Why such low AA Samples? Why not use 8x or edge-detect (12x, 24x)?

 

Went out and learned about SSAA versus SGSS. While I can run those higher AA modes, I don't think 4xSSAA should be considered low. Most NVidia guides recommend 8xS + 2xSGSS. That is 4 samples as well with a sprinkle of SSAA. (2xSS+4xMSAA) and enabling 2xSGSS to transparent textures in inspector is 2 sample Super Sample to Gauges, GPS displays, VC Bezel edges and Paint jobs on external models in FSX. This is roughly the equivalent to (maybe a pinch better on poly's) 4 Sample Full Scene Super Sample.

 

http://www.dahlsys.com/misc/antialias/

http://naturalviolen....com/sgssaa.htm

 

I just bought a new ATI 7950 3GB (660ti competitor) for $300. Blasting around ORBX PNW in the Carenado C337 with some real time weather injection from Opus is glass smooth, zero shimmer, no tearing, no blurring. Wish I could have afforded a 7970 but not sure it would have made that much difference. I will try 8xSSAA for a while but I think in thick overcast layers I will still drop to low 20's if I do that.

 

I believe the issues of ATI and Clouds in FSX are finally over and done with. Have been for a few years.

 

C.

Over the past years, we have plenty of tweaks for Nvidia users but not ATI. Keep up with your research on ATI card settings for fsx. I'm sure us ATI users will be glad to know if there's a tweak which on par with Nvidia NI.

 

Regards.

Went out and learned about SSAA versus SGSS. While I can run those higher AA modes, I don't think 4xSSAA should be considered low. Most NVidia guides recommend 8xS + 2xSGSS. That is 4 samples as well with a sprinkle of SSAA. (2xSS+4xMSAA) and enabling 2xSGSS to transparent textures in inspector is 2 sample Super Sample to Gauges, GPS displays, VC Bezel edges and Paint jobs on external models in FSX. This is roughly the equivalent to (maybe a pinch better on poly's) 4 Sample Full Scene Super Sample.

 

http://www.dahlsys.com/misc/antialias/

http://naturalviolen....com/sgssaa.htm

 

I just bought a new ATI 7950 3GB (660ti competitor) for $300. Blasting around ORBX PNW in the Carenado C337 with some real time weather injection from Opus is glass smooth, zero shimmer, no tearing, no blurring. Wish I could have afforded a 7970 but not sure it would have made that much difference. I will try 8xSSAA for a while but I think in thick overcast layers I will still drop to low 20's if I do that.

 

I believe the issues of ATI and Clouds in FSX are finally over and done with. Have been for a few years.

 

C.

 

I changed my settings back to 4x and visually I cant tell a difference. However, at busy airports with all the add-ons at dawn with building storms (Rex, UTX, FSDreamTeam DFW) in the RealAir duke I am getting around 5fps better in the VC (around 22-23) and near 30 in all the other views.

 

THANK YOU!!!

 

As others have said, it appears us ATI people are finally getting our cards tweaked properly :lol:

I changed my settings back to 4x and visually I cant tell a difference. However, at busy airports with all the add-ons at dawn with building storms (Rex, UTX, FSDreamTeam DFW) in the RealAir duke I am getting around 5fps better in the VC (around 22-23) and near 30 in all the other views.

 

THANK YOU!!!

 

As others have said, it appears us ATI people are finally getting our cards tweaked properly :lol:

So glad its working well for you. That 7870 is a great card!

 

C.

Ok I cannot edit the original post but a GTX580 owner gave me a piece of advise. While I already have Ansio enabled in FSX Graphics Options, I was Setting Override in ATI CCC for Anisotrophic Filtering Mode and setting it to 16X and High Quality, he suggested I set it to Application Controlled and let FSX do the Ansio.

 

In my Benchmarks with FSXMARK11 got about a 10% boost in framrates. FSXMARK11 is a GPU killer benchmark where you max the weather sliders in FSX and ten load a flight and let it fly in a million layers of overcast in the default 747. I was getting about 20 fps average and now I get about 22 with spikes to 25. Not that this granular level of change really matters. And of course people can manipulate results with all kinds of FSX.CFG and inspector tweaks and LOD radius settings and things of that nature. I have seen people get 30 locked in this test with lesser system than people getting 20. This tweak that tweak (compromises in some cases like reject radius for instance). All I cared was I was able to measure a difference. With Could density simply at HIGH instead of maxed and draw distance to 70, I get FSXMARK11 to average 30 - 35 fps. Apparently ATI can do clouds. No doubt an overcocked GTX580, 660ti and 680 all get better than the equivalent ATI in this tourture test but for regular weather themes and flying, ATI is far from "unable to handle clouds". I am getting more or less GTX570/580 type results.

 

Now from an IQ standpoint, I am testing...

 

Ansio set in game (as before) but CCC set to application controlled. **FAIL** -> See below...

AA set in ATI CCC (I use SuperSample 4xAA which is roughly equivalent to the NVidia 8xS w/ 2xSGSS).

 

Letting FSX do ANSIO. Looks good. But to me not good enough. While there is no Shimmer in AG or land textures, there is some slight shimmer in the distant water. I am an IQ nut so I am going back to ATI CCC for Ansio. I still leave FSX set to ANSIO but I am back to 16X in CCC. Looks better and no shimmer anywhere.

 

Looks great! Locked at 30 at 99% of the time in payware planes in ORBX land multitudes of weather scenarios. I need to keep an eye on textures letting FSX do it to ensure it is still shimmer free. So far so goo. In fair to medium weather I can use 8xSSAA without drops in fps even with some medium cloud as long as I set cloud to HIGH instead of maxed for Density. This is on this new HIS 7950 3GB card. For $300 it is a monster. Especially in Crysis 3 and BioShock infinite which I got free with the card!

 

FSX has never looked this good and ran this smooth with minimal tweaks required. Just himemfix and forcefullscreenvsync.

 

Last note... Using Bjotes online tweak tool here ---> http://www.venetubo.com/fsx.html

 

dropped my results to 18fps. Pretty massive change to the negative for me. Went back to the 2 simple tweaks and it just works better.

 

Charles.

Firstly my thanks for starting a ATI thread were we (ATI owners) are able to discuss settings.

 

Running at EGLL Extreme and the NGX with 20% AI traffic (Mytraffic) i can get reasonable performance at 5760x1080 (windowed).  

 

My CCC settings are similar to the above though i have:

AA: Enhance application settings

Filter: Edge

AA method: Adaptive.  

Morph Filtering: Off

 

Otherwise very much the same, from observations on overclocking the gfx card it appears to make little difference.  I don't run separate profiles for other applications.

 

Last note... Using Bjotes online tweak tool here ---> http://www.venetubo.com/fsx.html

 

dropped my results to 18fps. Pretty massive change to the negative for me. Went back to the 2 simple tweaks and it just works better.

 

Charles.

 

Interesting, was this because the max texture size is now only 1024?  I think that the tweaks move this to 4096.  It would be interesting to know which tweak resulted in the drop?

Firstly my thanks for starting a ATI thread were we (ATI owners) are able to discuss settings.

 

Running at EGLL Extreme and the NGX with 20% AI traffic (Mytraffic) i can get reasonable performance at 5760x1080 (windowed).  

 

My CCC settings are similar to the above though i have:

AA: Enhance application settings

Filter: Edge

AA method: Adaptive.  

Morph Filtering: Off

 

Otherwise very much the same, from observations on overclocking the gfx card it appears to make little difference.  I don't run separate profiles for other applications.

 

 

Interesting, was this because the max texture size is now only 1024?  I think that the tweaks move this to 4096.  It would be interesting to know which tweak resulted in the drop?

 

I have to try that "Enhance AA" instead of override. 8xMSAA is free with ATI in FSX and looks stunning but gauges are Transparent textures and require SSAA. Which is why NVidia users do the 2xSGSS thing to fix the gauges clarity. Same as switching from MSAA to SSAA with ATI. NVidia tweak is a little more flexible as it allows them to do a slightly better than 4xMSAA and then tell the driver to hit the gauges with 2xSGSS (2xSSAA) to make them sharp. I have friends with 680's that came from 570's and using 4xSGAA in inspector in thick layer clouds tanks the fps even on their new card. REX clouds and 4xSGAA = fps drop. ATI users have pure full scene Super Sample AA to pick for that but it is on everything so the card has to work a touch harder in that regard. So I stick to 4x. Now enhance? I have not tried.

 

All I know that is in heavy cloud with FSX set to AA in game I was getting stutters when there was heavy overcast cloud when I practice low vis IFR approaches. Not bad stutters but I am a stickler when it comes to any hitching or glitching when I look around with my TrackIR.

 

When I get time I will try that setting.

 

C.

ATI users have pure full scene Super Sample AA to pick for that but it is on everything so the card has to work a touch harder in that regard. So I stick to 4x. Now enhance? I have not tried.

 

 

C.

 

It does look a little better (in my opinion) but Super Sampling kills my system at 5760x1080, not just in FSX but in everything.  I haven't tried Morphological Filtering within FSX, it has issues with other software making the text kind of blury, i might try it again.

It does look a little better (in my opinion) but Super Sampling kills my system at 5760x1080, not just in FSX but in everything.  I haven't tried Morphological Filtering within FSX, it has issues with other software making the text kind of blury, i might try it again.

Just so you know... I use PROFILES in the 3D area. Basically you set up like you want. Then you say... New Profile and browse to the FSX.EXE file in the FSX main folder. Done. Now you can leave the STANDARD set to whatever you want so anything but FSX uses that configuration and everything else uses another. For Crysis 3 I left the Main CCC configuration at DEFAULT because the games does SSAA really well and I dont want to mess with it. When I run FSX I get 4xSSAA and 16XAF.

 

So if you set 4xSSAA in CCC you can't fly that resolution? What sort of fps do you average just bumming around ORBX scenery if you were to use that setting? URGENT NOTE: if you use that setting (Override 4X Super Sample) in CCC you MUST turn off AA in FSX. ATI does not like SSAA with FSX AA enabled.

 

C.

Nice to see some ATI interest here.

 

My settings are similar too. I find it a good balance. I do have Surface Format Optimisation ON so will try with it off. Does it make that much difference then?

ATI cards are not that bad for FSX. Not as bad as some would suggest anyway.

Nice to see some ATI interest here.

 

My settings are similar too. I find it a good balance. I do have Surface Format Optimisation ON so will try with it off. Does it make that much difference then?

ATI cards are not that bad for FSX. Not as bad as some would suggest anyway.

IQ (image quality) is a Pandoras box. So I apologise in advance. :-)

 

Surface format optimization is a compromise. Oh sorry driver developers.... An "optimization". Lol

 

I find with it on, some (not all) surfaces in the distance shimmer. Look. Don't fret. If you don't notice, don't worry. Leave it be. You may get a few fps out of it. :-)

 

For me and others is about trying to get it perfect. Which you can never really do without losing something. I suggest turning it off. Same as I suggest using super sample AA. This is if you want to match what we try to do with a typical nvidia setup following the guides.

 

All video card manufacturers ship with compromises enabled in the drivers so that their cards are faster out of the box. We IQ nut jobs jump in there and turn those optimizations off at the risk of some loss in performance. Is a balancing act.

 

I digress. Turning it off has minimal impact.

 

C.

Just so you know... I use PROFILES in the 3D area. Basically you set up like you want. Then you say... New Profile and browse to the FSX.EXE file in the FSX main folder. Done. Now you can leave the STANDARD set to whatever you want so anything but FSX uses that configuration and everything else uses another. For Crysis 3 I left the Main CCC configuration at DEFAULT because the games does SSAA really well and I dont want to mess with it. When I run FSX I get 4xSSAA and 16XAF.

 

So if you set 4xSSAA in CCC you can't fly that resolution? What sort of fps do you average just bumming around ORBX scenery if you were to use that setting? URGENT NOTE: if you use that setting (Override 4X Super Sample) in CCC you MUST turn off AA in FSX. ATI does not like SSAA with FSX AA enabled.

 

C.

 

I'm going to re-run SS with the current driver set.  I don't use ORBX, but have FSGlobal, GEX and UTX Europe.  It may have been i also had AA set in FSX; but i also remember having performance issues in X3 as well.

I'm going to re-run SS with the current driver set. I don't use ORBX, but have FSGlobal, GEX and UTX Europe. It may have been i also had AA set in FSX; but i also remember having performance issues in X3 as well.

Start FSX.

Disable AA but set Ansio and lock at 30 fps.

Exit FSX.

Go into CCC and set AA to 4x, Standard, Supersample and Ansio to 16x.

Turn off Surface format optimization.

Exit CCC. Start FSX and try a standard flight of some kind. You really should be OK with that card at these settings. I was OK with 6950. You have the superior card.

 

But what tweaks did you put in FSX? Whenever I mess with use pools tweaks or any of that crap, I lose performance or get stutters. Just ensure you at least have himemfix tweak in your FSX.cfg. this is imperative!! It is the ONLY tweak you need with ATI. In fact its required.

 

Would love to hear back.

 

C.

Start FSX.

Disable AA but set Ansio and lock at 30 fps.

Exit FSX.

Go into CCC and set AA to 4x, Standard, Supersample and Ansio to 16x.

Turn off Surface format optimization.

Exit CCC. Start FSX and try a standard flight of some kind. You really should be OK with that card at these settings. I was OK with 6950. You have the superior card.

 

But what tweaks did you put in FSX? Whenever I mess with use pools tweaks or any of that crap, I lose performance or get stutters. Just ensure you at least have himemfix tweak in your FSX.cfg. this is imperative!! It is the ONLY tweak you need with ATI. In fact its required.

 

Would love to hear back.

 

C.

 

I'll probably try your settings tomorrow.

 

Yeah i know about 'himem...' being important, i'm pretty lazy so i use the ******* tweak, but i also have the max textures set to 4096, I believe that the standard is 1024, the NGX looks poor with this texture  depth.

I'll probably try your settings tomorrow.

 

Yeah i know about 'himem...' being important, i'm pretty lazy so i use the ******* tweak, but i also have the max textures set to 4096, I believe that the standard is 1024, the NGX looks poor with this texture  depth.

I tested the ******* online tweak tool. I lost 10% performance in the FSXMARK11 benchmark. Went back to just himemfix, wideviewaspect and forcefullscreenvsync.