DX10 and FSAA: some personal observations

[smpetty 6]

There must be 50 posts indicating higher settings SGSS settings (8xSGSS is very demanding) kill you GPU in clouds. Want to confirm it? Run the GPU monitor found in Nvidia Inspector (little icon 2nd down in the upper left corner IIRC). Stretch it out along the bottom of your screen and get rid of the non essential monitors (fan, temp..).Go flying in the clouds. See if your drop on FPS is related to your GPU being pinned at 100% utilization.

Thanks odiferous one I wasn't aware of the GPU monitor in NI. I will test that later today and report back.

 

Thanks again!

 

Scott

[Guest]

 

 

I made all of the changes that were suggested but unfortunately I am still seeing some real slowdowns. With more testing I realized that it is ALL about the clouds. With light cloud cover or clear skies, I am pinned at 30fps even in busy scenery with traffic. But when there is heavy cloud cover, I drop down to 15-22 fps. No changes to my fsx.cfg file make a significant change in the cloud hit. I'm using REX textures and OpusFSX weather. I have tried dropping the REX textures to 512 or 1024 and it was no better than REX textures at 2048 or 4096. Any DX10 FSAA from 4X on up (with appropriate changes to NI) cause the cloud hit to occur. With 2X FSAA it is much less pronounced but everything shimmers.

 

Something to try: SolRayz posted elsewhere how he solved his problem with wave animations: he was using a REX one. He restored the default FSX wave animation and then reinstalled his REX textures but this time without the REX wave animation, so that one is default. 1. He's got his animation back and 2. surprisingly his problems with low fps and lots of clouds seems to be solved! He is currently investigating if this really is related or not but you might want to give it a try yourself: maybe the problem with clouds has something to do with the used wave animations (and the reflections, of course).

[Blodwenblod 0]

Something to try: SolRayz posted elsewhere how he solved his problem with wave animations: he was using a REX one. He restored the default FSX wave animation and then reinstalled his REX textures but this time without the REX wave animation, so that one is default. 1. He's got his animation back and 2. surprisingly his problems with low fps and lots of clouds seems to be solved! He is currently investigating if this really is related or not but you might want to give it a try yourself: maybe the problem with clouds has something to do with the used wave animations (and the reflections, of course).

 

My experiences were the same - I was getting awful FPS (with a 660Ti) until I re-installed the cloud and water textures, and I had the REX Textures installed for clouds and water which would appear to have been the culprit.

 

You could try this which worked brilliantly for me.

 

Replace your cloud textures (use the 512 or 1024 not HD) from here:

http://simviation.com/1/search?submit=1&keywords=hde+ (choose second download on page), 

then install 'Oscar's Clouds' v4 from here:

https://sites.google.com/site/aimecreations/freeware-fsx/fsx-clouds-screenshots

Backup cumulus01.bmp from your FS textures folder before you do.

 

I don't know who Oscar is, but I'd like to thank him for his texture excellence!

 

FPS were also awful if I had Water 2.x Low selected, until I installed these textures:

Water - http://flyawaysimulation.com/downloads/files/1457/fsx-water-effects-texture/

Also, I found that when I set anisotropic filtering to application controlled, rather than the recommended user defined/off I got much improved FPS.  This goes against the grain of the experience of many, but it's worth a shot if you're still having problems.

 

Hope this is helpful to some of you.  I'm really happy with my sim now, for the first time in a long time.  Thanks to all for the DX10 goodness. 

[odourboy 1,290]

With SO many REX users, this is a pretty significant revelation! Kind of thing that deserves to be pinned at the top of this forum.

[smpetty 6]

 

 

Hope this is helpful to some of you.  I'm really happy with my sim now, for the first time in a long time.  Thanks to all for the DX10 goodness. 

 

Thanks very much - I will try this tonight after work.

 

 

Go flying in the clouds. See if your drop on FPS is related to your GPU being pinned at 100% utilization.

 

I just ran a quick test of FSX with heavy cloud cover watching my GPU utilization - it stays pegged at 99% anytime clouds are a significant  part of the scene and drops well below 50% when the sky is clear.  I think that the 660 Ti is not great at AA... in fact it's 47% slower at AA than the GTX 680:

 

http://www.hwcompare.com/13139/geforce-gtx-660-ti-vs-geforce-gtx-680/

 

So... I just ordered an ASUS GTX 680 and will try it this weekend.  First I'll fiddle with removing the REX water and cloud textures and installing the default/freeware ones that have helped others.  I'll report back what I find.

 

Thanks so much to all who helped...

 

Scott

[odourboy 1,290]

I just ran a quick test of FSX with heavy cloud cover watching my GPU utilization - it stays pegged at 99% anytime clouds are a significant part of the scene

 

This is not right. I ran tests with a 660 (not ti) and only hit the ceiling when my screen was completely full of clouds (spot view), and even then, it was hard to keep it pinned. Your ti should do better.

 

Try the REX water animation fix - I bet you that's the real culprit.

 

Edit to add: I never experimented much with different cloud resolutions - 1024 versus 2048 versus 4096 and how they interact with SGSS settings & GPU. I stick with 1024 clouds; YMMV

[smpetty 6]

 

 

Try the REX water animation fix - I bet you that's the real culprit.

 

Will do...

[Guest]

I started a seperate topic about the REX animation lowering performance with lots of clouds around:

 

     Please try this when you have low fps with clouds and high AA settings    

 

(I decided to post it in the general DX10 forum and not in the Fixer forum because it's not a Fixer problem.)

[Richard Sennett 2,499]

Great post Guys lots of stuff to try not having much issues just t777 skeleton but maybe some of this and the rex stuff will help

[Christopher Low 5,354]

I have done a bit of fiddling with respect to the REX textures, but it seems that I can't get those nice looking "white caps" that I had in DX9 mode. If I disable "DX10 optimised" in the REX Options Menu, I get the purple lighter coloured areas (that I think are supposed to be the parts that look like white caps), but if I enable "DX10 Optimised" I lose the white caps completely!

 

Very frustrating.

[Guest]

I have done a bit of fiddling with respect to the REX textures, but it seems that I can't get those nice looking "white caps" that I had in DX9 mode. If I disable "DX10 optimised" in the REX Options Menu, I get the purple lighter coloured areas (that I think are supposed to be the parts that look like white caps), but if I enable "DX10 Optimised" I lose the white caps completely!

 

Very frustrating.

 

Give the default FSX wave animation a try then...?

[Christopher Low 5,354]

Where is that set?

[Guest]

Where is that set?

 

The default stuff isn't a set (oddly enough, I'd say): you hopefully made a backup with REX before you installed any sets... If you did that, then you have to restore that backup and then re-apply the set you like but this time with the wave animation deselected on the options screen (so they won't be installed again).

[Christopher Low 5,354]

I have already tried that.

[SolRayz 392]

When you first install REX, iirc, asks you to backup default textures. If you didn't do this, well...I'm not sure what to tell you.

 

For those that are still having issues with performance or wave animation, be absolutely sure that you begin with a fresh set of default textures, and a fresh set of FSX Root director Shader files that Paul posted. And setup DX10 with Fixer without REX to begin with so you can see whether your dx10 is performing well or not. If it is...then move on with REX tweaking....if not, then you have issues elswhere, most likely your fsx.cfg.

 

And when you are ready for REX...DXT1

 

I gained 5-10 fps with DXT1 wave animations set in REX...much more important than I initialy thought. And I haven't noticed much difference visually.