I have fresh install of FSX, on a fresh install of windows and I am currently playing around with various settings to get the right balance of performance and image quality. I would like to share my observations fro discussion and comment, especially in light of recent developments in graphics area of FSX.

 

My system is an unoverclocked at present i7 950, 6GB ram and 2 GTX580 in SLi, Dell 30 inch monitor. I have Orbx scenery installed currently , although used to (still am) a big fan of photoscenery. I use complex planes like the Superbug, Iris F-16, etc.

 

I am using all Word Not Allowed's suggested settings in my .cfg file, as well as some others generated by the Bojote tweaker tool. I use Word Not Allowed's Nvidia inspector settings.

 

With settings as Word Not Allowed recommended, I was struggling to keep to 30FPS, in the PNW, with rex overdrive clouds. Also, texture loading was not as it should be.So started adjusting settings.

 

I adjusted my texture max load to 400 ( I used to use this setting with photoscenery to great effect). Much better texture loading. Then I tried setting DX10 on. Instantly rock solid 30 FPS frames, with no hit for clouds. water looks a little OTT at max settings, so dialed that down. And really smooth. In the FSX GUI, I set filtering to tri linear and also checked antialiasing. In the free flight screen, the little preview window showed quite jaggy edges to the aircraft, but everything was super smooth in the game. So I tried playing with the various AA options in Nvidia inspector and found that whatever the setting, there was no appreciable difference in game to either performance, or the look of the sim. So, for me, as long as i can get the water looking good, DX10 seems the way to go.

 

I was running in windowed mode, so just for kicks, I switched to full screen. FPS no different, but big difference in the AA, it looked really terrible, even with 32xS AA set in Nvidia inspector. Switched back to windowed and back to everything looking groovy.

 

So thats the first question / discussion point - Why the massive performance improvement using DX10 and why does the AA setting seem to have no effect ? and what do you think is going on with the windowed mode behaviour?

 

second question, what is the perceived wisdom regarding the other .cfg file entries that the bojote tweaker generates, such as TEXTURE_QUALITY, TEXTUREMAXLOAD (not TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD), TransitionTime and SWAP_WAIT_TIMEOUT ? What do these do and are they needed ? If not, why does the bojote tweaker write them in?

 

 

Regards, Mark

Hi Mark,

 

to answer part of your first question, When using Inspector, 'uncheck' AA in FSX GUI.

 

As far as I know Inspector has no effect when running in DX10 preview mode. Remove the DX10 preview and see if your AA returns.

 

 

Ron.

Hi Ron, I will try that as suggested. That's interesting about inspector and DX10 - how / why does that work? inspector works at driver level and there are loads of DX10 games it works with.....

 

I do have AA, when using the in game check box, and it looks OK, it was just wierd to see it dissappear full screen.

 

I guess my point here is that all these little clues and behaviours are all just little pieces of the puzzle that is FSX and it's workings, even now, we are still finding new behaviours and new ways to tweak. 2 or 3 years ago when I was flying FSX fulltime, I spent ages tweaking settings to arrive at a good set up for using tile proxy and photoscenery, in fact if you dig back far enough on the simforums, you will see that NickN actually included my texture load at 400 for photoscenery setting in his guide, after he checked and found it did help. I discovered this in the tileproxy notes that Christian Buchner wrote and he knows a thing or two about FSX and its texture workings.

 

Re my texture loading, I still get some lag in loading the highest textures, but if I pause over a blurry area, it usually only takes a second or 2 to snap in. With texture load at 40, it was taking 10 -15 seconds. So I think there is further improvement to be had. I am sure that the other .cfg file entries I referred to have an as yet unknown effect and there is still some mileage to be gained from trying different combinations.

 

Finally, as some way of testing this, I guess I could use the FSXMark11 utility, yes?

 

Regards, Mark

The DX10 option in FSX is as stated only DX10 preview, my understanding is that it was never really sorted out. i have found it to be a complete waste of time and cause more problems than it's worth. One of the more bizarre issues has been the loss of textures, I have flown some of my 3rd party aircraft with the repainst missing but covered with an FSX Flight Simulator skin.

 

I have lost clouds and the sky be replaced with some kind of FSX flash screen effect. Propellors on some aircraft have hust become solid grey disks and one occasion I had clouds show up inside Bristol Extreme's terminal building.

 

Good luck my friend all I can say is good luck.

 

Wycliffe

Hi Mark,

 

I think it's maybe only AA that's not working with DX10,

I have been following two interesting threads both here and at Simflight, both very informative.

Not for me to tell you how to setup your system, you probably know more than me, but computers are constantly changing, with new video cards and higher specs.

What worked for older hardware, is not relevent to new high end cards. Some tweaks are now redundent with the huge video memory cababilities of modern hardware.

 

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/369500-adaptive-vsync-30fps-new-levels-of-smoothness-in-fs9x/

 

http://www.simforums.com/forums/different-scenarios-different-settings-thats-how_topic41798.html

 

It's a never ending game,

 

Ron.

I have not seen a single post that proves that AA is working with DX10 Preview.

Also, the name of it actually suggests its a "preview", it's not a fully functioning DX10 function.

Yes, DX10 is supposed to give more performance, of course, but it is broken.

 

About that 400 number... ehh, well, to each his own. I won't even go into discussion about that

Hi Ron, thanks for the links, I will take a look. As you say, never ending!!

 

Word Not Allowed, do you mean AA in general, or just driver based alterations such as using nvidia inspector. Because I definitely have AA working in game using DX10, as evidenced by the big difference when I switch from windowed mode that I described above, I am just not sure whether what I am seeing is the FSX DX10 preview version of AA, that cant be altered by inspector etc or AA generated by inspector. I did notice that whatever setting I chose using inspector, appeared to make no difference.

I am wondering if this is SLi related in some way? What were your thoughts re the other tweaks question I raised ? Finally, do you have any update on those SLI settings you were working on for nvidia inspector?

 

All I can say regarding the DX10 graphical issues, is that my FSX looks fantastic, the only graphics related issue I can see is that the highly reflective water looks a bit weird in some situations, but I guess that can be tweaked. I am just posting this in case it helps anyone else who has my kind of set up and wants to see if works for them.

 

In relation to the multiplyer number Word Not Allowed, load up some photoscenery and try it out.....it works! I was just surprised to see that it also helped using Orbyx scenery and autogen on my new set up, as it was not as effective before - I used 3 different .cfg files depending on what type of scenery I was using and swapped them in and out with a little batch file I wrote. I was hoping that with your obvious knowledge and experience in these areas, perhaps we could find out some further helpful tweak settings.

 

I think I will post up some screenshots and maybe some in game video to show you all what I am talking about...

 

Whats the latest best way to capture in game video, still Fraps? It used to cane my framerates 2 years ago...

 

Finally it would be really helpful if you could comment on the question regarding the the other tweak lines Word Not Allowed.

 

Regards, Mark

Word Not Allowed, do you mean AA in general, or just driver based alterations such as using nvidia inspector. Because I definitely have AA working in game using DX10

 

Only the driver based alterations. Of course, the ingame switch is working. That is software based and quite easy to implement.

 

Finally, do you have any update on those SLI settings you were working on for nvidia inspector?

 

Yep. Posted about 10 minutes ago.

 

and try it out.....it works!

 

OK, what should I be looking at?

 

Finally it would be really helpful if you could comment on the question regarding the the other tweak lines Word Not Allowed.

 

Not much to comment. Not using them, nor did I ever seen a real benefit of using them. Less tweaks means less sim breaking.

Hi Word Not Allowed, I think I agree with you there about the less tweaks the better - its logical that at some point one or other of them is going to start working against the others. I was just curious as the Bojote tweak site ( which was the hot tweak set up 2 years ago) introduced all these extra lines and if its the case that they are not needed, I wondered what they did and why he used them......

 

So, less is more then.

 

I will check out the sli settings thread now, thanks.

 

Re the multiplyer, just check how quickly blurry textures snap into focus by flying over the same area. I started at 90 and worked my way up to 400 and it kept improving. I hasten to reiterate this was with photoscenery and no autogen. After I found this, just by trial and error, I read the very same recommendation in the tileproxy documentation, which is essentially photoscenery

 

Cheers, Mark

Re the multiplyer, just check how quickly blurry textures snap into focus by flying over the same area.

 

Before I do, I know I did some testing around photoscenery, and have always been seeing sharp textures.

Are you using external limiter maybe?

Hi Word Not Allowed, no external limiter, frames set at 30 in the sim, your inspector settings and .cfg settings, just altered the multiplyer number. Oh, and I usually fly jets, like the superbug but low, so I am usually at 300kts, not bubbling around in a cessna at 150..!! This is when you notice whether the textures are keeping up or not!!

 

BTW, can you link to the SLi settings post, I cant find it now,,,,,,,

 

Cheers, Mark

Yes, me too, usually testing with the Learjet at some 400kts (*realism off )

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/373069-sli-test-results/

Hi Word Not Allowed, wondered if you had managed to try the TBM 400 setting yet?

 

rgds,Mark

Hi Word Not Allowed, wondered if you had managed to try the TBM 400 setting yet?

 

rgds,Mark

 

In fact I did some tests. Not really sure about results, because they have to be done in a sim, and measuring texture loading in the sim is very very hard. I usually do it by fast slewing for couple of seconds, then see how fast terrain is loading. I noticed faster loads when using 400. We are talking about seconds here, like, one takes 15 seconds to fully load, another 10, or so...

 

I shall possibly to some photoscenery testing too.

 

But then again, I never have such need for texture loading while flying normally. Using 40, I never have problems when flying NGX or any other airliner. All my textures are always sharp. Be that photoscenery around KDFW and FSDT KDFW when landing a PMDG 747 or NGX, or a simple scenery in Austria and around Europe.

400 seems to be faster, but I question the fluidity of the sim and stuttering possibility. But no way to test this for real...

 

So, I decided to keep 40, or alternatively 80 as this has been accepted as "non-stuttering" number, even by Phil Taylor back in his days with his calculations. As long as my sim works fine, and I have no stutters and no blurries, why would I go into changing any default numbers? Less tweaks lately for me usually means more. That is why I said in my tutorial to remove all Bojote's tweaks, as for me, they threw my FSX totally out of balance.

That is why I said in my tutorial to remove all Bojote's tweaks, as for me, they threw my FSX totally out of balance.

 

His tweaks were useful 2 years ago with the old gen i7's.