Hi guys,

 

Can someone please clairfy how airport addons affect VAS usage?

 

Say im flying from EGLL to KORD in the PMDG 777. If i have an OMDB addon installed and checked in the Scenery options, will having OMDB activated increase VAS, even though its 6 hours away in the opposite direction? Or does FSX only load areas within a certain radius?

Having airports enabled isn't so much of an issue when you have them enabled as most of them will not load until your within 10 miles or so of them. You can test that by setting yourself up to flying to an addon airport and watch the airport in the distance as you get closer to it. Once you cross the 10 mile radius if you're zoomed in to where the airport is you will start to see it being rendered and loaded.

 

The big killer for VAS regarding addon scenery is photoreal products like MegaScenery Earth and things like that. Photoscenery will be loaded no matter how far you are from it. One way to test and confirm that is to go to overhead view and zoom way out and if you have photoreal states enabled you will see all those states being rendered across the globe. For example, I dont have any whole states, but I do have some regional photoreal like the old MegaScenery SoCal, Phoenix, and Dallas. If I park my plane in New Mexico and zoom out  to where my view point is in space, I can see the photoreal for those areas being displayed.

 

So in short, keeping airports enabled is not really that much of a big VAS killer, unless of course you have a bunch of addon airports in close proximity to each other and you're going to land at one of them and all the other airports in the area are being rendered. But, keeping full states of photoreal enabled will take a toll on your VAS. It's been reported here and even by Ryan (Tabs) who was helping a customer who had many MSE states of photoreal enabled and kept getting OOM's in either the NGX to T7. Once the customer disabled the states he wasn't fly to or around, his VAS dropped and he was able to start completing flights, so yes it helps in that regard.

 

Once other VAS killer besides addon scenery is using HD cloud and water textures in 2048 or 4096. Even worse is using those textures in 32bit rather than DXT because they consume a lot more memory and aren't location specific since you have clouds and water every where that need to be rendered. Sticking to 1024 DXT formats of those textures will help lower your VAS and even increase performance.

 

Sean Campbell

Thanks for the reply, really helpful. I that case, if i fly over an addon airport, that will load also, even at FL390? FSX does not unload these airports, right?

 

I guess FTX England falls under the photoreal category in that case... Not sure about FTX Global, will see how that goes.

 

I have changed my REX 4 settings to DXT. Are 1024 reolutions the 'FSX standard', or should i drop those to 512?

 

Iv only had one or two OOMs with the 777, so this is more preventative rather than a cure - doing another long haul soon. Never heard of VAS until the mention of it in the documentation, so im streamlining things to what i need.

 

Thanks again!

 

 

I that case, if i fly over an addon airport, that will load also, even at FL390? FSX does not unload these airports, right?

 

I'm not really sure if you're at an altitude like 39000 if an airport will load or not. I just know the horizontal distance is 10nm. Although it would be easy enough to test. Just go to an airfield near one of your addon airports, slew to FS390, go into spot view and look at where the addon airport is and use the zoom key to look and see if its loaded or not.

 

To answer your other question, yes FSX unloads the airport after you get out of the 10nm range. 

 

Another thing to note is the FSDT and Flightbeam airports can use altitude culling to prevent the airport from loading at a high altitude. There is a check box in the Addon Manager to turn on or off altitude culling. I think the altitude at which it wont load to 10000 feet.

 

 

 

 

 

I guess FTX England falls under the photoreal category in that case... Not sure about FTX Global, will see how that goes.

 

I dont think FTX regional products fall under that category altogether since they do use some repeating ground tiles, however FTX regional packs do include some photoreal areas in them, so yes, they would be loaded no matter where you are. If you're not flying in England turn it off.

 

FTX Global wont effect VAS in the same way photoreal does because FTXG just uses repeating ground tiles which replace the default ground tiles, same as GEX does. However FTXG might affect your VAS at night due to the 3D lights. So in essence FTXG or GEX ground tiles will make no issue with VAS since they are the same size as the FSX default ground tiles and are repetitive meaning they are used globally.

 

 

 

 

I have changed my REX 4 settings to DXT. Are 1024 reolutions the 'FSX standard', or should i drop those to 512?

 

That's up to you. 512 will consume even less memory than 1024 naturally. Try the 512 size and see how it looks to you and if it improves performance. Personally, I do like 512 because they look softer and more natural than 1024 or higher and they take less memory. Its really a personal choice though, just like some prefer FS9 to FSX even though FS9 has lower res ground textures to FSX, but generally FS9 consumes less memory and generally people have higher FPS in it than they do in FSX depending on the area.

Sean Campbell

FSX only loads OBJECTS within a certain radius.

 

FSX loads the entire world's landclass.

 

Photoreal scenery areas is a high detailed texture area which fools FSX into thinking it's like a landclass, but instead of a 1mb address of where certain textures should be, it's a 25GB actual texture.

 

Photoreal ground textures therefore get loaded regardless of where you are.

 

One of my favourite Photoreal areas is the freeware NL2000 scenery which covered the Netherlands.

 

If I load up my simulator in Sydney, Australia, or KLAX California, or anywhere on earth, that Netherlands scenery photoreal area is loaded by FSX. (You can see this by zooming out the top-down external view so that it's the entire planet earth view, and you can see the Netherlands area stand out as very different looking from Belgium/France/Germany etc)

 

So in general: Highly detailed airports: not loaded

Highly detailed photoreal areas (or even landclass areas like Orbx Regions): loaded.

 

(Some airports have a photoreal underlay on which the afcad, textured runways etc are layed on top of. The underlay will be loaded)

Hopskip, that was a long post to say just about the same thing as the poster above you outlined. I concur however with what both of you said.

Hopskip, that was a long post to say just about the same thing as the poster above you outlined. I concur however with what both of you said.

 

The poster above me wrote more words than I did.

The poster above me wrote lots about texture sizes. I didn't even mention those at all.

The poster above me stated that they were not sure if altitude effected scenery loading distance or not. I didn't mention altitude at all (because it's complicated and isn't really what the poster asked... the answer is: It doesn't effect the loading of photoreal, but it does effect the texturing of 3d objects. so the question "Does altitude effect VAS of scenery near you" can be answered "Yes and no if: a or: b and only when c ie: TL/DR")

 

I tried to condense the information to be only relevant to the original question asked, without going off on (very closely related) tangents. Hence my answer is shorter, but in my opinion, answers the original question more directly - not to disparage the poster above me because everything he said is also correct. Just longer to read. lol.

 

cmpbellsjc wrote 462 words.

I wrote 178 words.

 

Source: Copy pasting the posts into microsoft word and running word count feature.

FSX only loads OBJECTS within a certain radius.

 

FSX loads the entire world's landclass.

 

Photoreal scenery areas is a high detailed texture area which fools FSX into thinking it's like a landclass, but instead of a 1mb address of where certain textures should be, it's a 25GB actual texture.

 

Photoreal ground textures therefore get loaded regardless of where you are.

 

One of my favourite Photoreal areas is the freeware NL2000 scenery which covered the Netherlands.

 

If I load up my simulator in Sydney, Australia, or KLAX California, or anywhere on earth, that Netherlands scenery photoreal area is loaded by FSX. (You can see this by zooming out the top-down external view so that it's the entire planet earth view, and you can see the Netherlands area stand out as very different looking from Belgium/France/Germany etc)

 

So in general: Highly detailed airports: not loaded

Highly detailed photoreal areas (or even landclass areas like Orbx Regions): loaded.

 

(Some airports have a photoreal underlay on which the afcad, textured runways etc are layed on top of. The underlay will be loaded)

 

I agree with all of this with the exception of the comment about the Orbx Regions - I don't see a VAS effect here in my testing from those. Their textures aren't any bigger than normal (it's not the photoreal stuff) so it really shouldn't have any effect.

Not that is matters between you and Jim Burke, but

 

 

 

 

The poster above me wrote lots about texture sizes. I didn't even mention those at all.

 

The only reason I talked about texture size is that the poster asked about it below, so I mentioned it to give him an opinion since he was curious.

 

 

I have changed my REX 4 settings to DXT. Are 1024 reolutions the 'FSX standard', or should i drop those to 512?

 

 

 

 

 

 

I didn't mention altitude at all (because it's complicated and isn't really what the poster asked...

 

But the poster did ask about altitude below, hence the reason I said I wasn't sure.

 

 

 

I that case, if i fly over an addon airport, that will load also, even at FL390? FSX does not unload these airports, right?

 

However I did mentioned that photoreal loads from any altitude and distance.

 

 

The big killer for VAS regarding addon scenery is photoreal products like MegaScenery Earth and things like that. Photoscenery will be loaded no matter how far you are from it. One way to test and confirm that is to go to overhead view and zoom way out and if you have photoreal states enabled you will see all those states being rendered across the globe. For example, I dont have any whole states, but I do have some regional photoreal like the old MegaScenery SoCal, Phoenix, and Dallas. If I park my plane in New Mexico and zoom out  to where my view point is in space, I can see the photoreal for those areas being displayed.

 

I didn't know that using 462 words and giving a comprehensive answer was bad, but since it seemed like the original poster is new to this, I though it was fair to him to give him as complete an answer as I could and to touch on all the questions he asked.

 

Personally I don't really care if someone explained the same thing I had already said as it did to Jim, but I just wanted to chime in and clarify why I posted like I did.

 

 

Sean Campbell

All the above nicely said!

 

But for about one and a half or two years ago I never had problems!

 

Using mostly the same scenery then as now, only bought a view more airports.

 

Never disabled scenery inside FSX libary in the past and now everybody is saying disable all scenery where you are not flying!

 

No chrashes, then suddely out of the blues problems using the menu FSX and all sorts of other chrashes.

 

Never changed a thing only windows updates, Nvidia drivers and bought some new airports.

 

Makes you wonder if it has something to do with windows updates or graphic card drivers?

 

It really does not make any sense to me.   :Thinking:

 

Robert

All the above nicely said!

 

But for about one and a half or two years ago I never had problems!

 

Using mostly the same scenery then as now, only bought a view more airports.

 

Never disabled scenery inside FSX libary in the past and now everybody is saying disable all scenery where you are not flying!

 

No chrashes, then suddely out of the blues problems using the menu FSX and all sorts of other chrashes.

 

Never changed a thing only windows updates, Nvidia drivers and bought some new airports.

 

Makes you wonder if it has something to do with windows updates or graphic card drivers?

 

It really does not make any sense to me.   :Thinking:

 

Robert

 

Could be the graphics card.

I'v had instability caused by Windows sometimes.

There's a few sceneries being released which subversively and without your permission ramp up texture resolution from the default 1024, up to 4098 without so much as telling you it happened. This increases texture processing by up to the power of 4 more than the default normal. May be worth just checking texture max load (or even just dropping it back a notch in your FSX sliders and then back up to what it was at previously - this will edit the FSX.cfg internally which defaults it back to the 1024 resolution.