Hi. I just installed FSX, but I'm having a strange problem. When in outside view, my frames are pretty much staying at 24 (locked at 25) but when I switch to the virtual cockpit view they drop to around 8 and when I switch to the 2d cockpit view they drop even more to around 3. This happens with every FSX airliner. For the GA planes, the VC drop is only 2-3 frames, but the super low 2d cockpit frames are with every aircraft. I haven't tested yet with 3rd party aircraft. So does anyone have any idea what might be the cause? I'm running FSX-SP2 without Acceleration on Vista 32bit SP1. My graphic card is GeForce 9800gx2 and processor is Intel DualCore E6600.

Hi,Full Screen or Windowed Mode?Thanks,Jimhttp://www.hifisim.com/banners/hifi-community-sigbanner.jpghttp://www.hifisim.com/

I use full screen, but the same thing happens with windowed mode.

I just found out that the panels work properly in the DX10 mode, but when using it, I get very poor peformance.

I also find that switching to the the 2d panel can cause quite a framerate drop.For reasons I cannot explain, saving the flight in mid-air and reloading can dramatically improve fps in cases like that. As a matter of fact, I only need to hit alt-f, s, and esc to get this effect..Q6600, Nvidia 8600GTS.

Hi All,Could be a video driver issue.Jimhttp://www.hifisim.com/banners/hifi-community-sigbanner.jpghttp://www.hifisim.com/

As Jim states, this sounds like a video driver issue. It may also be related to available memory and excessive disk swapping. Is the same thing happening in DX9 mode?Etienne

When using DX9 I get what I described in the first post, but when using DX10 mode, I no longer get those huge FPS drops in 2D or VC, but the general performance is lower. For example when using outside view in areas I got solid 24 fps in DX9, I get around 19 in DX10 and of course that flickering and other DX10 mode bugs. So that very poor performance was bit of an exaggeration. I'm using currently the latest beta drivers from Nvidia so I'll try to downgrade to the latest offical drivers and see if that helps.

I tried the other drivers and they made no difference. Also after some testing I found out that the huge fps drops happen especially on those planes with glass cockpit. That includes the airliners and the cessna and mooney with glass cockpits. All of those get huge drops in both VC and 2d panels. For the other aircraft the drop is mostly just on 2d panels.

That is odd. I would suggest then to turn off all AI (air in particular) and see if that makes a difference. Moving jetways and AI traffic at large airports can really dent the FPS. Can you duplicate the behavior at KSEA (heavy FPS impact) and say, KASE (low FPS impact)?How much memory do you have in your system? How much remains available as you run FSX?Etienne

All right. I did some more testing. I Removed AI and used default KSEA and default 737: on VC fps = 1.6, on 2d fps = 1.1, (Not a typo, it went all the way down) Spot view fps = 22. Next I tried with default Beaver: on VC fps = 25, on 2d fps = 25, (no drop this time for some reason) Spot view fps = 25.Then same thing in default KASE. With the 737: VC = 2.3, 2d = 1.1, Spot view = 25.And Beaver: VC = 25, 2d = 25, Spot = 25.As you can see 737 with both VC and 2d is like watching a diashow----------------------------------------------------Then DX10 mode. KSEA with 737: VC = 16.5, 2d = 15, Spot = 21.KSEA with beaver: VC = 19, 2d = 20, Spot = 25.KASE with 737: VC = 25, 2d = 25, Spot = 25.KASE with beaver I got 25 for all views.And I have 2gb of RAM.

Yes!! I got it working. The problem was that my graphics card has two GPUs and it was using them both, so I switched the other off and now I get smooth frames even with DX9 mode. Thanks for everyone who tried to help.

I'm happy you got this solved!Etienne