My last words on fps...

[FTD1949 0]

I agree Noel, half the fun is experimenting and tweaking....the hard part is remembering what you did:) If you want local low and slow VFR then maxing some or all of the settings is great. If you are cruising at FL 320 for half or your flight then there isn't much point in having autogen or anything else you don't need cranked up to the max or on at all or set at a reasonable level. What's the point of landing at 145 and being able to see a house whiz by. I can assure you that when you are landing a heavy you certainly aren't sightseeing. So with Noels thoughts in mind use the sliders like they are intended. Tailor them to your flight but quit trying to reach the Holy Grail of framerates....it will tend to make you crazy !!!!

[moss1 11]

"Tailor them to your flight but quit trying to reach the Holy Grailof framerates....it will tend to make you crazy !!!!"Crazy, you say??? That is an under statement!! I have spent everyday and night with every free moment I have 7 days a week, 365 days...well you get the picture. Tweeking, changing this, removing that, rebooting 8 billion times, fsauto start, free ramXP, crash... reboot, open fs9cfg., change another setting, start fs9, "hey I 've got something here...ooops..(Stutter, crash etc.. spoke too soon...) I am so exausted now that I have most of my sliders mid range. Low cloud dens, The only thing I changed is pan speed to 700, multi band width to 110. Extended radius and such are at all zeros out of the box. FPS is locked at 28. I enjoy FS9 now more than ever. Do stutters bother me??? You bet they do, but after all of this I finally realized there is nothing I can do about it, other than spending a fortune on a new rig. I'll wait for FSX for that. I case anyone is interested my specs are below. Happy flying everyone. I wish I was a millionaire!!Asus A7N8XDeluxe MB / AMD2800XP+barton cpu / 1.5 gigs Dual ch ddr pc3200 ram / Nvidia 6800GT AGP / 550watt pwr supply / Win2000pro (only 14 processes running) CH Products yoke usb and rudder peddles40gig 7200 IDE HD (20 Gigs left) 20 gig second IDE 15gigleft (Virtual memory set on that drive)

[Guest Ozark Dogfighter]

> I also have an SLI Mobo but don't run two cards because FS9>doesn't > support SLI...There's nothing to support my man. It's just double the cards, more or less, and doesn't require game support. All of the SLI mixing is handled through the GPU drivers. So pop in another card and enjoy it! :)-Jeremy Burchhttp://home.earthlink.net/~dawgfighter/sit...es/swvasig1.gifSWVA4806 http://www.virtualswa.com/home.phpThe Ozark Dogfighter http://forums.avsim.net/images/wedge.gifHappy Flying!BOAC: Heathrow Centre, British Airways Speedbird Flight 723HC: British Airways Speedbird Flight 723, Heathrow Centre, go aheadBOAC: Heathrow Centre, British Airways Speedbird Flight 723 has a message for youHC: British Airways Speedbird Flight 723, Heathrow Centre is ready to copy messageBOAC: Heathrow Centre, British Airways Speedbird Flight 723, message is as follows: Mayday, Mayday, Mayday ....

[AlaskanFlyboy 7]

From my experience, I have to agree that I get worse performance with the slider at unlimited than I do locked at 24. Can't give you a detailed description as to why as I felt I'd rather play my sim than spend another 2 hours researching into why it was running better. :-lol----------------------------------------------------------------John MorganReal World: KGEG, UND Aerospace Spokane Satillite, Private ASEL 141.2 hrs, 314 landings, 46 inst. apprs.Virtual: MSFS 2004"There is a feeling about an airport that no other piece of ground can have. No matter what the name of the country on whose land it lies, an airport is a place you can see and touch that leads to a reality that can only be thought and felt." - The Bridge Across Forever: A Love Story by Richard Bach

[Guest gasebah]

>I read these threads with interest and thank my lucky stars->I must be one of the lucky ones. My system runs FS9 with all>settings maxed out, full 100% AI traffic (FPS-friendly models>from AIA, EVAI, FSP),......<<>> I guess this is the key. Although I have a fairly fast system I had small stutters every once in a while in areas with a lot of traffic. I was using UT until I installed that Acrobat or what's it called AI package with all the better looking but more fps friendly planes. No stutters ever since.Alex

[Guest CowlFlapsOpen]

I also have $2000 "twenty-dollar game"!Here's something I haven't heard people touch on but I found while trying to avoid turing off Ai traffic. While poking around the Traffic 2006 forum, the developer wrote a thread in which he directed readers to the Blog of one of the MS flight sim developers (Steve something). Steve had an exchange in which he discussed the pupose of the Max bandwith multiplier and max texture size parameters (not at home and don't remember the names exactly). Anyway he mentions that FS uses these parameters in various ways to optimize fps and minimize stutters UNLESS the framerate is set to unlimited. I'm don't know much about these things, but I'd be interested in the implications because it seems to me that one implication it that the puzzle is more complicated. Unlimited can be good unless one needs to optimize these other parameters (say to take better advantage of bus speeds). In these circumstances it seems, just shy of unlimited would be better (the slider is a multiplier in some of the computations and unlimited is undefined it appears). Anyways, just interested in whether others read about this too.

[N562Z 4]

There is so much subjectivity here, it's really almost useless to try and compare one person's sense of what's acceptable to anyone elses. Personaly, I'm not happy with less than 15FPS. I don't care what the so-called "experts" say, I can feel it in the way the aircraft handles, the fluidity aspect disappears, and I can see it. Thats me. I tried locking my frames at 25 but when your used to maneuvering at 40-50 FPS climbing out of Seattle, if you have the rig to do it, 20-25 doesn't feel right at all. Another person says he can accept below 15FPS, even single digit frame-rates(!), and that feels ok to him (hard to imagine, but ok, to each his own). Of interest was a recent post by Koorby summarizing his observations and the settings he feels help enhance performance in FS9. Most I've tested and work for me. I would only disagree with the locking of frame rates at 20-25, and if I set TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=40 to anything more than 100, I get stutters. What a great hobby, eh?http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...d=303782&page=3http://www.graphics-free.com/animations/tr...ges/plane_6.gifAlex ChristoffN562ZBaltimore, MD

[tf51d 284]

>Thanks Jim,>>I had followed that thread, but can't see where having the fps>slider locked would decrease or eliminate the issue the thread>describes. I've had my fps slider set to unlimited after>having it locked for about the first year of using FS2004. I>switched it to unlimited one day when I was flying way out in>the middle of nowhere, just to see if I could really glean a>difference between 20 fps and 50 fps (I most certainly did!). >>>I never locked it again, not because I get 50 fps everywhere>(I most certainly can't), but because I found as a side effect>that the sim seemed to be a bit smoother, especially in spot>view. For my old system, FS2002 seems to prefer a fps lock,>and FS2004 doesn't. I suspect the best advice is to try it>both ways, and whatever way works best, stick with it. I>haven't tweaked in ages.>>-John John here's a link to Steve Lacey's blog entry on the subject, explaning that by setting Unlimited FPS can starve FS of time to accomplish other tasks within it's fiber system, and can introduce or increase problems such as the blurries.http://www.steve-lacey.com/blogarchives/20..._blurries.shtml

[Guest av84fun]

<>I have a similar system and agree with your conclusions.Regards,Jim

[John_Cillis 2,406]

I saw the blog entry some time back, but it doesn't mention unlimited fps causing FS2004 to search for scenery on the other side of the globe. Regardless, I have had no ill effects--unlimited works for me and I haven't had any blurries. I wonder how much having a clean simming system (with no background tasks) throws into the equation. Few are cleaner than mine in those terms--I don't like processes gumming up my flight experience :) That, and having realistic expectations--I know my system is old 'n slow and have forgone AI and Autogen to compensate. MSFS seems equal to the remaining challenges I give it despite Steve's advice in his blog.-John

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

I wonder if Steve Lacey was completely clear on this matter. As he explained it, the game requires a certain amount of resources (he calls it "time") for all the tasks it must perform. There is nothing secret about this and we have known it all along.So, Steve recommends locking the frame rates so that the display does not use up an inordinate amount of resources, and leaves enough for calculating the other aspects of the game.There is, of course, another way to see this matter. Turn down your settings all the way (!) - go ahead, do it. Now, you have much of the system resources available. Place the frame rate slider on "Unlimited" and see how the game flies. Now, start turning up the other settings, mix and match, see what you can live without and what you absolutely need, until the frame rates and stuttering become unlivable. The game will calculate how many frames it can give based on your display and other settings.There you have another method of managing resources without locking your frame rates. That is, using the sliders to limit the work and leave enough resources for frame rates.Best regards.Luis

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Good post Luis,That's exactly what my approach has been towards every simulator release (although I keep FS2002 locked at 25 as it seems to prefer the lock). I think the trap some get into is they have a good system or a great system, so they start with everything maxed plus every add-on you can think of. That's like getting hit with a gale force wind full of challenges, as one wouldn't know where to turn first as a culprit for poor performance. My approach has always been to start with minimal detail, and increase each slider in turn. In addition, if I have to type a tweak into the FS9.cfg, I save the original in case I see adverse effects.Initially when I started using FS2004, it was a long process. I would change one setting, then fly and observe performance. Then the next, and so on. But when I was done, I found settings that worked for me. For someone else, those settings might not work. There could even be that one setting that "requires" the fps be locked down, and without it, the sim doesn't care.The goal is, to borrow a phrase from an infomercial, to "set it and forget it". But it takes patience and some trial and error to do that. And any given add-on may set things back to the beginning, so it's always good to keep a log of what you do to your system.Here's one more tip. When I fly, I hit the suspend button on my cable modem to minimize web traffic. With no bits and bytes streaming into my computer, MSFS performance is smoother. No fps ticker can measure it, but I see the result. It may or may not work for others....-John