A Strange Marriage of RTM and SP1

[PhilTaylor 45]

Mike,I thank you for that. I believe most of your work is quite good, and it is unfortunate that in a couple of threads we have gotten off to the wrong foot. I'd offer a peace pipe :-)Phil

[Geofa 108]

So much for the season of good will....Locked...http://www.mediafire.com/imgbnc.php/1b5baf...b9f427f694g.jpgMy blog:http://geofageofa.spaces.live.com/

[Guest jase439]

As reported by several others, the infamous "blurries" problem introduced in SP1, magically go away when you revert to RTM. Frame rates are in the toilet, of course, but the terrain has never looked better - even at 400 knots. I've seen this first hand and bounced back and forth between RTM and SP1 with exactly the same settings and witnessed a very clear and reproducible result.Of course, the downside to RTM is that many of the popular add-ons like FSUIPC and Level-D will not work (largely in part because they require the newer SimConnect.dll). For sh*tz n giggles I decided to try marrying RTM and SP1 to create a kind of SP0.5 :).Indeed, I managed to conjure up an RTM build that inherits the data patches from SP1, uses the original RTM engine, and allows third-party mods to run "as-if" SP1 were installed.TO do this, prior to installing SP1, I backed up the following files from my root FSX folder:ablscpt.dllacontain.dllactivate.exeai_player.dllapi.dllatc.dllcontrols.dlldemo.dlleula.dllfacilities.dllfe.dllflight.dllfs-traffic.dllfsui.dllfsx.exeg2d.dllg3d.dllgps.dlllanguage.dlllivingwater.dllmain.dllmultiplayer.dllpanels.dllsim1.dllsimprop.dllsimpropace.dllsimpropext.dllsimscheduler.dllsound.dllsymmap.dllterrain.dllui.dllutil.dllvisualfx.dllweather.dllwindow.dllxuipc.dllThese are the core files that are patched by SP1. I may not need ALL these files, but upon inspection of the DLL import table of terrain.dll (where I suspect the blurry problem lives), I realized all the DLLs are deeply intertwined with one another and its better to keep the core binaries a matched set rather than attempt to cherry pick only the ones I needed.Next, I installed SP1.Then, I copied over the RTM binaries I backed up over top the ones installed from SP1.Lastly, in the C:WINDOWSWinSxS folder there are two side-by-side versions of SimConnect.dll. To ensure that the SP1 version is always loaded I stomped the copy in this folder:x86_Microsoft.FlightSimulator.SimConnect_67c7c14424d61b5b_10.0.60905.0_x-ww_429211e9...with the one in this folder...x86_Microsoft.FlightSimulator.SimConnect_67c7c14424d61b5b_10.0.61242.0_x-ww_35e8ee9aSure as I'm sitting here, I was able to fire up the game, load up Level-D and experienced mostly blurry free flight at 300 knots at high altitude. All FSUIPC functionality is present as well. No problems with utilities like ASX either.Here's the rub, though. Unless you are packing some serious hardware, autogen has to stay OFF (completely). Autogen rendering is what buried performance in RTM and what was fixed in SP1 (that in turn gave us the "blurries" in trade). Low-altitude bush pilots may find this an unacceptable loss. You can turn autogen on - it still works - but be prepared for your frame rates to take it in the shorts.I attempted to do the same with SP2. However, I found that changes made to the MDL files cause the VC panel gauges to not render when the RTM binaries are present. Perhaps with more time I could have puzzled this out, but since SP2 adds no value to me (a lowly DX9 user) except more bugs, I did not see the point in trying.I should caution: this is not a "100% blurry-free" solution. Just as in FS9, you still get the occasional blurring when the simulation falls behind, but its very clear that the terrain texturing engine keeps up MUCH better than SP1 or SP2. I would say it's nearly on par with FS9 in this regard. Better yet, as you throw more CPU at the sim, the simulation is less likely to fall behind and the response of the texturing engine responds in kind (unlike SP1 or SP2 where throwing $2000 hardware at the problem does absolutely nothing for many people). Please note, the RTM engine doesn't scale to multiple-cores (but therein may be the reason the blurries exist in the first place) but the FIBER_FRAME_FRACTION is very effective with this release in tuning how much rendering cycles are given to the terrain engine so you can strike your own personal balance of quality vs performance.Also, on a side note, if you have alot of background service crap and device drivers for your umpteen different peripherals like I do, I found that setting the fsx.exe process priority to Above Normal gives me a slight nudge in performance as these services will tend to yield their CPU time more often. There are utilities like TuneXP which you can also use to give the foreground application a priority boost as well. Nothing to write home about, but any lift you can get is a positive one.Anyway, maybe someone will find this useful if you're willing to trade out your autogen for crisper terrain textures. If you're feeling "dangerous" and want to try something different because everything else has failed, grab a beer and give this a try.Cheers,J