Phil @ MicroSoft, at Least Fix This!!!!!!

[Guest _MSW_]

My system is a P4 3.2 ghz HT, 2 gb dual path RAM and a 6800 GT 256 mb GPU. My system is very clean and efficient with services tweaked as per Blackviper.com and O&O defragged. I have been able to fly this sim most everywhere with autogen near maxed out and water at 1X high. The only tweaks I have is the default XML file that still allows trees in the cities, the tweak to reduce the amount of autogen tree variety, fiber fill... at default 4500 and 3000 (although I adjust this lower sometimes), bufferpools at 1000000 and that's it. If I want the better water at 2X Medium I will pull the scenery complexity and autogen back some.The problems lie within the detailed cities and airports where my fps goes to 10 and below. From what I can tell most people with better systems than mine have the same problem.The problem is that no amount of FSX.cfg or slider adjustments have any effect on the detailed big buildings and airports within these detailed cities. There are sliders to adjust the quality and thus performance hits on just about everything else except this. If you need less performance hit from the water, for example, you can simply lower the quality of the water with a slider.What MicroSoft needs to do is to provide for the simmer to do just that with the detailed city objects and detailed airports. Provide a slider or button that can lower the quaility of these items, if needed, to increase performance. This is desperately needed. There are plenty of other items which need to be fixed but this one fix alone would greatly enhance FSX above what it is now and solve a lot of the performance problems.Please consider. Thanks!MikePS: Another major problem is the large hesitations experienced when some things load even though fps is 20 - 30.

[Guest Tingoose]

It's precisely this description Phil that made me throw my hands up in frustration and decide to do something else with my time, and that was with FS9. I really hate that drop as you fly urban, and that hesitation as you turn onto final etc etc. It kills the experince for me, and dumbing down justs kills it visually. I haven't got a top end system so it's a decision about how much to spend to upgrade versus, how important is the simming activity for me. . . not important enough in my case. I used to enjoy it but eventually the frustration forced me to decide. There is a very enthusiastic simmer who has posted the same subject twice in his excitement and who claims to have transformed his performance by getting more system RAM. Perhaps you should try that.

[Mace 1,926]

I do not know if 3 gb of memory is the answer.But certainly it is fact that there is something with the DEFAULT.XML file that destroys frame rate in cities. Let us not forget the xml memory leak bug in FS9. Perhaps something similar here?If, on the other hand, this is merely a case of not enough system memory, (2gb), then I would like to know it.If this is a case of simply needing tomorrows hardware, then, I can live with that too. But if there is a *problem* with default.xml, then in my mind, that is the #1 thing to address right now--it could literally transform FSX into something wonderful.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2.5 ghz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (94.47), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8, WD 250 gig 7200 rpm SATA2, CoolerMaster Praetorian

[Guest smarti05]

HelloI have the same issue and after a great deal of experimenting i sort of fixed it but at a cost.Basically cut down the autogen buidings to at least 200I also have the reduced texture trees but also set scenery complexity to at least dense, that way you get plenty of buildings in the cities and around airports but fewer of the generic block buildings.I really need reduced texture autogen buildings from somewhere.I've also reduced fiber time to 0.25 but i'm still not convinced on that, i run autogen on normal (obviously not really) and water at 2low because i like it, i am reasonably happy with double figure frames in cities, but i would try the reduced autogen buildings and see what you think

[PhilTaylor 45]

As I said, I cannot comment on what is in or out yet, until the investigations are complete even we dont know yet :-).And then there is the issue about MS pre-announce policy and how creative we have to be to continue the dialog.Lets just agree that in a couple weeks I will be back to talk more on this subject.

[Guest _MSW_]

Thanks for responding, Phil. I just wanted to make sure you saw this post because if the detailed cities and airports can be made to run more easily a lot of problems will be fixed. I am looking forward to hearing from you in a couple of weeks. :-) Mike

[Guest BOPrey]

While you guys are still investigating, can you take a look why we good 2 times more fps in FS9 than FSX eventhough FS9 has 3 times more object on the screen than FSX. I use Aerosoft NYC addon which as 3 times more building than FSX when scenery and autogen are max, and yet, FS9 is still able to put out twice as many fps.

[Manny 1,293]

And Phil, while you are at it..could you please fix my Floppy drive thats been giving me grief.:(Manny

[NM5K 1]

This is a guess at this point, but I'm starting to lean towards a building/texture overload. I think it's the apparently high number of high res images that is knocking things down. IE: all the images that "cover"the airport buildings, many skyscrapers, etc, etc.One reason I say this, is yesterday I flew the 737 fromKMCI to KHOU. When I got to the airport and parked, I had a great many buildings, etc in front of me, and tothe sides. Also another 737 was parked next to me.When I tried doing an outside view to see if I could seethe fuel truck coming, I started getting the symptomsof video overload. My picture actually freezes in place,but the sim is still running. The way I get out of it,is to go to non full screen, and then back, it it snapsout of it, I assume due to a semi reload of the textures.As long I didn't try to view the buildings, etc, it wouldbe ok. But if I panned over to the buildings, it would start to wheeze and gag again. Sooo...I'm starting to lean to high res texture overload. I'm still using allstock textures, but I'm considering running that batchfile to reduce many of those to a lower res. I'm hopingthat might help a bit on my old 1 gig ram, 128 m 9800pro box. When using autogen, I see a loss in fps greaterthan I would expect for what I see, but that could befrom the number of object types, etc. But it could alsobe the old texture overload problem again to an extent.Landclass in itself does not hurt my box, no matterwhat the setting. It's when I get around all the buildingsthat things go downhill. And I would blame that on the complexity of the buildings, and the higher res texturesbeing used, compared to say FS9. I assume they are higherres anyway, from what people say..It's possible that the reports of 3 g RAM helping are dueto having enough ram to properly deal with all the textures, but I dunno.. I do remember that the first thing I had todo to get the sim flyable on my box was to turn up the AGP aperature. That kinda tells me FSX is running lots oftexture files. BTW, when I say I'm thinking about convertingthe textures, I mean only the building textures, not the landclass. I have no trouble at all with the landclass evenset at 7cm.MK

[vgbaron 3,625]

>As I said, I cannot comment on what is in or out yet, until>the investigations are complete even we dont know yet :-).>>And then there is the issue about MS pre-announce policy and>how creative we have to be to continue the dialog.>>Lets just agree that in a couple weeks I will be back to talk>more on this subject.Ooooh! Oooohh! Let's start a new rumor - MS is doing a complete rewrite of FSX to take advantage of Dual Core and SLI. Should be ready in a couple of weeks! Got it straight from the horse's mouth!:)OK, it's 1:50 Pacific Standard Time - let's see how long it takes for htis to hit both coasts as truth.:-sae VicVisit the Virtual Pilot's Centerwww.flightadventures.comhttp://www.hifisim.com/Active Sky V6 Proud SupporterRadar Contact Supporter: http://www.jdtllc.com/

[JerryG 1]

Well,I have 3GB of RAM. When I renamed the default.xml file in the Autogenfolder to a new name, the FPS was not affected that much at all. I test at KSEA for most tweaks since it's a heavy performance area.Perahps the default.xml impacts other systems more than mine. But, for me, deleting this file has not made a difference. Which it would since many have reported great results.Saying this, my values are about 12-13 FPS at KSEA on take-off and increase to about mid 20 FPS looking West, high teens looking East.Looking at the buildings of downtown Seattle drops the values to about 11 FPS. Flying West of downtown, I can get high twenties, low thirtites.I'm giving ranges of FPS since I have my slider set to Unlimited - it give me higher framerates. I know, I know, locking is the "best" thing to do (I've read all the reasons and they _are_ logical), but for some reason, in FSX, I get higher FPS with it set Unlimited.I will say that upgrading from 1GB RAM to 3GB RAM did help - a good amount. I did this prior to FSX being released.JerryG

[Mace 1,926]

I would like someone with 2gb to tell me if renaming default.xml to default.xml.bak does in fact help their fps in cities...Someone besides myself, that is... :)that way I can determine if it's just a memory issue or if it is something in the file.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2.5 ghz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (94.47), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8, WD 250 gig 7200 rpm SATA2, CoolerMaster Praetorian

[Mace 1,926]

>While you guys are still investigating, can you take a look>why we good 2 times more fps in FS9 than FSX eventhough FS9>has 3 times more object on the screen than FSX. I use Aerosoft>NYC addon which as 3 times more building than FSX when scenery>and autogen are max, and yet, FS9 is still able to put out>twice as many fps.>Good point.That's kind of why I asked, if there is some problem in the default.xml file. That's really what the original poster was asking.If we all recall, FS9 had an xml problem when it shipped, too.I'm not saying FSX has an xml problem, but it is a possibility. Certainly a 5 meg xml file is going to take some ram. So maybe that's all it is.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2.5 ghz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (94.47), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8, WD 250 gig 7200 rpm SATA2, CoolerMaster Praetorian

[Mace 1,926]

MK, what you are describing is definitely a lack a vid mem, but I think the o.p. is talking about a different issue. You can fly over a big city with few if any "special" textured buildings, and you still get massive slowdowns.Sure the textured buildings can choke it out. But the sim chokes out WITHOUT them too. But with default.xml out of the picture, the sim runs amazingly well.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2.5 ghz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (94.47), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8, WD 250 gig 7200 rpm SATA2, CoolerMaster Praetorian

[Guest B52Drivr]

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