I tried out the demo version of UK2000 Heathrow Extreme airport. I tested with the Siamachetti SF260 addon plane taking of from 27L. I have no other addon scenery in Europe. With default EGLL I got about 20 fps on the ground raising somewhat in the air and only slight stuttering occasionally. Autogen sparse and other slider about middle or somewhat higher. But AI traffic airliners was at 80% and GA 25%. After installing this addon fps dropped to single digits and stuttering was severe. Fps recovered somewhat in the air. Is the reason for this that the airport is situated in the big city London. Or must I expect these tremendous hit on performence on other addon airports? I unistalled it and instead installed the free version. Then the hit on performence was only slight and the airport scenery is still clearly better than default EGLL. Fps in the 10s and raising in the air only slight stuttering.

Then I tried lowering the autogen to none contrary to advice of the opposite that I have read. It should actually lower fps I have heard. My experience was the opposite. Fps went up to 30. No significant improvement on stuttering though. I would have prefered the other way around.

My scenery complexity setting was DENSE. Problem here is that if I lower that airport building are going to be removed right? Or has that already happened at dense setting?

A lot of it depends on your computer. As we all know, FSX is a big drain on the processor.

 

Al

Your have a very high AI traffic setting in a very busy airport, I am sure that is contributing to the performance drain.

A lot of it depends on your computer. As we all know, FSX is a big drain on the processor.

 

Al

 

I forgot to tell my system

AMD Phenom II X4 3.4 GHz

4 Gb PC6400 RAM

NVIDIA GTS250 1 Gb

Win 7 x64

EGLL is really hard on frame rates - turn off your traffic for a minute and you'll see a massive difference. Or try say EGCC instead, which is a terrific scenery (also UK2000) but very kind on frames, even with higher traffic settings.

Yeah EGLL is very hard on frames - partly because it's a big airport and is going to have quite a lot of traffic (though you can ramp that down) and partly because it's close to central London and therefore you are trying to process a lot of scenery as well. Perhaps give EGKK (Gatwick) Xtreme a go - smaller airport (but still busy) and away from central London.

 

If I want to stress test my system I do an approach into EGLL over London!

You have almost a perfect storm of factors coming together here. Your system specification is on the low end of the scale compared to current PCs. Then you have a location in a big city with lots of AI planes. Finally, you have an add on that is really hard on frame rates. All these things make it pretty much impossible to maintain high frame rates in FSX. With my system, which is pretty much as good as I could get, I still avoid big cities, AI, high autogen settings or heavy clouds. FSX will bring any system to its knees with such a combination. Try one of the free Orbx airports, in a rural setting with clear skies and I think you will be much happier!

 

Cheers,

 

Noel.

Then I tried lowering the autogen to none contrary to advice of the opposite that I have read. It should actually lower fps I have heard.

 

Who told you that??

Hi Christopher,

Yes, that is quite true. In certain or most conditions, turning Autogen down to zero can have a negative effect. ( Does not apply to photo scenery of course)

This has been documented in various forums like Aerosoft, Simforums (NickN) and no doubt here at Avsim.

FSX seems to be the opposite to FS9 in regard to the Autogen slider.

jfri, how it seems to me, is that you are attempting to run FSX like the big boy's machines on a poor man's machine (no offense intended). FSX is a hog and needs a monstermachine to run decent (or even nearly decent in some situations). You don't own that.

You have a maybe good hardware for some games, GPU which is low-mediocre at best, CPU which sucks in FSX, quite low RAM for W7 + FSX...

Anyway, reporting single digits with UK2000 EGLL with AI traffic is completely understandable. I can't get it up above 20 if I load it with what you mentioned... And your machine is likely at least 4x slower than mine. So, expectance of 5fps or less is quite normal.

 

I suggest you turn off AI, turn down settings and see what you can make of it. If nothing, all that is possible is another scenery or faster machine.

 

Good luck!

jfri, how it seems to me, is that you are attempting to run FSX like the big boy's machines on a poor man's machine (no offense intended). FSX is a hog and needs a monstermachine to run decent (or even nearly decent in some situations). You don't own that.

You have a maybe good hardware for some games, GPU which is low-mediocre at best, CPU which sucks in FSX, quite low RAM for W7 + FSX...

Anyway, reporting single digits with UK2000 EGLL with AI traffic is completely understandable. I can't get it up above 20 if I load it with what you mentioned... And your machine is likely at least 4x slower than mine. So, expectance of 5fps or less is quite normal.

 

I suggest you turn off AI, turn down settings and see what you can make of it. If nothing, all that is possible is another scenery or faster machine.

 

Good luck!

 

But keep in mind that I run it with sliders turned down. See my slider settings in the pics below but autogen was sparse during my mentioned test (which are your settings that don't give you 20 fps?). Rather moderate settings I think. I can run all of my other games without problem. My CPU significantly raised performence in FS compared to previous AMD 64 X2 6000+. My windows experience index is 7.5 and the highest of all partratings. Then CPU 7.4 followed by GPU 7.0.

I think I should tell my intentions here. I'm investigating the possibilty to use airliners in FSX. Therefore I wan't an realistic amount of traffic around airports that have airliner traffic. EGLL is important in that aspect. But turning of the GA traffic might be an option.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ehm mate, that is *not* what in FSX sense is called lowered sliders. Can't run that effectively with your machine, sorry.

 

You've been around long enough I'd guess to know how FSX behaves. Your sliders are way too high, and the settings you turned down are not really FPS boosters. Turn off AI (all), clouds to min, density medium, LOD middle, water lower, scenery complexity to normal, no highres cockpit, and see what you gain. Autogen should be on, not off, but low. Test without AI, see how it performs, then try adding AI. AI is by far the biggest hog. 80% *kills* my system.

Ehm mate, that is *not* what in FSX sense is called lowered sliders. Can't run that effectively with your machine, sorry.

 

You've been around long enough I'd guess to know how FSX behaves. Your sliders are way too high, and the settings you turned down are not really FPS boosters. Turn off AI (all), clouds to min, density medium, LOD middle, water lower, scenery complexity to normal, no highres cockpit, and see what you gain. Autogen should be on, not off, but low. Test without AI, see how it performs, then try adding AI. AI is by far the biggest hog. 80% *kills* my system.

 

I tried your suggestion and as expected at that low setting I got a smooth near 30 fps experience. Then I tried enabling back what I had before one item at a time. My impression is that I loose more in visual quality than I gain in performence. When I got to weather I started to notice a small hit in performence. After resetting most everything I have fps 10s on ground and around 20 in the air and some but not serious stuttering.

I left highres VC off since it does not impact visuals very much also clouds to high and lowest distance. But I changed to ORBX 4 weather theme to get more clouds. I wan't to fly airliners in cloudy condition.

The most effective thing to do was to replace the demo version of EGLL with the free version. That had the greatest impact on performence.

So I would like to get back to the question in my first post. Are things going to be significantly better in other airport scenery? Is EGLL unusually heavy on performence even for being in great city area?

The most effective thing to do was to replace the demo version of EGLL with the free version.

 

Of course, it's also less detailed!

 

You are insisting on using all bells and whistles, but don't have a horsepower.

 

Are things going to be significantly better in other airport scenery?

 

No.

 

Is EGLL unusually heavy on performence even for being in great city area?

 

Not significantly. It's on of the heavier, but there are much heavier sceneries, and there are also lighter sceneries. But I'd just say EGLL is one of the best coded airports out there.

So I would like to get back to the question in my first post. Are things going to be significantly better in other airport scenery? Is EGLL unusually heavy on performence even for being in great city area?

 

I'll chime in here with my experience. I own and use all of the UK2000 sceneries. I also have most of the other "mega" or "ultimate" airport sceneries in Europe (I don't fly outside Europe -- I've enough already! <G>).

 

Of all of these, EGLL is most definitely the heaviest in terms of performance on my system. I use it as my benchmark. Over the 6 years of FSX I've been struggling to get a system together with which I can fly EGLL with realistic weather AND realistic AI traffic. I use AS2012 weather with REX 4096 clouds, and i use either or both of MyTrafficX and UT2 for traffic. Both of these AI packages give heavier traffic for the same FPS as default traffic, and more realistic of course too, with pretty much the correct airlines using correct gates and fgong on belevable journeys..

 

At last, in this last year, I've achieved this ambition. I now get a minimum of 15 fps, but more usally 20-30 (my limiter is at 30) fps throughout EGLL, and always >= 20 on approach, which is important. But to do this I use:

 

1. An i5-2500K overclocked to 4.9 GHz, with Corsair water cooling.

2. A 3Gb overclocked GTX 580 video card -- the large memory is vital to me for the FSX configuration I use (see 4)

3. 8 Gb of 2000 MHz memory

4. FSX configured very carefully with Bufferpools=0

5. nVidia 296.61 drivers. configured with nVidia inspector for best quality. (the 3xx drivers don't work for me).

 

My AI settings for MyTrafficX are 60% airliners, 15% GA. Most of the other sliders aren't relevant. Autogen has an effect, but it is dwarfed by weather and AI at EGLL so i have it at "normal" or "dense". Note that 60% AI with MyTrafficX is like 100% default but with only 50% of the FPS impact.

 

I don't have any complex aircraft -- just a 737-800 which I think was originally modelled on the default but with more tuning (a la PMDG). No cockpit -- no gauges, nothing, as the complete complit is run on WideFS-linked PCs with Project Magenta. It is a hardware cockpit.

 

The FSX screen is running at standard 1080p HD (i.e. 1920 x 1080 x 32) on a 10 foot wide projection screen. I suspect the lack of any panels helps with FPS excepting that it leaves more screen for dense scenery, which might make things worse with places like EGLL.

 

Note that by achieving this level of performace at EGLL i am assured of superb performance just about anywhere else -- pretty much always hitting the (nVidia inspector-set) limiter of 30 fps. Of course, this is why it is my benchmark.

 

Hope this helps you understand. For a first complex add-on airport you've made a somewhat drastic choice! ;-)

 

Regards

Pete