Is it really this bad?

[Guest]

Just bought FLY!2. The first one (the original FLY!) ran "ok" about 20 FPS with my old 32mb Radeon card. Now I have an 8500 Mac Edition (64mb). I have a G4 dual 450 with 768mb Ram.In OSX the graphic settings show my card as the ATI Radeon 8500 like it should (I set Ram to More than 32mb). Had to apply the update patch to get it to run (it would quit when reading the HID stuff according to the crash log). The update fixed it though and started up fine from there.In OS9 it detects the graphics card as an ATI 3DRage (huh?). No other choices.In cockpit view (with just the top 3 of the main 6 six guages visible in the trainer plane), rolling down the runway, I was getting about 2 FPS (both in OS9 and OSX). About 2 'jerks' per second, a literal slide show. In the Frame rate window (running at a resolution of 800x600 16 bit) had a thin red line about 1/8" up from the bottom (very very low FPS). I was at a small airfield with hardly any buildings around and when I was rolling down the runway, there were no buildings in view at all.When I press the tab key, at the bottom of my screen, it says, Sim (fps/ctr): 60/16. I thought I was getting 60 FPS when sitting in my cockpit setting up. But when I rolled I realized that was not the case. It wasn't even 16 (it said 16 on the right-hand number but when I was rolling I only could get about 2 frames per second. I'm already running low resolution so I doubt any little graphics settings will help it it's so bad out of the box (I used the default settings right out of the box). Only thing I changed was the ram of the video card to "more than 32mb".I read comments from users with iMacs with 16mb cards saying it was a little choppy but playable. I thought with my set-up I'd be fine.Is FLY!2 really that bad and unflyable?

[Guest]

JayG,With your system you should be getting better framerates. Make sure you have virtual memory OFF, at least 500meg of RAM allocated to FLY! and try using a minimum extension set. Make sure your monitor matches the selected resolution. Try 1024x768 if you're using "more tham 32meg" video card.I've been able to get abot 18fps with full interior instruments visible, 25 if I reduce them to the main six and 30-40 depending on the exterior view.I'm running a G4 with 768 meg of RAM and a 32meg Radeon Card in OS9.2.There've been a few Radeon updates that help a bit.Hope this info helps,Peter

[Guest]

Thanks for the reply. I thought I should be getting better frames too.How do you read the FPS counter at the bottom of the screen? Is it the second number you should be paying attention to?I run in OSX (can get around the lack of menu bar by assigning the important ones to command-F1 , F2 keys etc.), so VM isn't an issue (is it?), nor is allocating memory to the application or extenstion stuff.I can run in OS9 but that has some problems itself. The control plus arrow keys would not change the view (in OSX they do). And in OS9 it is not showing my card not as the 8500 as is does in OSX but as a Rage card (that can't be good). So I think right there I should avoid OS9 (there are no other choices for a video card either.I have the very latest ATI retail update drivers (July 2002 I believe were the latest ones).18 FPS with full instruments or 25 with 6 guages showing is more than playable. The way it stands now it shows 60/16 on the FPS counter. If that means I'm getting 16 FPS, that can't be right because it's literally about 2 per second.The only thing I can think of trying now is changed my desktop monitor resolution to 1024x768 and then starting up FLY2 in that resolution as well. I also didn't allocate any more memory to the OS9 app so I'll try that too (but then again it's not recognizing my video card properly in OS9).Also in OS9 it looks horrible. The sky is made up of about 6-7 bands of a gradient when in OSX it looks beautiful (probably has something to do with FLY2 recognizing my card correctly in OSX but not in OS9 (it thinks I have a Rage card).Hopefully it's the monitor refresh rate difference that's causing the problem. Really don't want to run it in OS9 because I can't look around (view keys don't work). In the keys and buttons menu, it show the cockpit view command as control-keypad #'s but those don't work either.

[Guest Allan Jones]

Jay,Check this thread:http://ftp.avsim.com/cgi-bin/dcforum/dcboa...rum=DCForumID15There were some know graphics issues with OS10 that may have been fixed in 10.2, according to that thread.The 60/16 means "60 divided by 16." That's less than four fps. The thread referenced shows how to make Fly show the rates properly with the TAB key, but I think you'll get better rate reports using the cntl-F rate graph. Each horizontal line is 10 fps.The Radeon 8500 didn't exist when Fly II was released so it may not be in the database that Fly reads. On my computer, Fly2 sometimes reports the video card as a Rage Pro and other times reports it as a Rage 128 (proper). However, the program runs the same regardless of the report.

[Guest]

Thanks Allan. I recently read that thread and it is encouraging indeed. About it not recognizing my graphics card right in OS9 makes sense, it seems to perform identically in OS9 or OSX.60/16 yikes!!! About 3-4 or so, that is what I'm seeing for sure.Can't wait until the 26th to get 10.2 now. Sounds like the menu bar issue is fixed with 10.2 as well, so that looks like the answer for me.Thanks again Allan and Peter, now I know there's a light at the end of the tunnel.I'm sure I'll have more questions later for sure though hehe.