FTX Day/Night Switcher

[Tim-HH]

Hi,

that sounds promising: Public Beta - FTX Day Night Switcher - Can double your FPS (http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/38204-public-beta-ftx-day-night-switcher-can-double-your-fps/) :applause:

Greetings
Tim

[Bruce Thompson]

Thanks for the HU Tim, I will give this a try, dowloading now.


Bruce.

[anthony31]

Man those lights sure eat a lot of frames.

Tested this out at Sydney with autogen at Dense and was getting 56 fps with normal settings but usin the light switcher and turning off the street light effects the frames went up to 80. That works out to a 40% fps improvement for me.

[OleBoy]

I'm hoping that this gets incorporated into FTX Central. All these added shortcuts all over my desktop, as it it is, gets me disliking even flying anymore. Click this, start that, tweak this, blah, blah blah, blah blah.

Not that I dislike what the outcome is, which sounds very beneficial, but I have plenty of short-cuts already.

I honestly hope this gets incorporated.

[limjack]

I'm hoping that this gets incorporated into FTX Central. All these added shortcuts all over my desktop, as it it is, gets me disliking even flying anymore. Click this, start that, tweak this, blah, blah blah, blah blah.

Not that I dislike what the outcome is, which sounds very beneficial, but I have plenty of short-cuts already.

I honestly hope this gets incorporated.


From their website OleBoy.

"We will look at integrating this into FTX Central soon".

[anthony31]

I have a folder on my desktop called FSX Controls and I throw all these sorts of shortcuts in there. Helps reduce the clutter :).

[OleBoy]

From their website OleBoy.

"We will look at integrating this into FTX Central soon".

Just, well, out of curiosity for instance. Could this Day/Night feature be created as a module that can be ran while running FSX, and then refresh the simulator scenery? Like the way FSUIPC is? Real time. It just sounds a lot more convenient than having it reside outside the sim, rather than incorporated inside say as an add-on. {shrug} Just a thought.

[mmann]

It figures that they would come up with this after I uninstalled the FTX products from my FSX installation!

[falcon409]

Saw no change, "Lights on" or "Lights Off", my frame rate around Seattle and any other "Autogen Rich" area in PNW is between 8 and 10. In the past they've issued other patches that were supposed to help reduce the FPS hit, but none had any affect on my system. I can control the FPS much more directly by reducing the autogen "in-sim". Some folks are seeing pretty impressive FPS increases, but I don't believe those claims are an "across the board" effect.

[MarkH]

I don't believe those claims are an "across the board" effect.
I'd guess your frames are being limited by more than one factor. From the description, lights create a significant overhead and if your system was optimally-tuned (or close to it) you would see a significant difference. The fact that you don't might mean you need to tweak something else as well. (Don't ask me what, I don't keep up with all this tweak stuff!)

[Tartuffe]

Thanks for the HU, Tim !

:applause:

[LouP]

Hey Falcon,

You are not alone, I just tested this out in Portland, OR and saw no improvement when switching to day. My FSX is not in the standard "C" drive, I am not sure if that matters or not.

LouP

[Marvin Carter]

Did not help me ether?

[Thoe6969]

Did nothing for me either,still get 35 to45 frames in non populated areas and 10 to 13 over Seattle.

[falcon409]

I'd guess your frames are being limited by more than one factor. From the description, lights create a significant overhead and if your system was optimally-tuned (or close to it) you would see a significant difference. The fact that you don't might mean you need to tweak something else as well. (Don't ask me what, I don't keep up with all this tweak stuff!)
Your last statement says a lot really Mark, you don't keep up with the maze of tweaks that have been posted and I have a feeling there are a lot of other folks who don't as well. Tweaks are subjective at best, working for the individual and their personal PC, but no guarantee at all that they'll work on all other PC's or even a few despite claims to the contrary. The patches and tweaks that Orbyx releases from time to time (this one included) to supposedly free up additional fps are no different. I see enough folks posting here that report no change in FPS after using the utility, to suggest, as I mentioned in my initial post, that the claims of significant increases in FPS are not an across-the-board guarantee.

One thing is certain, one persons "optimally tuned" FSX/PC could render someone else's unusable. If I've done everything I can to "tune" my FSX setup based on the available tweaks and I don't see any change using this latest tweak, then what are my options? Isn't it possible that I've milked my PC and FSX for every drop of FPS there is based on my PC's abilities? Suggesting that this latest utility "must" show significant results is flawed. . . .period.:salute:

[Thoe6969]

A little update to my earlyer findings that the switcher did not help my frames any.I did another flight departing from Bremmerton,that I fly out of a lot,got about ten more fps than I used to but still no improvement over seatlle.So if it improves framrates at airports it worth having for me.

[MarkH]

Suggesting that this latest utility "must" show significant results is flawed. . . .period.
I presume there is method behind the light switcher, and if it reduces the amount of work FSX has to do then there is a performance benefit to be had. But you're right, if that's not your bottleneck it isn't going to help you.

[vora]

According to Tim Harris, the developer of this tool, this tweak is simply a scripted swap of the OrbX library file Miscelleneous_lib_orbx.bgl.
(see post on Orbx forum, registration required (http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/38204-public-beta-ftx-day-night-switcher-can-double-your-fps/page__view__findpost__p__334561))

The default file ("night version") contains the FSX default lightpoles with FX attached. Unfortunately MS attached an FX to every lightpole model that switches the light on/off depending on daytime. That means that countless FX models are running during daytime without any visible effect. The replacement library ("day version") replaces the FX models with simple dummies without any FX.

That being said this tweak covers only
- autogen lightpoles
- in FTX regions
BTW, it was UTX that premiered that tweak for its regions.

Why does it bring good or no results on different machines? Well, it's FSX :icon_lol:
- on the highend side your hardware/software configuration may be so good that your machine does not choke on loads of FX models.
- on the midrange to lowend side your hardware/software has other bottlenecks that denies you any improvement this tweak should (obviously) bring.

On my rig I tested it in Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane and Seattle (DX10 preview). I got 20 - 30% increase of my frame rates (frames set to unlimited, no outside frame rate limiter).





PS: OrbX just announced their christmas line-up here (http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/38290-the-official-orbx-xmas-shopping-list/page__view__findpost__p__334261): 1 region (New Zealand South) and 7 airports (among them Alice Springs and Ketchikan, woohooo!)

[OleBoy]

I'd say slightly off topic a bit from what's coming in the near future, but I just stumbled on this. It's likely already known by many, but I don't frequent their forums much due to my schedule. Some neat stuff in the pipe. http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/34184-orbx-and-large-international-airports/