitymask for quad core will then increase my performance on that system.Thanks for the info GManGraham

[gman! 1]

Thanks for responding guys and here is a analogy of running on two instead of four cores for the people that may not understand. Its not that good but it gives you the basic idea.

To make it simpler running on 4 cores is like the evening traffic where everything is slowed down, and running on 2 cores is like a 4 lane highway with 2 HOV lanes. The 2 HOV lanes allow the cars that are more important and have more people (in this case more importance in processing) to proceed on clear lanes, while 2 lanes have traffic, and it reduces the traffic build up overall because the 2 HOV lanes will deduce traffic from the 2 traffic filled lanes. Where in the other case all 4 traffic filled lanes are moving but it is very slow and nobody is getting anywhere. With a four lane highway and no HOV lanes, someone in an ambulance which has more importance can't cut through and get ahead because its too congested. (Graphics Driver or some system related process does not get the high priority it needs and its order in things being processed is disturbed causing lag)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-occupancy_vehicle_lane

[TheDanger 182]

Just adding that I havent experienced an OOM or crash running buggerpools=0. Took off from KSEA and heading towards 0 degrees at altitude of 31000ft. Left on Autopilot and went to work. Came home 8 hrs later and flight still going but the aircraft was flying in circles (maybe something to do with the North Pole?)Certainly works for me and thats with GPU @ 768mb ramGraham

[gman! 1]

Just adding that I havent experienced an OOM or crash running buggerpools=0. Took off from KSEA and heading towards 0 degrees at altitude of 31000ft. Left on Autopilot and went to work. Came home 8 hrs later and flight still going but the aircraft was flying in circles (maybe something to do with the North Pole?)Certainly works for me and thats with GPU @ 768mb ramGraham

Good to hear good news! I am also testing it as well, and before I had my bufferpools at 300KBs (Poolsize=300000) because of the thread here: http://forums1.avsim.net/index.php?showtopic=271292&hl=.I'm doing some heavy hauls in the iFly 747 (school is closed all week due to snow) and HD clouds and trees from AVSIM to see the performance I'll get. Flying from KIAD (Dulles my local international airport in Virginia) to KEWR (Newark, New Jersey) and KEWR to KMEM (Memphis, Tennessee). I'm currently on my way to Memphis and the weather from the snow storm is INCREDIBLE. Heavy snow, 1/4nm visibility at KEWR, and extremely low pressure (Altimeter 29.06) AND I'm flying over Tennessee with 278nm to go and I'm at a heading of 248 getting a 180 knot direct tailwind. End result. Ground speed of 651kts @ FL350!!!! If anyone wants to test, they should fly KEWR to KMEM. Great flight with the conditions today!All this in addition to a smooth high FPS flight thanks to bufferpools, but I'll have to test in some more heavy areas. :(.

[HercFan 1]

Gman,Keep going my friend. It's fun to tag along!!I hope your are using FSX Go (by FTX). It sure would make things easy for you in your tweaking quest (note that I did not say "quest for the grail!")

[gman! 1]

Gman,Keep going my friend. It's fun to tag along!!I hope your are using FSX Go (by FTX). It sure would make things easy for you in your tweaking quest (note that I did not say "quest for the grail!")

Thanks for the support, lol. I will look for the FSX Go your speaking of.Just an update, for people getting slow texture loading even with a high fiber_frame value I found that using a texture_bandwidth_mult value of 120 gave me awesome texture loading with no blurry textures whatsoever. This line should automatically be in the FSX.CFG so to edit it, open the FSX.CFG using notepad. Go to 'Edit' > 'Find' and search "mult" and it should automatically bring up the line. A value of 70-120 should do the trick. This tweak does not hurt the smoothness of my sim, but may for others. Start low and increase if you don't like the results your getting.I am also testing the MipBias setting for the ATi cards and have successfully been able to bring up the shimmering problem again. I am seeing which value of MipBias in combination with the LOD Adjustment in ATiTrayTools will give seamless, good looking textures.More to come soon... :(Good Luck and Safe Flights!-------EDIT: MipBias=4 and no LOD adjustment in ATiTrayTools gives me no shimmering textures. Will report back soon with more results.I tested MipBias 4-7. 4 is the only value that gave me no shimmering with ground textures and no LOD adjustment.

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

The original poster, whatever his name (is it Ben?) suggests deleting the fsx.cfg file. He is not the only one and this is a common suggestion on this forum and probably on others.In truth, it is easier and gives the same results to simply press the "Reset to Default" button that can be found on numerous pages of the User Shell. In addition, it can be done from within the game and the results are immediate, no need to exit and reload FS.Unless one has added some of the so-called "tweaks" to that file, then there is no particular need to find and delete the document itself.Many are surprised at the improved performance when deleting the file (resetting display options to default values). In fact, the ACES team used the very same "tweaks" to optimize the game for different systems. That is to say, the various variables that Phil Taylor and Paul Lange (and the rest of the developers in the beta forum) released to the public were not meant to be used for modifying or improving the performance of the RTM version at all, but to allow them to test different values so that the game will run as optimally as possible on different platforms. So, there was little, if any, value in using those tweaks at the release of the game, and it is only now that hardware specifications have largely exceeded those existing at the time that some, but not all, of those "tweaks" can be used to better utilize the greater power and capacity of display boards, buses, and processors.Best regards.Luis

[Guest anthony31fs]

Also keep in mind that deleting your FSX.CFG will also cause the Controls/Standard.XML file to be reset when you reload FSX. You will find a "controls" folder in the same folder as your fsx.cfg (at least in XP you do ). The Controls/Standard.XML contains your key commands so if you use a lot of custom key settings you may like to back up this file before deleting your fsx.cfg.Happy tinkering gentlemen :)PS.

In Hex (You can check in the Windows Calculator or Google) it is equal to 1100, and is read backwards by FSX because it is Hex.

12 in hex is C (or for the real computer nerds, 0c), 12 is 1100 in binary

[gman! 1]

Also keep in mind that deleting your FSX.CFG will also cause the Controls/Standard.XML file to be reset when you reload FSX. You will find a "controls" folder in the same folder as your fsx.cfg (at least in XP you do ). The Controls/Standard.XML contains your key commands so if you use a lot of custom key settings you may like to back up this file before deleting your fsx.cfg.Happy tinkering gentlemen :)PS.12 in hex is C (or for the real computer nerds, 0c), 12 is 1100 in binary

Yes ,sorry. That was a typo. I wouldn't be able to know 12 is 1100 without switching to binary in the calculator! :(. And you can backup the Standard.XML in the "%appdata%\Microsoft\FSX\Controls" if you like and replace it.

The original poster, whatever his name (is it Ben?) suggests deleting the fsx.cfg file. He is not the only one and this is a common suggestion on this forum and probably on others.In truth, it is easier and gives the same results to simply press the "Reset to Default" button that can be found on numerous pages of the User Shell. In addition, it can be done from within the game and the results are immediate, no need to exit and reload FS.Unless one has added some of the so-called "tweaks" to that file, then there is no particular need to find and delete the document itself.Many are surprised at the improved performance when deleting the file (resetting display options to default values). In fact, the ACES team used the very same "tweaks" to optimize the game for different systems. That is to say, the various variables that Phil Taylor and Paul Lange (and the rest of the developers in the beta forum) released to the public were not meant to be used for modifying or improving the performance of the RTM version at all, but to allow them to test different values so that the game will run as optimally as possible on different platforms. So, there was little, if any, value in using those tweaks at the release of the game, and it is only now that hardware specifications have largely exceeded those existing at the time that some, but not all, of those "tweaks" can be used to better utilize the greater power and capacity of display boards, buses, and processors.Best regards.Luis

Most of that is true, but like you said, using "Reset to Default" inside FSX is immediate, but it only changes the sliders in FSX and does not make it rebuild the file, or erase any extra lines or change lines like TBM back to default if the user forgot they changed the value. That is why I prefer just deleting the file. Also, the tweaks that I am using have been used by many users and these are tweaks that actually work and change something, instead of tweaks like the maximum autogen which creates havoc on FSX. These "tweaks" were also released after FSX SP1, so they are still valid.

[Guest anthony31fs]

I was just looking at the hardware forum about graphics cards and found this link about fiber frame fraction (coincidence or what?) which may help explain what this line does. Note how it recommends a setting of 0.33 but also note how it was written in 2006. Quad core processors may have changed the playing field so to speak.[/url]http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555738I've just cut and pasted a section from the link above for those who don't want to click on the link:

To reduce this cause of the blurries, the ACES team reworked how Flight Simulator's scheduler prioritizes background tasks in FSX. Now much more CPU time is devoted to loading scenery data, including terrain textures, at the expense of somewhat lower frame rates. This change has mostly solved this cause of the blurries, although the scenery loader can still get behind at extremely low frame rates (less than 10 fps) or at very large airspeeds (faster than 600 knots). There are several ways to adjust how much CPU time FS devotes to loading scenery and textures. The easiest way is to set the target frame rate slider to a value that your machine can consistently achieve. The lower you set the slider, the more CPU time is diverted from rendering to loading data. Another thing you can do is to modify the following variable in FSX.CFG: Add this entry, just below the [MAIN] section in FSX.CFGFIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION=0.33This variable determines the amount of CPU time given to loading scenery data as a fraction of the time spent rendering. For example, the default value of 0.33 means that for every 3 milliseconds spent rendering, FS will give 1 millisecond to the scenery loader. If necessary, you can use a larger value to devote more time to loading. Or, if you don't have a problem with the blurries and you want slightly higher frame rates, then you can use a smaller value. Again, this variable is only available in the final release version of FSX and is not available in the beta or demo.