the more fps the better?

[gianlucabagatti]

hi guys, looking around I´ve noticed how emphasis is placed on how many fps
could be obtained by powerful rigs...
so I wonder if there is an ideal framerate for fsx at which the game gives his best...or simply a limit beyond which fps are no more important!
I´m getting usually 20 to 30 (I think low when compared to some up to 60 I´ve read somewhere) with sliders quite full right and the game still goes fluid!
where it goes not fluid is over big towns where it drops dramatically to 10/12 but there I could not find solutions...

[heywooood]

smoothness over volume

I am set at 30 and get nice fluid movement of the camera as I pan around the VC or in all the external views...nice smooth fly-bys

my understanding is that selecting unlimited framerates makes your rig try to render all aspects of the sim at the detail and distance and autogen and weather selections you have made without compromise to those details but at the expense of your processor - causing stutters.

I have found this to be true - with the stuttering factor being increased and the random texture dumps and blurries ocurring frequently with the unlimited FPS selected. I have not experienced either of these problems with my current settings.

I have found that settings of 25-30 locked gives me the best return depending on my water settings (either 2xmed. @ 30FPS OR 2xhigh @ 25 FPS)

I have a p3.4 core 2 and a zotac 8800gt512 and 2 gigs ram

[Panther_99FS]

If you can maintain 20-30 at all times, you're quite fine :mixedsmi:

[lucas81]

I keep my FSX locked to 20 fps. I got used to this setting. I set my fsx to have them no matter where Iam flying. This forced me to create few config settings (GA, Tubeliners/Jets)

[kilo delta]

I'm locked at 30 fps. I'd prefer more eye candy/ better textures to more fps :)

[Mithrin]

Above 30 fps the human eye stops to see the individual frames and everything looks fluid. ;)

[LTCSZ]

Don't worry about frame rates above about 30...The human eye can't distinguish any flicker above 24 fps (that's what movies in a theater run at)...I lock mine at 30...That way, your computer has plenty of power left to worry about other things...And, take frame rate claims of unusually high numbers with a grain of salt...Often, these reflect programs that have lots of features turned way down (autogen, clouds, traffic etc)...If you can maintain a consistent 25 or higher you are just fine...

[Sascha66]

High fps are necessary in shooters, but I have my FS locked at 17. This is absolutely smooth - which makes for an immersive flying experience. Higher settings already give me the stutters. I have a very old rig: Pentium IV 2.8 Ghz with an NVIDIA 6800 GS.

[Kiwikat]

I lock mine between 30 and 35. It makes it very smooth. Anything lower than 25 and I start to complain... :mixedsmi:

[txnetcop]

Believe me when I tell you that no one is getting 60fps everywhere in FSX. It may show up as 60 and even higher in unlimited but NO ONE is getting 60 fps all the time with all sliders right. I run some of the fastest rigs money can buy in my TechCorp testing and we can't do it. If you quit using unlimited and lock your sim at anywhere from 20-40 depending on what you have for a computer you should have a nice smooth experience with FSX.
Ted

[SolarEagle]

Locking gives a smoother image even if the framerate is technically lower being that micro stutters are introduced when not locked. The downside to locking is there's a performance hit introduced by the act of locking, even if you're locking at a number higher than what you are getting. If I'm getting 35 unlocked, when I lock it, if even at 60fps, I'll drop down 25 or so. Of course more CPU cycles are given to the terrain loader when locked, so you get a major reduction in blurries when locked.

Normally I keep it unlocked for my FTX scenery so I can push up autogen and stay around 30fps, but for a low impact area like Plum Island I fly with it locked at 25fps for a glass smooth experience, being that I normally get 45fps in that area unlocked, and I find 25fps locked to be much more enjoyable than 45fps unlocked, as it totally illiminates blurries and micro stutters.

As to the human eye only seeing 25fps, that is a myth and is not true at all. Any gamer can tell you you need 60fps and above for the smoothest game play, which is very common knowledge. Only in the flight sim community have I seen people consitently perpetuating the 25fps myth. In fact most gamers will tell you 25fps is "unplayable", being that it's so choppy. A flight sim can get away with it, but if you try playing a blazing fast shooter game you will see 25fps is not enjoyable. Relaly you need 45fps in a shooter for a good experience, though 60 is prefered. The reason film use 24fps is becuase they capture motion blur, so that's all that is needed, though since games are just a series of static images, you need much higher fps. The fact is the human eye can tell the difference up to 100fps and beyond.

See this link for details, though there are many sites out there dispelling the myth.

http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm

[Fortiesboy]

I have mine locked at 40 and the sim is fluid.
Some VFR scenery forums ask you to set the target rate at unlimited. That was certainly true and best for FS9 but FSX can run quite smoothly at around 20 even.
The secret is the config file. Glean the best for yourself from the tweaks which guys offer.
Bottom line- if you have 25 above and smooth play then you are OK.
If any tweaks take you below that, then abandon them. If you stay at 25 and fluid then try the next tweak or slider position-- and so on.

[Lionheart]

24 FPS is really good if it stays there.

Keeping the locked level a bit low (not at 60, but perhaps 24 to 30) helps to keep your system from working 'too' hard.

The eyes input frequency is under the range of say 40 FPS. (I think its alot lower, like 36, but cannot remember). Thus even if you could get your rig going say 70 FPS, you wouldnt be able to see the difference...


When FSX first came out, some people were getting occassional drops to 5, 7, and 10 FPS, like over cities.. So the campaign to increase Frame Rates began.... Thats why you will see a ton of posts on that subject. Now that hardware is becoming available that FSX can run properly on, the subject is starting to disappear.

[jimjones]

I have a different perspective when it comes to photoreal terrain. If one gets 20 fps max, photoreal terrain may look fuzzy. Traveling fast over photoreal will be too much of a hit on a system. Slow flying is need to get the full potential of photoreal terrain, and even at 50 fps on my rig at 80 mph it takes time for 1m terrain to pop into full resolution.

[Meso]

i had a question not too long ago about frames per second which you can find here:
http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/showthread.php?t=6253

what i found out is that when the fps limiter is set to unlimited you find good framerates everywhere (good > 20). Today however i was using tileproxya and discovered that at this setting the terrain loads while flying is longer. so i limited the setting to 60 (refresh rate of my monitor), this helped to fasten up the loading of ground textures, however the framerates drop to 12-20 around dense areas like honolulu even oshkosh does this with not too much of ai traffic.

so it looks like when the frame rate is set t unlimited the comp will do anything to do that but at the cost of eye candy, so more blurries occur, but flying is smooth.

kind regards,

meso

[simkid22]

Ok here is a conundrum for all those that know fps better than me. Why is it that when I lock my frames around 30 it drops to about 5 and turns to a slide show but when I leave it unlocked its smooth as glass over 90% of the time with frames around 30 to 60.

[stansdds]

I'm new to FSX and the frame rate, stuttering, and blurry issues are perplexing. I am using trilinear filtering in FSX, no AA, scenery sliders set to medium high, aviation traffic full blast (it's about flying, there should be other aircraft up there with me), land and sea traffic at 30%. I'm using 4xAA multi-sampling and 16xAF via my video card (8800GT). Those settings pretty well cleared up my blurry issues.

The only tweak that I have found that might improve performance is the TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULTI=xx setting. My stock installation had it at 40, I've upped it to 60 (70 or higher seemed to induce stuttering) and have my frames locked at 30. I get 30 most of the time, but it does drop down to as low as 15 under heavy traffic urban areas. If I fly with frames unlocked, I will get 30, sometimes 35, but it tends to alternate between 30 and 20 constantly and stutters are more prominant.

I've also replaced a lot of the stock textures with "smaller" versions. That really smoothed out FSX for me.

My rig is a E6850 overclocked to 3.60GHz, 2GB of DDR2-800 RAM, Zotac 8800GT-OC using the 178.24 WHQL driver, WinXP Home SP2.

[stansdds]

Oh, and after spending hours getting FSX configured to run reasonably well, I'm now confronted with a relative lack of aircraft compared to FS9. Yes, some FS9 aircraft have been converted to run in FSX, but I just tried AFG's outstanding Beech B300 and it does not work anywhere near flawlessly in FSX and there is a frame rate hit when using converted aircraft in FSX. :banghead:

This makes me seriously consider purchasing something like Ultimate Terrain and maybe Ground Environment and FS Genesis for FS9 and shelving FSX. :isadizzy:

Quick! Somebody... :friday: Ahhhh, that's the ticket.

[Lionheart]

Oh, and after spending hours getting FSX configured to run reasonably well, I'm now confronted with a relative lack of aircraft compared to FS9. Yes, some FS9 aircraft have been converted to run in FSX, but I just tried AFG's outstanding Beech B300 and it does not work anywhere near flawlessly in FSX and there is a frame rate hit when using converted aircraft in FSX. :banghead:

This makes me seriously consider purchasing something like Ultimate Terrain and maybe Ground Environment and FS Genesis for FS9 and shelving FSX. :isadizzy:

Quick! Somebody... :friday: Ahhhh, that's the ticket.

lolol....




On the Beech 300 Kingair, try recompiling your textures to DXT3 or DDS and flip vertically. That might speed frames back up. I think the Kingair runs a few 32bit textures, which hit the system real hard with memory draw...




Bill

[gianlucabagatti]

Hi guys, thks a lot for yout feedback: now I know a lot more about fps! moreover I was confirmed in thinking this is the best forum! my best regards, gianluca

[VaporZ]

Both my FSX and FS9 are set at 24 FPS and works pretty fine.

FPS IS A BIG MYTH not worth the discussion.

Why ? My Oculist told me that FPS differences over 20 FPS
............CAN NOT BE PERCEIVED BY THE HUMAN EYE.

We are not cats ! ....... We are only Humans.
:eek:
VaporZ

[Alexraptor]

Funny thing is that FPS is not a constant. It seems to vary from game to game even in FPS.
Crysis is reported to be perfectly playable and smooth at 25 fps, while other FPS like Halo need to be more in the 40-60 range for it to feel smooth.

[stansdds]

lolol....

On the Beech 300 Kingair, try recompiling your textures to DXT3 or DDS and flip vertically. That might speed frames back up. I think the Kingair runs a few 32bit textures, which hit the system real hard with memory draw...

Bill
I've never done anything like that, but I guess I can experiment. The props are an issue as well with the classic Acceleration prop disc opacity when viewed from the exterior of the aircraft. There might also be a gauge problem as there are multiple reports of the master caution light remaining lit during flight. I also noticed the left and right bleed failure lights remain lit. The tool tips feature doesn't work either, just shows a black and white box. FSX looks nice out of the box, but MS changing the method of modeling the planes is just so frustrating.

[MCDesigns]

Oh, and after spending hours getting FSX configured to run reasonably well, I'm now confronted with a relative lack of aircraft compared to FS9. Yes, some FS9 aircraft have been converted to run in FSX, but I just tried AFG's outstanding Beech B300 and it does not work anywhere near flawlessly in FSX and there is a frame rate hit when using converted aircraft in FSX. :banghead:

Yes, you will usually get more of a hit using ported FS9 aircraft over native just because of the way the model is compiled for each sim and the formats. If you took the same model and recompiled it for FSX, usually it will be easier (more efficient?) on the frames.

People tend to associate FPS for gaming goodness because that is usually the case. FSX is about the only game that is actually playable/enjoyable at such low framerates so it's hard to break that stigma if you are a gamer.

People can argue till they are blue in the face about how many framerates the human eye can distinguish, BUT the main reason higher framerates are important in FS is so that when you hit a high detailed, polygon dense area (detailed city with detailed airports with lots of AI traffic and real weather) you DO NOT lose fluidity, plain and simple. This is something MS and ACES need to realize as well and is the source of all our frustrations.

THIS IS ALSO SOMETHING simmers need to take into consideration, EXPECTATIONS, the more you have to render on the screen, the more resources it takes. I wonder how many would actually get acceptable performance out of the sim if we did not have payware, detailed addons to add to it and affect our performance. Could explain why I have a good experience with my old rig, I am very selective as to what I use in my sim.

People tend to get upset when they can't run detailed addons, well think about it for a second, the sim wasn't designed with that particular addon in mind was it? So of course you are going to have some issues going from default to addon on many levels. this is always why I ask about new aircraft and to compare performance to the defaults, to ensure I won't have a problem using it.

[Meso]

The question however still is that why the frame rates drop dramatically (12 - 18) when you set a target i.e. 25 or 60 or 40 compared to unlimited. This i find very strange, is there an entry in the fsx.cfg that will tune this. so that at least 20 fps are there at dense areas.

I found that unless youi set the frame rate limiter to unlimited that the fps is above 20 (i use oshkosh as a kind of benchmark for these tests), but if you set the limiter to lets say 40 or 60 the frames drop below 20. Now why is this happening since i was able to reach 25-30 at this airport when is set the limiter to unlimited?

I agree that at these low fps fsx is still fluid in the controls, but you more stutter past the airport than you fly.

kind regards,

Meso

EDIT: maybe it would be nice to have a frame rate minimum adjuster, so you set there a value you want at least. Maybe at the cost of some eye candy in the dense areas, but when you leave that area you get some more eye candy. I know you can adjust the autogen density and the scenery complexity, but over new york for instance you see a lot of toweres, now when you depart there and you fly to a not so dense area you might want to see some more trees without adjusting this setting. just a thought.