FPS

[davidzill 8]

While using PMDG aircraft, i.e. the NGX, with payware airports (flightbeam flytampa) and textures set to 4096 and using REX 4 TD clouds, is 25-30 a good fps while taxing around the airports? Am I being too ambitious in pursuing anything further? I have a 2600K at 4.6ghz and a 780 gtx. bajote's fsx tweak, nvidia inspector set to 16xS [Combined: 2x2 SS + 4x MS] and 2 sparsegrid supersampling. 

[LeeL 272]

That's very good. You're locked at 30 I imagine?

 

Don't go messing with anything lol

[scandinavian13 5,192]

Still don't understand the "OMG I NEED MOAR FRAMES" sentiment in the gaming industry.  I believe the film industry uses 24 frames in recording.  Your eye can only perceive around 12-16.  What your eye does pick up, however, is changes to that value.  If it stutters, or hangs, you'll definitely notice because the frames drop below that doubled threshold (24 is double the low range of natural perception).  You may notice certain equipment - GoPro/Contour cameras, notably - may have settings for upwards of 60 frames, but that's so that you can slow the film down for slow motion effects without it looking jumpy.

 

So, your goal shouldn't be 40 or 60 or 100 fps - it should be a stable, reasonable frame rate.

[stans 702]

As long as the images are displayed smoothly, I couldn't care less about the frame rates.  I'll take 15 and smooth as glass over 60 and jerky.

[3-2-1-Now 126]

Actually, the brain can perceive up to around 30 FPS before any further increase becomes undetectable. Watching traditional film, I can actually "see" the framerate, but modern laser projectors which do not blank make it harder to detect.

 

If you actually analyze how the sim is processed, you want as many FPS as possible, as the smoothness of the simulation is tied to frame rate. The higher the frame rate, the better the overall simulation.

 

Something I noticed with FSX is that whilst the FPS counter may display e.g. 35 FPS, the rate at which the FPS counter itself updates is far more telling of how well the sim is running.

 

I have seen it at 20FPS updating at a rate that is far faster than when it reads 40 FPS. These times when the frame rate counter is slow to update also councides with slower systems response from the aircraft, despite apparently higher FPS.

 

FSX is generally broken in the overall way it works.

 

Best regards,

Robin.

[B747tebs 80]

Your eye can only perceive around 12-16.

It varies across the eye, and between the sexes.

It also varies with luminance, colour, contrast, and area of the flickering source.

18-120 c/s!

 

In eyes, it's usually referred to by the FFF: flicker fusion frequency. The cyclic rate at which a flickering light source appears constant.

 

Peripheral vision is much better than central vision at detecting flicker, and females appreciably better than males.

So if the ladies working at their desks notice the fluorescents flickering overhead, and complain, the male office manager will come in, look directly at the tubes, and see no flicker at all.

And they'll both be right.

[Tabs 2,790]

A couple misconceptions going on here (and I'm going to speak generally at first and then with respect to FSX):

 

- Kyle, you actually can't compare video game graphics to film in an apples to apples manner like that - 24 fps works for film mostly due to motion blur. If you've ever seen individual movie frames there is always a slight blur there. The brain composites these all into something that seems smooth. Games project perfectly sharp individual frames that don't have blur. Some game engines (ie most modern first person shooter engines) have a simulated motion blur effect that can mimic the film effect but it's still applied after the fact, it's not an inherent shutter thing in the source material like film.

 

- Robin, the eye can definitely see more than 30 FPS. I'm old enough to have had CRT monitors for a long time before the proliferation of LCDs that redraw the whole screen at once, and anything below around 72Hz I could easily see flicker on. I'd get a headache from it after a while - I remember upgrading monitors at one point in the mid 90s specifically to be able to run 75Hz so that the flicker went away.

 

In general with modern video gaming, 60 FPS is seen as the target framerate. There's several reasons for this - mainly because it's still the standard "refresh rate" for LCDs (which again doesn't mean what it did with CRTs - there's no flicker at 60Hz on an LCD), but a big one aside from that is that it enhances mouse control in "twitch" games like first person shooters. Someone who's getting 60 FPS vs, someone getting 30 is going to have much finer control when they're aiming. 30 FPS absolutely is pretty unacceptable in a shooter - it just feels laggy and unresponsive when you move the mouse. The monitor and GPU tech is beginning to move beyond this - we have a line of 120Hz monitors out there now that can accurately display every frame up to 120 FPS. Nvidia has their GSync technology coming out too that essentially creates a dynamic refresh rate that the GPU controls by sending signals to the monitor rather than the monitor just being a dumb box that can only accept one rate. These things will increase the perceived smoothness even if the actually FPS doesn't increase.

 

Now - that said, FSX has a few characteristics that I think make the lack of the standard gaming-world 60 FPS not as big a deal as it would be in the aforementioned shooter games. Mainly, it's that FSX isn't a "twitch" game. You are often very far away from the motion of the scenery or whatever (even at landing, it's nothing compared to how close objects and other players are to you in a shooter) If the FSX world moved by you at the same relative speed things move by in a shooter, this would be a much bigger deal.  Don't get me wrong, 60FPS definitely would not *hurt* anything in FSX, but it wouldn't have the same effect that it does in Battlefield or whatever vs. 30. Unfortunately thanks to the graphics engine's inefficiency, lack of serious GPU acceleration and things like the clickspot FPS loss issue we're probably never going to see 60 in high end addons.

[maukro_1990 38]

I´ve got some performance issues, too. My system uses a I5 3570K (@4,3GHZ), 8 gb RAM and a ASUS GTX 770. I locked my frames inside FSX to 30 and for most of the time, especially at higher cruise altitudes, i get these frames and a smooth performance. But with the 737ngx and 777X, at some addon airports my frames drops from 22-30 and i get huge stuttering etc if i´m about to land or i taxi etc. 

 

I have to deal with this performance but i can´t really understand why i have bad performance with up to 22 frames (huge stuttering). I use nvidia inspector and tweaked my FSX.cfg (a "virgin" cfg does not have any effect for me). Sometimes i hope that this is only happening becouse some settings are wrong or something^^.... 

[messifan10 3]

as long as fsx is smooth,15 or 40 fps dont matter,the way i see it,

the ngx is eating less fps on my pc,than the T7

its also how the aiport is made,copenhagen on my pc is eating much more than los angeles from fsdreamteam.

the new ones from aerosoft is not eating much,the old one does.

they are much better today,than they were just 2 years ago,making optimized airports.

[Buziel-411 4]

I find 25-30 FPS perfectly acceptable in FSX or other flight simulators, but as Tabs stated, in a fast paced first person shooter it is not acceptable at all and feels awful.

 

I still don't understand how so many members of the flight simulation community continue to believe/repeat the misconception that the eye cannot perceive more then 30 FPS...  For whatever reason I almost exclusively see people claiming this at flight sim forums.

[aceridgey 330]

I would disagree that saying as long as you get 16fps but stable FSX is fine..

 

The FPS is a good indication on how much the sim is struggling processing the data. IF you try and pan around the cockpit at 16fps go into a default (or majestic dash 8) and pan around then.. The different is immediately and significantly apparent.

 

I think the focus of high end developments is to try and get the highest fps possible in every situation. It's what we, the simmer, immediately notice when flying.

[FLEX1978 373]

I definitely notice anything below 30 FPS, that is the bare minimum I will accept for FPS.

 

 For those running a 770GTX or higher I found a random tweak online that advises changing texture max load from 1024 to 4096 in the FSX.cfg

 

On my setup a saw a very nice performance boost.  Not sure how or why it works.

 

Regards

[3-2-1-Now 126]

@Ryan:

 

- Robin, the eye can definitely see more than 30 FPS. I'm old enough to have had CRT monitors for a long time before the proliferation of LCDs that redraw the whole screen at once, and anything below around 72Hz I could easily see flicker on. I'd get a headache from it after a while - I remember upgrading monitors at one point in the mid 90s specifically to be able to run 75Hz so that the flicker went away.

 

I agree. What I meant was the break in the update was undetecable (take for example cine-film vs. laser projector), but the flicker, whilst it can't directly be seen, can still be sensed by the eye/brain.

 

I can "see" the 50 Hz flicker of my panel backlight now, even though it appears to be on constantly.

 

Best regards,

Robin.

[GHarrall 494]

Still don't understand the "OMG I NEED MOAR FRAMES" sentiment in the gaming industry. I believe the film industry uses 24 frames in recording. Your eye can only perceive around 12-16. What your eye does pick up, however, is changes to that value. If it stutters, or hangs, you'll definitely notice because the frames drop below that doubled threshold (24 is double the low range of natural perception). You may notice certain equipment - GoPro/Contour cameras, notably - may have settings for upwards of 60 frames, but that's so that you can slow the film down for slow motion effects without it looking jumpy.

 

So, your goal shouldn't be 40 or 60 or 100 fps - it should be a stable, reasonable frame rate.

I can't believe this myth regarding frames to be still doing the rounds after all these years. Ryan has given a fairly good explanation and if you search the forums this 24 fps limit has been beaten to death and discredited many times over.

[martin-w 3,235]

I have babbled on about,  24 FPS  is smooth  due to the blurring nature of cinematography, and doesn't apply to games, many times in the forum. In fact in a current thread. Nice explanation from Ryan regarding this.

 

For those of you that say, 15 is fine, all that matters is that it doesn't stutter... now try panning around the VC. You will instantly see the difference. you will also see a significant difference, if you compare 30 and 60 while panning in the VC.

 

Something else that's rarely mentioned is flight dynamics.  If frame rate is too low, flight dynamics are compromised, and you won't experience the subtleties coded by talented people from PMDG, majestic etc.