FPS drop of 100 when using panel...

[ndicki]

Hello again - back fiddling with CFS2 just for a break from CFS3!

Anyway, I've got an interesting phenomenon here - with the panel on, I'm getting around 15 fps, but in HUD mode, more than 100. Seems a bit odd... What am I missing?

P4C 2.8GHz, 7600GS with recent drivers with AA at 4x, resolution 1280x960x32, 1.5GB RAM, W XP. Try not to laugh!

[bearcat241]

...P4C 2.8GHz, 7600GS with recent drivers with AA at 4x, resolution 1280x960x32, 1.5GB RAM, W XP. Try not to laugh!

:icon_lol:...Sorry Ndicki, but i gotta chuckle a bit on that, thinking there's your reason right there. But on a serious note, you could try reducing your resolution to """"""x16 first, then 800x600x32. If you insist on keeping it at 1280x960x32, you might want to open the panel.cfg with FSPanel Studio or CfgEdit and remove any unnecessary gauges from the 2D panel. Its just too much a load on your graphics. As a last resort, you might find a suitable replacement 2D panel that's more frame-friendly. If so just remember to use Notepad to copy the entire VC sections from the original, offending panel.cfg over to the new replacement, overwriting the VC of the replacement.

[ndicki]

I feared as much! Sometimes, CFS3 is more friendly than CFS2. I vaguely remember using old CFS1 panels a long time ago - they worked, but it was at 800x600 as you suggest. I imagine that stretching a 1024x768 bitmap to 1280x960 size is going to cause trouble as well. Odd how ancient games sometimes run less easily than more recent ones despite obsolescent hardware!

[bearcat241]

Well, to be fair to the older sim, we're talkin' apples and oranges in terms of cockpit graphics displaying. CFS3 does not display cockpits in 2D - only 3D - whereas CFS2 does both. My guess is that building upon experience gained from CFS2, the CFS3 programmers foresaw that the more graphics-intensive programming of CFS3 would cause too many headaches in 2D viewing, so they skipped it entirely and installed model-based VC instrumentation in CFS3. As in CFS2, you also see some glimpses of this contrasting FPS performance in the FS9-FSX series between 2D and 3D viewing modes, and they're newer programs like CFS3.

But getting back to your current hardware config, the solution of a stronger rig would go a long way even with an instrument-rich panel. I had the same type problems with my previous rig before upgrading. I now run all of my CFS2 action in 1680x1050x32 with no FPS drops due to cockpit layouts and i love heavy gauge work in my panels.

[ndicki]

Valid enough comments there, but the money simply isn't available. Meanwhile, I've dropped antialiasing from 4x to 2x and tweaked a few settings - it now runs reasonably well. The good news is that as it's the panel that's the trouble, I can still have huge numbers of aircraft, clouds, etc, in the sky without getting too badly hit. In CFS3, it goes the other way round as you've seen!

[bearcat241]

Sounds like progress...good hunting! :icon29: