Made a city flying fps improvement...

[Guest flyinfriend]

Hi All,As many know the city buildings that are non-auto gen cause a huge framerate hit. I use reduced textures for auto-gen and clouds but not for the land texture as I enjoy the one meter high quality too much. I fly out of Logan in Boston often and the city buildings are always framerate killers. I created a batch file to reduce the texture size to 128 X 128 (you can modify the bat file to 256 or 512, using replace in notepad, depending on the quality you can live with) of all the building textures for Northeast America. It is based on the bat file at Matt-Fox's site that is used to reduce autogen, clouds etc.. The bat file I created is only for North Eastern America but you could use this as a model to create other bat files to reduce the other city areas if you wish. I do not notice any 'major' quality difference in the building textures as I fly by and the framerate hit is now unnoticable. I can now fly out of Logan, over the city and actually maintain 21-22 fps when the buldings are in view. The file I created includes NY although I haven't tried flying out of it yet. The directory it affects is C:Program FilesMicrosoft GamesMicrosoft Flight Simulator XSceneryNAMEtexture where 'NAME' stands for North AMerica Eastern.If you installed FSX in the default directory then you create a new directory called C:Program FilesMicrosoft GamesMicrosoft Flight Simulator XSceneryNAMEtexture temp and copy the nconvert.exe and imagetool.exe utilities to the new directory as well as the bat file. You then just run the bat file.It will bring the dds file sizes from 171kb down to 11 kb. PLEASE back up your C:Program FilesMicrosoft GamesMicrosoft Flight Simulator XSceneryNAMEtexture directory BEFORE running the bat file.I hope this helps others as I now enjoy flying out of Logan without any severe framerate hit.Thanks,Tom

[FOD 23]

Tom,I had noticed the same in the UK - basic autogen was not the problem; it was the special city buildings. I have being doing my testing from EGLC on r/w 28 - a huge fps hit if you want a decent scenery.So now I have to try to modify your bat file ............... ow!! Any Brit experts out there to help?John Rooum

[Guest flyinfriend]

>Tom,>>I had noticed the same in the UK - basic autogen was not the>problem; it was the special city buildings. I have being>doing my testing from EGLC on r/w 28 - a huge fps hit if you>want a decent scenery.>>So now I have to try to modify your bat file ...............>ow!! Any Brit experts out there to help?>>John RooumHi John,Try the attached bat file first to make sure you see a difference in the North Eastern US (Boston, New York, Toronto) before modifying it for UK. I haven't checked which folder contains the UK buildings yet. If the attached one makes a difference for you, I can make a UK version or help you make one to modify the dds files in the correct folder.Thanks and good luck,Tom

[FOD 23]

Tom,Many thanks - I'll give it a go {but I am afraid it will be a tomorrow} and come back to you when I can.John RooumPS This is what I like about the forums - rather than the continual arguements about FSX v FS9. I am running them both in parallel; I cannot afford Conroe, but can still have fun with both - including the Red Bull!

[curt1 79]

I hope Microsoft releases a patch that will do this for the entire globe. Have they stated when they're going to release a patch?

[Guest fatboysim]

"SP1" sometime after Jan 07. Not specific details on the content, but hopefully some performance improvement.

[Guest 777_lr_2k7]

Does this include airport buildings/terminals?

[tf51d 284]

It will bring the dds file sizes from 171kb down to 11 kb. PLEASE back up your C:Program FilesMicrosoft GamesMicrosoft Flight Simulator XSceneryNAMEtexture directory BEFORE running the bat file.One point I would like to make! You should keep this backup, not just to make sure everything works, but also for further MSFS patches. Update installers have been known to use checksums on files to ensure the proper files are updated. If MS/Aces uses these in their installers, you may find an update to fail on a checksum error. This will necessitate restoring the original content to it's original state. If you don't have the backup at that time, you may need to reinstall all over again, in order to complete the update!! I don't know if this is the case with FSX, just wanted to remind everyone it's a distinct possibility!! Proceed with caution!!

[Guest flyinfriend]

>Does this include airport buildings/terminals?Hi,Yes it does. I actually notice a degradation on the terminal buildings more so than the city buildings. This is not a miracle cure for fps, but as I am on the cusp of running smoothly with my P4 2.6 OC'd to 3.1 it buys me about 4-5 fps to keep me in the low 20s. Anything below 20 and it is not smooth to me.Thanks,Tom

[mgbmike 0]

I agree...I gained about 3-4 FPS with your mod and I thank you for that.A couple points on installing though (at least on my system):1. I found that I had to create a folder (I called it temp) just under the folder NAME (not under NAMETexture) and put the 3 files there.2. In your batch file the first line is --copy. The batch file will fail unless this line is removed. Easy enough using notepad.After these 2 changes your mod worked fine.Mike4B8

[Guest flyinfriend]

>I agree...I gained about 3-4 FPS with your mod and I thank>you for that.>A couple points on installing though (at least on my system):>>1. I found that I had to create a folder (I called it temp)>just under the folder NAME (not under NAMETexture) and put>the 3 files there.>>2. In your batch file the first line is --copy. The batch file>will fail unless this line is removed. Easy enough using>notepad.>>After these 2 changes your mod worked fine.>>Mike>4B8Hi Mike,So glad you found an improvement.In my original post I had mentioned to create this new directory:'If you installed FSX in the default directory then you create a new directory called C:Program FilesMicrosoft GamesMicrosoft Flight Simulator XSceneryNAMEtexture temp and copy the nconvert.exe and imagetool.exe utilities to the new directory as well as the bat file. You then just run the bat file.'I think the confusion in item one of your post item 1 was that the folder I created under NAME has the name of 'texture temp'. As you did I also created the 'temp' folder directly under the NAME directory, I just called mine 'texture temp'' I can see how the full directory name I listed ending in 'texture temp' was confusing.As for item two I'm not sure why the bat file failed for you and not for me with the comment sections in there. I don't think I used the correct DOS file comments but it does not fail when I run it with those in there.Glad it worked for you and you saw some improvement.Thanks,Tom

[Guest dykesc]

Tom,Thanks for the improvement. It did make a difference for me. Flying out of JFK as Manhattan starts coming in to view in a turn the pause and stutter is much improved. Not gone, but much better.Need all the help I can get.P4 1.9 Ghz, 512 ram, Radeon 9600 212 mbDykes

[Guest flyinfriend]

Hi Dykes,Glad it helped you. I'd be interested to see others try it, but so far only a couple of people have. It has helped them as well though.thanks,Tom

[Gypsy Baron 10]

>Hi Dykes,>>Glad it helped you. I'd be interested to see others try it,>but so far only a couple of people have. It has helped them as>well though.>>>thanks,>>Tom( See my UPDATE below...this first post is now history )Hi Tom...I set the conditions up with the texture temp directory, etc.Ran the batch file and it APPEARED to do it's thing but onexamination of the texture folder after operations were completeI found that all the textures still had the same size as theoriginals that I had saved. They also had the same time/datestamps...not todays date.I re-ran the batch file and noticed that there were no .bmpfiles being created after the "copy" operation.I then created a test.bat file containing just the first two lines in each operation...( I inserted "pauses" so I couldsee the results of each step )copy ..Textureaquarium.ddscopy ..Textureaquarium_lm.ddsnconvert -out bmp -o %%.bmp -yflip -ratio -rtype linear -resize 128 128 aquarium.ddsnconvert -out bmp -o %%.bmp -yflip -ratio -rtype linear -resize 128 128 aquarium_lm.ddspauseImageTool.exe -e dds -DXT1 -mip -nogui aquarium.bmpImageTool.exe -e dds -DXT1 -mip -nogui aquarium_lm.bmppausemove aquarium.dds ..Texturemove aquarium_lm.dds ..Texturepausedel aquarium.bmpdel aquarium_lm.bmpWhat I observed was that after each nconvert operation I saw the following error message:Bad argument -'yflip'This seems to be preventing the whole batch file from doing whatit was intended to do.Something is definately wrong with the nconvert operations.I'm looking at the -help output of nconvert and notice thatthe copy I am running is version 2.73 dated May 6, 1999.Seems like a rather old utility.Also, there is no "yflip" option listed.Is it possible that you are using a more recent version, andif so, where did you find it?UPDATE:I found a more recent version on the web and it appears to be working OK with my test BAT file. I'll run your files now and I expect Ishall see the chages as advertised :)I just downloaded nconvert from the first URL that popped outof a Google search. That was the ancient version. Dug a bitdeeper into the Goole results and found the newer version. Paul

[northtexas 51]

You can find Nconvert v4.57 dtd 3/3/2006 here: http://perso.orange.fr/pierre.g/xnview/enhome.html