HELP - Water Texture FPS Slide Show

[Mach3DS]

Just recently, my water textures have started to cause major stutters, reducing FPS down into 7-14 range. I have my system locked at 30 using Nvidia Inspector, and normally get about 24 FPS solid around high dense scenery areas (PNW) with no problems. And in fact as long as I don't have large bodies of water viewable on screen (excluding streams or rivers) then I get good performance. As soon as a lake or the ocean comes into view I go into stutter mode. I'm using REX, and never had an issue with this previously. It doesn't matter if I have the scenery detail range set to Low or High, it happens the same. I use Resolution of 1920x1080x32. I use a Dense scenery detail and Normal - Dense autogen (depending on the area). Clouds are set to High-Max. (it doesn't do anything even if I remove all autogen, it still happens the same, so it's not the autogen that overloading the system, as far as I can tell).

I have an nvidia geforce GT630 2gb card. Not the best I know (but not going to upgrade anytime soon), but it wasn't happening previously, so I'm at a loss.

Should I keep a copy of my current FSX.cfg file and then let FSX create a new one? I'm at a total loss, and it's frustrating to say the least. My clouds are DXT5 optimized within REX. I can't imagine why it would start happening all of a sudden. Any help or insight would be appreciated. Thanks Everyone!

[Gdavis101]

You have probably already done this, but have you tried changing the water textures with REX?

[Mach3DS]

Well, as mysteriously as it came its gone! I tried reacing my FSX.cfg file with no luck. Then I reinstalled all the REX textures. And returned to my old cfg file. Voila! I have no idea how or why but I'm now getting close to 30 locked in high dense areas including PNW Orbx with most sliders now maxed. So in reality I'm getting higher detail without reduced performance. I e stopped using NI and saw a huge performance increase but can't say for sure it because of that. So without knowing why it was resolved, it is! I guess that's all that matters.

[Mach3DS]

I think I've figured out "why" my rig is suddenly performing like I thought that it should be from the beginning.

I recently built a new rig. An AMD FX-8150 3.6-4.2ghz...i thought, for sure I would be blazing through the FSX skies with unlimited performance! But then I wasn't. In fact there was hardly any improvement overall from my old rig! I then had this strange water texture issue.

So, I did a little trip down memory lane in order to figure out what I had tweaked. I had followed Kostas guide, and also had the Bojote tweak installed. those check out. In fact many of the bojote tweaks are the same as in the Kosta guide for tweaking FSX. I finally realized "why" my FSX suddenly started working correctly. a while back I started using Nvidia Inspector, along with it's built in FPS limiter. I recently updated my Nvidia drivers to 314.xxx and noticed that when I was in FSX all the edges of my models were jaggy, despite the fact that I was using NI, with the AA options enabled. I thought this was strange, so I tried enabling the FSX AA and using the built in FPS limiter. Even according to Kosta's guide the FSX limiter is the smoothest FSX can make it. So I thought I give it a try. I checked Inspector to see what was going on, and found that after the driver update my FSX game options were turned off in the Nvidia control panel. It turns out that with my particular setup using the stock limiter and AA works best. With that said. I'm done tweaking for now. I'm still going to tweak, but I'm giving it a rest for a while. I'll live with great FPS for a while before I start tweaking to improve this or that. That said, autogen, weather, and scenery detail are all maxed....AI flights at 21%...and either SweetFx or ENB enabled And I'm at a solid 24-30FPS in high dense payware areas. So I'm going out with showmanship, while on the high note and going to just enjoy flying rather than trying to tweak. For a while anyway! :D

[napamule]

Ok, so you 'fixed' it. What I would like to know is what DID you have your water slider at and what is it at NOW. Is it 'Low 2X' now? (I am willing to bet it is-or you might not be getting 25-30 fps). Tweaking isn't an 'art'. It's a skill. So don't leave out what in my opinion is one of the most important setting for 'max' fps -the scenery/water effects slider. NI or not. Cheers.
Chuck B
Napamule

[Mach3DS]

Water slider - It was set at all of the above(meaning I tried it on all the settings to see the result) - PREVIOUSLY. It didn't matter what setting I used. I got the same result. A slide show, if the water textures were visible on my screen. Whether is was at 2.xLow or the 2.xHigh. It didn't seem to matter. It also didn't matter what water I was over. Stream, lake, ocean, all the same result. If it was on the screen, I got a slide show. Which was the bizarre part of this whole thing.


NOW - yes, you're right I have it set to 2.xLow or Med...depending on how I feel... Yes, I don't got solid 30FPS over open ocean areas. I get a ~17-20FPS which I can live with. But for small lakes etc. it keeps it pretty solid. If I'm around Orbx scenery with Water, and my autogen sliders to where they are and scenery complexity at very dense....then it dips into the 12-15 range... So I will lower the autogen if my purpose is to be over the water in cases like that. You're right it's skill. Certainly some sliders kill performance. If I need to, I can turn down weather/clouds to increase performance. But seems like the water must be the biggest FPS killer of the bunch. This is just my experience and by no means a recommendation that other do the same to get the same results. trial and error seem the best method on an individual basis, and having a knowledge of what sliders and tweaks affect what in the sim. I'm also NOT using NI at the moment...

i also need to strike a balance because I don't have the GPU power to process everything my CPU throws at it all at once... I'd certainly fair better with a newer card but what I have right now, works so I'm not going to upgrade at this point.

[napamule]

Ok. Now I have another question please. Since it sounds like it's a new rig (with maybe a new MB) did you download the latest chip set drivers for your motherboard and installed them? Just curious. Because your water should not be giving you THAT much of a problem if the water effects is set to Low 2X. See my point? Makes me wonder.

And sometimes the 'LATEST' video card drivers DO NOT make it all 'better' and may just make it worse. But of course, you must remove ALL TRACES of the last video drivers you had installed, or the new video drivers will 'see' the old files and things get messy after that. Argh vey!

It's all good. Being there, done that. Trial & error sometimes is right, especially when you add permissions, etc (stupid MS) and you are risking disaster (sometimes) when you do 'MS Windows UpDate' (yeah, right). Espcially if it's on 'auto update / download & install at will' (yikes).
Chuck B
Napamule