World of (traffic) AI + Framerates General Inquiry

[Guest SkoalFyfan]

I have a fairly decent rig.E6600Nvidia 6800 640MB GTS2 gigs Mushkin ram Vista UltimateThe increase in framerate that I saw when I upgraded from XP to Vista was ASTOUNDING. I now got close 20 FPS in major airports running everything at Ultra High.I recently installed World of AI Traffic and downloaded every single traffic pack and installed them (what a pain!)Anyhow, my major airport FPS has dropped now to ~ 10fps using traffic settings of about 70% / 30%. My question is 3 part:1 - What the heck are the two traffic sliders and their differences? Hovering over both, each say they modify traffic volume on ground and air. Is the first one ground and the second slider then air? 2 - Would increasing my RAM to 4 gigs help with my traffic settings and put me back close to 20 FPS in majors with these settings? 3 - What are the optimum traffic settings with WofAI anyway? I was reading how Microsoft doesn't recommend raising traffic levels beyond 70% somewhere.Regards,Paul

[tf51d 284]

FS was not designed to handle all the traffic we're throwing at it, so the more you add the slower it will be. I run mine at 100% Airline, I have no GA traffic though. While I have seen a decrease with the most recent traffic files I added, it still ok. I'm pretty much at a point I don't think I'll be adding anymore though. (Except maybe Frontier Airlines if WOAI ever releases that one.) If your starting to see an unacceptable hit, you'll need to reduce more either with the slider or removing some of the traffic files. That's what's good about WOAI. It has one traffic bgl per airline, so it's just a matter of eliminating some airlines in your environment. Hopefully some you won't miss much! You can also reduce the impact by reducing other settings like cloud distance, water levels autogen etc...

[RFields5421 1]

1 - What the heck are the two traffic sliders and their differences? Hovering over both, each say they modify traffic volume on ground and air. Is the first one ground and the second slider then air?On the ground - simply means aircraft scheduled to be parked on the ground at airports within about 100 nm of our aircraft waiting to begin flights at some time in the future.In the air - simply means aircraft scheduled to be in the air flying through the grids around your aircraft. Some will be landing at airports in the active AI zone, some will only be passing through.Which aircraft are subject to which slider?In the aircraft.cfg file for each repaint - if atc_airline= has any entry - that repaint is airline traffic. If there is no entry or that line is not present in the fltsim.x section - that repaint is GA traffic. It doesn't matter is the aircraft is a Cessna or a B747 - just the entry in the atc_airline=However the % slider is also frequently mis-represented. It does not control the percentage of AI traffic. It sets a threshold of the AI flight plans which will be displayed.Every AI flight plan has a % number written into the plan by the flight plan designer. For FS2004 many FP designers like to use 1% for ALL flight. Which means if the AI slider is at 1% or any setting above 1% = 100% of the flights will display/ be flown.The WoA American Airlines & British Airlines packages are setup that way. WoA has started to randomize the % in the flight plans they receive from various designers - such as their recent update to the Continental Airlines package. It will take some time for them to work their way through all their packages. And of course some very small airlines need to be set to display their two or three aircraft at low percentages.2 - Would increasing my RAM to 4 gigs help with my traffic settings and put me back close to 20 FPS in majors with these settings?Possibly not. Even Vista doesn't effectively use the RAM above 3GB without some technical tricks.Everyone has to understand that when they add AI traffic, they add tens of thousands of extra polygons to be displayed at busy airports. Plus you add many, many CPU cycles to track sometimes several hundred aircraft which you cannot see but are active in the 100nm or so around your aircraft. If those aircraft do not have sufficient parking at all the airports - it will also cause slowdowns on your computer.Finding a good setting which works is a balancing act. But at some airports - "realistic" traffic is not going to allow high FPS - in FS2004 or FSX. The London area averages almost 1,200 AI aircraft with realistic traffic. New York City almost 900, Los Angeles800, etc.The very busiest airspaces with the most traffic are always going to be the hardest on the computer.3 - What are the optimum traffic settings with WofAI anyway? I was reading how Microsoft doesn't recommend raising traffic levels beyond 70% somewhere.Microsoft added a setting to airport properties in FSX which did not exist in FS2004 - a traffic scalar setting. The default setting for every airport in FSX is 70%.As far as we can tell - it has no impact upon the number of AI aircraft displayed in the sim while the program is running. That is strictly a function of the traffic file(s) to set the number of aircraft - and if the traffic % is randomized - the AI % sliders.What it does impact is the traffic created by use of Microsoft's Traffic Database Builder program. If an airport is set to 70% - TDBB will not allow the flight plans to schedule more than 70% of the airport's parking spots to be used at any one time. It will discard any extra flight plans.The default FSX AI traffic is generated with TDBB - so any traffic more than the default AI traffic level @ 100% AI is probably more than the airport is setup to handle without adding more parking spots.The My Traffic X program used TDBB to generate it's traffic files - but I understand they have modified the traffic scalar for many airports to allow a higher percentage of parking to be scheduled.All other AI traffic programs - Ultimate Traffic, Traffic 2005, Traffic, Project AI and World of AI use variations of TrafficTools - which has no checks of airport capacity when it creates traffic files.If the flight is in the flightplan - TTools will compile the flight.Only you can determine which setting on the traffic sliders will work best for you on your computer. If you have two computers - it is very likely you will need different settings for each.

[Guest SkoalFyfan]

A) Frontier Airlines is available through WOAI. I remember it being one of my packages that I installed.:( What kind of framerates do you get with your rig. currently?>FS was not designed to handle all the traffic we're throwing>at it, so the more you add the slower it will be. I run mine>at 100% Airline, I have no GA traffic though. While I have>seen a decrease with the most recent traffic files I added, it>still ok. I'm pretty much at a point I don't think I'll be>adding anymore though. (Except maybe Frontier Airlines if WOAI>ever releases that one.) If your starting to see an>unacceptable hit, you'll need to reduce more either with the>slider or removing some of the traffic files. That's what's>good about WOAI. It has one traffic bgl per airline, so it's>just a matter of eliminating some airlines in your>environment. Hopefully some you won't miss much! You can also>reduce the impact by reducing other settings like cloud>distance, water levels autogen etc...

[RFields5421 1]

I now got close 20 FPS in major airports running everything at Ultra High.Let's talk about settings.As I mentioned above - adding AI aircraft adds tens of thousands or even possibly hundreds of thousands of polygons to be displayed at the airports.Each polygon add a very small hit to FPS - a hundred thousand - say 25 AIA B747 aircraft - adds a noticable hit to FPS.You have other settings which control polygons at your airports.The Scenery Complexity setting - Jetways are very polygon heavy, especially when moving because the displayed polygon counts keep changing. Every building displayed add polygons, every common library object adds polygons - some are very polygon heavy.At some airports - LIRF for example probably have a few tens of million polygons just in the default buildings. Microsoft set the default buildings so that almost no buildings are displayed at the NORMAL scenery density setting.Now personally I like the is setting at Extremely Dense - because that is the only setting to get all the jetways (Normal has no jetways).But at LIRF - the difference between Normal and Extremely Dense is 44 FPS to 21 FPS on my system with full WoA traffic.With no AI traffic the difference is 51 FPS to 24 FPS.So the airport buildings hit my system harder than the AI traffic.Autogen - Autogen is an amazing difference in FS2004 and FSX.Setting your autogen to extremely dense can add 60,000 polygons of trees and 120,000 polygons of buildings per tile to your FS world.In FS2004 that same setting was 4,000 polygons of trees and 12,000 polygons of building.Since your display area can be many tiles - you can easily add a few million polygons very quickly.Autogen setting of NORMAL is approximately 400-500% as much autogen as FS2004.On my best system - changing the Autogen from Normal to Extremely Dense at LIRF takes my FPS from 21 FPS with to 11 FPS - that is with full WoA AI and Extremely Dense Scenery Complexity.Anything above Normal Autogen is too much for my system at this stage.Cloud draw distance - this can be a real FPS killer if you have Detailed clouds and your Cloud coverage density very high.I have the draw distance as low as possible but increase the Detailed Cloud coverage to High for a very good coverage. Yes, it does look have an impact when I fly very high - but again - it's a balance act.Airport vehicle density - I like this at the Maximum setting because that is the only way to get all the pushback tugs and baggage cart/ loaders at all the gates. But it also causes problems at a lot of FSX default airports. No small percentage of FSX default parking spots will never allow AI aircraft to pushback and takeoff because the airport vehicle network doesn't work correctly at almost all airports. This is something wich needs a lot more study - but can really impact FPS.Land and sea traffic - can be a big hit on FPS - I keep mind down to 10%. Seems to be an effective level with a lot of traffic. I don't really need to see rush hour traffic jammed on every freeway in FSX.Light bloom - this is a real FPS killer - keep it turned off. The effect isn't work the effort.Water Effects - anything in the 1.x range does not enable reflections. The change from High 1.x to Low 2.x is a huge FPS hit. But there is no reason to go above Low 2.x at this point.When you play with settings - look for things you can visibly see - and see their impact.I think you will find you have just as good a visual experience with many settings not at the highest levels - and a better FSX experience with higher FPS.

[tf51d 284]

>>A) Frontier Airlines is available through WOAI. I remember it>being one of my packages that I installed.>>:( What kind of framerates do you get with your rig.>currently?A. Only their commuter airline Frontier Jet Express is available in WOAI currently, still waiting on the mainline. I just downloaded the AI aircraft and flightplans from AVSIM, so I may try to build it manually! B: Currently with non complex models, I get 15-20 in dense areas like New York, 20-30 most other places on the ground and 35-70 in the air. (Depending on weather conditions and the amount of traffic in the area.)Reduce about 6 to 8 FPS for the Level-D 767. Captain Sim 757 is even worse, although I just completed a Panel Merge with the LDS including parts of the VC with an integrated FMC and it brings it back up to the LDS performance levels (Maybe a little less), which is acceptable for a complex aircraft. PS. Before anybody asks. Sorry guys this is personal use only. I can't distribute the files for obvious copyright reasons. As much as I would like to provide instructions how to do it, this was a very complex merge, with a lot of trial and error, so I don't think I could easily do that without the risk of causing more harm than good. It is possible though.