New GEX released. Performance along with FEX?

[Guest 499DRJustin]

So I'm completely sold on the new GEX. I'd LOVE to get this going with FEX. (Ground Environment/Flight Environment X).I keep seeing "improved performance" on the features of both products. What impact will running both of these have on my framerates? It looks like it'd be a real killer to just run one, let alone both hi-def sky and ground textures. Perhaps it's more of an issue of how the textures work within the FSX engine?I have a an E6400 @ 3.4ghz, a evga 7900 GTO at GTX speeds. 2ghz of G.skill 800mhz running at about 850mhz (whatever 1:1 ratio with FSB), and an Asus P5B Deluxe. I get pretty good framerates with settings on high and ultra high. I also run it at 1680X1050 resolution, 16bit, AA at 4x, sometimes 8s, and AF at full via nHancer utility. By pretty good I mean 20 fps at Newark airport ground with moderate traffic and vehicle density, with sliders at ultra high. Once I get airborne and at altitude FPS jumps dramatically. I just don't wanna plunk down nearly $100 USD and find out I'll be running 10fps unless I turn my sliders down to low....Thanks!

[Guest Xiderpunk]

Hi, hope I can answer this without managing to insert over-enthusiatic and un-necessary hype.. so here goes:With FEX we have tested thoroughly with beta testers and many users since release and have found no framerate hit in the vast majority of cases, with many people seeing an improvement in FPS by using FEX over the defaults. The simple reason is this, because all our textures are dynamically created (on an as needed basis) it allows each texture to be sized to exactly what the user wants, and what works best for the users hardware.Let me give you the following example:The default cloud texture is a 256x256 bitmap, we recommend however 1024x1024. Any performance loss associated with the increase in cloud bitmap size can be offset by changing the water from the default size of 1024x1024 to 512x512 or even 256x256.FSX is loading many water textures at 1024x1024 and only 1 single cloud texture so as you can imagine the performance with FEX is usually a net gain over the default textures.DISCLAIMER:We have had some users (very few) report an FPS hit, in our experience of supporting FEX it nearly always is another factor rather than FEX. Also some hardware with lower video memory will struggle with HD clouds, however even resized down to 256x256 or 512x512 they are still an improvement over the defaults.Ok that now said, we can't promise a performance increase on your hardware with your drivers, however we would hope you will get the same FPS or better after installing FEX.What you could also do, is Flight1 offer a 30 day money back guarentee so you could always try before you buy as such. :-)Regards,Chris

[Guest 499DRJustin]

>The default cloud texture is a 256x256 bitmap, we recommend>however 1024x1024. Any performance loss associated with the>increase in cloud bitmap size can be offset by changing the>water from the default size of 1024x1024 to 512x512 or even>256x256.>>FSX is loading many water textures at 1024x1024 and only 1>single cloud texture so as you can imagine the performance>with FEX is usually a net gain over the default textures.>>DISCLAIMER:>>We have had some users (very few) report an FPS hit, in our>experience of supporting FEX it nearly always is another>factor rather than FEX. Also some hardware with lower video>memory will struggle with HD clouds, however even resized down>to 256x256 or 512x512 they are still an improvement over the>defaults.>>Ok that now said, we can't promise a performance increase on>your hardware with your drivers, however we would hope you>will get the same FPS or better after installing FEX.>>What you could also do, is Flight1 offer a 30 day money back>guarentee so you could always try before you buy as such. :-)>>Regards,>>Chris> Amazing...I JUST read this over at your forums. What I find especially useful in this thread http://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=23465 is the GPU chart. I run a 7900 GTO, which when overclocked is more or less a GTX. Those fps are completely in line with what I'm seeing at 1680 by 1050. Their resolution was set at 1600 by 1200 in that benchmark.Does GEX utilize the same "net performance" theory as FEX? Will I see a hit when running in tandem with FEX?Those screenshots look so amazing, I'm not convinced I need a terrain mesh or landclass enhancement add-on at all!

[Guest Xiderpunk]

Yes it was a very useful and informative post from Glenn, in respect of GEX unfortunately I can not comment with any authority, however as far as I am aware they are essentially replacing like-for-like with the defaults. So they should not be any performance hit what-so-ever I would imagine (I don't have this yet myself).Hopefully Anthony or Steve will comment :-)

[Guest 499DRJustin]

>Yes it was a very useful and informative post from Glenn, in>respect of GEX unfortunately I can not comment with any>authority, however as far as I am aware they are essentially>replacing like-for-like with the defaults. So they should not>be any performance hit what-so-ever I would imagine (I don't>have this yet myself).>>Hopefully Anthony or Steve will comment :-)Yeah...I just noticed there was a whole announcement thread on the new version. Probably should ask there huh? Woops...Thanks for the quick response and support!

[bkeske 0]

>Will I see a hit when running in tandem with FEX?I have both, and although I was only testing last night, and not actually flying too much, I would say that you may actually see a FR increase with GEX. At worse, it may be equal to the defaults. What comes most into play here is the amount of autogen you are using. My initial 'gut feeling' is that autogen is better managed in GEX, and I have have to consider/reconsider my FSX.cfg settings here. But outside your auotogen, my feeling is you may actually see an increase in performance.Regardless, GEX and FEX are two separate programs doing two separate things, and one does not effect the other at all. FEX has more latitude on changing texture preferences in term of resolution...but again...we are are talking about different textures here, i.e clouds vs. ground.The other program I have Ultimate Terrain, will also effect things. With GEX, I will probably have to re-address how FS, UT, and GEX all are 'calibrated' with one another, but FEX simply does not effect those others.

[TRauppius 0]

I have been using FEX for several weeks on my older 3GHz/P4/2GB/XP with 256MB 7600GT and FSGenesis Mesh and Landclass rig and have experienced a significant improvement in appearance while also getting a slight boost in FPS versus the default textures; no problem with FEX....well done!However, as with many folks with rigs like mine I am always fighting the constant FSP and blurry tradeoff/battle with FSX and have achieved a (just) acceptable compromise by using many of the tweaks from the RTM/SP1 era; especially the texture tweaks to reduce the size of the textures for trees, buildings, misc. objects, and the scenery global ground textures. This worked very well and I was finally able to get nlt 15FPS with Acceleration and complex planes (LVLD-767, for exanple) over the big towns like Seattle and NY.Then GEX arrived. I love the improved look and realism, and indeed it does look spectacular at 0.6m and dense autogen. The problem is that the texture load has gone way over the limited capability of my rig....again! It is fine in rural areas, or when flying low and slow, but +200 knots with the "adjusted" autogen and new textures over complex scenery areas leads quickly to mass blurries, menu fuzz/fade, some vertical spike visual artifacts, too low FPS and the inevitable lock-up.I am going to ask the GEX guys if it is possible to use nconvert and imagetool to resize their textures prior to overloading them into the FSX teture directories. Perhaps the resulting sacrifice of detail would not be too high a price to pay. If possible, I could finally "rest in peace" and enjoy flying if I can just find a way to use GEX without overburdening my system.Todd

[Guest jase439]

GEX had no performance impact on my system whatsoever (I would not expect it to, considering it's just swapping textures 1:1). It does change autogen placement a bit, so that might possibly impact frames for some depending on how your sliders are set. The only true impact I might see is if you have to boost your texture resolution to 1m or 60cm, which you really do need to get the full benefit of GEX. I was running with these settings to begin with, so there was no FPS hit to be had there.FEX hurt me a bit with the 1024x1024 clouds (especially with Active Sky which creates numerous cloud layers). I dialed those back to 512x512 and my frames bounced right back. I honestly can't tell the difference. I suppose I'm just not a connoisseur of cloud formation ;-).So far, I'm using GEX for my ground textures, FEX for atmospherics and lighting, using some features from UT which is adding coastlines and streams and landclass/waterclass (although I must say I am disappointed with how poorly the roads blend in and they look like crap if you suffer at all from the blurries - so roads are always off for me), 10m terrain mesh from FSGenesis, and ASX to render my weather. My sim looks like a d*mn postcard now.Alas, I can only enjoy it from the Maule or other slow flying low-altitude VFR aircraft. FSX blurries really put a damper on things for faster aircraft. All around its still a very good sim, but they really bungled the texture engine this time around which steals thunder away from these products' true potential. Unless there's hope in h**l for an SP3, it doesn't look like we'll see a fix for it until FS11 :. J

[McCrash 3]

I have GEX and haven't noticed any impact on performance.It looks great.

[scott967 62]

Confirming, it appears to be a one-for-one texture replacement, with new autogen annotation files. Don't know if the new autogen is more or less dense, but that of course can be set by slider and fsx.cfg mods.scott s..