DX10 and FSAA: some personal observations

[virtualstuff 759]

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.

 

Just use the default FSX animation (great white caps lol) with any texture set and you will be surprised about the performance increase ;-)

[Richard Sennett 2,499]

I have reverted rex textures but I have no wave animation on coast lines fswc may have messed something up unistalled it and did the rex default texture operation but no coastline waves beyond coastline I do have animations - weird.

[odourboy 1,290]

Coastline waves are a product of UTX...  if we're thinking of the same coastline waves (they're the only ones I know of).

[Christopher Low 5,354]

The default "coastline waves" are rubbish, so you aint missing anything there.

[agood 12]

Guys I know ATI usage is frowned upon in FSX circles, and I'll get an NVIDIA card when it's time to update - but still, for now: anyone any ideas on how to get usable AA with DX10 and an ATI card? 

I tried what I could think of, for now I ended up with the max AA settings from the first post of this thread plus whatever SweetFX can do - but it's not really any good, I'm afraid... any ideas/pointers welcome!

[ozflyer 2]

Rob, what are these entries in your cfg?

 

SHADER_OPTIMIZE=1

SHADER_PARTIAL_PRECISION=1

Under what section of fsx.cfg should this be listed.

 

Mine currently doesn't have it, and I have installed the paid shaded fix.

 

... hari

[Reader 2,028]

Beware of adding tweaks from unverified sources.

 

Most of them are no longer relevant as the power of the average PC

is now so high but some have entered FSX folklore as legends.

Legends don't stick to the facts either and by definition are stuck in the past.

 

I suggest you have a read of this http://www.simforums.com/Forums/different-scenarios-different-settings-thats-how_topic41798_page3.html

 

This is a small extract.

[GRAPHICS]

SHADER_OPTIMIZE=1
SHADER_PARTIAL_PRECISION=1
STALE_BUFFER_THRESHOLD=24   all garbage

 

 

They are nothing to do with the paid shaded fix and should be ignored.

 

The only addition to the [GRAPHICS] section that is required is HIGHMEMFIX=1

 

Regards,

Nick

[ozflyer 2]

Thanks Nick...

[ozflyer 2]

Hi Nick,

 

Would you be able to post an optimized Fsx.cfg here for a dx10 setup ? Or point me via a link ?

 

 

I agree with you looking at my cfg file, there could be a lot of rubbish built up over time, which might not be relevant now, so want to clean it up.

 

I don't want to delete and let fsx rebuild it, as I might use some important setting !!!.

[Reader 2,028]

I only use one tweak,

[GRAPHICS]
HIGHMEMFIX=1

 

I also don't have the two lines added by the Fixer,

MultiSamplesPerPixel=

MultiSampleQuality=

as I discovered that with the right NI settings, it worked well for me without them. I do not recommend this but it might be worth a try.

You can find my NI settings here http://forum.avsim.net/topic/422803-re-the-whats-going-on-here-topic/

Note that I do not use the included FSX NI profile.

 

Over the years I have tried just about every tweak that has been suggested but I am now

of the opinion that my PC (and yours by the looks of it) is perfectly capable of running FSX

without tweaks.

 

Instead of deleting your fsx.cfg file, if you rename it to fsx.cfg.old

and then restart FSX it will build a new one and you can try just

this one necessary tweak.

 

Once you have set all the options to your satisfaction in Display settings

and run the Fixer, if you like the results you can keep it, if you don't, rename the new one

to say fsx.cfg.clean and remove the .old from your original.

 

If you want to compare them, just open both at the same time in Notepad

and you can then flip between them and find any spurious tweaks in your original.

 

If you then want to try removing a tweak, simply put // before the line in question and

restart FSX. To re-enable it, remove the //.

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

[Main]

DisablePreload=1

 

There are those who maintain that this addition will prevent screen tearing.

Some people find that it interferes with the loading of complex addon aircraft.

Others say that FSX loads faster.

It doesn't make any difference to me except that it stops FSX loading behind the spinning aircraft screen, but you might wish to try it.

 

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

[TERRAIN]
LOD_RADIUS=4.500000

 

Where to put this setting is a matter of where you prefer it to be.

4.5 is the highest that FSX will set but most PCs will tolerate anything up to 9.0.

I suppose this is also a tweak, if by definition, a tweak is any setting not automatically

set by FSX.

If I am flying over photoscenery, I use 8.5 which gives sharp scenery up to a point where

in real life the detail would be indistinct and using realistic weather, that far is mostly

shrouded in haze.

In generated scenery and/or flying at great height, there isn't much to be gained by exceeding 4.5 as however far you can see, autogen will still pop up as you fly or photoscenery will be too far away to see detail.

 

 

Regards,

Nick.

[ozflyer 2]

Thanks again Nick, will try your method....

... Hari

[Guest]

 

 

In generated scenery and/or flying at great height, there isn't much to be gained by exceeding 4.5 as however far you can see, autogen will still pop up as you fly or photoscenery will be too far away to see detail.

 

Although I do use 6.5 the difference this tweak makes isn't as huge as you would expect (or as I always expected ^_^ ) looking at that number with all those 0000000's. A few weeks ago I tested various settings and while I expected 6.5 to draw a lot larger circle around my plane, I was surprised that the difference was just a few 100 meters in the FSX world. Of course the tweak does make a difference because textures are loaded a tiny bit sooner and further away from you so the loading may be slightly less noticeable, but don't expect that setting the LOD really high will load things beyond the horizon!!!

 

BTW I agree with Nick: create a new cfg and add tweaks and changes one at a time. Don't try to repair or cleanup your old one: that simply won't work well.

 

And btw 2 apart from the few tweaks Nick already mentioned I also use the famous Bufferpools tweak (=0) because it makes a WORLD of difference on my PC. It's like plugging in a CPU that's twice as fast. All other tweaks I could do without but not Bufferpools! Obviously you have to test this and decide for yourself because this really is one of those YMMV tweaks.

[Christopher Low 5,354]

I always fly "low and slow", and I do not see any problems with blurry textures from the VC using a LOD radius of 4.5. However, that may be because I am running FSX at 1280x1024 resolution on a 19" monitor. Maybe blurry textures are more obvious at higher resolutions on huge widescreen monitors? In addition, if I tried using a LOD radius of 8.5 with my settings (ultra high detail), I would very quickly suffer an OOM error in super dense areas.

[Guest]

 

 

Maybe blurry textures are more obvious at higher resolutions on huge widescreen monitors?

 

 

I have a 1920x1080 widescreen, 24", so you tend to see those things earlier, I suppose. Another factor is the zoom: some people (and for instance Orbx) use a zoom (widescreen=true) of .40 to make everything look sharp but gives a fish eye lens effect. I use 0.70.

[Christopher Low 5,354]

I use 0.50 or 0.60, and the image looks perfectly normal to me.