Very good computer, slow frame rates

[rjsciolino]

Upgraded to a powerful system two months ago. I have a P4, 3.02 prossesor, two 512's of memory, and NVidia's 5900 Ultra 256. I of course immediately maxed all my FS2002 settings and enjoyed incredibly smooth flights everywhere. Even after installing a few complex airports and big flight plans everything seemed o.k. All of a sudden about a month ago I strated getting the stutters after accidently applying "opensky" aircraft to an AI flightplan at a newly upgraded airport. Those planes multiplied by thirty along with the airport killed my frame rates. But even after fixing those issues along with a myriad of other "fixes" like redoing the fs2002 config, finding as many "frame rate friendly" AI aircraft as possible, reducing my Windows XP to minimum appearence settings, this $4,000.00 investment, which was blowing me away my first month has me wondering why I didn't stay with my Dell 660 hz p3! After reading some of the posts hear, I am observing people with frame rates much higher than mine with half the system. Example, downloaded Reagan National upgrade; a frame rate killer as it is incredibly detailed, my system out of the box should have hardly flinched. But the best frame rates I can muster now at that airport are 12 or 13 fps. What the heck did I do?

[bab111]

Hey, simmers. I've got a similar problem. Just over a month ago, I experienced a similar drop in framerates. I think it happened when I was downloading a bunch of new aircraft for FS2002. I've got a P4 2.4GHz CPU, MSI GeForce 4 Ti4200 128Mb gfx card, and a gig of RAM. A little help here please? :-hmmm

[heyer]

One month ago you say?

:-hmmm Let me see, now we have October...

OK, now I remember: It's the wellknown "September Bug"!

No, no, folks, just to be honest: If not even you do remember what "myriad" of changes and "myriad" of tweaks and "myriad" of fixes and "myriad" of installations and "myriad" of configuration changes you did, how the hell should we? Ever heard of the word documentation?

One of the most stupid sentences I hear regarding computer users is: "All of a sudden my computer did this and did that..." Rubbish! A computer never does things on it's own. It's always the user who makes all the trouble.

It's the old story: If you demand more from your simulator than the average standard you just have to know a little more about computers than the average standard. If you don't have the required knowledge (yet) you better stay with the "out of the box" functions.

(And BTW these standard functions are more than demanding for most users anyway...)

[FatTulip]

I thought the posting above was a bit harsh! Anyway;

-Set your cursor to the basic one as fancy pointers slow things down in panel view. Do this through Control Panel in Windows.

-In Advanced Display Settings in Windows, check Direct 3D to make sure you haven't inadvertently done something like put Anisotropic Filtering on maximum which will make things crawl along.

In the Sim settings;

Reduce maximum visibility below 100 miles.
Put water effects to Detail only.
Knock off aircraft reflections and aircraft cast shadows.
Keep target framerate to about 30 or the plane periodically jumps.
Keep the number of hardware lights to about 3 or 4.
Knock of Transform and Lighting.
Use Bilinear instead of Trilinear filtering - there's not much difference.

I admit this is a trade-off, but you don't need to see more than 100 miles ahead - ever, you don't need to see your face on other aircraft - you shouldn't be that close, and why watch your shadow when there are more pressing things going on in the cockpit.

[keenrw2]

Hi

With a PC like his he should not have to reduce the details as much as that , i agree with the visibiity setting thou as i never go above 20 miles as this looks the most realistic ( 10 miles if you are in the UK lol ) . The only thing that i can say would be to try and reinstall FS as you have deleted the .cfg file and that did not help , before you do that reduce the AI A/C to 0 , if the sim runs fine then its some thing to do with that Add on A/C you added to the flight plans . A reinstall should help thou .

Rich

[Qballbandit]

What always strikes me is when people are complaining that the sim is ruuning at 13-15 fps. I have mine (2002) maxed on all but shadows and max vis, have tons of AI, and mostly add-on airports. I am running 10-12 fps when arriving at these airports, and I think it looks just fine, I mean REALLY DARN SMOOTH!!! What the heck is the difference between having 14 fps and 30? Smooth is smooth, right? I mean how does smooth get smoother?

But Michael, I am curious to what your view is on stuttering? We know FPS is affected by how much junk you throw in the game, but stutters - a bottleneck between the CPU and the AGP? or mobo/cpu/agp bottleneck??

AMD Athlon XP3000+
Asus A7N8X nvidia nforce2 mobo
ATI Radeon 9600 pro, 128 mb
512 PC3200 ddr

http://www.flightsim.com/dcforum/Use...da5ad61e56.jpg

[heyer]

>But Michael, I am curious to what your view is on
>stuttering? We know FPS is affected by how much junk you
>throw in the game, but stutters - a bottleneck between the
>CPU and the AGP? or mobo/cpu/agp bottleneck??

Provided that the computer is physically and logically OK and also configured correctly there are many reasons for the so called stuttering. First of all it's important to have a sufficient amount of physical memory installed to prevent the system from using virtual memory (swap file). The use of virtual memory means harddrive access and this access leads to (short) stutters.

Another important thing is to make sure that there are as few processes running as possible while the sim runs. At least processes which also access the harddrive will produce stutters and therefor have to be stopped. I use "KillProcess" for ending such programs but others may prefer "EndItAll".

Also all kind of messengers and mailers will produce stutters everytime they connect to their ISP's mail servers to look for new mails.

Then there are these virus protection tools. Of course they are very important in principle and while surfing the web or reading emails but while just running the sim you can shut them down. If you are sure that non of the files belonging to your simulator would be dangerous why have all of them examined every time they are accessed by the sim over and over again? Does not make sense; it just produces stutters.

These are just a few things which came into my mind while you asked me. Another thing is: A fool with a tool still remains a fool. So the amount of theoretically possible errors intiated by an unexperienced computer user is quite large too...

[rjsciolino]

Rich, Thanks for the insight.- Robert.

[rjsciolino]

Mike, Thanks for your very useful and unassuming comments. It has been a long while since I participated on a message board. I truly forgot how argumentative and sarcastic some people can get about the most benign subjects. With all due respect to your obvious vast wisdom, "Captain Mike", I was asking a very general question in hopes that someone would "respectfully" respond asking more specific questions. Yes, "Captain Mike" I guess I should have written you with a four page glossary on all the issues I have been through this past month so I could have sought your infinite flight sim and computer knowledge. I thouroughly acknowledge being a complete novice. I apologize to you, oh great and powerful Oz, for troubling you with my experimentation into a realm that only a few like your great self are privledge to enter. Someday, "Captain Mike", I hope to have the intestinal fortitude to ask you if I may enter your domain. In the meantime, I truly apologize for having asked such stupid questions. I guess I'll just keep it "in the box" from now on. In the meantime, I hope to find the answers from someone who does not sit as high on their altar as you. Humbily yours, Robert

[rjsciolino]

Thanks for the tips. I am trying not to drop my settings but if I have to, I have to. I'm beginning to believe many of the planes I have downloaded ( I only have 85 or so in my flight plan aircraft file) are the big culprits here. I have succeeded in changing out many of them for more "frame rate friendly" files. I am obviously just learning all of this. You show your obvious wisdom in patiently giving me some tips instead of acting like a "newbie" expert who has to demean a novice for asking a simple question. I appreaciate your respect. You know my other passion is bicycle racing and I have been into it for quite some time. You can always spot the guy who just discovered he is pretty good at it because he's the guy who trashes everyone else who is just beginning, you know, the same syndrome as the junior in high school who just got accepted to varsity and then terrorizes all the freshmen? Thanks for acting like a mature adult and helping me out here,I do appreciate it; and help "Captain Mike" grow up a little. Robert