Is there already a thread that discusses the Flight .cfg file and ways to tweak it to improve performance? There isn't one stickied and I couldn't find one by searching.

 

Does anyone know exactly which settings "Scenery Quality" affect?

 

I've been running "Scenery Quality" on maximum since Flight's release. The first time I fired up Alaska, I had pretty low (single digit) FPS over dense autogen areas (forests, Anchorage, etc...). I tried turning down all the usual culprits (Scenery Density, Textures, Sharpness, etc...) but found the only setting that improved performance was lowering Scenery Quality to High. The description of what this changes in the options menu is pretty generic. The only thing I noticed when I turned this down is that terrain reflections no longer showed up on the water, and my FPS over high autogen areas went way up.

 

So, the good news was that I found that "magical" setting to turn down that results in a huge FPS boost. Bad news was that the terrain reflections on the water are a huge part of what made Flight look so good. I didn't realize it until they weren't there.

 

So I had a look through the .cfg file and found "ReflectionQuality=LOW". I changed "custom=0" to "=1" and changed that "LOW" to "HIGH". When back into the game and BAM! Performance boost was still there and I had my water reflections back. I then went back into the .cfg file to poke around a little more and found "UseLightMaps=FALSE" (I don't know if this is a setting that's tied to Scenery Quatliy or not...). I changed that to TRUE adn went back into the game and didn't notice a difference visually, but didn't see a performance drop either.

 

So here are my questions:

 

1. What settings does Scenery Quality change (other than reflections)?

 

From there we can determine which one is the FPS killer over autogen areas (at least for me).

 

2. What does UseLightMaps affect visually?

How do you get or mesure your FPS rate?

 

Thank you

How do you get or mesure your FPS rate?

 

Thank you

 

I actually don't know how to do it in Flight. When I said it dipped into single digits, I was just guessing based on past experience. I guess anywhere in my post where I said "FPS boost" or "FPS increase" I should have actually said "increase in perceived smoothness".

Thank you.

 

Just for your information, I try with and without the Vertical Sync option on the main menu.

 

I found the with vertical sync check, I get more stable FPS and my GPU is working less.

This option will CAP your FPS to near your native display refresh rate.

Without the option, the GPU seem to try get as many FPS as possible and waisting GPU resources

 

Have a good Flight!

Thank you.

 

Just for your information, I try with and without the Vertical Sync option on the main menu.

 

I found the with vertical sync check, I get more stable FPS and my GPU is working less.

This option will CAP your FPS to near your native display refresh rate.

Without the option, the GPU seem to try get as many FPS as possible and waisting GPU resources

 

Have a good Flight!

 

Thanks. I didn't mention it above, but I did try with and without vsync and didn't see any difference in smoothness (in this specific case). I do have it turned on at this point.

 

..

 

So here are my questions:

 

1. What settings does Scenery Quality change (other than reflections)?

 

From there we can determine which one is the FPS killer over autogen areas (at least for me).

 

2. What does UseLightMaps affect visually?

 

No takers?

 

OK. I'm thinking that if I rename my current config, let the game create a new one, and set Scenery Quality to Maximum, I should be able to compare the two .cfg files to see what that settings changes...

How do you get or mesure your FPS rate?

 

Thank you

 

You can get freeware called FRAPS that will tell you your FPS and record videos of your session.

 

See the download tab at http://www.fraps.com/

@malibu43...did you defrag. after installation? That may help if you did not.....

You can get freeware called FRAPS that will tell you your FPS and record videos of your session.

 

See the download tab at http://www.fraps.com/

 

Fraps is the best. All you see is the number for the frame rate in Flight in the corner of the screen where you only notice it if you are looking for it, and you can run full screen..

@malibu43...did you defrag. after installation? That may help if you did not.....

 

That was the first thing I tried, but it didn't seem to help much (if any).

Well, I've answered some of my questions and found a way to get my FPS to an acceptable level with eye candy that I'm happy with.

 

Here is something helpful that someone posted on the Flight Beta Forums. These are the settings affected by the "Scenery Quality" option:

 

Low Medium High Maximum

VisualEffectQuality= LOW MEDIUM HIGH HIGH

LodRadius= 1.500000 2.000000 2.500000 3.500000

MeshComplexity= 25 50 75 80

ReflectionQuality= NONE LOW LOW MAX

 

Also, after mucking around with all the different settings, I found that there were two things giving me a big FPS drop in Alaska (seemed to be fine in Hawaii):

1) High Shadows - All the long shadows that the coniferous trees cast with the low sun angles in Alaska were killing me. Turning shadows down to medium brings FPS back up. I'll miss those long shadows cast across the runway, though.

 

2) Max water reflection - I can set "Maximum Scenery Quality" and then manually drop water reflections to HIGH and performance is great. Bring reflections back up to MAX and things get real chunky around Anchorage. Surprisingly, LOD radius at 3.5 vs 2.5 didn't give me any performanc issues.

 

I'm not sure why the default Scenery Quatliy options skip over the HIGH water reflection setting. If the High Scenery Qualtiy Option used HIGH water reflections, it would have saved me all this trouble...

 

*edit* - sorry for that table not displaying correctly. I can't get the columns to line up.

No takers?

 

Well, I'm so happy that my tweaking days are behind me that I rather not check out cfg's... But I see you already are well on the way to become the Flight-tweakmaster. Although I don't think 'Flight' and 'tweak' belong in one sentence.

Well, I'm so happy that my tweaking days are behind me that I rather not check out cfg's... But I see you already are well on the way to become the Flight-tweakmaster. Although I don't think 'Flight' and 'tweak' belong in one sentence.

 

Trust me. I'd much rather not be digging into .cfg files. But realizing that I couldn't fly with the water reflections turned on (man what a difference they make!) was enough motivation for me to dive in... JUST THIS ONCE, though! Never again!

 

And, like I said in my last post above, if the basic graphics options didn't skip over the HIGH water reflections (whiched I've asked M$ about on the beta forums), I wouldn't have had to go diving into the .cfg file in the first place!

Trust me. I'd much rather not be digging into .cfg files. But realizing that I couldn't fly with the water reflections turned on (man what a difference they make!) was enough motivation for me to dive in... JUST THIS ONCE, though! Never again!

 

And, like I said in my last post above, if the basic graphics options didn't skip over the HIGH water reflections (whiched I've asked M$ about on the beta forums), I wouldn't have had to go diving into the .cfg file in the first place!

 

Well, it's nice that your digging paid off! I am sure some others around here will benefit too from all this. (In case someone else only reads your last post: don't forget about the "custom=0" to "=1" tip from the OP otherwise your custom settings won't work. If I am not mistaken.)

That was the first thing I tried, but it didn't seem to help much (if any).

 

Agreed. Actually in many cases it's just a placebo effect. Unless many files are too scattered over the hard drive. It can increase the load times but no more than that.