Hello,

Well, this is nothing new really, but today I'm elated because for me at least, I've finally gotten fsx and a lot of orbx scenery stuff working beautifully....smooth 30-70 fps without jitters or tearing or anything weird over SeaTac with autogen on dense. It's been a long, tedious waste of time trying to get things to work on my system.

 

i7 3.5 ghz, gtx 560ti windows 7. one SSD drive for Windows, one SSD drive for FSX....near instant texture loading and menu loading. Nice to have but $$$$ and limited storage.

The issues I've had are numerous crashes to desk-top, fatal error messages, bizarre graphics meltdowns (black skies, smearing weirdness etc, blurries, stuttering, you name it. This stuff doesn't happen all the time, but definitely once in every flying session. Fatal error 2-3 times per session : (

 

I've tried everything under the sun and have reinstalled fsx and all the add ons four times (my wife is ready to leave me). For me at least I've 'learned' what works on my system and I can repeat it now every time on my computer to ensure great results. I just thought I'd share what I've done that's worked so well. I realize that all systems are different yaddayadda yadda. Some of this might work for you, some of it might not. Posts like this sure helped me sort things out, so I thought I'd give back.

So here's my story:

-I've tried many tweaks to the config, usually with the Bohote fsx tweaker tool. Bufferpools, max texture load, reject threshold, etc. etc. etc. After hours of trial and error using a saved flight for consistency, I only found the tweaks to cause instability and noticed little to no difference to frame rates or visual performance.

I've concluded that for better or worse, the stock config is the most stable.

I run the sim at stock config except for the swarmcloud fix which solved flashing clouds for me and the ForceFullScreenVsync=1 which solved the screen tearing.

I run my card on default settings with vsync enabled. Nothing else is different. (I've experimented with external AA, vsync settings, external frame limiter, and have noticed no differences to the sim in performance or quality..only instability and unpredictable performance. I'm running fsx acceleration btw.

 

-I also run all the Orbx North America sceneries. I LOVE these addons but have found them to cause a lot of instability to FSX on my machine (crashing, errors, artifacts etc.). I run REX, but have never had any issues with it anywhere and the fsx default scenery flies like a dream and has never crashed or erred. So for me, Orbx FTX was the issue. Now here's the game changer:

What really solved MY problems was the UIAutomationCore-1.dll vista file 'fix'. I downloaded this Vista file and simply dropped it into the FSX main folder. I can now fly FSX problem free. I can switch menus over and over, change settings, start and stop, fly in complex areas in addon aircraft and never have a crash or error. If you're having issues on a Widows 7 setup and haven't tried this, I highly recommend it. http://www.mediafire.../?mik2mlqdz1w�� It might not work...hope it does because for me it was like Christmas. It could be wishful thinking, but I'm pretty sure I've gained 10 frames per second from this as well. I'm no computer expert though so don't know if that's even possible.

As for settings:

Filtering-Bilinear

AA-On

All boat traffic 100% Cars 25% Water low 2.0

Private traffic 100% Airline traffic-off

Autogen Dense / Auto gen complexity maximum

Mesh Complexity 50%

Mesh Resolution 100% Detail radius 100%

Texture res 100% No ground shadows, NO BLOOM!!, no aircraft shadows, cloud distance 80K,

Also, I tried using the Grand theft auto ENBseries mod, but only found it to cause issues for me and maybe even instability. I don't know though, people seem to use it and works for them.

Thoughts on Frame limiter: If you have a fast machine and you're getting a wide range of fps in a single flight it can cause stutters (as you know). I found that by simply setting the fsx frame limiter to 100, it stops the stutters, but still allows high fps. It's as if by simply having it on, it irons out the issues for a fast machine. So in busy areas, things drop to 20-40 fps, but can fly up to 70 fps without jitters as well in simple areas. By setting to 100, I never fiddle with the slider anymore no matter where I'm flying. Definitely advice for fast systems only though I suspect.

 

This nice little program will allow you to slow down the AI vehicles from 1000 mph to something more realistic like 25 mph. Looks great in towns. http://www.wolfgang-...ng-picheta.de�� Also fixes lots of little details.

For me, the brakes release/hold control would never repeat. I'd set the slider to max repeat but it would revert. I tried many joystick assignments for it but the problem persisted. I discovered that by setting it to medium, it now behaves like a true car brake and never reverts in the assignments.

On an aesthetic note, I love the Water configurator from http://www.strikings...om/fswc.shtml��

combined with REX, the water can look beautifully real ('black' lakes, rich dark oceans etc.)

Well, that's all....sorry for the novel. I just wish that I would have found this post 3 months ago, so I'm just writing it to put it all down in one place. Maybe it can help someone out there with similar issues/setup to me. I realize that it's all nothing new. It just hard to find it all in one place!

Hope some of it makes your fsx experience a little more friendly.

Awesome post!

Greatly appreciate all the links, tips and hints you supplied!

Thanx

Just a couple of other things that worked for me that I forgot to mention. The vista file fix solved my in-game error message crashing, but DID NOT solve my black sky psychedelics. I downloaded this Bojote fix mini-program and followed the instructions. Easy as "install" "apply".

Apparently it solves graphics/shader loading issues for people using complex aircraft and scenery. Somehow it allows the computer to load more info without being leashed by a built in protective mechanism or something. It's in the description. Aside from the odd texture flash, it completely solved all the LSD-crash issues. Many of these issues happened for me during weather changes and menu changes. The new scenario would load, but would be missing information like the whole cockpit, black sky etc. etc.

Here's the link:

http://forums.flight...turefix-v10zip/

I'm going to back track and contradict myself. I honestly have no opinion re: the Bojote tool. it seems to greatly decrease texture drop-out issues and maybe makes things less prone to graphics melt-downs. I don't know. I'm now running the config on the Bojote fixes and no more black skies or texture drop outs. I honestly don't notice too much of a fps increase, but the fixes are about more than just increasing fps I gather. I'm no expert on code/programming. In another post, I've added another little thing I found that gave me an additional 15 fps and dramatically improved performance. If you check your task manager during game, you'll see that the threads of your cpu are imbalanced and unevenly working. If you turn of 'core parking' in windows seven you'll get a more even spread across the threads. This has little to no effect on performance, BUT....if you go into Task manager/processes and right click fsx, you can choose to set the priority for the cpu. If you select 'realtime', you might see great results. For me, I'm getting all 8 threads working at 80% and a dramatic increase in frame-rates and performance. Night and day really.

I'm going to back track and contradict myself. I honestly have no opinion re: the Bojote tool. it seems to greatly decrease texture drop-out issues and maybe makes things less prone to graphics melt-downs. I don't know. I'm now running the config on the Bojote fixes and no more black skies or texture drop outs. I honestly don't notice too much of a fps increase, but the fixes are about more than just increasing fps I gather. I'm no expert on code/programming. In another post, I've added another little thing I found that gave me an additional 15 fps and dramatically improved performance. If you check your task manager during game, you'll see that the threads of your cpu are imbalanced and unevenly working. If you turn of 'core parking' in windows seven you'll get a more even spread across the threads. This has little to no effect on performance, BUT....if you go into Task manager/processes and right click fsx, you can choose to set the priority for the cpu. If you select 'realtime', you might see great results. For me, I'm getting all 8 threads working at 80% and a dramatic increase in frame-rates and performance. Night and day really.

 

You can add Affynity mask tweak in your fsx.cfg for fsx to use all cores. One core is recommended to be left for OS and proceses. Bojote's tweaks was great at the time, but now it's recommended to use Word Not Allowed's guide: http://#####.wordpress.com/fsx-software-and- hardware-guide/

 

You have there all tweaks and fixes for fsx