"I turned off bloom and reduced water settings from max to 2.0 low, now i can run FSX with most on high settings with good FPS.system specs:Dell XPSGEN4 3.73EE 2mb cache, 1066 mhz fsb, 2gb pc4200 533mhz ram, ATI x1800xt."I have just about everything on low to mid and can't get good performance unless autogen is completly 100% off which doesn't look very good. I can't believe the hit on my rig. How can it be that some users here with half the machine I have, report good performance??? It makes no sense to me. EX: If I run the water at 2.0 setting like quoted above, forget about it. The testing I did was at KSEA. I hope there are some tweaks soon or I guess I will stay with FS9 until then. I might try the autogen conversions as long as it can be done without the upside down tree syndrome. FSX has nice potential if we can get by the initial performace issues. I am sure in time things will get better just as they did with FS9. Have a great night everyone.

From DXTBmp help file:"This will attempt to load DDS images in 565, 555-1, 444-4, DXT1, DXT3 and DXT5 formats. Note that DDS images are stored upside down (compared with Bmp) so may need flipping once loaded if you are going to save them again in Bmp formats."

My instinct tells me that the autogen performance issue is more of a bug than anything. There wasn't nearly this much of a hit with FS2004 autogen, even at max density. I'm hoping there is a simple performance tweak/patch for this coming down the pipe.As a sidenote, using FSX with autogen off still yields incredible visuals as well as smooth-as-butter performance. The terrain mesh and textures are so detailed now that in many areas you forget that autogen is turned off.

Or just use the texconv.exe that is available in the DirectX SDK. It's the most powerfull tool that I know. To batch convert these filestexconv.exe -f DXT1 *.ddsAnd of course no upside down since the convertion is direct.Jos

I seem to remember somebody saying that they changed the graphics memory aperture in their computer's BIOS and it fixed their problems. It had been too small and was choking the graphics card.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

How exactly do you install texconv.exe? I keep getting a message: Failed to create D3D device.First, I downloaded the SDK and installed the utilities and Library. Then I copied texconv.exe to the texture directory (backing up the texture directory first). Then I opened a command window and tried to run the command you listed above. And got the above error.I also tried to run the texture tool from the SDK and it said the same thing and added that d3dref.dll must be installed. So I found that and copied it to the Windowssystem32 directory. No go.I'm going to try to reboot my machine.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

I figured out my problem. I had to install the DirectX runtime as well from the SDK (August '06). Upon running the conversion, it saved about 12 MB of disk space on the fs x demotexture directory.I'll see if I notice any difference in running. As I've noted before, the biggest hit on my system for the new demo has come from the autombiles. Running that at 100% KILLED my system. Different Autogen settings did not seem to have much of an effect (sparse vs. high). I was changing that setting mid-flight, so perhaps that might be why there was little effect. Weird.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

In Demo 1, on my Athlon XP 3200+/Radeon 9800 Pro system, one time I managed to turn autogen on max and I was getting 24 FPS! I could not believe it. Indeed, I have not been able to reproduce that in any version (demo 1, 2, or retail).I have found as others have that if I put autogen on sparse or max I get the same FPS hit on my system.Brian

I believe that was later disspelled.

I should have mentioned that i only have the latest demo, not the retail version. So thats where i get good performance now, i am a little worried how it will go when i start up at KSEA :).

Wow! 12 MB reduction! If nothing else, maybe at least help loading times. Well, if it really improves frame rates, I hope someone will upload the replacement autogen textures to the library...or maybe it is still too large a file.Last night, in an attempt to find the seagulls, I turned all sliders full right, except for AI planes and cars on the roads. It slowed my frame rate to 7-12 FPS...a little jerky, but still flyable. The autogen scenery and ground textures were nothing short of spectacular!! (This is Demo 2 at Juliana). I would sure like to be able to do that at about 15 or higher FPS!On the other hand, it gives those of us who live in ANCBBS* something to do while waiting for the 17th!*areas of non-cooperative Best Buy Stores

Is there an easy way to flip all the bmp

I believe it has to be the trees as well. I get very good performance, except when a treed area comes into view. Then things get real choppy. And this is at St. Maarten with not a huge land area. I'm certainly not trying to max sliders at all. Whatever they did with the trees, it's causing problems, and I don't think I'll be buying FSX right away.

Once they are converted I don't know. But in the originals you can tryimagetool.exe -batch -DXT1 -dds *.dds Didn't test myself. Yhe imagetool is in SDK terrain. The SDK install is in DVD1.Jos

"i know i can convert the textures with directx SDK but its a 500+ mb download."Actualy directx_aug2006_redist.exe is 53.999 MB. OK let's say 54MB ;-)I just dnwlded it in about 2.5 min on a 300kbs dsl!Hugo