Max # of gauges and fps performance?

[Guest sphing]

Can anyone shed some light on these? - Is there a maximum number of gauges allowed?- At what point would you expect to see a drop in performance due to a large number of gauges? (...or complexe coding within a smaller number of gauges)- Is XML slower than C gauges?- Explain how the FS engine processes gauge files?- Does it matter if lump multiple functions into a single gauge or create seperate gauge files for each function?thanksJohn

[Guest Fabio Miguez]

Hey John.Let me try to answer a couple I know, and we will see if someone else will stop by and fill in the rest.1 - Good Question. I do not know, but I have never heard of it.2 - That depends a lot on what kind of gauges you have, and how often they are updated. One good piece of information is that background calculations done in the code, that are not being drawn on the gauge, don't seem to affect frames at all. Meaning you could be churning up some serious equations to get a single number and printing that as a string, and your gauge's impact would be almost nil. Obviously you can't be calculating the mass of the Universe or anything to that proportion, but in simulating aircraft systems with several custom functions, I have never seen a drop (and hear the same from some friends).Gauge update is the other issue. You can sacrifice smoothnes of movement in the gauge for performance. Some developers even let the user set how often the gauge is updated so they can best fit it to their systems.But generally, the greatest frame eaters are vector gauges, such as the EFIS screens on PSS's A320 series, or the radar on Eric Marciano's Mirage (and don't forget hir excellent FREE Airbus panel too ;-)). The PFD in the Cirrus is now to a point where I'd start to use the word complex here and there, and it is using up about 3 fps. On the other hand, the Engie Display, an equal-size vector gauge, doesn't use up as much since a lot of the stuff in it can be drawn only once (static text that won't be overdrawn).3 - Not sure. Arne Bartels can probably answer this better. He does both, I only do C.4 - Besides what I mentioned above, I think what is left to say is that gauges are updated 18 times a second (based on the old DOS clock), but it is becoming apparent that vector gauges can somehow be updated faster, although that needs to be confirmed.5 - No. I assume you mean that either way, you will have one single GAU file after compilation. And if that is the case, it does not matter how many files you had before, and just #included them all in the master .c or .cpp. Now if you have several GAU files I am not sure, I have never tested that.I hope this was of some help.

[badderjet 181]

To your first question: According to the Panel and Gauges SDK, there doesn't seem to be any limit, you may also exceed the 100th gauge. e. g. gauge99=... gauge100=... gauge101=... should still work.Regards,http://www.flightfactory-simulations.com/i...enne_Banner.jpg

[Avcomware 1]

Hi, John.Do search for "avcomware" on this forum, and see if you can find my message about some of your cocerns, it may help. If you cannot find the message post here and I will repost. TV

[Guest]

In the cae of xml gauges; put in enough background (not directly driving a needle) code and it will halt the fs-system rather seriously. NOT by means of a serious framedrop, instead ground textures will never be updated and become seriously blurred.