1Wolf

I've also picked up ASFS and haven't had a chance to fiddle with it much so don't quite have any sort of informed opinion yet. Combing through all the pages of this thread to see what others think, personally for my own uses and opinions, I find the pictures that compare in-game conditions to real world pictures most valuable. If you're not already familiar with it, some of you might find this website valuable. https://weathercams.faa.gov/ On a separate note, aside from cloud representation. What are your opinions on other elements of the weather, like winds and such? I like to use MSFS to practice crosswind landings at my local airport in a C172. I loaded up MSFS with MSFS weather the other day and it had a stiff gusting crosswind. My pattern required considerable crab to keep my track straight and a nice pattern. Crosswind landing used considerable rudder & aileron. Then I did the same in ASFS and the winds seemed much much tamer...especially on short final. I could still see the wings of the Cessna fluttering on the taxiway with the wind and hear the wind...but it required less crab in the pattern, less wind correction to keep a straight track, and much less rudder and aileron to land. I can't say which one was more "accurate" at this point. It could be that MSFS was too stiff and exaggerated with the winds and ASFS was more accurate. Or it could be that ASFS was too tame with the winds and MSFS had it right. Or it could have been the same and just my imagination, user error, etc. Just curious what others constructive findings and opinions are with regards to surface winds and winds aloft.

Just got back into FSX after a year or so. I didn't have to reinstall or anything as my install, terrain, addons, aircraft...all were just the way I left them. I never uninstalled as I knew that when I had more time again I'd be back. Right now, I'm in that painful process of scratching my head and trying to remember what I had installed, and what the addons do....and updating those that need updating. Its amazing how you take for granted the things you've installed over time and how easy it is to forget how you used all of those things in synergy. I used FS Global for Mesh. I used to use Megscenery Earth v2 (and some BlueSkyScenery) for some areas where I was flying above 3000-5000 feet or so. Other times I'd turn that scenery off, depending on the altitudes I was flying and what I was doing, and use the autogen when I was flying low and wanted to see 3D objects. I've got all sorts of UTX stuff installed, and all sorts of GEX stuff. If I remember correctly, UTX controlled where the roads, rivers, and lakes were and made sure they were accurate (I think it did something with night lights or some such as well)...and GEX was replacement autogen scenery that was better than the default. Does that sound correct to you? Or am I off base here? I also had ORBX PNW and would use that when I wanted to do some low/slow flying in the Pacific Northwest. As I read through these posts on the forum here, I read alot about this "FTX Global" and almost never see mention of UTX or GEX. Did most people dump UTX/GEX and pick up FTX Global instead? In newbie-terms...what exactly is FTX Global? (Please forgive me as having just returned, I'm getting my mind back around all the terms and concepts again). I see mention of this "Vector" as well...where does that fit in? Does it all play well with FS Global Mesh? Also, as a side note, how is FSX holding out these days? Its been a couple years and I know some folks have picked up P3D instead. Is FSX still going pretty strong? It looks like the forum has been pretty active. I just didn't want to invest in more "stuff" for FSX if a ton of people were moving to P3D these days. Lastly, how is DX10 faring? When I was last flying..some followed certain guides that were available and went to DX10. It seemed like most stuck with DX9. Is that still true? Do you think the most common use is still DX9 or is it DX10 now? Thanks

Thats an absolutely terrific idea! Thanks for posting that link! I realize that it may ruin the immersion of some to have to pause it to set this up, but it doesn't bother me in the least. I'd never even though to try it. I usually end up having to pause it to take care of bodily functions or get coffee anyway so it doesn't bother me at all. I'll give this a try. Good idea. MSEv2 includes so much extra "Stuff" with it like sectionals and plates, they also don't seem to hesitate to post here to help a customer or answer an e-mail. Maybe they wouldn't mind including a "map" with all the "extra stuff" that is similar to what BlueSkyScenery does..and indicate which files are for which areas. Maybe it wouldn't be that big a deal to create and we should all throw them a quick e-mail?

Thanks It is indeed MSEv2 (as well as some Blue Sky Scenery) so sounds like I can just leave the Autogen on and be done with it. I was just worried I was wasting FPS because, without understanding the way it worked, I was afraid it was still creating the autogen but it was just hidden under the photoscenery. Thanks kindly for the advice and explanations.

Just a question regarding FSX Autogen and MegaSceneryEarth. I run UTX/GEX in many places, but for some places I have MegaSceneryEarth that I use. I'm fairly knew to Photoscenery so I hope I'm doing this correctly. I didn't turn anything 'off' or change anything in FSX to use the Photoscenery...I just installed it. So if I'm flying in an area that has the MSE and then leave that area....I see the UTX/GEX autogen. I never see Autogen in the areas that have MSE and I'm guessing that is because the MSE somehow disables it for the area I'm flying in. I've read in several places that if you're using MegaSceneryEarth you can turn off your Autogen to save on FPS because its not needed. My question is...doesn't MSE somehow do this already? I never see Autogen in the places I fly with MSE so does that mean that MSE automatically turned it off already? Or can I get additional FPS savings by going into the FSX Settings and manually de-activating Autogen as well? Is FSX still spending the processing power to generate the autogen and I just can't see it because its "covered" by the MSE and thus the processing power is being wasted? Or am I better off leaving the Autogen ON so that when I fly outside of my MSE area...I have nice UTX/GEX Autogen? Thanks!

A standard 60Hz Refresh Rate monitor with VSync set to "1/2 Refresh Rate" in Nvidia Inspector and FPS Locked to 30 in FSX are pretty typical settings. What happens if you have 2 monitors with dissimilar refresh rates though? I run FSX Full Screen. I only ALT-ENT and run it in a window if I need to look something up on the net, looks at SkyVector, etc. Then I go back to Full Screen. My primary monitor is a 120Hz 1920x1080. I run a secondary monitor that I don't use to display the actual cockpit or terrain...only instrument windows such as maybe the kneeboard, or maybe move the radio stack over there...thats about it. The secondary monitor is 60Hz 1920x1200. I've been using the same settings as many other people: VSynch set to "1/2 Refresh Rate" in Nvidia Inspector and FPS Locked to 30 in FSX. Is this incorrect? Should i be setting my FPS to be locked at 60 instead of 30 in FSX because 60 is half of 120? I tried setting VSynch in Nvidia Inspector to "1/4 Refresh Rate" once and it just didn't work correctly. My main monitor kept blinking on and off every few seconds. It definitely wasn't right. I assumed that it was because I was "stuck" at the lowest refresh rate of the two monitors. The whole concept of locking FPS at a given number, manually setting a refresh rate in Nvidia Inspector, etc...all of that is a bit of a foreign concept to me and I don't pretend to understand it all. Thanks!

Depends on your setup. If you're using the standard Windows 7 backup to create an image of your system drive, and if you've got a ton of FSX stuff installed on that same drive...it can end up being a really big image that takes a long time. For example, my own setup my dedicated FSX drive is at around 300 Gig right now. By keeping that on a separate drive I can create a system image of JUST my C drive (Without the huge amount of FSX stuff) which is much smaller and more manageable. Then, for my FSX drive, I don't create an image..I can pick and choose which folders I want to back up and just back those up. So, for example, I back up my FSX folder but don't back up my Megascenery folder or BlueSkyScenery. If something happens and I need that stuff back...I've got it on DVD. So thats why I said its a "bit" easier. If you've got a small FSX installation and you don't mind it being all lumped in with your system image then its certainly easier to just image the whole thing. But if you're like me and you're FSX installation tends to grow and expand alot....keeping it all completely separate has been alot easier for me.

DX9 is running pretty good and stable but I'm at the point now where I think I'd like to try out DX10. I've been doing my homework and reading the stickied posts along with the DX10 section of the AVSIM FSX Guide. Before I go any further though I just have a few questions I was hoping someone might be able to fill me in on... Will doing all the "stuff" for DX10 listed in the AVSIM guide and stickied here on AVSIM permanently change my FSX installation? If I save off my current FSX.cfg Will I be able to go back and forth to my current DX9 and DX10 at will? Or does DX10 and all of the fixes described in the stickied posts and AVSIM guide permanently alter or change stuff? Provided my sytem will run the DX10 stable...is there a downside to DX10 over DX9? I imagine one downside folks might list is incompatibility. If so, how does it stack up with compatibility versus the different 'categories' of Add Ons? What I mean is...how compatible is it with UTX & GEX, or ORBX, or MegaScenery/BlueSky Photoscenery? Or is it just certain airports? Or is it just certain aircraft? How about Weather programs like REX/Active Sky 2012/Opus FSX? Or Texture programs like those available in REX or Active Sky? With regards to the AVSIM guides and stickied posts, I see they've been updated just a few days ago so they must be at least fairly current. Are there any other fairly common fixes or tweaks that folks are often using for DX10 FSX that are not listed or mentioned in the guide or stickies? Thanks!

I believe Windows 7 Home Basic only supports up to 8 GB of memory, Home Premium 16 GB of memory, and Windows 7 Professional and above 192 GB. If you're planning on running alot or RAM, or adding alot more RAM in the future, you might want to look into Windows 7 Professional. Also, with regards to separate drives. Certainly not mandatory by any stretch of the imagination but if you can afford it I always think separate drives is better. Performance considerations aside, FSX and all your assorted "FSX Stuff" likes alot of room to play. Its nice to be able to give it its own playground. It also makes backups a bit easier. If you want to image your system drive but its loaded with FSX stuff...it makes for huge images. Much easier (for me at least...opinions vary) to have a nice slim system drive and all my FSX stuff on its own drive.

Would like to visit your website but I get a security warning from my company's security...

I'm running MSEv2 and there are a few airports that look "duplicated", with the duplicate skewed from its twin by about a quarter mile. I'm still new to this, but I think what I'm seeing is default FSX or custom FSX airports "showing through" the photoscenery. I'm guessing its either because I have UTX installed or its because one of my AddOns installed some addon airports in my "Add On Scenery" folder which I have at the top of my scenery library. So how do I fix this? How do you know which of the "twins" is the correct airport? The AddOn airports I mentioned above also have custom buildings and stuff so I don't know if I can like "scoot" the entire airport somehow so that it sits over or under the photoscenery one? Or even better, is there some way to "hide" the photoscenery one?

Looks like, at least to some degree, I Solved one of the mysteries. Looks like my FPS problem is fixed. After alot of testing I was able to determine it was indeed CombatPilot causing it. When I ran the exact same flight, same plane, same weather, same everything through regular FSX my FPS was reasonable and what I'd expect it to be. Through Combat Pilot I was getting those strange FPS drop offs. Some sort of memory leak I guess. PCAviator & Jim, Thanks for the tips and settings. I'm actually already using most of those MSE tweaks (Except for the zoom...nothing but zoom of 1.0x works for me. The cockpit, instruments, and proportions of the cockpit look just too far away for me). I'm going to go back over my Nvidia Inspector settings tonight and compare them to the ones Jim posted (Thanks Jim!). I tried the advice of dropping my lod_radius all the way down to 4.5 but, believe it or not, it actually made things alot worse...not better. Go figure. Things that weren't sharp weren't sharpening any faster at low lod_radius. I think the reason it seemed worse was that the textures were "sharpening" at the same speed regardless of the lod_radius setting...however...with a high lod_radius setting its letting my system work "ahead" a little bit and thus many times the textures have already sharpened by the time I get to them. Whereas, at lower lod_radius setings often times they don't sharpen until I'm already flying past them, or sometimes they simply don't sharpen at all. Regardless of lod_radius setting, sometimes they just don't sharpen up all the way. And sometimes they do. Whatever the case, after many many hours of testing now I'm fairly convinced that lowering lod_radius doesn't seem to help them sharpen, and raising lod_radius doesn't help them sharpen faster but does allow me to have "more" sharp at a time and thus give the appearance that they are sharpening better. with regards to OOM errors....I still haven't had one (Except for a brief time when I was testing ENB Series stuff which had me crashing left & right). The other interesting thing is that, with regards to the 'speed' that textures sharpen...if I completely deactivated the MSE textures and relied only on my UTX/GEX combination, flying at 3000 feet or below many times even THOSE non-photoreal textures wouldn't sharpen all the way. I could see that same effect with them sometimes beneath the autogen. You'd be flying along and a cornfield or what not would look a bit blocky and blurry...but then as you are flying past it would suddenly 'sharpen up' and look much better. Other times they were sharp by the time I got to them, other times they didn't sharpen at all. Fiber_Time does seem to make a huge difference though. Drop it to .20 and the textures never sharpen at all...ever. Raise it to .99 and they "Seem" to sharpen up better, and more frequently, but the FPS takes a huge hit...especially on the ground. I've got it set at .49 right now. Maybe thats just how it is and I can't make it any better. I still haven't overclocked my system, so there is a good chance I think that would help. I overclocked one system once before...my last system, and it was very time consuming and alot of work. There was alot to learn. However, I only built this current one in September and just haven't had the time to re-learn to do it on an Ivy Bridge and with this motherboard, or had the time to leave my PC running for the stress testing. Maybe its time that I finally bite the bullet and do it...and perhaps the AVSIM hardware guide would be a good place to start learning again. I noticed there were some 'overclocking' links in the document. Another thing I'll say regarding my testing is that I also did some testing at 18,000 feet. I've got a theory that alot of users are NOT getting "sharpened" textures and just don't know it. At FL018 the textures look very nice and if I wasn't paying attention, I probably wouldn't notice when they didn't sharpen all the way. They might just have a very slightly blurry or hazy look....but then if I really watch...sometimes I can catch them in the act of sharpening up and then it went from looking "pretty good" to looking even better. Clutch, This weekend I did exactly as you asked. Started from the military base down there and headed to the tip of key west. I flew at between 5000-10000, and was at around 250 Knots. I'm not a very good reviewer as I've never been to Key West, much less seen it from the air, so take what I say with a grain of salt. The ground color looked good to me. The sharpness I can't say...I had my lod_radius set at 4.5 for my tests and so things were sometimes just not sharpening up as they should. Often times it looked pretty bad and blurry to me. Sometimes it would magically "sharpen" as I flew over it, others it would stay blurry. I haven't tested with lod_radius at 8.5 though or at higher altitudes. When the textures DID sharpen, they looked very good. When they did NOT sharpen...if they were beach or wilderness they looked nice but if they were urban they looked horrible. I'm not 100% sure how to judge "masking problems" or what masking problems look like...but I THINK I saw some. There were islands there that appeared to have bodies of water in the center, or rivers/streams but the lake/river/stream wasn't water textured...it was pure white...as if it were made of snow. It was really bizarre looking. There were a few of the areas I saw this going from the tip of the keys back up to the mainland. Bear in mind that I'm still checking and will run another flight, but so far, I haven't noticed any large swaths of land missing from coast to coast mid-state.

Do you happen to be running multiple monitors? I know on mine, I use a secondary monitor for surfing, maps, etc. If I run FRAPS, it seems to like to record my secondary instead of the primary.

Thats what I was starting to think as well. Its really strange. I do have one uncommon FSX add-on running and thats Combat Pilot. I previously wouldn't have thought that Combat Pilot could affect FSX as its more of a "wrapper" or "launcher". But Combat Pilot does modify FSX slightly so its probably possible. So maybe I'll try the same flight outside of Combat Pilot, just in regular FSX and see if I get the same result. The odd thing is it seems to have "something" to do with me setting the LOD_Radius from 8.5 down to 6.5. The problem didn't occur at 8.5...it only happened at 6.5. You're correct about the military aircraft...its a T-45C Goshawk jet trainer. Sure thing. I should have some time this weekend to check it out. You happen to have any specific areas or routes you want me to check or at any specific altitudes? Actually, my flight is much simpler than that. Its a military jet flying VFR along the Southern coast of the Florida panhandle making the exact same flight I'd made dozens of times, at the same altitudes, at the same speeds. I'm not descending to landing or anything like that...for that entire half of the flight I'm at 3000 feet. This started occurring long before I got anywhere near the destination. I'm not really any closer to the ground or any nearer to the destination when it occurs. On the 2nd leg of the flight....at roughly the same altitude...suddenly the FPS slowly starts falling off. On the final leg of the flight...it continues to slowly fall off getting worse and worse. At that point...I'm still a ways from the destination. The real kicker though is I've flown that SAME flight, at the same altitudes, at the same speeds, in the same aircraft...dozens of times. At an LOD_Radius of 8.5 my FPS was pretty constantly near 30. But I didn't run into the situation described above until I dropped that LOD_Radius to 6.5. Just plain bizarre. This weekend I'll have to try the same flight again, under the same conditions and see if I get the same FPS fall off. If I do...then I'll try it again outside of Combat Pilot, and also try it again with the LOD_Radius set back up to 8.5.

Riddle me this batman.... This is just plain weird. So last night I decide to experiment with some of the tips I received here in this thread and from MSE support. So I drop my LOD_Radius down from 8.5 to 6.5 and I fly the exact same flight that I've been testing this with. Its several legs over Florida...about 200 miles total. Some legs going 250 KIAS, others going 360 KIAS, some legs at 3000 feet, some at 5000 feet, some at 10,000 feet. And its the exact same flight every time, with the exact same weather (Using a built-in FSX "Fair Weather" theme and not any sort of live weather). When I was testing with an LOD_Radius of 8.5, my FPS usually hovered right around 30 and my textures sharpened or blurred as I described elsewhere in this thread. But when I dropped that LOD_Radius to 6.5...after takeoff and through about the first 2/3 of the flight my FPS was about the same. The textures DID seem to be sharpening up a little bit better. It still wasn't quite right as I'd guess that 50% of the time the textures were sharp by the time I flew over them. 25% of the time they were blurry until I was over them or just past them and then they sharpened up. And 25% of the time they never sharpened up as I flew past them. However, in the last 1/3 of the flight something strange happened...my FPS just started plummeting. It first stuck down in the mid twenties, then the high teens, then by the time I finally landed it was averaging in the low teens. What the heck happened? I've flown that same flight dozens of times with everything exactly the same but a higher LOD_Radius of 8.5. So what in the world would cause my FPS to drop with a LOWER LOD_Radius? And even stranger...what would cause the FPS to be fine through the majority of the flight...and then suddenly just start dropping off like that for the final half hour of the flight? Its not like I was flying over different terrain or textures, or using different clouds or water or weather. Everything was the same. I didn't have time to try that flight more than one time to see if the weird FPS plummet was repeatable. Do you think maybe it was some strange memory-leak-like freak thing? Or can you think of a reason that behavior would be linked to reducing my LOD_Radius to 6.5. Weird.