Hi guys,

 

I run both FSX and FS9, both having installed FSDT KDFW scenery. For some reason, I get substantially better frames in FSX than FS9 at that airport. Can anyone shed some light as to why this might be? And are there addon manager settings like that in FSX to reduce FSDT scenery complexity?

 

 

Help is much appreciated,

 

Brendan

Do you have a lot of WoAI traffic? With KDFW being THE American Airlines hub, you may need to check for missing alpha channels and mip maps. For some reason, the AA "bare metal" textures seem to cause serious problems with missing mip maps. See the discussion at the top of the forum entitled "Huge FPS difference." I know that once I fixed my AI traffic, FSDT KDFW became much better in terms of frame rates. You may want to check the KDFW files also, though as I recall, FSDT are pretty consistent in not releasing files that need to be fixed...

Thanks for the quick reply. I have all traffic disabled as I always fly on VATSIM. Thanks for the suggestion though.

Anyone else have any possible solutions?

For some reason, I get substantially better frames in FSX than FS9 at that airport. Can anyone shed some light as to why this might be?

 

As I recall, KDFW was optimized for FSX and ported to FS9... Make sure you have installed the latest version updates and go to the FSDT site and download the texture resizer they furnish - the DFW textures are large and will slow down some systems in FS9. The FS9 Addon Manager doesn't provide the performance adjustments that are present in FSX.

 

DJ

The texture resizer has already been run and improved nothing unfortunately. Thanks for the help, I will have to purchase P3D to stop the constant fatal errors haha.

 

 

Much appreciated,

Brendan

Hi Brendan

Your problem with the FS9 version definitely should be fixable. I have run FSDT KDFW on two different setups with FS9 and it worked okay on both. Have you tried:

1. Checking for duplicate AFCADs

2. Checking the KDFW textures for missing alpha channels

 

If neither of these works, try running it with a clean scenery.cfg file with only KDFW as the only addon. That might point to a conflict with another scenery as the cause.

 

I don't think KDFW was an FSX portover. The only one I definitely recall that FSDT did that with was KLAX and it was not a great success. They were very resentful about supporting FS9 at that point and I almos thad the feeling that they didn't really care. But when they released KDFW I don't recall there being any issues at all with it.

 

The problem is not the scenery itself - it's been in use for years. Obviously because of its size it's a resource hog but it still works well and if you can fix the problem, you will really enjoy it

Good luck

Ian

As I recall, KDFW was optimized for FSX and ported to FS9... Make sure you have installed the latest version updates and go to the FSDT site and download the texture resizer they furnish - the DFW textures are large and will slow down some systems in FS9. The FS9 Addon Manager doesn't provide the performance adjustments that are present in FSX.

 

DJ

 

That may be true for some systems, but many should run fine.

 

The fact is FSDT claims that many FS9 systems can't run their sceneries, and offer texture resizer tools to downgrade them. But I would recommend that before you downgrade your experience, search your scenery for dxt3 texture files without alpha channels.

 

This is a MAJOR performance killer, and unfortunatelly is very common on FSDT sceneries. Sad that they consider themselves "state of the art" and never miss an opportunity to mistreat their FS9 user base, while failing to provide a product without this basic mistake.

Thanks for the replies, I'll give them a go

Okay, I've had a search on the forums and found that the grass file is missing alpha channels. I have fixed that by opening it up in dxtbmp and resaving the file. No performance increase. It seems it is to do with the terminal buildings, either the model themselves or the textures. I turned scenery complexity all the way down (to the point where there were no terminal buildings) and got 30fps+. Any ideas?

 

Regards,

 

Brendan

And also have run the AlphaSearcher with no missing alpha channels at DFW. Although there is a grass texture missing mipmaps. Could this be an influencing factor?

As with mostly every other tweak, your mileage will vary. Unfortunately, the alpha channel theory was a placebo for me as well.

No worries. So what is it about this duplicate AFCAD? Could this be impacting on performance if there were?

A duplicate AFCAD can cause all kinds of issues. Easiest way if you have a lot of sceneries is to use the freeware utility ScanAFD. It will scan all your scenery files very quickly and then you can choose to delete any AFCADs that you think are a problem. (It doesn't delete anything automatically - which is just as well as there are a number of .bgl files that show up as AFCADs but aren't!)

 

I truly don't think the problem is with the DFW scenery itself. That just doesn't add up. It's a mature product that's been around for a long time and although it is certainly performance demanding because it's such a big airport, it should be no worse than any other large scenery like ORD or JFK etc. If it's not a duplicate AFCAD, then I suggest you make a safe copy of your scenery.cfg file, then take out everything after the default entry

[Area.038]

Title=Addon Scenery

Layer=38

Active=TRUE

Required=FALSE

Local=Addon Scenery

Remote=

 

Make KDFW entry area 039 and see if that makes a difference with no other addons activated. If so, it may mean there is some other addon you have that is causing the problem. As weird as it may sound, many of us have had problems with sceneries that are hundreds of miles apart and seem to have no relationship to one another. As tedious as it will be, you will then have to add back to your scenery.cfg files a few at a time to isolate which one it is

 

PITA I know, but believe me, FSDT sceneries are worth it and KDFW is superb

 

Ian

Thanks very much Ian, I will give that a go and report back the results.