There is something terribly wrong with FSX SP1 and my setup. I read Phil's blog saying you should put all sliders down to the left and work your way up. Well, I have had terrible results with autogen trees on mountains. Everywhere else fps went up a lot (30-50%) with SP1 but above trees my fps drops to lower fps than before SP1.So, I thought I'd give Phil's advice a try. (Also installed the latest DX and nVidia drivers, although the last one I used is still the newest one.) I put EVERY (and I mean EVERY!) slider to the right and turned EVERY available option off. Apart from Autogen density: I set that to Extremely dense. Fps was limited to 25. I was really interested what holds autogen back. Now before SP1 I could fly abouve mountains with extremely dense trees with about 18-20 fps. No real problem. And besides that I had a LOT of other option on and pretty high.To my amazement fps with ALL options OFF but ONLY autogen on extremely dense, the fps is EXACTLY THE SAME as with all other option ON! It hovers between 9-12!So the weird thing is I get 11 fps with ALL options OFF but autogen on extremely dense and I get 11 fps with ALL options ON (and pretty high) with autogen on extremely dense...This does not make sense... Turning other options off or on doesn't make a difference! Well, with everyting off it all looks AWFULL, very awfull indeed, but with the same fps. I tried various things like Affinity mask but nothing helps. It's driving me crazy! I get very nice fps above cities with A LOT of autogen, but trees drops fps! I just don't get it...I wonder if everyone else would get the same fps when they turn ALL options down and off (and I mean ALL) except for autogen at extremely dense...

Okay, I've tested some more with various settings. Last week I decided to forget about autogen altogether, so I disabled it and put the sliders in such a way that I had a nice envorinment, without autogen. So I use water 2x high, pretty high mesh settings, scenery objects at very dense, a lot of clouds, etc. etc.Just now I tested WHICH autogen setting kills my fps. And I found out which one it is!!!With autogen at Normal fps above the mountains is 23. Very nice. Lovely. Specially since I got water at 2x high and so on. Setting autogen ONE NOTCH higher, to Dense, makes the fps drop to 12!!! So ONE notch on ONE slider suddenly drops fps to 50%!Is that normal? I would like to see what happens with fps if some other people turned their autogen from dense to normal!The nice thing is that now I CAN fly with autogen after all! Even though it's not dense... But it IS very weird that ONE slider and even one notch can make such a difference, no matter what I do with the other sliders...!

As a heavy high-flyer I hate autogen so always have it turned off but after SP1 I find that I get higher FPS with autogen turned on (at any setting). It seems SP1 is optimized for autogen to be on. ==Marten:Weber==P-D920 oc3.64MHz 2GB RAM WinXP ATI X1900+1024MB 2xSATA250 2xVIEWSONIC 19"Best AI available today: www.world-of-ai.com

Well, tried what you asked and set everything to minimal....unlimited I got fluctuations from 20 to 250 fps so I locked at 30 fps. Turned autogen to max and no difference, locked at 30, unlimited it went up to 75 and down to 20. This was at the active runway for PANC.core2duo, 7900 gs, 4 gb ram. Looks like you got things solved! Good news.Ian.

Is that normal?I don't have FSX in front of me right now but the setting for Autogen should be:Very_SparseSparseNormalDenseVery_DenseExtremely_DenseSo the impact would be (These numbers are to represent a point - not the real ones):Very_Sparse - 100 trees per tileSparse = 250 trees per tileNormal - 500 trees per tileDense - 1,000 trees per tileVery_Dense - 1,300 trees per tileExtremely_Dense - 1,600 trees per tileSo you increase the number of objects to be displayed by 100% and it cuts your FPS by 50%.You pay a price for more objects. I have no idea if the one notch setting in the slider is a 100% increase in objects, but would not be surprised.One change I would suggest is to lower the Water Effects to 2.x Low.Adding several thousand more objects to display is an impact on your system.But the difference between 2.x Low and 2.x High adds several extra passes where the entire frame is recalcualted for the additional effect.I've found Low 2.x allows me to have one notch higher autogen.

>One change I would suggest is to lower the Water Effects to>2.x Low.As I said, changing options hardly have an effect on fps above trees (in my case): I had ALL options OFF and fps dropped to 12, with all options on it STILL is 12...!But I've got SOMETING solved now... I can fly with 25 fps when I got the autogen to Normal. Even with water at 2x high. I tested some more and now I even put the visibility on the weather tab to 100 km and clouds at max and I STILL get 25 above mountains and trees! Mesh settings are also high (complexity at 100) and I do use traffic now (10% for everything). I've got fps maxed to 25 so it might even be higher!All in all I got a LOT higher settings than before SP1 and fps is between 20-25 in the regions I usually fly. I just did a flight around La Guardi, and even there I have an fps between 13-20 (depending on which way I look). Everything lookds awesome (also due to the water at 2x high)! But I still have to get used to a bit less autogen than I used before SP1 (but I've got nice water now, traffic, lots of clouds into the far distance, very high mesh settings, etc.)So... the difference between Autogen on Normal and Dense is my main discovery! Dense gives me 50% decrease in fps, no matter what other settings I use. Even the lowest settings won't help at Dense. Until now I tested all the time with Dense because I love autogen. But now I am very happy with Normal because I can use very high settings and still fly with an average fps of 20-25.

same situation here...i tested RTM before SP1 and I was getting a smooth 19fps (locked) in a mountainous area, after SP1...those frames dropped to 11 (19 locked)I can't fly in mountain areas anymore (Bella Coola) b/c the FPS dropped so dramatically from RTM

My problem with trees is that alot of my airports have TREES right in FRONT on the runway}( If only there was a program or when the sim is being developed, say an area 1/4 mile off each end of a runway there can be no autogen.I am already $250 on addons for FSX and its not much better than when I bought it.FS9 with $700 in addons, which I should have never deleted, is going to seem like a bargain by the time this bloated version gets added on to death..

Depends on which airports you're talking about. I noticed the same thing on some smaller airports and thought it couldn't be correct, but after looking at some pictures of these airports there are trees about 50 feet off the end of the runway and the runways are x'd out about 100 to 200 feet pushing the threshold back. Makes for some tough landings.Ian.

Hi all.FSX renders the viewport using multiple passes. Each pass increases rendering time.The first pass places terrain, mesh, and scenery and aircraft objects.2x water settings add a rendering pass.Bloom adds a rendering pass.Shadows adds a rendering pass.Turn off all shadows, bloom, and reduce water to 1x, and you have reduced rendering passes by a factor of 3. Now your autogen and objects should display with optimum FPS.Traffic also increases rendering time as it requires more CPU usage to calculate movement of all those objects... turn it off if FPS is more important than moving objects.Dick

>same situation here...i tested RTM before SP1 and I was>getting a smooth 19fps (locked) in a mountainous area, after>SP1...those frames dropped to 11 (19 locked)>>I can't fly in mountain areas anymore (Bella Coola) b/c the>FPS dropped so dramatically from RTMAnd what is your autogen setting? Does fps become good again as soon as you set it to Normal?The weird thing that Autogen keeps my fps down in it's own! No matter what settings I use (for instance low 1x water or 2x high water), when autogen goes from Normal to Dense fps drops 50%... I'm sort of glad (...) finally someone else has the same thing: I was wondering if I was the only one with this problem. I mean, a E6600 with 2 Gb Ram and a 8800GTX should be able to run Very dense autogen with everything else on low (!!!) at very good fps!!! Maybe it's a Vista thing...? I'm also having problems with loading a flight again after changing a setting: loading seems to stop sometimes: luckily I found out that al-tabbing to the desktop (or whatever) will start FSX loading again. Something wrong in the memory department...?

>Turn off all shadows, bloom, and reduce water to 1x, and you have>reduced rendering passes by a factor of 3. Now your autogen and>objects should display with optimum FPS.As I said (let's repeat myself ;) ): it does NOT matter how low I put my settings. Going from Autogen at Normal to Dense drops my fps from >20 to about 10-12 no matter what! I tested this with everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) off and low (which made FSX look very awfull). And STILL fps was 10-12 above (lots of) trees. That's not right on a E6600 with 2 Gb Ram and a 8800GTX... BEFORE SP1 I got 19-20 fps at the same location (I saved that specific flight in mid air!), with LOTS of other settings pretty high! So SP1 definitely did something bad with autogen... I can fly now with better fps than before (using water at 2x high and clouds all the way, etc.) as long as I keep autogen at Normal. That's nice, but still something is wrong...

Turn everything off, even the power switch. That way, when you pass by your computer, you only make one pass, and you say to yourself, "I'll Pass FSX today" :-lolSorry Dick, I just had too..Lee

I think we all need to turn off the computer and get some fresh air.FSX like FS2004 is a morphing program thats rarely ever the same twice even on identical computers.I had tweeked it to my likings last night only to sit down this morning to a blurred mess.Im done moving sliders,changing numbers and reading all these "I found the Holy grail" Elvis sightings here.I think I will start the weekend early and by tonight, my world my be a little blurry:-bla

2.x high is re-rendering autogen for reflections. So basically, I think 2.x high is going to have the performance effect of doubling you autogen objects. Don't user 2.x high. (You are probably not going to notice that autogen trees don't get reflected in the water anyway).