Smooth FPS in FSX, A MYTH?

[sidh 29]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6AXMkvUHJ0 This is smoothness for me guys.. How awesome it looks without that lag!

[cmpbellsjc 2,963]

 

 

 

Keep in mind that some of those youtube video are recorded at 1/2 speed then edited to make them look smoother. Not saying that is the case in his, but its possible.

 

Having said that, he's running almost the same rig as mine, same CPU and same GPU, although I have faster RAM and a different mobo, but when I am flying the NGX or T7 I get the same smoothness and visual quality as him.

 

In your case you have a similar system to my rig and his, so there shouldn't be any reason your not getting good performance.

 

Why dont you post your FSX.cfg and a screen shot of your Inspector settings so we can take a look at your settings. Maybe some suggestions could be made that will help you get to where he and I both are in regards to performance. It shouldn't really be that difficult for you to get 25+ FPS and a smooth ride.

[sidh 29]

Keep in mind that some of those youtube video are recorded at 1/2 speed then edited to make them look smoother. Not saying that is the case in his, but its possible.

 

Having said that, he's running almost the same rig as mine, same CPU and same GPU, although I have faster RAM and a different mobo, but when I am flying the NGX or T7 I get the same smoothness and visual quality as him.

 

In your case you have a similar system to my rig and his, so there shouldn't be any reason your not getting good performance.

 

Why dont you post your FSX.cfg and a screen shot of your Inspector settings so we can take a look at your settings. Maybe some suggestions could be made that will help you get to where he and I both are in regards to performance. It shouldn't really be that difficult for you to get 25+ FPS and a smooth ride.

If you refer my  this thread I have posted .. you can check it...

 

I will still attatch my FSX cfg.

 

Nvidia settings are as per nick. Nothing else

[cmpbellsjc 2,963]

A few things stick out to me that I dont use and help me get better performance that what your saying you get.

 

[GRAPHICS]

TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=2048  

AIRCRAFT_SHADOWS=1

 

1. In this section your set to 2048 for your Texture Max Load. Have you tried running 1024 sized clouds and water and are you running them in DXT or 32 bit? If your running 32bit that is a know factor to reduce performance. Try running 1024 water and clouds and set the TML to 1024. Granted higher res might look a little better, the difference isn't that great and when your flying complex a/c you need all the extra resources you can get. Save the higher res stuff for when your flying around in simpler less demanding a/c.

 

2. Turn off the Aircraft_Shadows=1 set it to 0 instead. The shadows look cool but require extra passes from the GPU to render and will cause an FPS hit, especially in areas where there are a lot of AI casting shadows, its a cumulative effect if your flying into a big hub with 50 or 60 a/c all having to have those shadows displayed.

 

 

[TERRAIN]

LOD_RADIUS=6.500000

 

Try the default 4.5 and see if that helps. Granted 6.5 may look a little better farther out, but if your system is tuned well 4.5 can look fine as well. Your going to need to compromise a little. The larger 6.5 setting is also consuming more memory which you may need in the T7 or NGX.

 

[bUFFERPOOLS]

Poolsize=0

 

This works well for some and not as well for others. I have tried a combo of many Bufferpool settings from =0 to setting a UsePools with both a PoolSize and a defined Reject threshold. On my rig which is similar to yours I find the best setting for me is:

 

[bUFFERPOOLS]

RejectThreshold=131072

 

 

 

[Display]

UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=30

 

I know that the popular tweak right now is 1/2Vsync combined with 30FPS locked. However even Nick has stated that when using more demanding a/c and sceneries you might be better off running unlocked and only use locked when in simple a/c or less demanding scenarios. I've tried 1/2 Vsync with both 30 and unlimited and when using the NGX ot T7, I get better results from unlocked and even better with Vsync set to force on and unlimited in the sim. You could try either way, but if you expect to hang on to 30 locked in the NGX with heavy airports, its going to be harder. If you run unlocked you might be able to bump up your other settings to smooth out the FPS fluctuations. I run unlocked and usually is smooth 99% of the time in the NGX even with the FPS bouncing around a little. I would rather have the FPS constantly between 30 and 60 and smooth than struggling to maintain 30 in tough situations.

 

 

[Main]

ProcSpeed=9176

 

Your proc speed seems very low if this is what your number is when you generated your .cfg. My old C2D registered at 11131 and my unclocked 2700K registers at 16343. Are you sure your overclocked? That number seems awfully low unless you never generated a new .cfg after overclocking. No need to change it tough since it doesn't do anything except generate a performance counter so to speak when you first install FSX based on your system information.

 

[TrafficManager]

AirlineDensity=0

GADensity=0

FreewayDensity=20

ShipsAndFerriesDensity=40

LeisureBoatsDensity=40

 

If your running UTX, having the car traffic set to 20 can also cause a significant performance hit. Try not only setting it to zero but also go into the UTX UI and turn off car traffic in the settings. Try it just to see the difference it makes. Just setting it to 0 in the sim is not enough, you also need to turn it off in the UTX UI because if it not turned off in UTX, UTX still leaves a footprint for the car traffic even when set to zero in FSX. This was discovered by NickN a few years ago. I keep mine at 0 and off in UTX. While the traffic looks cool, you need to decide if getting more FPS in the NXG is worth having a few cars driving around while your on approach. If you hand flying the NGX on final you probably wont even have time to look at the cars any way since you will be too busy flying the a/c and you can see them above 10K feet anyway. Leave those for when your flying low and slow a/c.

 

 

Lastly, have you followed NickN's other setup guide and turned off performance counters and all the other stuff he recommends in Windows and properly tuned Win7? He has a wealth of info in his guide about setting up Win7 than can make a difference in performance.

 

Try some of this out and see how you get along. Once you get better FPS and smoothness you can always go back and turn some stuff back on or higher, but you'll need to compromise when flying the big jets in FSX into complex sceneries if you want to have higher FPS and smoothness.

[martin-w 3,235]

4.5ghz is the sweet spot i feel for fsx, my fsx is very smooth even in overcast conditions with rex clouds and opus weather. I have droped down to the low 20's in the ngx and it was still smooth.. you would think it was 30fps it was that smooth.

 

I do feel how you tweak your pc and sim is the deciding factor on smoothness but that is only something you can do as not every pc is the same. There is stuff people do that can be wrong for the sim and over tweaking on modern hardware can be a very bad thing and is something to watch out for, the same with to much HD.

 

I use these manual tweaks only

 

Highmemfix 1

BP 0

Affintymask 14

wideviewaspect 1

LOD 5.5 but i will use 6.5 when i fly slow and low

I agree with everything Paul said, same for me. I don't bother with AF=14 though.

[Noel 4,503]

 

 

I know that the popular tweak right now is 1/2Vsync combined with 30FPS locked. However even Nick has stated that when using more demanding a/c and sceneries you might be better off running unlocked and only use locked when in simple a/c or less demanding scenarios. I've tried 1/2 Vsync with both 30 and unlimited and when using the NGX ot T7, I get better results from unlocked and even better with Vsync set to force on and unlimited in the sim.

 

This has always been true for me too, w/ the former Core 2 Quad and now the SB-E system.  Unlocked in FSX always works best and I do use the 1/2 refresh to control displayed frames.  For effects on texture loading rate I use the fiber frame fraction control.

[magnetite 38]

My FSX is smooth, but I don't have all the eye candy turned up. So I sacrifice quality for performance.

[nateanderson 1]

Recently built a 3570K @ 4.6 and GTX570. After applying the minimal tweaks, I run 30fps in most places. However, let me say that smoothness is much more important than a high fps. On my system road and sea traffic always causes stutters. If I notice stuttering while flying, I can always look around and find a road with traffic.

 

FSX does have inherent limitations, but there is definitely a way to get a smooth 30fps most of the time.

 

Ben

[McDaniel 48]

my holy grail for smoothness was a 120hz monitor and the 30 fps 1/2 vsync tweak (1/4 in my case with 120 hz ).

 

FPS is actually limited to 27 FPS which is smoother in my case then 30 FPS, go figure...

Crazy: I did set the FPS limiter in FSX and used the cars on highway as reference, with 27 fps the light stutter of my highway traffic is gone and at the same time renders the best smoothness overall.

 

If I have the resource to be over 27 fps, then I can say, that my FSX is smooth as DCS A-10 or any other nice running sim/game. Logical if I get below 27 FPS (PMDG 777, KSEA) then I get some micro stuttering.

Also, even with FPS above 27, when you change view, lets say looking out to the left 90 degree, the first few seconds are not totally smooth, due to the texture loading.

 

So far I am really happy with my FSX performance and my system is based on a 2009 i7 675 build.

 

McDan out

[DeskPilot518 15]

share?

What more can on low it's settings .. Traffic is 0% Other settings are just Dense... probably guys tell me what you think about this?! http://www.jetlinesystems.com// <- The only cure to FSX performance?

To OP, glad you asked the question as I am looking to upgrade myself.

 

 

 

I found the FSX tweaking tutorial by Matt Davies on YouTube to be very helpful though. He really puts a lot of info together from different sources. Even on my sad 2.0 ghz labtop fsx now runs smooth with REX. If I didn't obsess about the fps, I would not even realize when it hits the teens at times. Obviously I am not using any scenery add ons though except a few free ones.

 

 

 

Also, I am hoping to get a new 4.5 ghz system and have been doing a lot of research.

Check out CyberpowerPC. http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/

 

Their prices seam very reasonable and it is easy to customize. The problem is knowing just what to get.

 

So far I am looking to get a OC I7 at 4.5ghz with gtx670 over clocked and 8 gb of 1800 hz DDR 3 ram with corsair CPU cooler and z78 motherboard (about $1300).

 

B.

[PigsInSpace 21]

[Main]

ProcSpeed=9176

 

Your proc speed seems very low if this is what your number is when you generated your .cfg. My old C2D registered at 11131 and my unclocked 2700K registers at 16343. Are you sure your overclocked? That number seems awfully low unless you never generated a new .cfg after overclocking. No need to change it tough since it doesn't do anything except generate a performance counter so to speak when you first install FSX based on your system information.

 

This means squat these days (most of the time), as this is usually based on non turbo mode just after installing and during first startup not your underload clock and certainly not based in weak vs strong CPU family.

 

As for Bufferpools, tweak away and then ask why terrain textures load slower and slower, or worse corruption of video memory, meh.

 

In most places besides the flat desert, scenery shadows are more of a hit than aircraft shadows.

[OneTinSoldier66 1]

Hi all,

 

I found that I needed to make a tweak or two to my Win8 OS, as well as tweak FSX. In case it might be of help to someone, here's the OS tweak from the guide that I followed that seemed to make a big difference for me.

 

Go to Control Panel – Power Options. In the window that appears there is a dropdown that says: Show Additional Plans, expand it. Place a bullet in the power profile: HIGH PERFORMANCE and then click PLAN SETTINGS. For the monitor you can set this to what ever you like, 20min is usually a good value. For the ‘Put Computer to Sleep option, select NEVER. Click the ADVANCED power settings link.
 
In the advanced power setting box go down the list and make sure these are set or change them as outlined:
 
HARD DISK – Turn off hard disk: NEVER
SLEEP – Sleep After: NEVER    
These next 2 settings may or may not appear, if they are there, change them as shown
           - Hibernate after: NEVER 
           - Allow hybrid sleep: OFF
PCI EXPRESS: Link State Power Management: OFF
PROCESSOR POWER MANAGEMENT: System cooling Policy: ACTIVE
 
Click Apply if you made any changes and then OK to close the box. Close the Edit Power Settings window.

 

Open a elevated ADMIN command prompt which is different from a standard command prompt: On the Windows task bar click Start and in the search box type: cmd   in the box that appears above, right click on cmd.exe and select Run as Administrator.
 
In the command prompt type - powercfg.exe /hibernate off - and then press ENTER
 
NOTE: Instead of typing you can use the mouse to highlight and copy -  powercfg.exe /hibernate off - then place the mouse pointer in the command window, right click and select PASTE and then click ENTER.

 

---------------------

 

My FSX runs really nice with settings turned up pretty high overall with let's say... the Eaglesoft Cessna Citation X v2, except at large airports due to the amount of AI Traffic. I still fly her on in at large airports. Most anywhere besides large airports(KDEN) it's really great and stays pretty much at the locked 30 FPS.

 

I highly recommend finding a good guide, tweak your OS, don't have it loaded down with a bunch of stuff running in the background(check into what's getting loaded at startup). Tweak FSX, play with settings, etc. Naturally you'll need to have a decent rig to have settings turned up fairly high. I built mine a few years ago and it seems to work just fine after some tweaking.

 

Cheers

 

Addons so far:

MyTrafficX v5.4

Scenery Tech North America Landclass

FSGenesis North America and World Terrain Mesh

Orbx FTX Global

FSUIPC

And a few payware and freeware aircrafts of course

 

 

System:

Asus P6X58D Premium

Intel iCore7 980x Extreme 6-Core CPU @3.33GHz(no overclocking)

Mushkin High Performance 6GB RAM(custom bios timing settings)

HIS(ATI/AMD) IceQ 7850 2GB GPU

[troyk 27]

I get 30 FPS mostly everywhere but it does drop to the low 20's at some of the most FPS-intensive OrbX airports. 4.5 GHz 4770K and GTX 670 here.

 

Part of the problem is obviously that FS isn't optimized for new GPUs, making it entirely depended on the CPU. However developers are pushing the 3D engine as far as it will go, which means at this time, they're targeting ~4.5 GHz CPUs during development. A few years ago they were targeting 4 GHz, and before that 3.5 GHz. If you were to make a clean install of FSX and then only use add-ons from 2007 and before, you'd get great FPS with any modern system.

 

I would agree with that. With FSX, my GTX 780 SC rarely goes over 50-60% usage but at the same time my i7 CPU is grunting away at 100%.

 

FSX is a very very old program and is neither optimised for todays CPUs nor GPUs.

 

We desperately need a modern Flight Simulator built for todays and tomorrows hardware to take over from FSX!

[GHarrall 494]

Hopefully It's coming.....p3d v2

[troyk 27]

Hopefully It's coming.....p3d v2

 

Just one rather large catch. P3D is not supported by PMDG, who just happen to make the best aircraft. IMHO.

 

Plus its licensing doesn't cover flight sim hobbyists.