AI and Frame Rate Advice

[Guest groundpounder75]

I need help or some good advice about frame rates and AI traffic. I have had no problems with my frame rates when running with the original traffic.bgl file. I have a GeForce 3 (64M RAM) video card, 1.8Mhz Intel chip and 512M RAM. Now, with the original traffic.bgl file I was getting frame rates around 30-40 FPS with everything in the display settings on max. When I added a bunch of flight plans and more AI my frame rates bottomed out to 2-3 FPS. So, I downloaded one GMAX plane and replaced all the other planes that were used for AI with this one. I have read that GMAX planes are easier on frame rates. So I started FS up and still had the same results with the GMAX plane. The frames were 2-3 FPS. I reduced all the display settings as low as they could go and still nothing. I also removed the texture file from the GMAX folder to see if that would help and it didn't. Am I missing something here? Does anyone else have the same problem I am having? Having the AI traffic is great but when you arrive at a busy airport it becomes impossible to fly. If anyone has any good advice I would love it. Thanks,

[Guest Joshieca]

I have had similar problems with my GFORCE 4 Ti4600 card. Check for a couple of things. First reduce your air traffic. AI air traffic is a huge frame rate killer. Regardless of it being a GMAX aircraft or not. Start with the basic traffic.bgl file and then add about 50 flights a time and try that out before adding more. When you fine that your frame rates are below what you would like then stop adding flight plans and/or back up a bit.Second...check your card's settings. Are you using Anti Aliasing? Are you using Ansiotropy filtering? Those can have a big effect on your frame rates. Get NVMAX and play around with them to find out which works the best. For me, I leave my AA set to the lowest level and set my filtering to BI/TRIlinear and that seems to work the best.Finally look for aircraft that have low polygon count. GMAX is good place to start. Repaints of the default aircraft can be good. Watch out for planes that have highly reflective surfaces (American Airlines, etc). Another good source of aircraft is Project AI. (DID I SAY THAT!) The PAI aircraft are really low in frame rate. However, I would suggest that you try some of them out before you use any auto installers. Simply download a few of the PAI aircraft models and then add the repaints from their repaint files and then add them to your AI traffic file through TTOOLS. You might find it easier to control the amount of PAI addon's if you work them into your sim by hand. (Personal choice here)Hope that helps.- Josh[br][br][div align=center][br][link:members.cox.net/fstimes/wetimage.html]Click Here For Weather Image of the Day!

[Guest groundpounder75]

Josh,Thanks for the advice. I am going to tweak with the video card settings and see what I can do. Do you think it would make sense to updgrade to the GeFroce 4 Ti4600? Thanks again,

[Guest Joshieca]

Is yours a GF3 plain or GF3 Ti2/500?In anycase, I wouldn't just yet. I went from a GF3 Ti500 to GF4 4600 and I saw a bit of a frame rate increase but not worth the $200 difference that the new card cost.I would sit back and wait until this fall or winter and see what Nvidia has up next, Direct X 9 wise. GF5 maybe??

[Guest]

PAI aircraft have made the biggest difference in my framerates. Still my fps are quite low at busy airports (5-8 fps depending on the view and the location-some of my airports could have 100 aircraft on the ground at a time). IMO, frame rates are at their lowest when the entire airport is in view which is when you are landing. On approach I lower my aircraft texture quality. That seems to speed things up a bit. As for graphics card settings, I've quit tweaking. Everything is as it was when I installed it. I let FS control AA and I update the drivers. Also, turn down the sound quality. That seems to help and it is hard to notice the difference in sound quality. Most of all, use PAI aircraft for all of your AI. One bad aircraft can screw things up for the whole airport. Bottom line, large amounts of AI are going to have a major effect on fps no matter what you do. You might gain 1 fps here or there but frame rates above 10 at busy airports are probably not possible with systems like ours. I just spent $600 upgrading my system and I only gained 2fps. The worst thing is I feel 2fps was worth $600 *:-* P.S. You said you experimented with a gmax aircraft. Some gmax aircraft are better on fps than others. Try the same experiment with a "official" PAI aircraft. You should see SOME results. Also, try this site for more advice on video cards and FS http://hacksaws.fsgateway.com/. Good Luck! JeffDetroit, MI USAAMD Athlon XP2000Windows XP 768MB DDR pc2700 ramMSI KT3 Ultra VisionTek gforce 3 ti500

[XWRed5 0]

Two words,Aircraft Shadows.When I turned them off I saw a massive increase in frames. Of course it means that your aircraft no longer has them but that's the compromise.Also use only GMax aircraft for AI, seems to make a big difference.Hope this helps,Ian