FSX Texture Loading

[johnnycaptain 165]

Hey Guys,

I notice that my FSX textures takes a while to get sharp, I was wondering which aspect of the system is this dependent on, CPU Video Card, Ram, or HDD. Also is their anything tweak etc that i can use to get my FSX textures loading fast and sharp? If this matters my display res i use is 1680*1050

Thanks

[PieEater 10]

The CPU plays a big part in processing and rendering textures and autogen. If your CPU is running at 2.7Ghz it would probably help if you could overclock it.

 

Out of interest have you got an AffinityMask setting in your FSX.cfg file?

[SAAB340 28]

What's your FFTF setting in the cfg?

FSX terrain engine is designed to be either CPU limited or limited by FSX internal FPS limiter.. A faster CPU certainly helps a lot with textureloading in those two scenarios. More cores helps as well and we also need to have storage with fast enough access time. So no 5400rpm drives.

 

But as soon as anything else is limiting our framerate it will interrupt the terrain engine and slow down texture loading. Like for example:

1, your GPU can't handle your AA settings with the clouds or you have a very weak GPU

2, v-sync is limiting your FPS to a lower value than set in FSXs internal limiter

3, an external FPS limiter is limiting your FPS to a lower value than set in FSXs internal FPS limiter

4, your PCIe bus is limiting your FPS (DX9, 8x PCIe 2.0 or lower over heavy autogen)

 

The FFTF value is the key in all of the above situations. (It should be combined with having the internal FPS lock set in FSX.) A low FFTF value reduces texture loading and when it's too low it'll stall the terrain engine fully. So what value to set? It depends on your system and your scenery. Using high res photo scenery requires a higher FFTF value than normal land class based scenery. Default is 0.33. The better CPU you have the lower the setting can be. You can also increase the value to get better texture loading but anything over 0.67 doesn't improve anything it just reduces FPS.

 

The reason people put a lower FFTF in is because it improves FPS (at the cost of textureloading) The difference in FPS when were CPU limited will be (1+oldFFTF)/(1+newFFTF).

[johnnycaptain 165]

I have affinity mask set at 56

 

Surprisingly I am not finding a Fiber Frame entry in my fsx, though i used Bojote Tweak, Should i add it in and what Value?

 

Also i get high fps and the textures take about 18 secs to sharpen properly as seen in the attached photo

[PieEater 10]

I have affinity mask set at 56

 

OK so you have disabled 3 of your 6 cores, I can see the logic in this as most folks with Intel i5/i7 CPUs run with 3 physical cores (AM14 / AM84) however these are generally running a full 2GHz faster than your CPU so I don't know if you can truely compare the 2 different senarios. You will probably find that allowing FSX to use more of your cores will help with texture loading but may also have a negative effect on FPS, you'll have to find whether this is the case and what your best compromise is. For your CPU AM56=3 cores, AM60=4 cores, AM62=5 cores, no AM is obviously all 6 cores.

[johnnycaptain 165]

Ok understood many thanks!

[johnnycaptain 165]

Ok so i tried affinity mask 84 and i saw some stuttering and then i took it off altogether. Their is stuttering and the texture speed increased ever so slightly but not near fast enough. However i made a big blunder in not saying that i am currently running a Nvidia 9500gt 1gb ; i just bought a Radeon 7770 and yet to install it. Do you think that is the reason?

[PieEater 10]

Ok so i tried affinity mask 84 and i saw some stuttering and then i took it off altogether. Their is stuttering and the texture speed increased ever so slightly but not near fast enough. However i made a big blunder in not saying that i am currently running a Nvidia 9500gt 1gb ; i just bought a Radeon 7770 and yet to install it. Do you think that is the reason?

 

Very sorry - I typed 84 for 3 cores rather than 56, but this is your existing setting anyhow, try removing the AffinityMask setting altogether.

 

Also do look at what SAAB340 says.

 

//Edit - Not sure from your post if you have removed the AM setting altogether, if so has this helped?

[SAAB340 28]

What AA settings are you using? A 9500gt is not a very fast GPU. I can't imagine it can do any additional AA and might restrict you even without AA.

 

You should use affinitymask 62 or 63 on your hexacore.

 

What sort of FPS are you seeing when you get the blurries? As a test, set the internal FPS lock to the lowest setting (think it is 12FPS) and see if you get OK texture loading then...?

[johnnycaptain 165]

Very sorry - I typed 84 for 3 cores rather than 56, but this is your existing setting anyhow, try removing the AffinityMask setting altogether.

 

Also do look at what SAAB340 says.

 

//Edit - Not sure from your post if you have removed the AM setting altogether, if so has this helped?

 

I removed the AM and put FFTF to 0.67. Texture speed improved a little but not much however i get stuttering now at high fps

[johnnycaptain 165]

What AA settings are you using? A 9500gt is not a very fast GPU. I can't imagine it can do any additional AA and might restrict you even without AA.

 

You should use affinitymask 62 or 63 on your hexacore.

 

What sort of FPS are you seeing when you get the blurries? As a test, set the internal FPS lock to the lowest setting (think it is 12FPS) and see if you get OK texture loading then...?

 

Ok i am running FSX on trilinnear, and i tried the internal lock to 10 fps and the texture loading was faster (time it took to get sharp). As the pic i posted shows i was getting 128fps and it was blurred for about 18 secs until it got sharp.

[SAAB340 28]

I removed the AM and put FFTF to 0.67. Texture speed improved a little but not much however i get stuttering now at high fps

Did you have the FPS locked in fsx while doing this?

 

 

 

Ok i am running FSX on trilinnear, and i tried the internal lock to 10 fps and the texture loading was faster (time it took to get sharp).

Was it fast enough for you and was that with no AffinityMask or Affinitymask=63?

This should take your GPU out of the equation and show you the fastest texture loading your CPU/HDD combo is capable of as long as you don't have any bad tweaks in your cfg. Have you always had this poor texture loading or did it just start and have you tried rebuilding your cfg? And what HDD do you have FSX on?

 

The 9500GT is actually a very slow GPU and i suspect putting that 7770 of yours in might help even at your low graphics settings. Let us know how you get on.

 

I can recommend reading this topic if you want to read more about textureloading in FSX:

http://forum.avsim.n...ing-ssd-vs-hdd/

(The vital images have fallen out of the post but they can be downloaded from links in a reply further down)

[johnnycaptain 165]

Thx so much for your help, i really appreciate it. Well, my situation is that i just upgraded my CPU from a Athlon X2 255 3.1 ghz. The X2 surprisingly wasnt bad at all with the bojote tweaks and actually used to run the NGX at about 15-20 fps in the VC with REX and GEX.Texture loading strangely was about the same or maybe very slightly faster the than my current one which i find is extremely strange. In my fsx settings i have forced to have sttuff like the texture resoultion as high as 15 which is needed gor GEX. I also have the LOD on the maximum. I have no problems with my current frames thought i really hate to fly with blurry textures. I plan to buy a new fan and overclock to maybe 3.4 ghz max (I have a phobia for overclocking) and put the 7770 in and hopefully that will resolve the issue. To answer your question my FSX is on my 500gb C drive and i will read your post,do over my cfg using Bojote (as i am not a computer whiz i find Word Not Allowed's a little difficult to follow) and install the 7770 and report to you

[SAAB340 28]

Are we talking a 500GB WD green HDD?

Your hexacore should not give you slower textureloading than your old dual core. Something is wrong if it does. First of all, rebuild your cfg. Just rename the one you have at the moment and FSX will crate a new one when you start it up. Try flying with an untweaked CFG to start with and see if there's a noticible improvement in your textureloading. You can allways revert to the old cfg at any time by deleting the new one and renaming the old one again.

[johnnycaptain 165]

Are we talking a 500GB WD green HDD?

Your hexacore should not give you slower textureloading than your old dual core. Something is wrong if it does. First of all, rebuild your cfg. Just rename the one you have at the moment and FSX will crate a new one when you start it up. Try flying with an untweaked CFG to start with and see if there's a noticible improvement in your textureloading. You can allways revert to the old cfg at any time by deleting the new one and renaming the old one again.

 

According to Speccy its a 466GB Hitachi HDT725050VLA SCSI Disk Device (ATA). Im gonna delete the cfg now