Picture Police got last msg. Here it is again for those who can use the info:

 

top left corner of inspector has a pull down menu for games. type in ms and a list will appear including fsx.

Top right is "Apply Changes"; after you change your settings, just hit this button and your set. Every time you open Inspector, it'll show global, but all your settings for FSX are still in there. Just remember to go to MSFS X pull down.

 

 

Respectfully Jim, that's impossible. As Word Not Allowed put in his guide (http://#####...hardware-guide/), 4x's gets completely rid of shimmering with a hit on performance and 2x's gets rid of some of the shimmering but with less of a hit on performance (or something close to that). I don't see how that setting can have any effect on jaggies. It's for reducing shimmering and has nothing to do with jaggies. In fact, yesterday I flew from KLAX to KSFO in a PMDG737. Slight shimering and jaggies you can barely see on the wings (but I see them) and I had those Inspector settings that PaulJ and some others have talked about in their guides. On the fly (or while enroute) I opened up Inspector and returned them back to the Inspector/Display Driver default for FSX and I saw absolutely no changes whatsoever. Still the same tiny shimmering on the wings, on the runways, on the taxiways, and almost impossible to see small jaggies on the wings. This is default settings. So DX10 and FSX are strange beasts.

 

I'm only responding to your post because this business of fixing DX10 and getting the best graphics ever with little or no shimmering and jaggies, is very, very complicated and saying supersampling got rid of your jaggies is just plain wrong information. Why it happened to you when you made this change in your Inspector settings is not known but probably because the area had been saved in your memory cache and it was rendering better than the first flight over Melbourne.

 

Respectfully,

Jim

 

Actually Jim,

"shimmering" and "jaggies" are two forms of the same undesirable side effect of the rasterization process, known as aliasing. Texture aliasing can be said to produce a "shimmering" effect and polygon aliasing is said to produce "jaggies". SSAA and all it's forms (including SGSS) is the only form of anti-aliasing which can effectively minimize both forms of aliasing.

"shimmering" and "jaggies" are two forms of the same undesirable side effect of the rasterization process, known as aliasing

 

Thanks! I'm just going by Word Not Allowed's guide as I'm not a graphics expert (but do a lot of reading on the subject). I sort of see what you mean though. If that's the case then Word Not Allowed did say the 2x Sparse Grid Supersampling does get rid of almost all of the shimmering and 4x sparse grid supersampling gets rid of it all, but a hit on performance. Now I have mine set at 4x's and still have some jaggies, especially on the edges of the runways and minor jaggies on the wings.

 

Best regards,

Jim

Hi Jim,

 

I posted a reply to your message last night, but it seems to have disappeared.

 

First of all let me apologise for seeming to uncover a new finding. I should have asked some questions instead. I was completely wrong in using the word "jaggies". I now know that refers to anti-ailiasing effects.

 

Orbx Melbourne is my most demanding area. After installing the new drivers and rebooting, I loaded a saved flight at Melbourne with the default Cessna waiting. All was well. I changed to the Nemeth EC135, flew around the airport, and headed for downtown Melbourne. As I approached the tower blocks and skyscrapers, I was confronted with an array of jagged splinter like artifacts, all across my outside wiew. I could continue to fly, fps around 17-20. As I headed away into the suburbs, the view cleared, and all was normal. I had seen this phenomenon earlier in my endevours, and assumed my system was overloaded.

 

In my non technical way, I looked in Inspector for something I could reduce, and tried changing from 4xSSGS to 2xSSGS. I rebooted, went back to Melbourne, and magically as was well.

 

I've now gone back to 4XSSGS, back to Melbourne, and for the first couple of seconds of outside view, I had pale blue splinters all across the sky, before the view settled down to normal. I then flew the EC135 down around the centre of Melbourne, around 20-22fps, and even landed on top of one of the towers. I've no idea what was different this time. If I have been doing other things on the computer, I always reboot afresh into Windows for a flight in FSX.

 

I'm really sorry for such a stupid post last time. This time I'd like to politely ask about these jagged splinters, and what they actually mean. I do know a little about anti-ailiasing in another context, since Photoshop is my other main computer related interest, so my "jaggies" are certainly different!

 

Regards, Jim

I was confronted with an array of jagged splinter like artifacts, all across my outside wiew.

 

Hi JimH,

 

Thanks for the explanation. I now see what you were seeing. I think what you were seeing was actually what's commonly called here as 'spiking'. Spiking is caused when your FSX settings/display driver settings are set too high and you are flying in an area where fps are difficult to manage. It sometimes happens to me if I'm flying in, say, the PMDG 737 in FTX/Orbx scenery with real world weather turned on and the conditions are really stormy. It's a memory issue. FSX is having a hard time rendering the textures. When you lowered the display settings, it reduced the stress on FSX and the artifacts or spiking went away. The only way to stop or reduce this effect is to reduce your FSX sliders, tweak your FSX.cfg, and/or reduce your display driver settings. The display driver settings in Word Not Allowed's guide I posted above are pretty intense for many systems. Your system should handle relatively high settings except that you have 3 monitors and I heard that requires even more system power for FSX to run properly. PaulJ has a similar setup but I haven't heard him talking at spikes. I found this quote from NickN's excellent guide on Setting up FSX and Tuning It:

 

"Bufferpools added to the fsx.cfg file can cause scenery 'spikes' even if the card has enough video memory. This edit to the configuration file works for some and does not work for others. If you see strange graphics errors that do not clear up by visually panning around the outside of the aircraft then you should REMOVE the bufferpool entry from your config file."

 

"Do note that with SP2 for FSX running high sliders depending on the drivers may bring on visual graphic 'spikes' from autogen when a flight is first loaded. If visually panning around the aircraft does not clear them, the bufferpool entry should be reduced or removed completely."

 

Best regards,

 

Jim

Those spikes and artifacts are the symptom of the gpu being overloaded. The secret is to get everything as high as one possibly can - keep pushing it in the heaviest area - playing with BP settings, TBM settings - traffic settings, monitoring the average fps - until it "artifacts" - and then back off the setting(s) - may be more than one - that you consider the least important. In my case it is/was - cars - road vehicles. I can make my beast spike by moving road traffic from 28 to 40. BOOM!! Spikes - all pretty colors! Roll it back - gone.

Thanks Guys,

 

More testing then! I thought I was doing very nicely. Funny this should appear out of the blue after I installed the new drivers.

 

Regards, jim

Try rolling back, Jim - this has also happened to me since the new drivers this week - just haven't had time!

 

Let us know how you make out.

Hi Paul,

 

I've rolled back the drivers to 304.48, reset my FSX.cfgs, checked my Inspector settings, and I'm back where I was at all three of my test areas. I'm obviously right at the limit of my hardware, but I can fly smoothly everywhere again.

 

Perhaps, for a GTX 570 card, this driver version is the last in line which will help, and new versions merely help the 600 cards. I did see a nice GTX 690 card advertised by a UK firm I deal with at the equivalent of US$1990!!

 

A little while back on our journey, I tried disabling some services, but quickly ran into trouble in other areas of computing. I think doing something similar would be my only hope of increasing any resources for FSX, but I'm too scared of upsetting my system.

 

Maybe some sort of communal effort in the use of Alacrity, specifically for the benefit of an FSX flying session, would yield some benefit? If I summon up the courage to experiment, I'll report any findings.

 

Regards, Jim

Yes - I'm thinking I should roll them back, too. I saw jagged ground shadows for the first time yesterday.

 

Here's a couple of profiles from my beast - one to start TIR and the other, just a cmd interface:

 

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/52676345/Alacrity/CMD.profile

 

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/52676345/Alacrity/TrackIR.profile

I finally got around to getting this set up.. it seems to work fairly well.. though at first glance I cant see much change between dx9 and dx10 fps wise or even graphically. One thing I cant even do to take comparison screen shots is use Fraps for the shots.. they come out as a black image for some reason (I dont think it supports dx10?).. if i switch to dx9 i can screen shot.

 

I notice a degree of far off flickering in dx10 mode compared to dx9 as well.. so in this sense to me it seems less sharp, although I swear the trees in dx10 look a little better perhaps and maybe water reflection.

 

I have the ati 5850.. i could not use application settings in the ati settings.. my fps went from 30 locked to 8 if i used AA in fsx.. if i uncheck AA and use my settings that worked in dx9, where i crank the AA and AF up, everything is fine, though more shimmering than in dx9 (but way off in distance however).

 

So my two issues currently are the far off shimmering and blank screens with fraps.

 

I may need to install a different app to take comparison shots, or use the built in one with fsx I guess.

 

I'm running 3.2 of the shaders.. i noticed there is 3.2.1, I may try that and rebuild the cache.

DX10 Anti Aliasing: Nvidia Inspector

 After selecting the "MS Flight Simulator X", let's change the header so that you can see all the settings 

you need to change on one page - look for, and click on the funnel icon. 

 

 

 

 Only the settings mentioned below need to be changed, the first being at the top of the screen - also 

seen above - set AntiAliasing Compatibility (DX1x) to "Bioshock". This will fix the AA for aircraft shadows on 

the ground, as per here. ". (Courtesy of "VeryBumpy") 

 

 

My FUNNEL icon does not light up?  What did I do wrong or what do I need to do?

 

Thanks so much.

No idea, Jet: Normal action - just rolling the mouse pointer over it causes a black outline to appear around it, with a darker color inside the square. Clicking on it immediately removes a number of unused items from the window, with the V-scroll bar lengthening. I do know that Inspector appears to configure itself dependent upon which GPU you use, as I know that the GTX 580 doesn't have the same functions available as the 780 - so I have to assume that this is the same with the GTS 450.

 

You might ask on the Inspector/Nvidia forum (if there is one). Sorry I can't be of more help.

 

The reason for doing it is so that you don't have to make two (or three) screen shots when you need to post your settings, that's all.

 

All the Best,

 

pj

Could this be saved as a PDF? Thanks!

Um... Sorry, Taz, could what be saved as a pdf?

 

pj