I'm starting to wonder if it's some of the urban OSM autogen that's the problem. Things seem worse in airports near connurbations, not so bad in rural areas. Tree density doesn't seem to be an issue.

I was down to a slide show in Paris. Dropping the number of objects to Tons helped a great deal.

Rats. Will have to go for 16 then I guess...

Scotchegg, I have a GTX 680, and 12 GB of system RAM running XPX 64 bit.  As you saw in my screenshots, I can keep pretty well at 29.96 FPS in the most detailed scenery in over-fly, and at a rez setting of VERY HIGH.

Regarding the shimmering, I have it in the freeware TRrueScenery Finland OSM 1.2, with Helsinki Ortho

 

 

Yes, I have it too with this Helsinki. I suspect some buildings are drawn twice in OSM. But if you say this happens on all buildings, this might be something else. Are you sure ?

I too would like to know more about this. I'm thinking of changing to faster RAM (1600 MHZ or above) from my 8GB 1033MHZ RAM. Would it make much difference and importantly, do I just need to swap the new RAM with the old RAM on my motherboard or do I also need to change anything in the BIOS settings? 

I run 12 GB's of 1600 MHz Crucial Ram in TRI-Channel (9-9-9-24-128-1T) 

 

I7-975 Extreme CPU

GTX 680 factory overclock  ....and get 29-30 FPS at VERY HIGH rez, with HDR at 4xSS and 16 AA.   Thought you might like a comparison. 

 

This is very important...and this is for any system, or manufacturer, you must run 128 ( tRFC for ram limit or higher)  for anything over 6 GB's (3 X 2GB sticks) of RAM. . This will allow your system to properly use 4 GB sticks If not, your system will POST the higher RAM figure, but as you use your memory locations over 6 GB's, you will start to see memory errors and outright slowdowns, or crashes.....This is a BIOS setting when setting up your memory config...and is critical. Remember, a lower setting other than 128 might have your system 'acknowledge' the full RAM...but it will error out in usage.... 

 

The 2nd shot shows my graphics settings. A total of about 950MB of textures is reported as being loaded. My GTX 650 Ti has 1GB GDDR5.

You are using nearly 1 GB simply for textures?  With 1 GB VRAM. So there is very few space to buffer something. Try to lower till you are around 600-700 MB and test again. Another thing that might help against the shimmering: HDR on 2xSSAA + FXAA. The higher the antialiasing (SSAA) the less shimmering you should get, but it takes VRAM!

 

 

Try to lower till you are around 600-700 MB and test again

 

How do I lower this?

 

BTW, in windows my swap space is set to 16GB, coincident with the RAM I have.

How do I lower this?

 

BTW, in windows my swap space is set to 16GB, coincident with the RAM I have.

Decrease the texture resolution. With only 1 GB RAM this is no longer feasible. I use "high"!

Your swap space settings have no meaning. You can't use X-Plane if it starts swapping.

@Longranger: Oops!  I didn't even realize it was set at extreme :-/

 

 

@Pascal_LSGC: You're right, not all buildings are affected. Might it have to do with the OSM Europe + only interfering with the Helsinki OSM?

 

@Pascal_LSGC: You're right, not all buildings are affected. Might it have to do with the OSM Europe + only interfering with the Helsinky OSM?

I thought that too, and desactivated OSM Europe, was still there.

Well after some further testing it seems I was deluding myself by thinking I could keep all that lovely autogen AND extreme textures, so bringing them down to very high naturally helped.

 

As a further question, I've noticed with extreme textures that when the stuttering and fps drops happen, the f-sim rate stays fairly high, but the f-act rate drops. Does this mean the VRam is the problem, or is it still extra Ram I should go for if I want to keep extreme textures?

 

 

graphics settings.jpg

 

jcomm I know you've said you're not so worried about eye candy but I strongly recommend you try water reflections at complete and fly around some lakes - it's really a nice effect.

 

 

jcomm I know you've said you're not so worried about eye candy but I strongly recommend you try water reflections at complete and fly around some lakes - it's really a nice effect.

 

Ah!  Meanwhile I did increase the settings, not to the highest setting you mention but to one (I don't recall now) two steps behind it, and it does look great, and not that heavy with my 650 Ti ;-)

 

Thx!