Why is 'updated' demo worse?

[oldbear 33]

I tried the original FSX demo and frame rates seemed reasonable. I just tried the updated version and I'm getting worse performance. About 10-12 FPS (sinking to 6-7 FPS on finals) for the CRJ scenario, for example.What's been changed? It's really put me off buying FSX - that and the prospect of a lifetime's tweaking. Unfortunately I can't afford to upgrade my system any time soon.ThanksIanAMD Athlon 64 3500+1 GB RAMRadeon X800

[W2DR 1,859]

I don't have an answer Ian. But many of us (most of us?) also see a framerate drop between the second demo and the retail version. If the second demo isn't satisfactory I'd really think twice about the retail version. Flame suit on....Doug

[Guest JohnEGPF]

Aces added new code in the latest demo that helped with blurry textures at the expense of frame rate.You can now add the following to the FSX.cfg file Main]User Objects=Airplane, HelicopterSimObjectPaths.0=SimObjectsAirplanesSimObjectPaths.1=SimObjectsRotorcraftSimObjectPaths.2=SimObjectsGroundVehiclesSimObjectPaths.3=SimObjectsBoatsSimObjectPaths.4=SimObjectsAnimalsSimObjectPaths.5=SimObjectsMiscFIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION=0.10Add the Fibre time fraction line to your cfg and watch the FPS jump up ,the default value is 0.33 higher number= lower FPS with more CPU time spent on texture updating, lower numbers =higher frame rate and more chances of getting blurred ground texturesJohn

[Guest tmilton]

The first demo had incomplete textures (many buildings had no roofs, many cars had no bodies, etc). Therefore less textures needed in memory, and less to render on screen equals higher performance.In the 2nd demo, all the textures were complete and included with the demo (also notice the file size difference between the two demos, the 2nd one is almost 200MB larger). Another factor leading to the reduced performance in the 2nd demo is that they increased the amount of time the processor spends on terrain textures in order to help prevent the blurries, but this also has the effect also of reducing performance in terms of FPS.

[oldbear 33]

Thanks for the explanation, and the tweak.The .cfg addition helped. FPS were much improved. I'm still not sure about buying FSX yet, but thanks MS for giving us the opportunity to try it out first.Ian

[FlyingsCool 3]

This is going to sound crazy compared to what others have written, but I've actually seen a framerate increase from demo to FSX deluxe. And I really haven't done much to tweak.I am finding issues that are weird, however. You can change the scenery library config on the fly. But it seems that once you've loaded a landclass, it stays loaded, even after you have shut it off in the scenery library.I'm also having issues with my SBuilder created landclass not working so well in FSX (Merrimack river is brown, and I don't see the city/town tiles). Also, my scenery ain't workin' so well in FSX (lots of dropped pockets and stuff). But I've still got lots of work and testing to do.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 180Dell D810 1.83GHz Pentium M, 64 MB ATI Mobilty X300, 1 GB memory, 80 GB 7200 RPM harddrive. FPS set to 15 and holds there pretty well.

[Guest cwright]

Doug, I did some frame rate comparisons between the second demo and the retail, using the demo scenery area. The retail was just as fast. In fact it came out at about one percent faster, though that was well inside the margin of error.Of course frame rates in the retail will often be lower for a simple reason: the scenery can be far more dense. In the demo there are no large cities or airports and it's mostly water.Best regards, Chris

[Guest cwright]

Ian, I have a similar system except that it has 2 Gb of RAM (many comments indicate that 2 Gb is far preferable to 1 Gb for reasons of smoothness).I did not see a great difference between the two demos in terms of frame rates but I believe there was a small drop. The second demo had more features enabled (e.g. the shoreline waves) so a small drop was to be expected.Unfortunately I think FSX does require a bit of tweaking, but not a lot - and certainly not a lifetime of tweaking!I've applied three tweaks and all were very effective, overall possibly doubling frame rates. And FSX still looks spectacular. I am quite satisfied with frame rates. Apart from large cities and airports I use maximum scenery and autogen settings (but one tweak reduces the density of trees).Reducing the road traffic can have a surprisingly large effect on frame rates. I have it set to 15%. But - again, surprisingly - this setting still allows the display of enormous numbers of vehicles (in some cases I estimate something approaching one thousand vehicles, but still with good frame rates).When I first ran the retail I was concerned about frame rates. It would take about ten minutes to apply the three tweaks I use (unfortunately at least one of them won't work in the demo). But the results are excellent. And FSX can be truly breathtaking.Best regards, Chris

[oldbear 33]

ChrisWhich tweak doesn't work in the demo?After reading various threads on the subject, I'm definitely going to get some more RAM. And after a bit more work following the various tips and advice given here the demo is working a lot better. FSX could be on my Xmas list after all..:)Cheers Ian

[Guest thx1137]

OMG. I had tried small changes to the FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION value such as 0.25 before but it didn't seem to make any difference. I was close to giving up trying to get decent FPS so I thought I may as well try using 0.10 as in your example. Flying around Tokyo I went from:Scene Complexity: NormalAutogen density: SparseAI Traffic: 17% jets, 17% GA, everything else offFPS: 10 - 14Scene Complexity: DenseAutogen density: NormalFPS: 30-42AI Traffic: 25% jets, 17% GA, everything else offI can't beleive it, after all the mucking around with all those tweaks that make absolutely no difference and settings changes that made FPS get into double figures but look like crap. The beauty is that the 1m textures still look great, the autogen pops up a bit instead of a smooth transition but I can live with that!My Machine:AMD 4.2ghz Dual CoreRAM 2gb 533mhz2 x 7600GT in SLI (in 16xSLI anit-alias mode seeing there is no benefit to redraw rates)

[FlyingsCool 3]

Which 3 tweaks did you do?I agree, the cars are a killer. Which is unfortunate, as they really add to the "life" of the sim. In investigating the auto textures, there are quite a few 1 MB textures for them. I'm wondering if 1. Reducing their size helps2. Doing an autogen reduction on them might help (reducing the number of types)Perhaps a project to replace them with less detailed models might help as well. If you look at the textures, even the treads on the tires are modeled in the textures. I'd be happy with black tires and minimum detail on the cars, and fewer types as well.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