FSX Tweaks How-To's Config Rewrites
Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast
Results 1 to 25 of 27

Thread: FSX Tweaks How-To's Config Rewrites

  1. #1
    harleyman
    Guest

    FSX Tweaks How-To's Config Rewrites

    Over the next weeks I am attempting to update all this material into one handy place for all to reference and easily find.Expecially newcommers to be directed here.. As I find good info I will move it to this master thread,credit the author,and eventualy edit out my long winded babbeling here at the top...

    From Nick C: Saving Custom Display Settings..... How to save your Texture_Max_Load in your config.....http://www.screenshotartist.co.uk/fs...ngs_config.htm


    This next link is to NickN's tutitioral on FSX and Doing it all right...To me he is a complete authority on FSX and Windows Operating System set ups..
    http://www.simforums.com/forums/foru....asp?TID=29041



    TEXTURE_ BANDWIDTH_MULTI from NickN

    TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=70 <----- I would be cautious with
    this after SP2. Try 50 to 90
    keep in mind FSX is not FS9. Although the max Texture
    Bandwidth Multiplier can go to 400 like FS9, to do so is
    suicide in FSX. I would say most should be somewhere
    around 40-90 MAX.




    This guide here covers most to all aspects of FSX ..Your Config and FSX settings are covered..Its a great read and full of info..Sorry I could not find the author for crediting.....

    http://members.cox.net/spambait/FSXTweakGuide.pdf

  2. #2
    harleyman
    Guest
    Well Just adding that in the above tweak I am currently using a value of 100 for that and it looks great...

    NichN reports that its for older systems, but I would not consider my system old, just socket 775 .....

    So...Go ahead and give it a shot and see ......



    Many use 60-90 with success........ Just need to try them one at a time and see...

  3. #3
    datter
    Guest
    I think mine is set to 10. :O

  4. #4
    harleyman
    Guest
    Quote Originally Posted by datter View Post
    I think mine is set to 10. :O



    10 ??? Really Have you tried other settings ???

  5. #5
    SOH Staff txnetcop's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Location
    Wentzville, MO
    Age
    73
    Posts
    5,242
    Blog Entries
    1
    Quote Originally Posted by datter View Post
    I think mine is set to 10. :O
    ?????? lowest that really works is 18 and that would be on a really bad video card...oh well

    Harleyman you do good work!!!:focus:
    Ted
    Vivat Christus Rex! Ad maiorem Dei gloriam

  6. #6
    harleyman
    Guest
    Thank you Master....LOL

    I am learning ......:faint:

  7. #7
    Does anyone know what TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT does?

    With my 8800gt superclock I had it set to 120 and seemed fine.

    How about Bufferpools?

    I had bufferpools set to 80mb. It is my understanding that this reserver GPU memory for texture buffers.

    I just upgraded to a GTX260 black edition, basically same as a gtx280, and am sick of messing with these settings. Do they only relate to video cards or does setting bufferpools to 1 gig load textures into System RAM? All I have noticed is if you put bufferpools too high it takes longer to load textures onto your plane initially but then runs at higher FPS afterward. It also helps the same way with clouds. I have noticed that if Bandwidth is set too low (20) i seem to get stutters, but if I set i set it too high (200) it makes no difference between that and say 80?

  8. #8
    harleyman
    Guest
    Have a look over of these explinations...They are fairly cut and dry



    http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/ya...1197380641/1#1

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by harleyman View Post
    Have a look over of these explinations...They are fairly cut and dry



    http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/ya...1197380641/1#1
    Thanks for the reply, but Nick says this in another forum:
    http://forums1.avsim.net/lofiversion...p/t246976.html

    "Tuning list is quite clear... 512MB cards will probably not see any advantage to increasing bufferpools as the amount needed to make any dent in the situation is about 25-35MB+ and that means 512 cards lose that video memory to rendering other things. FSX wants 512MB if it can have it and bufferpools is over and above that amount. So cards that only have 512MB of memory available are really not suited to use the tweak at all

    640 cards, max 35MB
    768 cards, max 70MB
    1GB cards, max 450-490MB"

    AND

    "Bufferpools is not for making large hubs run better, it performs 2 functions: 1. Buffers geometry around the aircraft 2. If set high enough can lower the buss latency smoothing out flight over large amounts of autogen such as large urban and large pine forests with the AG slider set very high or 100%"

    Which makes much more sense with bufferpools and is more in line with what I found. Right now buffer pools is at 80 but will probably up that to 120.

    I assume I just want enough VRAM left to run windows graphics if I jump out of the game so it doesn't crash stuff. Basically what I read it should be set to is, in my case with my 768 mb card:

    768 - 512 (max FSX assigns) - 120 (bufferpools, which will be additional VRAM I am forcing FSX to use as buffer memory) = 136 (amount left over)



    Still trying to figure out what bandwidth multiplier actually does though.

  10. #10
    harleyman
    Guest
    All I can say is thank God my 500 dollar box runs FSX ragged all day long with no tweaks needed at all...Finally those days are over....

  11. #11
    Ok, I just found an explanation for Texture Bandwidth after much sophisicated googlage.

    " -- UPDATE SP1 -- (from Phil Taylor's blog)
    The mysterious sounding TEXTURE_BANDWITH_MULT is our first target. This is a setting in the [DISPLAY] section of the file, formatted like this:
    [DISPLAY] TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=n
    Where n can range from 10 to some reasonable value that is related to your frame rate limit.
    From Rafael Cintron, part of the FS Graphics and Terrain team, comes this description:
    “The TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT option in the Graphics section is the target frame rate use for calculating texture bandwidth. The higher you set this value the more textures we will allocate and copy per frame to the graphics card. The lower you set this value, the less we will allocate and copy up to a minimum limit. As an example, the default rate in the “high” perf bucket setting is 40. The lowest perf bucket setting is 10.
    Higher settings on this flag can cause stutters on frames where the terrain system has finished compositing lots of textures. Lower settings can reduce stutters on busy frames and spread out the load across multiple frames“
    So thinking this thru, if the value you set is 40, and your frame rate limit is 30, then we will send 40/30 or 4/3 as much textures per frame.
    Moving this value to 400, like I have seen some users post in the forums, is probably *not* what you want to do since that increases the texture load on the graphics card by 10x, eg 400/40 = 10x. And after talking about this to Raf, setting it to 0 is ignored and can be validated by setting it to 10 which should give no different results. "

    now I just need to translate it into Redneck.

  12. #12
    harleyman
    Guest
    LOL thats why I can't explain it too...I just use 90 on my other box and it works...Thats the only tweak I use on the big box.

  13. #13
    TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=140
    UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=40

    TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=4096

    TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_TREES_PER_CELL=600
    TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_BUILDINGS_PER_CELL=400

    [BUFFERPOOLS]
    PoolSize=35000000

    this is what works for me - I get no blurries, no stutters unless I fly near the big cities, and no rendering issues.

    I have nhancer running my GPU - an 8800gt512 from Zotac and it defies logic

    my CPU is an Intel P4 3.4 dual core factory clock on both GPU and CPU
    4gigs corsair RAM

    windows Xp Sp3 32bit
    enter..the Sandman

    visit Heywood Planes - YouTube

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by harleyman View Post
    LOL thats why I can't explain it too...I just use 90 on my other box and it works...Thats the only tweak I use on the big box.
    After reading it a couple times I think the Texture Multiplier is the number of textures that are loaded per screen draw.

    so if you target frame rate is (as in my case) 20 all the textures for drawing the screen are not loaded and done in on frame but only a set amount of textures are sent and it draws in over multiple frames. ie when you go to external veiw and parts of your plane textures fill in at a time across 1 second when you are running at 15fps so it took 15 frames to load all the plane textures because it was only sending enough in an attempt to allow your system to acheive 20fps. Obviously this effect only occurs on frames that use more than the max textures allowed per draw when the target frame rate is set at 20.

    Now if you set your Texture_Bandwidth_multiplier to 40 it will double the amount of textures sent in these high texture frames because:

    40/20 = 2 times as many textures sent per frame on frames that have more textures to draw.

    So as you can see this number will vary on equal systems depending on what the target frame rate is selected as.

    I think I will set my at 50 to begin with due to my video card having alot of texture processors on it and a wide buss to send the textures across.

    Don't know for sure if the above is correct, but this is what I got out of it.

  15. #15
    Members +
    Join Date
    Nov 2007
    Location
    Kandahar, Afghanistan
    Posts
    20
    Just another data point for the discussion …

    Rig:
    Rampage Extreme @FSB=400, Q9550=> 3.4 GHz , 4GB Ram
    FSX-SP2, Slipstreamed XP-SP2 32b, w/ 3GB, userva= see below per video card

    Test set up:
    FSX Baron @ 160 KIAS, 2 minute turn radius @ 1500 ft ASL, (AP on) centered ½ mi. north of Brooklyn Bridge, NYC. All sliders maxed, AI, cars, boats etc. off, FSX water, FSX two cloud layers, 1/8 coverage at draw distance 110 mi., ManhattanX, MegaSceneryEarth all NY & NJ tiles active, 10M mesh, fiber_frame_time_fraction=80, LOD Radius@ 6.5000, frame rate unlimited, 1920x1200, Game AA, Game AF, Ultra Quality, 12:00 - high noon.

    Evaluated:
    EVGA 9800GTX+ SSC (512MB) userva= 3072
    EVGA 8800 Ultra (768MB) userva= 2816
    Sparkle 9800GTX+ (1GB) userva= 2560

    Best result was the Ultra w/ 175.16 driver yielding 25 – 30 FPS, very smooth and no blurries.

    What I found was:
    Texture_Bandwidth_Mult= had no perceivable effect from 10 up to 100. This follows Phil Taylor’s blog stating that a quad-core will saturate at or before the minimum allowable value of 10. (He also states single cores benefit the most by tweaking this one.)

    Buffer Pool Size was interesting. The larger it was, the higher FPS achieved, but to a point where FSX becomes unstable and scenery objects (buildings, autogen) become spikes tens of thousands of feet tall followed by the eventual BSOD or C2DT (Crash to Desktop). NickN talks about this as memory runs out. So, you find this point in the densest scenery you can set up on your rig and back off a little. You can set it way high in sparse scenery areas and get away with it, but you don’t need the tweak there.

    Bufferpools for me:
    EVGA 9800GTX+ SSC (512MB) Bufferpools=50M
    EVGA 8800 Ultra (768MB) Bufferpools=65M
    Sparkle 9800GTX+ (1GB) Bufferpools=80M

    I found no perceivable fps difference between the 9800’s but could perceive the superior being the Ultra, albeit only by 2-3 fps. What is also interesting is the Q9550 and Ultra take turns being the bottle neck at repeatable points throughout each 360. I also found that drivers to have a much greater effect on performance than the GPU or memory size, the newest drivers were the worst, thus the 175.16 choice. Understand my rig is FSX only, and is built as such. The video card and driver choice would not be considered at the top of the list today for an all around gamming performer. It’s all about FSB MHz, 4xCPU GHz and Video memory bandwidth as far as FSX is concerned.

    harleyman, good luck with your forum

    txnetcop, thanks for your past work, I absorbed everything you wrote. Sorry we lost it all.

    wally-bob:USA-flag:

  16. #16
    harleyman
    Guest
    Thanks Wally Bob...



    Stay safe protecting us .....

  17. #17
    SOH Staff txnetcop's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Location
    Wentzville, MO
    Age
    73
    Posts
    5,242
    Blog Entries
    1
    Hey Wally-Bob, I too was a little sick over losing all that stuff, but it's still in my head and one day I will sit down and do it all over. Harleyman and a bunch of others have taken up the slack in here and I'm grateful for that. After all that was gone I just didn't have the heart to start over at the time.

    The i7Cores and Phenom IIs are really the most fun to deal with now. With the advent of some new Version 2 X58 motherboards for Intel and new 790X AM3 boards for AMD, we are going to see some really nice overclocks that will make a difference in FSX and other games. I just finished a whole week of testing at TechCorp and attended a hardware engineer seminar at Lake Travis in Austin. Some great stuff coming down the pike! One thing that I was astounded at seeing this week was the new HD4890 cards and high they overclock with a BIOS change on the GPU. The engineers at AMD-ATI have really been busy. We can expect some great competition from AMD in the very near future on all fronts. Wish I could say more. Anyway Amigo stay tuned, there will be more articles now that I have been re-energized.

    Stay safe my friend and come home soon. Thank you for your service!
    Ted
    Vivat Christus Rex! Ad maiorem Dei gloriam

  18. #18
    Members +
    Join Date
    Nov 2007
    Location
    Kandahar, Afghanistan
    Posts
    20
    Thanks Texnetcop, Thanks Harleyman,

    This one is for Major_Spittle,

    I too wrestled with the Texture_Bandwidth_Multiplier concept. Here’s how I understand it. (Right or wrong? Don’t know)

    Texture_Bandwidth_Multiplier represents the CPU’s task time sharing between simulating and rendering per display frame. Simulating means solving all those massive scary mathematical physics equations to determine where the aircraft is and how the terrain should be laid out on the monitor. Rendering means actually drawing it. (displaying textures)

    FSX must have the simulation completed before it can render the next frame. FSX will simulate the next frame even if the current frame is not completely rendered. One has to take priority; you can’t have it both ways. FSX chooses simulate, because if we can’t display it all, oh well – on to the next frame, we’ve got places to get to. (We are flying after all.)

    So, where to set it? Set it too low and you will come down with a case of the blurries, but smooth flying. Set it too high and you will have a beautifully rendered slide show. Remember we must complete the simulation first, so we will halt frame production until we’re finished, then render.

    No calculator needed. Pretty easy right? Well, not so fast. Enter - Fiber_Frame_Time_Fraction. This one is important for autogen and the UTX stuff. NickN has some good articles on it. The complication is that Texture_Bandwidth_Multiplier and Fiber_Frame_Time_Fraction interact with each other. (Sort of) Set Fiber_Frame_Time_Fraction too low and you will get the blurries, too high, stutters.

    What to do? Quad cores are easy, set Texture_Bandwidth_Multiplier at 10 or so and mess with Fiber_Frame_Time_Fraction. Single core, leave Fiber_Frame_Time_Fraction at default and mess with Texture_Bandwidth_Multiplier. Dual cores, have fun! What ever you do, don’t change everything all at once, one thing slowly at a time. Keep your test area conditions consistent and write things down.

    Eventually you will have the perfect tweak for beautiful clear weather photo scenery flying in the Florida Keys. Now off to the Rockies with UTX and stormy winter weather and everything is all tweaked up wrong. Well that’s just how it is. Some guys have different FSX.cfg’s for every scenario. Gotta love this hobby!

    wally-bob:USA-flag:

  19. #19
    Charter Member 2015
    Join Date
    Apr 2007
    Location
    USA Vermont
    Age
    75
    Posts
    942

    Couple of FSX.Cfg questions

    Where in FSX.cfg can you change the light intensity of approach and runway lights?

    Is there "a" document showing "all" the adjustments possible using FSX.cfg?

    Thanks

    David

  20. #20
    harleyman
    Guest
    Hey david...

    All i know is this...You just need to adjust them to suit your needs.

    I have not reset mine or I would post them for you..




    RUNWAY_LIGHTS_SURFACE_SCALAR=1.2 //adjust values to suit your scale
    RUNWAY_LIGHTS_VASI_SCALAR=1.2
    RUNWAY_LIGHTS_APPROACH_SCALAR=1.2
    RUNWAY_LIGHTS_STROBE_SCALAR=1.0

  21. #21
    Charter Member 2015
    Join Date
    Apr 2007
    Location
    USA Vermont
    Age
    75
    Posts
    942
    Thanks for your help.

    David

  22. #22
    harleyman
    Guest
    Quote Originally Posted by Pepere View Post
    Thanks for your help.

    David

    OK..Not real sure it was much help...But

    Hope you get it all sorted.....

  23. #23
    Members +
    Join Date
    Nov 2007
    Location
    Kandahar, Afghanistan
    Posts
    20
    David,

    There are quite a "few" documents showing "all" the adjustments possible for FSX.cfg around on the various Flight Sim sites. They were very popular for FSX-RTM and somewhat popular during the FSX-SP1 time frames. For FSX-SP2, most of those documents were “replaced” by all the sliders and check boxes now so there is really not a lot left to play with, and they are covered in this thread. Also the better hardware today negates the need to reduce others.

    There are some start-up load tweaks and other stuff left that have no bearing on flying performance like customizing your Shift-Z experience and disabling red text notifications like Stall … What is left are mostly personal preferences as Harleyman described.

    There are still some that you can mess with. UTX has a configuration tool to change some of these that it is concerned with.

    Mostly the ones I mess with now are to extend the range of sliders beyond “Allowable”. You could say “Performance Tweak”, but really are Eye-Candy enhancements at the expense of FPS.

    Two that come to mind are:

    Texture_Max_Load= which is important to Real Environment Extreme (REX) due to some of the new high resolution cloud textures provided. The manual covers this.

    LODRadius= provides Level Of Detail further out towards the horizon, especially for mesh terrain. #.500000 are the only valid values, i.e. 5.499999 is really 4.500000 (max slider), thus 5.5, 6.5 …

    The hassle with these two are they revert back to the maximum slider value every time you move any slider and you have to manually change them back and then restart FSX for the effect. Also be cautious as some addons modify your FSX.cfg, always have a back-up to revert to.

    Sorry not to be more comprehensive, maybe some day. For me to have internet access and free time concurrently seems like the planets must be in alignment.

    Wally-Bob :USA-flag:

  24. #24
    harleyman
    Guest
    Thanks for that Wally-Bob...

    Good to see that from time to time you can drop in for a few...


    I like to run my LOD at 7.5...But as you say you have to leave the sliders alone after that or else you get to reset the config again...I keep a shortcut to my config on the desktop for that reason...

  25. #25
    Members +
    Join Date
    Nov 2007
    Location
    Kandahar, Afghanistan
    Posts
    20
    Me too.

    wb:USA-flag:

Similar Threads

  1. Ju-87G-1 Tweaks.zip
    By sc7500 in forum CFS2 General Discussion
    Replies: 0
    Last Post: December 15th, 2011, 16:51
  2. FS9.cfg Tweaks
    By Dangerousdave26 in forum FS2004 Tweaks and Tips
    Replies: 10
    Last Post: December 11th, 2011, 05:26
  3. Camera.cfg tweaks
    By Rezabrya in forum FSX Tweaks
    Replies: 3
    Last Post: July 6th, 2010, 15:34
  4. Two tweaks for FSX
    By metalman739 in forum FSX General Discussion
    Replies: 0
    Last Post: April 13th, 2009, 20:01
  5. CF3 tweaks
    By Johan_Dees in forum CFS3 General Discussion
    Replies: 11
    Last Post: January 25th, 2009, 12:18

Members who have read this thread: 8

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •