Learning to fly all over again

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Alan_A
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Learning to fly all over again

Post by Alan_A »

Everything they told you about the Cub is true.

First flight went beautifully. Cruise, turns, power-on and power-off stalls, then a long airliner approach in a gusty crosswind. Crab and slip, touch on the upwind wheel, perfect.

Second flight, tried turns around a point. What's that revving sound? Oh, right, that's me losing 500 feet of altitude in the turn. Ugly.

Then my first attempt at a pattern. Didn't trust that the Cub could glide, kept the power on too long, came in high and hot, had to go around. Second time, marginally better but more of the same. It really doesn't want to be forced onto the ground.

Looks like I've got a lot of bad flightsim habits to unlearn.

By the way, I found I was paying a big framerate penalty at Plum Island. Autogen and scenery complexity sliders didn't have much effect, so it must be an issue about the complexity of the Plum Island scenery itself. I'll keep experimenting with settings (might need to lose the ASA haze layer, though I'd regret that). Frames are good in standard/custom FSX scenery (stock plus UTX/GEX/REX, with ASA weather). But if anyone has good tuning for Plum Island, let me know.
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Zorg12
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Re: Learning to fly all over again

Post by Zorg12 »

Can't help you. But I had a similar experience, I noticed worse framerates than I'm used to around FTX payware airports but smooth framerates over "standard" FTX terrain. It seems there is not much headroom for extra visuals with this Cub on my system (E6600@3,4/8800GTS 512MB).
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Alan_A
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Re: Learning to fly all over again

Post by Alan_A »

Interesting. I'm on a Core i7 965 @ 4.0, with a GTX 280, but the effect seems to be the same. I guess it's all relative to whatever your settings were before. If not working the ASA haze layer, then trying REX again as the weather engine (it doesn't seem to load clouds as heavily as ASA). But first I should find out if the system is being challenged by the Plum Island scenery itself, separate from other variables. I hope not - I like the place and it's a perfect Cub field. Will check and advise.
"Ah, Paula, they are firing at me!" -- Saint-Exupery

GlennC
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Re: Learning to fly all over again

Post by GlennC »

For what it's worth, and all systems being different. I don't have any issues at Plumb Island. ASA is not active, no special environment loaded except Xgraphics. The PC is better and worse than Zorgs: E6400 with 4meg of RAM on Vista 32, GTX250 card with 896Meg of system video. I don't look at FPS, but it feels smoothe.

As the old saying goes - your mileage may vary.

Glenn
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Alan_A
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Re: Learning to fly all over again

Post by Alan_A »

Well, that was interesting. I flew the Cub out of Plum Island three times - first without weather, second with ASA but with the fog layer disabled, and then finally with ASA and the fog layer turned on again. Frames were the same throughout. What's more, frames were fine at the airport itself - running about 5 fps below the default Cessna (frames capped at 30 with FPS Limiter). The problems come in in two specific areas - over the marshes south of the airport, along the shoreline, and then in a smaller area along the shoreline to the north. Some of it seems to be related to direction - at one point I was over the northern marshes with good frames, then turned south and the fps immediately fell to the 10-12 range. At that point I wasn't in the southern problem area - I was just looking at it. My best guess is that there's something about the way the scenery is drawn in those small sectors that sucks frames. I'd never noticed it before, but in the past I've flown there only in FPS-friendly aircraft, like the default Cub, the RealAir Citabria, and a couple of Carenados. I guess it's true that the A2A Cub taxes the system more - but thankfully it's not a global problem. You can ride through the problem areas and be clear in a couple of minutes. In a way it's like flying the FSX Hudson River Corridor past NYC. You just count on frames to go down and try to be patient.

The good news is that I don't have to change anything major - can keep ASA and the fog layer going, and motor on through.

Enough tweaking now - back to flying.
"Ah, Paula, they are firing at me!" -- Saint-Exupery

bapy1
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Re: Learning to fly all over again

Post by bapy1 »

Did anyone tried the Cub with Accu-sim on FSX SP1 ? I don't want to install SP2 since a lot of my aircrafts aren't compatible ; but I'd really want to taste some Accu-simed plane, especially this one :)

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Scott - A2A
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Re: Learning to fly all over again

Post by Scott - A2A »

bapy1,

Accu-Sim was developed on SP2 machines, and tested on SP2 and Acceleration. I do not think all of the functions would be working on SP1.

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Lewis - A2A
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Re: Learning to fly all over again

Post by Lewis - A2A »

No we could not offcially support SP1, I do not beloeve alot of the programmed functions would work anyway as many new features behind the scenes were added to SP2 to allow Devlopers more and more freedom.
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GlennC
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Re: Learning to fly all over again

Post by GlennC »

Alan,

I wonder if those two areas are where the "whales" are. Seems to me there are some in the bay just north of the airport. I looked for them last night but didn't see them from pattern altitude.

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Private-Cowboy
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Re: Learning to fly all over again

Post by Private-Cowboy »

I also noticed some rather noticeable fps-hit over addon terrain like FTX. The Cub is extremely complex though with a model of ~28MB and a texture load of ~80MB. Even the Cessna Mustang with modeled minibar only has a 20MB model. The 377 has a 15MB one. I guess that the Cub doesn't leave much headroom for more complex scenery on midrange systems. Changing autogen or other scenery settings did not improve things. The fps are fluctuating pretty badly here too.

Maybe reducing the texture load (by resizing from 4096 to 2048 ones) reduces the load a bit. Need to give it a try.

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Scott - A2A
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Re: Learning to fly all over again

Post by Scott - A2A »

PC,

We actually picked up 1-3 fps when reducing the texture load in testing, so you may get some results here.

It's easy to think, "it's just a cub" but this model demanded more modeling than any previous model, because it is so small, and everything is up close. The fabric wings and open engine added more demand as well.

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Private-Cowboy
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Re: Learning to fly all over again

Post by Private-Cowboy »

I just tested the same Cub (standard wheel model) over Tongass and saw much better framerate - about 5fps more than over FTX. I don't really get that because over Tongass there's much more autogen visible and FTX normally is a very systemfriendly scenery. Strange...

I love the details on the model and the great texturing. I especially like the vibration of the entire Cub after the engine starts. And it's great fun to fly. Trying to lift up a fully loaded floater out of the water is some tricky stuff. :mrgreen:

Short question of different content. Is it possible to break engine? I had some rpm loss and something that sounded like a misfiring engine. I was able to do an emergency landing but shortly after the engine died completely and I was unable to start it again. I didn't do any wild stunts, it just happened out of the blue.

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Re: Learning to fly all over again

Post by Jigsaw »

Private-Cowboy wrote:I just tested the same Cub (standard wheel model) over Tongass and saw much better framerate - about 5fps more than over FTX. I don't really get that because over Tongass there's much more autogen visible and FTX normally is a very systemfriendly scenery. Strange...
Tongass doesn't use as many different textures at once as FTX does, due to the nature that Alaska is mostly forest. That may take some load off it. And buildings should be more demanding than trees. Not many of those in Alaska either.
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Private-Cowboy
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Re: Learning to fly all over again

Post by Private-Cowboy »

That's true but normally it's the other way round - I see better FPS over FTX than over Tongass. Just in the Cub it seems to be the other way round. I don't understand that either.

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Re: Learning to fly all over again

Post by CodyValkyrie »

I haven't tried FTX, however, as I made the video in Tongass (thank you FSAddon for allowing us to use your scenery!), I found the FPS there very acceptable, especially with DX10 enabled. There were some areas (heavy autogen trees) that lowered FPS a bit, but I never sunk below 25FPS throughout the whole ordeal with everything pretty much maxed.
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