FSX - Slow, slow, slow/Unflyable

[beatle 0]

Hey Ryan,Had to have been 1024x768, which I think is generally the default res we choose on all machines, because that is the lowest res we support. I would have preferred that the default full screen res default to whatever my desktop res was, but I didn't notice that problem on my own machines (because I just recently converted my CRTs over to LCDs) until it was too late to do anything about it this version.On my machines, I haven't noticed any frame rate difference between different screen resolutions (and via an option in the NVidia drivers, I'm running my full screen resolution at 3200x1200x32 spread across 2 1600x1200 LCD screens :-> - the driver option makes both screens look like 1 big screen to Windows and DirectX).Tim

[Guest Len]

I was experimenting last night and again this morning with this thing.I should have made clear that I use FSAutoStart as well so I turn off various unecessary applications.Basically what it comes down to is that everything is on default minus autogen (I'm running on 'fair weather' preset), all traffic is at 15% (air, land, sea), water effects High 2.x running at 1280x1024, cloud draw 70 miles. On the ground with the motorized trike about 7 fps and that's on the runway of KSEA. Up in the air it varies 7-10fps.While in the air I experimented with various settings. I turned global textures off and I was surprised (everything else as noted above) not to see a huge change in frames - maybe 1 to 1.5 loss.EASILY the signficant changes with fps comes from water and land and sea traffic. Zeroing either of these out I get a significant boost in frames. For example, I zeroed out land and sea traffic and saw an approx. 4-5 fps boost. Flying around KSEA and the city varied wildly from 10.5 to 15 fps. Leaving these at 15% and bringing the water down to zero I saw the same relative inicrease in fps. Now I've left that at High 2.x and the fps run 7-10 as stated above.None of this can compare to what a boned up FS9 can offer full tilt at 1600x1200 WITH an addon like PMDG 747 or EagleSoft Citation X.Cannot recommend FSX at this time.

[Guest Len]

I remember it differently. For me, FS9 ran just about the same as FS8 on the same machine, and even a little bit better in some respects. It had denser autogen, so you needed to tweak that slider a bit, but overall there wasn't too much of an upgrade shock. And, of course, before that we had the upgrade from FS7 to FS8, which was a huge boon in smooth perforamance (FS7=stuttersville) for many users.Yes. Indeed the major difference on fps was the clouds (volumetric) in FS9. Fairly quickly less impacting clouds (bit wise) were developed to address this issue.

[Guest davewins]

>Uhmm.......no. Either you don't have a clue what your talking>about and you are simply repeating marketing speak, or you>have an agenda.>>Why will FSX run better on Vista? Seriosly, you answer that>question and I'll shut up. Can you name one reason besides>".....but the readme says so"? You people seem to think that>Vista will run faster than XP while the exact opposite is>true. Vista will require more memory and more cpu cycles for>itself giving less to the game. It requires a completely>different grafic driver, resulting in certain performance>lossen (due to optimisations that ATI/Nvidia have not yet had>enough expirience playing with). So why....oh why will it run>faster on Vista. I just wanna know? I know of no new>technolagy in Vista that would result in better FPS. The I/O>system has gone through a bit of an overhaul, so that might>help a bit in loading times, but come on, it surely isnt this>magical thing.>>64 Bit? Nah, there is a 64 bit xp version right now.......only>nobody runs it because a) software is not written for 64 bit>yet so there is not point at all and :( driver support for>anything but the most mainstream hardware is still a joke. Bit>of a chicken and egg thingy really. So will 64 big Vista make>FSX run faster? Nah, because as was stated many times before,>FSX is 32bit only....resulting, and heres the funny part, in>Windows having to run it under a Compatibility layer>translating 32 bit instructions to 64 bit instructions. So it>will actually run slower (although marginally).>>DX10? That one may actually help performance, but guess what,>we have no idea right now. As was stated previously the ACES>team has said that FSX was design for DX9 and once they get>sample DX10 cards they'll "start thinking" about what to do>with DX10. So again, DX10 just a marketing thing so MS can say>at Vista launch that there already are DX10 titles out there.>Personally I suspect DX10 (btw I hope youre willing to shuffle>out 700$ at launch for one of those) will improve lighting>visuals, I don't expect it to give us a huge performance>boost. Better visual with little fps loss if you enable the>feature, but generall nothing magical (remember, it was>DESIGNED for DX9 from the get go).>>So, Dave, I challenge you to show my FSX running faster in>Vista with full 64 Bit support than on the same machine in XP.>Or do you not have anything to back up your claims?>>Respectfully>StevenHow can I back up my claims on something that is not even out yet. If I had a time machine then maybe I could move on forward to when DX10 is out and wait to see if they send a patch out for FSX for DX10 play and then make a judgment. I don't believe this is hype. I believe this is the real deal. DX10 that is. We just have to wait and see what they do with FSX. DX10 isn't just an upgrade. I don't know if you are failing to realize that or not. It's not just another little upgrade. Read this article my friend.http://blogs.technet.com/windowsvista/articles/447226.aspxAnytime I have ever mentioned the word Vista and did not include DX10 right next to it I apologize. Obviously Vista alone wouldn't help this game by any means and it would in fact slow it down. I could go ahead and download the RC1 beta if I wanted to see for myself. It's DX10 that's the animal here. Just marketing by Microsoft and good marketing by putting DX10 on Vista and Vista only. It's going to make everybody make the upgrade to Vista not that you weren't going to anyway.

[Guest Len]

Have just been playing with the demo version after reading this whole post and the one thing on the slider settings that made a huuuuge difference for me (going from 7 to a solid 30 fps) is the Texture resolution. Just a change from 2m to 1m has this huge effect. That only is what is causes my reduction, ,aybe it could work for you?GrahamI did more experimenting as I posted above. I even turned off Global Textures which did NOT give a significant boost in fps (1-1.5). Basically you can say that water and land and sea traffic are a significant source of lost fps - and those are a deal breaker for FSX.Terrain and WaterLevel of Detail Radius MediumMesh complexity 70Mesh Resolution 76Texture " 2mAutogen is OFF.

[Guest SilverCircle]

>> "Q: Will

[Guest Len]

I've seen some posting about changing the file for density of autogen and people claiming huge performance increases. I beg to differ. I've had autogen:OFF throughout my testings and hence turning it on with the mods will not help at all of course. Why not go back toa beefed up FS9 then if mods will strip down everything FSX is supposed to give? Just turn water effects off as well and zero out traffic on land and sea - oh yeah! fps increase. Poor substitute for bad programming.

[FTD1949 0]

I counted 115 posts so far and out of that 115 only about 15 people even bothered to post their system specs and 1 posted thier FSX config settings. I'm not sure what the point of this thread is but I am sure of one thing. Without system specs and or config settings then all of these posts are pretty much meaningless to anyone who is considering the purchase of FSX. If the point of the post is to complain then it's working quite well. Since I don't yet have the full version I am unable to comment on it with any knowledge. I see nothing but subjective statements so far with the exception of a very few. I'm starting to think that the folks that are complaing the most are the ones that ran out and bought a CoreDuo thinking that they would be able to load the game and max the sliders. The point is: please be kind enough to list system specs and config settings so other folks have some kind of idea what to expect on their system. I'll be more than happy to post my results along with system specs and config settings as soon as I obtain a copy. Craig

[Guest davewins]

>>> "Q: Will

[Guest Len]

Have just been playing with the demo version after reading this whole post and the one thing on the slider settings that made a huuuuge difference for me (going from 7 to a solid 30 fps) is the Texture resolution. Just a change from 2m to 1m has this huge effect. That only is what is causes my reduction, ,aybe it could work for you?GrahamI went back and experimented some more. As noted my Texture resolution was at 2m. Just a note to you moving to 1m is an increase in resolution - 2m, 5m etc. (left) is a decrease in resolution. So I moved it completely to the right 7 cm and I have to say there is not any significant impact on fps. In fact, as I headed east towards Mt. Rainier my frames progressively got higher (again without autogen) - 17-20 fps (the latter is where I've set the limit at).I have to agree with another poster, with the settings as I have them (there is still the issue of autogen) FSX may best be flown outside of cities and significant bodies of water (and obviously devoid of traffic). I'm still using the sparsely gauged motorized trike of course. Later I'll try the Baron or Cessna.

[FTD1949 0]

As I posted earlier: Any analysis and or recommendation for or against FSX in MEANINGLESS without providing your system specs and FSX config. Craig

[LAdamson 240]

> Why not go back toa beefed up FS9 then if mods will>strip down everything FSX is supposed to give? Just turn water>effects off as well and zero out traffic on land and sea - oh>yeah! fps increase. Poor substitute for bad programming.Just tried KSEA with auto-gen ranging from off to dense. Water effects still off, as I didn't use them with FS9 either.IMO, the ground textures just look too much better in FSX, than FS9. Wasn't particularly impressed with all the cartoony buildings at low level with auto-gen turned to dense either. I'm still using terrain settings at high. With auto-gen at dense, water off, my fps on landing ranged from 8-22. With auto-gen at sparse to off, fps ranged from mid 20's to my setting of 28. Sky is the "fair" setting. Overall, I just like the climb out look (overall textures) in FSX better; especially from the viewpoint of a faster jet.L.Adamson --- Athlon64 3800/Geforce 7600GS 256mb, 1gig ram 1600*1200edit: bloom is "off" also. I don't even know what it is, yet...But it slows the fps

[Paul J 349]

Totally agree, Craig; We had the exact same outcry about FS9: this is no different. My old system - purchased/upgraded - maybe - 18 months ago was what pretty much what the original poster had, except the gpu was a 1600XT Pro. It isn't adequate for full-blown FS9, let alone FSX. I was never able to consistently load ASv6, FS Nav, KSEA and load traffic all in the same breath. It will bring that system to a crawl, and 27 fps was the max I ever saw - usually it was 18 - 22.. I hate to say this, but knowing the way software goes - particularly gaming s/w, you don't develop for old hardware, I anticipated the issues, and wanted better FS9 performance anyway, so five days ago I spent $1700 (Can)- NOT U$3000, and now run FS9 at whatever fps I want. FSX will take some tweaking (for me), but the demo is very, very, very, flyable now. I will probably move to FSX, but the addons I have and use are just not available for FSX yet, so realistically it's likely another 12 months before FS9 gets pushed aside. gpu: http://www.infonec.com/site/main.php?module=detail&id=187312cpu: http://www.infonec.com/site/main.php?module=detail&id=129605ram: http://www.infonec.com/site/main.php?module=detail&id=16452mobo:http://www.infonec.com/site/main.php?module=detail&id=129713p/s:http://www.infonec.com/site/main.php?module=detail&id=10693http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2009328,00.asp and other sites for more research. The ATI 1950XTX Crossfire (used solo) is the kingpin, and retails around $560 Can.

[Guest SilverCircle]

>Ok so basically you are making this assumption that FSX will>not play better on Vista/DX10 by playing a BETA version of>Vista WITHOUT DX10. When we get our hands on the retail Vista>with DX10 and if they are going to patch FSX to DX10 then it's>a surefire thing that it will perform better. The main thing>we have to keep our eyes on is if FSX is patched to make the>best out of DX10. DX10 is not just an upgrade...read on>http://blogs.technet.com/windowsvista/articles/447226.aspxYeah, sure. Continue to trust into it. Some people really behave like they got a nice brainwash.It's not gonna happen, ok? Believe it or not.Vista is no longer beta, it is in RC state which means that the code is more or less *final* minus bugfixes and small adjustments. No big architectural changes or optimizations will be done until it hits RTM status. That's a fact.And DX10 + DX10 hardware will improve performance, sure. It may then compensate the loss which Vista alone produces because of its increased own resource usage. Fine.And we all know that MSFS always has been very dependent on *CPU* speed and we all also know that single CPU cores aren't going to improve speed a lot in the near future. Things have changed and the dual core approach is only the beginning. Multiple cpu cores are the future and the software design will need to change to effectively use these new designs. Software which fails to do so won't benefit much from new CPU designs. That's just another fact and it seems that people simply don't understand it (or don't want to).

[Guest Len]

As I posted earlier: Any analysis and or recommendation for or againstFSX in MEANINGLESS without providing your system specs and FSX config.Hope this wasn't addressed to me as that's the first thing I did initiating this thread.