Mork

He probably shouldn't activate every state he has, because even if you don't fly there, it leaves some memory footprint. Bufferpools tweak doesn't have anything to do with OOM's as far as I can tell, it just tells FSX to either buffer frames first or send them directly to the graphics card. If he has a higher LOD_RADIUS value, it might help to lower that, or tell him to make the switch to DX10. There is an extensive How-to in the DX10 subsection on the AVSim forums. DX10 has better memory handling and allows for more add-ons to be active.

Ah ok, thanks to both! @Paul, in the How-to it says this: --- Blue squares: While fixed with Patch 3.2.1, there are still occasional black squares popping up, particularly over water, and Simon (Avsim member flying_w) noticed a line in the cfg left over from DX9 was SWAP_WAIT_TIMEOUT=2, so he removed it, and in doing so found another fix. --- its a left over from DX9 and you should remove it? I still don't fully understand what the SWT entry does. Phil doesn't really explain what it does and what the effects are by lowering it or making it higher. He does say default value is 30. That makes your advice harder to understand when you say with the modern GPU's of this we can maybe get it up to 3 or 4, if the default value is much higher than that, if it is indeed 30. I will test this entry soon for sure though. Edit: Tested it briefly at KLAX in Mega Scenery SoCal and it looked like it helped with loading textures. Without the entry I noticed an AI plane with black wings (until I got closer to it) and with the entry (SWT=2) I didn't see that happening at all. But it was hardly a serious test, will have to repeat it more often. I wonder why I never heard about this entry a lot, with all the tweaking and testing I've done so far :blink:

Hi Alvarez, DX10 is not supported by every developer. Lucky for us there is a program close to it's release that will fix more remaining issues with DX10. I'm not really sure if all addons will work completely, but so far the reported results are great. A lot of people are already flying exclusively with DX10, but the DX10 Shader fix Jim is talking about is a must-have for that. Please check the how-to in the sticky forum thread. It's not hard, and you can easily go back to DX9. Still, flying at night in DX10 is not up to par yet, but the solution is underway.

Well lucky for us that FS Dreamteam makes really beautiful airports, they are my personal favorite! I really think with all the stir up around FTX Global not being fully DX10 compatible and the popping up of DX10 in most threads in forums about performance nowadays that the DX10 community is growing faster and faster. When Steve releases his latest work there will be another wave of new DX10 users, no doubt about that. This will wake up other developers as well, like it probably woke up the guys at Orbx too. It will benefit them also with more sales probably, but also with more room for them to work with, performance wise. The new Manhatten release by Drzewiecki Design wold have gone 'smoother' (pun intended) as well, if they would advocate using DX10 now that it's become more than just 'DX10 light/not really working'. I bet a big chunk of those OOM's wouldn't occur if more people would use DX10. So far it's been a hard choice for everyone: Do I really want to tweak again to try something that might be a bit smoother, probably has better memory handling and has nicer water, and am I willing to except some quirky stuff and some annoyances a long the way (DX10), or do I stay with my proven stable simulator, but with a bigger chance of getting an OOM and most likely a less smooth experience, but with all-on's working guaranteed (DX9). If Steve's app breaks down the last cons that people still have to switching (and most already are with the fixed shaders) and if it eliminates the mights and probably's in peoples heads, it will undeniably be a jump that a lot more people are willing to make. A lot of them will be reading the reviews and comments on forums to really understand what it is, does and does not, and what the current state of DX10 in FSX really is. People just want to know what they are getting in too, not everybody likes the tweaking and trying out new stuff, specially with well known prophets advising against it. But that will change ^_^

[sOUNDSFAMILIAR] ExactSameTrainOfThought=1 Laughing=1

Hmm I have never used the SwapWaitTimeout entry. It's hard to find any info about it too, only some NickN posts on SimForums. Can someone explain to me what effects this entry has?

And without VoX, do you get to see your MYTraffic AI planes if you use default traffic? I have used the VoxATC demo (6.2) for a week and it worked perfectly with DX10. My traffic at that time was TrafficX.

Great, thanks for the info Paul.

Ha old man! Well it's great to see someone at your age (I certainly don't mean old, that is subjective) still passionate about his hobby, and willing to learn and use the latest technology. By the way Paul, somebody asked -either on AVSim or on the FTX forums- if the FTX Global patch was delaying the DX10 Fixer. Because a couple of days ago Steve said a release was very close/imminent and now the fix for the Global 3D lights is going to take a minimum of 4 weeks. So I really couldn't tell him anything. Do you know if it will come in one package of will they be released separately (Shader patch 3.2.3 with FTX fix + DX10 Fixer)? Maybe it has been said already somewhere, but with all these forums I'm reading, my memory could be letting me down :Hypnotized:

Maybe you tried it already and it isn't the cause of your crashing, but maybe you missed it: There is an Windows Update causing Sweet FX to crash your system. There is at least one topic on AVSim about this. When I removed it, the crashing stopped instantly as it did at many others as well. If you haven't tried it yet you should look it up. It's Windows update: KB2670838. But look it up first, what it does, and if you want to remove it. For most people it will be fine to just remove it, but it is a long time ago for me and maybe things changed or you need the update for something else you use.

I've used both DXTFixer and MipMap thing without any errors, and a couple of months earlier too. So it seems perfectly safe to use.

Don't use it? If it works, you might get a little bit of extra stability in that sense that FSX doesn't run on core 0 like most program's do by default. That way it is less likely that a sudden need of CPU-time by another application can interfere with FSX. But it is very subtle and most don't even notice a difference. If it gives you bad results I would ignore it. I do use AF=14, but I have an I5 2500k. Are you sure your CPU doesn't have hyperthreading and that you are using the right number voor the I7 3770K? I don't have time to look it up, but you can find it by Googling I'm sure. In any case, I wouldn't put too much time in this 'tweak' but it won't be your magic bullet anyway.

I'm glad it works, and that was exactly the reason of my elaborate post But his remark was funny, because he basically did give the same answer as me, but I needed a few hundred more words

LOL

:p0504: !!!

Yea, it's a bonus when you have a working setup. Without it I find FSX rather 'pale', like there is a thin white haze overlay. With SweetFX it looks darker (also with Shade) and has more vivid colors. It probably comes with a cost, but I like it and I think my videocard can take it.

The lower RT is because i think (! - I'm no expert) it's the next best thing to bp=0. Because of such a low threshold, most things will still be fired at the GPU directly without buffering. Of course there is an even lower setting, but then you can probably also use bp=0. I normally use bp=0, so these settings aren't really tested by me yet either. About SweetFX: I had a rather weird anomaly also, my yellow showed up flashing with black stripes. Mostly noticeable on taxi signs and some knobs on panels. It turned out to be lunasharpning (if I remember correctly). Without that effect my display is fine again. So if you still want to give it a try, you can try different settings in runtime in FSX, so you see the results instantly. It might be caused by a single effect giving you this glitch. If you need some help with that, let me know. Edit: Oh wait, you already tried without any settings! Sorry. Then I think it's not going to work probably.

Ok, thanks You are the most reliable source I know for these things, so your 'feelings' and expectations give me at least some insight on about if it can be solved. And I'm just really hopeful of Steve's work, so that's why I asked. I did some more flying in FTX Global by the way, and too bad for you, I can't say it is disappointing and that you shouldn't buy it LOL. Because it just looks really nice in combination with landclass and UTX, so I actually would recommend you to get it. Of course, if you only fly certain regions you already have nice scenery for, it would be silly to buy it. But I don't regret buying it for a second to be honest, it is really that nice.

Hi Dave, what does it look like when you fly past it? Do the spikes stay stationary, or are they moving/changing shape, getting longer/shorter? At first sight it looks like artifacting, what can be caused by overstressing the GPU with info. The bufferpool=0 might cause this, so if you use bp=0 then you could try: BufferPools=1 PoolSize=10485760 //8388608 // 20971520 20M //5242880 5M //10485760 10M RejectThreshold=262144 //262144 // 786432 //1048576 //262144 // 131072 instead. With these settings you probably won't even notice a difference in performance, but it will stop artifacting. I have never seen this, so i'm just guessing here. I doubt it's a DX10 thing -BUT- graphic anomalies can happen sooner, because more load is transferred to the GPU from the CPU than with DX9.

Hi Paul, when Steve says 'harder', does he mean harder as in more work but doable, or harder as in: I might not be able to crack this thing? Now i'm using UTX lighting which is ok, but the OrbX lighting seems a lot nicer.

It's not a bad thing to close services, processes or programs only when starting FSX. I use my PC for much more than just FSX, and for those I need some services that I don't need for FSX or want other stuff to be loaded quickly. For this I use Alacrity and it works very well. But there are many alternatives.

Everything he has done so far has been free. He had to put so much time in this piece of software, that I totally understand him charging us for his time working on this. This program is very valuable and is almost a true update to the old FSX code, so with things like this I don't even feel bad about my wallet. And I'm sure he won't charge a ridiculous price.

Hi Ivo, Yea, i have had this too, this is because of you new FSX.cfg file. You should look in yours and look for the lines of your GPU: "[DISPLAY.Device.NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670.0.0]" or something similar. If you use DX10, you have to set your resolution there too, because it creates an other line like that. Those with two decimals like above is for DX10. I think you can leave them both in your .cfg, but to be sure i commented the DX9 lines out (the GPU-line with only one decimal). Remember to also set antialias =1 and anisotropic=1 for DX10. So it's just the resolution not set yet for DX10! Of course you can also set it from within FSX-menu, but if you have a custom value in the LOD-RADIUS or TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD entries, you will lose those like always when you change something in your FSX-settings.

But I can tell you that when you have it all optimized and then decide to fly the NGX on a detailed add-on airport, you will experience worse performance and need to start tweaking again to get the smoothness back. These airports also have more heavy AI traffic than when flying at small airports in non-heavy areas. After that when you want to fly in VFR environment with a GA plane you know you are missing out on some details, because you now you have resources left compared to flying the NGX. If you really want the maximum eyecandy and performance, it heavily depends on what and where you are flying.

Hi Jeroen, as far as the TBM I have the exact same experience as you. I used to fly with the default 40 value, because it made no difference whatsoever. But I know other people swear by it, so I have set it at 80. At 120 I thought I saw some small irregularities, but like you I also acknowledge the 'it's all in your head' factor, lol. Also the texturemaxload entry has an effect on this. Did you also test FTFF? Because that one is suspicious too, because it should only work on single core CPU's I read in some old FSX documentation somewhere. I do use higher LOD, but you are right, the circle of LOD doesn't grow as fast as you think. I have set it at 7.5 now I think, because with DX10 you don't get OOM's that quickly and it still performs well. Affinitymask does seem to work here, but only a little bit. I have it set in my cfg. (2500K -> AM=14) Bufferpools (=0) I have tested many times and does seem to work, however if I use bufferpools settings for high end PC's, I can almost see no difference. Tested this yesterday. Internal or external FPS limiter: I have tested it many times, external ALWAYS worked better here, but yesterday I used the FSX limiter during testing and now I had about the same performance as external?! LOL (With Vsync active, I don't even know exactly if this matters at all) The problem with all this is: 1) With DX10 the tweaks don't seem all necessary, and it is hard to compare tweak results with DX9. 2) It does seems to matter where you fly. Some tweaks only show their effect on certain scenery and when flying the NGX for example. The sim has different calculations going on, and I suspect that if you fly at detailed scenery, with bad weather at a detailed addon airport, you need different settings to get the best results then when you fly a GA in rural environments with FTX Global for example. People all give their experiences, but you never EXACTLY know the combination of hardware (RAM timings, CPU-type + clock etc), Windows settings (and services running + what drivers and firmware installed), installed add-ons and their settings (Accufeel, UTX, AI-traffic) etc. so that makes it very hard to compare. The best tweak is learning yourself to accept what you have I guess.