Automated Tweaking and Tuning tool for FSX

[Pete Dowson 558]

I suggest the following: When you have a problem with stuttering try to determine if the cause is autogen or regular scenery objects

At this Heathrow it isn't autogen -- I can twiddle autogen anywhere between zero and dense without much noticeable difference to frame rates or stuttering.

Lower Image Complexity, if this fixes it, then a 'particular' 'object' or missing texture is causing trouble. Try to determine 'which' object this is. Or enable this settings to see if a missing texture could be the cause:

[sCENERY]MissingLibraryAlert=1ShowMissingTextureAlert=1

Okay, that may be useful. Thanks.RegardsPete

[acoma 0]

******* - First of all thanks for the new effort. Your stuff has made a large difference in the FSX community. I have what is now a low-end system that was set up for FS-9 and has limped into FSX.Intel Q6600 quad @ 2.40 GhzW7 32 bit with 3 Gb usable DDR2 memory @ 800MhzGeForce 8800GT 512 MbI fly mostly FTX NA PNW and only by using some of your earlier tweak suggestions. Otherwise I would be unable to fly FTX scenery. I tried your program first at the normal setting and found it gave me much smoother performance without too much loss in FSX features although my system still has FSX performance issues that no amount of tweaking can overcome. I tried it again in the aggressive mode using the cfg file from the 1st effort and it pretty much took away most of my autogen, texture resolution, mesh resolution, and left me with some very uninteresting scenery. Perhaps aggresive was a little too aggresive for my old system! I will go back to the first cfg file you created for me and keep experimenting as you make changes in your software.You added a cfg line new to me - I haven't seen it in the FSX forum which I watch pretty carefully - MAX_ASYNC_BATCHING_JOBS. What does it do?Thanks again for all that you've done for us.Jim S.

[bojote 20]

MAX_ASYNC_BATCHING_JOBS. What does it do?

Autogen in SP2 is batched, it happens in the background. The process is quite CPU intensive, but doesn't affect your frames because is not running in the main scheduler. Batching occurs based on your surrounding scenery. The faster this ocurrs, the more chance you have of autogen poping at once and not in stages (which looks unrealistic).MAX_ASYNC_BATCHING_JOBS tells the FSX engine what is the MAX number of threads that can be used for autogen batching. I set this based on your Affinity. So that ALL of your TEXTURE manager threads do batching. Default is 1, Max is 4.It's a setting that will prove beneficial ONLY when you are flying into dense autogen scenery or flying too fast. Check my videos in the previous page, see how autogen is always loaded and not popping up.

[Pete Dowson 558]

Hi again *******,Using your scenery missing texture parameters in the CFG, for UK2000 Heathrow V2 I get these textures missing:BLANK.BMP.BMP _LM.BMPwhich all appear to be rubbish names to me. This appears to mean that there's some sort of corruption in one or other of the BGLs.Problem now is isolating it to the right one, then working out what to do about it.First off I'm going to create such files to see if stopping the error makes any performance difference.RegardsPete

[bojote 20]

First off I'm going to create such files to see if stopping the error makes any performance difference.

And, don't forget to look for the 'objects/textures' that due to size are probably causing stutters/low FPS. Like I said, with your hardware is easier for you to spot performance problems easier than the actual developer! One good way I use to troubleshoot problems is using my laptop over the network using the perftool app. You can monitor your Desktop performance remotely. You only need to have the Ultimate or Enterprise version of Win7 on the server, and start the Remote registy service and the performance tools and logs.. (not sure if there's more that need to be active) then run perftool from your laptop to 'add' counters. You'll have a nice graph with all kind of info about what happens on the desktop so you can spot CPU spikes when panning around, CPU queue lenght, disk, memory.. everything. I can spot 1-2% variations in CPU usage using FS Recorder tracks looping. Thats how I can know exactly what impact each option have on performance.

[Pete Dowson 558]

And, don't forget to look for the 'objects/textures' that due to size are probably causing stutters/low FPS. Like I said, with your hardware is easier for you to spot performance problems easier than the actual developer!

Hmm. not sure what to look for there.I tried adding files calledBLANK.BMP.BMP _LM.BMPby renaming copies of the smallest BMP file in that folder, but of course Windows won't let me name a file 2.xxx. .." without the filename part, so I failed miserably there. Seems you have ot have a program create such files, Explorer doesn't allow it!

One good way I use to troubleshoot problems is using my laptop over the network using the perftool app. You can monitor your Desktop performance remotely. You only need to have the Ultimate or Enterprise version of Win7 on the server, and start the Remote registy service and the performance tools and logs.. (not sure if there's more that need to be active) then run perftool from your laptop to 'add' counters. You'll have a nice graph with all kind of info about what happens on the desktop so you can spot CPU spikes when panning around, CPU queue lenght, disk, memory.. everything. I can spot 1-2% variations in CPU usage using FS Recorder tracks looping. Thats how I can know exactly what impact each option have on performance.

Ah, *******, this is getting too much for me. Even if I saw all that I wouldn't know what to do about it.When are you coming to Europe? Please do come and visit me in England, and help me with this system. We've got a nice bedroom ready for you, and my wife's cooking is really delicious. Can I tempt you? ;-)BestPete

[bojote 20]

When are you coming to Europe? Please do come and visit me in England, and help me with this system. We've got a nice bedroom ready for you, and my wife's cooking is really delicious. Can I tempt you? ;-)

It will be an honor ;) I'll pay you a visit sometime! probably it will be tweaking MS Flight and not FSX anymore... oh boy, I think I'm not the only one with OCD here lol.

[Guest Devrij]

I hope this hasn't already been posted, but apologies if it was (didn't see it).The tool suggests I install the shader 3.0 mod, but I already have it installed using your installer tool (I did confirm the entries in my cfg file). Hope that helps!Great tool btw, although I think setting my ati 5850 as a 4xx series card may have been a bit ambitious and the AI traffic was a bit too much for my system. Having always had the slider near the bottom of the scale up til now it's now made me want to have it higher though. Traffic is fun!

[ABE 0]

*******,Thank you very much for your tremendous contribution. The first alteration was successful. I am planning on trying it again and again, hope this won't be a problem and is PERMISSABLE.Thanks again, *******.Abe

[vgbaron 3,696]

******* - Ran the tool again and it dropped the TextureMaxLoad to 6 - however - the microstutters continued when panning with TrackIR and in fact, when I switched to spot view and started a slow turn I got definite pauses during the turn. Went back to original cxfg file - all is well.One other thing I noticed, using my original cfg the autogen buildings pop in more frequently than when using your cfg. Not an issue but just a difference.Vic

[NetNinja 14]

*******,Compliments on your professional effort. I read the previous posts regarding comment preservation & ordering. Just to add a bit more feedback for your consideration here.... I utilize a freeware tool called WinMerge for comparing line differences between two similar files. Please consider keeping the exact same order as the original, at least to the extent possible, to facilitate a quick comparison between the original and tuned results. Thanks!-Ed

[bojote 20]

******* - Ran the tool again and it dropped the TextureMaxLoad to 6 - however - the microstutters continued when panning with TrackIR and in fact, when I switched to spot view and started a slow turn I got definite pauses during the turn. Went back to original cxfg file - all is well.One other thing I noticed, using my original cfg the autogen buildings pop in more frequently than when using your cfg. Not an issue but just a difference.Vic

Vic, will it be ok if I take a look at your FSX file? you can either PM the actual file or PM the URL where the backup is.

[Ben Johnson 3]

*******,Thank you for your hard work and dedication to this wonderful addicition ( I mean hobby) we all have! I have tried the tuning tool and have implmented the suggestions and I do see a improvement in smoothness.Thanks again,Bob Lyddy

[MindYerBeak 73]

I tried the tool. Sim feels smooth but I get a couple of annoying "burps" every couple of minutes.I only flew for max 5 mins at a time so not sure if the system crashes on longer flights-Whenever i tried you other tweaks the sim would be smooth for a little while and then religiously crash every time... so not sure this is the case with the tool. specs i7 980x @4.27, gtx480, 6 gb 7-7-7-24what do you suggest ?ThanksVic

Update. Yesterday i tried the too..l with the bonanza and the duke the results seemed promising even if i got those little burps very often.Today I'm testing with the pmdg 747.The results...nasty... bad stutters..with the fps limiter on...a bit better without the limiter. Since I mostly fly the pmdgs and leveld these tweaks are not for me. Thanks for taking the time anyway.Vic

[Tomaz Drnovsek 440]

Don't know why but I also get stutters with FPS Limiter. It's actually better for me to use unlimited without it but even better if I limit internally.. the only downside (as always with FS, there must be a downside if there's an "upside") I loose a lot of FPS doing that and flying in EHAM with PMDG is not fun at all.. if I set it to unlimited without limiter.. well, pretty reasonable performance. With limiter... bad stutters. It's probably something I'm not doing right.