I have a problem with FSX

[Lionheart]

I have a huge problem with FSX....

I went to turn on Anti-Aliasing. Usually it brings frame rates down to 7 to 12 FPS, (more like 5 to 7 actually.

But.................

but...

(but, except, contrary)

This time, its working smoothly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


:faint:



Thank you GOD! Thank you Jesus! Thank you Holy Spirit!!!



<---- runs around in a circle in front of the desk doing the victory dance



WOOO HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

[datter]

New video drivers by any chance? :)

[stiz]

either that or hes gonna post about how good mac is he he :wave:

[Kiwikat]

either that or hes gonna post about how good mac is he he :wave:

:karate:

[stansdds]

And he celebrates wildly until he realizes that he accidentally started FS9. :faint:

[Lionheart]

And he celebrates wildly until he realizes that he accidentally started FS9. :faint:

lololol..... oops!


Nope.. definately FSX.. (still has micro jumps and micro hops). ;)


But man! my jaggies are GONE!!! WOOO HOOOOOO!!!! :woot:

[Naki]

So tell us - whats the secret??? New video drivers helped me a lot but I am still entirely not satisfied with my FSX ...I think only new hardware will fix it for me..which wont happen this year anyway unlees I get the big one in Lotto.....

[Lionheart]

So tell us - whats the secret??? New video drivers helped me a lot but I am still entirely not satisfied with my FSX ...I think only new hardware will fix it for me..which wont happen this year anyway unlees I get the big one in Lotto.....



Well, I have this new, state of the art iMac computer. But the ATI card is based on Mac software. It has a XP driver, but its lower priority then Mac. I downloaded the newest ATI XP driver for it, and that seemed to mess it up royal, so I did a backstep and got the older driver going again, which was better.


However, I did lower the screen resolution a week or two ago. I was playing COD5 and realised alot of the textures are fairly good at low resolution and thought, why not lower them on FSX instead of having them at full blast, which is almost 2000 wide (24 inch screen).

So.... That must be it.

But I swear I had tried all avenues before on that, from resolutions to frame rates, etc.


I did raise frame rates to 100 also, which helped some, allowing the system to be super high at times. I wonder if having the sim running higer gives it a sort of 'higher speed' in dealing with dips and 'hops'? Sort of like innertia and mass. Can that be?


Who knows.... Just thankful its razor sharp.... :d




Bill

[Kiwikat]

I did raise frame rates to 100 also, which helped some, allowing the system to be super high at times. I wonder if having the sim running higer gives it a sort of 'higher speed' in dealing with dips and 'hops'? Sort of like innertia and mass. Can that be?

Sort of. FSX is a straaaaaaange bird. What works on some peoples' systems won't work on others. Lowering your resolution helped for sure, but sometimes setting FPS higher does have an affect. I have mine locked at 61 (refresh rate is 60) to get it as smooth as possible. If I run it down at 35 or 40, sure the FPS is pinned, but it has little stutters and has other odd behavior that isn't present when it is set at 61.

Putting our computer preferences aside, congrats on getting FSX running smoothly. I know what it feels like too with my new system. It is indeed a great feeling worth doing the "victory dance" over. :applause:

[MCDesigns]

either that or hes gonna post about how good mac is he he :wave:

LMAO, too funny!

Congrats Bill;, enjoy it while you can, FS is funny like that.

I think one of the main reasons I haven't upgraded yet is that I am scared. I get good performance on my old rig, locked at 30 with high settings and without real weather is enjoyable to fly and design for. yet, I see so many posts with people with much higher systems than mine and they are having a bad experience, which means mine is a fluke or they have totally different expectations than myself.

[Boomer]

which means mine is a fluke or they have totally different expectations than myself.

The differance is you remembered to sacrafice that chicken when you installed FSX...

Told ya it would work! ;) :costumes:

[Lionheart]

Hey guys,

Thanks much.


I have to tell you though, I found out why it was running poorly and why it was suddenly running good.


I booted up FSX again a moment ago and found the frame rates being back to 7 FPS. I couldnt believe it. I rebooted. Same.. Bummed me out, and I dared not tell you guys of the horrible news after such good news.

It then occurred to me that the issue that was blocking it must be present at that moment.. I looked at the screen and noticed Gmax was idle in the background, running.. I booted up FSX, same.... I shut it down, saved my build in Gmax, exited, rebooted FSX, and bang, 30 FPS with AA ticked on!

It was Gmax this entire time. Evidently its just enough to throw resources over the edge and cut performance in FSX when AA is online. Perhaps the edge of performance for the ATI card? Dont know.....


I have Gmax running idle ALOT... Part of the biz. I had rarely ever run FSX without Gmax running in the background, lol.. (my fun flying is in FS9).


A note for developers on the Gmax issue. I have resolutions in FSX set at 1024 and 512 (max settings) and I use 2048 size master PSD files for mappings in Gmax, which is a hurrendous, astronomical taxxing of memory resources when having perhaps 20 materials in a project.


So.... That is a clue on performance for devs... If you want good frame rates in FSX and you have Gmax running, aint going to happen... Shut down Gmax or Max for better performance if you seem to be having issues with frame rates in FSX.



Bill

EDIT: The reason I found this odd, having FSX and Gmax running at once, including Photoshop, is that in the past 2 years, it never seemed to effect frame rates before, as though the program running was the one that had master control of the memory, but not this time.

[harleyman]

Bad Bad GMax............


Thats incrediable to discover Bill...I am very happy for you....YEA.....:ernae::applause:

[MCDesigns]

The differance is you remembered to sacrafice that chicken when you installed FSX...

Told ya it would work! ;) :costumes:

Hmmmmmmmmmm was wondering about those chicken feathers on the keyboard..............

That is odd Bill, I also have Gmax open in the background many times with FSX open AND my texture primaries are usually 2048 and still don't notice any hit or resource issues, very odd indeed.

[Lionheart]

Hmmmmmmmmmm was wondering about those chicken feathers on the keyboard..............

That is odd Bill, I also have Gmax open in the background many times with FSX open AND my texture primaries are usually 2048 and still don't notice any hit or resource issues, very odd indeed.


Yep... I am sure its the new GPU architectures, because in the past, its never happened before.. but it sure is now....





Bill

[stiz]

i would have thought it would have been obvious that haveing gmax open and loaded with a plane in it would decrease overall performace :engel016: i know that if i have a plane loaded i'm lucky to get 15fps (if that) compared to me normanl 30

[Lionheart]

Hey Stiz,


I dont know what to tell you.. In the past, it never effected the system.. Seems now, things are different.




Bill

[stiz]

hmm guess it must be different for each pc, or the amount of polys+textures you have going, a 3mil mesh with 6 4096 textures must obviosly hit performance more than a 65k mesh with 7 1024 textures ... my poor pc :icon_twi:

[beatle]

Could also be that occasionally, 3DSMax is allocating some video card resources and then not releasing them correctly (may only happen with certain material settings or combination of materials, etc) or it could also be forcing card wide setting changes instead of app specific settings.

I've occasionally run into problems with FSX/ESP and Virtual Earth 3D running on the same machine at the same time (granted, this was also a resource limited notebook computer :-> ), so yes, multiple DX based apps running at the same time can cause card resource issues (and possibly disable certain features). I've not noticed any problems with WPF apps running at the same time (they also use DX hardware accel), but most of mine are fairly small test SimConnect apps :->

Tim

[beatle]

The differance is you remembered to sacrafice that chicken when you installed FSX...

And don't worry about all those chickens going to waste, they get picked up and sent to the Popeye's near my house and turned into yummy fried things :->

Tim

[Chuck_Jodry-VJPL]

Using psd's while painting parts is a good idea but once done making a JPG out of the psd saves scads of memory and reduces loading time as well as the refresh rate in max/gmax when you spin the viewpoint around.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>
The JPG is assigned into the diffuse slot and has no influence on the export process as FS is going to be looking for a DDS or BMP in game.<o:p></o:p>

[n4gix]

So.... That is a clue on performance for devs... If you want good frame rates in FSX and you have Gmax running, aint going to happen... Shut down Gmax or Max for better performance if you seem to be having issues with frame rates in FSX.

Funny, I notice no difference whatever!

Oh wait, that's because I have one 'puter strictly for FS9/FSX and another 'puter strictly for Max/GMax/Photoshop development... :whistle:

[Lionheart]

Funny, I notice no difference whatever!

Oh wait, that's because I have one 'puter strictly for FS9/FSX and another 'puter strictly for Max/GMax/Photoshop development... :whistle:


Ok, thats like having one car for going to the grocery store, and one for going to the electronics store...

:woot:

lolol... I want one for just checking forums... one for Gmax, one for Photoshop...


Just kiddin Bill. ;) That would be a nice luxury.



Chuck,

I used to do that a few computers back. It was hanging so bad with PSD's, that I finally started burning JPG's to lower RAM useage. Really helps and highly recommended for slower systems.

If mine is sluggish, I'll rotate in mesh mode, then go back to color. Thats usually if I have all the big programs running all at once though.



Bill


(I can fly with AA on now!!!!!!! wooo hooooooooo)

<--- does another victory dance

[Chuck_Jodry-VJPL]

I had found that saving file space paid off even on the quad cores i run now, a texture set for one plane with 8 interior 2048’s and another 6 psd's for the exterior also 2048’s can chew up half a video cards memory , looking at one upcoming job on the desktop has 170 meg’s of psd’s to load into 3DS, Jean Luc,(RXP) was over at my place and had one psd for the airbus console that by itself was over 400MB! , they add up fast so i tend to .jpg what i can . <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>
Using networked machines is one way of getting around the problems associated with demanding software but it takes time to ship really big files over the wireless system i use so i divide things differently now.<o:p></o:p>
One machine with Max8 using panda exports to Make Model and on that machine is 2004. <o:p></o:p>
One machine running Max9 and XtoMDL with FSX / Accell and a third machine with Gmax and a copy of FSX sp1 for compatibility testing, all three have Photoshop, the third machine also has a dial up modem and is linked to a back up dial up account so that i can still take care of website updates if the high speed connection goes down. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>

[Lionheart]

Goodness!

:faint:

Well, I guess I need more computers to be like you guys!

I have my lil HP lappie as backup. I dont know where I could fit more computers... :eek:



Bill

[n4gix]

Ok, thats like having one car for going to the grocery store, and one for going to the electronics store...

Nah, more like having a regular car for the road, and a 4-WD for offroading, and a golf cart to use on the course. :friday: