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Piotr007

Disappointed with XPX and XPXI, unfortunately!

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Just agreeing with the others here -- you need to turn "Cloud Area Covered" in SkyMaxx Pro way down, that's a frame rate killer. I have it set to 5000 square miles on my system. I know setting it to maximum helps with the "box of clouds around your plane" look at high altitude, but that's just a limitation of this particular plugin (and I think they're working to improve it).

If you want a better appearance at airliner altitudes, try XEnviro. However, realize that each of the two commercial weather plugins have their own advantages and disadvantages. I bought both XEnviro and SkyMaxx Pro v4 so I could make an informed choice for my own flying style (which is hard to tell just from looking at screen shots). Right now, I'm using SkyMaxx because I don't fly airliners in the sim, and I prefer the look of SkyMaxx to XEnviro at low altitudes when mountain flying. Also, I need custom weather settings, which XEnviro will never do. I might try it again when they add historical weather, which might be a work-around for not being able to adjust the weather manually.

Also, I recommend turning off ground shadows (use shadows on plane only), which is another resource hog. Your monitor resolution also matters. You won't get the same frame rates if you're using a 4k monitor or dual monitors, compared to running a 1080p monitor. 

My system isn't quite as powerful as yours, and I'm getting a happy 40+ fps average, never lower than 30fps on my 1920x1200 monitor. That's at maximum world detail and graphics set to High(HDR). So it's not that X-Plane has some inherent problem on a reasonably good computer system. It's just a question of choosing the plugins and settings that give you the frame rate you're looking for.

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X-Plane and Microsoft Flight Simulator on Windows 10 
i7 6700 4.0 GHz, 32 GB RAM, GTX 1660 ti, 1920x1200 monitor

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2 hours ago, wb5okj said:

One other thing that may be a consideration is having a web browser open while simming. I am running Windows 10 Professional on my new computer, Task manager tells me the I7 6850K cpu is running at 4.36 Ghrz. If I open Firefox, (my favorite browser), the cpu goes crazy, from 4.36 it starts cycling down to as low as 1.8 Ghrz, and fps in X-Plane 11 starts jumping all over the place. It does the same thing with Chrome, which I use for some work specific things. I have to use MS Edge now I I open a browser. I fly out of KPWA so scenery is light, I get around 60 fps most of the time, with one of these browsers open I get down to 40 and as low as 30 fps. I don't know if this is just specific to my rig but would be interested if anyone else has these browser problems. I jus don't use Firefox or Chrome if I have X-Plane 11 or 10 up. May be something to think about or look into.

This is not right.  Check your "power options" setting in windows and re-test using either balanced performance (the recommended setting) or high performance (which  on my system will not de-clock the CPU and thus will run at full clock speed even when idle).  You can find power options by typing power options in the search field (bottom left usually) in the task bar.

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2 hours ago, Mik75 said:

You definitely have to turn down "Cloud Area Covered"! Maximum setting is way too much. Try something around 10,000 sq km, that's a realistic setting. I get good results with my 1070 in XP11 with this setting. Overall, xEnviro (which I use in XPX), performs much better. 

And as others stated before, turn the shadows in XPX down to "3D on aircraft". Objects to draw should all be set in middle positions in XPX (objects "tons", streets "tons", trees "filled in", cars "siberian winter", these settings work very nicely for me). 

Reasonable settings are very important. Then the sim will be silky smooth. 

Thank you for the good tips! I will look into this!

I love XPX as well as XPXI graphics wise. But other things are things I have to get used to.

Does anyone have an idea of World AI traffic for XPX and XPXI? Does it have a massive hit on PC as does P3D and FSX?

(I have also a small question about contrails. I did not see them in XPX! Has it to do with the particle system?)


I9 12900K @ 5.1ghz P-cores/ 4.0 ghz E-cores fixed HT off / Corsair iCue H150i Capellix Cooler/ MSI Z690 CARBON WiFi / 32GB Corsair DDR5 RAM @ 5200 mhz XMP on / 12GB MSI 4090 RTX Ventus 3 / 7,5 total TB SSD (2+2+2+1+0,5 all NVMe)/ PSU 850W Corsair / 27" (1080P)

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44 minutes ago, gpb500 said:

This is not right.  Check your "power options" setting in windows and re-test using either balanced performance (the recommended setting) or high performance (which  on my system will not de-clock the CPU and thus will run at full clock speed even when idle).  You can find power options by typing power options in the search field (bottom left usually) in the task bar.

Thanks for the suggest. I have checked power options, they are set to high. I don't know why the browsers bring the cpu down, that's the only thing that does, the cpu runs at full power with everything else and at idle it runs full power. I've never  found another app that does this except Firefox and Chrome. I just don't run these if I am simming.

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2 hours ago, Piotr007 said:

Does anyone have an idea of World AI traffic for XPX and XPXI? Does it have a massive hit on PC as does P3D and FSX?

World Traffic 2 does not have much affect on FPS - no where near as much as in FSX/P3D. I pretty much filled the entire Heathrow with AI on almost every gate and the FPS dropped by about 5. Be warned though that WT2 is very complex to set up and takes time to generate routes, ground maps etc to make it work well. There is a version 3.0 (free update) coming out any day which is supposed to simplify some things.

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I would fly with JAR's X-Life/Deluxe until World Traffic 3 comes, which will purportedly have auto generated ground traffic. Otherwise, especially if you fly Europe, X-Life is the way to go. Hardly any frame hits


 Ryzen 7 5800x, 32gb, RX 6900XT 16gb

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18 hours ago, jh71 said:

I fly VFR, at those altitudes, this 25 miles is most of the time sufficient. But I believe once going over a certain height (I don't know how it is calculated) the visibility will go up, and the number of objects will decrease with height due to the LOD, so higher visibility will have less impact on cruise altitude. The smart thing to do for Laminar would be to play with those 2, and probably that is what they do.  (Again, not sure, as generally I don't fly airliners).

Yeah, a feature like what is in Active Sky 2016 would be nice where you can sit the minimum/maximum draw distance for VFR and IFR flight.


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Captain K-Man FlightBlog Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCulqmz0zmIMuAzJvDAZPkWQ  //  Streaming on YouTube most Wednesdays and Fridays @ 6pm CST

Brian Navy

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2 hours ago, Lenny777 said:

I would fly with JAR's X-Life/Deluxe until World Traffic 3 comes, which will purportedly have auto generated ground traffic. Otherwise, especially if you fly Europe, X-Life is the way to go. Hardly any frame hits

Really?  I tried the X-Life Freeware and it was hammering my FPS with just a few planes.  They were also not landing on the runways at KDAL.  They were slightly off center and taxing out into the grass?   Maybe I set something up wrong.  I'd love to get some AI traffic running that doesn't murder my system.  In P3D I can have 80 aircraft around me with very little hit on FPS but with just 4 planes in X-Life I lost of 10 FPS.


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Captain K-Man FlightBlog Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCulqmz0zmIMuAzJvDAZPkWQ  //  Streaming on YouTube most Wednesdays and Fridays @ 6pm CST

Brian Navy

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One thought I have for you is if you are using the GPU tweak software from the manufacture of the card (MSI)?  This is not Nvidia stuff. In my case it was ASUS GPU tweak II for y 1070. This is what lets you control the internal workings of the card and set it up for gaming mode, etc.  In my case, once I got this installed and setup, I jumped about 10 to 15 frames.  

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7 hours ago, Kuragiman said:

Really?  I tried the X-Life Freeware and it was hammering my FPS with just a few planes.  They were also not landing on the runways at KDAL.  They were slightly off center and taxing out into the grass?   Maybe I set something up wrong.  I'd love to get some AI traffic running that doesn't murder my system.  In P3D I can have 80 aircraft around me with very little hit on FPS but with just 4 planes in X-Life I lost of 10 FPS.

Not sure in XP11, but in XP10 I have a small imapct on FPS from WT (testing WT3 right now but FPS wise it's not different apart better models). With a couple thousands of active flight plans at payware EGCC (let's say some 60/70 at gates and some 30 in the air at that time I got a 5 FPS decrease form 41 to 36 which I could gain back by setting autolod by Fjs (not sure it works in XP11 but for me an unmissable plugin) from .8 to 1.2

 

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17 hours ago, Kuragiman said:

Really?  I tried the X-Life Freeware and it was hammering my FPS with just a few planes.  They were also not landing on the runways at KDAL.  They were slightly off center and taxing out into the grass?   Maybe I set something up wrong.  I'd love to get some AI traffic running that doesn't murder my system.  In P3D I can have 80 aircraft around me with very little hit on FPS but with just 4 planes in X-Life I lost of 10 FPS.

What about contrails in X-plane 10? I thought they were working on a particle system that would enhance it in XPX?

XP-11 has some nice contrails from what I have seen.


I9 12900K @ 5.1ghz P-cores/ 4.0 ghz E-cores fixed HT off / Corsair iCue H150i Capellix Cooler/ MSI Z690 CARBON WiFi / 32GB Corsair DDR5 RAM @ 5200 mhz XMP on / 12GB MSI 4090 RTX Ventus 3 / 7,5 total TB SSD (2+2+2+1+0,5 all NVMe)/ PSU 850W Corsair / 27" (1080P)

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Wow I have a little bit less powerful pc than you (4790K/980Ti/32gb ram) and I get 35 fps with most settings maxed or near max.

The only thing I would consider is turning down reflections (all the way down) and unchecking the shadows checkmark box. With those 2 off I can MAX OUT every other setting and get 30 fps in the Flight Factor 757 with xenviro, sitting at a gate in JFK.

As for xenviro, I get the same frames with it turned ON, or with it OFF, EXACT SAME FRAMERATE...EXACT!!! And you see a huge difference in the environment. I have xenviro pretty much set to max setting.

So if you don't care for shadows or reflections, then turn those off and your sim will be smoking with everything else set to max...35fps!

I love autogen, so that's why I turned the other 2 things off, never even knew I was looking at shadows, so I said if I don't even notice them (and they were there), then why turn them on...turned them off and cranked everything else to MAX.

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Clouds are always the culprit when my frame rate drops. Something that really needs to be addressed for X-plane. I find that in DCS, I can have a 3000' overcast layer as far as I can see and still get 100+FPS. Now, to be fair, the detail is not as high, but Skymax overcast looks pretty silly; almost like a bowl of popcorn but the lighting isn't right. However, in DCS it looks pretty good. I favor less detail and more coverage, because seeing a square shape area of clouds around your plane looks pretty bad.

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Jim Shield

Cybersecurity Specialist

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2 hours ago, Piotr007 said:

What about contrails in X-plane 10? I thought they were working on a particle system that would enhance it in XPX?

X-Plane 11 has a particle system, but at the moment it isn't used for normal effects like contrails yet.

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On 2/26/2017 at 0:14 PM, wb5okj said:

One other thing that may be a consideration is having a web browser open while simming. I am running Windows 10 Professional on my new computer, Task manager tells me the I7 6850K cpu is running at 4.36 Ghrz. If I open Firefox, (my favorite browser), the cpu goes crazy, from 4.36 it starts cycling down to as low as 1.8 Ghrz, and fps in X-Plane 11 starts jumping all over the place. It does the same thing with Chrome, which I use for some work specific things. I have to use MS Edge now I I open a browser. I fly out of KPWA so scenery is light, I get around 60 fps most of the time, with one of these browsers open I get down to 40 and as low as 30 fps. I don't know if this is just specific to my rig but would be interested if anyone else has these browser problems. I jus don't use Firefox or Chrome if I have X-Plane 11 or 10 up. May be something to think about or look into.

I suggest you DON'T use task manager to check your CPU speeds as it's very unreliable. I suggest HWInfo instead.

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