A "How-To-go-DX10" doc

[Mirtma 0]

Thanks, Paul

This is just what I need. It will be even better if Steve adds a few more pointers using the ATI card.

 

+1

[Jim Young 2,356]

I'm pinning this document! Thanks Paul for your guide!

 

Best regards,

Jim

[SirStiggie 63]

Thanks for this guide. I just made the changes and it looks really positive so far. I'm not sure if this was an error of omission or if its not needed but I had to add the AffinityMask=xx back to my fsx.cfg file as without it I was getting really low frame rates.

 

Thanks again.

[Paul J 349]

Interesting, Chris - I had taken it out to see if it would be missed, but I never got around to testing it, and so it's still missing ..... we shall fix it right now.... Thank you. The guide will change over the next three or four days, as I add newer or more correct info from Mike Krawczyk's posts and Steve's AMD/ATI AA document.

[Skippermark 3]

Thank you, Paul, Steve and everyone else who contributed to making DirectX 10 work in FSX. I installed the fixes today along with Addon Converter X, and it works awesome! Everything went smoothly. Thank you.

 

I'm not sure what AffinityMask=xx does, but it wasn't in my original CFG file or in there after installing the fixes, and my frame rates are pretty good. If anything, they're higher after installing than before the patch...if that's possible. If AffinityMask=xx increases frame rates, I will definitely give it a try.

[matgg 1]

I'm not sure what AffinityMask=xx does, but it wasn't in my original CFG file or in there after installing the fixes, and my frame rates are pretty good. If anything, they're higher after installing than before the patch...if that's possible. If AffinityMask=xx increases frame rates, I will definitely give it a try.

 

Affinity Mask basically allows you to select which cores of the cpu fsx uses. Have a look here for how to calculate it for whatever cpu you have and if you have hyperthreading on or off:

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/241915-hyperthread-fsx-i7-and-you/ or to calculate here http://fsxtimes.wordpress.com/2010/08/18/affinitymask/ (or just google it!)

[Paul J 349]

"How-To" has a few updates - Inspector's AA settings, but mainly the water, road traffic and BufferPool settings, and their mutual impact on ground flashing settings.

[Randall 82]

Thanks for this. One little thing and I might not be correct but I thought the default MSFSX Poolsize was 4mb.

 

Randall

[Jason Howell 1]

Paul, i have followed this guide since the original post and can attest that this stuff works! Tinkering is still required to find the sweet spot, and i am sure this applies to everyone since every system is different. For example, in your Nvidia Inspector settings, you crank up the AF setting to 16x, myself i only have it up to 8x. On AA transparency Supersampling, i have it set to off/multisampling. your doc states it is at x8 sparse grid. In my tinkering i have noticed that panning in the VC with that setting on becomes VERY sluggish. The sim still looks amazing with this setting off.

 

One thing that i cant figure out is every time i change TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULTI to 120, the sim changes it back to default everytime.

 

And last night during a flight i tried the following setting:

 

 

[bufferPools]

BufferPools=1

PoolSize=10485760

RejectThreshold=1048576

 

and with this i experienced my first FSX OOM ever. To ensure it wasnt a fluke, i repeated the same flight 2 more times and it OOMed in pretty much the same spot every time. I was in some very dense autogen scenery and spinning around in a helicopter. So I went back to this

 

[bufferpools]

UsePools=0

 

and tried the same flight and no OOM's. And now i have ORBX Aussie scenery and flying that up and down left and right, and no OOM;s to be had

 

It used to be that i spent 90 percent of my time tinkering, and 10% flying. That has thankfully flip flopped thanks to your guide and the recent fixes to dx10.

[Paul J 349]

Naaah...partially right, Randall - in SP1 it was 4meg: they pushed that to a whopping 8meg with SP2.

 

G'Day, Jason - Australia? Hahahaaa .. Yeah, I know - I read yer post on the FSX forum.. Good on ya, mate!

 

Re the BP - the way to get rid of OOM's is to to rebuild the paging file. When managed by Windows it eventually becomes fragmented, and then the applications that need that space can't find it. The file needs enough contiguous memory addresses to write each block of data. If the app needs to write 512kB - it will get a 1MB block. If it needs to write 17,24 MB - it needs 18 x 1MB blocks - consecutive memory addresses. If the biggest size the app can find is only 14MB - or even 5 more separate blocks just like it, totaling 100 MB, - If not contiguous - the app will crash.

 

You may or may not need BP=1 anyway, so don't worry.

 

Is yours spelled like this:

 

[Display]

TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=120 <-------- "MULT"

 

or do you have "MULTI"

 

 

Thanks for the Inspector settings. Can you post a screenshot? I'm want to try them later.

 

Gratzy,

[jimh 23]

Hi,

I don't usually post, because I feel I'm not expert enough to offer advice, but this time I have to come in to say a huge thanks to Paul for his notes, and obviously to Steve for the result of his research.

 

I've installed Steve's fix, followed the detail in Paul's notes, and the result is phenomenal!

 

My FPS are invariably 29-30 around Orbx NZ, flying Real Air Legacy, and flying the QW Avro from London City to Heathrow (uk2000 Extreme versions), FPS 23-24.

 

Scenery in my left and right monitors (TH2GO- 3x22") has always been annoyingly stretched, but now is absolutely normal.

 

It's simply not the same FSX!

 

Regards, Jim

[Paul J 349]

You know what an expert is.. It's "ex" as in has-been, and "spert" like a drip under pressure...

 

Thanks for your input, Jim - it's good to know we're on the right track! We're all enjoying it, and I haven't seen this much enthusiasm since Kitty was a pup!

 

The real hero, though - is still Steve. This sim has been out (in SP2 format) since late 2007,and no-one has done anything to improve the DX10 side of FSX - in spite of all of the terrific devs around - until Steve came along. I'm hoping that he won't put down the pen now, and call it a day, as he is having such an impact on peoples lives. This is our way of enjoying life - it's a terrific escape from the real world: for some it's an extension of their childhood: it's a great procedural training tool; it's a challenge; it's a career that we couldn't have any other way; it's new friendships; it's exciting! All this and more. The ability to fly any superbly accurate aircraft, anywhere - and without stuttering, predictable, smooth - with great-looking weather, with superb scenery. With the DX10 version of the Sim - we're pretty close to our Nirvana - all we need now are the devs to take a closer look at DX10, given the short time Steve spent while diagnosing and creating the fixes - it should be a new lease on their businesses, too!.

 

Yes - It's simply not the same FSX!

 

All the Best, Jim, and again thanks for your thoughts and comments.

 

Now for another flight......... :lol:

[SirStiggie 63]

I just went through setting up DX10 as per the latest document including starting with a fresh fsx.cfg and have a few comments/questions:

 

Comments

 

1. I didn't get much in the way of increased frame rates but what I got was a much smoother experience than DX9 and FSX did seem more stable

2. My Orbx scenery had intermittent flashing street lights

3. I get better FPS in full-screen than in windowed mode

4. I was running a bit of a hybrid install before (Word Not Allowed's tweeks with Stevejp's shader tweak and DX10 preview enabled) and got better FPS but the graphics were not as smooth as using this set of tweaks

5. It worked pretty well until I introduced Rex Essentials into the mix. Once that was running, my frame rates would fluctuate badly between 25 and 8, sometimes as low as 1

 

Questions:

 

1. The document mentioned that full right in Scenery will give more scenery and auto-gen than in DX9 so the settings could be less. Does this apply to add-on scenery like Orbx or is this just default?

 

I had two more but forgot what they were

 

I'll post when I remember.

 

So far I'm using lower settings than I was in DX9 or with my hybrid setup and the frame rates using my Carenado C90 and Orbx PNW have been in the 18-25fps range but the overall quality seems higher which I guess is the AA at work. As with all things FSX, your mileage may vary so I know I have tweaking to do.

 

Good stuff though..

 

 

Edit... I just unchecked AA in FSX and my FPS shot up to 20-30 consistently. Does this mean AA is not working even though its activated in nVidia Inspector?

[Paul J 349]

1. The document mentioned that full right in Scenery will give more scenery and auto-gen than in DX9 so the settings could be less. Does this apply to add-on scenery like Orbx or is this just default?

I pretty much only fly the PNW, NRM & CRM airports, Chris. It was on the way to Darrington, looking at the scenery in the valley, the road, etc., that "it didn't look right", and so I ended up comparing it with the airport and town pics on the OrbX site, that mostly gave me the answer I was looking for. Sitting on the aircraft parking spot, at the N-W corner of the viewing shelter where the picnic tables, etc., are, looking at that scene - (SC & AG full) I had many more trees than I saw in DX9, so I started comparing the other pics, and I had much greater density. I slid back the "big guys" and re-did it a few more times, until I got what I was familiar with in DX9.

Edit... I just unchecked AA in FSX and my FPS shot up to 20-30 consistently. Does this mean AA is not working even though its activated in nVidia Inspector?

Can't say - mine is still ticked. I'll look later today - or someone else will chime in with their results! When I/we hear of an increase - I/we need to try it, as we're still learning DX10. I hope it comes out the way yours has - just like Mike Krawczyk's Inspector settings. If it does I'll mod the How-To again to reflect that more strongly.

It worked pretty well until I introduced Rex Essentials into the mix. Once that was running, my frame rates would fluctuate badly between 25 and 8, sometimes as low as 1

Yep, I agree, Chris - that was one of the reasons which prompted me to purchase the AS2012 upgrade.

My Orbx scenery had intermittent flashing street lights

A known issue that came up during testing. It's caused by the strobes. There's more on Steve's site, plus one of the other posts here. The lighting system in FSX is bad in DX9 or DX10, but it's possible that Steve will have a fix for this at some point. It depends on how far he intends to go.

[jimh 23]

Hi Paul,

 

I just thought I'd make a very personal comment, concerning my experience with Alacrity PC.

 

I've used Alactrity a few years ago, with apparent success. This time I set it up and ran my test flight, London City to Heathrow. There was no difference for me, with and without Alacrity.

 

In MsConfig, I have 8 Startups, and 58 Services. I'm not knowledgable enough to eliminate any of the 58, but the results I previously posted are in spite of the large number of Services.

 

Regards, Jim