Totally compressing FS2004 works wonders and much smoother.

[Guest]

FS does not deal with JPEG but with BMP. Please appreciate the frame rate which you see in FS is nothing but a figure directly proportional to bmp files displayed/sec. All files before being processed by the CPU and displayed by the video card needs to be decompressed to bmp format. By defrag too you wont gain frame rates, you'll have less stutter and similarly if your vid card has more memory than on turns you wont get stutters. We all are avid flight sim enthusiast and are emotionally bonded to it but lets not leave out all these years of learning for emotion. Its like those numerous spam mails i get on some herbs which promises to increase one particular organ of mine....despite all the logic i do read it though...just in case!! I guess men are equally emotional about FS.>Babua, is the fact that a jpeg loads faster than a bitmap>snake oil? Jpeg is a type of compression.

[Guest Ed_S]

Takes longer for FS9 to load texturesThe clouds still eat the Fps.Although it did seem to be more consistant in Fps.In some instances a tad smoother.This might just be uphoric though? I'll try it for a couple of day'sto make sure im not imagining anything. I guess any improvment you can get for free is worth it.we shall see......................

[Guest Enzoblue]

Babua, I didn't say it used jpeg's, I was showing you that jpeg is a form of compression that makes pictures load faster by making them smaller. Computers render jpegs faster than uncompressed bmp's. Maybe our bmp's are rendering faster because they are compressed? Maybe there's a file indexing loophole we found that actually makes decompressing then rendering faster than just rendering? Maybe the files are still compressed when in the RAM making the RAM more effective?There are many possible tecnical reasons, laughing off the good results and calling it snake oil is saying we are just lying about our results and are delusional. That's emotional.

[JimmiG 244]

>>1) Can I convert the FS drive to NTFS from FAT32 without a complete >>format of that drive?Yes.With Windows 2000, converting the drive from FAT32 to NTFS resulted in lower performance than reformatting it with NTFS did. With WinXP this is fixed, and you can convert the drive and still get optimal performance. Just be aware that there is no easy way to go back to FAT32 (other than a reformat) once you've converted the drive.>>2) If I do successfully convert to NTFS on that drive, does it matter that the OS is on a FAT32 drive? (I don't think it should, right?)This should not cause any problems.>>3) Does anyone know if any addons will NOT work with NTFS? Not that I'm aware of. I DO however know of addons that are not 100% compatible with FAT32 (Megascenery LA for example) because they contain a huge number of files that FAT32 simply isn't powerful enough to handle.>>4) Does Norton Utilities 2003 have a adequate defragging program compared to MS?I prefer PerfectDisk (now version 6.0), but Norton Utilities 2003 includes SpeedDisk, which is a decent defragging program (better than the MS default).

[Erv Moore 21]

Snake oil! If it is, please give us more. I have used FS9 for about 8 hours since using the recommended "Snake Oil" and I can tell you on my system it has made a positive change(smoother operation). Yes, I do have a shot of JB on occasion but not during this 8 hour period. Thanks again for this tip, my FS2004 will remain compressed.Erv KSDFASUS P4C800-E Deluxe, P43.0, Win XP Home, ATI9700 Pro, 2 Corsair 512MB DDR400 PC3200, Antec SL400W PS.

[Sarge27 0]

Another satisfied customer here! I would have never dreamed that compression would actually SPEED UP FPS! Don't know why, but it does! Made a huge difference in FPS. I was finally able to crank the old sliders up!2.8 GHz P41 Gig RAMGFFX 5900U

[peppy197 165]

Same here, Im satisfiedAlthough the overall fps is about the same, it is consistent, smooth.I can now use the following settings "with confidence"AI 100 % both GA and IFRclouds 3D 100%coverage clouds 100%Downloaded weather, although sometimes it has inherent problems.(Im not sure of the settings' names here so using numbers)Autogen 100%Scenery 100%terrain mesh complexity (here i only use 25%, makes no real diff)everything maxed/ticked, water used too.It is the CONFIDENCE that i appreciate, I can almost be certain that the fps will not descend to stutters. It has once gone to 5 fps but i was climbing into and through many cloud types overcast, etc... I lock at 14P4-2.4, ASUS/1G RAM/128FX5200/ Win XP compressed FS9's drive only

[Guest Tim W]

I just have an AMD XP1.4, would you reccomend that I compress FS?regardsTimhttp://www.cambridgeflyingclub.com/images/timavatar2.jpg

[Guest henkb]

Works GREATI have a celeron 1.2 with 684 MB mem and a GF2 GTS card.It runs smooth with 17fps. can't set all sliders to max of course, but the experience is a whole lot better now :)

[JimmiG 244]

You can try it. It's easy to uncompress the folder again.

[Guest]

Well myself and Scottpilot for what I have read both don't seem to get much higher framerates, but the sim is smoother with clearer scenery, seems to draw much faster and clearer. I have an AMD Duron 1.4, and I think Scottpilot mentions he has a 1 Ghz P111, so give it a try, as has been mentioned if it does nothing for you, you can uncompress it just as easy as compressing, so wont lose anything by trying.

[Guest Tim W]

I will give it a go, thanks for the note.RgdsTimhttp://www.cambridgeflyingclub.com/images/timavatar2.jpg

[BrzI 26]

Here is what I did :Preparation:Create Startup flight with your most FPS-unfriendly aircraft in outside view. Dawn. Most complex scenery you can get (I used SF KLAS). Rain. Wind. Overcast. Clouds 100 %. Cloud draw distance 60 miles.Restart FS9. Verify that startup flight starts OK.Defrag HDD with FS9RebootNote CPU and MOBO temperature.Start FRAPS (frame rate counter)Start FS9As soon as FS9 loads start default flight.Wait for all scenery and details to be drawn and for the frame rates to stabilize.Exit FS9Exit FRAPSSave FRAPS log file.Compress FS9 folder (25-40 minutes or more)Reboot.Note CPU and MOBO temperature. When they are within 2C of the previous benchmark:Start FRAPS (frame rate counter)Start FS9As soon as FS9 loads start default flight.Wait for all scenery and details to be drawn and for the frame rates to stabilize.Exit FS9Exit FRAPSSave FRAPS log file.Compare results in a spreadsheet.Here are the results :And I see no clearcut reason for this hype. It might be because I am running RAID0 which already has improved I/O.I also see no reason to decompress either. I will just use the compressed folder for a while and see if it creates any disk errors.Hope this helps some of you to decide whether this tweak is for you.Cheeriohttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/36631.jpg

[Noel 4,503]

I am running Cheetah 15K.3 drives over SCSI U160 and I see no difference, so I put it back to uncompressed. Compression uses the CPU to compress and decompress on the fly, so I can't see how that could help, unless of course it is more efficient than a typical IDE transaction might be. I am guessing it is not more efficient than SCSI U160 so perhaps that is why I am not seeing any diff on this sys. I left it on comporessed for a few days, and concluded, if anything, textures loaded slightly slower than uncompressed.Noel

[Guest hassata]

No difference here: P4 2.4@3.02 800 FSB 1 Gig 3200 Dual Channel Radeon 9800. After compressing and defrag with O&O I decompressed. BUT FS9 would no longer boot up. Had to reinstall.For higher FPS, get a faster processor or turn down sliders. The only worthwhile tip which impacted frame rates in a significant manner was renaiming the autogen.dxl file, but again your are trading candy.