Hi,I'm a little confused about what setting to have in FSX for the FPS, and I would have some suggestion from the experts here.If I set FPS to 30, almost never I get them effectively (between 18-24 in the 2D cockpit, between 13-18 looking from the wing views).If I set the FPS to unlimited, I regurarly exceed the 30 FPS (between 35-50 in the 2D cockpit, between 20-35 from the wing views).If I'm in a busy airport these values go for sure down, but if I have the unlimited FPS the values are anywya higher than with the limited setting.I didn't notice any difference also using the FPS limiter tool (may be worse)The effect of this is that with the unlimited setting I have some more micro-stuttering, but with the limited setting and when the FPS go down I have often a macro-stuttering effect.Having red in several posts that the best soultion should be to have the FPS set to limited (to have the PC resources well distributed), I would understand what I'm doing wrong or what I'm missing.My system specifications are:Intel i7/8708 GB RAMNvidia Geforce GX 470OS (Win7/64) on SATA Disk 7200 RPMFSX/SP2 on dedicated SATA Disk 10000 RPMMain installed Add Ons: GEX,UTX,REX,Scenery Tech Landclass, MyTraffic 5.3 PRO,ASE,FSK,FS Passengers XThanks in advance for the support and the suggestionsBest regards and happy flightsJoe

What you're observing is quite normal. We had a topic a while ago, where we discussed some advanced fsx.cfg testing, and I also found out that limiting the FPS setting in the FSX, no matter how much, sinks the actual FPS by a lot, usually as you observe around 30%.You can also set it to 99fps, you will still get 30% less.If you observe the CPU usage, you will notice it still is pretty much at 100% with the limiter turned on.But, if you use an external limiter, you get rid of the problem, you will get constant 30fps with external limiter at 30, but you will probably get slower texture loading.I did 101 tests on this matter, and concluded it's still better to use internal limiter.Observing the CPU usage with external limiter will show you drop of the maximum possible CPU usage, something like the FPS limiter would be limiting the CPU usage instead of actual FPS.The whole shabang is also one of the reasons why I switched back to FS9...You have pretty much the same system like mine, depending how high you clock your CPU, and 18-24 seems very low though, but it all depends what settings are you running.

The external limiter patches the Direct3D Present method. D3D rendering involves these calls from FSX to D3D per frame:- BeginScene() Here FSX can draw a new scene- EndScene()- Present() : Tells D3D to display what was drawnFPS Limiter will thus patch the Call to Present. The patched version first calls the original Present function and then sleeps the rendering thread until a new frame should be created to achieve the desired framerate. If all FSX does in the rendering thread is BeginScene/EndScene/Present then there should not be any side effects from using the external limiter, while indeed other threads do get more time to do their stuff.But if FSX does other things (between Present and BeginScene for instance), it might decide that it does not have enough time for that if the external FPS Limiter is taking away the processing time (while sleeping). No doubt FSX' internal frame limiter is also somewhere between the calls to Present and the next BeginScene call.Daniel

Hi,The effect of this is that with the unlimited setting I have some more micro-stuttering, but with the limited setting and when the FPS go down I have often a macro-stuttering effect.

I think this is pretty much the trade-off you make.. Some people even suggest using the limited setting in rural areas and the unlimited in busy areas - altogether too complicated for my taste.For my personal use, I've settled on the external limiter at 24. It lowers my CPU usage which means my processor runs cooler and it provides the best experience overall. On my [email protected] I cannot run "sliders to the right", but have decided to set freeway traffic to zero, got rid of all exit doors on AI airplanes to avoid airport gate animations, and am using the Affinity Mask=14 setting to separate the FSX flight threads from the scenery loading. No more tweaking, just flying! Your "compromise" may be different, but you'll have to settle on something that works best for you!

I use the external limiter set at 30 fps, just half the refresh rate of the monitor (60 Hz). I find I get slightly smoother results that way. I'm also using the GameBooster 2 beta, which also seems to help smooth things a little, as well as the autogen tweak. The latter is essentials for airports in cities.Cheers,Noel.

Gronden"The effect of this is that with the unlimited setting I have some more micro-stuttering, but with the limited setting and when the FPS go down I have often a macro-stuttering effect."Do you have vsync forced on? Apparently Vsync can halve the fps values when they fall below 60 fps and can cause stutters.If yes do you get the frame rate drop and microstuttering with vSync turned off.Have you tried - vsync forced on and turn on triple buffering?I do not limit my cpu in any way but if I did restrict the frame rates I would use an integer value of 60Hz (Monitor Refresh rate) ie 12, 15, 20, and 30, but with most modern fast cpu's (even with FSX) shouldn't need to be restricted.RegardsPeterH

Hi,thanks to all of you for the comments and the suggestion.To answer to some of you: I have the Vsync on: i will try to see what's happen turning it off or leaving it on and activating the triple buffering.I will try also to set the affinity mask to 14 (currently i have it at 255, but I have already red posts mentioning that this is absolutely useless in FSX)At the moment I prefer anyway to leave the FPS unlimited: after to have done some teawks I have found around here (increase poolsize and using the releated threshold, putting the texture_bandwidth_mult to 80, enabling the shader 3 to mention the most significant) I have noticed an incredible increase of the FPS even in busy areas, that I not able to reach limiting the FPS (with limit 30 I costantly have 14-20).A strange thing I have noticed is that launching FSX and in all the different views, at the beginning the FPS are low and after more or less 1 minutes they jump up (i.e from 24 to 60) and on a cycling base for few moments go down again to jump up immediately after. Is that normal?I have also the impression that using the external aircraft view I get some blurries: is that a side effect to have the unlimited FPS?Thanks again and best regardsJoe

A strange thing I have noticed is that launching FSX and in all the different views, at the beginning the FPS are low and after more or less 1 minutes they jump up (i.e from 24 to 60) and on a cycling base for few moments go down again to jump up immediately after. Is that normal?I have also the impression that using the external aircraft view I get some blurries: is that a side effect to have the unlimited FPS?Thanks again and best regardsJoe

When you first load fsx, scenery and stuff take some time to render/load and AI flight plans have to be loaded and the aircraft has to be put in the air. So yes, it would be normal for low fps when you first start up. Having blurries when using external aircraft views is not a side effect to unlimited fps as I do not get blurries and I have my fps set to unlimited. One of your scenery sliders is causing the blurries.Best regards,Jim

I have also the impression that using the external aircraft view I get some blurries: is that a side effect to have the unlimited FPS?

I believe this is just FSX trying to get all the textures lined up that you now want to look at. If you change your viewpoint repeatedly, you can induce quite a lot of blurries, so be gentle in terms of jumping around outside the aircraft.FSX can be slow to recover if you get the texture loading process in a jam...

Try the following:Add affinity mask = 15. For me, this setting eliminates blurries.Add a low Bufferpools # like 5000 or even 0. Try different settings.Set FSX to unlimited fps.Then, set external limiter to 30fps or if your system can handle it, 40 fps.On my system with AM=15, BP=0, FPS at Unlimited and the external limiter at 40 fps, I get smooth simulation even in extremely dense areas like Manhattan X in NYC.Good luck.