"Shaders" the "What and Why" of it all.

[falcon409]

I have searched a lot of links pertaining the use of "shaders" in FSX and the entries necessary in the FSX.cfg file. Every one that I've located thus far is written by geeks for geeks (no offense intended Geeks). Can someone explain in simple terms, what "it/they" are(is), why they are needed (or not) and what entries should I see in the config file that would activate them. Thanks.:salute:

[Barnes]

I cant but your " geeks for geeks " is very well put. You so rarely find anything taken from the basics without terminology that means that you have to research every line of text as you go to peice the jigsaw togeather.

[JIMJAM]

2 things I no longer fool with which in my personal experiences cause more grief than gain.
Overclocking ram.
Replacement or modded shaders
And not just pertaining to FSX but using "registry cleaners".

You can always backup anything but after using some various shader mods, if/when any graphic issues happpen which for FSX is all the time, they will be suspect.
Flashes,white blocks,slow loading,popping autogen and on and on. All in my experiences happen at some time or another and just like overclocking, the first thing the "gurus" will say is..." are you overclocking" And if you have modded shaders they will ask " have you modded your shaders?"
Thats just my if it aint broke, quit chasing the FSX Holy grail Donkey's tail perfect FSX set, keep it simple and fly attitude.

[falcon409]

2 things I no longer fool with which in my personal experiences cause more grief than gain.
Overclocking ram.
Replacement or modded shaders
And not just pertaining to FSX but using "registry cleaners".

You can always backup anything but after using some various shader mods, if/when any graphic issues happen which for FSX is all the time, they will be suspect.
Flashes,white blocks,slow loading,popping autogen and on and on. All in my experiences happen at some time or another and just like overclocking, the first thing the "gurus" will say is..." are you overclocking" And if you have modded shaders they will ask " have you modded your shaders?"
That's just my if it ain't broke, quit chasing the FSX Holy grail Donkey's tail perfect FSX set, keep it simple and fly attitude.
Couldn't agree with you more. . .for the time being I've commented out both references to "Shaders" in the cfg file and have seen absolutely no difference. I swear, there should be sections of the config files we use for Flightsim that should be "un-editable", "grayed-out" so-to-speak so we simply can't mess with em, it would save a lot of people that see a forum post about the "Amazing increase in performance" after a tweak is performed using so and so's tweaks from having to delete their FSX.cfg file and start over from scratch, lol.

As I'm typing this I opened the fsx.cfg file to check something and apparently, you can't comment out the "SHADER_CACHE_PRIMED=XXXXXXXXXX" lines. . . .because FSX put them right back in, lol. Moving on, lol:salute:

[Roger]

If you're not confident then always best to leave well alone! However as a last ditch attempt to get a smooth experience from my elderly rig I have tried Dx10 again with Steve Parsons new shaders for Dx10 only...there is no effect on Dx9 simulation. I'm glad I did because for the first time ever (since running default ground textures and default aircraft 5 years ago) I'm actually find smooth simulation in amongst all that lovely ORBX scenery.

[falcon409]

If you're not confident then always best to leave well alone! However as a last ditch attempt to get a smooth experience from my elderly rig I have tried Dx10 again with Steve Parsons new shaders for Dx10 only...there is no effect on Dx9 simulation. I'm glad I did because for the first time ever (since running default ground textures and default aircraft 5 years ago) I'm actually find smooth simulation in amongst all that lovely ORBX scenery.
I tried DX10 with the tweaks and what I got was less than spectacular, fps was lower and since 75% of the airplanes I fly in FSX are ports, I wasn't interested in pursuing it any further. I think part of what is so frustrating about, as one person put it, "Chasing the Holy Grail of FPS and the blurries" is that the information is so scattered that you can get lost in what is current and what isn't. Folks who obsess over this stuff probably have a running list of every tweak and links to each, lol. . .the casual simmer wouldn't know where to start.

My FSX.cfg file, like so many others I would wager, has become a "hodge-podge" of unnecessary tweaks and incorrect digits. I should just save it to a safe spot, let FSX rebuild from the ground up and just add back the joystick and throttle assignments and move on from there, lol.:salute:

[GrinningJester]

I tried DX10 with the tweaks and what I got was less than spectacular, fps was lower and since 75% of the airplanes I fly in FSX are ports, I wasn't interested in pursuing it any further. I think part of what is so frustrating about, as one person put it, "Chasing the Holy Grail of FPS and the blurries" is that the information is so scattered that you can get lost in what is current and what isn't. Folks who obsess over this stuff probably have a running list of every tweak and links to each, lol. . .the casual simmer wouldn't know where to start.

My FSX.cfg file, like so many others I would wager, has become a "hodge-podge" of unnecessary tweaks and incorrect digits. I should just save it to a safe spot, let FSX rebuild from the ground up and just add back the joystick and throttle assignments and move on from there, lol.:salute:

Trying to simplify it;

"Shaders" are small programmes written in HLSL (a coding language), sent directly to the GPU, which are used to manipulate pixels displayed on screen. Simply put; shaders are utilized in order to enhance many graphical parts of the gameworld.

A Shader is used for example to calculate the height of the bounding box of a cloud in the game, and then multiplies the lower pixels of the cloud in order to darken it; giving you darker clouds at the base. That is the simplest example I can think of-- however they do much more in the game ( for example normal & specular mapping, water reflection and wave dynamics, etc).

As to what shaders are in use in FS X, or how to tweak them-- I have no idea. I have myself never dabbled in the FS engine. :)

Cheers,
Nick

[falcon409]

Thanks for that Nick. This whole thing started because I had read somewhere that when you modified the FSX.cfg file for any reason, you were supposed to change the numbers set at the end of the "SHADERS" line, otherwise they wouldn't reload correctly. My only real problem with how FSX displayed in Sim was that I would get autogen "Spikes" when I panned left or right. My system is only a dual core with an NVidia 9600GT card (512meg). I'm most likely pushing it to it's max as it is so things that I see, like the spikes and the "blurries" are probably products of an out-of-date GPU and trying to find a way to "fix" those is just messing up what I have that DOES work, lol.:salute:

[GrinningJester]

Thanks for that Nick. This whole thing started because I had read somewhere that when you modified the FSX.cfg file for any reason, you were supposed to change the numbers set at the end of the "SHADERS" line, otherwise they wouldn't reload correctly. My only real problem with how FSX displayed in Sim was that I would get autogen "Spikes" when I panned left or right. My system is only a dual core with an NVidia 9600GT card (512meg). I'm most likely pushing it to it's max as it is so things that I see, like the spikes and the "blurries" are probably products of an out-of-date GPU and trying to find a way to "fix" those is just messing up what I have that DOES work, lol.:salute:

Heya Falcon,

That piece of advice was very likely so that Flight Sim would recompile shaders-- in order for updated values to be updated. (Shaders need to be compiled just like any other program). :)

With regards to blurries, I do believe this is mostly CPU/HDD based, though I admittedly know very little of the FSX engine. :icon_lol:

[scott967b]

I believe that DirectX9 (DX9) allows graphics cards to implement various features of DX9 (called capabilities). So the main program has to query the graphics card and determine what capabilities are provided and use that when the shaders are compiled. The fsx.cfg entries are supposed to let fsx determine if it needs to recompile the shaders or not (if for example, you change the graphics card out). Compiled shaders are in %appdata%\local in Win 7. At least that's my understanding.

scott s.
.