ematheson

I fly FS2004 on a laptop. The laptop is not a shabby performer, but I've never entirely gotten rid of stuttering - even on FS9. The game stutters badly when increasing mip levels on terrain tiles - and gets even worse when using addon scenery. The delay in loading terrrain textures must surely be due to a slow component somewhere, but I don't know quite where. I suspect that the hard-drive is old and slow and that switching to an SSD would fix the issue, but before I pull the trigger, I'd like your input on identifying the issue, as RAM or graphics card issues are a possibility. GPU: AMD Radeon HD 6620G 512Mbs DD3 with core clock 444Mhz and memory clock 667Mhz in Crossfire with AMD Radeon 6660M 1G GDDR5 with core clock 600Mhz and memory clock 800Mhz CPU: AMD A8-5300 quad core clocked at 1.4Ghz (don't know more than that) RAM: 6Gbs installed (don't know more than that) HDD: Toshiba MK6476GSX SATA Disk Device 640Gbs 5400 RPM 8Mbs Cache

If you've installed a lot of scenery libraries, extra or high-res textures, etc, it can take a while for FS to load all the textures it needs into memory. A faster HD decreases the time this takes - a SSD can take tenths of a second to load what my 7200 RPM laptop HD takes 1-3 seconds to access. You might not have considered this when you built your system and bought a drive for capacity instead of speed... with the result that FS might jerk while it pauses to load textures or other needed files.

What speed does your hard disk spin at?

I'm sure many of us could ask the same of you... Back on topic, though: I made the switch early and haven't regretted it. I am primarily an FS9 user, but I've bought a few FSX addons and fly in FSX once in a while. For me, the Steam edition performs much better... double the FPS, fewer stutters, etc. I also convert FSX scenery to FS9 on occasion. The Steam edition object libraries are (slightly) expanded and (slightly) bug fixed. There's no reason to have noticed this unless you're too familiar with them like I am, but that was a nice bonus for me.

As a matter of fact, yes. The daily stream of trolls didn't really start to let up until about a year or so ago... Not that you are a troll. But there was (and still is) a population of trolls who think it is appropriate to insult and malign FS9 users.

Actually, no. The problem is insistence on 2d panels, not VCs...In most addons featuring "wing views", the wing view is a fixed view angle based on the 2d panel. This view system was developed for FS95, before VCs existed in any form and therefore, necessarily, existed as a defined view angle of the external model. Thus, a wing view as programmed into the 2d panel through the panel.Cfg will have external sounds. However, since FS98, (and excluding the anomaly that was FS2000), all versions of FS and CFS have had a VC view that can have separate sounds associated with it. If a wing view is programmed as a FSX camera in a VC model containing a wing and cabin, it can make use of custom VC sounds, which can be made to be realistic. In short, if you find this problem, it's because you aren't actually in the cabin and are using outdated technology.

Hard drives are not perfect pieces of machinery and occasionally data-loss happens through no fault of anyones. Sometimes, these things happen. In a complex program with little tolerance for errors (such as FS9), this can be a problem... Which is why I usually reinstall about once a year regardless. It ensures continued integrity of things like landclass files - which FS can't be bothered to tolerate. In that regard, landclass is a bother. If there's a texture missing, FS OOMs. If it's layered wrong, FS OOMs. If it's got even a minor error, FS crashes... if there's anything wrong, FS gags on it. Not like textures - FS has a lot tolerance for those things...

By default, FS9 doesn't actually use LODs of scenery objects... It's either all or nothing. Auto_lod is an option in the display (I think) section of the FS9.cfg that toggles use of LODs for scenery objects, which can reduce number of polygons and textures needed while still displaying the same number of objects at a distance. If you're getting stuttering while FS9 loads high detail objects, this setting might help.

Sounds disk related. I was getting this all the time in my last install... Seems it was because not only the files, but the directory too, was fragmented. Because of replacement of ground and sky textures, I had ground textures essentially shotgunned around my drive, so I got a severe lag drawing ground textures. You might also try turning on auto_lod in your FS9.cfg. And/or adding empty LODs to your converted FSX libraries. Anything to reduce the amount of searching your drive needs to do...

Please see posts by clearedtoland. He has said essentially what I would say. If you read what he has posted, I suspect you will find a subtext saying what I have said as well... Just perhaps a little more diplomatically.

You have spent the time to write several long posts essentially telling such individuals that they are stupid or lazy or both. If this was not your intent, I challenge you to demonstrate this. Your posts in this thread constitute a clear example of the negative or ill-willed responses that you claim to be seeking to end. Kindly define "informative" in a way that addresses your perceived issue. What is informative for you is not necessarily what is needed by another... Which is precisely why people post the questions that seem to annoy you so much. I submit that your wish carries an underlying sentiment that you are a flight simulator god, knowing all that there is to know about FS at that time and that those of lesser knowledge are not worthy to post here, there, or anywhere. If you have your way, avsim will become a place with draconian moderation and a utility similar to Wikipedia. I would not belong to such a forum.

Oh... That. I loved the plane, but I almost never used the default scheme, preferring some of the many fine repaints that were done for it... So that detail rather escaped me. Thanks for the explanation.

I wasn't in the payware market at that time (in fact, I was using FS98 on a computer that was too slow for it at that time). I'm afraid I missed that aspect of the product and don't remember reading anything like that on the documentation. Could you explain? I agree, though, it's a pretty special model. I just formatted my HD and am reinstalling windows, but on my last install, it got a lot of milage.

How many times sure Tom Allensworth have to say no before this topic quits being posted?

George's version adds custom buildings, plenty of objects, and photoscenery. Not all of this converts... Some FSX scenery elements cannot be converted. These include photoscenery, landclass, vector scenery, and some super detailed models. I create new photoscenery and new vectors for my conversions to make them work right, since the FSX versions don't convert. On the other hand, airports and most models do convert. There's really two programs to use for conversion: ModelConverterX and FSX2FS9. I also use SBuilder, AirportDesignerEditor (ADE9), AGeNt, and FSEarthTiles to create new supporting files to replace that which won't convert. I may post some screenshots this evening, but I don't have a photo hosting account anywhere, so that might be difficult.

facing some oddly ineradicable oiltank objects, but nothing off-shore to mess up your scenery - that issue, at least, is fixed. It's just that there are some double-objects inland that I haven't yet gotten rid of. fixed the double objects, finally. Now tracing some more autogen issues. calling it done.Remember, the original scenery is not my work AND for best results, you're going to have to do some conversion of your own to get the supporting libraries from FSX. This ought to fix your issues with PHJR once and for all, though. Just remember to keep this scenery ABOVE all other Hawaii sceneries in your scenery library. This conversion is done for my own enjoyment and is not for public distribution in any form. All credit goes to George Keogh, who does excellent work. I may share it with martinlest2, since by now I've pretty much made it certain that I'm expected to, but it must be remembered that this is a personal conversion and is NOT, therefore, without Georges approval, which he has not given me, for public distribution. I'm not intending on messaging him for approval either, since I have never planned on redistributing any of my conversions! If one of you want to ask him on my behalf, be my guest. The copyright issues involved with distributing converted work are just too potentially thorny for me to even want to try to go there. Nevertheless, PM me if you're interested, but you really had ought to figure out how to convert it for yourself.

Well, I've done all the freeware ORBX airports (save the Germany ones, since they use a different object placement method that doesn't convert as well.) I've done many of the Keogh airports in Ireland and Hawaii, and some from FlightPort.de... and there's a few other miscellaneous airports I've done. I've got a few hundred more ORBX airports from the regions I bought this last christmas still to go, though... Got the groundpoly issue sorted - I'll simply not include it, since it looks OK without it. Still working on some random buildings which are not being excluded properly. Without the default FSX libraries, you won't get all the trees or the cars, but overall, it's the same scenery with and without the FSX libraries. But if you've attempted conversions before, you've probably got them converted already, so it will look even better than what I'm seeing right now as I test the thing without them.

I've just finished the autogen on the new phototerrain backing for it and am testing the conversion in sim as I write. I'll let you know soon how it looks as a stand-alone scenery without all the other FSX library conversion I've done. Tested - appears the ground-poly is excluding autogen - testing again without the ground-poly.

You should rebuy them. Just know, though, that they work best if they are the first thing you install. In other words, you should be prepared to do a reinstall of FS9 instead of trying to install it later. I would never fly FS without it, though. It's more than worth the effort.

I'll put together a conversion of George Keogh's FSX version tonight for you. I think it will for the bill... But you can't distribute it publicly...

There MUST be a fix. The bay area does not look that bad on my system, and never has!

You've got a problem for sure, but it isn't ultimate terrain's fault. You should re run the configurator or reinstall ultimate terrain.

If you're going that direction, be sure to add the FSFreeFlow sceneries... They're compatible with UTUSA(or can be made so)... And they extend coverage to the Bahamas. Then, there's a fine rendition of Puerto Rico to find and the Antilles2004 project to install... I love the gulf coast and the Caribbean in FS9!

There is no official FS9.5 update... That's just our way of expressing how far FS9 can be extended with the right addons. There's enough out there to totally replace all visual and many core aspects of the Sim (such as ATC, weather engine, sounds, and even the flight dynamics engine on some few aircraft). Of course, not all of the latter are still available, free, or operational in Win7 and above, but at one point, most everything has been upgraded by somebody, sometime...

I think that's right. And, confusingly, to make that work, you need to edit the fs9.cfg for a tmvl of 20 or 21! So many numbers to get lost in...