FSW and Vertical Sync

[MadDog 353]

I took my first FSW flight out of KATL late last night, the first thing I noticed was that while I was maintaining frame rates in the mid 40s to low 50s, I was also experiencing some pretty pronounced stutters.  (The second thing I noticed was that the 5th runway is "finally" included in the default Atlanta scenery...yay !!! ).

Since this wasn't my first time around the block with an FSX variant, the first thing I did was go into fsw.cfg and set UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=30 to try to smooth things out.  Surprisingly, when I restarted the sim, while the frame counter (shift+Z) showed a target of 30 fps, I was still getting frames well above 40.  Obviously, that must be one of the many legacy settings that is not working in FSW.

So on to "Plan B".  I went into NVidia Inspector, created a profile for fsw.exe and enabled Vertical Sync at 1/2 Refresh Rate (which effectively limits my frames to 30 on my 60 Hz screen).  That option worked perfectly and I've had butter smooth performance ever since... I highly recommend this solution to anyone having problems with stuttering or "long frames".  Keep in mind that this will only work when FSW is running in Full Screen mode... which reminds me of one of the major complaints I have with P3D... no true full screen.

Anyway, I've also seen many people comment on how well FSW performs on their system and was curious if anyone was getting smooth performance without limiting frames.  It's always been my understanding that unless you have a rock-solid, consistent frame-rate, you will always get a certain amount of stuttering/hesitation.  At least, that's always been my experience.

On a separate note, I've only been able to spend about 45 minutes with FSW; but couldn't help but notice the strange color pallet and "overexposed" lighting during the day.  This was a major problem in Flight School and, although it's been improved somewhat, it's still very distracting and imho "ugly" (especially the bright runways).  I hope DTG will be able to fix it; but I'm a bit worried since the issue still persists a full year after Flight School's release .

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

I went through the same experience and have for now set VSync to "ON" in NI.

That knocked the fps down to 30 from about 55 and got rid of rippling when

panning around the cockpit.

Also, applying my favorite AA and AF settings from my FSX profile has improved the visuals considerably.

I am frankly surprised that this worked.. but, one step at a time 

[Airline2Sim 489]

Turning on V-sync with frames set to unlimited was the only way I ever flew FSX back in the day. LM in their wisdom disabled the proper 'full screen' mode in P3D, meaning that running your screen at 30hz is the only way to achieve it. It's good to see that DTG still offer this. 

[HiFlyer 9,332]

Eh. Luckily I have a Gsync monitor. Seems to work fine.

 

[MadDog 353]

6 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

Luckily I have a Gsync monitor

Yup...that would work too... just wish they would make them a little bigger... and cheaper!

[angeli662 43]

1 hour ago, Bert Pieke said:

I went through the same experience and have for now set VSync to "ON" in NI.

That knocked the fps down to 30 from about 55 and got rid of rippling when

panning around the cockpit.

Also, applying my favorite AA and AF settings from my FSX profile has improved the visuals considerably.

I am frankly surprised that this worked.. but, one step at a time 

Bert, where did you find FSW.cfg? I looked but didn't see anywhere. thanks

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

4 hours ago, angeli662 said:

Bert, where did you find FSW.cfg? I looked but didn't see anywhere. thanks

Search for it on your C: drive.

[MadDog 353]

In Windows 7, fsw.cfg is normally found in C:\Users\<your name>\AppData\Roaming\Dovetail Games\FSW\

[spearmint_flyer 578]

Let the tweaking begin. Will we ever get a simulator that needs no tweaking. And if these tweaks are universal to begin with why my add then prior to release. How many years have we head the Vsync fix.