FSX-MS Which tweak would you consider "essential"?

[Guest Mik75]

Hi there!

I recently un- and reinstalled my complete FSX. I only installed the addons I really use, and my FSX.cfg only contains the HIGHMEMFIX=1 and the AFFINITYMASK tweaks. I never had a faster booting, performing and better looking FSX! I also use it in DX9 mode.

The performance is really great! With frames set to unlimited, I get a framerate of well above 30 most of the time, with drops down to low twenties at dense airport sceneries,

Only at some airports and over cities like London (FTX Global, FTX Vector, FTX Open LC Europe and FTX Trees HD), my fps go down to 15-19.

Which additional tweak would you add to speed up FSX in these areas, if any, and why?

My system specs:

i5 3570k @ 4.2 GHz

16 GB CL9 RAM

GTX 670 2GB

all on SSD

Win 7 64 bit

 

FSX with Acceleration Pack, sliders are all set to reasonable settings, autogen and scenery complexity are set to "dense", AI aircraft traffic is completely off.

I use ASN and REX soft clouds with a maximum of 4 cloud layers.

 

Thanks in advance for your input!

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

I use the same two tweaks being Highmemfix and the Affinitymask. I don't use any frame limiters or vsync tweaks, just run 16AA and 8xS in Inspector. I fly with unlimited FPS in airliners and do use the internal FSX limited locked to 29 when flying less intensive g/a aircraft.

 

The majority of my tweaking mainly comes from modifying my addon sceneries to be less resource intensive. Mainly just resizing textures over 1024 back to 1024 DXT5/3/1 with mip maps. Although I have decompiled some certain Aerosoft sceneries, removed some FPS intensive models and recompiled them.

 

I use ASN as well, 4 layers max on clouds. Run FEX clouds at 512 DXT5 for cumulus and 512 DXT5 for cirrus, REX water at 512 DXT5. I don't use any REX airport enhancements since I never use default airports.

 

I typically don't run any car traffic or ship traffic.

 

I do use AI, mainly UT2 with some cargo WOAI mixed in. I've mip mapped all my AI textures since they never come mip mapped, and I run traffic at 75% airline and 10% GA.

 

I have my operating system set up per NickN's bible, don't run any anti-virus programs and use my computer for FSX only.

 

That's about it for me. I've used the same recipe on two different FSX rigs for 7 years now and it's served me well. Run most big airport scenery packages, all PMDG planes, some photoreal stuff and never had an OOM or CTD. That's pretty good for 7 years considering all the trials and tribulations I read about here everyday.

[jcomm 5,916]

I use ASN, max 3 layers, scenery complexity = Sparse, autogen = full left ( minimum ).  FSX:SE runs great this way, and ORBX FTX Global gives me World textures that pretty much substitute the effects of autogen, sometimes not suitable for many places around the World....

 

I found out that setting Max FPS to 72 fps is my best choice since I am using FSX:SE only as a display for Aerowinx PSX, which runs at max 72 fps....

 

Fiber Frame Time Fraction set to 0.12, and LOD = 3 can help as well

[Guest Mik75]

Thanks for your input so far!

I am actually quite happy with the performance of my sim. Other than very dense urban areas like London, only a few airports (like Aerosoft EDDT, EDDM, EDDS, etc.) bring the sim down to the mid teens. Flying over Berlin I.e., which is a very dense scenery, brings results of 24-30 fps in the PMDG 737 (online on VATSIM, with vPilot and IVAO MTL). But as soon as the airport scenery gets completely loaded, the performance drops dramatically.

Reducing the resolution of the textures in this scenery would probably help a lot, but I never did that before...

FiberTimeFraction is a tweak that I used and experimented with in earlier installs of FSX, with mixed results. The sim did speed up noticeably, but textures got quite blurry...

[CFIJose 5,485]

Hi there!

I recently un- and reinstalled my complete FSX. I only installed the addons I really use, and my FSX.cfg only contains the HIGHMEMFIX=1 and the AFFINITYMASK tweaks. I never had a faster booting, performing and better looking FSX! I also use it in DX9 mode.

The performance is really great! With frames set to unlimited, I get a framerate of well above 30 most of the time, with drops down to low twenties at dense airport sceneries,

Only at some airports and over cities like London (FTX Global, FTX Vector, FTX Open LC Europe and FTX Trees HD), my fps go down to 15-19.

Which additional tweak would you add to speed up FSX in these areas, if any, and why?

My system specs:

i5 3570k @ 4.2 GHz

16 GB CL9 RAM

GTX 670 2GB

all on SSD

Win 7 64 bit

 

FSX with Acceleration Pack, sliders are all set to reasonable settings, autogen and scenery complexity are set to "dense", AI aircraft traffic is completely off.

I use ASN and REX soft clouds with a maximum of 4 cloud layers.

 

Thanks in advance for your input!

After the HIGHMEMFIX=1 (left out by the FSX team) and the AFFINITYMASK=14 (added by ASN) there are two tweaks that dramatically increased my framerates:

 

Bufferpools=0

FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION=0.15

 

Since I want the best graphics I set Inspector to 8xS AA, 2SGSS, and 16anis. I also have vsync enabled with 1/2 refresh rate. To avoid stutters, blurry ground textures, and flashes, I set FSX fps locked to 30 and water to 2high.

 

Give it a try and I hope that it works for you.

 

Jose

[Guest Mik75]

Thanks a lot for your detailed answer! I experimented a lot with BP, and BP=0 brought a good performance boost in previous installs. But it also introduced some stuttering from time to time, and right now, my FSX is really smooth. FIBER_TIME_FRACTION is something I might give another try anytime soon. Although it made the textures quite blurry on my last FSX install (I can't remember the actual value I used).

[Mephic 129]

ASN with 4 cloud layers and reducing autogen to dense helped me more than any tweaks in cfg file but I run all which was mentioned. Bp=0 was also decent performance gain. Anyway - if current performance works for you do not break it. There is no set of golden tweaks for everyone.

[Skybluex25 0]

Looks like you are already in a good situation. As long as you have HIGHMEMFIX, you shouldn't encounter much problems. But a gentle reminder, don't go crazy with addons. I have a similar PC, and I can barely fly around New York City X (I've once even got 4.2 gb of VAS usage, and somehow did not crash). And it'll also be worth looking into how much VAS usage you get when fly around with addons. 4gb is the limit, and FSX usually crashes at that point. Otherwise, there's not much else you can benefit from, as it seems you are already in a good situation.

Oh and also, you should try to limit your FPS. I set mines to 50 and I get 25-50 frames. And if you're really desperate, there is this addon from FSPS, I forgot what it's called, but it is worth looking into.

[Bartbear 10]

Read the FSX 'bible' here :

 

#####

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

I think you are where you want to be..  :rolleyes:

 

Big add-on airports will tax any system and there are no essential tweaks that will help,

other than beginning to think about Intel's next CPU and nvidia's next GPU  ^_^ 

[Jim Robinson 122]

Best tweak around IMHO:

 

[GRAPHICS]
D3D10=1

[MarkW 1,491]

You could try FSX-SE and may see smoother performance.  I think Steam has a big sale on this weekend.  Other than that the only thing left is buying a faster processor and upgrading the video card.

[glenecho3 9]

Always considered highmemfix and affinitymask to be essential but this thread made me go back and do some comparisons and on a new Windows 7 installation with FSX:SE I'm getting exactly the same performance with or without either of these tweaks. I didn't look at the CPU threads to see what was going on without affinitymask, but the FPS and smoothness were the same in 3 or 4 test scenarios.

 

I've heard that as time goes on and hardware has improved that the old tweaks lose their effectiveness. I assume either that occurred or that FSX:SE is doing something under the hood differently than the old boxed version.

 

No other tweaks...and I mean NONE of them...ever really worked for me. We're talking across several different PCs over the last ten years. Some may give you some improvement under CERTAIN and specific situations but I've found that all of them always caused some sort of negative as well. Many of them have never seemed to have any effect for me. For all the talk about settings like the FiberFraction tweak...I never noticed that tweak to make any difference either way.

 

At the end of the day the primary bottleneck for me still appears to be CPU load under high scenery locations (NYC...London) and still (and somewhat maddening after 10+ years) the clouds. Clouds also cause a big FPS hit in X-plane for me so I have to assume that there is something about cloud textures that is simply a great challenge to overcome. Even FS2004 can get choppy on me if I go crazy on the REX clouds. It's the ONLY thing I can do that will bring that old sim to it's knees.

[Guest Mik75]

Hi there!

Sorry for repyling that late, but I had difficulties to load the AVSIM Forums and to search my Content.

Thanks a lot for all your detailed answers.

What I forgot to mention in my initial post, is that I am not new to FSX and that, in years of using it on different machines, I probably tested all the known "fixes" and "tweaks" again and again.

I am absolutely pleased with how my latest clean install runs right now. I just wanted to know, which tweaks you find to be absolutely essential and what your experiences are with them.

I´ll probably will add BP=0 anytime soon again, to do a bit more in depth testing with it once more. It brought some severe stuttering on my last installs, but also a decent improvement in fps.

So, once more, thanks a lot for all your answers!

[Dirk98 354]

I use the same two tweaks being Highmemfix and the Affinitymask. I don't use any frame limiters or vsync tweaks, just run 16AA and 8xS in Inspector. I fly with unlimited FPS in airliners and do use the internal FSX limited locked to 29 when flying less intensive g/a aircraft.

 

The majority of my tweaking mainly comes from modifying my addon sceneries to be less resource intensive. Mainly just resizing textures over 1024 back to 1024 DXT5/3/1 with mip maps. Although I have decompiled some certain Aerosoft sceneries, removed some FPS intensive models and recompiled them.

 

I use ASN as well, 4 layers max on clouds. Run FEX clouds at 512 DXT5 for cumulus and 512 DXT5 for cirrus, REX water at 512 DXT5. I don't use any REX airport enhancements since I never use default airports.

 

I typically don't run any car traffic or ship traffic.

 

I do use AI, mainly UT2 with some cargo WOAI mixed in. I've mip mapped all my AI textures since they never come mip mapped, and I run traffic at 75% airline and 10% GA.

 

I have my operating system set up per NickN's bible, don't run any anti-virus programs and use my computer for FSX only.

 

NickN has been ardently anti-affinitymask tweak.

 

Dirk.