Hi

 

I'm new to FSX. I am now running a plain FSX withs SP2. I only run My ASE 2010 and WOP2 P51D which can be used for both fs9/fsx. Think I am gonna fly in fsx for GA's or perhaps my next fsx native A2A products. Watching YT clips, I was truly deeply amazed with FTX ORBX sceneries. How do they run on medium system? say, my i5 2500K at clock speed with slider corrections here and there+Bojote's tweak? No I do not plan to OC, I will get a new GPU sometime this end of the year but not overclocking.

 

It'd be great hearing from users. I do't know if their forum is accessible for non costumers, haven't tried, I know this is a good place to start .

 

 

Respectfully

By now, you know they look fantastic, so that is past the point. I have a terrible habit of running my system with the sliders full-right, despite not having the power to reasonably do so, and at Piper Cub speed, it looks absolutely fantastic, and is fluidly smooth at 12 FPS, which is great for me. At Mustang speed, you would need a little more power, which seems to be what you have! I would start from sliders all right, then work your way towards that middle mark of performance and quality, or just stay at full-right if FPS are good. It's worth noting some of their more recent regions(New Zealand, England) are much more optimized than the older ones, like Austrailia, the American PNW, etc. But it really is a must buy!

 

A quick edit: people with your processor will definitely attest to much higher frames than I achieve, do not think you will get my low frames that I find acceptable and smooth, as your processor is a much more powerful build than mine is.

I get good frame rates either, with relatively high scenery settings, and my computer specs are a bit lower than yours, I'd say, and mine is a laptop. That said, I just want to point out that no matter what you do, in some very dense areas (mainly Seattle area in PNW, I didn't notice anything in London, though) frames simply drop, as they did/do with default FSX scenery.

It will aslo depend, what airfield addons you use, and at which settings you run them: The airfields come with a configuration tool, so you can easily switch some scenery features on/off, such as all the "Flow" objects (which only have little effect on FPS from my experience), different layers of 3D grass etc.

Also note, what Wendall has already pointed out, that the higher your aircraft speed is the more powerful a computer you'll need, because textures tend to become blurry very quickly in faster planes. (I just had that experience yesterday myself, when I thought I might annoy the people living in PNW with the Hornet at very low altitude, but that turned the scenery into an aweful mess of extremely blurred textures)

Other than that, I second what Wendall said:

it really is a must buy!

 

Cheers,

Flo

By now, you know they look fantastic, so that is past the point. I have a terrible habit of running my system with the sliders full-right, despite not having the power to reasonably do so, and at Piper Cub speed, it looks absolutely fantastic, and is fluidly smooth at 12 FPS, which is great for me. At Mustang speed, you would need a little more power, which seems to be what you have! I would start from sliders all right, then work your way towards that middle mark of performance and quality, or just stay at full-right if FPS are good. It's worth noting some of their more recent regions(New Zealand, England) are much more optimized than the older ones, like Austrailia, the American PNW, etc. But it really is a must buy!

 

A quick edit: people with your processor will definitely attest to much higher frames than I achieve, do not think you will get my low frames that I find acceptable and smooth, as your processor is a much more powerful build than mine is.

 

Mr. Dalton, thank you for the reply:D. yes, I agree experimenting with sliders, although it screwed my head once when I just fired up FSX at the first time, staring that FRAPS fps mark and realised this sim is a pretty tough one.. I am now almost getting a setting that suites my expectation finally.

 

Not many people are comfortable running the sim with 12 FPS. While it is always a good idea not paying attention to fps that much, my guess 12 fps in fsx and 12 fps in fs9 are different. Somehow 25 fps in fsx is smoother than in fs9 (mine is locked at 29, if it is unleashed i'll jump from- to 60-112, again, running a plain fsx). .

just download their pnw demo and you can decide for yourself.

I get good frame rates either, with relatively high scenery settings, and my computer specs are a bit lower than yours, I'd say, and mine is a laptop. That said, I just want to point out that no matter what you do, in some very dense areas (mainly Seattle area in PNW, I didn't notice anything in London, though) frames simply drop, as they did/do with default FSX scenery.

It will aslo depend, what airfield addons you use, and at which settings you run them: The airfields come with a configuration tool, so you can easily switch some scenery features on/off, such as all the "Flow" objects (which only have little effect on FPS from my experience), different layers of 3D grass etc.

Also note, what Wendall has already pointed out, that the higher your aircraft speed is the more powerful a computer you'll need, because textures tend to become blurry very quickly in faster planes. (I just had that experience yesterday myself, when I thought I might annoy the people living in PNW with the Hornet at very low altitude, but that turned the scenery into an aweful mess of extremely blurred textures)

Other than that, I second what Wendall said:

 

 

Cheers,

Flo

 

 

 

Hi Flo, thanks for the preview .

 

I am now more aware flying lo-slow could save some fps. FS9, I could stick with 60 no matter what I threw at. As I stated, I am now more interested in flying warbirds and default GA's in FSX (planning to get Acceleration too) as my fs9 is only for heavies and jet. I am nowhere near any FTX scenery, the closest is Australia but it is a huge package and costs more , so what is the first scenery I may want to look for?

 

just download their pnw demo and you can decide for yourself.

 

wilco!

what is the first scenery I may want to look for?

Well, that depends on what "type" of GA flying you want to do: If you just want to do some cross country flying, Australia or England might be just fine for you. If you want more of a thrill, and a greater variety of scenery, the American packages, most probably PNW and PFJ are waht you want. You'll get some really stunning scenery, great located airports and some thrilling visual approaches into very small fields.

I myself like the US area best, for the given reasons, but also, because I feel they are very well covered with additional airport/airfield sceneries, which are depicted at an incredible level of detail. There also are some freeware addons available at http://fullterrain.com/freeware.html, which are very similar to the payware addons, quality-wise. Another plus of the PNW area is the available demo, which kdfw__ has already mentioned. (Well, there's a demo for Australia, too, but it's limited to Tasmania, if memory serves, and that's not one of the lower performance areas in FSX.)

 

I'd say the major difference between AU and US are the types of available airports: While in Australia you'll get some major hubs such as Melbourne or Brisbane, and only a few "GA only" airports, you have mainly GA airports/airfields in the US, which perform excellently, even though they are at a higher level of detail.

 

As for the UK area, there's not much to say yet, since it's just been released, and there are no ORBX airport sceneries available yet, but from flying there, I must say, they did a good job on England, too.

 

Regards,

Flo

I'd say my experience is the same as Dalton's, except that it really depends on the area I'm flying in. The Piper Cub in the crescent between Israel's Farm, Concrete and Darrington everything is fluidly smooth at 25FPS, with sliders almost fully to the right. Go to the south however around Firstair and Harvey, and my FPS tends to drop to 12FPS. I'm guessing it's because of the proximity to Seattle. That said, it doesn't matter that much to me: Darrington and Israel's Farm are my top favorite OrbX fields. Hopping from one to the other in either the Piper Cub or the RealAir Scout is probably the flight I do most often nowadays in FSX. If I were to try the Carenado CT210M, which is a much faster plane, I will get blurries all over the place though.

 

In summary, some of the airfields work really well and they will work beautifully on your rig; yours is way better than mine! I have a 2,8gHz i5 quad of an older generation - Yeah, I have a 2,5 year old iMac, so not noly don't I have the best hardware to begin with, it's also very old by now. But, I must say it handles FSX very well, and OrbX is traditionally not a problem if I stay between Seattle and Vancouver and don't go flying into any of those cities with my sliders the way they are now.

@Quraisy........I have a similar system to yours (2500k but mine is a i7), and FTX regions and airports run beautifully for me, especially if you're flying GA aircraft, as they tend to be a lot lighter than the complex airliners.

 

One thing you haven't said though is what Graphics Card you have at the moment? .......... If you are using onboard graphics, that will be a huge bottleneck / achilles heel to your system, and performance may be slow, as FTX uses really high quality, high definition textures.

 

With a i7 2500k, 8GB DDR3 RAM, and ATI 5770, I easily get 30 FPS throughout all of FTX PNW, ENG, etc, in a Carenado, RealAir or A2A type GA aircraft ...... if I am near a large conurbation like Seattle, London, etc, then it will drop to as low as 20 FPS ..... I don't think I ever see lower than that. 20 FPS is my own personal 'minimum' benchmark.

 

But with any half good GPU you will be fine ... Go for it!

 

FTX ENG and FTX PNW are my favourite packages.

It'd be great hearing from users. I do't know if their forum is accessible for non costumers, haven't tried, I know this is a good place to start .

Respectfully

 

They run spectacularly, even on lower end systems, depending on the definition of 'lower end' (Q9650, nV GTX 280). Seriously, it's true! I have 4 1/2 y/o hardware and run ORBX sceneries all the time--I just have to respect my old hardware and not ask it to fly the NGX out of KSEA! I am mindful to use birds like the QW757 or CoolSky Super MD 80 Pro and these can handle any locations in and out of ORBX sceneries. I did a lovely trip from Brisbane to Townsville in the QW757 w/ fabulous weather from REX Essentials Plus and stayed closed to locked on 30 frames for the entire flight. I have all my sliders hard right except cloud distance at 100m and autogen density at DENSE. Hopefully the 'no over clock' was referring to your GPU? Certainly your processor is begging to be amped up and w/ that you will have fabulous performance over me old Core 2 Quad.

 

Noel

I definitely notice a hit on my end... but I do run usually maxed autogen. They do have a little tweak where you can disable street lamps in the daytime (even though they dont show) and it helps with fps.

 

The worst areas are the areas that are already bad in FSX... like near KSEA - I usually get a OOM after flying in that region for an hour even with not maxed scenery. So I try to avoid it.

They run spectacularly, even on lower end systems,

 

LOL, not for everyone. I have issues with performance with some of their addons, specifically the detailed airports. I will say the newer regions do run smoother on my rig than PNW does for some reason. I almost uninstalled the whole lot awile back due to poor performance and other visual design choices that killed the immersion for me, then the pacific fjords area and PAKT came out and that was the redeeming factor.

Don't get me wrong, I love what they do for the most part, especially the flow tech ideas, but when everything is combined including real whether, the performance can really take a hit. I also really hate turning anything off, especially after seeing it once, LOL.

I definitely notice a hit on my end... but I do run usually maxed autogen.

 

Don't get me wrong, I love what they do for the most part, especially the flow tech ideas, but when everything is combined including real whether, the performance can really take a hit.

 

This is the issue w/ FSX. People seem to want to push the sim to the bleeding edge, but even w/ today's best hardware there will be situations where the only solution is to dial back complexity in some fashion as a trade off for better performance. So, this being the case, one can easily get FTX ORBX Scenery to perform very well as long as you're willing to trade down a little elsewhere. If the old Core 2 Quad can do it, well, you get the idea. I use GSX too and it's smooth and great. I get a lot of wiggle room from my fav plane, the QW757 since it's so easy on frames. It's really on the NGX that I have to be careful w/. The 737NGX is such a dog by comparison (thrust to weight ratio) it's nice to be able to take off in the 757-200 out of ORBX KJAC. I'd love to have a PMDG 757! In heavy weather at that lovely airport in that plane I get maybe 23-24 frames on the runway, and plenty smooth. This is another trick I have to employ using dated hardware: keep the autogen down by carefully matching plane to setting. I can fly the 737NGX around the Hawaiian Islands using FSDT airports and be very close to or locked at 30 frames all around the airports and at take off. Looking forward to Haswell esp if it will clock to 5Ghz or close. That and a juicy new video card should allow me to fly in some areas and in some planes I don't get to use as much together currently.

This is the issue w/ FSX. People seem to want to push the sim to the bleeding edge, but even w/ today's best hardware there will be situations where the only solution is to dial back complexity in some fashion as a trade off for better performance. So, this being the case, one can easily get FTX ORBX Scenery to perform very well as long as you're willing to trade down a little elsewhere.

 

No, this is the issue with people. We already know FSX has limited headroom for addons, yet users still push the boundaried and developers ignore then. i agree that most try to push the sim farther than it should go in most cases. When i first got FSX, i ran it on my older system that ran FS9 full to the right. i had my sliders set at normal because i knew i was getting more autogen than FS9 at full, BUT I always wondered what maxed would look like. One day after blissfully running for about 6 months, I decided to crank the autogen just to see what i was missing, holy cow, what a huge visual difference, thick forests, tons of buildings, wow, amazing thick 3D, yet it killed my performance. I had seen nirvana and couldn't go back, so that is when i built a new system, LOL .

 

You can get ANY scenery to work if you make compromises, that shouldn't be the case though. i develop scenery and have a pretty good idea of what is invloved and what impacts performance. I have my scenery sliders where it needs to be with headroom for addons. i also shy away from addon aircraft that are not optimized and are to heavy on the system. And I honestly believe that a developer needs to make their designs fit closer with default performance instead of expecting a user to compromise their settings to accomodate their addon, that is just being presumptuous considering how little performance head room FSX has.

 

When PNW came out, performance was dodgy, but they have gotten much better over time. KJAC is a good example of size vs performance.and I love the large photoreal areas.

 

i am glad i don't fly the heavies, I would go crazy trying to find a good middleground between eye candy and performance at big hubs

You can get ANY scenery to work if you make compromises, that shouldn't be the case though.

 

Bologna, the 'that shouldn't be the case though' part. Everyone makes compromises, and this is NOT a fault of FSX nor of the scenery, aircraft, nor weather product--it only points to the open-ended capacity of FSX to accommodate a reasonable amount of increasing complexity and is why the software continues to be a useful platform despite its many years in existence, and so this is a strength of the core software and the add ons built for it.

 

And I honestly believe that a developer needs to make their designs fit closer with default performance instead of expecting a user to compromise their settings to accomodate their addon

 

FSX debuted 6 years ago when Core 2 Duo at 3Ghz was the top performer. With your line of reasoning developers should target THAT performance criteria? Oh, ok, well we already have a nice Boeing 737, so who needs an NGX? Today's top CPUs are a whopping 600-700% more potent than what FSX was originally designed to run on, albeit not very well! Targeting old hardware as the benchmark of complexity design would have spelled the end of the franchise out of people being blissfully uninspired to use software that offers essentially the same level of depth, with a few pixels rearranged, that 'default performance' dictated ... in 2006. Continuing to to push the envelope is what has kept the entire gig going this far.