Hmmm.  So, you keep the regions active.  What airplanes do you fly with that?

 

You mean the FTX regions?

Yes I do, but in the not-so-distant past Orbx changed the region loading logic. As far as I know it is loaded automatically now.

I only fly PMDG like aircraft, like NGX, 777, Q400, etc.

Normally when departing I have beween 1.4GB-1.7GB VAS free and after landing between 0.4GB-0.7GB free, depending on dep/dest and route length.

You mean the FTX regions?

Yes I do, but in the not-so-distant past Orbx changed the region loading logic. As far as I know it is loaded automatically now.

I only fly PMDG like aircraft, like NGX, 777, Q400, etc.

Normally when departing I have beween 1.4GB-1.7GB VAS free and after landing between 0.4GB-0.7GB free, depending on dep/dest and route length.

 

Interesting.  I'd have thought London downtown might have been the issue with my flight.  Landing west I was on Big4B coming up on it.  I've done some adjustments based on the other comments but haven't disabled the regions just yet.  I'll do another test today and see what happens.

I made some changes to my sim before I ran my next test, pretty much the same scenario (A320 Zurich to Heathrow), AS16 BKN clouds:

• Changed LOD_RADIUS to 4.5.  I'd been running it a notch higher.
• Changed TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD to 1024 (had been 2048).
• Loaded Zurich low resolution textures (Aerosoft).
• Disabled RAAS (word is it uses 150MB of VAS or so)
• Disabled London City Airport for the destination side.  Two close airports with large VAS footprints is going to cause problems.
• I kept FTX England turned on.
• Reduced airline traffic to 14% (from low 20s) and car traffic to 2% (from about 5).  I also cut boats down a bit.
• I run 512 AS16 clouds and they look just fine.  The weather was exactly the same as the first flight.

Departure end observations:

• VAS sitting in the VC was 2667MB.  Panning around outside with lots of vehicles it went up to 2753MB.
• Enabling FS2Crew cost a little less than 100MB
• Started GSX cost 50MB
• When I departed VAS was about 3050 and dropped back to 2985 at cruise.

Arrival observations:

• VAS stayed steady at 3000MB until I crossed over the English Channel and then began a slow increase (got worse) by about 200MB.
• As London City and Heathrow appeared I think I lost another 200MB.  I was flying past the west side of the city on BIG4B on my way to the initial approach fix 27R.
• I lost another 250 by the time I landed and had 350MB left on final and through taxi.

When I landed I had 350 MB VAS left.  Now, I have to say the changes didn't seem to take away much enjoyment...I still had plenty out in front of me.  I think the LOD_RADIUS of 4.5 makes sense.  I'll have a better sense of it on my second flight.  All in all, these changes made the difference between OOM 15 miles out and a successful approach and landing.  None of this is surprising.  All it does is give some ideas to people about what settings might be needed to make flights into and out of the tougher airports.

 

To be continued.  I'm going to do another flight from Frankfurt to Heathrow in the 777 to see what happens.

I'm going to do another flight from Frankfurt to Heathrow in the 777 to see what happens.

 

I did a flight from Aerosoft EGLL to Aerosoft EDDF v2 in the PMDG 777 in P3D v3.4 a couple of weeks ago. Managed to land with around 300 Mb of free VAS. This was with LOD 5.5 but FTX England deactivated. So it is possible. But it is a pain that we have to worry about VAS again. In P3D v3.3 there was always so much headroom that one could just fly with high settings and not worry about VAS...

 

 

I did a flight from Aerosoft EGLL to Aerosoft EDDF v2 in the PMDG 777 in P3D v3.4 a couple of weeks ago. Managed to land with around 300 Mb of free VAS. This was with LOD 5.5 but FTX England deactivated. So it is possible. But it is a pain that we have to worry about VAS again. In P3D v3.3 there was always so much headroom that one could just fly with high settings and not worry about VAS...

 

I'm running 3.35 and still having to pair things down.  I'm wondering if something I added might have made it worse.  In any case I flew the 777 from Aerosoft EDDF to UK2000 Heathrow.  FTX Germany was on (3,200MB VAS on the ground), FTX UK off.  I squeaked in with a little over 100MB of VAS left with 14% AI.  You're right...9% AI would have been better.  The sim didn't seem to ever let go of much VAS.  I'm going to do some experiments.

I'm running 3.35 and still having to pair things down.  I'm wondering if something I added might have made it worse.  In any case I flew the 777 from Aerosoft EDDF to UK2000 Heathrow.  FTX Germany was on (3,200MB VAS on the ground), FTX UK off.  I squeaked in with a little over 100MB of VAS left with 14% AI.  You're right...9% AI would have been better.  The sim didn't seem to ever let go of much VAS.  I'm going to do some experiments.

How did EDDF perform in the past?  I only ask because I had serious issues with EDDF, primarily an OOM prior to approach.  No issues with par, taxi and takeoff from EDDF, but VAS was on the high side to start.

 

There is a very lengthy thread at Aerosoft's forums about EDDF and VAS, with nothing concrete from Aerosoft on how to combat the problem, yet some users have found some workarounds pertaining to the very same things we are discussing here.

 

 

How did EDDF perform in the past?

 

Seemed okay for me.  I've heard Tegel is worse.  I'll load it up without FTX Germany and see what I get.

Sorry May be a silly question. but how do you measure VAS,  is there a add on program to run in the background?

It hasn't effected me  for quite a while, but my flights tend to be less than an hour at present.

Regards

Steve

I use process explorer.

I use Process Explorer...

 

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/processexplorer.aspx

 

Some people just use a setting in FSUIPC.

Deactivate any 3rd party scenery not used for that flight.  Forget traffic.  And sometimes lower texture res.

There is a great sticky in the tips and tricks forums on how to optimizing and mipmapping airport textures.

 

http://www.avsim.com/topic/471107-guide-to-mipmapping-and-optimising-textures/

 

Firstly, you really don't need HD textures. Yes, they look really nice, but 1024 textures also look just as good and the VAS savings can be extraordinary.

Secondly some textures are not optimized. You'll be surprised just how much better airport performance is when the textures are the correct format and proper dimensions.

 

There is a freeware texture optimizer that can do this for you (I forget the link, but I think it is in the thread I posted above).

 

Certain developers don't need this done to their airports. For example Flightbeam has done a remarkable job optimizing, so I don't touch those.

 

I also wish developers would stop internal modeling. I know it looks cool, but I personally think it is unnecessary and wastes resources.

 

 

I also wish developers would stop internal modeling. I know it looks cool, but I personally think it is unnecessary and wastes resources.

 

I don't mind it *if* it doesn't hurt performance.  Some airports can be fine with it.  But, also, we need to have a way to turn it off.