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Guest X15

VFR Real Scenery SE England performance issue

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Guest X15

Hi guys,Has anyone else installed this software from Just Fligh for FSX?For the first hour it ran pretty well, now I have the stutters.I originally put it on the same RAID 0 array as FSX. Thinking this might be the problem I've now moved it to its own single drive but have the same problem. In both cases the drives were defragged after the instal.I've gone from running at a smooth 40-50 FPS with the standard ground textures (no autogen I prefer 100% traffic) to the same but dropping to 8 FPS periodically which results in freezing and stutters. Lowering the FPS lock doesn't help, nor does lowering any of my other settings such as weather, traffic, terrain mesh, texture size etc etc.Any help or thoughts appreciated, disabling the photo scenery gives me back my very fluid 40-50 FPS.This isn't ment as a dig at either piece of software, FSX is superb and the VFR Real Scenery is fantastic (I can spot my house and my local airfied is spot on) I just need to sort out why I'm not getting 100%Thanks for any suggestions,Gemma

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Guest X15

Hi Allcott,I should have mentioned that, yes the patch has been applied and it shows as applied in the Real Scenery folder. (I think, this is shown by a file in the VFR scenery folder which states update01 installed, I used the patch file from the PC Pilot cover disc).Just to add to my first comments, I've run through as much as I can think of. I disabled the mesh (I know the Just Flight mesh is more complex), no difference. The issue occurs only when the photo scenery is enabled.Gemma

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Guest wyoming

I don't know what your specs are but given your reported 40-50 fps, I assume they must be high. Perhaps an AGP aperture set too low in the BIOS? Mine was at 64 and 256 works much better. There was a thread about that not so long ago. I'm considering buying the part 3 and I'm interested in what you find!

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Guest fatboysim

How long does it take for your flight to load once you have chosen it? I use Horizon's VFR product and had problems relating to the number of file accesses made by FSX to the scenery. This manifested itself in long load times (up to 15 minutes) and stutters in flight. For some bizarre reason it turned out to be use the of a modified display driver. When I went back to the Standard ATI Catalyst, all was well.Simon

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Guest X15

Hi Wyoming, I'll look at the BIOS settings for sure as I need to have a dig around in there today anyway.I'll list the specs and settings I'm running as it might help others offering possible solutions:Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 2.4 GHZASUS P5N32-E SLI 680i2x Corsair 1 GBSapphire X 1950XTXWD Caviar SE16 320 GB S300(OS)2x WD Caviar SE16 320 GB S300 RAID 0 (FSX)+(Page File primary)WD Caviar SE16 320 GB S300(VFR Real Scenery SE England)XP Pro SP2 + updatesMS Photo scenery patchSettings:Level of Detail radius - LargeMesh complexity - 100 mTexture Resolution - 1mWater effects - High 1.xScenery complexity - very sparseAutogen density - noneLand detail textures (ticked)Above are recommended settings from Just Flight which I have set, reducing the settings makes no differenceI've mucked around with traffic, weather etc with no improvement, turning everything up doesn't make it better or worse either.I have no Overclocking and no tweaks applied to FSXAny suggestions welcome, I've waited a long time for the scenery and it completes my 'dream' setup, so come on guys what do I need to do to get it flying, I need to get in some circuit practice at my local field ;0)Best regards,Gemma

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Guest X15

It takes longer to load than before I installed the scenery, but nothing like 15 minutes. One thing I have noticed is that the initial screen is 'sticky'. When the plane preview loads it is usually a little slow and hesitant, then it starts to spin and I can use the buttons to make my selections for the flight. Now it is slower and it is quite a while before the buttons become clickable.How do I know if the display driver has been modified and if it has how to I get back to the standard ATI Catalyst?

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Guest cwright

This is exactly the same problem we have seen in the Horizon scenery. This is not surprising as they probably use the same technique for creating the scenery bgl files (there are no separate texture files which means that the bgl files are very large). These problems are almost certainly an FSX problem and probably only Microsoft can fix them.Fortunately we have quite a bit of experience already with the Horizon scenery. The fundamental problem is that, when loading the first flight, FSX insists on heavily accessing *all* the Horizon scenery files - even if the flight is in Japan! On some systems - but, strangely, not all - this can make FSX bog down, causing extremely long load times of up to 25 minutes (yes, that's not a typo!)In your case, the delay before you can use the FSX interface occurs because, during the load process, FSX actually loads the default flight (no, I don't know why either, it's a ridiculous idea - how many people will want to regularly start with the default flight?)Fortunately there's a simple fix to stop this preloading. Open fsx.cfg and find the (Main) heading. Right underneath the Main heading, add this line: DisablePreload=1You should now find that loading FSX is normal again. The bad news is that you may see a greater delay when loading the first flight, even if it's on the other side of the world.It gets worse. Again, even if flying on the other side of the world (e.g. Japan), FSX continues to insist on accessing the VFR files. When this occurs I see stuttering and a fall in frame rates. This is clearly ridiculous, as I am thousands of miles away from the UK.If you're interested you can run FileMon when loading and running flights. If you're starting a flight in, say, Japan I think most likely you'll find that FileMon shows heavy accesses to the Just Flight scenery.Microsoft (in particular, Adam Szofran) is aware of the problem. I hope there will be a fix for this as it certainly impacts performance, and performance is what SP1 is primarily aimed at.Best regards, Chris

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Guest X15

Thanks for that Chris, I can certainly hear the drive access when I start up FSX now and while the interface is playing up.Now for another question, what has happened to my fsx.cfg? I've searched all my drives and I can't find it anywhere, only a couple of user defined .cfg files I have saved.

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Guest X15

Hi again Chris,Used the DisablePreload=1 tweak, everyone should put this in their fsx.cfg if they haven't already, that little plane stuttering around in circles bugged me from the first time I used FSX, now it's cured. No problems loading after, quite quick.I've unistalled the VFR scenery until I'm in a better mood, very expensive accessory arrived today in USED condition.. GRRRR I won't mention who or what until they have had a chance to sort it out. I also bought a CH yoke, so need to play with that for a while before revisiting the photo scenery in tweak mode. I've an idea that maybe if I go for a minimal instal for the area I most need I might be able to use it until MS fix the underlying problem (theory being there will be less and small files for FSX to access).Thanks to all, if it wasn't for you lot I would have set fire to my rig at some point today LOL,Best regards,Gemma

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Guest wyoming

This full loading thing is pretty much the only way to improve performance with what we have now (aside from perhaps n-core issues). This is interesting also in the perspective of the "my app/OS does it *all* for everyone" mindset... Which winds up with everything bloated and spurs the race for CPU speed...Once this mindset is done with, a tall order no doubt, I can't believe one couldn't limit the loading to what is reasonable (within drawing distance or even within sight [e.g. cloud layers].)

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Hi Gemma,I don't know whether it will help you or not but, having just set up a VFR-GenX configuration file with Horizon's recommendations, I note that they recommend unchecking 'Land detail textures'. Might be worth a try. I seem to be getting quite good results and even with their 3D Autogen demo in Snowdonia activated I am achieving 30fps quite consistently. I have also set my visibility to 30 miles - that does help a lot and is also much more realistic. That's what I liked/like about FS9.Incidentally, is your GPU AGP or PCI-E? If the latter, then forget about the AGP aperture - just leave it at the BIOS default - usually 64MB. Same goes for latency adjustments.MikeASRock 939Dual-SATA2, AMD Athlon 64X2 4800+ (2400MHz)(Toledo), 2GB Crucial PC3200 DDR400 Ram 3-3-3-8 (2T)(Dual Channel), (PCI-E)Sapphire ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 512MB (Catalyst 7.1 WHQL), Hyundai ImageQuest Q17 17" TFT LCD 20ms Digital Monitor (1280x1024x32), SB Audigy2 ZS Platinum (Drivers version 5.12.0001.1196 WHQL), WD Caviar SE16 250GB (WD2500KS) SATAII + Hitachi Deskstar T7K500 ATA133 UDMA-6 (320 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 29), Logitech MX1000 Laser Mouse, Windows XP Home Edition (SP2), DirectX 9.0c

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Guest X15

Hi Mike,GPU is PCI-E, I wondered why I couldn't find the AGP setting in the Bios LOL (now I know what AGP is, fun all this learning about computers).Tried your suggestions, no go, I also dumbed down the installation to 2m resolution, installed the minimum area for my requirements, shut down everything, water effects, A.I. traffic, weather everything. I still get 40-50 FPS but with massive sudden drops hence the stutters.I've contacted Just Flight regarding the issue. Meanwhile I guess I'll just uninstal and maybe try out the Horizon scenery for the area I wanted.

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Guest wyoming

to see if Vista would solve your problem... Kind of an expensive tweak though.. Lol.

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