I was playing around with my settings yesterday to see what kinda of frame rates I could get. I left my aircraft parked at KIWA in AZ and made a bunch of different setting changes. Here is what I'm running with FS20042.8 GHZ2 GB RAMNVidia 6800 Ultra 256MBDell 24" Widescreen 1920 x 1200Active Sky VFS Real TimeUltimate Traffic 2004FS Genesis 32m MeshFlight One Cessna 172(My own personal Phoenix Area DEM at 9.2m)Here are the changes that I made and how big of a difference it made:Resolution: 1920 x 1200 = 10-12 FPS 1680 x 1050 = 13-14 FPS 1152 x 864 = 15-16 FPSTurning Down 3D Cloud Percentage was negligable maybe 1 FPS.Turning Down MIP Mapping to 4 instead of 8 was about 1 FPS.Turning Down Lights from 8 to 4 was negligable.Turning sight distance down to 80 instead of full was negligible.Turning cloud coverage to medium was about 1-2 FPS greater.Turning Global Aircraft Detail down to Medium was negligable.Lowering traffic densities was negligable.Removing Phoenix Area 9.2m DEM was a whopping 5-8 FPS increase.Not Running Active Sky and FS Real Time was a 10 FPS increase.So in conclusion, it seems to me the limitation with FS2004 is purely CPU based, with the only graphical setting that made any difference was some weather effects, but it was very little. It seems the higher the mesh complexity the lower the frame rates go. The more programs in the background, the lower the frame rates. I'm getting a new computer with a AN8-SLI motherboard, AMD 64 Dual-Core 4800+ and two Geforce 7800 GTX cards in the next week. I will post my FPS with the new setup and let you know how things workout.Just some info for those who have nothing better to do, John Flowers

If you're going to perform tests to measure frame rates then you need to do more than just park at a gate. Most of the performance issues of FS (or any game, really) come about as the scene changes, requiring texture loading and changes to the geometry. The reason you didn't see much change in your scenario is that the scene was pretty static. The places where you saw a change (resolution, DEM) changed the scene and this is expected. That's why Microsoft uses saved flights in its performance testing. I would suggest creating a flight typical of how you use the product and then measure frame rates at specific intervals (e.g., every 5 seconds) throughout the flight to get an average.

John,One thing caught my eye...<>With respect try moving to a runway at a major airport such as EGLL or KORD and assess the impact of lowering Ai traffic then. Traffic loading is heavily weighted towards the top end. Reducing Ai from 100% to 70% kills over half the traffic.I've used AI Traffic Mover to spread the load of Ai aircraft uniformly so they don't clump together. Try it here www.molitor-home.de/FS/AITM/Since I've installed ASV my frame rates have increased quite substantially mainly because I'm using lower density cloud textures without any real visible difference over the originals. Great program too!Cheers,

Actually the scene was pretty dynamic. There were variable cloud layers, thunderstorms in the area, and a good amount of airport traffic. KIWA is located in the flight path of incoming AI traffic to KPHX. I'm using the 512 textures which could be an issue. Don't get me wrong, I love ASV, but I just wish FS2004 utilized the GPU a little more if it could. My suspicion is the amount of data that needs to be computed for the mesh. The problem with actually flying this test, is that I wanted a static environment for my flight and wanted to see what affect my addons created. Traffic adds planes to the tarmac and ASV adds cloud textures and the mesh obviously adds alot. I wanted to take out flight dynamics from the equation. I just wanted to see what effect the other stuff had. I restarted the flight each time. My whole point though is that it seems that FS2004 does not use much of the GPU and is mainly bound by the CPU.

Must be nice to have lots of money to burn, your new rig is pure overkill as FS9 doesn't use any of that new technology, so it's kind of a waste, unless you have other uses for it.Also, each system is different and results will vary based on other factors as well. I have seen numerous posts from guys with high end SLI rigs that get poor performance and ones from guys with mid range rigs getting great performance. My conclusion is just wait till the next version and hopefully MS will get it right and we will all benefit then.For the 4-5 grand you are spending on that rig you could almost get your PPL.Regards, MichaelKDFWhttp://www.calvirair.com/mcpics/mcdcvabanner.jpgCalVirAir International

Good analysis John. And welcome to the forum(s). It just highlights the role of the CPU vs. GPU with MSFS. The overall performance of every MSFS version has been limited by the availability of CPU cycles and you have, once again, confirmed that to be the case for the current version. I'm really hoping that MS finds a way to offload a sizeable portion of the workload to the GPU in the next version. It's far easier, and possibly less exoensive, to upgrade the GPU rather than having to upgrade the mobo/CPU/system RAM. But (there is always one of those) I had the same hope for this version, to no avail. Time will tell...Doug

>>I've used AI Traffic Mover to spread the load of Ai aircraft>uniformly so they don't clump together. Try it here>www.molitor-home.de/FS/AITM/>Ray,Can you provide details on how to do this please? I have traffic mover but not sure where to go from there. I guess I have to decompile the traffic.bgl? I am using Ultimate Traffic as well.Thanks,EIDUB

Actually, the rig is free, from work, and will be used for 3D Studio Max Rendering, but to say the FS9 won't benefit is completely untrue. First, the dual processor will run additional addon's behind the scenes. For example, Active Sky V will run in the second core as well as FS Real Time. I have read that FS9 has trouble with SLI, but I can always disable the feature. I wouldn't imagine a game limited by CPU can be improved by SLI anyways. It's not quite 4-5 grand either. It's more like 2 grand anyways and it's free.

"Actually, the rig is free, from work, and will be used for 3DStudio Max Rendering, but to say the FS9 won't benefit iscompletely untrue. First, the dual processor will runadditional addon's behind the scenes. For example, Active SkyV will run in the second core as well as FS Real Time. I haveread that FS9 has trouble with SLI, but I can always disablethe feature. I wouldn't imagine a game limited by CPU can beimproved by SLI anyways. It's not quite 4-5 grand either. It's more like 2 grand anyways and it's free."Wow, cool job you have that you get a new state of the art PC, envious. Not saying it won't benefit, but not as much as it would if it was designed to take advantage of dual core and SLI which it is not. Seen a few benchmarks showing that games get about the same performance from the new AMD dual cores as they do from the single FX series, so there isn't much of an improvement vs costs. If you know where to get a top end dual core 4800 with twin 7800 card rig for 2 grand, please share, as the cards alone are $500 each retail and the cpu is over a grand and I am building a new rig.Regards, MichaelKDFWhttp://www.calvirair.com/mcpics/mcdcvabanner.jpgCalVirAir International

John,The 512 textures will have a significant impact on your frame rates. I couldn't believe the difference when I loaded ASV. Previously I used FS Meteo with standard MS clouds. It was like getting a PC upgrade for free!Having listened to the FS Development Team when they visited a major FS show in Blackpool, England it's clear they are putting more emphasis on graphics for a future version of FS. They'll be utilising features available in DirectX9 which will make a big difference. This is reflected in graphics card prices of course. Cards costing several hundred pounds are now replacing the relatively cheap 3D cards of a few years ago. Eventually FS will become less CPU bound but no doubt third-party developers will find someway of filling that gap!Cheers,

Hi,Yes, decompile the traffic.bgl. You can do that within AITM. Tools / Decompile Flightplan(s). You will need to select which version of FS you're using under FlightSimulator first.Having decompiled the traffic.bgl select File / Open Flightplan. Wait while it loads. Then select Tools / Randomize Ai percentage. Go with the defaults of 1 and 99. Finally recompile - Tools / Compile Current Flightplan. Choose Yes to save the current txt file and then wait for a couple of minutes whilst it compiles a new traffic.bgl.Cheers,

It is only two grand because I'm only replacing the motherboard, the video cards and the chip. The breakdown was as follows:Chip $999Video Cards $559 eachMotherboard $150Business Discount too!!!

Even if there is a dramatic leap in GPU dependance in the next FS; taking full advantage of the newer DX9 features, don't forget that thte GPU will not be able to influence the CPU when it comes to the core logics of the programme, which is what causes much of the performance problems currently.....The graphics card may lay lovely textures over the ground, but the CPU will still have work out the framework of the mesh, and as good as a graphics engine can make AI planes look, it's still going to be the CPU that looks after the flight plans and ground handling of the AI at airports. The busier the airport, the more that the CPU has to cope with. (Try looking at EGLL - London Heathrow with a variety of AI percentages and watch the frame rates fall as the AI is increased!) Of course, as far as AI traffic goes, it depends on what extra package you use! The weather can be made to look wonderful by the GPU, but it's still the CPU that needs to decipher the raw data. ATC is purely a CPU thing as it computes your flight plan, and controls all the AI too. And of course, amongst all this, it's still got to look after all the raw sound data before it goes to the sound card! And then there's YOUR aircraft! Good as the GPU can make it look, the CPU still needs to operate behind your flight plan, GPS/FMC, autopilot, engines, turbulence effects, etc....The more sophisticated that the sim becomes, the more work overall that the CPU will have to deal with. The graphics card will only show a small part of the work by displaying the nice textures and giving the lighting effects.I would imagine that this is something that we'll ALWAYS see with type of sim where the graphics are the 'window dressing'; the part that makes it look appealing, whillst the CPU does all the background work.

Donny AKA ShalomarFly 2 ROCKS!!!Might be off topic, but I did some playing around too and found terrain texture size at max to be the critical factor if you want to land at a lake in an amphib then drop your gear and taxi up the beach. Mesh quality, global texture size, terrain detail can be set to lowest but if it's the other way around and terrain texture size is reduced you can get stuck or even destroy your plane if you then give it a lot of power attempting to get up on the beach.Best Regards, Donny:-wave

Agreed on the CPU apsect, but I am holding out hope that FS9 may take advantage of AGEIA new physics processor. That would free up alot of resources for the CPU. Here is to hoping!!!Peace out!!!John Flowers