The A2A Simulations Community

Recently watching a tutorial on YouTube about fsx settings. Does it make a difference in the aircraft if in the graphics settings that the aircraft settings isn't ultra high?

I guess what I'm asking is what's the best settings to maximize frame rates?

I'm running a toshiba x205 sli2 with dual 8600 gt in sli 4 gb ram with t8100

What's a real frame rate eater here?I tried to run everything full but wasn't really successful at all.

Hi,

No-one can really run max sliders with success. The sim is too buggy to do it.

Disable AutoGen, ALL AI, Bloom, for a start, and set water to Max 1.x. Be sure to restart FSX afterwards as even disabling these in the sim is bugged and they still affect performance even though you just disabled them!! It takes a restart of FSX (and maybe your computer) to ensure it is removed totally from processing, and for you to see the maximum increase in performance from them being disabled.

Best regards,
Robin.

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A2A/AccuSim. 'nuff said!

I agree with Robin even with my computers stats I can't turn all the sliders to full, I still ran this utility

http://www.venetubo.com/fsx.html

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Ron
B-17 AIRFRAME 710 HRS PLUS AND CLIMBING




GIGABYTE X58A-UD5 MB, INTEL I7 950, 12GB DOMINATOR-GT DDR3 RAM, WIN7 64, GIGABYTE SUPER OVER CLOCK GTX 560 TI 1GB GGDDR5 1000Mz, CORSAIR 850W PS, NOCTUA NH-D14,
TRACKIR 5 & TrackClipPro

I was just about to share this link my self, It is the single greatest thing Ive ever had for my FSX, and having only discovered it a few months ago I was shamed i'd flown FSX all these years with low frame rates, sound crackling issues and other nonsense, this tweaking tool is fantastic, customise the end result though e.g it turns off things like tooltips which i use for accurate readings of small guages and so on.

Although FSX does have its share of bugs this isn't really the reason you cant max everything out on all but uber built rigs. FSX was deliberately written to maximise CPU throughput in order to be as scaleable as well as compatible with the hardware of the day and still be able to use future hardware without becoming obsolete over night due to hardware changes. To that end it doesn't utilise SLI or Crossfire and doesn't exactly run an average spec GFX card very hard at all.

To maximise performance you need to claw back CPU cycles and have a decent amount of fairly good speed ram. So a lot of optimisations can be made outside of FSX in shutting down non essential background tasks. Ignoring the obvious such as complex scenery and aircraft, even adding on more hardware to your flight sim experience (I have a shed load of Saitek panels for instance) will add to the CPU burden not to mention the many calls through Simconnect all competing with getting CPU attention at the expense of frame rate.

At the end of the day each system is unique and each one of us unique in what we expect out of our flight sim experience so you need to decided what you can and can't live with in terms of eye candy, draw distance, complex scenery and what frame rate is acceptable to you. Personally I like complex airports that are a hive of activity, the trade off for me being the lowest frame rates when you need the most control but I find it still acceptable. You can also have a range of settings saved so you can just load them in while flying to get the best frame rates for a range of conditions.

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Asus P6X58D-E Intel X58 MB with onboard Realtek HD audio
Intel i7 970 3.2GHz 6 Core
Samsung 256Gb SSD for Win 7 64 bit
Corsair Vengeance 12Gb Triple Channel DDR3
nVidia 680 GTX
TrackIR 5,Track clip pro, EZDOK and a host of CH/Saitek controls and panels

If you want to believe the poor excuses of the ACES team as to why FSX is so poor, then that is your choice, but do be aware it is baloney. When Phil Taylor started spouting this, they really were cooked as a dev team. When they announced ACES were to close, I was not the least bit surprised. Phil T could see what was going on which is why he left before the closure was announced - he knew what ended up happening was inevitable. They started making excuses when people started picking holes, and they had to release two service packs for glaring bugs, the second service pack fixing bugs created by the first, and introducing new ones. It was a total mess.

Just look at DCS:BS or DCS:W for what a sim done properly looks like (and they still use DX9 tech BTW - none of the DX10 preview rubbish we saw with FSX). Whatever MS intentions were with FSX, it was not to produce a high-quality flight simulator.

Best regards,
Robin.

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A2A/AccuSim. 'nuff said!

So watching the remains portions of the tutorial, and hearing that fsx only recognizes single core CPU. So if this statement was true does the same happen with GPU? In other words sli is useless?

Hi,

SLI is not useless. SLI is a graphics driver function and is independent of the software you are running. FSX uses DirectX, DirectX supports SLI, so it will use it if available. SLI only has a performance increase if the app making the drawing calls uses functions that are sped up through the use of SLI (I suggest you research what SLI really is, and how it really works, by reading the technical documentation about it instead of uninformed rubbish in multiple hardware forums).

Best regards,
Robin.

_________________
A2A/AccuSim. 'nuff said!

Not sure where the unwarrented hostility came from in your post as I was mearly stating fact not listening to rumor or bitter words of departing developers. Fact : FSX IS CPU intensive as its more CPU based then GFX based (irrespective of the developer decisions being made as to why they made that choice, MS arent the best group in the world when it comes to supporting PC gaming). Fact : DCS : BS and A:10 are written around currently hardware to full utilise GFX potentinal including technologies such as SLI and yes as DX9 they do so rather well.

Lyonsdan FSX does use multicore but it does so in its own way off loading its own internal threads for different things. You can fudge it with a fsx.cfg infinitycores tweak but even with my hyperthreaded 12 cores I cant see it making much difference on my system but your mileage may vary. Tweaks for one rig may work well and for others not work at all or worse introduce CTD's.

_________________
Asus P6X58D-E Intel X58 MB with onboard Realtek HD audio
Intel i7 970 3.2GHz 6 Core
Samsung 256Gb SSD for Win 7 64 bit
Corsair Vengeance 12Gb Triple Channel DDR3
nVidia 680 GTX
TrackIR 5,Track clip pro, EZDOK and a host of CH/Saitek controls and panels

I wasn't meaning to be hostile. Sorry if it came across that way. When it comes to the subject of how FSX does things, it is a very good example of how they should NOT be done.

Too many uninformed opinions are made about how FSX threading, micro-thread management (fibers) etc.. is supposed to be the best thing since sliced bread, but it is all junk. Just jump on http://msdn.microsoft.com/ and http://www.intel.com/products/processor/manuals/ and study how it really works. It will soon become apparent that the way FSX is coded is rubbish.

I was not meaning to attack you personally, but understanding how it works, I can't stand reading this crap any longer. I've spent the last 18 months specifically designing high performance multi-threaded code, but I'm still not there yet because of all the traps. I'm close to scrapping the idea and doing it all in one thread, as it is looking like it will be faster. Sure, I could just write multi-threaded code now, and do like FSX and even use fibers (if I wanted to really abuse capability I don't need), but it will be buggy, unreliable, and ultimately quite a bit slower. Threads (and worse, fibers), take management, and that is stealing time and system resources I could be using for something else.

Phil T was not a ranting, disgruntled employee, but ACES were just desperate to justify why FSX was so slow. "It was designed for future hardware" was an instant classic I'll be quoting a decade from now.

Best regards,
Robin.

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A2A/AccuSim. 'nuff said!

Well friendly handshake from me. I shouldn't post from a phone anyway as it comes out all wrong

Well I'm happy to say with my pretty much stock toshiba x205. I'm now getting 35-90 FPS after some much needed tweaking in settings.

Robin, I never heard Phil ever try to justify FSX running slow beyond the following -

1) ACES decided early on not to build for multi-core CPUs because they weren't convinced that they were going to catch on.
2) ACES was FORCED to rebuild the FSX Graphics Kernel in about 30 days after Microsoft told them they were not going to slip their GOLD date because of the debacle that was DX10 but keep all of the non-DX9 GPU supported features. This is what caused the offload of a lot of stuff back to the CPU that they'd originally moved off to the DX10 GPU.
3) ACES was FORCED to release the DX9 Graphics Kernel partially completed (hence SP1) because they ran out of time.
4) ACES TRIED to show what they were trying to do with SP2 and make up for the lack of multi-core support as much as they could without completely rebuilding the kernels again.

Phil was disgruntled as was the ACES team. They had been backstabbed by the now Gates-less management that decided that making the money off a highly anticipated game was more important than actually releasing a finished project. The final straw was when MS started showing signs that they were going to stillbirth MSTS2, which Phil had high hopes for. That's when he left ACES and the rest of the team followed shortly afterwards.

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CAPFlyer:


Your list is news to me. Enlightening, but not surprising, either.

The quote about "designed for future hardware" was most certainly written by Phil Taylor in one of the many posts he made. I can't remember where, but I'm sure Google will know.

Best regards,
Robin.

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A2A/AccuSim. 'nuff said!