FSX-SE How do I get more FPS out of FSX:SE?

[charliearon 3,023]

17 minutes ago, cobalt said:

    I strongly disagree. 3.4 GHZ is certainly not "very tiny". I have an Alienware X51 computer with an i7-2600 @ 3.4 GHz processor, Windows 7, a GEX 1060 video card, and I run FSX (with a wide range of high-definition scenery) with almost all sliders maxed out except water (which I have at mid-high). I experience smooth performance with FPS ranging from 50 to above 100 outside a few high-density airports, and even in those places I see FPS >20 in most cases. You absolutely do NOT need 4-5 GHZ to have good to excellence performance.

And along with your high-definition scenery, are you running high-quality payware aircraft with payware weather producers and other such eye candy?  I run very good quality photo-realistic scenery and airports with a 2 GHZ CPU and 2 GHZ memory and sliders well right, but as soon as I try a payware "demo" aircraft I come almost to a complete halt.  Everyone can only run what they can!

[vortex681 806]

14 hours ago, cobalt said:

    I strongly disagree. 3.4 GHZ is certainly not "very tiny". I have an Alienware X51 computer with an i7-2600 @ 3.4 GHz processor, Windows 7, a GEX 1060 video card, and I run FSX (with a wide range of high-definition scenery) with almost all sliders maxed out except water (which I have at mid-high). I experience smooth performance with FPS ranging from 50 to above 100 outside a few high-density airports, and even in those places I see FPS >20 in most cases. You absolutely do NOT need 4-5 GHZ to have good to excellence performance.

It's been said many times in these forums that talking about settings and performance means little unless you also say what screen resolution you use. If you use 1920x1080 or less, your results are not surprising. If you use 4K then, with your hardware, they're remarkable!

I agree that a 3.4GHz processor is not "very tiny", but if you run at QHD or 4K then I'd say you do need a minimum of 4GHz for acceptable performance with certain payware add-ons.

[cobalt 798]

On 3/21/2018 at 4:20 PM, charliearon said:

And along with your high-definition scenery, are you running high-quality payware aircraft with payware weather producers and other such eye candy?  I run very good quality photo-realistic scenery and airports with a 2 GHZ CPU and 2 GHZ memory and sliders well right, but as soon as I try a payware "demo" aircraft I come almost to a complete halt.  Everyone can only run what they can!

 I have a good deal of payware scenery but very few payware planes. As has been noted in this and other forums many times, quality is not restricted to payware, and there are many excellent freeware products out there -- notwithstanding the fact that some simmers are fixated on the idea that if it ain't payware it must be junk!

 In any case, I am seeing crisp, sharp scenery and aircraft with smooth performance at high screen resolution (not sure of the exact number -- I am away from my home computer at .the moment) and most sliders maxed out. That's all I can say.

[vortex681 806]

4 hours ago, cobalt said:

As has been noted in this and other forums many times, quality is not restricted to payware, and there are many excellent freeware products out there

I couldn't agree more. However, the add-ons which seem to put the biggest load on FSX tend to be payware.

4 hours ago, cobalt said:

I am seeing crisp, sharp scenery and aircraft with smooth performance at high screen resolution (not sure of the exact number -- I am away from my home computer at .the moment) and most sliders maxed out.

With your system specs, unless you've somehow found the illusive magic setting, I'd be surprised if your screen resolution was higher than 1920x1080. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, but it's worth mentioning the resolution so that it doesn't give others, with similar systems to yours, false expectations.

Edited March 23, 2018 by vortex681

[cobalt 798]

On 3/23/2018 at 3:53 PM, vortex681 said:

I couldn't agree more. However, the add-ons which seem to put the biggest load on FSX tend to be payware.

With your system specs, unless you've somehow found the illusive magic setting, I'd be surprised if your screen resolution was higher than 1920x1080. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, but it's worth mentioning the resolution so that it doesn't give others, with similar systems to yours, false expectations.

Point taken, and thanks. However, my eyes and brain would be unlikely to detect higher resolution than what I already have, so for me this is an academic exercise (similar to the never-ending obsession with achieving higher FPS levels that are beyond the ability of human eyesight to detect).

[cobalt 798]

23 hours ago, cobalt said:

Point taken, and thanks. However, my eyes and brain would be unlikely to detect higher resolution than what I already have, so for me this is an academic exercise (similar to the never-ending obsession with achieving higher FPS levels that are beyond the ability of human eyesight to detect).

Just to confirm, my screen resolution is indeed 1920 x 1080. As this affords photographic quality, I have no reason whatsoever to want to increase it.

[vortex681 806]

3 hours ago, cobalt said:

Just to confirm, my screen resolution is indeed 1920 x 1080. As this affords photographic quality, I have no reason whatsoever to want to increase it.

I wasn't suggesting for a moment that you should - I'm a great believer in sticking with what works for you. I just think that people should always state their screen resolution when discussing performance as it has such a significant effect.

[SoloPilot 2]

On 3/20/2018 at 1:30 AM, cmpbellsjc said:

Spending more money won’t eliminate the out of memory situation, that will only be resolved by settings and what you have installed.

You haven’t told us what settings you are currently using but I can tell you that I run a modest system (2700K at 3.85ghz, 8GB RAM, GTX670 4GB, Win 7 64bit) and have all the PMDG planes, countless addon airports (FSDT, Flightbeam, FlyTampa, LatinVFR, etc), WOAI cargo + UT2, ORBX stuff, UT USA/Eu, bunch of photoreal scenery and I’ve configured it to maintain at least 25 FPS or higher at all addon airports and never run out of memory. I don’t use any addon sky, water or scenery textures larger than 1024 and am careful about settings (no road traffic, no boats, no airport vehicles as most addon scenery provides that).

If you post your settings and addons we can give more info on what to turn off/down that can help you get more FPS and not run out of memory. 

Since I started FSX in 2009 I’ve only had one OOM and it was due to the first release of the PMDG NGX that had an issue that was later fixed in a service pack. Aside from that one time, I’ve never had another out of memory situation.

My computer specs:

• Windows 10 Home, 64-bit
• Intel Core i7-4770 @ 3.40 GHz, 4 cores, 8 logical processors
• BIOS: AMI 80.16
• RAM: 8 GB
• Hard Drive: 1 TB
• GPU: NVIDIA GT640 with 2GB VRAM

FSX Settings:

• Target Frame rate: 30 FPS
• Resolution: 1920x1080
• Global texture resolution: High
• Only "Advanced Animations" is checked
• Filtering: Trilinear
• No anti-aliasing
• Aircraft casts shadow on ground: on
• aircraft casts shadow on itself: off
• aircraft landing-lights illuminate ground: on
• LOD radius: medium
• Mesh complexity: 50
• Mesh resolution: 152 m
• Texture resolution: 5 m
• Water effects: high 1.x
• Scenery complexity: dense
• Autogen density: normal
• no ground scenery shadows
• Special effects detail: medium
• Weather: I use ASN
• Airline traffic density: 50%
• GA traffic density: 50%
• Airport vehicle density: high
• road vehicles: 14%
• Ships and ferries: 15%
• Leisure boats: 0%
• No aircraft labels

I also use FTX vector, a traffic addon which I can't remember the name of, GSX, and Navigraph Charts. I have airport addons such as FlyTampa and UK2000.

Edited March 30, 2018 by SoloPilot
forgot a section

[ryanbatc 12,836]

Interesting thread

Ithink the GT640 is limiting the OP.  That's a pretty low end card.  I think a GTX 1060 would help fps even at 1080P.  The prices are still too high right now though 

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

1 hour ago, ryanbatcund said:

Interesting thread

Ithink the GT640 is limiting the OP.  That's a pretty low end card.  I think a GTX 1060 would help fps even at 1080P.  The prices are still too high right now though 

I doubt it. I ran FSX with an E8400 and GTS250 for years and was still able to fly the NGX into large aftermarket hubs with traffic and maintain 25 to 30 FPS. It’s all about settings. GPUs don’t make that much difference in FSX like they do in P3D.

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

On 3/30/2018 at 2:36 PM, SoloPilot said:

FSX Settings:

• Target Frame rate: 30 FPS
• Resolution: 1920x1080
• Global texture resolution: High
• Only "Advanced Animations" is checked
• Filtering: Trilinear
• No anti-aliasing
• Aircraft casts shadow on ground: on
• aircraft casts shadow on itself: off
• aircraft landing-lights illuminate ground: on
• LOD radius: medium
• Mesh complexity: 50
• Mesh resolution: 152 m
• Texture resolution: 5 m
• Water effects: high 1.x
• Scenery complexity: dense
• Autogen density: normal
• no ground scenery shadows
• Special effects detail: medium
• Weather: I use ASN
• Airline traffic density: 50%
• GA traffic density: 50%
• Airport vehicle density: high
• road vehicles: 14%
• Ships and ferries: 15%
• Leisure boats: 0%
• No aircraft labels

I also use FTX vector

Try changing the settings you have above to the settings I marked below. The aircraft shadows and car traffic can make a difference. It would be helpful to know what AI pack your using. If WOAI, then the 50% settings are not working because they compile most of their traffic to be either 0% or 100%, so setting it to 50% is the same as 100% which will cause a big FPS hit at large airports.

Also, I’ve always foinfo on both my rigs that when flying planes like PMDG stuff, I get much better performance running unlimited FPS than locked. When flying less demanding aircraft, I have to lock it to 30 otherwise it stutters to much.

FSX Settings:

Target Frame rate: Unlimited 

Aircraft casts shadow on ground: Off

LOD radius: high

Airline traffic density: 50%

GA traffic density: 50%

Airport vehicle density: Off - zero

road vehicles: Off - zero

Ships and ferries: Off - zero

[SoloPilot 2]

5 hours ago, cmpbellsjc said:

Try changing the settings you have above to the settings I marked below. The aircraft shadows and car traffic can make a difference. It would be helpful to know what AI pack your using. If WOAI, then the 50% settings are not working because they compile most of their traffic to be either 0% or 100%, so setting it to 50% is the same as 100% which will cause a big FPS hit at large airports.

Also, I’ve always foinfo on both my rigs that when flying planes like PMDG stuff, I get much better performance running unlimited FPS than locked. When flying less demanding aircraft, I have to lock it to 30 otherwise it stutters to much.

FSX Settings:

Target Frame rate: Unlimited 

Aircraft casts shadow on ground: Off

LOD radius: high

Airline traffic density: 50%

GA traffic density: 50%

Airport vehicle density: Off - zero

road vehicles: Off - zero

Ships and ferries: Off - zero

I now remember, the pack I have is (removed name).

Edited April 2, 2018 by cmpbellsjc
Listed name of pirated freeware AI.

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

3 hours ago, SoloPilot said:

I now remember, the pack I have is (removed name)

That AI pack you have is pirated AI. I’d suggest you remove it. I also removed the name of it because it’s against Avsim Terms of Service to discuss pirated software.

In anycase, it’s probably not compiled to give 50% traffic anyway.

[MaDDogz 242]

.....how can freeware be pirated?

Only way i can think of is that the authur ask it not to be shared, making it not freeware? I feel im missing somthing, but ive only had half a mug of coffee so far

[SoloPilot 2]

4 hours ago, cmpbellsjc said:

That AI pack you have is pirated AI. I’d suggest you remove it. I also removed the name of it because it’s against Avsim Terms of Service to discuss pirated software.

In anycase, it’s probably not compiled to give 50% traffic anyway.

Hmm, okay. I guess I’ll go back to UT2, and just deal with not being able to figure out how to add liveries 😂