I've noticed that a lot of people have argued recently, that 15fps is smooth and flyable, plus enjoyable.While I've agreed wholeheartedly, I tried something tonight that made me sulk in a corner with a couple of beers before deciding to come back here and type up what happened.My settings were decent, I was maintaining 15FPS in most locations, with a few drops to 10 every so often. I have no modifications to the sims autogen or texture files, I found them to be rather ineffective. The only tweaks I use are the Fiber_Frame and Poolsize ones, and those were enough for me to run the sim in a nice flyable manor.So I've enjoyed the last few weeks at 15fps, enjoying the weather especially, nothing beats coming through the clouds 200ft above the numbers only to find yourself surrounded by white fluffy snowfall. Ohhhh I loved it.Tonight I wanted to try something. I turned almost ALL my sliders to the left, except for autogen. I killed just about every feature as well, like bloom, shadows etc. Water was set to the far left. I was still only getting about 20FPS though.... even with all those changes.As I flew over downtown Toronto and out onto Lake Ontario, my FPS flew up to over 70. Here I was in a snow storm at 1000ft and 250knots in my lil CRJ and was getting full motion fps finally. Let me tell you, the snow effect looks absolutely incredible at 30+ FPS, the lightning looks even more realistic... rain too. I bumped up the Cloud details to MAX and didn't see any hit at all in performance, yet the pretty storm outside the window just got even prettier.... indeed.So if you, like me, thought that 15fps seemed plenty smooth and flyable, I recommend you save all your settings to a file then mess with them. Lower everything you can, fly out over a large body of water and start playing with the weather. You'll really see how the weather system was meant to be, then you'll sulk, probably down a couple of beers, then go back to a visually appealing 15fps that doesn't seem to impress anymore :(There has to be issues in this software :( My dad asked me to drop by and install the flight sim for him and set it all up. I told him to forget it, he's using my old AMD 2500+ system with 512megs of cheap generic ram and a Geforce FX5200... not the greatest really, yet he spent the money and bought the game even though I'd told him that even MY system won't run it properly.To my suprise, the sucker not only runs well... it outperforms my own machine, AMD 64 4000+, 2GB Corsair, 2x6800UltraOC's. I just don't get it :( Personally, I am hoping that this software 'bottleneck' can be fixed and ACES get on it and release a patch before my dad rubs it in my face some more. It's pretty sad, but I haven't actually been visiting my dad as much in recent years, until his FSX beat mine hands down B)By the way. Am I the only person seeing this issue. Basically sometimes while fooling around with sliders and settings, I'll make a change that logically should drop my FPS in the bucket... only to find an INCREASE! I don't fully understand why, but twice now I've enabled Bloom and found my FPS jump up by at least 6. Here's a real kicker.... I've switched my road traffic to max and seen zero loss in FPS even though the streets below are buzzing with activity. Then I change my cloud density and my FPS bottom out at 7-8FPS, I put it back down two notches and I'm getting only 10-11FPS now. I just had 16 before changing the clouds!!! I turn off road traffic and I get 18fps.... I turn it back on and I'm back to 16fps!!! Same setting I had two mins before and was only getting 10-11fps!!!Can't quite grasp it really. In all my years experience with computers, I've never seen a software title ever confuse me as much as this one has... and I've been simming for a very long time. In fact my first ever simulator was on my little 48k Sinclair Spectrum, sure, it was texture-less, and the mountains were invisible.... but I learned all about flaps, power and stalls, spinning me into the realm of Simming for years to come.heh, for xmas, I would like either a patch, or a new computer.... a nice old AMD 2500+, half a gig of ram and a $25 Geforce 5200 :) My girl is gonna love me this xmas, last xmas I asked for a second 6800 Ultra, this xmas is gonna cost half as much :)

I have a 5200 and noticed that I was getting better performance than most people with high-end machines.I know nothing about graphics at all, but suppose that it is because shaders are turned off by default for the 5200. There is a lower graphics quality than a high-end graphics card, and some elements such as taxiway signs and bridges will not display textures, so it is not all good.To see whether performance can increase, you can try turning off the shaders in the display.cfg. High-end cards may very well not have an entry in there - there was a post here a few weeks ago on how to create one and either turn shaders to a lower level or turn them off altogether.Best regards.Luis

The older card may well be doing better because shading is not supported. I am getting 15- 35 FPS (15 in heavy weather) on this very midrange machine- my shaders are set to 10 in the display CFG and I renamed default.bak in the autogen folder but that is it for tweaks. Asus K8N, AMD Sempron 2700+, 1.5 gig DDR 1 400, ATI X1300 256 DDR MBFLYing? It's cool. Trillions of birds and insects can't be wrong.

Hi Kev:FSX is indeed bewildering sometimes isn't it?I expect we will be learning about its seemingly dynamic and adaptive behavior related to tweaking for some time to come.Thanks for sharing your insights; similarly, I was surprised to find that using 3-D rather than 2-D cockpits, and an unlimited frame rate target resulted in overall better framerates on my system (go figure!???):-roll BTW, I really appreciate your efforts elsewhere in the system cacheing thread, and look forward to learning more in that ongoing thread and from your related web pages.Amazing what we may yet be able to do with FSX on older computers via "manual" tweaks!I just worry about the number of people who will give up and badmouth the product with resultant subpar sales because of the apparent Microsoft Marketing (an oxymoron in the case of FSX?) agenda of "enforced generosity" which I believe may have compelled ACES (against their own ongoing better judgement since the FS2000 framerate fiasco) to bias FSX installation/autoconfiguration routines toward the excessively high detail settings.In light of an unwillingness on the part of Aces to "dumb down the details" in FSX installation/configuration, I am concerned that a MS Corporate "push" to show off features (which might otherwise only be rendered in 2 years from now on an adequate computer without an option in the UI to adequately tweak it into a range controllable via the existing sliders, since the installer's auto-configuration engine appears to not ballpark FSX into a useable state for most current computers) may ironically put the future commercial success of the FS product franchise at risk.I believe the problem may be complicated by the fact that a greater volume of prospective buyers are going to be unaware of, or intimidated by, the option to manually tweak FSX and get the product to work better until adequate hardware become available.Well, anyway... kudos to Dads for keeping us younger whippersnappers open to the "press on / try it and see" school of thinking now and then! :-lol Take care,GaryGB

heh, I've actually considered sending FSX to the closet until a patch comes out, but quitting is for loooooozers :) I'm close to giving up, but not yet. Tonight revealed a lot about my system. At full autogen and traffic and no texture/autogen tweaks, I find my PC can keep up with the graphics and high resolution without any problem. The sheer number of polygons being rendered seems to be well within the range of my 6800UltraOC.It's the shaders themselves that I find dramatically reduce me to a whimpering crybaby. Yet for some reason, the 6800 excels in other gaming titles that use shaders of high quality. Funny though, when I enable shaders for another software title, it doesn't impact the game in any way. I know that some will argue that this is because FSX is rendering a planet while most games will render a small town or so, but the difference being that FSX renders simple objects and textures define the details (windows, doors etc), wheras other titles render every part of a house, street or town right down to the window frames. So really, FSX isn't doing a whole lot more work than say Far Cry or CoD2 does.In some other titles, I can run at max settings and have a whole lot more intricate geometry on my screen than FSX could ever achieve. Turning on Shaders has very little impact on that scene, yet in FSX it cuts it down and eats it. This is why I personally believe that the underlying render engine is at fault. Especially since I've tried turning shaders off and still get worse performance than my dads 5200 :(btw: I haven't forgotten about the System Cache website. I've been contemplating whether to invest more time in the research or not, because one good fellow posted a link to another thread on AVSIM that was posted about 2 years ago when people were looking for performance out of FS2004. The posts in that thread really speak for themselves, and underline what myself and others have been suggesting all along. I find that the thread really does explain that the tweak is just not worth the risk. I've also found that other software really can't come close to providing any performance benefits as much as that tweak does on it's own, so I've been thinking that it would be a waste of time to continue it.Besides, the patch will be here soon :) ACES have already stated that they are looking into 'perf related issues', so it's my hopes that they realize that there really is a problem with this software, and that us little people really are looking forward to seeing it in all its glory. We know it will, it just needs some TLC from the Sim Gods at ACES :)

Hi Kev,Perhaps this has all got something to do with the FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION= setting.A week or two back I installed a demo of Horizon Sim's High definition VFR Photographic Snowdonia NP in North Wales. I read somewhere (I forget exactly where - perhaps it was Horizon Sims themselves) that a setting of 0.50 would improve general performance, particularly texture loading. Suffice it to say I was amazed to see the results!Now we all now know about the effect this setting has on texture loading performance in the sim:Higher setting ---> faster ground texture loading and consequent fewer blurries. The down side was fewer FPS.Lower setting ---> slower ground texture loading, a tendency to see more blurries, but faster frame rates.I have experimented with this setting and, paradoxically, I have found that I get better performance with a setting approaching or equal to 0.50. Frame rates can in fact increase, in some cases very significantly, but only away from cities. I imagine other factors are involved there.My theory is that by employing a higher setting you are reducing the time it takes for the sim to load and display the ground textures and consequently this releases the rendering engine earlier in the cycle to get on with other things - hence fewer blurries and better performance.The default setting for FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION= is 0.33, so adding this parameter really makes no discernible difference. Therefore, to see any change in the sim's behaviour you need to modify this setting. Lower settings for me are a no no as I see far too many blurries which take an age to clear. Whereas a higher setting (and I am currently using 0.50) improves things quite a bit. The sim ticks over quite evenly with sharp ground textures even when frame rates are 10-15.Generally I fix my frame rates at 20, but never hesitate to quickly change to unlimited when the situation allows.My advice to everyone is don't be afraid to experiment - it really is the only way to fine tune the sim to your systems capabilities.Like you, I tried the texture reduction tweaks, but was unconvinced - others may be too and this also might depend in part on their FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION= setting. I soon reverted back to the default textures.At present, my preferred settings in FSX.cfg are:[Display]TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=40UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=20[Main]FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION=0.50 <--- seems to work in FS9 as well![TERRAIN]TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_TREES_PER_CELL=3000TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_BUILDINGS_PER_CELL=1500[BUFFERPOOLS]PoolSize=5000000 <---- may also work in FS9In particular, note the TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT= setting of 40. I tried much higher settings, but these introduced stutters and flashing empty white texture loads adjacent to the leading edge of the screen during fast pans. As in FS9 several 360 pans gets rid of these, but only for a while. As your flight progresses, side view textures appear to be removed from memory and require to be reloaded when a fresh side to side or 360 pan is executed. You can, of course, mitigate this effect by reducing the Pan Rate value, but I prefer being able to pan quickly (if I'm not using TrackIR). I believe useful settings, like FS9, will probably lie within the range 40 - 120. 40 works best for me.Regards,MikeASRock 939Dual-SATA2, AMD Athlon 64X2 3800+ (2000MHz)(K8 Manchester/Toledo), 2GB Crucial PC3200 DDR400 Ram 1CMD (Dual Channel), (AGP 8X) Saphire ATI Radeon X800 XL (R430) 256MB (Omega 3.8.273 (Catalyst 6.7), Hyundai ImageQuest Q17 17" TFT LCD 20ms Monitor (1280x1024x32), SB Audigy2 ZS Platinum (Drivers version 5.12.0001.1196 WHQL), WD Caviar SE16 250GB (WD2500KS) SATA2 + Hitachi Deskstar 7K80 UDMA133 (80 GB), ASUS DRW-1608P2S Optical Drive, Antec P150 case with NeoHE 430W PSU, CH Products USB Yoke, Pedals and Fighterstick, Plantronics Headset and Mike combo, TrackIR Pro ver. 4.1 (build 28), Logitech MX1000 Laser Mouse, Windows XP Home Edition (SP2), DirectX 9.0c, AGP Aperture = 256MB

Don't laugh at me here, but I've been using:FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION=0.93When I tweak my setup, I tweak it for a good balance of performance and quality, having textures appear sharp when initially displayed was pretty important to me, so I've always had it set fairly high.I was fairly satisfied with my setup, which I was getting a steady locked 15fps at most times with few drops to 10 or so here and there. Most of my settings are up fairly high, including Autogen and Scenery, which are both at Very Dense. I also run with the default.xml enabled, because without it just looks rubbish. The main things I ended up turning off or down was bloom, aircraft shadows on itself, Level of Detail, water effects (Low 1x), and unchecked the box with "Show Land Detail".... which seems to make no difference. I run clouds at maximum and my mesh is very low indeed. 15fps seemed awesome and smooth until I saw true full motion at over 30-40fps last night. I'm seriously thinking about REALLLLY dumbing down ground details altogether so that I can enjoy the awesome look and feel of full motion like that... it really did take me by surprise :(Anyways... here's to ACES... hopefully those guys can give us a way to run 30-40fps with regular settings so we can fully see FSX in all its glory!!!