Possible FSX autogen performance fix

[FlyingsCool 3]

After extremely unrigorous testing it feels like converting the .dds files to dxt1 did help.Dell D810 1.83 GHz laptop, 64 MB X300 ATI Mobility Graphics, 1 GB ram, 1920x1200x32 graphics, processes cleaned sort of.Demo 2 Settings:shadows, bloom, lens flare offLanding Lights illuminate ground onGlobal Texture Resolution Very High (Max)Advanced Animations onTerrain max at 38m, textures 1mLocked at 15 fpsBilinearAA and AS at 4X for quality by hardware (off in FSX)Hi Res 3D VC onTooltips onLOD Radius MedMesh Complexity 100Mesh Res 38 mTexture Res 1 mWater 1.x Low (what am I missing with this on low?)Scenery Complexity Very DenseAutogen NormalSpecial effects highCloud draw 60 miThermal Visualization noneDetailed Clouds Low coverageAirline traffic 0%GA traffic 0%Airport Vehicle Density HighRoad Vehicles 17%Ships & Ferries 48%Leisure Boats 27%Realism MaxedWith these settings and the dds textures converted to DXT1, my frame rates went from being from between 6 to 15 avg 10 to being between 10 to 15 avg 14.5. There was more micro stuttering today than before, it seemed though, so flight was not always quite as smooth as normal. Normally, when I'm averaging 15 fps, flight is very smooth. I noticed a stutter each time a car appeared and disappeared when I was on the runway. I wish there was a way to control how long cars "stayed alive". Why have them appear/disappear at all? Increasing the auto traffic to 60% did not seem to change much, though it might have increased the micro-stutters.As noted, converting all the .dds textures in the texture directory changed the size from 134 MB to 122 MB.Thomas[a href=http://www.flyingscool.com] http://www.flyingscool.com/images/Signature.jpg [/a]I like using VC's :-)N15802 KASH '73 Piper Cherokee Challenger 180

[FlyingsCool 3]

But is the texconv.exe utility in the redist package? It was my understanding it is only in the SDK, which is 506 MB.Thomas[a href=http://www.flyingscool.com] http://www.flyingscool.com/images/Signature.jpg [/a]I like using VC's :-)N15802 KASH '73 Piper Cherokee Challenger 180

[FTD1949 0]

Chris, I'm a bit confused. Your inputing as DDS and outputting as BMP? And then replacing the DDS with BMP? I was under the impression that you had to convert the BMP to DXT1 afterconverting the DDS5 to BMP. Help? Craig

[Guest Hugo]

Woops! My error Thomas. dxsdk_aug2006.exe actualy IS 506.5 MB hence a 4+ hrs dwld on my system. I downloaded the wrong file but had not yet installed it when posted my last message.Sorry for my mistake and the false sense of relief I may have sent you :-(Hugo

[Guest BOPrey]

Thank you for posting. I also have laptop. It is Dell Inspiron 5160 with 1g of ram, 64M nVidia Go5200, and running at 3ghz. Hope I will get the same performance after this trick. One thing about laptops, they throttle back and forth due to heat. I have no problem running fs9 at med setting, and getting around 20fps. However, due to throttling, every 15 or so, it drops to 1 fps for a few seconds. Sometime I just disable dynamic throttling so I can get a constant frame rate in the expenses of getting a lower fps since doing so will lock the process on the lowest clock speed, which in my case, is 1.8Ghz. Ofcouse, it also produces less heat.

[FlyingsCool 3]

Yes, I discovered a similar issue last year with my D800. I had the system running nice and smooth, then all of a sudden, I was getting huge stutters. Turns out, I had created a box to put the laptop in so I could use it outside, and was testing it there. The enclosed space increased the heat, and, wah-lah, processor slowed down and I got stutters. I fixed it by putting blocks of ice under it :)When I run plugged in, (and in open air!), I don't tend to get heat problems, though with either my old lattitude or this one (D810).I'm not sure how well this will perform with retail, however, as right now I am only running over the islands.Listening to everyone, and comparing to what Adam said, I think we will need an addon which modifies the autogen to use the old style trees with more tree types (at lower resolution)/texture to increase performance till the hardware picks up (or FS_SP1 does a better job of optimizing for batch loading of objects).But heat could be an issue. I just tried it again, and I was getting somewhat slower reported fps, though performance seemed about equal (perhaps the fps meter if fs is not accurate??). 'sgonna need more testin'.BTW, the processor in my laptop is a Pentium M, which means it is about equal to a 2.1 GHz P4.Thomas[a href=http://www.flyingscool.com] http://www.flyingscool.com/images/Signature.jpg [/a]I like using VC's :-)N15802 KASH '73 Piper Cherokee Challenger 180

[Guest BOPrey]

re: I fixed it by putting blocks of ice under it LoL. To be fair, laptops are not meant to be used for games.

[FlyingsCool 3]

Tell that to the Dell XPS laptop. :)Thomas[a href=http://www.flyingscool.com] http://www.flyingscool.com/images/Signature.jpg [/a]I like using VC's :-)N15802 KASH '73 Piper Cherokee Challenger 180

[Guest B1900 Mech]

What exactly do you type into the command prompt? This is my base path,F:Program FilesMicrosoft GamesMicrosoft Flight Simulator XSceneryGlobalTexture

[Guest 777LR]

Hey guys I posted that fix on FS2004. I've tested it with the beta and demo 2 and it seems like it does increase FPS. Another FPS hog is the AI plane textures which are also very very large in size. For people running low - med computers who aren't too worried about decreased textures you might want to try to decrease the sizes for AI planes. Also detailed airports, ships and other objects in FSX are using very large texture files and you can play around and see what textures you want to decrease. You can also decrease the .dds files to .dxt3 if you don't want to decrease to .dxt1. A 4mb .dds file will be 1mb if you decrease to .dxt3 but of course a .dxt1 file will be way less. I'm waiting for my retail FSX and if i'm allowed to upload the edited textures I will.

[jcboliveira 1]

Just copy the exe inside the texture folder and do a bat file with the command. I also posted the command for imagetool but didn't tested.Jos

[Guest B1900 Mech]

You lost me there Jose:-lol

[Guest srathe]

Try this (there may be a better way, but after some trial and error, this worked for me):after installing the DirectX SDK,1. copy the file C:Program FilesMicrosoft DirectX SDK (August 2006)UtilitiesBinx86texconv.exe into C:Program FilesMicrosoft GamesMicrosoft Flight Simulator XSceneryGlobalTexture (assuming this is where you installed fsx).2. go to your start menu and click on "Run" (usually near the bottom right of the window that pops up when you click start)3.type this into the box that appears after the word "Open:" (type this exactly as it appears, including the quotation marks, assuming your directory structure is the same as above; if not, modify it accordingly; alternatively, you can click on "browse" and locate the texconv.exe file that you've copied into your texture folder, and then add the -f DXT1 *.dds outside of the quotation marks)"E:Program FilesMicrosoft GamesMicrosoft Flight Simulator XSceneryGlobalTexturetexconv.exe" -f DXT1 *.dds4. click "OK" or hit the enter key5. sit back and enjoy the show as it converts, file by file, in a black and white text window.hope that works for you. it worked for me, and resulted in a meaningful framerate increase (able to bump up autogen about 2 notches to achieve comparable framerates).

[FlyingsCool 3]

Ok, time for me to eat my hat some. I spoke a little too soon. I'm not sure what Adam was really thinking, he had suggested that the trees textures had been split up. I checked it out, and they still look the same. Though without the SDK, perhaps there are other textures and these are for back compat? Anyway, I can see that there are many more building textures, and maybe this is what he was really thinking of. These would definately fall under the same category, IOW, you can only batch load based on one texture at a time, so, with more building textures out there, this could hit performance.Upon looking in the texture directory, the biggest files are the clouds. The next biggest are the runway, taxi, building, and trees textures. If somebody would go through these and cut them in half in dimension (which is actually cutting them by 75% in size!), I'd bet that you would see a sizable jump in performance. There's only about 123 files of 342kb or larger in the demo, 90 MB total. And then another 102 of 171 KB, 17 MB total. Cutting these down could make their total file size from 107 MB to 26 MB.Think about it, if we can sign up 20 people to do it, that's about 11 files apiece to modify.Don't forget to modify the alpha channel while you are at it if you decide to take on this task!Thomas[a href=http://www.flyingscool.com] http://www.flyingscool.com/images/Signature.jpg [/a]I like using VC's :-)N15802 KASH '73 Piper Cherokee Challenger 180

[Guest 777LR]

>Ok, time for me to eat my hat some. I spoke a little too>soon. I'm not sure what Adam was really thinking, he had>suggested that the trees textures had been split up. I>checked it out, and they still look the same. Though without>the SDK, perhaps there are other textures and these are for>back compat? Anyway, I can see that there are many more>building textures, and maybe this is what he was really>thinking of. These would definately fall under the same>category, IOW, you can only batch load based on one texture at>a time, so, with more building textures out there, this could>hit performance.>>Upon looking in the texture directory, the biggest files are>the clouds. The next biggest are the runway, taxi, building,>and trees textures. If somebody would go through these and>cut them in half in dimension (which is actually cutting them>by 75% in size!), I'd bet that you would see a sizable jump in>performance. There's only about 123 files of 342kb or larger>in the demo, 90 MB total. And then another 102 of 171 KB, 17>MB total. Cutting these down could make their total file size>from 107 MB to 26 MB.>>Think about it, if we can sign up 20 people to do it, that's>about 11 files apiece to modify.>>Don't forget to modify the alpha channel while you are at it>if you decide to take on this task!>>Thomas>>[a href=http://www.flyingscool.com]>http://www.flyingscool.com/images/Signature.jpg [/a]>>I like using VC's :-)>N15802 KASH '73 Piper Cherokee Challenger 180I've already converted all the texture files in SceneryGlobalTexture. I screwed up the trees so if anyone has the tree files from FSX plese send them over so I can test the rest of textures. Mind you i've only been testing with the beta FSX and I have seen increases in FPS.