Using FSX for visuals in a real flight simulator

[G450]

We just started using FSX for out the window visuals in our Gulfstream flight simulator used for engineering testing. We bought a Cybertron TGM2131B computer and are using a Optoma HD projector on a 10 foot screen in front of the cockpit. We feed our GPS position, heading and attitude to the game, close all windows so we just view the scenery. This computer has a i7 processor overclocked to 4ghz, there are two GTX570 cards sli'd together and the game is playing on a 160G SSD and there is 16G of RAM available. It is liquid cooled. We also use ORBX scenery for PNW. When flying today with no clouds and other AI for the first time with this rig I noticed that scenery is building in front of us as we fly, trees, buildings in the Seattle area. Also when you spin the plane around there is a lot of stuttering. Is this typical and what else can we do to make this as realistic as possible?
Thanks, Dave

[loki]

FSX has architectural limitations that restrict its performance. The main ones being that it is largely restricted to using one CPU core, and doesn't make full use of modern graphics systems. Overclocking the CPU is about the best one can do as far as hardware is concerned, and after that it comes down to tweaking the settings for your system. As the sim is a 32 bit program it can only use a max of 4GB of memory, even when running under a 64 bit OS. An SSD does certainly help with loading times, but once the data has been loaded, it is up to the CPU to process it.

Perhaps you would be better served with Prepar3D. This is based on Microsoft's ESP product, which was a commercial version of the core engine used in FSX (which is not licenced for commercial use). The Prepar3D team has continued developing the engine to overcome the limitations noted above.

http://www.prepar3d.com/

[johnost]

Dave, there is no easy way to obtain the best possible performance in FSX. I have a fairly competent computer, but did not get satisfactory performance without some tweaking, especially most of these changes


http://forum.avsim.net/topic/281538-...0-conclusions/


CPU I7-960 OC @ 3.84Ghz, Asetek Water Cooler
Asus P6T X58 MB, 6Gb RAM Corsair Dominator DDR3 1600Mhz
EVGA nVidia GTX 275, 1.792Gb DDR3 RAM
1 Tb SATA II HD, Kingston 128Gb SSD (FSX only)
Apevia 800W PS, Win 7 64-bit

[clutchcargo]

1. Overclock system as close to 5GHz as possible. 4Ghz just wont give you a smooth experience with Orbx (or a heavy loaded FSX system).
2. Check out Prepar3D as mentioned above.
3. Seattle is the "black hole" of flight sim areas. It sucks in all you FPS! One of the hardest areas to get smooth flight. However, since you are using Orbx in that area, I would check out the Orbx forums. They have come up with a way to dis-engage (can't think of a better term as I type), light effects that occur even when flying in the daytime. This severely effect FPS even during daytime flight. Claims of huge FPS boost being made when you turn off the "lights". That could solve your stuttering issue.

Clutch