what should I upgrade for Flight

[Bobsk8 12,723]

Actually, a lot of people complain about stuttering motion in 24fps film. :D. Cinema and home-theater is my other hobby. :)

 

While you don't need high framerates to perceive motion as smooth, it does get even smoother as the framerates increase; up to a point. Individuals have different tolerances, some with 24 not being quite enough, some able to identify framerate changes up to 80fps or more. My testing found myself unable to distinguish increases beyond about 72fps.

 

But a consistent framerate is more important than a high framerate. I will take a steady 30fps over variable 30-45fps any day of the week. Flight's new framerate-locking in the latest title update is supposed to be helping with this.

 

Frequent rapid panning, like when using TrackIR, is a worst-case scenario for low framerates.

 

And equally, there were people that complained about Hobbit and preferred the 24FPS version. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2403570,00.asp

 

And I agree, a consistent frame rate is the best thing. I think 30FPS consistently works pretty well in a home Flight Sim.

[dburne 2]

Imho,

 

You have a pretty decent system already for running Flight. I doubt there is a system out there yet, that could run Flight with all graphics maxed out and get a min of 60 fps.

You already have your processor running at 4 ghz, and with the rest of your components you should already be seeing some smooth flying in Flight. I am running my I7 processor at 4 ghz, and Flight is very smooth for me. I get 60 fps much of the time - would probably get more but I run with vsync- unless I am low over some highly detailed areas, then it drops to the 40's and sometimes the 30's, all still very smooth though. I used to get some minor stuttering, but disabling hyperthreading in the bios for my I7 processor eliminated that.

 

If you had money to burn and wanted better performance, you could upgrade your motherboard and cpu to Sandy Bridge, and with a decent cooler overclock to say the 4.5 ghz range. Not sure the gain in performance would be worth the price of admission. Or even try the newer Ivy Bridge, but I think the verdict is still out on that new platform.

 

But seriously, for what Flight is today, you should be fine for a while with what you have. I know I am going to hold steady for the next few months with my system.

[Bobsk8 12,723]

Indeed, but I am talking about framerate, not refresh rate.

 

Framerate with an interactive medium (like sims) is far more critical to perception of smooth motion than passive media like films. Pan rates when filming are often consciously restrained to limit the effects on perceived smoothness of the motion.

 

True.....

[RoboRay 126]

 

And equally, there were people that complained about Hobbit and preferred the 24FPS version. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2403570,00.asp

 

And I agree, a consistent frame rate is the best thing. I think 30FPS consistently works pretty well in a home Flight Sim.

 

I do like 24fps films. It's almost like the "story-telling haze" effect on some TV shows or movies... I know I'm being presented with a story and that doesn't impact my enjoyment of it one bit. I have my own reservations about 48fps filming. It looks too much like video.

 

I can be satisfied with a steady 30fps in sims, but I will never turn down a higher steady framerate.

 

With Flight, I have never even tested my framerate. It looks smooth to me.

 

[styler360 0]

 

Have you tried using the adaptive v-sync setting in the nvidia control panel? It should get rid of that drastic drop off from 60 to 30fps, or 30 to 20fps. Some people complain about screen tearing when you go below 60fps, but it's worth trying.

 

In the control panel I "let the application decide". Should I use individual settings for adaptive v-sync and disable the ingame v-sync?

 

Thanks for all your comments!

[DMagick 0]

In the control panel I "let the application decide". Should I use individual settings for adaptive v-sync and disable the ingame v-sync?

 

Thanks for all your comments!

 

I don't think you have to disable the in-game v-sync, the control panel setting will override it. You should be able to notice when it's on; dropping below 60fps won't be produce such a sudden stuttering effect. You could also run FRAPS just to check if it's working properly.

[Prune 0]

From what I have read, FS2004 and FSX do not support multi core processors as they were coded before everyone had dual core , let alone quad cores and multithreading. As Flight is based on these it has the same limitations -

 

http://forums.whirlp...archive/1882609

 

As it says in the article, there are tweaks you can apply but basically MS coded their flight sim for single core processing.

 

I`ve never had a problem with Flight on my four year old Dell XPS16 with i7 chip. Maybe a few settings like shadows I have reduced a bit but basically it`s incredibly smooth and runs better than my 3D rendering programs like Blender and Sketchup. I think they were coded for multi core processing so a newer Ivy chip would probably make all the difference to them but little difference to Flight.

 

(Please correct me if I am wrong anywhere )

[fastcarfastplane 0]

flight is miles ahead of FSX. i don't even understand how people could put up with FSX's problems. i have a high end pc. its starting to date a little bit now, but still way many gamers and fsx runs like complete crap on it. i would average maybe 20-30fps.......while in flight i can steadily run 60 without any dips.

[HummusLord 0]

Will there be a huge improvement, if I upgrade to a i5 2550k, or sth. thelike?

 

I have an i5 3570k (ivy bridge) OC'd to 4.1Ghz with 6950's xfire and still can't max out Flight even though I can max out the current most graphically demanding games (BF3) which stay mostly above 60fps. Once playing at 60+fps anything lower is pretty noticeable, especially if it dips into the 30's.

 

With Flight in Hawaii I can max out everything but scenery density, or have scenery density maxed while scenery quality is on high. With Alaska I found I have to lower both scenery quality and density because in some areas it slows down quite a bit especially with weather. Even with V-sync disabled I can't put everything on max, plus the screen tear is somewhat annoying. In most instances Flight is very smooth and looks great even if it isn't maxed out. Here's to hoping Flight gets some multi-GPU love.

 

From what I've read Ivy Bridge does perform better than Sandy Bridge, but probably not so much to justify getting it if you already have a Sandy Bridge setup. I think I ready somewhere that Flight is supposed to take advantage of Ivy Bridge in some way, I think it is with the integrated GPU.

[Gibbage 199]

Here is what I would do if you truly want to get a nice rig for Flight. Get a 2nd video card for SLI, and then put it over 3 monitors. With that rig, you should get butter smooth FPS.

[HummusLord 0]

Here is what I would do if you truly want to get a nice rig for Flight. Get a 2nd video card for SLI, and then put it over 3 monitors. With that rig, you should get butter smooth FPS.

 

Maybe it's different with Nvidia users (doubt it) but I've found with Flight and AMD xfire that there is no discernable difference between one or two cards.

[jeff1155 0]

There are some that have reported the near doubling of speed sometimes seen with SLI/Xfire, but personally I tried it, didn't notice any difference except it crashed 50% of the time running Flight, on the load screen to boot!

 

My hardware is older, I was trying this on a P35 board with an E8200 and dual 5850 Xtremes, so more capable hardware might be different, but there is a view that rather than hoping for it to work you should just sell you old graphics card and get the best single GPU card you can afford.

 

With the OPs setup both processor and GPU are mid range these days, the first gen i5s were slower than the i7-920 IIRC, and the GTX560 is good but nowhere near top of the tree anymore. I think I'd check my CPU and GPU loads and replace whichever was fullest, might get a good deal on an i5-2500k as stock clears if it's the CPU, while the GTX660 is imminent and the latest driver update for the 7970 has radically improved performance I hear.

 

If you want 60fps and MAX settings though, be prepared to pay for it!

[Gibbage 199]

Maybe it's different with Nvidia users (doubt it) but I've found with Flight and AMD xfire that there is no discernable difference between one or two cards.

 

Flight does NOT support Xfire. ATI must make specific driver profiles for it to do so, and I dont think they have. Second, Nvidia does not need this driver profile. They can run games in SLI mode and get some optimization. Its not as good as driver specific, but still better then nothing. Another thing is, Nvidia does not support multi-monitor on a single card in 3D, so you must SLI them to play games on more then 1 screen. 2 cards will do 3 screens. On the other hand, ATI will do 6 screen on 1 card if I recall correctly.

 

Nvidia is the more powerful card, but ATI is the more cost effective.

[zinfinion 0]

Here is what I would do if you truly want to get a nice rig for Flight. Get a 2nd video card for SLI, and then put it over 3 monitors. With that rig, you should get butter smooth FPS.

 

My personal experience is that Flight has pretty bad microstutter with Nvidia SLI (which is not something unique to Flight). I went from GTX 460 SLI to a single GTX 670 and that is what made Flight butter smooth. Same reported framerate of 60FPS, but no more microstutter.

 

For a detailed look at microstutter, TechReport has a great article. Page 5 is especially enlightening.