Core 2 Duo and Fly!II saga. Need help

[Roger Mazengarb 0]

G'day Brian,Yep your system is similar to mine. I'm using a Gigabyte 965P-S3 motherboard with 667 DDR ram.My video card is an Asus EN7600GT 256 Mb and I'm using the latest universal driver from nVidia. One thing I'm unsure about is whether or not the 512 Mb of ram on the 7600GS is DDR3 or DDR2. I have a nagging suspicion it might be the latter.I'm glad that you are at least up and running quickly. I just cant explain the 4 minute startup time.If you have gone from 74 to 87 FPS thats a 17.6% increase!!! Also remember that since your monitor refreshes at 70 MHz then anything greater than 70 FPS cannot be displayed on the screen so it is just wasted. All my astronomical frame rates are achieved with all settings at minimums and stock standard sceneries. Then it's simply a matter of prioritising what you require from a flight sim. Just keep adding features and watch the FPS drop. Stop when you achieve an acceptable balance of features verses FPS.What I have done is reduced all the frame rate killers. Set AA to 4X - that's plenty for me. This is the biggest performance killer.1. Fly in lonely skies -- no AI aircraft.2. reduce max vibility to 20 miles.3. set high definition radius to 4 miles 4. set medium definition radius to 14 miles5. set shadows to " aircraft only"6. don't use standard clouds. - download Jure Dolenec's "big mamma's" from the library.I don't know what render.ini settings you are using but with 512MB to play with you have lots of options.Have you loaded DX-9 ?? I can't comment on sharpnes of ATI V Nvidia as I have never ownedan ATI card and any way I need glasses to read a book only 12" in front of my nose. To my experience I'm happy with the card I have.( ignorance is bliss :-lol )On the graphic screen is a box for sharp textures. Have you checked the box??Hope you get everthing to your liking.Cheers,Roger

[RandallR 444]

Roger,I have followed with interest some of your comments re: long start-up times. For a couple of years my startup had been averaging about 5-10 seconds lag on the video setup screen before the sim loaded.A couple of months ago, with no changes to my system, it took a nose-dive to over 5 minutes - sometimes I couldn't get it to load at all! At first, I thought it must have been due to one of the multitudinous MS updates actually "breaking" something that Fly!II needed to run, but backing them out did no good.After a couple of weeks of frustration, only being able to start Fly!II on occasion, I took a careful look at my installation. One of the things that caught my eye was the huge amount of files in my data directory. Over time, mainly due to the wonderful scenery construction of Wayne and others, I had installed many airports and other add-ons. Most of the airports didn't have podded taxiway files so the files piled up by the hundreds. It occurred to me that the reading by Fly! of all the data files may be the reason for my delay - I may have passed a threshold that stalled the startup.I took all of the taxiway files, podded them, and put them in the taxiways folder. My next startup took 15 seconds. Since then, it has varied from about 12 to 25 seconds, but there have been no more long delays or start failures.

[Earl_Buice 0]

Hi Randall,I have a ton of elevation files in my data folder. I wonder if I podded those if it might help my system.Or, what do all you guys have use for elevation?Thanks,Earl

[Roger Mazengarb 0]

G'day Randall,I'll check out your theory but as I am having this delay on a brand new installation of Fly! II with no add-ons (scenery or aircraft) then there shouldn't be anything much in the data directory. - I'll check it out.Last night I encountered another delay (slow running). I imported an S3d aircraft model into the Fly! II keyframe editor and whilst it did finally produce a tif and ACM file, it was a lengthy (time wise) process. also if within the editor I make a selection there is about a 15 second delay before the editor responds to the selection. In win98 response was immediate.I note that Microsoft have a patch on their website that applies to nearly all late model Intel processors that "makes them more reliable" whatever that means. Unfortunately MS don't elaborate on the need for the patch or what it exactly does. Do you think that this might be my problem?Thanks for the suggestion.Cheers,Roger

[Guest 3cffts]

Hi Roger:I tried your settings on my machine, and now I am really confused. They made no difference to my frame rate.... and I still get the very same frame rate if I max everything, including detailed terrascenery! The sim flies well, but still the image is not as clear and sharp as the old ATI video card, but I suspect that is only improved with a new card as I have tried all the AA and AF settings.I would much appreciate your thoughts as to why my frame rates do not change with complexity of scenery and dynamic acft.Brian.

[Guest 3cffts]

HI again Roger:Let me back off on my last post! I have just read your post to another thread.... I did not realize I was using the wrong fps info. Now I have set "allowdebuginfo=1" and get the true frame rate. I find that this rate does vary with dynamic scenery (with 20 acft and in a max rate turn = about 9 fps) ... but still does not appear to change with any of the other settings... it maxes out at about 35 fps, even with Terrascenery ...or no scenery. Brian.

[RandallR 444]

Earl,It's possible that each of our installations (every one being unique mattering on scenery and other add-ons) responds differently. It certainly is possible that the elevation files in your data folder have affected your performance. As I recall, the data folder was never meant to store a large amount of files for that very reason. It's fine for a few small adjustment files, for testing scenery, and for rendering image files prior to podding.It's been a while since I produced scenery pods that contained elevations only, but I believe that if you pod them properly, producing the required scenery file (SCF) to go with them, they should run properly out of the scenery folder, freeing up space in the data folder.One quick way to find out is to simply move all of the files to a temporary directory outside of Fly! and go Fly!ing. If the performance increases, you're on the right track.

[RandallR 444]

Roger,Do you have a link to the patch information at Microsoft? That's a new one on me, but it certainly warrants checking out.

[Roger Mazengarb 0]

G'day Randall,I got this from another flightsim forum :-)You can go direct to the Microsoft site at:http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=936357but they don't realy elaborate as to just what exactly it does.Cheers,Roger