Afternoon from New Orleans

 

One of you genious simmers has to be able to help me with this.

 

Last night I'm toying with FSX while waiting for the 777 to download. Im running it windowed mode so I can run all the outside programs FSX pilots love to benefit from and suddenly it dawns on me that everytime my mouse brings up my Windows 7 Task Bar (auto-hid) at the bottom of the screen, my in game FPS jump 10-15 FPS!! My NGX 700 on a stormy busy day at KMSY went from 22 on the active runway to a steady 34-36 FPS??

 

At the disgust of my wife who was waiting on me to watch something lame and non-aviation related, i dug into the discovery.

Regardless of any in game setting, condition, or aircraft the result is the same. Touch the Windows Task Bar = 10-15 FPS gain. Move mouse away = 10-15 FPS gain goes nearly immediately away.

 

My processor isnt ramping up, and neither is my GPU. No matter what I do with that cotton pickin task bar (Lock, Auto-Hide, etc.) I can't get the boost in FPS to remain so long as I'm having to use my mouse in the cockpit.

 

A google search came up with several other people referring to the phenomenon as far back as 2010 but most called it a "noted bug" without any suggestions on how to maintain the improvement.

:unsure:

Please Help. This means the difference between playing with AI traffic,and greater autogen, etc. and having to play with the bare minimum.

 

 

At the disgust of my wife who was waiting on me to watch something lame and non-aviation related, i dug into the discovery.

 

Love it. :lol:

The mouse cursor in FSX is not hardware accelerated and is known to cause a large performance hit. What happens if you simply don't touch the mouse and just leave it for ~10 seconds?

Just move it to the top on the window frame after you finish clicking in the vc. I have been doing for while now.

Naif, so I'm not the only one huh? No permanent solution then?

 

 

JimmiG, Im busy doing Army things right now but I do think you might be right, that if I wait ten seconds or so, the FPS changes. Mouse cursor?? Really? Geez. I'll have to check.       There has to be a way capitalize on this.

 

cavcpt, i think you may be looking at it backwards.  It's not that you 'gain' FPS when you move the mouse to the taskbar, it's that you 'lose' FPS when you leave it on the screen.  This is a known issue with the NGX and some other AC as well.  A change of 10-15 seems like a lot - I see just 3-5. Apparently there's no cure for this FSX bug - maybe in P3D, I don't know

 

 

 

A change of 10-15 seems like a lot - I see just 3-5. Apparently there's no cure for this FSX bug - maybe in P3D, I don't know

 

Same same--it's about a 20% loss of frames when the mouse pointer is visible.  As others have reported, if you're in full screen mode and hit the Alt key to bring up the drop down menu bar you can park the cursor on top of the menu bar and get the immediate improvement.  I think an elegant solution would be program a 'ghost' bar in the same place:  one that is 100% clear and has no borders so is not visible at all--perhaps it could be coded to be user-configurable to be on any side of the display.  The way you could park the cursor on it and not have to look at the menu bar.  The only downside is that the mouse pointer then does not disappear, though this could be programmed out as I notice other 2D sub-panels including the ATC window also serve to put the the mouse curse 'above' the main VC view where the impact is felt, however in all of these the mouse pointer will disappear after the requisite 5 seconds or whatever FSX programs the mouse pointer interval to disappear upon no movement. 

 

When you consider the literally 100's of thousands of dollars spent worldwide to get 20% improvement out of FSX it's kind of bizarre no one has taken this on yet definitively.  Though not all aircraft suffer I know most do in my 6 y/o Core 2 Quad system and my new SB-E system.  I'm not a programmer but I mentioned it enough here in case some kind soul could figure out how to do this.

Same same--it's about a 20% loss of frames when the mouse pointer is visible.  As others have reported, if you're in full screen mode and hit the Alt key to bring up the drop down menu bar you can park the cursor on top of the menu bar and get the immediate improvement.  I think an elegant solution would be program a 'ghost' bar in the same place:  one that is 100% clear and has no borders so is not visible at all--perhaps it could be coded to be user-configurable to be on any side of the display.  The way you could park the cursor on it and not have to look at the menu bar.  The only downside is that the mouse pointer then does not disappear, though this could be programmed out as I notice other 2D sub-panels including the ATC window also serve to put the the mouse curse 'above' the main VC view where the impact is felt, however in all of these the mouse pointer will disappear after the requisite 5 seconds or whatever FSX programs the mouse pointer interval to disappear upon no movement. 

 

When you consider the literally 100's of thousands of dollars spent worldwide to get 20% improvement out of FSX it's kind of bizarre no one has taken this on yet definitively.  Though not all aircraft suffer I know most do in my 6 y/o Core 2 Quad system and my new SB-E system.  I'm not a programmer but I mentioned it enough here in case some kind soul could figure out how to do this.

 

PMDG, Ryan! Hello? Noel, why dont you PM Ryan, I think this is an excellent idea and a good start to a possible permanant sollution.

 

me wonders what happens when you turn a "wireless" mouse off ... must try !!!

So if you have two monitors - one with fsx on and one with other stuff on - will moving the cursor off of the fsx monitor and on to the other one achieve the same? Is it as long as the cursor isn't directly on the VC?

In short, the picking algorithm (term in graphics programming used to describe the process of interacting with vertices and 3D parts with the mouse cursor) in FSX is not the most efficient. I suspect it is a case of it is constantly calculating where the clickspots are relative to the cursor even while the cursor position and viewpoint arent changing. Probably that and as others have pointed out, it isnt hardware accelerated.

 

So if you have two monitors - one with fsx on and one with other stuff on - will moving the cursor off of the fsx monitor and on to the other one achieve the same? Is it as long as the cursor isn't directly on the VC?

it would seem to depend on whether you have fsx fullscreen vc on monitor #1 & 2d fsx panels on #2 or programs such as AS2012 on #2 and hence fsx in windows on #1 .... in the later you might see the fps gain the TS observed ???

 

 

it would seem to depend on whether you have fsx fullscreen vc on monitor #1 & 2d fsx panels on #2 or programs such as AS2012 on #2 and hence fsx in windows on #1 .... in the later you might see the fps gain the TS observed ???

Yes I have fsx in windowed mode on one and other programs open on the other. I always leave the mouse pointer in the VC, will have to try this!

Great feedback. I'm going to try some of the suggested tests at lunch and see what comes of it. I sure do hate watch those FPS when I reach for that mouse.

 

I actually havent found an aircraft yet that doesnt display this phenomenon.

 

Stephen

I have a second display and FSX on windowed mode. It does work like the top of the window.