FSDT KLAS Antipopup not working?

[bonchie 2,305]

I've got the trial running and want to buy it but I can't seem to get the anti-popup to work.

 

No matter what the setting is at I still have to be within 50 feet of the terminal for that terminal's ground clutter to load. I thought the anti-popup is supposed to multiply the view distance by up to 30x for which ground clutter appears, making it load the 3d objects as far away as the airports boundaries (in theory).

 

Anyone else got it working correctly?

 

I signed up for their forum but am still awaiting verfication by their admin.

 

I'm getting 26+ FPS with the airport and strip fully in view in the Aerosoft Airbus with FTXG at max autogen so the performance is excellent. Tried the KIAD trial but I'm dipping into the high teens there in certain situations.

[virtuali 4,421]

The Anti pop-up doesn't control every possible aspect of object loading strategies. An object visibility is decided by several factors:

 

1) Decide if an object should be loaded in memory or not.

 

This is not possible with regular .BGL files: once the .BGL is in range, all scenery objects will be loaded at once, it's not possible for a scenery developer to controls their ranges individually (of course, using native FSX code. I'm not discussing FS8 code, which allowed this). Since the Addon Manager ALLOWS for this, we can squeeze better performances AND save memory, by separately control object loading ranges. This has a cost in the visual "pop-up" effect AND it has a cost in potentially more stuttering, because it takes time to destroy and create objects.

 

THAT'S why we have an Anti-popup slider. With that slider, users can decide to override the range we decided for smaller objects (larger objects such as terminals and runways are always loaded entirely with the scenery) and increase it, of course at a cost of increase memory usage and possibly fps, but with a benefit in smoothness and less visual pop-up. With the slider all the way to the right, the loading strategy will be similar to a regular .BGL: everything is loaded at once when the scenery loads.

 

The anti-popup slider controls ONLY this aspect of the loading strategy.

 

 

2) AFTER an object is loaded, decide WHICH parts of it are displayed, depending on LOD levels.

 

LOD levels are different versions of the same object at different levels of complexity, displayed depending on viewing distance. LOD levels are extremely fast to switch, there's no stuttering when the LOD changes, because all LODs are always loaded at once in memory. Some items, such as ground details and vehicles, are not made as separate objects with their own separate loading strategy as explained on #1 but, instead, they are represented as LOD levels instead.

 

The anti-popup slider doesn't have ANY control over the LOD levels, they are hard-coded in the scenery and can't be easily changed by users. We ARE working on some what to have them changing dynamically and adjustable with an user-preference, but it's not ready yet. Once we'll have it in place, it can probably retro-fitted to all our existing sceneries, just with an Addon Manager update.

 

3) Additional optimization methods.

 

On top of loading distance strategy and LODs, we occasionally add other fps optimizations, for example cutting ground clutter objects if the user is flying above a certain altitude. The reasoning behind this, is that you want to have the best possible fps while on final, and eventually accept some fps degradations when taxiing. 

 

The Anti-popup switch doesn't control these additional optimization strategies too.

 

There's no general rule that applies to all our sceneries: some use just #1, some use #1 + #2 and some use all 3 methods together, and this changes on a object by object basis, each case is different.