Hello,I recently bought FSDreamteam's John F Kennedy, Imagine Simulation's Washington Dulles and Fly Tampa's Boston Logan airports.Performance is acceptable in a C172 or helicopter in and around the airports.For the last couple of days, I have been flying between these airports with the PMDG JS41.The performance in the air is smooth as butter but about 10nm from arrival the framerates start dropping and end up around 8-9 fps on final approach/ ground.Q. Is this considered normal performance for the JS41 at a large international airport?I don't know because I only recently bought these airports and only recently learnt to fly the JS41.I don't watch framerates but use this as an example to explain my problem.Normally I fly GA in and around Orbx PNW and have no problems with performance, apart from near Seattle.I'm just having problems at these payware airports with the JS41.Everything is set up and working perfectly, I just would be interested to know if this kind of performance is considered 'normal' at these kind of airports.Thanks for your help,Toby

Hi Toby,The area your flying into creates a heavy load on your system. You have three major airports in the vicinity (KJFK-KLGA-KEWR), add up the heavy scenery at KJFK combined with AI Traffic for these airports and the added load by PMDG's aircraft and you have the perfect storm. :( It would be nice if someone developed a program that was able to temporarily disable all non departure/destination airports during takeoff/final.

Hello,I recently bought FSDreamteam's John F Kennedy, Imagine Simulation's Washington Dulles and Fly Tampa's Boston Logan airports.Performance is acceptable in a C172 or helicopter in and around the airports.For the last couple of days, I have been flying between these airports with the PMDG JS41.The performance in the air is smooth as butter but about 10nm from arrival the framerates start dropping and end up around 8-9 fps on final approach/ ground.Q. Is this considered normal performance for the JS41 at a large international airport?I don't know because I only recently bought these airports and only recently learnt to fly the JS41.I don't watch framerates but use this as an example to explain my problem.Normally I fly GA in and around Orbx PNW and have no problems with performance, apart from near Seattle.I'm just having problems at these payware airports with the JS41.Everything is set up and working perfectly, I just would be interested to know if this kind of performance is considered 'normal' at these kind of airports.Thanks for your help,Toby

Hi Mike,I was thinking the same thing!That would be great if someone could work out how to do that.Could you recommend any payware/ larger airports with good performance where I could train with the JS41?Thanks for your help,Toby

Could you recommend any payware/ larger airports with good performance where I could train with the JS41?Toby

TobyI can recommend Imagine Sim's Chek Lap Kok (Hong Kong Intl). No problems with framerates there for me, with aircraft like the CS 767 or QW 757. I can raise the amount of UT2 traffic too. The place is so big they just seem to get swallowed up... :( It's always been one of my 'training fields' in FSX. Ian

Could you recommend any payware/ larger airports with good performance where I could train with the JS41?

Anything developed by SimWings. Their sceneries are sold by Aerosoft (www.aerosoft.com).Check out Ibiza (LEIB) or Menorca (LEMH) for example.Good luck with your JS41 training. Don't forget to keep your eyes on those small EGT marks! :(

Hello,I recently bought FSDreamteam's John F Kennedy, Imagine Simulation's Washington Dulles and Fly Tampa's Boston Logan airports.Performance is acceptable in a C172 or helicopter in and around the airports.For the last couple of days, I have been flying between these airports with the PMDG JS41.The performance in the air is smooth as butter but about 10nm from arrival the framerates start dropping and end up around 8-9 fps on final approach/ ground.Q. Is this considered normal performance for the JS41 at a large international airport?I don't know because I only recently bought these airports and only recently learnt to fly the JS41.I don't watch framerates but use this as an example to explain my problem.Normally I fly GA in and around Orbx PNW and have no problems with performance, apart from near Seattle.I'm just having problems at these payware airports with the JS41.Everything is set up and working perfectly, I just would be interested to know if this kind of performance is considered 'normal' at these kind of airports.Thanks for your help,Toby

Hello Toby It depends on the cpu you have and the speed, the amount of ai traffic can kill frame rates! also autogen is a big killer! :( also I would have to say sticking to in area like maybe St Marten from flytampa like in island were there isn't that much stuff. fsdreamteam's scenery are really optimized to the max of whats possible so its not them but jfk is a very demanding area. I love the New York City area but its a really tough area to fly around in the sim.

With my machine I get up to max. 20-23fps in such situations (FSDT KJFK + JS4100). And I don't use any AI. Basically on VATSIM. Hope it helps.

It would be nice if someone developed a program that was able to temporarily disable all non departure/destination airports during takeoff/final.

If you're confident at manipulating AI, then this is actually possible.I use London Stansted as my base airport, so I fly into one of the busiest bits of airspace in the world - affected by traffic using Heathrow, Gatwick and Luton. And boy can this hit frame rates.However, the way I get around it is to assign any flight that uses Stansted a traffic percentage of 1%. Then any flight that doesn't use Stansted a percentage of anything greater than 1%. When I fly into and out of Stansted, I simply set my traffic percetage to 1% and voila, I have full traffic at Stansted, but no traffic any where else. Once clear of the busy airspace, I reset the traffic percentage to 100% and everything's back to normal. Btw, these are mapped to keysrokes using FSUIPC so I don't even need to access the drop down menus.As I stated above, this is only suitable for those that are confident with AI, but it can make a big difference if you're prepared to put in the effort...Gary

Thank you to all of you for your help.I appear to have solved this problem by going against the grain....1. Set Scenery Complexity to Dense2. Turn off Aircraft casts shadows on ground3. Set Water to Low x24. Set Airport Vehicle Density to LowI don't have any road/ boat traffic either when flying the JS41.Now I have 20+ fps with 60% AI traffic (UT2) and approaches are relatively smooth with the JS41!Thanks again,TobyPS Gary, could you please explain how to do this?It sounds very interesting...

Hi,Although I do not have the time nor desire to take on a challenge such as this, its nice to know it can be done. This type of addon for FSX is a utility I would gladly pay for.

If you're confident at manipulating AI, then this is actually possible.I use London Stansted as my base airport, so I fly into one of the busiest bits of airspace in the world - affected by traffic using Heathrow, Gatwick and Luton. And boy can this hit frame rates.However, the way I get around it is to assign any flight that uses Stansted a traffic percentage of 1%. Then any flight that doesn't use Stansted a percentage of anything greater than 1%. When I fly into and out of Stansted, I simply set my traffic percetage to 1% and voila, I have full traffic at Stansted, but no traffic any where else. Once clear of the busy airspace, I reset the traffic percentage to 100% and everything's back to normal. Btw, these are mapped to keysrokes using FSUIPC so I don't even need to access the drop down menus.As I stated above, this is only suitable for those that are confident with AI, but it can make a big difference if you're prepared to put in the effort...Gary

Thank you to all of you for your help.I appear to have solved this problem by going against the grain....1. Set Scenery Complexity to Dense2. Turn off Aircraft casts shadows on ground3. Set Water to Low x24. Set Airport Vehicle Density to LowI don't have any road/ boat traffic either when flying the JS41.Now I have 20+ fps with 60% AI traffic (UT2) and approaches are relatively smooth with the JS41!Thanks again,TobyPS Gary, could you please explain how to do this?It sounds very interesting...

Glade you got it working better Toby, :( Low x2 still looks good. Aircraft casts shadows on ground causes a hit so thats a good start. with fsx you have to constantly tweak till you find the right spot. :( which you seemed to have found. :)

I have been down this same road with payware airports. In the past when I was using FS9 I bought payware of KJFK, KBOS, KIAD, KMIA and many more. I loved to look at how accurate those airports were while I was taxing. However I had TERRIBLE fps on approach with my LDS 767. Today I only fly with FSX, and the LDS 767, but with default airports with updated AFCADS. Even when landing at KJFK, with my AI set at 50%, I don't get more than a slight drop in my FPS and that is about 30fps on a mid range dual core system. The paywhere for Heathrow is so good, but unless you have a super computer, it just drops to low for me.The paywhere guys have done some great work on airports and I really admire their work, but landing my plane with smooth fps is far more important than "looking pretty :( y". I know there is some work being done my some developers that is aiming for smooth fps with their airports, hopefully when they get this kins of work I will upgrade my airports. For now smooth landings out performs pretty :( y.Bob

Thank you to all of you for your help.I appear to have solved this problem by going against the grain....1. Set Scenery Complexity to Dense2. Turn off Aircraft casts shadows on ground3. Set Water to Low x24. Set Airport Vehicle Density to LowI don't have any road/ boat traffic either when flying the JS41.Now I have 20+ fps with 60% AI traffic (UT2) and approaches are relatively smooth with the JS41!Thanks again,TobyPS Gary, could you please explain how to do this?It sounds very interesting...

Toby,Something else you could try if you haven't already, is opening the JS41 config manager and try turning the refresh rates of the Right EHSI and EADI to 0% which essentially turns off those displays on the co-pilot side of the plane, in addition you could try setting the External Model and Virtual Cockpit Model both to Low, which will turn off the Icing effects and show no passgengers (External Model) and no Icing effect and Wings/Props (VC Model). Since I fly my JS41 from the left side (Capt), the right side displays aren't a necessity for me and having the passengers modeled aren't important to me either. Having those options turned off saved me around 5 to 10 FPS depending on where I am flying and they're easy adjustment to try since you can revert them back easily enough using the config manage.I think what Gary was talking about with his AI settings are a good idea also but are probably for bgl based AI, not UT2. You could probably recomplile your UT2 data base traffic schedules by importing bgl traffic plans with settings like Gary mentioned, but it would probably be very time consuming, especially if your not used to using TTools and working with traffic files.The good news is using UT2 you could always try setting your Distance to Spawn AI down to 5 miles that way if your in a city with other big hubs, it wont try to spawn traffic farther away. Another thing you could try as well when flying into very busy areas, is using the hot key in UT2 to turn off traffic, shut traffic off when on approach, then right when you land, turn it back on. I have assigned the "Stop Traffic" UT2 hotkey using the "T" key. Although I dont always use it, sometimes when flying into a big hub like Heathrow in a complex plane with heavy weather, I will hit the "T" key, which kills all AI and gives a few FPS back, then once I land hit the "T" key again and traffic re-appears, like nothing ever happened.

Hi Toby,I use AI Aircraft that has been manually installed using various freeware providers. I also purchased (some time ago) UT2, I preferred the manually installed aircraft because they look better than some of the models provided by UT2. I was unaware of UT2's ability to Spawn AI down to 5 miles, this may be the deciding factor in removing my manually installed AI for UT2. I'll have to give that a try sometime today.Thanks

Toby,Something else you could try if you haven't already, is opening the JS41 config manager and try turning the refresh rates of the Right EHSI and EADI to 0% which essentially turns off those displays on the co-pilot side of the plane, in addition you could try setting the External Model and Virtual Cockpit Model both to Low, which will turn off the Icing effects and show no passgengers (External Model) and no Icing effect and Wings/Props (VC Model). Since I fly my JS41 from the left side (Capt), the right side displays aren't a necessity for me and having the passengers modeled aren't important to me either. Having those options turned off saved me around 5 to 10 FPS depending on where I am flying and they're easy adjustment to try since you can revert them back easily enough using the config manage.I think what Gary was talking about with his AI settings are a good idea also but are probably for bgl based AI, not UT2. You could probably recomplile your UT2 data base traffic schedules by importing bgl traffic plans with settings like Gary mentioned, but it would probably be very time consuming, especially if your not used to using TTools and working with traffic files.The good news is using UT2 you could always try setting your Distance to Spawn AI down to 5 miles that way if your in a city with other big hubs, it wont try to spawn traffic farther away. Another thing you could try as well when flying into very busy areas, is using the hot key in UT2 to turn off traffic, shut traffic off when on approach, then right when you land, turn it back on. I have assigned the "Stop Traffic" UT2 hotkey using the "T" key. Although I dont always use it, sometimes when flying into a big hub like Heathrow in a complex plane with heavy weather, I will hit the "T" key, which kills all AI and gives a few FPS back, then once I land hit the "T" key again and traffic re-appears, like nothing ever happened.

Hi Toby,I use AI Aircraft that has been manually installed using various freeware providers. I also purchased (some time ago) UT2, I preferred the manually installed aircraft because they look better than some of the models provided by UT2. I was unaware of UT2's ability to Spawn AI down to 5 miles, this may be the deciding factor in removing my manually installed AI for UT2. I'll have to give that a try sometime today.Thanks

Hey Mike, you can also easily, I mean very easily, swap any UT2 models and paints for other ones that you have been using in the UT2 UI. Although opinions vary on AI often here, frankly, I have always felt that the UT2 included models and paints look as good and sometimes even better than what is offerend as freeware or WOAI, but at times I have swapped out models/textures from the UT ones to others that I have downloaded and installed manually. All you have to do is go into the UT2 UI and load the airline that you want to mess with and select the a/c model you want to change. Once you do that, look on the right side of the UI and use the pull down menu to cycle thru the AI you already have installed and select the paint and model you want to replace it with and select it and press assign and your done. Just make sure to unassign the previous UT2 assigment to the same model/paint. I've had do do that with some of the UT2 cargo flights that had PAX models assigned to it. Most recently I noticed that Korean Air's cargo flight was showing up at KDFW as a PAX model, so I reassigned it to another model and paint that I had downloaded from Avsim.On the same subject of UT2, besides the Distance to Spawn you can also adjust the Altitude from which AI are visable on the ground as well. I think by default its set at around 18,000', but I changed mine to around 6000' feet since above that height you can't really see them on the ground anyways, especially if your flying and airliner.I'm still using a combo of UT2, WOAI, and custom built AI, since it seems no package available today covers everything down to things as small as feeder cargo.