FS8 TO FS9 = Disappointment

[arthurplum 0]

P4,3.2G1024mb 3200 Ram6600gt O/C graphics120G sata HDHi guys, new here but been simming 3 years now, so 6 months ago decided to join the rest and upgrade to fs9. Straight from the box I was impressed with the improvements,so decided to set up the same as fs2002. As I fly mainly online (vatsim)or to practise T/o,landing,sid,stars etc, I disable ATC and AI traffic.Set the remainder of the sliders between medium and full add on the pmdg 737,UK2000 scenery, and FSmeteo weather. Now in fs8 this configuration never drops below high 20's fps (locked at 30)addon squawkbox and at a busy online airport may see low 20's fps but at all times stays smooth. Move over to fs9 (again locked at 30) frames in the air good still smooth, land and taxi at same local regional airport EGNM frames now between 12 and 18 and smooth simulation is replaced by a choppy jerky ride and a not too impressed pilot.Addon squawkbox and frames nosedive to an unusable 4fps if another couple of aircraft appear. Have spent the last 6 months trying to get fs9 to run smooth but with little success, have altered sliders,the cfg file, different addon aircraft but cannot recreate that silky smooth sim that was fs8.Out of the box fs9 great,put in a few addons (which I imagine all who read these forums have)and the frustration begins.I still fly online as often as possible but only with fs8. Reflecting back over the last 6 months i think is it me, or is it my set up or configuration, I suspect not. I would love to buy the LDS767 but not when my sim runs like this,maybe one day I can afforda super computer and run fs9 silky smooth, but until then happy landings flight simmers and take care. arthurplum

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Many people making the transition to FS9 have reported what you have. One problem is for any given slider setting, FS9 displays more detail than FS8 before it. To put it another way, if you max scenery density in FS9, you get a lot more scenery than you do in FS8--just fly around downtown Houston between the two sims and you'll get a sense for what I mean.Then there's weather. At best, FS2002 could only display a cloud deck in a 20-30 mile radius around an aircraft, and that cloud deck "dissolved" to a flat 2-d deck once you rose a certain height above it. FS2004 at its MINIMUM cloud draw settings exceeds FS2002's. Many using weather add-ons turn around and max the settings, or even place them at 50 percent. My advice--reduce your cloud draw distance to 30 miles (you may max all the other cloud sliders) and match your vis against that if you want very realistic looking levels of haze and want to see the weather fading into the distance.You may also need to look at different ways to apply anti-aliasing. FS2004 works a bit different vs. FS2002 when it comes to anti-aliasing. There's a number of posts on the topic in the MSFS h/w forum and I am not a good person to consult with there--I haven't tweaked any FS2004 setting in years.I still run FS9 on an old P3/800 with a 4200TI vid card. And with flight lessons once a week, it looks like I will keep the P3/800 to the last possible second prior to loading FS-X on my system. Even with AI around, I can still get around 12-14 fps in a place like LAX. If I match visuals (not sliders, since sliders in FS9 give more) to FS2002, my fps in almost every type of situation exceed FS2002. As for smoothness, I can't tell them apart in areas where the scenery detail closely matches FS2002.I have to believe with a system like yours, there is a way to get more from FS2004. Welcome to the forums--you're in the right place to get set up so you can enjoy better visuals and the smoothness you're used to. I'll let the more articulate take the helm of this thread now...-JohnEdit: I should say, let me welcome your first post to the forum, since it shows you've been a member here for some time :)

[Guest koorby]

Arthur, there is no reason a PC spec like your should have any issues whatsoever running FS9 a smooth as silk, simply none. I don't have a lot of time to get indepth, but here's my 2 minute guide, some of which you may already know:INSIDE FS9==========1. Set visibility (vis) to about 30mi/48km - that's the real world and this single adjustment will a) make FS2004 textures look much nicer and realistic, and :( Give you back lots and lots of FPS2. Avoid large amount of cumulus clouds - they eat FPS. Create a new weather theme which looks nice but avoids those. If you must use real-world weather then get Active Sky 6 and install their 128x128 DXT3 MIP cloud sets - perfect solution3. Slide MIP down to 4 - no need for more than that on your 6600GT4. Slide LIGHTS down to 65. Slide 3D cloud density to 50%, will still look great6. Turn off lens flare (pilot's sunglasses don't have lens flare :)7. Turn OFF anti-aliasing inside FS98. Set to Trilinear filtering always9. Run FS9 in Full-screen mode at the same resolution as your desktop10. Lock your FPS to 25 - seriously, you won't notice anything higher and it really does help. At the worst set it to 30FPS, but I never run it that fast, because PAL video runs at 25FPS and 3.5 billion people can't be wrong eh? :) Movies in the cinema run even slower.Optional11. Optional (disable the autogen library by renaming the fs9Autogendefault.xml to default.xml.OFF - this will make very little visual difference to your flying but gives back FPS also.Leave everything else maxed out.YOUR VIDEO CARD===============1. Set to AA to 4XS (anything else is overkill if running = > 1280x1024)2. Set AF to 43. Set Sharpness to +1 (this will make FS9 visuals look spectacular)YOUR WINDOWS XP===============1. Not running XP? Buy it, install it with SP22. Shutdown about 40-50 services you don't need. Grab a program called FSautostart, which will do this for you with tips on each setting. I have 1024MB RAM and when I start FS9 I have 860MB free. Trust me, it makes a huge difference to performance.3. Turn OFF any programs in the tray you are not using. This includes Anti-virus, anti-spam, anti-anything. Also turn off all those silly tray icons like quicktime and countless others. They are all consuming CPU cycles and the Anti-virus will most definitely interfere with FS9 performance.BLURRIES========The most common thing that can ruin your flight experience is a case of the "blurries". I see this in so many screenshots, and it's completely avoidable.Here's a few rules to follow:1. If you are flying low (below 5,000 ft) (not slewing), keep your ground speed around 120Kts2. If you are slewing (not flying), always tap Y to go back into flying mode so the textures can be reloaded in your immediately area. So (a) slew to the position, (tap the 'Y' key and fly for a bit to let the textures catch up, tap 'Y' again and just slew back to the best position for the shot.)3. Make sure your [TERRAIN] section of your fs9.cfg file has these last 3 entries in the section:[TERRAIN]TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=100.000000TERRAIN_MIN_DEM_AREA=10.000000TERRAIN_MAX_DEM_AREA=100.000000TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=19 (20 for 38m mesh, 21 for 20m mesh)TERRAIN_TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=8TERRAIN_AUTOGEN_DENSITY=5TERRAIN_USE_GRADIENT_MAP=1TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=3.500000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=4.000000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=4There's plenty more to talk about, but doing the above will help you enormously, make your visuals look much better and give you a big hike in FPS.Hope this helped ;)

[Guest PaulL01]

Did you update your FS9 with the MS patch?It did adress a few issues that for some really helped in the FPS department esp at airports.FS9 is very smooth on my system with all settings including 3d clouds set at the upper end.

[Guest christian]

Hi ArthurWith such a system FS9 should run really well out of the box. I suspect the culprit is one of your addons (did you run the same in FS2002 or are these different versions?).Sometimes aircraft or scenery can be badly designed and waste all your speed. (for comparison, I have system slightly worse then yours and with addons I get 50+ fps).Christian

[W2DR 1,860]

Nice post. There are a couple of things mentioned that I'd never thought of. Thanks.Doug

[Guest ianrivaldosmith]

Can I just say, thats the best tweaksadvice Ive ever seen. I did as your post suggested, and now I think thats the end of my tweaking! I run a celeron 2.5gig, radeon 9550 with 1gig ram, and now my sim is running great, with or without addons! best it has, mainly due to that advice!Cheers, Ian

[arthurplum 0]

Thanks guys for the response,and special thanks to Koorby for many excellent suggestions,some of which I had never even considered. Not had a lot of time to experiment but briefly, Disabled antivirus and many unneeded firewall settings,(still require firewall for online weather etc).Reduced visibility as per Koorby's suggestions.Chosen simple clouds and reduced draw distance and 3D percentage.Disabled several programmes running from start up that are not required. Fired up the PMDG 737 and flew into the excellent EGNM scenery from Gary Summons with weather courtesy of fsMeteo.Result- noticable improvement in fps, up from 12-18 fps,to a satisfying 21-27 fps and almost as smooth as fs2002.Now looking forward to trying a few more suggestions,and installing that ever so tempting LDS767 in the near future.Once again many thanks,you've made my day. arthurplum.

[Guest koorby]

Fantastic result! Well done Arthur :) Happy flying.

[tf51d 284]

I just like to add one thing to the "Blurries" Section, which is just as important to prevent them. The TERRAIN_BANDWIDTH_MULT setting in FS9 defaults to 60. This is too low for most systems, and will increase texture load times. This is basically a system specific field, and you'll need to use trial and error to get the right setting for your system. The max setting for this field is 400, however setting it this high may introduce some stuttering. Too low will increase the blurries. For your system, I would start somewhere in the 150-200 area. You can adjust from there, til you are satisfied with the results.

[John_Cillis 2,406]

"Chosen simple clouds and reduced draw distance and 3D percentage."Go ahead and adjust your clouds back to 100 pct. 3-d vs. simple clouds and check your performance. Visually, the sim will look much better and you shouldn't see that much of a loss, if any, of frames.Also, I forgot to mention and didn't note if it was mentioned here, but there are some excellent reduced texture size cloud sets around, some of which visually look almost identical to the defaults. Install one of these sets and you should reap the full benefit of 3-d clouds.-John

[windycloud 30]

Good post and a nice blend of great tweaks. Therefore I'd like to ask a few performance questions.I did most of what's suggested here. But where do you set visibility to 30 miles in FS? I thought the lowest setting is 60 miles for visibility and 30 miles for cloud draw distance. My setting is 40 miles cloud draw and 39 miles visibility set in ASV, 100% 3D cloud with max coverage with FE 256x256 cloud. Why trilinear not bilinear in FS? I thought bilinear is less work for the computer. But I'll give it a try tonight.I am still using ASV not AS6 cause I understand they had some performance issues with version 6. Is it all good now?My config: AMD 64 3200+ | 1Gb ram | 6600GT PCI-e. The only performance problem I have is in heavy weather I get "loading shutters" for a few secs. every few mins. My FPS goes from mid 20 to low 10. As I can see in Filemon, FS9 reads many ground texture and bgl files at that moment. Also visually I can see that FS9 draws clouds at that moment too. So my conclusion is that cloud draw and texture loading hits my performance a lot. My friends don't have this problem and their computers are simular to mine and their settings are normally higher than mine in general. I wonder what's causing me this.Figured it doesn't hurt to ask. Any input is appreciated.Jason

[Murmur 3,941]

Hi Jason!>I did most of what's suggested here. But where do you set>visibility to 30 miles in FS? I thought the lowest setting is>60 miles for visibility and 30 miles for cloud draw distance. You're right, in FS9 lowest setting for vis is 60mi. You can override that setting, by manually changing a value in fs9.cfg:MAX_UNLIMITED_VIS=96560 (default is 96560 metres, that is 60 miles).In this case however, every time you enter OR change FS9 display settings, the value returns to default 96560, and you have to manually change it again.A more effective way of setting a max vis lower than 60 mi, is to use FSUIPC (registered) or Active Sky.>My setting is 40 miles cloud draw and 39 miles visibility set>in ASV, 100% 3D cloud with max coverage with FE 256x256 cloud.I set it to 29 miles. Advantages:.I get rid of visibility shift that happen going from 30 to 29.9 miles and viceversa;.with clouds distance to 30 miles, I get rid of clouds popping up;.Good FPS!Are you using DXT clouds? Have you enabled MipMaps?>Why trilinear not bilinear in FS? I thought bilinear is less>work for the computer. But I'll give it a try tonight.I suppose it's because trilinear is not significantly heavier than bilinear for today hardware, but gives significant better quality;Marco

[windycloud 30]

Hi Marco,Thank you for your reply. I tried both DXT & non-DXT clouds. They don't make significant performance difference on my PC so right now I am using non-DTX textures.Cloud settings are the only ones that are very high in my system and that's because I wouldn't settle for less. I love clouds and only max coverage with ASV can kind of ease the FS9 problem of lacking solid overcast layers.I will try change cloud draw to 30 miles and vis. to 29. It sounds like a real solution for me, altough I am reluctant to give up more cloud and vis. distance. I also have decided to replace my eVga 6600GT with a XFX 7800GT. I've been reading about it for a while and it looks like it's a fantastic performer for its price.Jason

[soaring_penguin 428]

Hello,my 2 cents :1st, upgrade to ASV6. they are at there third patch. I have a 3 year old computer and it's running great (p4 2.6GHz, 1024MB Ram, only upgraded last year to Geforce 6600 AGP). They claim themselves that performance is improved, and I tend to believe the specialists.2nd try framerates at unlimited. There are some discussions about it, but what I understand is that it frees up resources for external processes, e.g. if you put it at 25frames/sec, and you reach this, the remaining processor power will not be used to improve visual quality or loading times or whatever, but to run your antivirus - email checker - whatever you are running outside FS. So give it a try.3rd follow koorby's suggestion about clouds. I would especially recommend lowering the 3D cloud distance a bit. Visually it does not change a lot, but you win in fluidity.4th thanks for the topic, makes interesting reading :-)Jan