Si tried this fix and it works great! One question though about nHancer. I reset the profiles and installed the new drivers. I get AA in the sim when the box is checked but its nowhere near perfect. everything glimmers and what not. Are any of you guys seeing this?

That's because what FS does by default with the AA checkbox is just normal multisample AA (what level of it I don't know because the checkbox doesn't tell you or give you options like most other games do) - the nHancer 8XS mode uses a supersampling componet to it, which is why the shimmering goes away. There's no problem with using the nHancer settings btw if all you're doing is the HIGHMEM and STALE_BUFFER commands - it's only when you start messing with disabling the vertex buffer (UsePools=0 etc) that you need to worry about how much load is on the video card from AA and such.

That's because what FS does by default with the AA checkbox is just normal multisample AA (what level of it I don't know because the checkbox doesn't tell you or give you options like most other games do) - the nHancer 8XS mode uses a supersampling componet to it, which is why the shimmering goes away. There's no problem with using the nHancer settings btw if all you're doing is the HIGHMEM and STALE_BUFFER commands - it's only when you start messing with disabling the vertex buffer (UsePools=0 etc) that you need to worry about how much load is on the video card from AA and such.

If anyone here feels like 'experimenting' you can try:[GRAPHICS]MultiSamplesPerPixel=MultiSampleQuality=They control AntiAliasing when FSX is in charge of it... however, I dont see ANY difference... you can try:MultiSamplesPerPixel=16 // you can try here 4, 8, 16 probably 32?MultiSampleQuality=1 // This I have NO IDEAAs you can see.. they refer to 'Multi' sampling.. not 'Super' and no.. there is no SuperSamplesPerPixel variable :)

If anyone here feels like 'experimenting' you can try:[GRAPHICS]MultiSamplesPerPixel=MultiSampleQuality=They control AntiAliasing when FSX is in charge of it... however, I dont see ANY difference... you can try:MultiSamplesPerPixel=16 // you can try here 4, 8, 16 probably 32?MultiSampleQuality=1 // This I have NO IDEAAs you can see.. they refer to 'Multi' sampling.. not 'Super' and no.. there is no SuperSamplesPerPixel variable :)

That's because Supersampling wasn't an option at the time of FS's release. Nvidia still doesn't officially support it, hence the need for Nhancer!TomP.S. ******* did you see my post (a couple of pages back) about potential of fragmentation from rebuiding shader files?

That's because Supersampling wasn't an option at the time of FS's release. Nvidia still doesn't officially support it, hence the need for Nhancer!TomP.S. ******* did you see my post (a couple of pages back) about potential of fragmentation from rebuiding shader files?

Oops! my mistake :) you are right... so many pages things start to get lost here.Well, it also depends on the user, If he likes to rebuild the cache every minute.. well, however for those using a separate drive for FSX this is not a concern. Shader Cache is located in your C:\ folder so, if anything, it fragments your drive C (and those cache files are tiny) what Ryan did was 'delete it' same thing...but thanks for pointing that out.

Robert, try completely disabling autogen and tell me if it improves things, if it does, then try 'one by one' disabling this options, and see if they impact performance:Vsync OFFAniso (set it to OFF in nHancer)AA (Set it to application controlled in nHancer)Remeber, that if you change either aniso or AA in nHancer, you'll need to check the options inside FSXDense AG (specially when used with BP=0) is able to completely crash FSX (and even your computer) because it stresses your video card... and don't trust any GPU Utilization readings, they only show % usage for the user space, not kernel/system.. AG produces so many draw calls (even with batching) that they saturate the command buffer and it gets overwritten just do the steps without nhancer (for testing purposes of course) and report back.

*******, I did a test as per your request. I always use KSEA RWY 34R weather set to Cold Fronts.FSX SettingsAutogen=OffFSX Filtering=AnisotropicTrilinear=OnTextures at 1024nHancer SettingsVsync OFFAniso (set it to OFF in nHancer)AA (Set it to application controlled in nHancer)With Autogen off the area around the airport looks as it did when the PNW was first settled until you reach altitude when streets, neighbourhoods, forest's etc. appear.Tested in 4 steps using different settings. 1. FSX filtering only (Filtering-Anisotropic, Trilinear checked) VSync, Aniso, AA all off (nHancer) - frames were not smooth, ground textures blurry outside 1 NM.2. Same FSX filtering, VSynch only turned on (nHancer) - frames smoother, still blurry. banking and slewing around exterior of aircraft smooth.3. FSX filtering checked AA only, Aniso selected in drop-down, Aniso turned on (nHancer) - same frame smoothness, textures were crisp. banking and slewing around exterior of aircraft not as smooth.4. FSX filtering Aniso selected in drop down, AA unchecked, AA Combined 8xS, Aniso 16x selected in nHancer - fluid frames in VC unless banking AC, crisp textures, slewing around aircraft not smooth.I have found that adding the HIGHMEMFIX and STALE_BUFFER_THRESHOLD do make a difference. I had to do a little math as I use REx HD textures. If I understood by your calculation that MAX_TEXTURE_DATA has a max value of 36864 Bytes then: (4096x(3x90))/30=TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=90UPPER_FRAME_LIMIT=30TextureMaxLoad=3 (I think that is the default)?I get fairly good results with the frames limited to 30 FPS but I get even smoother frames when I set them to unlimited and use the FPS Limiter tool, my CPU and GPU however reach temps of 52

I am in the same boat as you Robert. I use the fps limiter tool, so what would you use to fbm and upper framerate limiter, tml?

I have a simple question ...I am running FSX on Windows 7 64 bit. I use ORBX's FTX scenery for Australia. I have Traffic X for AI. I use no other add-ons. I run FSX with Acceleration. I have a Geforce Nvidia GTX 285 with the latest current WHQL drivers (197.13). I do not use Nhancer. My FSX runs fine. I use locked frame rates (30) and get 30 FPS at 40,000 feet with the default FSX aircraft. At busy airports, my FPS can drop to around 10 FPS, but the sim is still smooth and the low frame rates are barely noticable. I do get occasional stutters, but only in areas with a LOT of autogen. The stutters are not enough to be annoying. All up, I am extremely happy with the way FSX performs on my system, even with my sliders possibly being up one notch too high.Getting to my question ...If an airport is busy (lots of aircraft parked on the ramp etc), I get a few WHITE aircraft. The Cessna 172, the King Air and the Beech Baron are all WHITE. No texture is being drawn on them. This mostly occurs in high population areas, near cities, where there is a high amount of AI planes (for example, if I am at a small airport, but it is near a large international airport). At outer regional airports, this is less of a problem, but occassionally occurs.So, the question is this ...Should this HIGHMEMFIX=1 fix this issue for me? I tried adding this line to my FSX.CFG last night and tested (albeit briefly); but it did not appear to fix this issue for me. I am a little confused by what this is supposed to fix. The post describes graphic corruption and missing textures etc. Isn't that what I am talking about? White aircraft have "missing textures"?Hoping someone can clear this up for me.

Hoping someone can clear this up for me.

Couple of questions.. do you by any chance run FSX in Vista compatiblity mode? and.. do you run in 16 or 32 bit color? and confirm the OS you are running.Make sure you are running 32 bit color, and you DO NOT run any compatibility mode.The other things you should try to see if they make a difference is TextureMaxLoad and STALE_BUFFER_THRESHOLD I'm interested in the result of your testing...EDIT: Ryan, if the theory of HIGHMEMFIX about it changing the way render states work with texture addressing modes is correct, then we need to make sure everyone uses 32 Bit color AND that they do NOT use Vista Compatiblity mode. In the case someone says they did not see the problem fixed with HIGHMEMFIX I would ask them to make sure about the color/compatibliy mode.Altough, what Freddy is reporting doesn't seem related to the issue #4, it ocurred to me this was worth mentioning (remember what you told me about the reviewer)

In my case, if I set Vsync, AA, filtering etc to something other than application controlled (or set to minimums obviously) frame rate drops dramatically. Guess that's when the command buffer is totally overwhelmed.That massive bulk of draw calls must go through the PCIe bus right? I tried overclocking it but could not see any improvement neither in texture load orframe rate. (it's not like I know what I'm doing anyway :()Does this also mean that FSX was not necessarily, allways about CPU after all? I understand that a fast multicore processor is a must here, but maybe we've been overating the CPU roll a bit if in many cases the bottleneck was elsewhere? (the command buffer)One last thing: what kind of GPU's should we looking at from now on? XFire/SLI maybe also?It's being a pain in the neck, but I'm glad I switched to FSX just now, right in the time it looks like it's going to be taken to another level (and achievable for almost everybody) Just imagine all those FS9 vs FSX threads gone forever! hehe

but I'm glad I switched to FSX just now,

Trust me... having EVERYONE switching to FSX, will benefit us ALL... more business for add-on developers, more variety more fun...and... as for the command buffer question. lets say that it is not a bottleneck, I would say no 'sane' developer would send so many instructions to it under any circumnstance (batching of autogen objects per frame is HUGE, specially in SP2)... what WE are doing (removing the bufferpools) is a little extreme... but we do it to get more out of our sim, thats why we need to be careful with the bufferpool thing. Yes, YOU ARE correct, it does shift things towards the GPU, but... NEXT generation GPU's :) more Like ATI 5870 and Fermi's... the GTX285's are 'barely' able to keep up reading FROM the buffer pool fast enough., so the bufferpools is not the 'actual' bottleneck, but the video card ability to read fast from it.. Imagine the CPU thrwoing everyting it can to the command buffer, now imagine the GPU reading everythjing it can FROM the command buffer.. what happens when the CPU writes faster than the ability of the GPU to 'read' the command buffer? things get messy!! sysmtem crashes and graphics get corrupted.So, what 'determines' the speed at which a video card 'READS' the command buffer fast enough? well.. Ryan will be posting an interesting document that will answer those questions :) it talks, among other things of Video Card architecture and how they work on FSX. it will educate us all, and we'll be able to 'understand' much better how things work and how to optimize them to get the most out of our hardware. Ryan will make sure its 'understandable' by all.. so, don't worry ... no technical mumbo jumbo (yet)

Crystal clear *******, I'm finally getting to understand how it works. Thanks again.So it's official, those guys from ACES suck at coding big time (or at least they screwed up with FSX) Is it the clock speed of those new VGA's the key feature or it's more about memory amount/speed?Now I see why that GTX285 I tested didn't make things any better

Couple of questions.. do you by any chance run FSX in Vista compatiblity mode? and.. do you run in 16 or 32 bit color? and confirm the OS you are running.Make sure you are running 32 bit color, and you DO NOT run any compatibility mode.The other things you should try to see if they make a difference is TextureMaxLoad and STALE_BUFFER_THRESHOLD I'm interested in the result of your testing...

I confirm I am using Windows 7 64 bit (Ultra). I confirm I am using 32 bit colour. No, I am not running in Vista compatibility mode.I added[GRAPHICS]HIGHMEMFIX=1STALE_BUFFER_THRESHOLD=2147483647 // (2048 megabytes)to my FSX.CFG file. I then deleted both Shader folders (made a backup copy first). I figure that doing this negates the need for me to use the SHADER_CACHE_VERSION=1 line. (Note that FSX is installed in to 'C:\Games\...' on my PC meaning that FSX.CFG definately can be edited and is definately saved etc. I also run FSX with the "Run As Administrator" option.)I then ran FSX. Still had "white" aircraft on the ramp.The [sOUND] section of my FSX.CFG already had [sOUND]SOUND=1SOUND_QUALITY=2SOUND_LOD=0in it and my sound card settings were already set to 44100 Hz in Windows.I gather from your response that with the HIGHMEMFIX=1 tweak in place, I shouldn't be getting these "white" aircraft?The only thing you mentioned which I did not add was the TextureMaxLoad line.

So it's official, those guys from ACES suck at coding big time (or at least they screwed up with FSX)

No, they don't. they 'cleverly' created a 'middleman' to coordinate what went into the command buffer.. unfortunately, this 'middleman' is CPU hungry ;) and runs on the main scheduler core, so lets just say.. they are trying to do the best they can with an aging engine... in fact, considering what they have done, I think those guys are geniuses.. all of them ;) probably, what they could have done better is move the vertex buffer (the middleman) to the texture manager and batching threads that are less CPU intensive. Probably they know this, but who knows what time constraints they had or why they didn't do it.... as for the explanation, on 'what' you need to look for in your next video card the answer is 'shader clock speed' + at least 300 shader processors (nVidias 285 have 240) but, wait from Ryan, it will be all there.

I gather from your response that with the HIGHMEMFIX=1 tweak in place, I shouldn't be getting these "white" aircraft?The only thing you mentioned which I did not add was the TextureMaxLoad line.

well, I don't think the 'white' aircraft are HIGHMEMFIX related.. if you remove it you still see them right? it seems another problem... lets wait to see what Ryan can tell you.

I retract my statement about ACES then, heheSo being the buffer in RAM the CPU can control the load of calls to be sent to the VGA if I got it right, cause is able to check when it's full, rather than just blindly send a bunch of shader requests that will eventually collapse the graphic card.Cierto o me vuelvo a confundir? :D

well, I don't think the 'white' aircraft are HIGHMEMFIX related.. if you remove it you still see them right? it seems another problem... lets wait to see what Ryan can tell you.

Correct, the white aircraft are there with or without the HIGHMEMFIX=1 line in my FSX.CFG. Ergo, I agree. I do not think my white aircraft are related to this tweak. I'll keep an eye on the thread in case Ryan has anything more to add. Thanks for the speedy responses.