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Alexraptor
December 25th, 2008, 18:06
Need some help here guys.
I had FSX configured near perfectly with the hardware i have a couple of months ago, then i ended up doing a few system and driver updates, including graphic drivers.
Now i have the problem that i cannot find my way back to those glorious settings.
Before i was able to have everything on ultra high, terrain mesh complexity 100%, terrain mesh detail 10m and texture detail 60cm.

It works fine in some cases but when theres a lot of autogen "combined with clouds" it gets choppy like crazy. I know i had it working before i just cant remember how.

So any tweaks in this particular area to either the fsx.cfg or settings for the Nvidia control panel would be very helpful(though the nvidia settings seems to be the ones i cant remember and possibly the primary cause for the stutters).

NCGent
December 25th, 2008, 18:19
Do you have nhancer? That helped me a lot in getting my settings right, along with nvidia control panel.

Alexraptor
December 26th, 2008, 03:46
nop no nhancer, didnt need it before either.

stansdds
December 26th, 2008, 04:22
nHancer seems to work better than nVidia's control panel.

Alexraptor
December 26th, 2008, 05:14
Problem solved... and kind of embaressing... .. i had not defragged the harddrive for quite a while! :banghead:

And i cleared up the rest of the stutters with forcing vsync and tripple buffering. :icon_lol:
But the HDD was the largest culprit.

Alexraptor
January 1st, 2009, 03:13
*sigh* its back again, and i don't have a clue whats wrong.

This is with FSX and Acceleration straight on top of it.
Settings are as follows..
Display: 1600x1200x32, Antialiasing, Anisotropic filtering, Advanced animations on, Lens flare off, Light Bloom off, global texture resolution Very High, Framerate locked at 30fps.
Aircraft: All settings maxed out
Scenery: Mesh resolution 10m, Texture resolution 60cm, Scenery Complexity very dense, autogen dense, Ground shadows off, rest of the sliders are all the way to the right.
Weather: sliders all the way to the right, rate of weather change is medium.
Traffic: Labels off, Airline density 25%, GA density 40%, Airport vehicle density Minimum, Road vehicles 10%, ships and ferries 10%, Leisure boats 20%.

FSX.cfg tweaks(only included the tweaks):
[JOBSCHEDULER]
AffinityMask=3
[Main]
DisablePreload=1
[DISPLAY.Device.NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX/9800 GTX+.0]
MipBias=6


That about gives a complete rundown of my FSX settings...
The stutters happen when i have clouds such as fair weather or building storms or cold fronts. However if i set the water shaders to minimum the problem clears up.
Now i know what you are going to say.... turn the settings down or keep the water shaders down if it works, which is not an option.
These settings were working just fine a couple of days ago and i need some help figuring out what is wrong now.

I have done a complete reinstallation of FSX and the addons, even testing FSX in a vanilla state before adding Real Environment Xtreme and the stutters were still present.
I have defragged with ultimate defrag every step of the way, placing FSX in the "high performance" area on the HDD.
So it seems to at least rule out the harddrive as the culprit this time which fits well in with there being no harddrive activity when the FPS drop and stutters happen.
Another thing is that the stutters and performance drops arent constant, i can look towards one direction and my FPS is nice and stable, i turn the view to the other direction and poof, stutters galore and framerate cut in half, and the scenery i am looking at does not have to be any more complex either.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

txnetcop
January 1st, 2009, 05:33
*sigh* its back again, and i don't have a clue whats wrong.

This is with FSX and Acceleration straight on top of it.
Settings are as follows..
Display: 1600x1200x32, Antialiasing, Anisotropic filtering, Advanced animations on, Lens flare off, Light Bloom off, global texture resolution Very High, Framerate locked at 30fps.
Aircraft: All settings maxed out
Scenery: Mesh resolution 10m, Texture resolution 60cm, Scenery Complexity very dense, autogen dense, Ground shadows off, rest of the sliders are all the way to the right.
Weather: sliders all the way to the right, rate of weather change is medium.
Traffic: Labels off, Airline density 25%, GA density 40%, Airport vehicle density Minimum, Road vehicles 10%, ships and ferries 10%, Leisure boats 20%.

FSX.cfg tweaks(only included the tweaks):
[JOBSCHEDULER]
AffinityMask=3
[Main]
DisablePreload=1
[DISPLAY.Device.NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX/9800 GTX+.0]
MipBias=6


That about gives a complete rundown of my FSX settings...
The stutters happen when i have clouds such as fair weather or building storms or cold fronts. However if i set the water shaders to minimum the problem clears up.
Now i know what you are going to say.... turn the settings down or keep the water shaders down if it works, which is not an option.
These settings were working just fine a couple of days ago and i need some help figuring out what is wrong now.

I have done a complete reinstallation of FSX and the addons, even testing FSX in a vanilla state before adding Real Environment Xtreme and the stutters were still present.
I have defragged with ultimate defrag every step of the way, placing FSX in the "high performance" area on the HDD.
So it seems to at least rule out the harddrive as the culprit this time which fits well in with there being no harddrive activity when the FPS drop and stutters happen.
Another thing is that the stutters and performance drops arent constant, i can look towards one direction and my FPS is nice and stable, i turn the view to the other direction and poof, stutters galore and framerate cut in half, and the scenery i am looking at does not have to be any more complex either.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

How many processes do you have working in the background of your OS?

Alexraptor
January 1st, 2009, 07:04
excluding the two browsers i have open at this moment(which i close when i fly) i have 27.
Been disabling as much as i can.

Alexraptor
January 2nd, 2009, 12:17
don't mean to be a pest here... but :redf:

Bjoern
January 3rd, 2009, 08:18
If you're on Vista, try disabling "Superfetch" and the "Indexing Service". The first is a matter of taste (it does have benefits), but the second is (next to UAC) one of the most unnecessary and resource-eating features Vista has to offer.

You can find more details on those services and how to disable them by consulting the search engine of your choice.

Alexraptor
January 3rd, 2009, 09:40
I'm on XP Professional service pack 3.
Actually have disabled Indexing on this system as well and i have been through the entire list of services and disabled as much as possible.

Bjoern
January 3rd, 2009, 14:35
Have you defragged your harddrive?

Alexraptor
January 3rd, 2009, 15:13
Thats what i said a couple of posts ago. :whistle:

Bjoern
January 3rd, 2009, 16:23
Oops!

Tried letting FSX rebuild a fresh fsx.cfg (just save/rename the old one and start up FSX)?

Alexraptor
January 3rd, 2009, 17:23
Done that several times, and like i also mentioned, i did a complete clean re-installation, cleaned registry, cleaned shader cache and other settings folders created by FSX.

Bjoern
January 4th, 2009, 10:30
If you can rule out the OS and drivers as well, it would only leave a hardware component as the source of the cause.


P.S: Is your virus scanner turned of while FSX'ing?

Alexraptor
January 4th, 2009, 12:20
Never use virus scanners period.
Allthough i routinely scan with symantec's online virus scan.

harleyman
January 4th, 2009, 16:50
Have you tried lowering your:

Texture _Bandwidth _Multi from 40 to 30?
This is found in your Config under *Display*
This can help with stutters.....


You can also reduce auto-gen as it gives gains there too...

Alexraptor
January 7th, 2009, 12:58
Didn't make any difference.
I wont reduce autogen, like i said, used to be just fine where it is.

If only i could find the faulty element in this equation...

harleyman
January 7th, 2009, 13:05
Hmmm...Give me some time to again research this more for you...We should be able to find the culprit here.....


Can you name your addons? like MegaSceneries....Weather...etc..


Also is your FSX resolution set to your monitors ??

Can you also post your system specs? Vid drivers and the such..Sound?


I see you have REX...What resolution clouds you using too?

harleyman
January 7th, 2009, 13:16
Give this a test too... EDIT...This is for FS9........NOT FSX....sorry...Don't do it...Don't exceed 100 here... My fault.....


[DISPLAY]
TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT= 40 <--------- start at 30 and move up..But don't excede 100

Lets go the other way and see......This is where mine is set

Alexraptor
January 8th, 2009, 01:35
i already went up to clear up issues with 4096x4096 texture stutters but it didnt resolve the other stutters.

harleyman
January 8th, 2009, 01:48
What do you mean you went up to clear up the high resolution cloud stutters?

So..What other stuttering are you getting?

Try setting your clouds at a much lower resolution for a while too..Just to be sure you are not still having cloud issues...Or have you done that before? Are you using the DXT textures and I assume you have ASX ?

Alexraptor
January 8th, 2009, 02:07
that was the first thing i tried, there is no difference between the high and low res cloud textures.
And no not ASX, Real Environment Xtreme with DXT5 optimization.

harleyman
January 8th, 2009, 02:25
Have you made any Vid card driver changes before this happened?

You say defragging your HDD cleared it up once....Then it came back...

You can go to your HDD manufactures website and DL a tool to run and test your HDD for errors.....You can run DiskCheck too..


What Sound card if any do you use? Have you updated drivers for that too lately.if its creative they have known issues....

harleyman
January 8th, 2009, 02:36
You are using REX...Have you changed your FSX config for that to..

TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=4096 (Required setting for REX )

Alexraptor
January 8th, 2009, 07:25
yes i have been playing around with the TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD setting.
Its not an HDD issue its a generic drop in framerate in stuttering for some unkown reason, there is no HDD activity going on with the FPS drop, in some instances the FPS stays low in a particular view angle even when paused.

I have a Creative X-FI XtremeGamer, no updates that recently.

harleyman
January 8th, 2009, 07:38
Hmm I know you have a all but virgin install...Do you have any add on sceneries?

Does this happen at any point or place you fly> Are you using a test airport ,or is it everywhere...

My thinking here was perhaps duplicate bgl files.....

Alexraptor
January 8th, 2009, 13:02
Actually i tested when i reinstalled FSX clean and the problem was still there before any addons had been installed.
Places i have been testing at has been primarily Jönköping(Jonkoping in FSX) and Orcas. But it tends to happen in general with any clouds.

harleyman
January 8th, 2009, 14:24
I think these answers might better be addressed at the REX site.... (maybe)

Correct me if I'm wrong

A clean install of FSX.....Does it run smooth then? (reread and see it does not)

Or only after you install REX ?

If its not smooth on just FSX,and you say it was perfect before then.....

I say you have a bad install of FSX....There is a proper way to install FSX ..


1. Defragg your HDDs
2. Install FSX...Load a flight..Fly a few minutes...Close
3. Defragg again....
4. Install Acceleration.....Load the sim...Fly a few...Close...
5. Defragg


Now then..A clean install of FSX means cleaning ALL regestry entries out too. I like to manually do that and with XP Pro I also use Reg Scrub XP..

After thats all done I reboot into a clean OS and regestry and begin my install process...

You may want to consider this too...

Alexraptor
January 8th, 2009, 17:53
No the problem still persists with FSX with a clean, no-addon, installation.

I have already done just that in reinstalling FSX including wiping the registry from FS related entries.

harleyman
January 8th, 2009, 20:14
Well Alexraptor..I am fast running out of ideas here....

Do you play any other games at all? if so do they stutter too?

Are your HDDS in Raid?

Do you Have your CPU OCed?

Is your GPU OCed?

Do you live over a burial ground? :help:

Alexraptor
January 9th, 2009, 02:10
No no burial ground lol
No RAID
No GPU OC
CPU OC'ed to 3Ghz(from 2.66)
I play Crysis, Crysis Warhead, Far Cry 2 amongst others and no problems period there.

stansdds
January 9th, 2009, 02:52
I'm getting micro stutters as well, no add-on scenery for me, just some freeware water and cloud textures and the free ground environment gift that was released during the holidays. I've tried just about everything except changing video drivers and that might be the issue, some cfg tweaks seem to help, but more often than not, the improvement is minimal. Il2 Sturmovik was designed around Java and OpenGL, only Nvidia cards can run that sim with all the graphics at max. Somewhere along the line, Nvidia either changed something in the drivers or in the hardware (or both) and introduced micro stutters into the sim. Some drivers seem better than others, but it always seems to be there. I'm begining to think the FSX may be suffering the same way.

I guess the question is, do ATI graphics card users have the same problem with stutters?

txnetcop
January 9th, 2009, 04:16
stansdds I have two ATIs and there are no micro stutters but neither should your Nvidia have microstutters of your system is set up correctly, have you flashed the BIOS on your motherboard or upgraded your video card drivers to the latest. NHancer will also do a very fine job at eliminating stutters, but if you use it please donate a small amount as it is a fine program for Nvidia users.
Ted

stansdds
January 9th, 2009, 10:04
I've used nHancer for about two years now, far better than the nVidia panel. I have not changed the BIOS on my computer since I built it last year. My motherboard is the Gigabyte GA-EP35C-DS3R with the F2 BIOS, at the time this was the most stable BIOS for this board. I'm still using the nVidia 178.24 WHQL driver, but the 181.20 WHQL just came out, so I may try that one. The remainder of my system is...

E6860 CPU overclocked to 3.6GHz
WD 320GB SATA 2 hard drive (one primary drive, the other used for back up copies)
2GB Corsair XMS PC-800 DDR2 RAM (not overclocked)
Windows XP Home SP2

stansdds
January 9th, 2009, 17:18
I've installed the 181.20 WHQL driver and it seems to be a keeper. I also messed with a couple of settings I was using for FSX and have greatly reduced the stutters. First, I jacked up the "Global Texture Resolution" slider to full (this allows 1024x1024 resolution textures) and the stutters were reduced and the world was a lot crisper. The next thing I did was to scale back the Anisotropic Filtering via nHancer from 16x down to 8x. I really didn't notice any difference in the image, but the frame rates became very stable.

Next, I messed with the target frame rate. "Unlimited" resulting in wildly oscillating frame rates and terrible stuttering. 30 was ok, but still a bit of stuttering and instability in frame rate. 24 seems to be the sweet spot. The stuttering is so minimal that it's really, really difficult to detect and the frame rates are stable. FSX stock Mooney locks in at 23 to 24 fps, the FS2004 Beechcraft B300 from AFG tends to run from 18 to 20 fps, but very, very smooth! Granted, 24 fps is nowhere near the 50+ I get with FS2004, but now FSX is smooth.

harleyman
January 9th, 2009, 18:37
Good deal...

Frames are a great way to see where you're at with your tweaking..Then when it gets smooth and nice...turn the dumb thing off....LOL

stansdds
January 10th, 2009, 02:35
Harleyman, I couldn't agree more. Another thing I noticed, or at least perceive, is that leaving the menu bar open slightly decreases frame rates. Maybe it's just me, but it all seems to be ever so slightly faster with the menu bar closed. And why do I have to tell FSX to close the menu bar twice before it closes?

harleyman
January 10th, 2009, 03:29
Many report that running in windowed mode hits their frames ..As to why it needs told twice,who knows,maybe it was a lack of parenting growing up....LOL

Really,I have no ideas on that...I guess whats important to rember is that at least it finally does do as you ask.....

Sorry I have no answer for that....:whistle:

FLighT01
January 21st, 2009, 08:42
Indeed, running in windowed mode on my box drops fps into the teens from a steady (1% or less variation) 30 fps when locked at 30. I can also lock at 60 and get 45 to 60 anywhere but I think the less variation in fps, regardless of the number once you get at or above 24, generally the smoother it will fly.

That being said, I will still get an occasional single "micropause" (for lack of a better word) from time to time regardless of my average fps and it's steadiness. I interpret a stutter as 2 or more pauses in quick succession. I'm thinking it has to do with scenery load / autogen and the video card capabilities. My 280 certainly has the specs to do a creditable job but again, we're talking FSX, anything can and will happen over time. It seems like you can have stable and sufficient fps and still get graphical glitches. On those extremely rare occasions I've seen a comparative bar graph test of various OS's or GPU's or CPU's trying to drive FSX I know that just because the bar shows 35 fps out of a major metropolitan area with a given card does not guarantee stutter or pause free performance, just that you can average (or peak) at those numbers. I find it's not unusual when turning onto final approach for some sort of visual glitch, stutter, whatever, to occur as the runway lights (or any lights for that matter, ie. AI) come into view. Rapid changes of view: panning, snap panning, inside to outside and back, rapid banking at low altitude all increase the probability of a burp in the program.

I've tried all the tweaks, some work, some don't, some have little or no effect. I can live with what I've got at this point. It's unbelievably good 98% of the time, so buttery smooth. It's that 2% that grates. (Well it's probably much less than 1% of actual flight time...but 2% sounds more dramatic).

I can no more turn down my aggressive grahics settings than I can drive 55 so I never try that approach. I'm primarily a VFR flyer.

I continue to maintain the steady strain and enjoy FSX. But, I do look forward to Win7 & FS11.

harleyman
January 21st, 2009, 09:58
You and me both.....FS11 HURRY....:woot:

Frank..All the config tweaks are mostly for lower end machines...

That leaves you out ....:rapture:

FLighT01
January 21st, 2009, 12:18
You and me both.....FS11 HURRY....:woot:

Frank..All the config tweaks are mostly for lower end machines...

That leaves you out ....:rapture:

Almost makes me want to go out and buy a bottom shelf Dell just so I can tweak it and see results.

Almost. LOL

harleyman
January 22nd, 2009, 04:31
Go ahead...I dare ya.....LOL

Can't take it with you ....:woot: