I find FSX FIBER ACCELERATER gives me a smooth approach and landing at any pay ware airport and I have many heavy ones. Seems I have been getting a lot of OOM crashes since purchasing ORYX GLOBEL. Maybe my settings are too high. But mussing about this topic at work today it seems a big part of the joy of flying is from what you see out the window. Tubing or GA flying I still want to get as much of that simulated for the joy of it. Thus my addiction to eye candy.

Interesting thread, which I have been following with some interest.

 

I'm very interested in buying the Zinertek product, but it will mean a resinstall for me. Every few months I basically start again; removing FSX and reinstalling based upon where I want to fly. At the moment, I do not have a lot of time to fly, so I am mostly doing short hop regional flying out of the U.K. I do this because I know the airports.

One thing I have noticed (and this is NOT a placebo) is that if I disable all other scenery areas in FSX (eg: North America) I definately get back frames, there is no doubt at all. No disrespect to ORBX, but I basically trashed my setup last week by installing ORBX regions and airports, my frames have taken a nose dive. :-(

 

When I next do my system, I will probably do barebones FSX, FTX Global, Zinertek and REX4 TD. This was how it used to be. I am getting some stunning eye candy at the moment, but at the expense of reasonable frame rates. It's true as others have stated here about the amount of detail in some products, and I'm sure that when I do my next upgrade, it will be able to handle everything.

 

Now to work out where to fly next.......

Interesting thread, which I have been following with some interest.

 

I'm very interested in buying the Zinertek product, but it will mean a resinstall for me. Every few months I basically start again; removing FSX and reinstalling based upon where I want to fly. At the moment, I do not have a lot of time to fly, so I am mostly doing short hop regional flying out of the U.K. I do this because I know the airports.

One thing I have noticed (and this is NOT a placebo) is that if I disable all other scenery areas in FSX (eg: North America) I definately get back frames, there is no doubt at all. No disrespect to ORBX, but I basically trashed my setup last week by installing ORBX regions and airports, my frames have taken a nose dive. :-(

 

When I next do my system, I will probably do barebones FSX, FTX Global, Zinertek and REX4 TD. This was how it used to be. I am getting some stunning eye candy at the moment, but at the expense of reasonable frame rates. It's true as others have stated here about the amount of detail in some products, and I'm sure that when I do my next upgrade, it will be able to handle everything.

 

Now to work out where to fly next.......

 

For this addon I don't see any reason why you would need to do a full reinstall.  All you are doing is adding texture files and backing up the old ones.  All you need is a good defrag (if using an HD) and off you go.

/\ /\ Yep, Mark's right there.

Craig - thanks for the pic of KROC, it does look better than default. How is the comparison with night textures, do you mind posting a pic? thanks Nick

Craig - thanks for the pic of KROC, it does look better than default. How is the comparison with night textures, do you mind posting a pic? thanks Nick

 

Generally speaking, all of the HD Airport Graphics night textures are better than the day versions.   You can see on some of the earlier pics in this thread - the terminals really look great lit up!

 

Sure, I'll take a pic of KROC at night with the HD Airport Graphics a little later tonight. 

I'm wavering now. I think as an interim I'm going to give UK2000's free EGKK as a start.

Well I am now for payware airports.

 

I was on the fence about a reinstall of Aerosofts PANC that I bought years ago and have been just flying out of Orbx SAK "stock" PANC airport for the last 2 weeks.

I decided to go ahead and give Aerosoft's Ted Stevens a whirl just to see if I cared. And WOW it is GREAT! I am sold. Since I fly real time (so mostly at night off of work) and real weather (so mostly heavy REX clouds and bad weather this time of year the upgraded airport is a huge difference. And Orbx "stock" PANC was not that bad.

 

But the advantages:

#1 Friction!! I was having a hard time taxing the J41 - even getting totally suck right before entering the runway (which sucks when you have spent an hour planning, another hour with check list and taxi) I had to enable "Fritionality - a great piece of software BTW" just to taxi around. With Aerosofts PANC taxi works fine.

#2 Taxi ways are correctly lined up, marked really well, lights before crossing runways. I park south side at the Million Airs FOB so taxi is a long journey.

#3 PARKING - Now I do not have to always be parked facing a building - which requires push back and in the J4100 that just sucks. Aerosoft's PANC has parking done right!

#4 Textures look like blowing snow, building are awesome.

#5 A 1/2 hour taxi and sitting in traffic - nice to look around

and more but you get my point.

 

To me it is the "Suspension of disbelief" that I tried for 2 weeks to ignore and handle the "upgraded" "Stock" airport. But since it is my main hub and have flown out of it A LOT, the payware made it a whole new world.

 

I am 100% for payware airports (kinda a blanket statement - research them first of coarse, but a good payware makes a difference to me).

PANC really changed my point of view today when I was born into a much more real experience - a true "Suspension of disbelief" - plus the benefits of the tech problems of friction too.

 

I will also note - I dropped some items in my fsx.cfg to low settings a couple of weeks ago and have really not noticed a difference visually but a huge performance increase that makes flying fun,  no slide show, and no OOMs.

 

IMO the 7.5 LOD back down to 4.5 and TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=4096 back down to 1024 stock made a big difference - with a few other tweaks too. Those high numbers where just vain...IMO

First fix your setup and then start to figure out what is worth it to yourself.

Hi Rob,

 

Good post.  I too have found that high LODs and High Texture settings (4096) are generally not worth the performance cost.   

 

Even with those sensible settings, is Aerosoft PANC not an absolute frame rate killer?   I own it but haven't had it installed for a couple of years because the last time I tried it, I couldn't get decent frames, even in default type aircraft.

 

How many FPS are you getting on average at AS PANC, with the J41 ?

Thank you Craig.

 

To me I saw no difference in performance...oddly. All of this with OpusFSI real time and Rex with REX clouds. Mind you I only drove around and will fly a full flight tonight.

In regards to - and I agree with- stuff you do not need with an AP. There are options to turn off things like the train.

 

I was getting 20-24 tops and 17 lowest. I have done several other things I believe that really helped - Mipmapped my UT2 traffic, Added something to keep FSX from doubling planes, UT2 at 50%,

AffinityMask=1364
[bUFFERPOOLS}
UsePools=0

WATER_EFFECTS=4
TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_TREES_PER_CELL=800
TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_BUILDINGS_PER_CELL=1500

 

But after basic PANC it was really refreshing- and ground procedures are easier to follow. I know if you use UTX you need to make an adjustment -google that if pertinent- I do not use UTX anymore.

 

Ehh I thought if it did not work it is not hard to disable so why not. Glad I did.

Good result :smile:

 

....and off-topic, but I love the quotation in your signature! ....too true!

I'm not much for 3rd party airports.  The first Mega Airport I bought was the last.  I like to give those precious fps to the airplane I'm flying and the AI.  Getting a bunch of airports is expensive too, so I'm glad I can content myself with the stock airports.

This entire thread is healthy food for thought. Thanks much. I need to be a bit more self-aware when it comes to choosing a place to fly, and try to broaden my view of the sim world. Seriously, I can go ANYWHERE!!!

 

Who'da'thunkit?

and the AI

 

Good point - I think a default airport packed with real airline aircraft at the gates offers a more vibrant and realistic environment than a dead 'mega airport' addon with no AI because the frames can't be spared!

 

Another bit of general food for thought within this discussion - for the model maker types out there, there is another alternative to living with either default airports, or overly-detailed, resource sucking addon airports ....... that is, using Flight 1 Instant Scenery to improve the airports that you fly in a lot.

 

It's a super easy tool to use (much easier than some of the tools that only edit the AFCAD!), and you can add any object from your FSX object libraries. As well as the default objects, buildings, terminals, airport clutter, etc, you'll also be able to add any 3rd party objects to your airports of choice too.

 

I first done this years ago, for PAVD - Valdez, Alaska, which I made my base for a long time, but there were no addon airports for it; not even freeware.   So I used Instant Scenery and absolutely filled the default PAVD with new terminals, building, vehicles, clutter, lights around the cargo area... it looked really great in the end.

 

 

I'm not much for 3rd party airports. The first Mega Airport I bought was the last. I like to give those precious fps to the airplane I'm flying and the AI. Getting a bunch of airports is expensive too, so I'm glad I can content myself with the stock airports.

 

3rd party doesn't necessarily mean "Mega Airport" and even when it does, that doesn't mean poor performance - see my comments on the excellent KDEN for example.  Huge airport, excellent detail and amazing performance.  Nevertheless, you're right - some compromise will always be necessary.  As I'm a GA guy and most of my airports are not air carrier, my compromise is with AI traffic.  I have airline and airport vehicle traffic turned waaay down, and keep GA traffic to about 25%.  I gladly sacrifice airline traffic (which I typically don't interact with much) for detailed ground environments.

 

And of course - you're right.  No matter what, the first priority is the airplane.

 

Scott