What LOD seetting do you use?

It depends some Lars.  Since I like to see frames at 30 in an entire flight plan I sometimes have to use 4.5, for example in FTX PNW areas at the big terminals--and of course I will modify other parameters as needed as well.  I will use 6.5 in less demanding scenarios, etc.

 

 

The reason I referred to the UFL at optional is because sometimes the best thing is not to use a framerate limiter at all. ..........................
..................But when should we use and FPS limiter and when not? I find that in demanding planes and FPS limiter is not required at all. In the PMDG 737 NGX, 777 and Aerosoft Airbus X VSync 1/2 runs butterly smooth without the internal framerate limiter, which gives me the advantage that I can maintain 30 FPS much better. When using outside views (locked spot etc.) however, it will not be so smooth at all. But I wouldn't care about that, as we are in the cockpit 99.9% of the time. ..

 

Fully agree with the above. I have been flying the NGX with unlimited frame rate and 1/2 VSync for many months now, and I can definitely state that at least on my rig and for complex addon aircraft this is THE best solution. 

With todays fast CPUs/GPUs I guess blurry textures are mostly a thing of the past if you use LOD 4.5 and don't have high-res ground textures and terrain mesh even if you use unlimited. Locking the frames internally does give you faster texture loading, but if you already have full textureloading to start with, you won't see any difference. It wouldn't surprise me if this is the case for a majority of FSX users. That they'll have full or at least good enough texture loading so you won't notice on an overclocked i5K with internal lock set to unlimited.

 

Locking internally will indeed let you see higher res scenery, and/or use a higher LOD and/or fly faster without the textures starting to lag behind. That's still useless in the cases you don't need this thou. The higher FPS from using unlimited will however be seen. I still personally prefer locking internally and lowering FFTF. But using unlimited seems to be working fine as well.

I'm thinking GSYNC really will be fabulous when combined w/ ULF=0 and no limiter internal or external. I say this now from running a test last night where I used VSYNC=ON (60Hz screen), stayed up about 1000' and slewed over dense metropolitan area using outside view, i.e. w/o seeing the VC in the T7.   Of course it's locked on 60 in this scenario w/ no VC showing.  What I saw was the most liquid, absolutely zero hitches/stutters of any kind.   I did the same test w/ 1/2 refresh and there was clearly less fluidity.  I then locked frames externally at 30 and repeated--same same, not the liquid 100% smooth.  This leads me to think when when has dynamic VSYNC, which I'm thinking what effectively GSYNC is, this will allow the same sync w/ UFL=0 at 30 or higher frame rate, and that is now possible to do in virtually all situations.  For now though, I do not see any downside to leaving VSYNC on at 60, UFL=0 and no limiters.

As you say, 60 FPS is more fluid than 30FPS. And 30 FPS is more fluid than 20 FPS for that matter. The fluidity of FPS is most visible when you have fast movement across the screen. It's basically more movie and less slideshow.

 

V-sync removes tearing. So the complete scene has to be rendered before the scene is updated on the display.

 

Our 60Hz displays update the screen 60 times a second regardless of how many FPS you have.

 

That means that with V-sync on, you have to have rendered a new scene every 16.6667 millisecond in order to have a new picture to display on your screen. If you haven't quite finished rendering the scene the screen will just display the same picture as the update before and once the scene is finished it has to wait for the next display update.

 

With half rate V-sync every picture is always shown at least twice. That means that you get 33.333 milliseconds to render a new scene.

 

The problem is that when the display doesn't have a new picture to show and re-displays the previous picture this is very obvious if you have anything moving on the screen at a very predictable speed. Our brain will see that the constant movement that happened previously, all of a sudden stops for one frame, and then continues afterwards. We see a stutter. That will always happen when we can't keep the V-sync FPS and its most noticeable when things are moving at a linear speed. Like everything outside the plane when you look out through the window as you fly along.

 

So butter smooth movement requires us to have FPS higher then the V-sync whilst fast movement is always much more fluid the higher FPS we have.

I am quite excited about G-sync. It's something that could never have been done with old CRT monitors but on makes total sense on todays LCD panels. G-sync basically abandons the fixed display refresh rate of 16.667 milliseconds and only updates the display when a new picture is available. That means that we will always get butter smooth movement with v-sync on regardless of if we can maintain the v-sync FPS or not at the same time as we can see the higher fluidity we get from an FPS that isn't effectively locked to 30FPS with half rate V-sync.

Good info to know when I build my new system.  My aging i7-860 can actually follow this in most areas and using the QW Avro.  However if I load up the NGX, even in default areas (but with FTX Global textures) I will get blurries all over on the ground textures unless I lock the FPS internally.  I ended up having to tune for and lock at 25.  Most of the time I get 18-25fps like that on the ground even with weather and larger airports.  I switch back to unlocked with vsync 1/2 refresh when not using the NGX.

 

 

With half rate V-sync every picture is always shown at least twice. That means that you get 33.333 milliseconds to render a new scene.

 

I think if one can run at 1/2 vsync AND UFL=0 AND have freedom from spikes/tearing, this might be the best of all situations currently possible on a 60Hz display.  I haven't had success w/ the freedom from xxx issue.  So for 1/2 vsync I have to use the external limiter which is superior to the internal limiter for the reasons stated.  And oddly from what you are saying--I am seeing the best visuals using VSYNC=ON.  I did some pretty quality evaluations last night on this and it was quite compelling.

 

Suggestions for success w/ 1/2 vsync so that spikes don't occur?  Even so, I'm still believing VSYNC=ON will empirically be the best.

I am quite excited about G-sync. It's something that could never have been done with old CRT monitors but on makes total sense on todays LCD panels. G-sync basically abandons the fixed display refresh rate of 16.667 milliseconds and only updates the display when a new picture is available. That means that we will always get butter smooth movement with v-sync on regardless of if we can maintain the v-sync FPS or not at the same time as we can see the higher fluidity we get from an FPS that isn't effectively locked to 30FPS with half rate V-sync.

I am quite excited about G-sync. It's something that could never have been done with old CRT monitors but on makes total sense on todays LCD panels. G-sync basically abandons the fixed display refresh rate of 16.667 milliseconds and only updates the display when a new picture is available. That means that we will always get butter smooth movement with v-sync on regardless of if we can maintain the v-sync FPS or not at the same time as we can see the higher fluidity we get from an FPS that isn't effectively locked to 30FPS with half rate V-sync.

Yes I agree we are now able to have total smooth performance, very good visuals by historical standards, all at 30 frames per second or higher. This seems to translate w/ GYNC to butter smooth video always. One will need to dial back a setting here or there, but you won't need to sacrifice very much in the way of video quality ever, really.

 

Lars, I am very intrigued by photo real, which I haven't even demoed. What I don't understand is why a company hasn't sprung up to populate photo real w/ 3D autogen that would have to be customized of course instead of landclass based, but I have to think there is a market for this. One could take advantage of a compromise of autogen so that similar types of buildings could be used rather than having to use custom objects for every object out there.

 

 

I can say w/o equivocation that the best of all comes w/ UFL=0 and Vsync set to ON, which for my screen is 60Hz..

........

........

I did have a little issue w/ texture spikes when I turned vsync to ON (not at 1/2 sync) that went away completely by setting vsync to Adaptive tearing in Inspector.

 

Noel I thought Adaptive vsync just turns vsync off below the nominated FPS threshold.

Assuming you are not getting 60 FPS or above, isn't setting vsync to 60Hz/Adaptive just the same as turning vsync off?

 

gb.

 I've had multiple systems over the years, and what I found to have a negative impact on smoothness were the newer type of videocards.

 

I would totally disagree with you.

 

I have an EVGA GTX 770 4 GB Duel BIOS.

 

I have no internal limiter set. I have no external limiter set.

 

In the NGX I get a minimum of 35 FPS... and the maximum in the Lancair is 120 FPS. That's with VSync on, and I have a 120 Hz monitor. So with VSync off, it would go even higher.

 

And that's with NO stutters at all. Utterly smooth.

 

 

 

I figured this is not a suitable card for FSX, so I sold it after a few weeks and bought a GTX 580, and got exactly the same results with regard to smoothness.

 

 

 

 

Prior to the GTX 770, I had a GTX 580. Again... NO stutters.

 

For lack of smoothness, we need to look elsewhere, other than "modern graphics cards". If that were the cause, I wouldn't be able to do what I do.

 

FSX sliders that are too high, traffic that is too high, and worst of all, hyper detailed horrendously demanding add-on airports and scenery could well be why stutters are so common. 

 

Not to mention too many dodgy tweaks that compromise performance.

 

So for me, there is an alternative. Don't crave extreme eye candy, don't crave add-on scenery that pushes FSX beyond it's design parameters, and experience super smooth flight at very high frame rate in dodgy weather courtesy of REX. Don't think my sim looks garbage, it doesn't, eye candy is perfectly acceptable, just not extreme.

 

Even now, with super powerful modern hardware, it seems to me that FSX will bite you if you demand too much.

 

I'm not definitively stating that avoidance of the scenery add-on's I mention is why I can achieve high frame rates and no stutters at unlimited frames, what I am saying is that if you don't test conventional wisdom, you may be missing out.

I would totally disagree with you.

 

I have an EVGA GTX 770 4 GB Duel BIOS.

 

I have no internal limiter set. I have no external limiter set.

 

In the NGX I get a minimum of 35 FPS... and the maximum in the Lancair is 120 FPS. That's with VSync on, and I have a 120 Hz monitor. So with VSync off, it would go even higher.

 

And that's with NO stutters at all. Utterly smooth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prior to the GTX 770, I had a GTX 580. Again... NO stutters.

 

For lack of smoothness, we need to look elsewhere, other than "modern graphics cards". If that were the cause, I wouldn't be able to do what I do.

 

FSX sliders that are too high, traffic that is too high, and worst of all, hyper detailed horrendously demanding add-on airports and scenery could well be why stutters are so common. 

 

Not to mention too many dodgy tweaks that compromise performance.

 

So for me, there is an alternative. Don't crave extreme eye candy, don't crave add-on scenery that pushes FSX beyond it's design parameters, and experience super smooth flight at very high frame rate in dodgy weather courtesy of REX. Don't think my sim looks garbage, it doesn't, eye candy is perfectly acceptable, just not extreme.

 

Even now, with super powerful modern hardware, it seems to me that FSX will bite you if you demand too much.

 

I'm not definitively stating that avoidance of the scenery add-on's I mention is why I can achieve high frame rates and no stutters at unlimited frames, what I am saying is that if you don't test conventional wisdom, you may be missing out.

Martin, you should read my post entirely. I didn't mean the newer videocards did something good to smoothness, they actually reduce it. 30 FPS with Intel HD3000 graphics is as smooth as running VSync (just a little tearing), 30 FPS locked with a good videocard is a little bit choppy. I have tested that multiple times. 

 

With no VSync FSX is simply not "butterly smooth". It all depends on what add-ons you're running and what you look at to judge smoothness. If you run the default Cessna at 30 FPS locked, pan around, look outside, it's butterly smooth. Run the NGX with 30 FPS locked, pan around, and it's still butterly smooth, but when you start taxiing and looking at the scenery, it's quite a bit choppy. That's the sole reason I cannot fly without VSync anymore. 

 

Maybe what I think is choppy is what you think is butterly smooth. Maybe I should record VSync vs no VSync (with my phone) and show it here and you say whether that's smooth. 

Martin, you should read my post entirely. I didn't mean the newer videocards did something good to smoothness, they actually reduce it.

 

 

Sorry, you've lost me there.  If you read my post, I'm saying newer video cards do not reduce smoothness. The opposite for me, smoothness has been better with my newer cards.

 

but when you start taxiing and looking at the scenery, it's quite a bit choppy. That's the sole reason I cannot fly without VSync anymore. 

 

 

Well, I don't know about you, but in an extreme taxing scenario, looking at the scenery instead of concentrating on the job of taxiing, it looks far better than my older graphics cards used to. 

Now start taxiing, and try to taxi in circles as quickly as you can while simultaneously looking outside towards the scenery (trees, airport buildings), now it's suddenly a lot more choppy and laggy isn't it? That's exactly the reason why I'm running VSync 1/2.

 

 

To be honest Arjen, if you are going to do something like taxi round in circles like a mad thing, I'm not surprised you have issues.

 

But who does that? It's not realistic, and not a reason to say you NEED VSync. I don't think you should judge if you need or don't need something based on an unrealistic activity, something we don't normally do. :smile:

 

I tried the VSync 1/2 refresh setting on my card, and because it's a 120 Hz monitor, 1/4 refresh rate, and for me it was horrible, didn't like it at all.

 

Running with no limiter at all, both internally or externally, has been a revelation. 30% increase in frame rate and still no stutters. As I said, VSync on or off makes not difference, great results either way. I'm not saying that will work for all, but it does for me.