dave belsey

Hi Mark, Thank you for your work in updating this program :clapping: I have recently encountered a problem though, and wonder if you can help? I am using G****E map version 110, but my downloads do not match what is showing in FSET. An example ..... this is what I get when downloaded: This detail from FSET shows that this area has been lightened considerably, and would be an improvement: The problem is that every time I download it, the result still looks like the original dark image from an earlier map version. Any ideas? Dave.

By changing from Standard to Smooth Cloud Transitions mode.

Resolved.

Since re-installing FSX recently, I have come across this problem.If I use ASE to generate weather, it appears in the sim correctly but is not injected into the FSX weather screens. All winds/clouds etc show nothing and visibilty is set to unlimited.Previously, I was able to save a situation to use for multi-player sessions with the required weather, but not any more. All I get now is 'all weather cleared' instead.Have I missed setting an option or is there another dependant program that is not recognising ASE any more?Dave.

rhodges,Thank you very much for the detailed reply - this was virtually identical to the setup that I was using. In my case, all worked as expected until the fsx.exe.limited.bat was processed - at that point, Alacrity (presumably) decided that the monitored process had ended and restarted all the processes again. By the time FSX had loaded, Alacrity was no longer running.I was still using the original download of Alacrity, so decided to allow it to install the updates. Now when I run it, both Alacrity and FPSLimiter are both still active but FSX takes a lifetime to load. When I close FSX, Alacrity does not seem to recognise that the monitored program has ended and remains active.I think I will have to search on the Alacrity forum to see if there is a solution to this.Dave.

I am unable to get these 2 programs to work together successfully. Can you please explain how you have them set up ?Dave.

Hello Maurice,I may have the answer to this ....I recently re-installed ASX on my new computer, but not to the default location. I inadvertently installed it to the root drive of my Flight Sim disc, so decided to uninstall and reinstall to a directory called HiFi. However, when I uninstalled, my complete disk was wiped - EVERYTHING went, FSX, all add-on aircraft, all add-on airfields, all add-on scenery, MyTrafficX etc etc....I wonder if HiFi Simulation might want to look at their uninstall routines to prevent this happening to others? :( Dave.

I understand that Microsoft will be adding the same functionality to their other programs in the near future .....Excel 2008 is released, but it would be quicker to do the calculations in your headExcel SP1 is released and 50% of users find that the speed of calculations has increased but unfortunately 2+2 now equals 5Excel SP2 is released, but backward-compatability has been dropped. The old characters (1,2,3,4 etc) have been replaced with symbols recently found in a Mayan Temple2+2 now equals 4.0000011111 (but only if you can recognise the symbols) and spreadsheets composed in earlier versions of Excel can not be loaded at allMicrosoft announce that NO fixes or further development will take place in Excel 2008 - they are moving onto Excel 2009 which can only be used by those with keyboards using alien technologyWhere can I buy shares in this up-and-coming Company ?Dave.

I thought we were aiming for ... "as real as it gets" ;-)Dave.

Scott,All I can say is don't give up, it is possible to get good results.My rig is nearly 3 years old, and is very similar to yours.P4 3.6Ghz2Gb RamRadeon X1950 ProSata Hard DrivesI dislike the defult scenery and almost exclusively fly with the Horizon Generation X photoscenery for England and Wales. I do not use autogen, but I do have Active Sky X.I have felt all of your pain and more, but with persistence and after making some concessions to the software, I am now achieving reasonable results. These are a few screenies taken since SP1 (which caused me anormous problems) - some of these were even taken during multiplayer sessions :They may not be perfect, but I don't think they are too shabby either.Dave.Thanks to ImageShack for free hosting.

mjrhealth,I'm not sure that can achieve anything - I had 4Gb (defragged)on that drive originally and the scenery could not load quick enough.Dave.

Phil,Does this mean that you think I should remove the page files from drive c: and f: and create a 10Gb page file on drive f: to achieve better results ?Is it possible to have Windows XP control the size of the file if I do that ?Dave.

Phil,A further update ....... and some improvement. Having seen mention of cache size, I decided to experiment a little with the page file set on my system.Until now I have been using 2Gb on c: drive and 2Gb on f: drive.I have now increased this to:2Gb on c: (Windows and FSX on this drive)4Gb on f: (Scenery files including Generation X)4Gb on g: (Music and video files)I have set all of these with the same values for minimum and maximum size.I have also changed Memory Usage in XP to best performance of System Cache rather than Programs.The result ? Nearly all the photoscenery is very sharp and draws ahead of the aircraft.I don't suppose for one moment that the settings I am now using are the optimum, but the improvement is extremely promising - I can only achieve this if I still disable 2 of the 3 Volumes of Gen X, but it is a start.Does any of this make any sense ? Does it help at all ?Dave.

Actually Phil, I think you'll find that Horizon Generation X is not very many, but large files.Dave.

Phil,If you remove Horizon, does the problem persist or go away:More than that .... if I just disable some of the Generation X scenery, the remainder works almost as well as it did pre-SP1.At the moment, I am using the equivalent of 1/3 of the scenery and it performs very well most of the time. Presumably the size/number of files being accessed is hitting a bottleneck in my (and others) system ?I hope this will help you to find a solution - disabling chunks of the scenery and knowing where you intend to fly is far from ideal.Dave.

Phil,Any further thoughts ?I notice that you asked in another thread if other photo-scenery exhibited the same symptoms (failure of scenery to display correctly close to the aircraft). The answer is yes, as in this thread ....along with many others this is exactly what I experience using Horizon Generation X scenery for England and Wales.I believe that Horizon have also taken this up directly with yourselves ?Dave.

UPDATE ....Settings as above except:Wait for Vertical Refresh OFFTriple Buffering OFFTrack IR OFFJust had a flight where photo-scenery was MUCH improved and frame rates averaged 29 (locked at 30).Dare I turn TrackIR back on again ?Dave.

Phil,My current settings are as follows:In fsx.cfg I have removed all of the tweaks that I experimented with except AffinityMask=1. ProcSpeed shows 3495 and PerfBucket 5.I use FSAutostart to close as many programs and services as I am comfortable with. I am using TrackIR 4.In FSX, the settings are :Frame Rate locked at 30Filtering AnisotropicA.A. TickedGlobal Texture Resolution Very HighLOD Radius LargeMesh Complexity 100Mesh Resolution 5mTexture Resolution 7cm Water High 2xLand Detail Texture tickedScenery Complexity Very DenseAutogen NoneSpecial Effects Detail HighAircraft Traffic NoneRoad Traffic 28%Ships 18%Leisure Craft 18%On the graphic card (ATI Radeon X1950Pro) :A.A. Use applicationAnisotropic 16x and High Quality AFMipmap detail High QualityWait for Vertical Refresh Always OnAdaptive AA QualityTriple Buffering OnMonitor is a Dell 24" Widescreen displaying at 1920x1200x32 and I have 2Gb DDR2 PC2-4100.When run with these settings load time for a flight is under 3 minutes. Frame rate is usually in the 20's and I get very few if any stutters, but scenery does not snap into place - if I switch to Windowed mode frames drop to single-figures accompanied by heavy shuddering. It remains this way unless I revert to Full Screen mode.Also, when switching from outside view the cockpit can stay grey for several seconds before displaying. Occasionally the sound also takes time to return after switching views.I realise that many of my settings are high, but all I am trying to achieve is the best possible display of the high resolution scenery and mesh.In essence, prior to SP1 the scenery looked fantastic with NO stutters and NO blurries and ran at over 20 FPS most of the time - I would like to get that back please.Dave.

Damian,I did try the latest ATI Catalyst drivers (7.4), but had problems with them .... particularly flight loading times, which increased by about 5 minutes.I have now reverted to version 7.3Dave.

I have a Pentium 4 processor @ 3.6GHz and fly almost exclusively in the U.K. with Horizon Generation X photo-scenery.In common with many others, I suffer from the scenery failing to render clearly - the area around the aircraft is often worse than surrounding areas.I have tried many different settings to try to improve this, with varying amounts of success. I am, however, confused by the results of the AffinityMask settings.If I set AffinityMask=1, the load time for a flight is around 2.5 minutes, but I have to run FSX in Full-Screen mode - Windowed mode is totally unflyable (huge drop in frame rates and massive shuddering).If I change the setting to AffinityMask=3 then the time to load a flight increases to around 8 minutes, but I am able to switch between Full-Screen and Windowed Modes without problems.Has anyone else found this to be true, and if so what is the reasoning behind it? Ideally I would like to be able to fly in both modes, but with lower loading times.Dave.

Damien,I bought Active Sky for the first time in December. I, too, purchased this because it was stated that it was fully supported in FSX. I was aware that a lot of features that were working in FS9 did not yet work in FSX, but the inference was that these were being worked on and I was happy to wait for solutions to be found.I feel somewhat aggrieved that at no point was it intimated that these features were proving impossible to work in FSX, let alone that you were already working on a new piece of software to replace it.Presumably I too qualify for a complete refund ?As an alternative, may I suggest that you offer that refund as a discount against the new product when it becomes available? It would seem appropriate to me that this could be offered to any of us who bought Active Sky 6.5 believing that it would eventually fulfill it's promise to fully work in FSX.Dave.