Instant increase in FPS in FSX-SE

[bjwoody61]

I have found a really simple way to increase FPS. A lot of the so called jitters and stalls and low fps are being caused by windows operating system. Its called process contention. FSX is competing for cpu time.

A simple fix is when you start FSX, right click on the task bar and then start Task Manager. Click on the details tab and scroll down to fsx.exe. Right click on it. A pop up menu appears, then click on CPU priorty. Set it to Above Normal or High. I have mine set to high and my FPS jumped from and average of 24 to 32 with the minimum of 17.5 and a maximum 44.3.

The only caveat to this is it's not permanent. You would have to do this every time you start FSX. I did find a small utility called Prio. Once installed it adds some items to that pop up menu in the Task Manager which allows you to save the setting. It makes it permanent until you decide to change it. It's free for personal use. Hese's the link

https://www.prnwatch.com/prio/

[ZeroReady]

I believe Windows 10 automatically puts games at highest CPU priority

[TextRich]

Originally posted by ZeroReady:

I believe Windows 10 automatically puts games at highest CPU priority

Not on my Windows 10 machine. Nice tip bjwoody61!

[SteveFSX/P3D]

Very interesting - and I will try this later on using my benchmark flight - and will give an honest opinion :-)

[Rogen]

Good catch for the Priority, I find things tend to run smoother with FSX-SE running as a higher priority.

And it is possible to configure so that FSX-SE is always started as the configured priority via a START script, which is what I have configured and use with FSX.exe set to REALTIME.


So to expand on the priority options, I have multiple applications to start prior to FSX-SE and I want to ensure all are started with one click and that if any are already running, that a new instance is not started.

The script determines if an app is already running and if so, a new instance will not be started. If the app isn't detected as running, then it will be started with the configured priority (e.g. /NORMAL or /REALTIME).

The items I start in the script are:
Active Sky Next
Borderless Gaming
Joy To Key
FSX-SE


I've included the script I use below and while I realise this is probably a bit too advanced for the average user of FSX-SE, I'm sure some will find such a script example of use.

To utilise it you would essentually remove the lines you don't need and change the paths for your own install locations. Each "tasklist" line is a self contained check for running app and then start if not already running.

The script is saved as "Start FSX-SE.cmd" and placed into the FSX-SE app folder root from where a shortcut is generated to the desktop, which in turn is configured with an icon and runas administrator rights.

~Start of Script~
@echo off

REM pushd

tasklist /nh /fi "imagename eq ASNext.exe" | find /i "ASNext.exe" > nul ||(START "Active Sky Next" /NORMAL /D "E:\FSX Addons\ASNext_FSX" /I "E:\FSX Addons\ASNext_FSX\ASNext.exe")

tasklist /nh /fi "imagename eq BorderlessGaming.exe" | find /i "BorderlessGaming.exe" > nul ||(START "BorderlessFSX" /NORMAL /D "C:\Program Files (x86)\Borderless Gaming" /MIN "C:\Program Files (x86)\Borderless Gaming\BorderlessGaming.exe")

tasklist /nh /fi "imagename eq JoyToKey.exe" | find /i "JoyToKey.exe" > nul ||(START "FSX-SE" /NORMAL /D "E:\FSX Addons\JoyToKey_en" /I "E:\FSX Addons\JoyToKey_en\JoyToKey.exe")

tasklist /nh /fi "imagename eq fsx.exe" | find /i "fsx.exe" > nul ||(START "FSX-SE" /REALTIME /D "E:\Games\Steam\steamapps\common\FSX" /I "E:\Games\Steam\steamapps\common\FSX\fsx.exe")

REM Info on the use of START https://technet.microsoft.com/en-au/library/bb491005.aspx
REM Info on the use of TASKLIST https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb491010.aspx

REM The script will run with the rights of the invoker which will set the priority as HIGH and not REALTIME as admin rights are required to set as REALTIME.

REM To allow the script to set FSX as REALTIME the script can be run from a shortcut where the shortcut is configured to run with ADMIN rights via the shortcut's property dialog.
~End of Script~

Shortcut configuration
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1096527547

Cheers

[SteveFSX/P3D]

Did not work for me after trying my standard benchmark flight and then checked with a mission. Using Windows 7 - but the option is available under 'processes'

That's just the way with FSX - some things work on some systems and not for others. I will be selecting it though - even if I did not see any fps increase. It might help in other areas.

Thanks

[bjwoody61]

Rogan: What's your settings? I tried REALTIME and got to many stalls.

[Rogen]

Originally posted by bjwoody61:

Rogan: What's your settings? I tried REALTIME and got to many stalls.

REALTIME might be a bit too much, give HIGH a try and see if it works for your system. If you download and run the Microsoft program of "Process Explorer" as an admin, you can change between the priorities on the fly and see what works for you and what doesn't.

I also have processor affinity configured to set FSX-SE to cores 2,3, and 4 (AMD processor) and I've removed the need for admin rights to run FSX-SE and the other programs as well.

I'm a bit of a tweeker of settings :-)