Hello everybody!

I'm here because I've ran out of useful tips & tricks on autogen problems with my FSx+Acceleration version.

 

Problem: Autogen elements popup and mesh increases definition only at a small distance from my aircraft, like in a virtual small circle. Please find explanatory screenshots attached.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First of all here are my specs (PC is 6 months old):

 

M/B: AsRock Z77 Extreme 4

CPU: Intel I7-3770K (non-OC)

PSU: BeQuiet! Straight Power Modular 580W

RAM: 2x4GB Corsair Vengeance 1833MHz

Graphic card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX670

HDD: WD 1Tb 6Gb/s 7200rpm

Monitor: DELL U2711 at 2560x1440 (32bit)

Overclocking: usualy I prefer to no OC (3.9GHz), but I reached a stable system up to 4.3 GHz.

 

I read a lot about this kind of problem and I think I've tried everything (including switching from a wonderful Sapphire Radeon 7870 to my actual GTX 670) and obviously all kind of tweak. No results!

 

Let me share something abount the tweaks. For my configuration they are almost useless! I found out that Bojote's, Nick's, Word Not Allowed, and others tweaks, simply do not make my fsx run smoother that a clean fsx.cfg. And of course none of these tweaks have helped for the sayed Autogen and definition problem.

HIGHMEMFIX=1

POOLSIZE=up to 100000000

rejectThresol=...

TextureMaxLoad=12

SmallPartRejectRadius=4

 

and many others; even trying to find out which combination of tweaks could improve my performance!

 

In addition I found out that nVidia Inspector (with common settings derived from forum reading) has a significant hit on the smoothness and provides very poor improvement from the trilinear (or anisotropic)+antialiasing fsx visualization (e.g. without nVidia Inspector, at unlimited Frame rate, I reached 60-70 FPS; with nVidia Inspector, I reached less than 35 FPS - both very variable that make me prefer Framerate locking).

 

So, when I see all those youtube fsx videos ("As Real as it gets", guitargamery vids, Cessna154 vids, and so on), running at 40 FPS, smooth as silk with building and terrain crisp till eye's reach, and after reading a Pc configuration much older than mine, I just want to smash my beatiful PC down the stairs, it's getting real frustruating! :angry:

 

On some posts I read that FSX performance is strictly related to each kind of PC configuration... so, do I have to face the reality? Have I built a useless system to reach those levels of performance?

Or is there a way to exploit the power of my system which is well above those of whom have published FSX movies of unquestionable quality?

 

Just finding out a way to resolve my autogen and mesh definition issue would really make me happy!

 

PLEASE... HELP!

Problem: Autogen elements popup and mesh increases definition only at a small distance from my aircraft, like in a virtual small circle.

 

Look in your FSX.CFG look by [TERRAIN] there is a line LOD_RADIUS=4.500000 and change it to 6.500000

It's an impact on your Fps.

And you must change it every time before you start FSX, FSX change it back to 4.50000 if you closing FSX.

 

Jan.

Thanks F70 but that change in my fsx.cfg file does not improve mesh definition (and obviously neither does on autogen building pops).

By the way, tha changed value is still there when I restart FSX! :huh:

This morning I've discovered something new.

I must anticipate that another scenery I've installed is Tuscany&Elba by Maurizio G.

 

This is the usual aerial image for Lod_Radius=4.5... Ok!

 

 

Now I found out that around my aircraft there is really a "circle of definition" (inside the Lod_Radius perimeter)... and really too small if you consider my hardware. In the following are a sequence of shots that explains this (coupled respectively bird's view and VC just in front of cockpit). Screenshots have been over-exposed in order to enhance the visibility (hope you can see it!).

 

 

 

 

Don't you think the size of this "circle" is way too small???

Turn your visibility down a notch or two. See if that helps a bit.

 

Hook

I don't understand what you mean with "visibility". If you refer to "Level of detail" I already tried to lower the value in the Scenery FSX settings section to LOW and MEDIUM. The only effect produced is that mountains distant scenery gets even less detailed than the one in the images I posted.

As you easily can notice the level of detail in those images is way too low even if Level of detail = LARGE!

I meant visibility in your weather theme.

 

Click the "Change" button under Current Weather. You're currently set to "Weather themes" with "Fair weather" checked. Select "User Defined Weather", then "Customize". There's a slider for VIsibility that's set to the far right, "Umlimited". Drop that back to 50 mi, or even 40.

 

No, this will not make terrain render farther away. It will help hide the far boundary where terrain features are rendered.

 

While there may be some magic to getting autogen to display at a longer distance, it will not display as far as the eye can see, especially in unlimited visibility.

 

If you fly towards mountains with unlimited visibility, you will see the mountains start to appear in the distance. This is bad enough if all they did was start rendering a bit at a time, but they flash between two or more states constantly until you get closer, a particularly ugly effect. Since terrain cannot be rendered to an unlimited distance, the only way to hide this is to use reduced visibility.

 

Autogen will pop up as you get closer. This can be a really ugly effect as well. It's more pronounced in unlimited visibility. Terrain mesh will change level of detail and you can see popping, but there's nothing to help with that unless visibility is set to very low.

 

I personally find unlimited visibility to be ugly and unrealistic. One problem we had with CumulusX is that it renders clouds as objects which cast shadows. With unlimited visibility the shadows are very harsh and hard edged. Reduce the visibility to 50 mi and it's a major improvement.

 

I typically fly with real world weather, which almost never has unlimited visibility. But even with that I recently saw some mountain flicker in the distance.

 

Unlimited visibility isn't truly unlimited anyway. If you could remove all distance haze effects, the terrain would look extremely unnatural.

 

Hook

I appreciate very much your suggestion and I'm actually changing both Lod_radius and visibility values in my fsx settings. I do achieve some significant improvement with these settings and I'm right now trying to push on some other tweaks to to take advantage of all my system's power.

Thanks to everybody!

I do achieve some significant improvement

 

Let us know when you get some numbers you're happy with. Thanks.

 

Hook

LOD will only revert to default if you click OK in Settings and save a new FSX.cfg.

 

Autogen is supposed to "pop-in", a tradeoff for better performance. It was a fix, along with the W key, that ACES didn't have time to put in SP2. Maybe Sp3... whch never happened.

 

Dave

Look in your FSX.CFG look by [TERRAIN] there is a line LOD_RADIUS=4.500000 and change it to 6.500000

It's an impact on your Fps.

And you must change it every time before you start FSX, FSX change it back to 4.50000 if you closing FSX.

 

 

No, FSX only changes this back to default if you make a change and confirm in the Settings - Display screen in FSX.

I had this very same problem.

 

For me I turned off AF within Nvidia inspector and ensured it was handled in FSX. Set to anisotropic.

 

Went from blurry to crisp as far as the eye could see.

This is an interesting topic. I had to recently due a complete reinstall of Windows 7 and FSX and upon doing so it appears as though my autogen radius is reduced versus my original configuration. However, I had a few pictures saved and recreated those images with my new setup and everything looked the same so perhaps it's just me.

You don't have to make a change in setting, clicking anything other than CANCEL will save a new fsx.cfg file (reset).

 

Your card should always be set to anisotropic=16X. In FSX, I like anisotropic, some say bilinear.

 

Dave