Improving performance in FSX

[misfit832 0]

Hello all, (first post and all...) My problem is this: I have a fairly high endish computer but I cannot seem to make FSX run as smoothly as I would like.(AMD X6 1100T, GTX 570, 4Gb DDR3, Win7 x64) (addons: REX, ASE) I have read Nick N's guides, I am familiar with Bojote's tweaking tool, I am using the recommended nHancer settings... all in all, I know quite a lot about tweaking when it comes to FSX. But I'm sure that I don't know everything and even possibly have tweaked it a step too far (hence the "not running as smoothly...) With default planes I have no problems whatsoever. Even with REX's (+ overdrive) 4096 hi-res clouds and sparkling wave animation, FSX runs very smoothly (oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I use FPS limiter 0.2 with 30 FPS lock, FSX's own set to unlimited). But the problems start to arise with PMDG's planes. First I bought the MD-11 (what a fantastic aircraft that big thing is!), got nice FPS in VC. Then I got McPhat's HD liveries for the MD-11 and the problems started. Now whenever I use one of those HD liveries and transition to an outside view, the plane is all white (without textures) for about 3-4 seconds (and there's no sound either while white) and only then do the textures load. Oh, and they load in increments, not like all at a time. That's a major bummer because I like to use the outside views a lot while flying (yeah, that's why I got the paints...obviously). Is there any easy way to fix this? I do not have an SSD and buying one at the time is kind of out of the question. (I have read that slowly loading textures are cured with fast SSD disks) Second problem is with my other PMDG plane, the 737 NGX. (I didn't post this topic to the PMDG board because the problem is not with the planes, they work just fine.) I get really bad FPS with that plane. When I load up a flight and I'm on the runway before taking off, the FPS jumps from 12-24, constantly. (Without the limiter it's somewhere in the 23's, 24's but not higher.) And it definitely isn't smooth anymore, it's clearly stuttering and isn't fun to fly anymore. What do you suggest I must do to make the 737 run smoother?I'd hate to stop using ASE and/or REX since they're such great addons.

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

You'll have to make choices... hi-rez scenery and evironment and simpler planesor complex planes and simpler scenery... At some point, you are overloading your computer and adding an SSD will notfix this.. You may already have tried this, but best to go back to basics - only as a testand base line to work from: Rename your fsx.cfg file (and save it as a backup) and let FSX rebuild it, set fps to 30 and turn off all traffic.Start at a simple airport, like KTPA with Fair Weather settings. Now load your 737NG and see how it runs.. from there on, it is all about choices..

[Rocky_53 1,566]

Bert's on the money there. You have already said that it all runs smooth with default aircraft, then there's your answer. If I understand the only difference in your setup in what you're describing is the addon aircraft. The way I see it, and I read it everywhere, and I've been a culprit too, and that we all seem to expect FSX to perform in a particular way, not based on any specific benchmark but simply because we have the latest CPU or whatever and therefore we should be able to run with all sliders to the right. I'm not suggesting this is the problem, just an observation in general. It's difficult to have an opi9nion as I cannot see your rig, but my rig is in my signature. It's pretty hot, but in the PMDG I run my autogen at normal, with all other sliders at 100% regardless. I have all rex resolutions at 1024. Framecounter set in FSX at 30, water Low 2x, no ai traffic, no boats, 10% cars, no GA 35% airline density, cloud draw distance minimum, cloud coverage medium, no ground shadows, no aircraft shadows, no bloom, can't think of anything else. I have spent an amazing amount of time tweaking the cfg file, which in itself is something that should be done slowly, with only a single change at a time. Why not try these settings and let us all know how you get on. Post back with your rig specs too, cheers.

[Humpty 751]

Yes you need to balance your settings, some get good performance in complex scenery and some don't.

[misfit832 0]

Last night I was thinking that OK maybe I don't need to fly the 737 at the moment (maybe it's loaded with bugs and/or PMDG will optimize it a little further and then I'll be able to fly it better)... but then I noticed that different graphics started to flicker or blink or some other word (sorry, English is not my main language), like the terrain flashed really quickly with something other than the land texture. And I started thinking, OK I'm probably not going to fix it simply by reverting to a default fsx.cfg because I've also been changing the textures with REX a lot, adding addon planes, addon sceneries, etc. So I decided to start from scratch. Uninstall everything, defrag properly, install everything back (in an orderly fashion and not all at once), defrag again, and go on from there. Thanks for your answers by the way. I think you're very correct in what you say. Just because I can run Witcher 2 or Deus Ex Human Revolution maxed out with my PC, it doesn't mean that I can do the same with FSX. Which means only one thing, FSX's coding is really horrible. But that's just the reality I have to live with. After I've finished the rebuilding process I'll try your settings Rockliffe and report back with results. Oh, none of you said anything about the slow texture loading... is that something that can be fixed with a setting in fsx.cfg? (It's clearly related to heavy textures, like PMDG's 737 VC or McPhat's HD livery on the MD-11)

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

Which means only one thing, FSX's coding is really horrible.... Oh, none of you said anything about the slow texture loading... is that something that can be fixed with a setting in fsx.cfg? (It's clearly related to heavy textures, like PMDG's 737 VC or McPhat's HD livery on the MD-11)

Really horrible.... mmmm.... I understand your disappointment, but FSX actually works pretty darn nicely, until you load it upwith demanding add-ons Re texture loading, you increase the texture loading speed by increasing TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT= default is 40, Try 80 first which should work OK on most systems - you can even try 100 or 120, but at some point you get stutters..

[misfit832 0]

Really horrible.... mmmm.... I understand your disappointment, but FSX actually works pretty darn nicely, until you load it upwith demanding add-ons

I have to disagree with you. FSX was released in October, 2006. That was the time of Intel's Core 2 Duos and Nvidia GeForce 7900s. Now people have a whole lot more power in their PC's and still we have to think about performance issues. Just think about other more modern flight simulators, for example the DCS: A-10C, which looks gorgeous AND runs way better than FSX. Thanks for the tip though, I'll try the TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT= tweak when I can.

[Rocky_53 1,566]

Last night I was thinking that OK maybe I don't need to fly the 737 at the moment (maybe it's loaded with bugs and/or PMDG will optimize it a little further and then I'll be able to fly it better)... but then I noticed that different graphics started to flicker or blink or some other word (sorry, English is not my main language), like the terrain flashed really quickly with something other than the land texture. And I started thinking, OK I'm probably not going to fix it simply by reverting to a default fsx.cfg because I've also been changing the textures with REX a lot, adding addon planes, addon sceneries, etc. So I decided to start from scratch. Uninstall everything, defrag properly, install everything back (in an orderly fashion and not all at once), defrag again, and go on from there. Thanks for your answers by the way. I think you're very correct in what you say. Just because I can run Witcher 2 or Deus Ex Human Revolution maxed out with my PC, it doesn't mean that I can do the same with FSX. Which means only one thing, FSX's coding is really horrible. But that's just the reality I have to live with. After I've finished the rebuilding process I'll try your settings Rockliffe and report back with results. Oh, none of you said anything about the slow texture loading... is that something that can be fixed with a setting in fsx.cfg? (It's clearly related to heavy textures, like PMDG's 737 VC or McPhat's HD livery on the MD-11)

Hiya, your flickering textures and instruments have nothing to do with the power of your computer, this is solely down to your graphics card and what settings you have it set in the control panel. For what it's worth, most current thinking suggests that while a Nvidia GPU is better performing than it's ATI rival, it is however, less successful at antialiasing and filtering. My personal experience seems to confirm this as I have tried both cards. Are you running the GPU through Inspector? As for texture loading, you can experiment with the LOD radius in the cfg file. although it is not related directly to the loading of textures it will increase or decrease the radius that scenery is loaded and as such affect the loading times. One thing that can affect the loading of aircraft textures is if switching views from a 2D cockpit to an external view, this generally entails the external view to be loaded slower than if switching form a virtual cockpit view. When flying in a VC view, the external modelling has already been rendered so there is no delay when switching to the outside view. If switching from a 2D view, then the outside has to be rendered separately. Hope this helps, cheers. PS. let us know how you get on.

[Noel 4,486]

Really horrible.... mmmm.... I understand your disappointment, but FSX actually works pretty darn nicely, until you load it upwith demanding add-ons Re texture loading, you increase the texture loading speed by increasing TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT= default is 40, Try 80 first which should work OK on most systems - you can even try 100 or 120, but at some point you get stutters..

Put another way, FSX is an open platform that you can add so much stuff to it becomes just a matter of time before you overwhelm your hardware, OS, and configuration settings. The farther along we go, the more stuff we attach to it. In the end, you will always have to decide what to prioritize and when to stop seeking more than your platform can support. I do question the wisdom of running FSX in internal limited mode. Be curious to hear your take on comparing the two options of internal limit versus unlimited + an external limiter. Good luck! Noel

[Rocky_53 1,566]

Put another way, FSX is an open platform that you can add so much stuff to it becomes just a matter of time before you overwhelm your hardware, OS, and configuration settings. The farther along we go, the more stuff we attach to it. In the end, you will always have to decide what to prioritize and when to stop seeking more than your platform can support. I do question the wisdom of running FSX in internal limited mode. Be curious to hear your take on comparing the two options of internal limit versus unlimited + an external limiter. Good luck! Noel

100% agree Noel. We all get so wrapped up with framerates and CTDs etc etc, that we forget that there is only a finite amount of power/performance from any rig. As for the running framerate internally, I have done exhaustive tests with the external framerate limiter, with several different limiters, but sadly with no joy whatsoever. The results have varied from worse preformance to frozen FSX! So I guess it is just one more example of how every rig appears to be completely different

[Blaze 102]

I have a high end machine too at 4.9ghz,ssd's, fast ram, etc set up for FSX only and still can't/won't max everything out. When I run into an area that I have fps issues I've found that bumping a slider or two back a notch is the solution rather than having to make a choice to live without a premier add on. Knocking back my AI traffic, autogen, airport detail a notch usually does the trick for me. Also choosing a REX or FEX cloud set that is 2048 not super hi-def still looks great but helps get a few fps back.

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

I do question the wisdom of running FSX in internal limited mode. Be curious to hear your take on comparing the two options of internal limit versus unlimited + an external limiter.

For what it is worth, I found that the internal limiter causes more textures to be loadedin urban areas where the external limiter would leave visible low-rez areas.Maybe further tuning could have improved that, but other than running one CPU core at 100%all the time, I found no downside to using the internal limiter.

[Paul J 349]

.. same here, Bert: I also found that I get a hesitation every now and then, along with wildly fluctuating fps, and - having unreliable success with frames limiter 02 - I locked it at 30 (months ago) and she keeps it at that solid 29.9 almost all the time. SEA with the Maddog and good traffic bounces it down, between 24 and 30.

[Noel 4,486]

The results have varied from worse preformance to frozen FSX! So I guess it is just one more example of how every rig appears to be completely different

Indeed. I was seeking a utility that would lock frame rate after all processing was done in FSX in order to control surges in the video in certain scenarios while flying in FSX that vertical sync wasn't resolving. I posted a request for proposals and voila, Omzig responded that he had found a DX9 frame lock, and so I brought it to others' attention here. I installed it and the surges disappeared, and frame rate improved considerably. What is significant for some users, myself included, running in UNLIMITED mode affords better performance than limiting gets you in internal frame lock mode. Here's the test for this: Use UNLIMITED frame rate in FSX. Then set up a scenario that will stress your machine significantly so that she sits there around 20 fps or so. Now, change back to frames locked at 20fps. If your system is similar in this regard to mine, you will find your frames hovering maybe 15-20% UNDER what it was at UNLIMITED frame rate in the same scenario. I guess this is attributable to remixing how the various threads are managed that happens when the frame lock is on or off. All this aside, it's been a very long time since I've tried using the internal frame lock, and the comments here make me want to revisit it in case I misinterpreted events back then. Cheers

[misfit832 0]

OK, after a rather lengthy defrag process (man O&O does take it's time on a 700+Gb HD!) I finally got FSX installed and tweaked. At the moment I don't feel like going to the PMDG 737 NGX, the whole uninstall-install process was way too much work. I'm going to get everything else sorted out first. Like for instance steady FPS and no texture flickering, etc. -> Haven't tested the differences between external and internal frame limiter. I previously found that the internal limiter causes stutters, but that was on my previous PC.