Something else to try to get into forest heaven

[Guest]

Yes, that's right, yet another topic on how to get FSX running great. Nah, not really... although... Seriously, I have some questions and maybe someone else could try something for me and tell me if they get the same results. If won't cost you much time and everything is easy to reverse because you won't have to touch any cfg. Don't you just love those FSX-tweak topics which has no cfg-tweaks?!? :( Okay, here we go. I love to fly above the bushes: going low and slow over the trees is just awesome. Unfortunately those FSX trees kill the smoothness on my i7 920@3.3 with GTX285 rig... (I'm all into smoothness, not into fps). So instead of tweaking the autogen in some cfg, I simply lowered the autogen settings. I found out that Dense was fine for my system. Unfortunately of course the forests don't look that good at Dense... You see a lot of texture with a bunch of trees here and there. Not your typical bushflyers dream.Now I was reading another topic about tweaks in which someone said to go to NickN's post (on another forum) to check out the nHancer setting for better performance...HOLD IT, I thought...Those nHancer settings aren't about good performance, they are about the best possible graphics. I've followed NickN's advice almost to the letter when I set up my current FSX-system (apart from defragging (SSD!) and I have bufferpools at 500000: but don't let's get into that here... :( ) but his nHancer-tips are all into looks, not performance (afaik at least). So I decided to see what happened if I lowered some nHancer settings.So I set FSAA to 4xS (instead of 8xS), I set Texture filtering at High performance (instead of High quality) and turned ON Trilinear opt and Aniso. sample opt (instead of both OFF). That's it.On top of that I decided to see what happened if I chose, in FSX, a resolution of 1680x15x16 instead of 1680x1050x32 (so another color depth, or whatever you call that). I expected to see a lot of banding with that last change, but well, who knows what it would give me.Now let me say here that I know nothing about what I just did. I ain't Nick. :( I just chose some settings that would, so I thought, help performance, probably at the cost of visuals. Maybe I did something that's not supposed to work at all, but I don't care as long as it helps. B) And boy, did it help.First question: do you have the resolution at 16 color depth or 32? I always had it at 32 because I thought 16 would look horrible. Maybe it's because I have an LCD now (the last time I tried 16 I had an old fashioned monitor), but I can't for the life of me see any difference. What happens if you switch to 16? Do you see any difference (in looks!)? It looks great to me...! In the old days 16 would inprove performance: seems that's still true... or not?Second question: can you tell the difference (in looks!) between NickN's recommended (high) nHancer settings and my low settings, which are geared towards performance? I can't. I really can't. Maybe if I compared screenshots, but while flying everything still look greatl.Third and last question: do you also get better performance? Because right now I can fly above huge FTX forests with autogen at Extremely dense and get (almost) the same performance as I had with Dense with the old high settings...! When I look sideways with my TrackIR I do get some slight stutters here and there, but I mean, come on... the difference between Dense and Extremely dense is absolutely staggering! Now I really have the idea I am flying above a forest instead of a texture with trees on it!I am looking forward to your experiences. B)

[SpiritFlyer 987]

Yes, that's right, yet another topic on how to get FSX running great. Nah, not really... although... Seriously, I have some questions and maybe someone else could try something for me and tell me if they get the same results. If won't cost you much time and everything is easy to reverse because you won't have to touch any cfg. Don't you just love those FSX-tweak topics which has no cfg-tweaks?!? :( Okay, here we go. I love to fly above the bushes: going low and slow over the trees is just awesome. Unfortunately those FSX trees kill the smoothness on my i7 920@3.3 with GTX285 rig... (I'm all into smoothness, not into fps). So instead of tweaking the autogen in some cfg, I simply lowered the autogen settings. I found out that Dense was fine for my system. Unfortunately of course the forests don't look that good at Dense... You see a lot of texture with a bunch of trees here and there. Not your typical bushflyers dream.Now I was reading another topic about tweaks in which someone said to go to NickN's post (on another forum) to check out the nHancer setting for better performance...HOLD IT, I thought...Those nHancer settings aren't about good performance, they are about the best possible graphics. I've followed NickN's advice almost to the letter when I set up my current FSX-system (apart from defragging (SSD!) and I have bufferpools at 500000: but don't let's get into that here... :( ) but his nHancer-tips are all into looks, not performance (afaik at least). So I decided to see what happened if I lowered some nHancer settings.So I set FSAA to 4xS (instead of 8xS), I set Texture filtering at High performance (instead of High quality) and turned ON Trilinear opt and Aniso. sample opt (instead of both OFF). That's it.On top of that I decided to see what happened if I chose, in FSX, a resolution of 1680x15x16 instead of 1680x1050x32 (so another color depth, or whatever you call that). I expected to see a lot of banding with that last change, but well, who knows what it would give me.Now let me say here that I know nothing about what I just did. I ain't Nick. :( I just chose some settings that would, so I thought, help performance, probably at the cost of visuals. Maybe I did something that's not supposed to work at all, but I don't care as long as it helps. B) And boy, did it help.First question: do you have the resolution at 16 color depth or 32? I always had it at 32 because I thought 16 would look horrible. Maybe it's because I have an LCD now (the last time I tried 16 I had an old fashioned monitor), but I can't for the life of me see any difference. What happens if you switch to 16? Do you see any difference (in looks!)? It looks great to me...! In the old days 16 would inprove performance: seems that's still true... or not?Second question: can you tell the difference (in looks!) between NickN's recommended (high) nHancer settings and my low settings, which are geared towards performance? I can't. I really can't. Maybe if I compared screenshots, but while flying everything still look greatl.Third and last question: do you also get better performance? Because right now I can fly above huge FTX forests with autogen at Extremely dense and get (almost) the same performance as I had with Dense with the old high settings...! When I look sideways with my TrackIR I do get some slight stutters here and there, but I mean, come on... the difference between Dense and Extremely dense is absolutely staggering! Now I really have the idea I am flying above a forest instead of a texture with trees on it!I am looking forward to your experiences. B)

Oh No! Not Again! I am actually thinking of trying out the same changes to see what's up. I need to be sedated into blissful complainance or have AVSIM blocked so that I will leave stuff alone. On the other hand, this is an interesting idea that might be worth trying too :)Stephen

[Guest FSXBuster]

Thanks J van E, what should we do without you and Gman, LOL!Actually, I've been doing similar a while back, changing from 32 to 16, and there's no difference in quality IMO.This actually works great, thanks!As you mention; the settings recommended by Nick are for best visual/look...That's a very important point to mention, it's for "visual perfectionists" !Let's have a balance between the two. I've tried your settings at KSEA and it gives a good performance boost, but unfortunately a lot more shimmer (on my non-i7 rig...)Will have to experiment a bit more.

[Paul J 349]

First question: do you have the resolution at 16 color depth or 32? I always had it at 32 because I thought 16 would look horrible. true... or not?

I've been running the TripleHead2Go at 3840 x 1050 at 16 bit, and long before that, on the 1650 x 1050 Gateway that I had: I think some artistic folks might discern some graduation in a cloudless sky.... but I can't. You can expect a small performance boost because you're using less memory.

Second question: can you tell the difference (in looks!) between NickN's recommended (high) nHancer settings and my low settings, which are geared towards performance? I can't. I really can't. Maybe if I compared screenshots, but while flying everything still look greatl.

Agreed!! :( Honestly, J: since moving to the i7-950 and running Win7-32 I've installed and uninstalled nHancer about six times: at the moment i use ntune to set the gpu - per Nick, but the FSX settings are somewhat variable, dependent upon what I'm trying. For the last two - three weeks I've been agonizing over uninstalling UT-2, finally replacing it with MyTraffiX v5.2b Pro. Somewhere in there I began experiencing the FSX "freeze", and so everything is now in a state of flux again. :( Normally I run at 25 fps locked over Seattle, using the A2A Spit as the testing aircraft, and this is always quite fluid and smooth. Below are my normal settings:[TrafficManager]AirlineDensity=72GADensity=100FreewayDensity=13ShipsAndFerriesDensity=0LeisureBoatsDensity=0IFROnly=0AIRPORT_SCENERY_DENSITY=3BLOOM_EFFECTS=0SKINNED_ANIMATIONS=1TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=40 // this is slightly better than 70UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=25 // frames are too jumpy unless I lock them. It is solid 24.9/25 with the above traffic.WideViewAspect=True[bUFFERPOOLS]poolsize=400000 // 800000 // Fantastic difference!! 800000 was the first setting, am now trying 1200000 and 2400000[TERRAIN]LOD_RADIUS=4.500000 // makes for some dips to the high teens. 3.5 is better.MESH_COMPLEXITY=79MESH_RESOLUTION=21TEXTURE_RESOLUTION=28AUTOGEN_DENSITY=3DETAIL_TEXTURE=1WATER_EFFECTS=1TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_TREES_PER_CELL=1500 // 300 // 4500TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_BUILDINGS_PER_CELL=2500 // 3500 // 3000SHADER_CACHE_PRIMED=1693458432TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=1024NUM_LIGHTS=8AIRCRAFT_SHADOWS=0AIRCRAFT_REFLECTIONS=1COCKPIT_HIGH_LOD=1LANDING_LIGHTS=1AC_SELF_SHADOW=1EFFECTS_QUALITY=2GROUND_SHADOWS=0TEXTURE_QUALITY=3IMAGE_QUALITY=0See_Self=1Text_Scroll=1SHADER_CACHE_PRIMED_10=1693458432D3D10=0CLOUD_DRAW_DISTANCE=3DETAILED_CLOUDS=1CLOUD_COVERAGE_DENSITY=8THERMAL_VISUALS=0Because of the freeze issue, I have reverted all sliders to the left, and have no freezes at that setting. I'm moving them up one at a time to see where that begins to occur. (Yes, I'm following and trying all the suggestions in the numerous posts on the subject!)Hope this helps!

[Guest]

Okay, so I wan't imagining things with that 16 setting: I can't see a difference indeed, and I am sure it must help performance, even if it's a little. And also those lower nHancer settings: maybe I am half blind, but... no difference. And that should also help.Let me explain though the 'almost' I added into the sentence 'and get (almost) the same performance' (I had to take the dog to the doctor, so I had no time to tell you more about it): it's not that I went from Dense to Extremely dense at the exact same smoothness: I could run Dense rather easily and now I can run Extremely dense without too annyoing stuttering. I mean, I don't want to exaggerate the improvement. But it DOES run better for sure. When I tried Extremely dense before, it was unplayable, but now it sure is. Even if this all won't help anyone, I think it's good to make clear that NickN's settings for nHancer are for quality, not performance. But the settings I use now look good too. I mean, I could gain even more by disabling FSAA altogether etc. but than things wouldn't look as good as they do now: I can see no difference as when I was using those high settings.EDIT:I got to tell you, seeing Extremely dense forests like this one passing smoothly underneath you is absolutely awesome! (Click for bigger picture.)Oddly enough I can't take screenshots anymore unless I switch to windowed mode: probably has something to do with the 16 color depth...?

[kttd 12]

The big difference for me on my computer, using a lower setting with Nhancer (rather than NickN settings), is that in the virtual cockpit the instruments are much less clear and more difficult to discern.

[Guest]

The big difference for me on my computer, using a lower setting with Nhancer (rather than NickN settings), is that in the virtual cockpit the instruments are much less clear and more difficult to discern.

Did you try my lower settings? (Won't take more than a few seconds to give it a try!) I mean, they are lower but FSAA isn't THAT much lower. It's not simply FSAA 2x basic whatever. :( But I also have to say I fly GA only right now: if I'd install my MD-11 again, I might also have more problems with lower settings. But still... I wonder... I've flown DX10 for a while with FSX FSAA and that's REALLY bad. 4xS is good, a lot better than FSX 2x, I can tell you!BTW (let me repeat) I am not saying my lower settings are the best lower settings: there are simply my own current settings. :( Maybe there are more settings in nHancer that will cost some quality but gain some smoothness without hardly a visual penalty. Or any penalty at all.EDIT:For completeness sake, as said the only real tweak I use is BP at 500000: but I also use the limiter, set at 25 (and so FSX itself at unlimited). That's all.

[Guest]

I wonder if any more people tried these settings...? Or do people only try things that require actual config-tweaks? :( For those who think my OP was too long too read (and right they are), here is the short version:- in FSX select 16 bit instead of 32 bit (I use 1680x1050x16 instead of 1680x1050x32)- use the video card's control panel and set it up for performance in all possible way (so skip nHancer)1. Do you see a difference in quality?2. Do you see a difference in performance?My answers:1. No, apart from FSAA2. O yes, definitely. I went from autogen at Dense to autogen at Extremely denseSorry for bumping this topic up again, but I am just curious if more people benefit from these kind of settings, which aren't real tweaks. :( I hardly ever read about this in all those tweak-topics, so...

[Guest FlyingBits]

Your seeing exactly what you should see.For instance different AA settings will cause the image to be drawn at twice its normal size or even more with in the Frame buffer, have some filtering FX applied and then re-drawn for your screen, will slow things down abit, but some of us like the sharp disply with the least amount of jaggies.As for 16 bit color, not taribly noticable during the day or esp if you have a 6bit LCD display (many are not 8bit) But try some night time flying with a bit of weather thrown in, howz it look?Run it any way YOU want!Google is your freind, check out "what is antialising" "Anisotropic filtering" 16 bit vs 32 bit etc etc.Knowing is good! :( Not knowing can be good too! :(