The wrong bufferpools setting affects FSX. I have to set mine really low BP=3000 in order to achieve the smoothest sim and highest fps.I still have to lock the fps with the external limiter. I really need all the additional fps I can get and locking fps in fsx decreases fps from 5-10 fps.I'm not saying that one should focus on fps, the key "smoothness." This is the result of properly configured hardware, FSX tuning, and some tweaking.

Interesting info DJJose. I was using Nick's guide to the T, and I was using the external limiter. I have good FPS but not smooth flight. I will try with a low BP setting to see. I guess you did not set BP to be 0? I suppose smoothness is subjective and depends on each person. I was going from Core 2 Duo to Core 2 Quad and then now on an i7-950. I upgrade HW every two years, but I wonder whether you will hit a diminishing return especially if one have high FPS but still have annoying stutters. Vu

What about update services running in the background?Antivirus, Java, Google, Adobe, Malwarebytes, Trojan remover, SpyBot, etc. etc.I found something over at forum.notebookreview - (I have a laptop Asus G73JH) - interesting read..."Tip for AMD GPU users for stutter/lag" http://forum.noteboo...tutter-lag.html

Nick's guide dealt with removing unnecessary services, and I did not have any, reduced to the bare bone essential. Using FSX frame limit did the trick for me. I will try DJJose suggestion and report back.Vu

Frame limit inside FSX is maybe the solution, a comment from "over there" http://www.simforums...topic37713.htmlSorry about the spamming of Nick-stuff, some very ego-sensitive people here don´t like it...

Hey guys-I wanna be clear on how I define stutters:Water-in-motion smooth -absolutely no stutters with NO joystick I/O lagSmooth -an occasional texture-load pause (HDD indicator lights up) with some I/O lag but otherwise NO stuttersMicro stutters -micro pauses despite solid FPS -textures already in ramStutters -looks like a photo slide show despite solid FPS -IE, solid 60 fps mixed in with an occasional fps dip into the teens.Chunky -single digit FPS with excessive joystick lag/latencyNow my FSX use:I only fly the PMDG MD11. I only fly into and out of the popular payware North American airports. I do use ENB light bloom, Rex, FSGenesis and WOAI -airline AI is 100% and all major carriers are loaded.So how would I describe my FSX performance ....Smooth I don't use a frame rate limiter or vsync. Instead I add or subtract FSX eye candy to control/balance system load <-----this is in the spirit of what Nick and ******* are try to accomplish. Is my system config bullet proof? The short answer is no. At cruise altitude I do have to confine myself to the cockpit or risk an FSX lock up, as my fps can sky rocket to as high as 200 fps using the external camera views ....switching camera views while doing 200 fps is asking for trouble, as some of you well know.Now, water-in-motion smooth is possible on my machine, as I said in a earlier post it is truly spectacular. However, I do like the ai traffic -lots of it, Rex and other goodies, so I did have to sacrafice the "water-in-motion" smooth for just plain "smooth". Again, one can achieve "smooth" on almost any machine, but a 5.0 GHz machine gives you more options to play with.

Water-in-motion smooth -absolutely no stutters with NO joystick I/O lagSmooth -an occasional texture-load pause (HDD indicator lights up) with some I/O lag but otherwise NO stuttersMicro stutters -micro pauses despite solid FPS -textures already in ramStutters -looks like a photo slide show despite solid FPS -IE, solid 60 fps mixed in with an occasional fps dip into the teens.Chunky -single digit FPS with excessive joystick lag/latency

I believe it is all in balancing your system to your FSX complexityand the other way around... this involves trade-offs..Even on a non-extreme system, I can get Water-in-motion smooth flight..- fps limited in FSX at 30- no highway traffic- limited (30%) traffic settings for other and exit doors removed in AI aircraft- lod radius at 5.5 for better visuals- affinity mask = 12- 8XSQ AA and pre-render frames = 1 in nvidia inspector- FSX on dedicated SSD- GA aircraft (RealAir, Carenado, Flight1) with RXP gauges- Orbx PNW and RMN scenery with Victoria and Vancouver+Asus P5K, [email protected], Asus GTX 460 1GB, 4 GB Kingston RAM, WD Caviar HD, Kingston SSD

I believe it is all in balancing your system to your FSX complexityand the other way around... this involves trade-offs..Even on a non-extreme system, I can get Water-in-motion smooth flight..- fps limited in FSX at 30- no highway traffic- limited (30%) traffic settings for other and exit doors removed in AI aircraft- lod radius at 5.5 for better visuals- affinity mask = 12- 8XSQ AA and pre-render frames = 1 in nvidia inspector- FSX on dedicated SSD- GA aircraft (RealAir, Carenado, Flight1) with RXP gauges- Orbx PNW and RMN scenery with Victoria and Vancouver+Asus P5K, [email protected], Asus GTX 460 1GB, 4 GB Kingston RAM, WD Caviar HD, Kingston SSD

Good call on the exit doors, I'll try the tweak. I've been spending a lot of time tweaking AI aircraft and gate assignments over the past few days. This due to the signifcant changes in aircraft types and gate assignments at the real KSFO over past few weeks.Oh, I too use LOD (6.5), not so much for the visuals but to actually help with stablity....helps bring down FPS at cruise altitude.

How do we remove the exit doors in AI Aircraft?Remove the whole default AI bgl would help a lot, or??

How do we remove the exit doors in AI Aircraft?Remove the whole default AI bgl would help a lot, or??

In my case, I only use the default FSX AI airplanes andedited their aircraft.cfg files. No exit doors means nogate movement (and no calculations when you get into range of the next airport..)

Frame limit inside FSX is maybe the solution, a comment from "over there" http://www.simforums...topic37713.htmlSorry about the spamming of Nick-stuff, some very ego-sensitive people here don´t like it...

No need to apologize for posting "Nick-stuff", PFL. However, I don't know who or why you would label anybody here as ego-sensitive. That title seems to go to NickN himself based on quotes like the one below that continue to pop up out of the woodwork. Yes, the quote is from the thread you linked. Sitting on his throne over at simforums and brainwashing his following into thinking that the AVSIM forum is a joke does nothing to advance the hobby. It's completely unprofessional! Whatever beef this guy has is from years ago... long before I and many others even joined AVSIM. I think he needs to pull whatever it is out of his ___ and go back to contributing advice without the spite. If he has some sound advice with an explanation that helps others to understand FSX better, great! But his simple observations are no more valuable than the next guy.Honestly, just don't blindly take anybody's word as the gospel. Try it for yourself and see what works. Sorry to derail your thread, Vu.

the tweak threads at AVSIM are a mile long with people returning for more/another tweak, or, 'change my settings' posts. I have yet to see it stop with a list of fully satisfied users. Some say they are and one, two or three weeks later they are back with another issue, or later they post to a developer (and waste real time and money) their aircraft does not work right,... to find out its some "god be blessed" automated online tweak tool, or, 'miracle shader hack' Its a never ending crock of crap is what it is...

No need to apologize for posting "Nick-stuff", PFL. However, I don't know who or why you would label anybody here as ego-sensitive. That title seems to go to NickN himself based on quotes like the one below that continue to pop up out of the woodwork. Yes, the quote is from the thread you linked. Sitting on his throne over at simforums and brainwashing his following into thinking that the AVSIM forum is a joke does nothing to advance the hobby. It's completely unprofessional! Whatever beef this guy has is from years ago... long before I and many others even joined AVSIM. I think he needs to pull whatever it is out of his ___ and go back to contributing advice without the spite. If he has some sound advice with an explanation that helps others to understand FSX better, great! But his simple observations are no more valuable than the next guy.Honestly, just don't blindly take anybody's word as the gospel. Try it for yourself and see what works. Sorry to derail your thread, Vu.

ROFLI can't believe he's ripping *******. I've probably learned more 'bout what makes FSX tick reading ******* posts than most anyone else combined, and I've learned a lot from others, too.

cmeeks wrote:"But his simple observations are no more valuable than the next guy."Wrong, very, very wrong!!People here are sensitive, too many "wanna-be guru´s" - but no substance in the advise...Look at his latest posts about OOM´s - you cannot find this kind of sharp and precise advise here, it´s simply not allowed, too many commercial members would stop it!!http://www.simforums.com/forums/fsx-and-4gb-limit_topic39269.html

cmeeks wrote:"But his simple observations are no more valuable than the next guy."Wrong, very, very wrong!!People here are sensitive, too many "wanna-be guru´s" - but no substance in the advise...Look at his latest posts about OOM´s - you cannot find this kind of sharp and precise advise here, it´s simply not allowed, too many commercial members would stop it!!http://www.simforums.com/forums/fsx-and-4gb-limit_topic39269.html

+1!ROTFLMAO after I read NickN's posts in that thread!Cheers,- jahman.

cmeeks wrote:"But his simple observations are no more valuable than the next guy."Wrong, very, very wrong!! People here are sensitive, too many "wanna-be guru´s" - but no substance in the advise... Look at his latest posts about OOM´s - you cannot find this kind of sharp and precise advise here, it´s simply not allowed, too many commercial members would stop it!! http://www.simforums...topic39269.html

The distinction between observation and advice with substance is exactly what I was trying to make. PFL, you have managed to find an example of both. Good job! Your original link is an example of no substance in advise. Nick didn't really explain why the FPS limiter doesn't work, thus his advice is no more valuable than your or my advice.

"The Meek(s) shall inherit the FS World"!Picking on small details, aren´t we?I 100% prefer Nick´s "guesswork" - be it the FPS Limiter, Bojote tweaks etc. - instead of listening to the fumbling around blindfolded "experts" here.!

For the record:The only reason I don't use the external fps limiter is becuase it doesn't work side by side with the ENBSeries LightBloom, otherwise I'm using it -200 fps with a complex aircraft is asking for trouble, and that's just one reason for the FPS limiter. Oh, and I do believe there's a time NOT to recommend the external FPS limiter (I've never found the internal limiter to be helpful, for any reason), and that is as an answer for stutters or other problems associated with an improperly tuned system. Too many times I've seen the limiter recommended as a cheap and easy answer for problems the limiter is simply not designed to address.

Thank you all for replying. The later part of the thread is "interesting", if only MS still support FSX, so we can all call them up and ask! Anyway, with DJJose idea, I found this combination works best for me and my criteria of smoothness, meaning no micro pause whatsoever (ok, not, but the micro stutters showed up much much less in frequency):Disable bufferpools (UsePools=0) , using FSX internal rate limit set to 30. Now I am happy until the next HW upgrade ;)Vu