I have been amused lately at the stream of posts advocating mods and various tweaks to XPlane 12.  Not sure why on the technical aspects other than scenery issues (that will get fixed up eventually) - I have been more than happy to ride along with XP12 and the various beta updates and found no reason to tweak or adjust anything - so I run a bog standard sim setup as Laminar makes it - works fine for me. No shortage of claims that x does y or this will give you this or that and ah yes the elusive supercharged FPS and miraculous scenery. 

Though about lots of them, they run from graphics manipulation to basic OS manipulation with everything in  between. Yet to be convinced any of them do anything worthwhile. I remember this game from FSX days where MS left a half finished product out there which called for endless tweaks and mods and even Lockheed Martin need 5 iterations to get it to work reasonably with modern CPU's and GPU's. Just cannot see that with Laminar - the basic release of XP12 was so impressive I ditched FSX and P3D and have avoided the MS world ever since (You want me to download 400GB of bloated code -to do what?).

Going to sit them all out - maybe a lot of us should take a deep breath and get to appreciate what a word not allowed good job Laminar have wrought with bits and bytes across all OS (Mac. Linux and Win) still that need to tinker is an interesting compulsion. 

3 minutes ago, coastaldriver said:

I have been amused lately at the stream of posts advocating mods and various tweaks to XPlane 12. 

Default XP12 works fine, so no, it doesn't need many tweaks.  However, it is way behind the times with its default terrain and accurate placements of buildings, trees, transport and many other important VFR reference objects  The XP Map Enhancement Tool and SimHeaven give me a realistic view of the world. In fact, if it wasn't for those two mods I personally would not be using XP12.  I guess you would be amused at how important correct tree placement is too.  At one of my local airfields, the traffic pattern includes reference to a wood of trees shaped like an elephant - you can actually see the legs, trunk and ears!  SimHeaven accurately plots this visual reference.

Discussing mods that improve realism in the sim is worthwhile - I'm here because of the improved atmosphere, the ease how worldwide ortho can be injected into XP12 and SimHeaven that places accurate VFR objects into XP12. It is probably more amusing that you don't appreciate how important these mods are for XP's future.

 

There are different types of simmers - the flyers and the tweakers. For the latter, their sim of choice is like a toy train set, never finished, never to be played with...but an endless project of adding/tweaking/modding and never being satisfied with.

Normally the latter type tends to gravitate to the other sim because they are naturally more concerned about the looks, less about the way things run, and if you look at the other forum, the content has shifted to 90% discussion of add-ons and enhancements (quite ironic, for a sim that was touted to not need any add-ons because it looks so good out of the box).

I hope that this forum will not degrade like that, but if there is one thing that the tweakers love almost as much as tweaking, then that is to talk about tweaking and showing off their "work". So I actually don´t have much hope 😅.

@Litjan forgot about yet another group... "the uninstallers..."

Well, presently it's as fast to uninstall / reinstall either Xp12 or FS 2024 🤣

No more fun for me 😞

 

2 hours ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

Discussing mods that improve realism in the sim is worthwhile

Not forgetting lossless scaling, without that XP12 would be awful with G-Sync. 

I'd say XP12 currently benefits from being suitable for "just the right amount of tweaks".

Things that are not suitable for everyone, and may require specific hardware or only look right in certain circumstances.

I do not miss the days of having to tweak every hidden setting to get reasonable framerates, and install cloud and lighting art to fix stupid bugs that languished around for decades.

3 hours ago, Litjan said:

There are different types of simmers - the flyers and the tweakers.

Don't forget newbies like me that tweak a lot in week one then become mostly a flyer 😁

1 hour ago, Ianrivaldosmith said:

 

Not forgetting lossless scaling, without that XP12 would be awful with G-Sync. 

This is another thing that can stop people trying XP12 - performance. However, it is another thing that isn't as bad as the myths say.

In MSFS 2024, with most settings on Ultra,  I run at 30 fixed FPS with FG to give 60 FPS.  In XP12 I have many settings on highest, apart from AA & ambient Occlusion, running at 40FPS plus Lossless Scaling for 80FPS.  Of note though is the rendering distance I have set to 'High' - this gives a greater viewing distance than MSFS with much better LODS.

Dont know what there is too tweak. 

Until [subjectively important feature] improves, the tweaking will continue.

1 hour ago, Bjoern said:

Until [subjectively important feature] improves, the tweaking will continue.

🤣

On 6/2/2025 at 6:39 AM, coastaldriver said:

No shortage of claims that x does y or this will give you this or that and ah yes the elusive supercharged FPS and miraculous scenery. 

Though about lots of them, they run from graphics manipulation to basic OS manipulation with everything in  between. Yet to be convinced any of them do anything worthwhile.

Hi,

I can clearly see a difference in performance (for the better) after removing Windows 11 background and user process. I'm down to 61 windows background processors from 93 and user processors are now down to 22. I also run X-Plane 12 via high priority, another good tweak!

As far as X-Plane 12, I prefer the extra kick I get from night lighting using reshade and my own night lighting edits.

Some additional tweaks

#remove powerlines (1 spans)
ROAD_TYPE 22001 12.0000 256.0000 0 0.9 0.9 0.9
ROAD_CENTER 6.000000
SHOW_LEVEL 9
WIRE 0 20000    0.083333 35.599998 0.407865
WIRE 0 20000    0.916667 35.599998 0.407865
WIRE 0 20000    0.000000 30.299999 0.462051
WIRE 0 20000    1.000000 30.299999 0.462051
WIRE 0 20000    0.083333 25.799999 0.544961
WIRE 0 20000    0.916667 25.799999 0.544961
OBJECT_GRADED VERT objects/structures/PowerTowerTallNear.obj    6.000000 6.000000 0.000000 0.000000 256.000000 256.000000 0.000000/0.000000 0.000000/0.000000
OBJECT_GRADED VERT objects/structures/PowerTowerTallFar.obj    6.000000 6.000000 0.000000 0.000000 256.000000 256.000000 0.000000/0.000000 0.000000/0.000000

===================================
 Remove Airport Vehicles from XP12
===================================
1. Navigate to the "apt.dat" file located at ...Global Scenery/Global Airports/Earth nav data
2. Open the apt.dat file with notepad++
3. Replace all the 1400 and 1401 entries in the apt.dat file with blank as follows

        notepad++ find/replace:

        Find what: ^1400.*\n

        Replace with: <blank>

        Search mode: regular expression

        'Replace All' button

If you don't like the view - delete this modified apt.dat file and replace it with your backup apt.dat. If you don't have a backup, just re-run the X-Plane installer.

===================================
 Remove Roadway Vehicles from XP12
===================================
1. Open the settings.txt file within X-Plane 12/resources sub directory
2. Do a search for cars
3. Change the vehicles numbers down to zero

#Set Car Density
SETTING_1 renopt_draw_3d_04 0 reno/draw_cars_05 0    cars/lod_min 0
SETTING_1 renopt_draw_3d_04 1 reno/draw_cars_05 2    cars/lod_min 0
SETTING_1 renopt_draw_3d_04 2 reno/draw_cars_05 2    cars/lod_min 0
SETTING_1 renopt_draw_3d_04 3 reno/draw_cars_05 3    cars/lod_min 0
SETTING_1 renopt_draw_3d_04 4 reno/draw_cars_05 4    cars/lod_min 0

Edited June 4, 20251 yr by Mike_CFII_MEL

8 hours ago, Mike_CFII_MEL said:

 Remove Roadway Vehicles from XP12

Why would one want to do this? They're great to look at

Because he likes to tweak settings 🙂

Hi, with these tweaks, is it possible to reduce the sometimes huge quantity of airport vehicles going around and around? or this is only tied to the WED airport design?