Here is an addon I would like to see for FSX.the abiltity to change settings on the fly by prioritizationwhat do I mean?I would like to tell FSX that I want a min of 20 fps and no more then say 30ok, now I want to be able to tell FSX how it goes about giving that frame rate to meso the logic would go like this:if fps<>20 then:reduce autogen to no lower then normal (this setting would be by the user)then test again, still not 20 frames? then it would go onto the next criteria such as reduce water to no lower then low2.x and then retest again and so on and so on, but have the ability to allow the user to set up any criteria they want. maybe you would want the mesh to be reduced first, then the autogen, or whatever.this would be freakin' amazing..what would this allow?it would allow me to start in ksea with lowered settings and then as I fly out of the city, the frames would increase (naturally) but the graphics would automatically turn up in detail, without having to do a complete scenery load..

Great idea, Brian, but you'd need to get around sitting at KSEA with no jetways because the darn "auto-program" reduced the scenery complexity; I personally like to see a slew of aircraft around me, too - and the baggage carts... and so on... and that's just for starters: I'm sure others can think of more cons.... :(

You would spend more time looking at the loading screen than you would flying in certain situations because FSX cannot change the settings you are interested in changing without reloading the sim.

Interesting Concept but I think it would be more appropriately used by our Congress when trying to balance the budget. That way we would never face a fiscal crisis again...Just a thought...fisheye

This is a feature (or IMHO a drawback since it doesn't give you an option) of X-Plane. If your frames drop below 19fps, it will start reducing graphics. At first it will reduce visibility. If that's not enough to keep it above 19FPS it will gradually reduce number of objects. It will present you with a warning message before it does this, disrupting the flow of the flight you are on. As an optional addon I think it's a good idea, but I wouldn't want to see any version of FS like the upcoming FLIGHT, impose it like it is with X-Plane.

You would spend more time looking at the loading screen than you would flying in certain situations because FSX cannot change the settings you are interested in changing without reloading the sim.

It's possible to change many settings, like the Scenery Density slider, for example, in real-time without any pauses, by writing the values in memory directly. Another one that can be changed in real-time was the small_part_reject_radius, which can be used to control Autogen without triggering a reload.I made some experiments with this, do insert such features in the Addon Manager, but the results wasn't very nice to look at. Even without any pauses, just changing the Scenery Density slider in real-time, would make for several objects popping in/out in front of you instantly, without even taking into account distance (as in LOD). Autogen is the best example, the whole *point* of having Autogen is to give better depth and distance cues when approaching. Trouble is, it would be very likely than approaching on a complex airport, the fps would drop, maybe triggering an automatic Autogen reduction in the moment you want it more...Even if I abandoned the concept, we use some bits of these techniques in the Addon Manager to help fps with our sceneries. For example, at KDFW the technique used to allow FSX Shaders on ground has issues with airplane shadows, but only after a certain altitude. So, we automatically turn off/on the "Airplane cast shadows on ground" option over/under a preset trigger altitude before any visual artifacts would show up, and this also helps with fps quite a bit. When outside the scenery area, control of that option is given back to the user, but it's all automatic. Same we are doing with 4096 HD textures: other developers just write the value in the FSX.CFG, hoping the user would not touch graphic settings because otherwise FSX will put the default value to 1024, others have even written a software module to keep the FSX.CFG updated at every restart (there's even a free one that keep rewriting it every second...talk about inefficiency), but we write the correct value directly in memory only when needed, and there's no risk of having to restart FSX because the user has touched the settings, the 4096 textures would still be there...