Just made the switch to DX10!

[captain420 3,099]

Hi everyone, I finally decide to give DX10 mode in FSX a try, since I was having a ton of CTD, OOM, stackhash, BEX and random crashing lately. I followed Paul's guide and did all the necessary settings that was mentioned. I still need someone to point me in the right direction for what settings to use with NVIDIA Inspector.

 

My current setup is: Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit, EVGA GTX 680 FTW (4GB), i7-3770k overclocked to 4.5Ghz, 16GB Ram, 30inch Monitor running at 2560x1600, 128GB SSD as my main C: Drive that the OS is installed on, and a 2TB HDD for mostly everything else including FSX installation.

 

I really want to be able to fly in FSX, but lately I have been extremely frustrated with trying to figure out what's causing all these crashing issues. So today I decided what the hell, since I'm going to erase my fsx.CFG file and start fresh, I might as well give DX10 a go. 

 

What exactly can I expect from DX10 FSX vs DX9? I mean, will I get higher performance, less crashing and better looking graphics? With that being said is DX10 recommended over DX9 for FSX with a computer setup like mine or should I go back to DX9? I own a lot of 3rd party addons and scenery for FSX, and want to be able to use them. I heard DX10 might cause incompatibility issues with certain addons?

 

As far as my FSX display settings, I have set to locked to 30FPS, Trilinear activated, AA checked, light bloom and lens flare unchecked. (It says so in the guide, but can I not use these 2 modes in DX10?

[z06z33 763]

Frames wise you should pick up about 5fps you will gain cockpit shadows which sounds trivial but it really adds to.immersion . I would recommend that you use nvidia inspector to set up your AA through that.

[captain420 3,099]

Can someone post a guide for getting a good starting point using Nvidia Inspector? I have reset the Microsoft FSX profile to default and want to start from scratch. I was told in Paul's guide to activate AA and set it to Trilinear inside FSX though. I'm getting confused with all different guides and stuff going around. I don't know what the correct or optimal setting to use anymore.

 

Also how difficult would it be to switch back to DX9 in case I decided to? Is it as simple as unchecking the Preview DX10 mode inside FSX? Or is a lot more involved?

 

Nevermind, I found the pinned topic by Paul with screenshots of various nvidia inspector settings to try out. Nice  

 

Also in the latest DX10 (June 4th, 2013), it says this:

 

Filtering: Anisotropic….. AntiAliasing: Ticked… Global Texture Resolution: Very High.

Preview DirectX 10: Ticked… Lens Flare: open… Light Bloom: open… Advanced Animation: 

Ticked…

 

What does open mean? Unchecked?

[Richard Sennett 2,499]

NGX have cockpit shadows ? not sure don't think so.

[RickB1293 9]

Your system has plenty of horse power though I've never cranked the screen resolution as high as you have yours. DX10 will improve your image quality and depth of field while allowing you to back down some of the FSX frame rate killers. (See the FX10 Guide).

 

My only problem with DX10 is grayed out addon airports from FsDreamTeam. I use their Hawaiian Islands 1-2 and PHNL alot and the airport areas disolve at anytime other than daylight. The posts list other developers with the same problem - they weren't optimized for DX10. FSDreamteam's KLAX v2.0 supports DX10 and shows great detail all the time.

 

Remember that the FSX Guide recommendations are a starting point only - you'll need to experiment with your FSX.CFG and Options settings to get to the best solution - everything is a tradeoff so try to determine ahead of time what is really important to you and experient accordingly. Many of these tweaks produce subjective improvements that can only be judged against your equipment and the results that are important to your sim expectations.

[Jim Young 2,356]

 

 

What does open mean? Unchecked?

 

Unticked.

 

 

 

With that being said is DX10 recommended over DX9 for FSX with a computer setup like mine or should I go back to DX9?

 

You have a lot of questions which have been answered several times in this forum.  DirectX is not an FSX development.  Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video.  Microsoft developed FSX/Acceleration with DX9.  In Acceleration, they had planned to program FSX with DX10 (a superior technology) but didn't have enough time as Acceleration/SP2 had to be published.  So FSX threw in a DX10 Preview button into the FSX setup program as it was not a completely finished product. There were a lot of anomalies found even with this first version of DX10 programming.  Microsoft FSX Team wanted to finish the DX10 program in a future update but Microsoft eliminated the development team before that could happen. Steve's DX10 Fix fixes many of the issues and anomalies found in the original version of Microsoft's implementation of DX10 in FSX.  It could be better and it might get better with future updates from Steve.  You can use the exact same settings you use for DX9 with DX10 and vice-versa.  There are no changes made to any DX9 file when you install DX10.  Microsoft made DX10 to be simply turned on or turned off in the FSX.cfg without any further modifications.  It will not make AA look better.  It will not make AF look better.  It will run FSX a little faster performance wise but not make it run without stuttering or without blurries. It has the same issues as DX9.  It does not like things made in older versions of FS.  If you want to run older versions of a product addon, simply revert back to DX9, Go Fly then come back after you have finished flying in an older addon product.  There are only a few things that DX10 has done to FSX and that is to provide shadowing inside aircraft cockpits and more wave animations when real weather is turned on.  It provides more immersion into flight simulation. You can read more about it from the FSX Lead Developer's Blog here -  http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ptaylor/archive/2007/10/02/acceleration-and-sp2.aspx. If you don't want more immersion into flight simulation, then go back to DX9.  The latest DirectX technology is now DX11 and we will unfortunately not see this technology in FSX.  It provides even more enhancements to multimedia taskings but we won't see them unless someone buys the FSX code and makes the changes.  Hope this answers some of your questions.

 

Best regards,

Jim

[RickB1293 9]

Great summary Jim. I'm interested in FSX "stills" screen shots and DX10, if supported by the developer of the addons. DX10 does provide shader enhancements that affect realism, especially when viewing well designed aircraft, scenery or weather which have been optimized for the DX10 APIs. I too switch back and forth between DX9 and 10 depending on the flight. It's just another part of my "preflight" flow.