This say's it all for me: Before & after shots over Manhatten.See attachments

This say's it all for me: Before & after shots over Manhatten.See attachments

First my system specs:Athlon XP 2600+ (overclocked from 1.9 GHz to 2.1 Ghz)Geforce 6600GT1.5 GB RAMYeah, not the greatest system, but I get by fine with it.Running stock FSX with a tweaked fsx.cfg to reduce autogen scenery density, I got around 12 FPS in my test location around New York City. After installing SP 1 and reverting to a stock fsx.cfg, I still got around 12 FPS but the scenery was slightly more dense, so no dramatic improvements but a small improvement none the less. However, I was able to bump up my scenery density from "Normal" to "High" which dropped a few frames (down to about 9 or so) but the game was still responsive and playable allowing me to successfully navigate through the thick cluster of skyscrapers in Manhattan. I haven't tested it with my tweaked fsx.cfg, so I might be able to buy a few frames back.Now in my normal flying location around my sparsely populated hometown airport, framerates got as high as 25 (locked at 30) which is a small but welcome improvement over the 15 to 20 I was getting before.One nice improvement is that stuttering has pretty much been eliminated. I can look around the virtual cockpit fluidly with no pauses or hesitation. Previously, the game would briefly pause while it loaded in scenery for the new view, but now, smooth as silk. I do notice some occasional texture and autogen scenery pop-in, but I think this is an acceptable trade-off.All in all, not the dramatic performance improvements I was hoping for (and which I really didn't expect given my machine specs) but some welcome improvements none-the-less.

>Chris,>>The major part of the performance gains in SP1 is based on a>more efficient use of multiple core cpu's. So obviously a>single core won't benefit as much as a multiple core.>>Ulf B :-)The API and engine optimizations also have a significant impact. I got a 30% - 75% (sometimes 100%) improvement on my single-core Athlon64.

>With FS2004 I have thousand of hours with the same PC and no>any problem with all sliders full right 1600x1200 32 bits>also, same Vista SO. How can you have 'thousand of hours with the same PC' when you state that you have a Intel Core2 Quad Extreme QX6800? The QX6800 was only released last month. I'm calling BS.

>>With FS2004 I have thousand of hours with the same PC and>no>>any problem with all sliders full right 1600x1200 32 bits>>also, same Vista SO. >>>How can you have 'thousand of hours with the same PC' when you>state that you have a Intel Core2 Quad Extreme QX6800? The>QX6800 was only released last month. I'm calling BS.>> Maybe elapsed time measured in FSX with simulation rate set to 64X ;-)Ulf B

Phil - I think I love you! (in a brotherly sort of way) :-hahGraphics: VH; adv.an - on; lns. flr./lt blm. - off; Trilin - on; AA - off - on in ATI ccc.A/C: 3-D; hi-res; a/c casts gnd shd - on; a/c ldg lts illum gnd - on; a/c casts shd on self - off.Scenery: LoD - large; Mesh Comp - 30%; Mesh Res - 10m; Text Res - 1m; water - 1x; Land Det txtr - on; Scen Comp - Very Dense; Autogen - Very Dense; Spec Eff - HighWeather: Cld Drw - 60m; No TV; Det. Cld - on; Cov Dens - Med;Traffic: - (Still the biggest hit) Airlines - 16%; GA - 16%; Airport Veh - 0%; Road, ship, boat - 0%**************************************************ActiveSky, Seattle area, 7/10th cloud, SW Bf109:20-100ft @ 500 km/hr - 18 - 22 fps, all above internal (3d - TrackIR)and external - 24-25 fps, locked at 25. Spinning frm 7000 - 24-25 fps. No tweaks, no stutters, and extremely happy. Thanks you, Aces.:-beerchug

Chris,I do not understand why MSFS9 or MSFSX would be wastingpc time (frame rates/quality expenses) pullingscenery from distant places. IMO it should be"working the scenery" for where you are ... say a 200mile radius. The plane is like going 500Kts groundspeed so scenery updates could be real smooth.The exception would be if the pilot did a slew.Then he could expect a long delay to load the new200 mile radius scenery.Do you happen to know how much this does cost in terms of FPS, quality, smoothness and last but not least CTD's?>>Unfortunately the pointless accesses of scenery from half way>around the world (most noticeable when large high resolution>photo realistic scenery is used) has not been fixed. This can>lead to long loading times and stuttering and frame rate loss>in flight.>>>Best regards,> Chris

Kudos to the ACES team! I hope Mr. Gates buys you guys some kind of reward for all the hard work you've been putting in. Maybe he will give you Saskatchewan. Kidding aside, the patch has been a pleasant experience for me. Most of the things that were promised were delivered. The best thing for me is that now I can set the water to 2X medium, which is very nice. Issues:Bloom is out of the question. I still get a big performance hit with that.Looking around with a TrackIR a lot seems to encourage slow-downs in dense urban areas. I need to test this some more. The slow-downs are not too bad, though.Blue Screen Of Death! I am getting BSOD crashes I didn't get before SP1. I only get them when I am playing with the nVidia stereoscopic drivers for the Eyecessories 3D glasses. I kind of suspect I have my resolution set up wrong, so it might not be an FSX problem but an Nvidia issue. Now that SP1 is out of the way, I can get back to my reviews!Jeff ShylukAvsim Product Reviewer

Just reporting back after playing with FSX + SP1 again this morning.Tried a few different settings of core affinity (3, 2, 1) which resulted in same, core 2 only and slighly lower performance, and core 1 only and slightly lower performance respectively.With the high settings that I use (with a few known FPS killers turned down) and with the default DC-3 that I mostly fly at the moment, I still see only ocassional maxing out of the second core, say every 15 seconds. If I crank the settings higher and get in a jet aircraft, the second core gets a lot more use, so perhaps all really is working as advertised for SP1.In terms of FPS, there is a definate improvement across the board and I have certainly been able to notch autogen up a few slider positions with no penalty over what I was previously getting pre-SP1. I can still get my FPS hovering around the low teens with what I consider to be slightly demanding, but not over the top, settings (ie. global high across the board, AA/AF on, no bloom, water 2.x low, ground shadows on) in a place like KSEA, which had me mildly concerned for this location when the LDS 767 FSX update hits my FSX skies, but I can always save and use a less taxing setting scenario for such flying.Overall, a great job there Phil and the ACES team!Gary

Here are my 2 cents: First a big thanks to ACES for SP1. My 8800 GTX, 6800 core 2 system on Vista 32 has seen a 50% increase in frames (50-100's) flying from KSUN to KLAS but as with pre SP1, when I goto airport (KSFO) at Gate 100 in the F1 Cessna c441, the frames drop to the teens and then a CTD soon follows in < 2 minutes. Just a guess but this is probably due to a resource starvation issue as my AI settings are at 75%. I'm pretty sure that this is related to the nforce driver however (158.42) as the CTD did not occur with 158.19 pre SP1. However, the frames were still in the teens. Anyway, I am not reverting back to the dated XP and XP technologies but just thought this would be useful to the techies.Thanksjja

SP1 did do a lot of good on my system, but it's obvious my system still isn't up to the task, at least to the extent I'd like it to be.I have an AMD64 3200+ / 2GB Ram / Geforce 6800 128mb / Soundblaster Audigy 128mb. With SP1 I can get 20 fps at Toronto or Vancouver with scenery sliders in the mid range, but I still get texture dumps (textures drop to lowest detail level) when I move the view around a lot (especially in Toronto at CYTZ), and especially if I up the resolution from 1024x786 to 1280x1024. So there is a very noticable performance increase, but I can't run FSX where I'd like it. This is not a rant or complaint, just saying that older systems are well, older and may not be up to the job even after SP1.

Excellent work, guys. At least a 75% improvement with virtually no stuttering no matter how high I put the settings.Thanks for the hard work.

I am so thrilled on the great improvement this service pack has brought... bascially for me, I get to run at the same sliders as before, but WITH the default.xml back in FSX - before it had to be removed for good frame rates and steadiness etc., but now the world is grapically tantalizing as it was designed to be! I run on a Dell XPS Gen 2 laptop and it's phenomenal ... locked at 24fps!Peter

My thanks to the ACES team for the work done on SP1 - and the real performance improvement I experience on my Athlon X2 3800+ / 2 Gb RAM / Nvidia 6800 GT 256MbPerfs - I experience an almost 80% increase on Seatle Intl runway (from 12 to 21 FPS), all settings the same except for the FIBER parameter back to 0.40 (from 0.25 pre-SP1) and BANDWIDTH MULT back to 40 (from 100 pre-SP1).(this is with no AI traffic, max Autogen, TreesX1.1, and Clouds/Autogen Buildings/Taxiways/Runways reduced to 50% using Matt Fox's kit)I can now pan 360 without any stutter - pre-SP1 was pathetic.Dual-core usage now almost always 100%+100% (was 100%+10% pre-SP1).I also experience quite a few micro stutters, and some 3-to-5 sec stutters, which made me think a couple of times my PC was crashed - but no, I just need to be patient. I swear the long stutters came with SP1, for the micro ones I think this was always the case pre-SP1, it's just more perceptible now, given the increased FPS and overall smoothness in-between stutters.I also experience blurries, and I noticed I can produce these at will, by panning 360 a few times.Just like pre-SP1, will re-center the 3D view on the 1st touch, but then it does nothing.That's it for my 1st hour flight - going back to enjoy more of itCheersDom