1,000,000 hours later - FINALLY decent FPS in FSX!

[Robert McDonald 167]

I don't know how many of you have felt my pain - but I'm betting its a big number of fellow pilots! I have been grappling with terrible frames in FSX - even on a 'high end' system, and have spent innumerable hours on this - robbing me of sleep, sanity and peace of mind!

 

The usual suspects were under the microscope, including NVidia Inspector, the GTX580 drivers, ******* (Mary and Joseph) Bojote's Venetubo site, and a lot of good advice from across the web and right here on AVSIM.

 

SOMEHOW I finally got suspicious of Ultimate Terrain X (UTX) after reading about issues caused by "night lighting" and "cars" in said program. I tried the instant disable feature of UTX, and guess what? Nighttime frames jumped up to equal daytime frames, and at a complex airport like FSDreamteam's KLAX, no less!

 

In my case, frames are far more important than seeing the blocky cars making square turns and driving across each other on the UTX 'improved' landclass map :Peace: Honestly, and this isn't meant as criticism, but when you see the freeways and traffic in XPlane 10 - am I the only guy who wants to throw my FSX system through the window? Now I will say that the SCENERY and the rest of the 'world' in XPlane10 has a LONG way to go - and PMDG needs to be made available for it as well - but since ACES disbanded, I am pinning my hopes for 'the next generation Flight Simulation platform' on XPLANE, possible XPLANE11?

 

At any rate, I turned off ALL the night lighting features of UTX and the 'freeways and sideroads' vehicles - for whatever it's worth.

 

Sidebar (off topic) Also solved the "disappearing traffic in Avilasoft's Electronic Flight Bag (EFB) by returning all Squawkbox 4 settings to DEFAULT, and disabling Ultimate Traffic 2. Since I fly "online" (VATSIM) 99.9% of the time, all the Ultimate Traffic 2 was good for was when I wanted to produce YouTube videos. In actual flight simulation - the UT2 traffic was useless to me - and the fact that somehow I messed up the settings in Squawkbox merely added more hours upon hours of troubleshooting before I got a wild idea to try returning all of the SB4 settings to 'default' and enabling mulitplayer mode. Joy!

 

Hopefully these little nuggets may prove useful to those struggling with very poor frames in high-density scenery areas, and (in my case) having big time frames loss at NIGHT. It got so bad (before my 'discovery' today) that I had about given up flying at night into complex airports (payware airports) because of the stuttering and freeze ups - and on an i2600K at 4.7GHZ no less.

[CoolP 283]

Seems like you've found your settings. Now enjoy FSX. Nice thread title by the way. ^_^

[vgbaron 3,590]

Glad you got it sorted. The UTX settings 'tweak" has been around for quite a while but that's the problem with so many different possiblities - it's way too easy to miss an important one. Somewhere down in the guts of NickN's tweak guide he goes through UTX features and some other stuff that need to be disabled to optimize performance. Moving traffic was right up there on the list.

[Boeing or not going 578]

I also have disabled moving traffic from the first time I installed, but I do like the addon airport sceneries that have moving traffic around their airports. Really adds to the realism on approach.

[Robert McDonald 167]

Yes - it's a tradeoff when you disable some of the functionality. Once you finally get those frames to lock in at about 30 'almost all the time' life brightens up considerably. There are so many places to turn wrenches inside FSX - it's mind-numbing. NickN is quite the valuable resource, as is ******* Bojote and our own AVSIM staff and membership-all of these aid the struggling pilot to worm his or her way towards 'as real as it gets' with decent frames rates.

 

For my part- I love the moving traffic - boats, cars, ships and the night lights. Yet in actual flight, no-stutters and great FRAPS recordings are priorities over the additional eye-candy. With all the garbage "ON" I saw frame rates at high density airports at night drop down to 13, 12, 10... not so great, huh? Turn on FRAPS to record scenes and dropped still more. Just grateful I found settings that give great visuals in real-time AND during recording! I can live without the funky cars driving through each other and making square turns.

 

Oh man, XPlane10 freeways... NOW THAT is something!

[Tom Allensworth 1,532]

Robert, if you have been working on this for 1,000,000 hours... I have two things to say. You spend waaaaaay too much time in this hobby, and there is a "drama queen" streak that runs deep within you. :LMAO:

[Noel 4,492]

SOMEHOW I finally got suspicious of Ultimate Terrain X (UTX) after reading about issues caused by "night lighting" and "cars" in said program.

 

I got on to that years ago when I noticed the predicted impact rate for those features. So even w/ my non-high end system I still enjoy very good performance.

[Robert McDonald 167]

Robert, if you have been working on this for 1,000,000 hours... I have two things to say. You spend waaaaaay too much time in this hobby, and there is a "drama queen" streak that runs deep within you. :LMAO:

 

You're right, Tom. I of course exaggerated the number of hours... it was no where near 1 million... more like 875,000. Seriously--I lost quite a bit of sleep trying to figure it out...even after doing the Word Not Allowed-suggested research across the web... my results still were way off, until I shut off the night lights and cars. I wrote this post with a big dramatic title bar to try to jump out to others who might have been similarly afflicted and unaware of what I consider a "wow" solution...

 

It's such a pity that ACES is no more... it was my dear hope that FLIGHT would be more XPlane10 insofar as upping the ante on the freeways and roads...what I regard as a serious weakness in what is otherwise pretty cool scenery in FSX.

 

Opps. Gotta head out the door to drama class! :Just Kidding:

 

I got on to that years ago when I noticed the predicted impact rate for those features. So even w/ my non-high end system I still enjoy very good performance.

 

I saw the 'predicted' rate but never put 2 and 2 together. I have added so much "stuff" to FSX, it's kind of amazing, really. Now I am much more reluctant to buy add ons - because of the threat of performance 'hit'.

 

Watch for my upcoming article on AvilaSoft Electronic Flight Bag- another 'stellar' add-on (IMHO).

[GBOLS 2]

I recently got to the stage of FSX running brilliantly and was filled with a strange urge to unplug the PC, shrink-wrap it and put it in a safe in a concrete bunker in case I mucked anything up! It was a momentary attack of 'Flight Sim Anxiety Syndrome' which I developed four years ago after reaching the same stage with FS9 and suffering a hard-drive failure the very next day. I love this hobby...I really do!Lol.

[Robert McDonald 167]

I recently got to the stage of FSX running brilliantly and was filled with a strange urge to unplug the PC, shrink-wrap it and put it in a safe in a concrete bunker in case I mucked anything up! It was a momentary attack of 'Flight Sim Anxiety Syndrome' which I developed four years ago after reaching the same stage with FS9 and suffering a hard-drive failure the very next day. I love this hobby...I really do!Lol.

 

It's funny- like you - I fear 'losing it', and am constantly creating full system images... I think I will create a 'master' and put it in a vault...because, all kidding aside, I don't know HOW LONG it would take if I ever had to 'start over' and re-create and re-install everything... not to mention the pain of digging up the product license keys for each and every add-on...

[TheDanger 182]

I don't know HOW LONG it would take if I ever had to 'start over' and re-create and re-install everything... not to mention the pain of digging up the product license keys for each and every add-on...

It took me a day to reinstall Win7/FSX.

 

The longest part is the defrag.....takes friggin' hours to complete 3 passes.