Hi simmers,With the huge amount of information received since a month on tweaking FSX for better performance, I just wondered if it would not help all of us to create a post like this one to report our respective experience.Of course, we know that every PC responds differently, depending on hardware installed, personal settings, etc. But there should be a common trend on the results that major tweaks produce. So may I suggest to look into 3 areas which, according to most of the comments seen here, that are our major concern in term of FSX sim smoothness: FPS, stutters, blueries.I propose the following list of tips and tweaks (please add anything that worked for you), with the results (when applicable for each category) and best balance you have obtained regarding fps, stutters, blueries, and scenery quality.1. FSX settings (your choice for quality and/or better performance)1.1 Graphic1.2 Aircraft1.3 Scenery1.4 Weather1.5 Traffic2. FSX.cfg tweaks (the best value that worked for you) 2.1 Target frame rate 2.2 Maximum autogen per cell2.3 poolsize 2.4 fiber frame fraction2.5 texture bandwith 2.6 any other ? 3. Texture resize 1.1 Resizing texture (replacement files 25 or 50%, using all files or some only)?1.2 Texture conversion (DXT) 3. OS tweaks3.1 video apperture3.2 Dual core affinity3.3 FSX.exe priority4. Video card settings Sorry if I missed some important ones. Any other suggestion ? For information my medium-end specs are:CPU AMD Athlon Dual Core 64x2 4400+Graphic: Nvidia 6500, 256mbHard Disk: 2x150GB, 7200 rpmMemory: 2GB DDR2, PC533Any better suggestion ?PatrickGeneva, Switzerland

I also suggest to create a PDF file based on all your comments, experience and results and keep it here available for all new starters.Patrick

Sorry made a mistake with my numbers, here is the updated list:1. FSX settings (your choice for quality and/or better performance)1.1 Graphic1.2 Aircraft1.3 Scenery1.4 Weather1.5 Traffic2. FSX.cfg tweaks (the best value that worked for you) 2.1 Target frame rate 2.2 Maximum autogen per cell2.3 poolsize 2.4 fiber frame fraction2.5 texture bandwith 2.6 any other ?3. Texture resize (is this worth using it?)3.1 Resizing texture (replacement files 25 or 50%, using all files or some only)?3.2 Texture conversion (DXT)4. OS/Bios tweaks4.1 video apperture4.2 Dual core affinity4.3 FSX.exe priority5. Video card settings

Nice idea, but your approach requires postings to a common theme across different forums? All hardware mods go in the hardware forum. Where technical discussion often takes precedence over actual physical benefits to FS. Discussions about scenery go elsewhere, and then there is the Tips and Tweaks section. I hope you're not suggesting circumventing existing forum rules and regulations as we already have a lot of miffed moderator musings and cut'n'pastes on that very subject! :)Nice idea, but you need a centralised web asite to make it work, and about three weeks worth of trawling through what has already been posted in these forums to make it viable. Shame you didn't come up with this on Day One of RTM, as it might have saved a lot of time.Also, there is already a centralised resource. Its called Avsim and the forum search function! ;)Allcott

Understand your point Allcott, and in no way the suggestion was to interfere on any existing order.The point was just to share experience on tweaking, may be we could restrict to non hardware tweaks.This was just to simplify searching results on a certain number of fsx twearks that many of us are testing. The same way as there is a PDF to list existing tweaks, I thought a PDF listing the results obtained would have been great.That's all. So deeply sorry if I gave the impression to wish changing rules or any kind of behaviour here.CheersPatrick

I like the idea to compare different systems and which settings seem to work best. Your scheme reminded me instantly of the settings I posted yesterday.I don't know if you just wanted to discuss things here or if starting to post lists is also ok. Anyway, I'll try it. The following is a new list (changed after more testing). I also formatted it so that it follows your proposed scheme better.New list, 17 November 2006:After trying this and that, I found that many tweaks indeed were not as powerful as I thought.What I did was reverting all and then adding one after the other until I had about the performance I had before with all tweaks.My system:Pentium D 8301 GB RAMGeForce 6700 XL 128 MBNote: Low video memory might cause texture reduction tweaks to show more impact in this case.Tweaks and configuration applied to get a good balance:1. FSX configuration:1.1 Graphic- Target Framerate: I set the limit to around 25 FPS, gives resources free in case the limit is reached and stabilizes frame rates.- Filtering: Anisotropic.Changed filtering to Anistropic now. Gives less blurries, much better image quality with not too mcuh loss of performance.See video card settings also!- Anti-Alias: Off. I set this via the video card driver settings.- General Texture Resolution: Very High. Leeds to VC and airplane textures at highest quality which is very noticable concerning the overall look.- Lense flare: On.- Light Bloom: Off. Drops my fps by about 10 if On.- Advanced Animations: On.1.2 Aircraft:- High resolution 3D cockpit: Checked.- Aircraft shadow on ground: On.- Aircraft self-shadow: Off.- Landing lights illumination: On.1.3 Scenery:- Level of Detail radius: Maximum.- Mesh Resolution: 38m. Don't know exactly what's the maximum with stock terrain.- Mesh Detail: Above 50, below 60. Sometimes it almost seemed as if values above 50 even improved performance instead of reducing it.- Texture Resolution: 1mTakes advantage of the maximum FSX terrain resolution.- Water Detail: Low 2.xNew reflection technique with reduced performance impact.- Land Detail Structure: On.Gives better detail when near the ground. In fact, it structures the surface.Important when flying low (Helicopters!).- Scenery Complexity: Very Dense.This is also important for displaying of jetways.This is one of the few settings I change for really big cities like New York.Around London or Hamburg, Very Dense is ok.--> Alternative setting for cities: Dense.- Autogen Density: Normal.--> Alternative setting for cities: Low.- Ground Scenery Shadows: Off.- Special Effects Detail: Medium.1.4 Weather:- Cloud Draw Distance: 60 Miles. - Cloud Detail: Detailed Clouds.- Cloud Density: Medium.- Weather Change Rate: Low.1.5 Traffic:- AI airliners: 10%--> Alternative setting for cities with many airports: 5%- AI general aviation: 5%--> Alternative setting for cities with many airports: 0%- Airport Vehicle Density: Medium.--> Alternative setting for cities with many airports: Low.- Road vehicles: 15%Lively streets make the simulation less sterile.- Ferries/Ships: 15%--> Alternative setting for large cities: 5%- Leisure boats: 5%--> Alternative setting for large cities: 0%2. FSX.cfg tweaks:2.1 UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=In my case set from within FSX. I set the limit to around 25 FPS, gives resources free in case the limit is reached and stabilizes frame rates.2.2 TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_TREES_PER_CELL= and TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_BUILDINGS_PER_CELL=Had it rather low, but now I'm back to 2400 for trees and 1800 for buildings. This gives high enough values for ingame setting on LOW and low enough values for ingame setting NORMAL.2.3 [bufferPools] PoolSize= Something between 4000000 and 4500000 worked well for me. 5 million seemed to be to high for my system.2.4 FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION=Tried values from 0.66 to 0.10 - settled to around 0.20 for best balance. Good framerates and not too many blurries. This setting seems to have the biggest impact on my system.2.5 TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=Tried the standard of 40 up to 375. I'm now using a value around 300 as it seems to speed loading up a bit.3. File editing tweaks3.1 Texture reduction tweaks:Clouds have an impact on my system as soon as weather get's heavier.I applied the Cloud texture reduction batch conversion and it really helped.Also applied water and runway/taxiway batch files as visual impact is low and it might free some more video memory.3.2 Autogen directory tweaks:I had the AutogenDescriptions.spb tweak and the different default.xml file installed, but removing them didn't have a really noticable impact on framerates. So everything reverted to standard now.4. Video Card settings:- Anti-Alias driver settings: 2x 2xQ blurs textures, 4x costs too much performance.- Anisotropic filtering: Set to 'Application controlled'. IMPORTANT: This makes the ingame option work!5. Other System tweaks:After starting FSX, I set the process priority to high (not real-time).I stopped as many processes as safely possible to get way above 700MB free physical memory.I set Windows style to classic. No wallpaper, no modern style windows.After all tweaks applied, I defragmented the partition.I think those settings could be called medium concerning what some people seem to have proposed on this forum. To my own surprise, this runs rather well. Except for some moments when things have to be loaded, it never falls into single digits. Medium cities (which includes Hamburg and London) rate at about 20 FPS, Bush flying gets me to the framerate limiter, while autogen density looks nice.Bigger cities like New York are more demanding, because of the vicinity of so many large airports. The scenery and AI get tough in those areas. I included alternative settings I'm using in those cases. This get's me to acceptable frame rates at New York, between 14-18 most times. Loading has more impact though.My conclusion is either some system require custom tailored tweaks, because some tweaks depend on what's the main problem: Machine speed, driver problems or just low memory.If a future patch allows full use of multiple core systems, then my system could make another jump forward, as the Pentium D is not fully used now. So things can only get better... not worse.

I think the essence of what you're suggesting can be found in FS TIPS AND TWEAKS. See the message from greggerm entitled Essential FSX Tweaks (The PDF).What he has done is collect the tweaks which have proven to work into a PDF file available for download. Not only that, but he periodically updates the PDF as new tweaks are discovered! A must-have file, in my opinion.And a BIG BIG tip-of-the-hat to greggerm, who did a great job pulling this all together!-Rick

>> I think the essence of what you're suggesting can be found in FS TIPS AND TWEAKS. See the message from greggerm entitled Essential FSX Tweaks (The PDF).The thing is, systems seem to differ. Thus the main problems differ.Seeing what helps whom, helps finding the right combination.For example, I used tweaks that had impact on image quality but not on performance without noticing it at first.With standard lists of possible tweaks, you know what might help, but only a lot of testing and tweaking tells you if it really does in your special case.

Yes, you are right. Unfortunately I don't think there's any way to avoid some trial-and-error.Also, in an ideal world maybe everyone would supply all the details which Patrick has requested. But human nature being what it is, I doubt that many people will take the time necessary to supply all the details requested.-Rick----------- My System -----------P4 @ 2.53 GHz / 1GB RAM / NVIDIA GeForce 6800XT, 256MB / Windows XP Home

Many thanks for taking the time to forward your experience. OK each system is different but I feel that we can benefit from others tweakings anyway. Therefore, have made my home work this weekend and spend many hours on tweaking and so few to really fly (sometime I really wonder if fs simmers are not more interested by tweaking than fliying...smile, probably part of the entertainment as well......).So there are my results:My specs first:AMD ATHLON 64X2 DUAL CORE 4400+HD 2X150GB/7200RPMNVIDIA 6500 - 256MB2GB DDR 2 RAM PC533 (4X512mb)1. FSX configuration:1.1 Graphic- Target Framerate: I set the limit to 25 FPS too, this gave me excellent results as less ressources are used to reach this target. Have tried unlimited, but FPS were under huge fluctuations, and my minimum was lower (15fps) than when targeting at 25 (never under 19)- Filtering: Anisotropic.I tried bilinear and trilinear but anisotropic is really best for value, less blues and better image with nearly no fps drop- Anti-Alias: Off. I set this via the video card driver settings (same for me).- General Texture Resolution: Very High. Huge difference for airplane texture when set to very high, no significant impact on fps with my system- Lense flare: Off- Light Bloom: Off. - Advanced Animations: On.1.2 Aircraft:- High resolution 2D cockpit: Checked.- Aircraft shadow on ground: Off.- Aircraft self-shadow: Off.- Landing lights illumination: On.I prefered to sacrify shadows are huge fps sucking when checked1.3 Scenery:- Got everything maxed here, except autogen (sparse) and sea high1x.My goal is to get the nicest possible looking scenery, this is why I maxed nearly everything here, and results are gret, also, setting scenery to max balance very well a sparse autogen with much better results in term of fluidity, and provide all available jetways at airports.- Ground Scenery Shadows: Off.- Special Effects Detail: Maxed1.4 Weather:- Cloud Draw Distance: 60 Miles. - Cloud Detail: Detailed Clouds.- Cloud Density: Low, will try medium but clouds are really fps killers, most specially under 10000 fts.- Weather Change Rate: Low.I still have problems with any other weather than nice weather.1.5 Traffic:- AI airliners: off- AI general aviation: off- Airport Vehicle Density: High- Road vehicles: off- Ferries/Ships: offInteresting point here, each one decides what is important is the sim. For me, as far as my hardware cannot cope with everything maxed, I decided to sacrify traffic for the benefit of scenery, with the exception of airport vehicles which create a sound atmosphere when aircraft engine are shut down. The reason why I decide to sacrify traffic is that having AI, road, sea traffic would cost too much in term of scenery overhaul look, and what's the point in flying FSX is the scenery looks like FS2002 ?2. FSX.cfg tweaks:2.1 UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=I set the limit to 25 FPS, sea also 1.2.2 TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_TREES_PER_CELL= and TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_BUILDINGS_PER_CELL=I started with 2500 each, but had to reduce to 1000 each, with a sparse autogen. The reason is not fps in my system, it's stutters. I realized how much autogen is the main responsible for stutters. I made some flights with autogen off, and every thing was soo smooth, fps always at 25, even when panning. But when at airport, a minimum autogen bring additional value when looking around. I really feel that autogen is THE PROBLEM with fsx, too many objects increases loading time (even with resized textures) the ideal would be an autogen "light" with far less different objects (not only tree types) v.s resized textures on my point.2.3 PoolSize= Very strange this one. As my main problem was stutters. I am not talking about low fps which create slide-show simulation, this is normal, but those stutters which takes place at 25fps or more and are really immersion killer for each simmer. So the poolsize maxed at 10 million in my pc seem to allow far much better panning when changing views with constant fluidity.2.4 FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION=Have tried from 0.05 to 0.60.Considering a huge poolsize (10mio) as above, and a minimum bandwith (100) as bellow, the best way for me to keep fluidity with a very good looking scenery was to keep it at 0.33. Eventually when down to 0.25 which gives good results. Too low and the scenery does not load properbly, too high and the stutters come back.2.5 TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=Tried up to 600. Create real stutters at high values, and blueries if too low. Have mine between 100-150, and it eliminate all nearly all stutters (specially when taxiing) with very very few blueries (nearly zero)when changing view.After tweaking the whole weekend, I am pretty sure that the solution agains stutters, which for me is the main fsx problem, if a drastic reduction of autogen to its minimal (the scenery at least in flight look fantastic even without autogen), and a balanced settings between poolsize, fiber frame, and texture bandwith. For the first time since a month, I am flying FSX without stutters at all after testing deeply those 3 elements.3. File editing tweaks3.1 Texture reduction tweaks:Have not noticed significant gain on fps (minimum on my pc) but also had no impact on stutters, so I revert to default textures and worked more on 2.3,2.4,2.5 to get my current smooth results.3.2 Autogen directory tweaks:I just renamed my default.xml to morefps.bak (positive thinking I presume...), this one really helped me. Not used the other modified files yet.4. Video Card settings:- Anti-Alias driver settings: 2x 2xQ blurs textures, 4x costs too much performance.same for me.- Anisotropic filtering: Set to 'Application controlled'. same for me.5. Other System tweaks:"After starting FSX, I set the process priority to high (not real-time)". Have tried that, got the impression that it create huge fps increase but only for a while, after 10 minutes my fps is back to normal.I do not stop anymore processes, had OS crashed in the past (probably uncheked one which had a hidden use...), so I am really cautious and do not use it anymore.I set Windows style to classic. No wallpaper, no modern style windows.(same for me)After all tweaks applied, I defragmented the partition.Last but not least, at also installed FSX on a separate drive, dedicated for fsx only, and kept the paging file on another drive with fs9.RegardsPatrick Geneva Switzerland

I think we got a real point here.Autogen appears to be THE REAL PROBLEM in term of STUTTERS, even more than the impact on fps.I feel that this is due to the number of types of objects (so large) v.s number of objects displayed, which increase a lot the time for loading.I tried testing autogen the whole weekend.First at dense or normal with 500 trees and buildings per cell, in FSX.cdg, a nightmare for stutters...But when I keep it at sparse and increase trees and building per cell to 1500 or 2000 in fsx.cfg, fluidity is much more better, no more stutters.Probably far less different types of objects displayed, even if total shown is similar, and it really gave me a much more smoother flight than ever before.Patrick Geneva

For those of us who can read french, there is an excellent post by eriktu. He collects tweaking infos on various sites, and after having tested them he publishes/updates them in this post.http://www.francesim.info/forumfs/Default.aspx?g=posts&t=122J.J.JJ StruyfBraine-L'AlleudBelgium