DX-10 and multiple monitors

Thanks for all the replies everyone. It was blind luck that no posts were

lost in the rollback that took place overnight too. It looks like kand's most

recent reply was posted prior to Wednesday.

 

To recap, I was running DX9 FSX acceleration with four different full screen

views parked on four different monitors. I wanted to run in DX10 in the same

manner. So far no joy in getting that to happen.

 

However I am overjoyed at the DX10 flight results thus far with Nvidia

surround mode (two gtx460s, 1g ea.). In fullscreen wide view, spanned across

the three 1400x1050 displays, with VC view at .60 zoom it looks wonderful. If

I zoom out to .50 or less then the side window views from the VC begin to

look elongated on the right and left displays. I'm not unhappy at all with

this though. And I am very very satisfied with the huge difference that

implementing the changes brought forth by Steve's work and Paul's efforts in

teaching myself and others how to use them. Thank you guys, thank you, thank

you. Frame rates are steady (most of the time right on 30 but almost never below 20 so far), stutters are virtually non-existent and that has

made all the difference in the world to me. The extra visual boost to the

scenery and such is just the icing on the cake. I feel like it's my birthday

and I got exactly the present that I wished for. Thanks again.

Some observations, hypothetical questions and, if you don't mind, a request for additonal cfg/insp help. Maybe I should have started a new thread on this? I'm just going to keep it here I guess.

Initial testing went great with only one large problem. The runway glide slope lights were so big and bright that I was just about completely unable to see the runway itself until I was almost above the threshold. That made it really hard to tell just how well lined up I was. This may have been a result of some lighting enhancement I had previously made whilst being a DX9 only user. I have already mostly fixed that irritant with a new halo.bmp and scalar adjustments in my .cfg. Runway lighting is much better but I would still like to tweak it in the future. Probably play with the scalar numbers first then maybe a different halo.bmp again if just adjusting with the numbers does not really help.

In DX9 it seemed I would get a momentary freeze when I saw autogen appearing

nearby. In DX10 the autogen just appears with no stutter or momentary freeze. It does appear too close to the airplane for my taste though. Also the ground is blurry a little ways beyond the area where I see the autogen first popping into view. It also seems that I don't get available airports, radio calling/landing options in my radio window available to select by clicking on them (day or night), or visible runway lights/airports at night even, until I am way closer to the airfield when compared to how it was in DX9 before I made any DX10 changes. I am almost positive that these symptoms are caused by load raduis or reject threshold or other some such in my .cfg file.

I understand the DX10 feature and it's being named "preview" means that, in

FSX at least, it is a somewhat unfinished product. The flashing taxiways are

ample evidence of that but it leads me to ask these questions. To what extent

unfinished? Where did Aces leave off exactly? I have perceptions about my DX10 experience so far that there may be extras (ie. scenery, static objects, effects, maybe even AI, etc.) in there for DX10 that just flat out do not exist in DX9. Is that even possible? I am far from being any kind of well informed person on this and maybe what is happening is simply a result of moving the sliders? Maybe the only real difference between DX9 & 10 is shaders (something I have a very limited understanding of, I know they are files and that's about all). But I am still asking myself, and now you, questions. Questions like, if the above is true, and there are extra goodies in there then where could they be found? DX10 exclusive Easter Eggs anyone? Logically I would look in the parts of the program that the development team obviously would have put more time and effort into. Things like the major scenery and other points of interest (the Las Vegas strip or maybe Rio, NYC, London, etc). One other area comes to mind also. The missions. I actually reflew the Sitka Approach mission in DX10 and think I saw some major differences. Was that car and semi-rig parked down at the end of the runway hanger when I flew this in DX9? Did the car actually have it's rear bumper hanging down and the hood missing? Maybe it is an artifiact of one of the add-on static object libraries that I installed when setting up AI for another airport months ago and thousands of miles away in the sim? Anyone else notice anything like I have? Or am I imagining things again? ha ha! Hey no worries either way. Like I said, extremely happy with the sim in DX10 and I'm going to do my best not to look back. I don't think that will take much, if any, effort at all!

On the subject of looking back, lol! The need exists for guide on the most effortless way to make the needed program changes to run in 9 or 10. And maybe that guide should get a sticky. Not that I plan on using it! Well maybe although I can't imagine why at the moment.

I know just enough to be dangerous with my cfg. file. I've used the Bojote tool before as you can probably see by my affinity mask setting at the end of this posting.

Is it UsePools=1 or Bufferpools=1? Both? Neither?

I think not having DisablePreload in there might be holding me back. Is that loading too much to memory?

TBM? Two cards in SLI numbers?

Since I am now running in Nvidia surround I set the .cfg file entry as one display that is three screens wide. At some point FSX added a second identical display device entry (triple wide) toward the very end of the .cfg file of it's own accord. I removed it and it seems to have stayed gone. Mistake? If I am running two cards in SLI surround with just one display device shown in the .cfg then by default does this not mean that FSX sees the SLI GPU combination as a single GPU? Probably stirred up a hornet's nest with that one, ha ha!

Does it matter in what order inside the .cfg file that the main categories and sub-items appear? If it does not then would having them in a certain order improve overall performance? Does it help or speed up FSX to read them in a certain order or not? The reason I ask this is that I have seen some pretty fast loads and some that took a very long time. I'm pretty sure this is when the .cfg loads and/or FSX actually writes to it. It occurs to me that there might be a "clean" order in which it could be loaded or read or whatever that could maybe be beneficial once the program is actually running. No?

When I edit my .cfg file, I open and then make changes to it and then save it. I do this with the actual.cfg file and not the .txt that is alwys there with it, correct? Does making saved changes in either one make the other one identical or does FSX do that to one or the other once it is running? Maybe too many questions for a single post. And I realize that some apply to both 9 and 10, but just a few more.

I know there are things in the .cfg that are mutually exclusive. In other words there is no point in having one if you also have the other in there too. What are those things? Reject threshold and load radius or some such? Others that I do not know about?

Paul, one question before I post some of my .cfg file. On your photo linked Nvidia inspector settings forum page where you have the option of going 4, 6 or 8 are those the only changes and everything else stays the same when switching back and forth? Or are there accompanying changes that need to be made in inspector or the .cfg file when switching between those modes too?

Sorry this runs so long but I have a lot of questions. Thanks again and happy DX10 simming everyone. The .cfg tidbits below (not all of it to save space). Please don't laugh because there is bound to be something stupid in there. I'm almost sure of that.

 

[GRAPHICS]

SHADER_CACHE_PRIMED_10=1693500672

SHADER_CACHE_PRIMED=1693500672

MultiSamplesPerPixel=4

MultiSampleQuality=8

D3D10=1

HIGHMEMFIX=1

TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=1024

NUM_LIGHTS=8

AIRCRAFT_SHADOWS=1

AIRCRAFT_REFLECTIONS=1

COCKPIT_HIGH_LOD=1

LANDING_LIGHTS=1

AC_SELF_SHADOW=1

EFFECTS_QUALITY=2

GROUND_SHADOWS=0

TEXTURE_QUALITY=3

IMAGE_QUALITY=0

See_Self=1

Text_Scroll=1

[Display]

RUNWAY_LIGHTS_SURFACE_SCALAR=0.9

RUNWAY_LIGHTS_VASI_SCALAR=0.9

RUNWAY_LIGHTS_APPROACH_SCALAR=0.9

RUNWAY_LIGHTS_STROBE_SCALAR=0.9

ChangeTime=4.000000

TransitionTime=4.000000

BLOOM_EFFECTS=1

SKINNED_ANIMATIONS=1

TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=100

UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=30

WideViewAspect=True

ChangeTime=4.000000

[Main]

FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION=0.33

PerfBucket=7

HideMenuNormal=0

HideMenuFullscreen=1

Maximized=1

[bufferPools]

BufferPools=1

PoolSize=10485760

RejectThreshold=524288

[AccelerationPack]

ControlsFirstRun=0

HomePageFirstRun=0

[ATC]

ShowATCText=1

COMM_MSG_NONE_COLOR=FFFFFFFF

COMM_MSG_ATC_USER_COLOR=FFB6FFB6

COMM_MSG_USER_ATC_COLOR=FFFFD21B

COMM_MSG_ATC_AI_COLOR=FF00FF00

COMM_MSG_AI_ATC_COLOR=FFFF7840

AutoOpenAirTrafficWindow=1

UsePilotVoice=1

PilotVoice=0

[PointOfInterestSystem]

CycleSetting=0

[sCENERY]

LENSFLARE=0

DAWN_DUSK_SMOOTHING=1

IMAGE_COMPLEXITY=4

[TrafficManager]

AirlineDensity=20

GADensity=20

FreewayDensity=6

ShipsAndFerriesDensity=0

LeisureBoatsDensity=0

IFROnly=0

AIRPORT_SCENERY_DENSITY=2

[TERRAIN]

LOD_RADIUS=4.500000

MESH_COMPLEXITY=75

MESH_RESOLUTION=24

TEXTURE_RESOLUTION=25

AUTOGEN_DENSITY=4

DETAIL_TEXTURE=1

WATER_EFFECTS=6

[JOBSCHEDULER]

AffinityMask=255

[DISPLAY.Device.NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460.0.0]

Mode=4420x1050x32

Anisotropic=1

AntiAlias=1