fsx-ms AFCAD files can ruin your FPS.

[ReneB 3]

Hello all,

 

For years I have been annoyed by sudden, serious FPS-drops when taxying or landing/taking off at a number of payware airports. A healthy 30 FPS can go down as far as 9. At long last I recently found the culprit: the AFCAD file. Designers tend to use a lot of ‘dots’ when drawing junctions or crossings of taxiways, presumably aimed at making the movement of AI aircraft as elegant as possible. However, all those dots consume calculating power when you pass such a spot with your own aircraft, resulting in an irritating loss of FPS. After I began to suspect the AFCAD files, I opened one of an airport that is notorious for this phenomenon with Jon Masterson’s ADE (Airport Design Editor), and simplified crossings, runway exits etc., reducing the number of dots by, in some cases, more than 50 percent. The FPS drop was finally gone!

 

ADE is a freeware tool, that can be found at www.scruffyduckscenery.co.uk . You need to have the FSX SDK installed to make it work. The SDK can be found on one of the FSX installation discs, if my memory serves me well the last one.

 

Happy flying!

René

[Clutch Cargo 384]

Good revelation Rene.  Every pixel counts.  Do I really need 50 "points" when creating a turn in my taxiline or can I get by with three.   It can add up quickly.

[out 769]

Great findings, Rene! Every step to increase performance in FS is welcome.

 

Now I have to test it myself and see how performance differs before and after.

[neucoas 82]

Thanks Good to know

[castarr 0]

Thank you, Rene...i'm going to take a peek at some...of my add-ons now..and see where i can tweak! :-)

[Poppet 703]

A good find Rene, thanks for posting 

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

I'm not sure that the number of nodes or "dots" as they're referred to here have any bearing on FPS. In freeware AFCADS the usual culprit to bad FPS is the over use of default objects or other freeware library objects that aren't very well optimized that the author compiles into the AFCAD.

 

I'd like to see some conclusive or factual info from a knowledgeable developer or someone like the ScruffyDuck devs who can provide some evidence to support this.

 

Post Edit: I just read an article by Dan Grovestine that suggests that their maybe some truth to an over abundance of nodes contributing to lower FPS. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://stuff4fs.com/Tutorials/Adding%2520Realism%2520to%2520Airports%2520Tutorial.pdf&ved=0ahUKEwiegKDi-tfJAhVC7mMKHTo-CIYQFggkMAE&usg=AFQjCNFyuokR9vFMqY7hHEZg0rhKvBBsWw&sig2=x7M5cq535IDSkTJBSNU_jQ

[mgh 89]

I'm not sure that the number of nodes or "dots" as they're referred to here have any bearing on FPS.

 

You dsbeleive the OP's initial post?

[Mickeyj 35]

Thanks for the find Rene! So i went out and tried this with flytampas CYYZ. It is a great scenery but horrible when it comes to FPS. I switched off the afcad that came with the scenery and i had a slight increase in FPS with PMDG NGX. For ex with Qualitywings Avro and the Q400 CYYZ is now flyable for me. In the NGXi had some mid to low 20 in heavy weather. Just to mention i switched off almost every enhancement.

 

Forgot to mention im using P3Dv3 only

[ReneB 3]

Thank you all for your kind reactions. I'm glad Mickey, that I could help to make at least one airport flyable for you. For those who have time (and patience) I would recommend to dig a bit deeper with ADE, using the fault finder. You will probably find orphan nodes, overlapping nodes, orphan links and open links, all of them superfluous and degrading performance. But, to be fair, I also looked into airports at which I couldn't find any faults at all.

 

Kind regards, and Merry Christmas!

René

[scott967 62]

You have to consider how you want your airport to work.  Node design interacts with the ATC ground-handling code both user aircraft and AI.

 

scott s.

.

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

It is a great scenery but horrible when it comes to FPS. I switched off the afcad that came with the scenery and i had a slight increase in FPS with PMDG NGX.

I'm surprised because the AFCAD that comes with a custom airport usually has excludes in it to keep the default buildings from appearing mixed in with the customer buildings, and the addon airports AFCAD has parking spaces that match up with the custom terminals and jetways. Otherwise you'll have planes parked half way into a building or other unusual places. Not typically a good solution to disable the AFCAD for an addon airport, better to just fix it or have the developer fix it.