Weird FS9 Blurry Behavior

[neumanix 114]

Cactus, come on... stop posting stupid global profile settings that wont do ANYTHING for FS9.

 

All this has been discussed to death in many threads here at Avsim and frankly I'm surprised of how hard it seems for some people to get it.

 

 

Gary, this it what you should do and nothing else. This is for the "MS Flight Simulator 2004" Program Settings and NOT the global profile.

 

1. You can disable NVIDIA Predefined FXAA usage as I doubt you will use it as it produces a rather blurred image. But if you want to try it, leave it at "Allowed" and set "Toggle FXAA on or off" to ON.

 

2. For Antialiasing - Transparency Supersampling, try 4xSupersampling. It will reduce some of the shimmering. 2x Sparse Grid Supersampling is much better but I don't know how your rather old

    gfx card will handle it. Give it a try however.

 

3. Set Texture Filtering Quality to "High Quality"

 

4. Set Maximum pre-rendered frames to 1 - will reduce stutters

 

5. If you use only one monitor, set Multi display/mixed-GPU acceleration to "Single Display Performance Mode"

 

6. Set Power Management Mode to "Prefer maximum performance"

 

7. Disable Triple Buffering

 

8. Set Vertical sync tear control to Standard

 

9. Set Vertical sync to 1/2 refresh rate.

 

Now set your fps limiter inside FS9 to 30. This is asuming you have a 60hz monitor. If you have a 120hz monitor, set the Vertical sync to 1/4.

 

The 4-4-4 Cactus talked about are the three terrain settings in fs9.cfg

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Cactus, come on... stop posting stupid global profile settings that wont do ANYTHING for FS9.

 

 

 

Please stop the personal attack comments.  To date, I have added these add-ons to our community:

 

~Land Class Assistant

~Soft Horizons

~Several FDE's and visual models for freeware aircraft in our community

~Hours of beta testing this product and reporting issues to Microsoft.  They fixed what they could.

~Personal exchanges with the FS9 developers and project managers

~Countless forum posts that have helped others.  Look them up, you will find them.

~A long tenure as a forums admin here at Avsim, volunteered

~Financial support for this site

 

Maybe my settings don't work for you, but they work for me and countless others.  The file library is full of landclass add-ons made with my tool.  Maybe you should know who you're talking too before you rush to judgement.

 

Tom can vouch for all these things.  I'm not perfect, but I am here to help.

 

John

[neumanix 114]

Well I'm just trying to say that your way of setting AA makes no sense.

The global profile is for any software that uses hardware accelerated graphics, both DirectX and OpenGL.

Now if you go fiddling with the global settings you might end up affecting all kinds of programs.

That's why there are specific profiles for different applications.

 

So it's obvious that one should use the provided "MS Flight Simulator 2004" profile for FS9 and "MS Flight Simulator X" for FSX.

 

In these we use the "Override application settings" so it wont matter if we enable AA within FS9 or FSX. Best to disable to be 100% sure that the CPU isn't doing any AA that will be overridden anyway.

 

I appreciate all your development efforts but in this case of setting and tweaking AA for FS9 your are way off target.

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Well I'm just trying to say that your way of setting AA makes no sense.

The global profile is for any software that uses hardware accelerated graphics, both DirectX and OpenGL.

Now if you go fiddling with the global settings you might end up affecting all kinds of programs.

That's why there are specific profiles for different applications.

 

So it's obvious that one should use the provided "MS Flight Simulator 2004" profile for FS9 and "MS Flight Simulator X" for FSX.

 

In these we use the "Override application settings" so it wont matter if we enable AA within FS9 or FSX. Best to disable to be 100% sure that the CPU isn't doing any AA that will be overridden anyway.

 

I appreciate all your development efforts but in this case of setting and tweaking AA for FS9 your are way off target.

 

It works for me, on my system.  So I'm right on target when it comes to what works for me.  I had FS9 purring along on a P3-800 for several years.  That's the system I used during the beta--I think it's why Microsoft chose me to help, so they could benchmark low end systems.  There's more to my FS9 setup than just FS9.cfg and Nvidia settings.  Every app I use and load on my system is tested for compatibility for MSFS and my other simulation titles.  I tuned my system in a manner similar to what FSGS did for many of their customers.  Comes from working as a PC tech specialist, WAN Admin, and QA and Software Engineer for a couple of decades.  There is no silver bullet setup for any one system.  It's what you choose to use, what add-ons you use, and how you work with them all.  My posts alone won't help, but collectively the answers are there for each individual's system.  I've found my optimum settings, and if sharing them helps someone, I am happy with that.

 

John

[John_Cillis 2,406]

@@Cactus521

 

Yes please keep thinking...... if it is not one thing its another at this point. I'm beginning to feel like Air Force 1's MX crew. 3-5 hours of maintenance for 1-2 hours of flight. 

 

Re: Vsync

 

Trust me that is not the reason. I can't count how many hours I put into that issue. I was trying settings left and right, up and down. Almost drove myself nuts. Still wish I could run it at 30 FPS since it is so fluid. I even thought of going up to a 75Hz monitor (currently my Acer is 59/60) but was told that wouldn't help and I would have wasted the money in the process. I've settled on my current settings after hours of taxiing in circles and judging the smoothness of the movement off the terminal building at the default KSEA..... 30 FPS is so smooth but alas  <_<

 

Gary

 

Hi Gary,

 

I just went into FS9 because I noticed my screenshots looked a little odd.  I remembered, I had turned off anti aliasing in FS9 when I was testing my new video card some months back.  I turned it back on, and here is the result.  Try my FS9.cfg and turn AA back on, and try my Nvidia settings.  In concert, I think everything will work for you.  Remember to enable autogen after you use my FS9.cfg.  Again, jpg compression reduces the quality of the shot, I keep it low to save bandwidth for my FS9 page at Photobucket.   If you want to see examples of FS9 as I have it configured, they are found here:

 

http://s483.photobucket.com/user/Cactus521_photos/library/FS2004?sort=2&page=1

 

John

 

[neumanix 114]

So your advice still is (as in one of the first post in this thread)  to use your whole fs9.cfg...

If anything that will mess things up further as Gary also earlier said.

Your fs9.cfg contains settings for your gfx cards (I see you have two) and also refers to a saved situation that Gary certainly don't have.

Also I saw a [bufferpools] section in there... come on, we're talking FS9 here for gods sake.

 

And you earlier said that you don't use vsync and don't sync your fps with the refresh rate. That if anything will cause tearing and stuttering.

You need to enable vsync and set your fps limiter accordingly.

 

The ususal case is you have a 60hz monitor. Now if your sim constantly stays above 60fps (and i mean ALL the time) then an ordinary vsync On and fps

limited to 60 fps will do the job.

But then the problem is with any higher levels of AA and bad weather and all the things that eat fps will make any decent system drop below 60fps sometimes.

 

The trick then is to lock your fps inside the sim (don't use external limiters) to 30 and use the 1/2 refresh rate vsync, which will be 30hz for a 60hz monitor.

Now your vsync is in sync with the updating frequency of the game and the result is butter smooth with no tearing while leaving a bit of headroom for the CPU.

 

To further eliminate stuttering I advice the use of my DxtFixerX tool (for both FS9 and FSX) to correct any dxt3 textures that has the alpha bit not set.

 

Here are a couple of screenshots I just took to show what my setup looks like. The only extra enhancement is enbseries with my own enbpalette:

 

 

 

My fs9 runs locked at 30fps all the time with full WOAI traffic and any plane I choose to fly (Ifly737, Maddog MD80, LevelD 767...)

No stutters what so ever and it looks pretty nice I would say.

[garymcginnis 3]

@@neumanix

 

All this has been discussed to death in many threads here at Avsim and frankly I'm surprised of how hard it seems for some people to get it.

If I got paid for all the work I've put into tweaks over the last year, I wouldn't have to work at my current airline..... only recently did I discover how active avsim still was in regards to fs2004  ^_^

 

In fact I'm in the process of going to "live the dream" all weekend and have run out of time to try to tweak. Your FS pictures look great. Will try settings when I get back but please see below:

 

1) I will try; not totally sure what all this means but if you say so!

2) 4XS was causing my FPS to keep dropping on my last flight for some reason. I had it locked at 27 and it would hold that and then drop down to 25 for a second and then repeat. Temps were amazing, so the computer wasn't downclocking and it held the FPS when I switched back to 4X. I know it was 4XS since that was the only thing I had changed before the last flight. It is weird..... I've used 4XS in the past with no issues and when I got on the ground, I let the FPS go unlimited and it was pushing well over 80. Will try again, might have then been a one off fluke based on the new AF settings. Right now I have it at 4X and didn't notice any difference as it was. I'm not sure what setting you're referring to on the second part.... 2X, 2X2, or 2QS (going from memory right now). Please advise!

 

3) I was always told that "performance" gave the best results. Is this something new?

4) Will try again.... I tried 1 and 8, before, when testing the Vsync options.

5) I use dual monitors and fly in windowed mode (I have the menu bar removed, so it almost like full screen).

6) Will try

7) Will try again.... I've been fiddling with that on and off for a while now

8-9) I've tried all settings under the sun (see my last post) and I still kept getting the nasty tear line. I'll try it one more time with the other settings you mentioned. If it doesn't work, I'll post a video showing that issue.

 

My monitor is a 60Hz but it defaults to 59Hz (hence why I said 59/60)

 

At this point, I want to fix the blurry to smooth thing and if I can run FS at 30 again, that is just a plus. I've been non-stop tweaking over the past year and my tweaking obsession only got worse when I built my new rig just for FS, since I know it can do much better  :Silly:

 

I don't know if this helps or not but this is the tweak guide I've used as my starting point for the last year http://www.ausflightsim.net/article37.html

 

Hope this all gives you some more info to go on!

 

@@Cactus521

 

Thanks for your help as well!

 

Thanks,

Gary

[John_Cillis 2,406]

So your advice still is (as in one of the first post in this thread)  to use your whole fs9.cfg...

If anything that will mess things up further as Gary also earlier said.

Your fs9.cfg contains settings for your gfx cards (I see you have two) and also refers to a saved situation that Gary certainly don't have.

Also I saw a [bufferpools] section in there... come on, we're talking FS9 here for gods sake.

 

And you earlier said that you don't use vsync and don't sync your fps with the refresh rate. That if anything will cause tearing and stuttering.

You need to enable vsync and set your fps limiter accordingly.

 

The ususal case is you have a 60hz monitor. Now if your sim constantly stays above 60fps (and i mean ALL the time) then an ordinary vsync On and fps

limited to 60 fps will do the job.

But then the problem is with any higher levels of AA and bad weather and all the things that eat fps will make any decent system drop below 60fps sometimes.

 

The trick then is to lock your fps inside the sim (don't use external limiters) to 30 and use the 1/2 refresh rate vsync, which will be 30hz for a 60hz monitor.

Now your vsync is in sync with the updating frequency of the game and the result is butter smooth with no tearing while leaving a bit of headroom for the CPU.

 

To further eliminate stuttering I advice the use of my DxtFixerX tool (for both FS9 and FSX) to correct any dxt3 textures that has the alpha bit not set.

 

Here are a couple of screenshots I just took to show what my setup looks like. The only extra enhancement is enbseries with my own enbpalette:

 

 

 

My fs9 runs locked at 30fps all the time with full WOAI traffic and any plane I choose to fly (Ifly737, Maddog MD80, LevelD 767...)

No stutters what so ever and it looks pretty nice I would say.

 

Frankly my FSX looks better than those screenshots.  Don't know why, it just does.  There is no "Holy Grail" of tweaks that works for one system.  Each computer is a universe of different applications, different settings, different hardware, different system configurations.  I've applied all the things I've learned during my years of working in the field, and they work for me.  Worse comes to worse I'd be willing to dial in to the OP's system and watch.  I have a lot of spare time to help.

 

Regards,

 

John

[neumanix 114]

There are some different ways the graphic card does antialiasing (or AA for short), some are more "costly" than others in terms of performance hit.

 

Multisampling is "cheap" and easy for the gfx card and produces a sharp looking image with some descent AA.

 

4xS is a combination of 2 techniques, Multisampling and Supersampling. Supersampling demands a lot more of the gfx card and produces a slightly blurred image with descent AA and reduces

shimmering, like flickering taxilines and such.

 

I like a sharper image so I use 4x Multisampling for AA. This is the "Antialiasing - Setting" in nVidia Inspector. This affects the whole frame being rendered.

 

Now if you look further down you see the setting for "Antialiasing - Transparency SuperSampling". This is separate antialiasing for transparency in textures, i.e. the alpha channel.

This helps reduce shimmering in trees, fences, gauges in your aircraft etc., anything with transparency.

Clouds have very detailed alpha channels so that's why fps will drop in bad weather if you crank this up too much.

 

Now this aint cheap if you want a great image. Setting this to 2xSparse Grid SuperSampling gives a very nice image with minimal shimmering but can bring older cards to their knees.

4xSparse Grid SuperSampling is only for the newest cards and they barely make it in really heavy weather with lots of clouds.

 

I just about manage 2xSGSS on my GTX285. But it's so on the limit that I use 4xSuperSampling instead and have to live with some shimmering. But I'll get a new gfx card soon though ^_^

 

Your card should manage 4xSupersampling as well.

 

I use Track Ir and it's easy to notice a lag if I have the "Maximum pre-rendered frames" set to anything higher than 1. I don't get an "Performance" option, but try and compare what seems to work best.

 

Some cards seem to have a problem with vsync in windowed mode. Mine works, just tested, but I fly fullscreen on a single monitor.

 

About the tearing line... I saw earlier you had "Vertical Synch Tear Control" set to "adaptive", it should be "standard". Check that.

 

The 59Hz is just a rounding bug. In reality it's something like 59.94hz so it's nothing to worry about.

 

You can PM me your entire fs9.cfg and I'll go through it and see if I can spot anything and then send it back to you.

 

Cheers!

[neumanix 114]

Oh one more thing, you said you locked your fps to 27. Never do that. How would that be able to sync with a 60hz monitor.

It's either 30 or 60 and for most it's 30.

 

Locking at 60fps would be awesome, but it requires that your fps would have to stay above 60 ALL THE TIME. Every little dip below 60 would cause stutters.

 

Locking to 30 thus requires that you always can stay above 30fps, never dip below, and this is of course a lot more managable.

That's why for best fluidity you should lock to 30 fps and set vsync to 1/2 refresh rate, which is also 30. Now they match and your will enjoy a smooth ride.

 

@@Cactus521

Well maybe your FSX looks better because FSX uses higher resolution textures. Just... maybe...

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Oh one more thing, you said you locked your fps to 27. Never do that. How would that be able to sync with a 60hz monitor.

It's either 30 or 60 and for most it's 30.

 

Locking at 60fps would be awesome, but it requires that your fps would have to stay above 60 ALL THE TIME. Every little dip below 60 would cause stutters.

 

Locking to 30 thus requires that you always can stay above 30fps, never dip below, and this is of course a lot more managable.

That's why for best fluidity you should lock to 30 fps and set vsync to 1/2 refresh rate, which is also 30. Now they match and your will enjoy a smooth ride.

 

@@Cactus521

Well maybe your FSX looks better because FSX uses higher resolution textures. Just... maybe...

 

I meant my FS9...my bad.  Look at the shots in the photobucket link.  Judge for yourselves.

 

John

[neumanix 114]

Yes there were some nice shots in there.

You're using default ground textures, right?

I'm using Ground Environment Pro and MyWorld2004 landclass that covers most of the world, plus some more local landclasses. I Like this combination.

I ditched Ultimate Terrain quite long ago as I thought it looked too messy.

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Yes there were some nice shots in there.

You're using default ground textures, right?

I'm using Ground Environment Pro and MyWorld2004 landclass that covers most of the world, plus some more local landclasses. I Like this combination.

I ditched Ultimate Terrain quite long ago as I thought it looked too messy.

 

I never got around to some of the texture replacement packages that are out there.  Some look remarkable however, I liked that second shot you posted the most.

 

John

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Here's a link to some screenshots with FS9 set up in an environment that's more natural for me, based on my real world flying.  Soft Horizons is working in full force to fade the textures and clouds into the distance.  Vis. was set at 30 miles.

 

John

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/409808-some-more-fs9-shots-lsa-allegro-over-phoenix/

[Chase 303]

 

 

Cactus, come on... stop posting stupid global profile settings that wont do ANYTHING for FS9.

 

A little harsh...This man has been helping the community for almost a decade.  He certainly didn't deserve that.