A HUGE improvement in FPS.......

[Glenn]

To anyone that has followed my problems with very low framerates (4 fps) recently. I found some improvement when I installed MSI Afterburner, which saw rates jump up from around 4 fps to around 18 - 20. Just now, I thought I would try something different. I right clicked on fsx.exe and opened the properties / compatibility tab. Just for the hell of it I ticked 'run as administrator' - even though I am the administrator and only user. Then I thought that, as a "what if" experiment, I would also tick 'compatibility mode for windows XP3 (service pack 3), and also 'Disable display scaling on high DPI settings'.

Then I ran the exact same flight that I have been using for test purposes. And lo' and behold, the fps rates have jumped right up from around 20 to around the 50 mark !

I have absolutely no idea why such small seemingly insignificant changes should have such a big effect. Maybe might be worth someone else ticking those boxes just to see what happens?

[udidwht]

Originally posted by komplik:

Originally posted by SpeedBird:

For fsx.. it all comes down to your processor. I was doing around 14 to 15 frames. with alot of sliders maxed.. then overcloced my from 3.4 to 4.5 ghz now getting 20 to 25... its' CPU intensive.. hopefully DT's version with have the GPU work way more.

Yes It is CPU intensive but only for one core. If DTG make something with much optimized multicore performance, then performance problem will be solved, but I think it is not easy to do. P3D v2 is much more optimized but still, one core is overloaded and two cores are about 40 percent load only (with 84 affinity mas ok HT enabled i7, under 30% if affinity mask at 85).

FSX service packs introduced 'Multi core support'. Acceleration icludes service packs 1 & 2. FSX itsef is very CPU bound and makes limited use of the GPU.

[J.Ko]

Originally posted by ;598198173703045765:

FSX service packs introduced 'Multi core support'. Acceleration icludes service packs 1 & 2. FSX itsef is very CPU bound and makes limited use of the GPU.

Yes multicore CPUs are supported, but not used for full power. Still one core is under 100% load, rest cores available for FSX (depends on affinity mask) have low load vs first one. My 4790k with aff. mask 84... core 0 for OS, core 1: load 100% with FSX, core 2,3: load about 40% each. With affinity mask 85... core 0 load 100% with FSX and OS, core 1,2,3 load under 30% each... More cores = same performance.

[udidwht]

Originally posted by komplik:

Originally posted by ;598198173703045765:

FSX service packs introduced 'Multi core support'. Acceleration icludes service packs 1 & 2. FSX itsef is very CPU bound and makes limited use of the GPU.

Yes multicore CPUs are supported, but not used for full power. Still one core is under 100% load, rest cores available for FSX (depends on affinity mask) have low load vs first one. My 4790k with aff. mask 84... core 0 for OS, core 1: load 100% with FSX, core 2,3: load about 40% each. With affinity mask 85... core 0 load 100% with FSX and OS, core 1,2,3 load under 30% each... More cores = same performance.

It's sharing the load among the other processors. Also the 'Affinity mask' tweak is not recommended anymore. Hasn't been for some time now.

[blewberry]

You can try BufferPools=0 to send directly to your GPU. It works for some, not for others.

[J.Ko]

Originally posted by ChodaGirl:

You can try BufferPools=0 to send directly to your GPU. It works for some, not for others.

BufferPools in FSX:SE... please forget all old tweeks. There is new platform. For example, many guides say: set TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=30 in to range 80 and 120... FSX:SE have 160 in default... HighMemFix present, AffinityMask is not needed...

[J.Ko]

Originally posted by Udidwht:

Originally posted by komplik:

Yes multicore CPUs are supported, but not used for full power. Still one core is under 100% load, rest cores available for FSX (depends on affinity mask) have low load vs first one. My 4790k with aff. mask 84... core 0 for OS, core 1: load 100% with FSX, core 2,3: load about 40% each. With affinity mask 85... core 0 load 100% with FSX and OS, core 1,2,3 load under 30% each... More cores = same performance.

It's sharing the load among the other processors. Also the 'Affinity mask' tweak is not recommended anymore. Hasn't been for some time now.

Yes it shares, but one core is stil overloaded to 100% no matter how much cores you use for FSX if there is at least two. Affnity mask is not needed, but due to ASN, which have alert if AM not present in cfg I set i to 84, which is default for my CPU.

[udidwht]

Here is the definitive guide for setting up FSX for anyone who wishes to learn more...

http://www.simforums.com/forums/topic29041_page1.html

[StuperMan03]

ugh...FSX is such a heartbreaker sometimes.

I can't tell you how many times in the last...what has it been 10 years at least since it came out...that I or others have applied some magic "fix" to see huge FPS improvements only to find out that some sort of "thing" changes at some point and we are back to the same old stuttering game play. I've tried every FSX tweak probably 10x over and can probably attribute MAYBE 5fps seconds of improvement to it. Not trying to be a Debbie Downer...but I will say that don't be surprised when/if the "magic tweak" either a) doesn't work in some region of the world that it worked before (or other environmental change such as weather or b) causes other issues such as blurry textures or crashes to the desktop.

Flight simmers...we desperately need and deserve a better solution. I really wish X-plane would just add better aircraft and resolve the over decade old oversight of not including actual airport buildings (after all...just runways should be enough right?).

Good luck to all...but be prepared to ultimately visit the forum for the next "magic tweak". I've been watching this movie for over 10 years and the ending is always the same.

Other than a faster CPU...there is no magic tweak...IMO of course.

[blewberry]

Originally posted by Udidwht:

Here is the definitive guide for setting up FSX for anyone who wishes to learn more...

http://www.simforums.com/forums/topic29041_page1.html

That guy was a bit of a prick, and the condescending tone of his guide is not appreciated. And tbh, he gets it VERY wrong in several spots. Probably because his doctrine is now out of date. His comments on DX10 if I recall are out of line, especially with SteveFX DX10 Fixer. Nevertheless, thank you for sharing as more sources of info, the more material we have to test with.

The Kosta Guide is the preference on AVSIM:
https://kostasfsworld.wordpress.com/fsx-software-and-hardware-guide/

Also a bit dated and incorrect.

But again, that's life with FSX for you.

[udidwht]

Originally posted by ChodaGirl:

Originally posted by Udidwht:

Here is the definitive guide for setting up FSX for anyone who wishes to learn more...

http://www.simforums.com/forums/topic29041_page1.html

That guy was a bit of a prick, and the condescending tone of his guide is not appreciated. And tbh, he gets it VERY wrong in several spots. Probably because his doctrine is now out of date. His comments on DX10 if I recall are out of line, especially with SteveFX DX10 Fixer. Nevertheless, thank you for sharing as more sources of info, the more material we have to test with.

The Kosta Guide is the preference on AVSIM:
https://kostasfsworld.wordpress.com/fsx-software-and-hardware-guide/

Also a bit dated and incorrect.

But again, that's life with FSX for you.

Nick's guide has recently been updated (ground up). He tells you the way it is from the point of understanding the code FSX was written in.

[J.Ko]

I can recoomend this Tweek which comes from ORBX CEO: http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/9946-the-super-duper-ultimate-tweak-get-the-best-smoothness-and-performance-in-fsx/

In short "Now please take my advice - all other tweaks, config files, special OS launchers and archane OS tuning sequences will not make things better, but more than likely far worse."

And

"So here's the official Orbx line: DON'T TWEAK! JUST FLY!"

My sign for it!

[udidwht]

Originally posted by komplik:

I can recooment this Tweek which comes from ORBX CEO: http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/9946-the-super-duper-ultimate-tweak-get-the-best-smoothness-and-performance-in-fsx/

In short "Now please take my advice - all other tweaks, config files, special OS launchers and archane OS tuning sequences will not make things better, but more than likely far worse."

And

"So here's the official Orbx line: DON'T TWEAK! JUST FLY!"

My sign for it!

I'm all for limiting the tweaks within FSX. But there are 2 tweaks that need to be applied:

HIGHMEMFIX
UIAutomationCore.dll

The most important tweak? System/configuration set up prior to install of FSX.

[blewberry]

Originally posted by Udidwht:

Originally posted by ChodaGirl:

That guy was a bit of a prick, and the condescending tone of his guide is not appreciated. And tbh, he gets it VERY wrong in several spots. Probably because his doctrine is now out of date. His comments on DX10 if I recall are out of line, especially with SteveFX DX10 Fixer. Nevertheless, thank you for sharing as more sources of info, the more material we have to test with.

The Kosta Guide is the preference on AVSIM:
https://kostasfsworld.wordpress.com/fsx-software-and-hardware-guide/

Also a bit dated and incorrect.

But again, that's life with FSX for you.

Nick's guide has recently been updated (ground up). He tells you the way it is from the point of understanding the code FSX was written in.

If it has been updated, then it's worse than I thought. It's just wrong. lol but I am glad it worked for you. Are you still on DX9 then?

[StuperMan03]

Originally posted by ChodaGirl:

Originally posted by Udidwht:

Here is the definitive guide for setting up FSX for anyone who wishes to learn more...

http://www.simforums.com/forums/topic29041_page1.html

That guy was a bit of a prick, and the condescending tone of his guide is not appreciated. And tbh, he gets it VERY wrong in several spots. Probably because his doctrine is now out of date. His comments on DX10 if I recall are out of line, especially with SteveFX DX10 Fixer. Nevertheless, thank you for sharing as more sources of info, the more material we have to test with.

The Kosta Guide is the preference on AVSIM:
https://kostasfsworld.wordpress.com/fsx-software-and-hardware-guide/

Also a bit dated and incorrect.

But again, that's life with FSX for you.

While the guy may be condescending he says something that I said in my post previous to yours and I can tell you as a Flight Simmer since 1995 to be true in respect to FSX:

"And every time you see a user post; "This tweak worked and my sim is perfect" within 1-2-3 months that same user is right back in that forum looking for another fix or boost... it NEVER ENDS and the tweaks and settings they claimed were perfect in the past now seem to need another round of changes.!"

Sorry...but that statement is absolutely true...almost entirely without fail. I don't blame it on "users". FSX just does not have an efficient graphics engine. Compared to FS2004 before it, it's hard to understand what exactly went wrong, but Microsoft has put out both GREAT and POOR versions of FlightSim...just as they did with Windows. For instance, in it's day FS2000 was a real system hog. FS2002 came out and actually IMPROVED this while adding even better eye candy which carried over to FS2004. Then, with FSX...MS did *something* really wrong. At the time of it's arrival I don't think most people knew what exactly it was although it certainly seems to boil down to the fact that MS made it CPU intensive instead of GPU. I've heard statements that seem to imply that they thought that 10ghz processors would be available not long after the game arrived.

I have no proof of it but I do have theories of what happened next. We do know that the FSX development team was basically scrapped. My belief is that this wasn't a result of the so-called organizational changes but the indisputable fact that MS delivered a high profile product that most people simply didn't have the firepower to run. Even ten years later...we still have people getting 4fps. I myself suffered 4 fps just the other night on approach to KSFO. Some people may find this hard to believe but there was a day that a new MS Flightsim was a guaranteed big seller...we're talking number 1 on the charts. FSX also sold well out of the gate...but I have to believe that MS received a huge amount of support calls and correspondence from people who simply could not run the sim efficiently (remember what hardware was 10 years ago and think of how FSX runs NOW...do that math for am minute). When I got FSX I tried for a week to do any effective flightsimming and just uninstalled it and waited until a year later.

got new hardware...same old issues.

I've done it 4-5 times now...and I still get 4 fps over KSFO with a 4ghz processor in the wrong conditions on occasion. Still can't land at KLGA or KJFK without either awful framerates or running out of VAS.

It's just a bad graphics engine...neither Lockheed or Dovetail seem to be able to do much about it.

[blewberry]

No really a bad engine, just a wrong engine.

When FSX was released, it was designed specifically for the CPUs that the developers believed were coming in the next few years, that is to say: 5Ghz processors. Unfortunately, due to silicone limitations, we still don't have those processors at the retail level, even 10 years later. If you recall, back then processor power was doubling every 2-3 years. Doubling.

Their intent was to create the best simulator possible that would grow with the coming computing technology. Well it didn't work out that way, and now we are stuck with FSX as it is.

And, the first time I loaded Microsoft Flight Simulator was back in the late 90s--though, I am not sure what that is supposed to mean, as it doesn't make me more qualified than someone who picked it up last year and knows more than you and I combined. BUT, what an improvement FSX is from the sim from those days. I can appreciate that we at least have the quality that we have today to have this debate. :)