Skeleton (no skin) 777 potential Fix, Question on reinstallation of Acceleration

[Richard Sennett 2,499]

I have been doing this for over 20 years and know what i am doing did you read my post no ai on no clouds on - you have something else you want to add

[William J.S.S 173]

I have followed the guide, intro guide. I have tried DX9 and DX10.

 

I have the Mem fix, have had it in their from the time I got the 737NGX

I have no traffic, cars, and Autogen at Dense. Same settings for about a year now.

I suffer from framerate jumps, drops....meaning it will be like 20-23 and then 15-16, then back up and back down. Very choppy compared to any other aircraft. Even the NGX in FlyTampa Tampa runs at around 27FPS.

 

Overall, my FPS are all over the place with it. I can't get past 25-27 though, even in the air. Close to any airport, default or not, I am in the teens. I would never think about flying to a large city with it, which kind of takes away from the kind of plane it is.

 

Hope something happens soon, as I would hate to just give it up, seeing as how a refund for no reason is not an option with PMDG. Wish that Flight1 sold these.

[777simmer 117]

I have been doing this for over 20 years and know what i am doing did you read my post no ai on no clouds on - you have something else you want to add

Nope, I am sure you can figure it out yourself then.

[777simmer 117]

I have followed the guide, intro guide. I have tried DX9 and DX10.

 

I have the Mem fix, have had it in their from the time I got the 737NGX

I have no traffic, cars, and Autogen at Dense. Same settings for about a year now.

I suffer from framerate jumps, drops....meaning it will be like 20-23 and then 15-16, then back up and back down. Very choppy compared to any other aircraft. Even the NGX in FlyTampa Tampa runs at around 27FPS.

 

Overall, my FPS are all over the place with it. I can't get past 25-27 though, even in the air. Close to any airport, default or not, I am in the teens. I would never think about flying to a large city with it, which kind of takes away from the kind of plane it is.

 

Hope something happens soon, as I would hate to just give it up, seeing as how a refund for no reason is not an option with PMDG. Wish that Flight1 sold these.

Ok, do you fly in windowed mode? Because an "aero mod" (tweak) is around that prevents frame rate jumps like that, for windowed mode users.

 

If you use full screen then you should try the 1/2Vsync setting that is provided by Nvidia for its GPUs.

I use 1/2Vsync and it gives me the smoothest FSX experience I have had so far (and without it even my i7 3770k@4.4Ghz with a GTX680 is terrible!)

 

If you want to try either method, let me know and I will give you a link.

 

Just so we are clear though, I thought you had the skeleton aircraft problem as well, but now it seems you do not have that problem. Correct?

[cmpbellsjc 2,963]

I even thought about trying to resize, but the thing is, I don't use 4096 textures, so I don't ever load them. 2048 is the highest I use and have never had an issue.

 

I have turned down the refresh rates on the displays and all.

 

You may have 2048 set in your FSX.cfg but the a/c exterior textures will still display at 4096 unless you physically resize them. The FSX.cfg setting only affects clouds, water, and scenery resolutions, that's why setting 2048 in your cfg can still result in the skeleton when changing views since the a/c will still render the 4096 textures.

 

Also, if you have 2048 or 4096 sized clouds, water or scenery textures installed, but have 1024 set in your cfg, the larger 2048 or 4096 will still load into memory, but the sim will only display the 1024 mip map of the said texture. So you wont really be saving much. The best thing to do is actually run or resize the textures to the size you want them to be if thats 1024 or 2048 and then set that in the cfg.

 

Personally, all my NGX and T7 exterior textures I have manually resized to 1024 to keep the memory usage at bay when in external view and I never have a skeleton when switching views. Just make sure if you resize the textures to also physically resize the alpha texture as well if the texture has one, otherwise just loading a texture that has an alpha included into a texture resizer program and resizing it can result in some graphic anomalies if the alpha isn't treated by itself.

 

Read these two quotes from Ryan explaining it.

 

Sean Campbell

 

 

 

 

This setting (TML=1024, 2048, 4096) does not affect the aircraft textures. It will always display the airplane at native resolution. It's just for things like clouds, certain ground scenery etc.

 

 

 

I run 2048 myself by the way guys. 4096 clouds and stuff add a ton of texture memory and VAS overhead for (I think at least) questionable visual improvement. What's important is the actual cloud texture size you set in REX or FEX or AS or whatever though, not this setting - if it's set to 2048 in the cfg but you're still loading 4096 files, it's going to still take up more memory and space, but the sim will just downsample them and display at a lower res.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Same here William worse part is this is the only bird I want to use exclusively so not happy, going to build my new 3730k with 32 gig of ram with titan on the Gigabytes flagship mb Z77x-UP7 this weekend if that doesn't work nothing will - should be interesting I am thinking it will not help but I want to rule out a bad motherboard as everything else is brand new including my titan card - well see 

 

I dont think its your current rig unless you have a component going bad. Plus as you already know, 32gb of RAM wont make any difference in FSX, although the latest and greatest hardware might make the skeleton effect disappear quicker than using lesser equipment.

 

I'm running your AA new colors repaint in the T7 (nice work BTW), resampled in 1024 size and dont get any skeleton when switching views. Granted its not as high def as your 4096 version, but unless your really close up to the external model, the difference in the looks in very small, but the gain in performance is much higher, plus it completely eliminates the skeleton effect.

 

I suppose if your bent on sticking to 4096 sized textures and not willing to run lower resolutions, then trying the fastest hardware is the only way to try and eliminate the effect. Really not sure if hardware will overcome the way FSX and it limitation are though.

 

It will be interesting to see if your new build fixes this. Keep us posted and let us know the results.

 

 

Sean Campbell

[Richard Sennett 2,499]

Sean how are you resampling your 777 textures, I'll try one and see if ti helps before new build this weekend, I have also tried 1024 in fsx.cfg file no luck with that either, thanks.

 

Also dx9 or dx10 does not matter same issue

 

Thanks Sean glad your enjoying the paint wish I could lol

[cmpbellsjc 2,963]

 

 

Sean how are you resampling your 777 textures, I'll try one and see if ti helps before new build this weekend, I have also tried 1024 in fsx.cfg file no luck with that either, thanks.
 
Also dx9 or dx10 does not matter same issue
 
Thanks Sean glad your enjoying the paint wish I could lol

 

Richard,

 

I assume you have photoshop to do your paints so here is the process, you'll need DXTBmp for this.

 

1. Open DXTBmp and in the Prefs tab, select editor find your photoshop.exe.

 

2. Once that is selected open the texture folder of the repaint you want to work with and drag and drop the texture into DXTBmp. For example, from your AA paint, drag pmdg_777_fuse_1.dds into the DXTBmp screen and it will load the 4096 texture.

 

3. Once its loaded go to the Image tab and select "Send to editor", it will then send the main texture sheet to Photoshop or whatever image editor your using. Keep DXTBmp open the whole time btw.

 

4. Then in Photoshop resize the texture to 1024 and hit save. Not save as, just save.

 

5. Go back to DXTBmp and select Image and Reload after Edit and it will reload the resized texture sheet. Close the window in Photoshop that has the texture sheet in it, but keep Photoshop open.

 

6. Then in DXTBmp, select the Alpha tab and Send Alpha to Editor. The alpha texture with the window outlines will be sent to Photoshop.

 

7. Resize the alpha texture in Photoshop and hit save again, not save as.

 

8. In DXTBmp go back to the Alpha tab and select Refresh Alpha and it will import the resize alpha texture. Close the window in Photoshop that has the resize alpha texture in it. Keep Photoshop open if your going to resume resizing the rest of the textures, if not then close Photoshop completely.

 

9. Now in DXTBmp, you will have the resized texture and alpha. Select File/Save and it will have the original name of the texture loaded and you can just hit save. Make sure you save as DDS DXT5 and also make sure on the right side of DXTBmp in the square outline section titled "MipMaps", you have the box checked that says Include when saving. 

 

That's it, done. I know it sounds like a lot to do, but after you do it a few times it really quick. And as you know not all the textures have alphas, so the ones with no alpha you can just resize the texture sheet, send it back to DXTBmp, save it and your done. 

 

The Tail and Wing textures usually dont have alphas so they are quicker. 

 

Also, make sure to resize the specular and and bump map textures if they are 4096 also. I know you have included specs and bumps in some of your paints so make sure to do those also if your resizing the artwork texture sheets.

 

 

BTW, on the 1024 in the FSX.cfg it wont affect the loading of textures on the aircraft, they will still load as 4096 unless you resize them as mention in the quote I put from Ryan. That only effects clouds, water, and scenery, but still only downsizes them into rendering in the sim, the whole texture is still loaded into memory and affecting it, just not displaying the 2048 or 4096 map.

 

Try this and see how it works. The same process also applies to sceneries and I do the same for those since a lot of devs are now using 2048 and 4096 texture sheets in their addons which consume a lot of resources.

 

Regards,

Sean Campbell

[Spook 96]

TAKE NOTE OF ABOVE POST!

 

I have been going blue in the face trying to explain this, ever since the first 'skelly' post...

 

Sean went through this with me a while back with the ngx (Thanks Sean) and solved umpteen problems i was having due to oversized textures.

 

Unless you get all up close and personal with the resized textures you will not see a diffence in detail.

 

You will however see a massive diffrence in performance! ...and have a flyable plane.

[777simmer 117]

TAKE NOTE OF ABOVE POST! I have been going blue in the face trying to explain this, ever since the first 'skelly' post... Sean went through this with me a while back with the ngx (Thanks Sean) and solved umpteen problems i was having due to oversized textures. Unless you get all up close and personal with the resized textures you will not see a diffence in detail. You will however see a massive diffrence in performance! ...and have a flyable plane.

There is a thread about completely deleting the outside textures as well.

 

Here:

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/422127-want-more-fps-with-the-777/

 

He claims more frames per second even when you are inside the cockpit!

 

I dont like not having any outside textures, so the above idea (reducing to 1024) sounds better to me.

That is if I need it.

So far I am ok the way things are.

 

Question:

Does the above method (reducing to 1024) also increase frames per second when you are INSIDE the VC?

Does the above method reduce VAS?

 

Thx.

[Spook 96]

Question:

Does the above method (reducing to 1024) also increase frames per second when you are INSIDE the VC?

Does the above method reduce VAS?

 

Thx.

 

1) No

2) I would say Yes but i havnt done any tests with numbers. It simlpy works as it should.

[777simmer 117]

1) No

2) I would say Yes but i havnt done any tests with numbers. It simlpy works as it should.

Too bad, so it only helps when you look at your aircraft from outside :-(

[cmpbellsjc 2,963]

TAKE NOTE OF ABOVE POST!

 

I have been going blue in the face trying to explain this, ever since the first 'skelly' post...

 

Sean went through this with me a while back with the ngx (Thanks Sean) and solved umpteen problems i was having due to oversized textures.

 

Unless you get all up close and personal with the resized textures you will not see a diffence in detail.

 

You will however see a massive diffrence in performance! ...and have a flyable plane.

 

Glad this has helped out Luke.

 

I've never gotten into the whole HD thing as far as FSX is concerned running 2048 and 4096 textures considering the type of flying I do (NGX, T7, MD-11, big airports, lot of AI, etc). For me the extra performance cost just isn't worth it for a slight visual improvement and in some cases, I find that really high def cloud sets, not only hurt performance, but look to sharp and defined in the sim. In real life I never see clouds looking so sharp since they are in constant motion and constantly changing shape which makes them softer looking.

 

I do the same thing for all my addon airports that use larger than 1024 and make sure to resample to DXT format any textures that are 32bit, which some devs still put in their sceneries (see Taxi2Gate MMMX).

 

If I was a low and slow flyer and used less intensive performing a/c where performance concerns weren't so much of a concern, then I probably wouldn't take those steps and just run large textures everywhere. The fact is, higher res equals less performance, not much we can do to change that even with todays hardware.

 

 

Sean Campbell

[ZKOKQ 986]

This is a great tip Sean. I don't have Photoshop, is there a freeware tool I could use ?

[777simmer 117]

Glad this has helped out Luke.

 

I've never gotten into the whole HD thing as far as FSX is concerned running 2048 and 4096 textures considering the type of flying I do (NGX, T7, MD-11, big airports, lot of AI, etc). For me the extra performance cost just isn't worth it for a slight visual improvement and in some cases, I find that really high def cloud sets, not only hurt performance, but look to sharp and defined in the sim. In real life I never see clouds looking so sharp since they are in constant motion and constantly changing shape which makes them softer looking.

 

I do the same thing for all my addon airports that use larger than 1024 and make sure to resample to DXT format any textures that are 32bit, which some devs still put in their sceneries (see Taxi2Gate MMMX).

 

If I was a low and slow flyer and used less intensive performing a/c where performance concerns weren't so much of a concern, then I probably wouldn't take those steps and just run large textures everywhere. The fact is, higher res equals less performance, not much we can do to change that even with todays hardware.

 

 

Sean Campbell

I dont get what performance boost you guys are talking about?

 

I just confirmed (see above) that reducing the aircrafts texture quality does not help increase FPS when you are inside the VC.

It only helps when you look at your aircraft from the outside.

Something I rarely do!

 

And it has not been confirmed it decreases VAS either.

[Gabriel Teles 172]

That's just strange, guys.

 

Resizing the textures may help you (I surely hope so!), but I think you shoudn't have the need to do so. 

 

Look at my PC specs; it isn't far from what you have and I can fly the 777 for hours without the skeleton issue. I had to do a bit of sacrifice (I'm using low settings for AI), but I'm able to fly in detailed scenery, with 2048px cloud, a lot of autogen etc. without problems. 

 

I'm sorry for not being helpful here, but my message is: keep investigating. Your issues doesn't seem to be normal and I don't think they are inherent to the 777...