Greetings everyone,

 

Today I will ask your help by asking you a simple question, what are your average FPS in FSX-SE?

 

My computer is a:

CPU:  AMD FX 9350 Back edition 4.7 Mhz liquid cooled

VIDEO: AMD MSI 390 8 GB

MEMORY: 16GB corsair DDR3 1866 MHZ

HARD DRIVE:  512 GB SSD + OCZ 256 GB SSD

Windows 10.

 

Products installed: FSX-SE, Fly-Tampa Montreal, Fsdt JFK V2, Fsdt Chicago O'hare, AS16 + REX SoftClouds, PMDG 737. 

 

In JFK in ground I get 15 fps in the virtual cockpit and around 22 fps outside

 

In the air the average can go up at 28 in the virtual cockpit 35 outside, with some random 50 fps picks.

 

Is this normal or low for my setup?

Kiss your computer and keep on flying! Most folks, even with Intel processors, struggle a bit with extra

Payware addons. I'm basically rubbing 2 sticks together creating sparks and getting 10-15 fps at the airport and 18-25 at cruise altitude.

Don't worry about the FPS! If it's running smoothly, no matter what the FPS is showing, then it's good. FSX is unlike modern games in that framerates under 30 don't make it look like a slideshow. Many people seem to chase framerates at the expense of actually enjoying the flying.

Ask yourself: Does this look acceptable visually, and does it feel smooth enough to fly?

 

That's a far better criteria to go off than a little digit up in the top left hand corner of the screen. To prove this is true, try knocking your detail setting right down without the FPS counter on, now try and guess what the FPS is at. Before you turn the counter on, does it seem unbelievably smooth? Could you never imagine living without that frame rate? Chances are it won't feel or even look that significantly different from what you normally experience as far as 'flyability' goes.

 

Being someone who trains movie special effects for a living, frame rates on video is a subject which often crops up on my courses. Now as you probably know, most (home) video cameras will default to something like 24, 25 or 29.97 frames per second at 1080p with a 16:9 aspect ratio (giving you an 1920x1080 image size), and this is fine for even HDTV (I know this because I've trained lots of TV editors and cameramen etc from the big companies, i.e. BBC, Al Jazeera, Viacom etc, and if 24 fps is good enough for them...). So it's only really if you are shooting with fancy pro movie cameras like a  Red 1, Phantom or whatever that you'd start worrying about faster frame rates. Sure, directors such as Ridley Scott and James Cameron will be whining about wanting to shoot everything at 120 fps, because they can lol, but even then, usually such high fps is only really necessary if you planned to slo-mo the shot and wanted to maintain a decent frame rate at half speed without any appreciable stutter, so, perhaps increasing to shooting at 60 fps for an intended slow motion shot would ensure that you'd still have 30 fps at half speed.

 

The point here is that much of what is often regarded as acceptable among gamers, is more about bragging rights than what is genuinely acceptable in practical terms. You might be surprised to know that many movie special effects shots intended for the big screen, have been rendered at as little as 1024 pixel resolution, this is because the graininess imparted on such a shot when shown on a large movie screen will nicely match the graininess of traditional film shots which they are intended to mix with. So you can take a lot of what gamers whine about in terms of minimum acceptable resolutions with a pinch of salt, because if 1024px was good enough for Industrial Light and Magic when rendering many Star Wars effects shots, it's good enough for Joe Blow playing Call of Duty lol.

 

Normally, I will tell people on my courses that if they are creating an animation, it will be at about less than 15 frames per second where movement will start to become noticable between frames, which is why TV and movies tend to be at 24 fps upwards, but 15 fps is acceptable for most animations, not least because if said animation is for example, going to be on a website, the file size and thus the transfer rate will be more acceptable.

 

With this in mind, forget about the gamer's frame rate bragging culture of 'my d*** is bigger than yours'. You can fly an FS aeroplane at a consistent 10-15 frames per second and it will be okay. Sure it will look a little bit smoother if you can get that fps up to over 24 consistently, but I can easily do a manual approach in FS on 10 frames per second without problems and frequently have done.

 

As to what frame rates I get in FSX-SE, it's at about 25 at payware airports, sometimes it drops to maybe 12 or so, although I have noticed the new PMDG Queen of the Skies Boeing 747 getting well over 100 frames per second at some default airports...

 

 

Did I think 'OMG, it's so smooth' when that PMDG 747 was getting over 100 fps? Nope, I was genuinely surprised to see the counter hitting that number, it felt no different to 20 fps to be honest.

 

So, put FS on what you feel is acceptable and be happy, but if you want some tips on that; try getting hold of the little payware add-on FSX Booster Live (which is great and will let you adjust things on the fly) and also make sure that your video card is overriding the FSX settings for things such as anti-aliasing etc, so that your GPU is doing that work.

Ask yourself: Does this look acceptable visually, and does it feel smooth enough to fly?

 

That's a far better criteria to go off than a little digit up in the top left hand corner of the screen. To prove this is true, try knocking your detail setting right down without the FPS counter on, now try and guess what the FPS is at. Before you turn the counter on, does it seem unbelievably smooth? Could you never imagine living without that frame rate? Chances are it won't feel or even look that significantly different from what you normally experience as far as 'flyability' goes.

 

Being someone who trains movie special effects for a living, frame rates on video is a subject which often crops up on my courses. Now as you probably know, most (home) video cameras will default to something like 24, 25 or 29.97 frames per second at 1080p with a 16:9 aspect ratio (giving you an 1920x1080 image size), and this is fine for even HDTV (I know this because I've trained lots of TV editors and cameramen etc from the big companies, i.e. BBC, Al Jazeera, Viacom etc, and if 24 fps is good enough for them...). So it's only really if you are shooting with fancy pro movie cameras like a  Red 1, Phantom or whatever that you'd start worrying about faster frame rates. Sure, directors such as Ridley Scott and James Cameron will be whining about wanting to shoot everything at 120 fps, because they can lol, but even then, usually such high fps is only really necessary if you planned to slo-mo the shot and wanted to maintain a decent frame rate at half speed without any appreciable stutter, so, perhaps increasing to shooting at 60 fps for an intended slow motion shot would ensure that you'd still have 30 fps at half speed.

 

The point here is that much of what is often regarded as acceptable among gamers, is more about bragging rights than what is genuinely acceptable in practical terms. You might be surprised to know that many movie special effects shots intended for the big screen, have been rendered at as little as 1024 pixel resolution, this is because the graininess imparted on such a shot when shown on a large movie screen will nicely match the graininess of traditional film shots which they are intended to mix with. So you can take a lot of what gamers whine about in terms of minimum acceptable resolutions with a pinch of salt, because if 1024px was good enough for Industrial Light and Magic when rendering many Star Wars effects shots, it's good enough for Joe Blow playing Call of Duty lol.

 

Normally, I will tell people on my courses that if they are creating an animation, it will be at about less than 15 frames per second where movement will start to become noticable between frames, which is why TV and movies tend to be at 24 fps upwards, but 15 fps is acceptable for most animations, not least because if said animation is for example, going to be on a website, the file size and thus the transfer rate will be more acceptable.

 

With this in mind, forget about the gamer's frame rate bragging culture of 'my d*** is bigger than yours'. You can fly an FS aeroplane at a consistent 10-15 frames per second and it will be okay. Sure it will look a little bit smoother if you can get that fps up to over 24 consistently, but I can easily do a manual approach in FS on 10 frames per second without problems and frequently have done.

 

As to what frame rates I get in FSX-SE, it's at about 25 at payware airports, sometimes it drops to maybe 12 or so, although I have noticed the new PMDG Queen of the Skies Boeing 747 getting well over 100 frames per second at some default airports...

 

 

Did I think 'OMG, it's so smooth' when that PMDG 747 was getting over 100 fps? Nope, I was genuinely surprised to see the counter hitting that number, it felt no different to 20 fps to be honest.

 

So, put FS on what you feel is acceptable and be happy, but if you want some tips on that; try getting hold of the little payware add-on FSX Booster Live (which is great and will let you adjust things on the fly) and also make sure that your video card is overriding the FSX settings for things such as anti-aliasing etc, so that your GPU is doing that work.

 

Greetings,

 

Principally, I'm asking because, if a configuration like mine should go at 30 or 50 or 100, that means there something wrong with my config and I'll like to fix'it, at least for now 15 fps is smooth for me, but I have in mind add ORBX global textures, and I'm afraid that will kill my FPS.

With around 650 AI aircraft in the area, I get around 13 FPS at JFK in a default airplane's cockpit, looking toward Manhattan. Other than that, my framerate is locked at 31 and that's where it remains most of the time. i5 4670K at 4 GHz turbo, 8 GB 2400 MHz, GTX 1060, SSD.

Hello,
I am continuously tweaking my FSX:SE whenever I find something new. So far I have managed to get FPS much higher than before and more smooth.

With PMDG 747 at FSDT KLAX, AI limit to 20, mouse cursor outside, looking straight into the terminals, I can get 30-40FPS exterior view and ~25FPS and above when panning in VC, pilot seat.

 

I'm using preview DX10 with Steve Fixer and mix settings of some guides online.

 

The problem I am having now is the high amount of VAS usage, even though I already try to minimum the settings and the addons, I still use more than 3000MB when using PMDG aircrafts with payware airports. And when flying into an airport I get slight pause when loading the scenery.

 

Cheers.
Hoang Le

Orbx Global will not affect your framerates  (watch out for Orbx Vector, though..).

 

If you want to up your framerates a bit, start by turning off all traffic  (roads in particular),

go with clear skies, and turn down Autogen a notch or two..

 

It is all a trade-off and only you can decide which settings you like..

The only way to lower VAS load is resizing or compressing aircraft and scenery textures. For each animated object, FSX will create a clone of the material said object uses, including diffuse, specular and bump map. Therefor, uncompressed high resolution textures on models with lots of animations (e.g. VCs) will drive VAS usage up really quickly.

 

 

Suitable tool: http://stuff4fs.com/newpage.asp?Folder=TM&Docs=TextureManager.pdf

The only way to lower VAS load is resizing or compressing aircraft and scenery textures. For each animated object, FSX will create a clone of the material said object uses, including diffuse, specular and bump map. Therefor, uncompressed high resolution textures on models with lots of animations (e.g. VCs) will drive VAS usage up really quickly.

 

 

Suitable tool: http://stuff4fs.com/newpage.asp?Folder=TM&Docs=TextureManager.pdf

Hi,

Does the Texture_Max_Load setting in FSX.cfg helps with VAS usage? I set mine to 2048.

Cheers.

Hoang Le

Greetings everyone,

 

Today I will ask your help by asking you a simple question, what are your average FPS in FSX-SE?

 

My computer is a:

CPU:  AMD FX 9350 Back edition 4.7 Mhz liquid cooled

VIDEO: AMD MSI 390 8 GB

MEMORY: 16GB corsair DDR3 1866 MHZ

HARD DRIVE:  512 GB SSD + OCZ 256 GB SSD

Windows 10.

 

Products installed: FSX-SE, Fly-Tampa Montreal, Fsdt JFK V2, Fsdt Chicago O'hare, AS16 + REX SoftClouds, PMDG 737. 

 

In JFK in ground I get 15 fps in the virtual cockpit and around 22 fps outside

 

In the air the average can go up at 28 in the virtual cockpit 35 outside, with some random 50 fps picks.

 

Is this normal or low for my setup?

That sounds about right with the add on's installed. but thats only my guess. I have mine setup to only drop to 30fps min. at the airport, so its smooth flying the rest of the flight.

Does the Texture_Max_Load setting in FSX.cfg helps with VAS usage? I set mine to 2048.

 

TML only controls the highest mip map level of a texture that will be displayed, but the texture still has to be loaded from disk into FSX' VAS, so no. You need to actually resize the source texture(s).