PT- "The fiber system that has been a part of FSX since the RTM version still runs on core-0" and other Gems

[Guest FlyingBits]

Paul, have you been drinking again? No, just kidding, good to see you once again contributing thoughtful comments, we missed the voice of sanity in this forum (did I just write that about you? I must be drunk!)There are so many problems with all the unsubstantiated claims, and unsurprisingly this is nothing new. I still have, tucked away in the archives, discussions carried out by you, Elrond, Chris Wright, and others from... wait for it.... 8 years ago! So, nothing changes.The comments here have always been plagued by a complete lack of rigor in analysis and testing: - definition of problem: as far as I know, only the developers know the concepts and code used in the game, and they told nobody, for obvious contractual reasons. So, how do self-proclaimed experts know the cause of display problems? - measurement: people talk about bus latency, frame buffer fill rates, etc., but who is actually providing precise measurements of these values? Nobody. And if so, how do they know that they are the source of the problems? And some vague vid memory values or approximate core usage data in the Windows Task Manager is not enough. - testing: nobody seems to empty cache, isolate display settings, or seek to stress the system to determine the true value of suggested remedies. It is all just flying around, looking at frame rate counter and giving a general impression of how much better it all seems. But, again, nobody thinks to measure buffer fill rates or latency after applying their "tweaks" to see if they made any difference at all.Oh well, it is just a computer game, and it does not really matter if the claims are unsubstantiated, or even unsubstantiable. As long as people are happy believing that they have made their flights more enjoyable and better looking, then that is all that counts.By the way, would you either stop showing those pictures of Buffalo, or show a lot more? You have been working on that project for too long and there must be a lot more and we want to see it.Best regards.Luis

Hello Luis,Very well said.8 years ago LOL! Oh the pain!The lack of good testing methods and the proclamations for certain tweaks was starting to make me feel ill, perhaps I did come out too strong in my comments or maybe I shouldn't have even bothered. Wasn't trying to spoil anyone

[John_Cillis 2,406]

......Oh well, it is just a computer game, and it does not really matter if the claims are unsubstantiated, or even unsubstantiable. As long as people are happy believing that they have made their flights more enjoyable and better looking, then that is all that counts.

That's exactly the point I have tried to make. There's no rule that says members of these forums need to hold degrees in I.T., certifications in development or quality assurance, or credentials in hardware support. If every tweak out there went thru the testing expected of professional development, the tweaks that do work would have never seen the light of day--very few have the bandwidth to define, measure and test. If I hear of a tweak that's interesting, I try out a few different scenarios and make my decision. Although it's pretty rare a tweak comes along that hasn't been heard before.I think some members are doing a disservice to this community by stifling or trying to embarrass members for their thoughts. It is a game, or simulation--whatever you want to call it. It's supposed to be fun, not a hobby "managed" by a bunch of us old geezers who've been working on PC's and code since the dark ages of Steve Wozniak's garage. In the office, I work by test plan and process. At home, I experiment and sometimes just shut my eyes, plunge ahead and change this or that and see what happens. But 99.9 pct of the time, I just fly (or when I am not in the mood, look at Barnstormers.com and dream of some aircraft to buy when I win the lottery).My two bits... (and great screenshots!)-John

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Yeah, yeah, Rochester, that's it. Well, I said I was drunk, didn't I? It's all Upstate anyway (said like a true New Yorker!) But, it looks great, as usual! You do know it is illegal to fly at 600 knots over urban areas, don't you? No blurries? Tell us your secret tweaks, Paul. Oh, none, that's right.You know, John, it doesn't matter at all in the long run - after all, as the wise man said, in the long run we are all dead. And generally, neither I, nor Paul for that matter, make much of a fuss over all these spurious claims. And it's not as if all of them are bogus, only that nobody bothers to demonstrate their value.And generally there is a great misunderstanding concerning these so-called "tweaks", and Phil Taylor is mostly to blame. The variables that he released to the public were not meant to be used to optimize the RTM version of the game, since it was already mostly optimized before release. In fact, as you know very well, the developers used those very same "tweaks" to optimize the code for different hardware specs, and that is why FS evaluates the computer at first install (or whenever people uselessly delete the fsx.cfg file) and establishes a baseline value that sets display sliders according to what the developers believe will give best performance. And generally it does!But, Phil was trying hard to please his customers and gave out those "tweaks", opening Pandora's Box (by the way, the only thing in there was Hope, I think, so when it was opened, that too went out the door!) He would probably have done better to just tell everyone to lower slider settings (which is all that happens when people delete the fsx.cfg file anyway!)And even the old fogeys in here (I am only 52, thank you very much, much younger than Tom!) have a right to protest that we have heard all of this before, and that the same silliness will occur again when the next version of FS is released, and the next, and the next...Best regards.Luis

[Guest FlyingBits]

You do know it is illegal to fly at 600 knots over urban areas, don't you? No blurries? Tell us your secret tweaks, Paul. Oh, none, that's right.Best regards.Luis

Heh heh.Dont you wounder what a full re-write of all of FSX main textures if done with a bit more modern tool would achieve? If FSX could handle it of course... :(

[tfm 169]

...As I begin to land, I loose all vc textures. When I switch exterior, ac is invisible. Go to desktop and go back in to sim. Now the ac is back.Upon landing I notice that the runway and scenery are gone....

Sorry if I've suggested this before, but have you tried the sound fix?Control panel > Sound > Playback > Speakers > Properties > Advanced > Default Format = "16 bit, 8000Hz (Telephone quality)"If you can't choose "Telephone quality" then try obtaining different audio drivers, or use the lowest quality setting available.Tim

[fbass 1]

That's exactly the point I have tried to make. There's no rule that says members of these forums need to hold degrees in I.T., certifications in development or quality assurance, or credentials in hardware support. If every tweak out there went thru the testing expected of professional development, the tweaks that do work would have never seen the light of day--very few have the bandwidth to define, measure and test. If I hear of a tweak that's interesting, I try out a few different scenarios and make my decision. Although it's pretty rare a tweak comes along that hasn't been heard before.I think some members are doing a disservice to this community by stifling or trying to embarrass members for their thoughts. It is a game, or simulation--whatever you want to call it. It's supposed to be fun, not a hobby "managed" by a bunch of us old geezers who've been working on PC's and code since the dark ages of Steve Wozniak's garage. In the office, I work by test plan and process. At home, I experiment and sometimes just shut my eyes, plunge ahead and change this or that and see what happens. But 99.9 pct of the time, I just fly (or when I am not in the mood, look at Barnstormers.com and dream of some aircraft to buy when I win the lottery).My two bits... (and great screenshots!)-John

John,I can say with great certainty that having an IT degree won't help. I know - I have a graduate degree in IT and there's no way I'm an expert on FSX or for that matter computers. Yes, I've been using flight sim for quite some time - no that still doesn't make me an expert. Having said that, there is one item that people are not including (for the most part) in their claims of performance and that is the size of their AI environment. I hear a lot of people discuss their slider positions and percentages used; but, I don't hear a lot about just how large their environments are. I run a huge scenery load on my computer - you name it I have it. However, nothing slows down a system running FSX (or any other FS version) any more than the size of the AI environment.Now, I have a pretty stable system right now. I have 3 Samsung 26" monitors plus a fourth 19" monitor - using the Matrox Triplehead2go digital screen extender. Here's the kicker - I have perhaps the largest AI environment on the planet (this is not a boast so please no hate mail). I do not use any of the "traffic" packages on the market. I have aircraft models from almost every developer. I do not use 32-bit textures. NOTE: If you're using that type of texture then IMHO you can't complain of a slow system with low FPS numbers. I'm not using textures with MIPS simply because I haven't noticed any texture type problems. I do get the occasional stutter but it is not too bad.So, if I tell you that I'm running my AI at 100% then you need to know how large is the environment. In my case, I have somewhere in neighborhood of 500 aircraft models. My AI folder contains almost 37,000 files - that's a whole lot of textures. I have almost 2,700 individual airline *.bgl files in my scenery folder. I don't run "bloom." My texture bandwidth is 40. Frame rate is set at 40. I have 68 SimObjectPaths in my config file. My fiber frame time fraction is set at 18. Preload is disabled. MipBias is 7. Aircraft shadows are set to "off." Airline density is 100, Freeway density is 50, ships and ferries is 40, and leisure boats is 18. These last four settings can really show down your system.The following are my "Terrain" settings:LOD_RADIUS=4.500000MESH_COMPLEXITY=75MESH_RESOLUTION=22TEXTURE_RESOLUTION=27AUTOGEN_DENSITY=3DETAIL_TEXTURE=1WATER_EFFECTS=6TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_TREES_PER_CELL=800TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_BUILDINGS_PER_CELL=3000I have many "trusted" statements in my config file because I have a large number of "flying" aircraft.My "affinityMask" is set to 15. Poolsize=6000000.So, the bottom line is this. I get acceptable smoothness from my system with little or no texture of display problems. NOTE: I don't mention frame rates here. IMHO, too much is made of this characteristic and there are way too many factors influencing the number. The way I look at it, if it's smooth I don't care what the rate is. If I'm not having display problems I don't care what the number is.One last thing - what does my system look like. Again, IMHO the components in a system running FSX can make all the difference. I have a ThermalTake case with built-in liquid cooling (you don't want to lift it if you can help it). The mobo is ASUS (P6X58D) with an Intel i7 975 CPU (3.3 GHz non overclocked at the moment). I have an Ultra X4 1050 watt PSU. I have a matched set of Corsair memory modules at 12Gb - standard clock. I have two 1.5Tb HDDs (RAID 1 config). I have an NVidia GTX 295 and a BFG 9800 GTX graphics card. The second graphics card runs a VRInsight CDUII unit. I also run a complete set of airline GoFlight hardware. The system has two DVD drives. I'm running Windows 7 64-bit.What's the point of all this - your system can make a difference. I run FSX with most sliders maxed out and it is very smooth - including guage operation. Sometimes it takes a moment for an aircraft to load all its textures - especially one from PMDG. But, things settle down and off I go. NOTE: With all the scenery I have it also takes a while for initial FSX startup. You just can't everything you know. :-)fb

[Guest Shockwave]

Sorry if I've suggested this before, but have you tried the sound fix?Control panel > Sound > Playback > Speakers > Properties > Advanced > Default Format = "16 bit, 8000Hz (Telephone quality)"If you can't choose "Telephone quality" then try obtaining different audio drivers, or use the lowest quality setting available.Tim

What sound card was this for, On board or add on card?

[Guest UlfB]

What sound card was this for, On board or add on card?

Doesn't matter, since it's a driver setting. Just try it if you have problems. This tweak has been very useful for many simmers. A very big thread available at the PMDG support forums OT.