I need a couple questions answered please

[captdennison]

So 3 years ago or so I got a new computer, Not the best, but all I could afford at the time. The specs are:

WIn7 Home Premium 64 Bit SP1

AMD 4100 Quad core at 3.60 GHz

8.00 Gig Ram

NVidea GTS450

 

I basically have FSX Gold edition installed along with a couple bought addons and a ton of free downloaded item.

Yes, I know it is horribly outdated, but it will run FSX OK it just takes forever to start the computer to actually flying is sometime 20 min or more.

The question is, IF I am flying in a Local or regional area Let say Colorado, should I UNCHECK all add on scenery except addons in Colorado? Or does it not matter?

Second question is, WHAT if anything can I do to the computer itself will allow it to run better in the way of Hardware. It is tweeked per NickN's FSX Bible. And I run it on all 4 cores at same time.

I realize a NEW computer would be Ideal, but anything at all to get it to at least LOAD up faster, I have setting fairly high and get 29FPS can get more, but understand that is not ideal.

Thanks

[Stearmandriver13]

I'm not the guy to answer your hardware upgrade questions so I'll defer that to someone more knowledgeable - but can I ask what you've done to get FS to utilize all four cores? I'd always heard FSX is basically locked to one core.

 

Thanks...

[jorgen.s.andersen]

With a lot of add-ons you WILL get longer load times, but there are a few things you can do to improve things on your present system.

 

First of all, make sure that all superfluous tasks are not running, like a browser or iTunes in the background.

 

Second, use the built-in functions in Win 7 to clean up the hard drive, then defrag the hard drive. There is a free cleaning tool out there called Ccleaner, which does a good job.

 

After that, I'm afraid it's going to start costing money.....

 

Jorgen

[amberdog1]

hardware side I would recommend a ssd hard drive

[jorgen.s.andersen]

That's what I meant by start costing money.....

 

Jorgen

[il88pp]

Disabling scenery is no use. Fsx only loads what's in the area you fly in. It does remember things from where you flew through. That can cause an OOM. If that happens often you can avoid it by saving the flight occasionally and reloading it. But that's not happening to you.

 

It sounds like fsx is running fine.

 

Do you mean the computer itself takes aifp to start? In that case it's time for a good clean and defrag, like the others suggest.

Also check for virusses. Use malwarebytes. And preferably a paid AV suite as well.

 

Also use: superantispyware.

 

If your harddisks are more then 80% full it slows things down also.

[mallcott]

So 3 years ago or so I got a new computer, Not the best, but all I could afford at the time. The specs are:

WIn7 Home Premium 64 Bit SP1

AMD 4100 Quad core at 3.60 GHz

8.00 Gig Ram

NVidea GTS450

 

I basically have FSX Gold edition installed along with a couple bought addons and a ton of free downloaded item.

Yes, I know it is horribly outdated, but it will run FSX OK it just takes forever to start the computer to actually flying is sometime 20 min or more.

The question is, IF I am flying in a Local or regional area Let say Colorado, should I UNCHECK all add on scenery except addons in Colorado? Or does it not matter?

Second question is, WHAT if anything can I do to the computer itself will allow it to run better in the way of Hardware. It is tweeked per NickN's FSX Bible. And I run it on all 4 cores at same time.

I realize a NEW computer would be Ideal, but anything at all to get it to at least LOAD up faster, I have setting fairly high and get 29FPS can get more, but understand that is not ideal.

Thanks

 

Uninstall and reinstall FSX.

 

Consider this your wake-up call to ONLY load those things you ABSOLUTELY need on that rig, with that FSX installation.

 

Use the `one in, one out` rule to ensure you are not putting more useless tosh into your sim. You said it yourself - a `ton` of addons - yet you can't name them, much less bother to define them, so they are not needed. You can always reinstall anything you later realise you miss - and my experience is that is never more than one or two addons.

 

That is the solution, until you can get a new rig.

[captdennison]

I have FSPS Multicore, it allows you to run on more than one core.

[jorgen.s.andersen]

If you have a lot of add-on scenery, and a lot of add-on aircraft and/or AI aircraft, then loading will be slower.

 

Jorgen

[captdennison]

I have all un needed tasks off except for the Explorer,exe, I do use CCleaner, and the system is defragged. The computer itself boots up in a few second , Once I select FSX though it can take 2-3 minutes before I can select flight, and once I go to do the flight, is where it takes another 10 or more min to actually be at the airport. I DO NOT GO ONLINE with this computer, and it has been virus scanned, and bug checked via several methods, ANYTHING I add to it is checked first on another computer, then transferred to it. I either buy or get whatever is offered up on site like FlightSim.com. Hard drive has room, but I have all on one single drive.

Would it improve my FSX performance, if I were to put the scenery on my second HD?

I mainly use it for storing items, or would the use of a separate HD slow down performance?

Thanks

With a lot of add-ons you WILL get longer load times, but there are a few things you can do to improve things on your present system.

 

First of all, make sure that all superfluous tasks are not running, like a browser or iTunes in the background.

 

Second, use the built-in functions in Win 7 to clean up the hard drive, then defrag the hard drive. There is a free cleaning tool out there called Ccleaner, which does a good job.

 

After that, I'm afraid it's going to start costing money.....

 

Jorgen

[captdennison]

Thanks for this answer it was my main question, as I had thought it would make a difference. All is clean as I posted elsewhere.

 

Disabling scenery is no use. Fsx only loads what's in the area you fly in. It does remember things from where you flew through. That can cause an OOM. If that happens often you can avoid it by saving the flight occasionally and reloading it. But that's not happening to you.

 

It sounds like fsx is running fine.

 

Do you mean the computer itself takes aifp to start? In that case it's time for a good clean and defrag, like the others suggest.

Also check for virusses. Use malwarebytes. And preferably a paid AV suite as well.

 

Also use: superantispyware.

 

If your harddisks are more then 80% full it slows things down also.

[captdennison]

Thanks, I believe I simply need to remove all the lesser airport scenery and just stick to major and minor hubs, nearly all my aircraft and airports come from Flightsim.com or similar. But I know I have some aircraft I do not fly and lots of small airfields I will probably never go into. I flew FS9 for many years, still fly it online on my other computer, and it does have nearly everything on it, it runs fine. I thought I could do the same on FSX but I guess not--thanks

 

If you have a lot of add-on scenery, and a lot of add-on aircraft and/or AI aircraft, then loading will be slower.

 

Jorgen

[captdennison]

OK so to sum things up, thanks to all who replied. I believe I have to remove unused smaller airports, and a few less aircraft that I fly only once in a while. The other question of having all items of scenery checked as added in or not has been answered-only other question is now, would I get better performance ir I moved some or all scenery files to my second hard drive. NO I do not have the hard drives setup as RAID as I do not know how to do that and they are NOT the same exact hard drive.

thanks again for quick replies.

[jorgen.s.andersen]

You could put FSX itself, with scenery and everything, on your other hard drive. That will get rid of the contention you have, when FSX and Windows are both trying to access your present hard drive, and fighting over it.

 

But, that will involve a reinstall.

 

Jorgen

[longbreak754]

..........Once I select FSX though it can take 2-3 minutes before I can select flight, and once I go to do the flight, is where it takes another 10 or more min to actually be at the airport............

 

WRT the loading issue -

 

The time your FSX is taking to load to the startup screen (2-3 Mins) isn't that bad so the main cause of your issue WRT the actual loading of the flight is not to do with the number of simobjects that you have. I suspect that it may be more to do with a scenery issue, (either related to the loading of textures or effects) or AI traffic issue (either aircraft or airport vehicle traffic). When you are loading the flight watch the progress bar. It tells you what portion of the flight it is loading (i.e. scenery, objects, traffic etc). Try and figure out what item is actually taking the longest to load.

 

Somethings you can try to reduce the load times:

 

1. Check for duplicated scenery, especially object libraries you have installed. You only need one 'copy' of a object library installed - duplicated entries can cause issues when being loaded. It can be easy to install duplicate object libraries, especially if they are recommended/provided as part of a freeware package and the package author has used a different name for the library.

 

2. In some circumstances, having your general scenery settings to high may cause long load times. So try turning them do a little to see if it makes a difference. Especially look at the Special Effects entry.

 

3. Turn down the traffic sliders to a low percentage (15-20%) and test the load times. Then increase the sliders by a small margin until you get a reasonable level of traffic versus a good load time. Note though, that if you have a third party AI product (such as Traffic 360 or Ultimate Traffic, etc) you may find that they have a recommended slider level so that all traffic is displayed. Some freeware 3rd party stuff may also need a higher slider level to display correctly.

 

4. On the subject of AI traffic - the models are treated as simobjects and the flight plans as scenery. As stated by il88p at post #6, FSX doesn't normally load all of the scenery installed. However, my understanding is that FSX does read all of the installed traffic files when loading a user flight, as it needs to identify what AI simobjects to load/display in the 'local' area.

 

If you use 3rd party stuff that comes in individual packages (such as WOAI or MAIW) you can reduce the AI load by splitting the packs into regions. By default, it is normally recommend to put the traffic files in the Scenery\World\Scenery folder - this is because the folder is an active folder and is the default location for the default FSX traffic file. However, by treating the traffic files as individual items of scenery you can create 'regional' or even 'country' related folders for them in the either the main default Addon Scenery folder or better still, in folders located outside of the sim in a dedicated folder structure that meets your needs. These can then be treated as 'normal' and selected/deselected as required. How much difference it will make in the load time can only be discovered during testing. This may also help avoid getting duplicate flight plans in differently named files.

 

 

WRT to moving stuff - It is not likely to improve, or indeed, have any impact on your FSX performance by having scenery on a different drive - FTR I have two rigs with FSX installed. One has FSX on the C:\ drive (an SSD) and most of my addon scenery and some AI simobjects on the D:\ drive (a HDD). The other rig has FSX and all scenery installed on a single dedicated drive (D:\ a SSD).

 

Depending on how you have your addon scenery installed, you can either:

 

A. Leave FSX installed on drive C: and move your scenery to the second drive

B. Uninstall FSX and re-install it on the second drive and then move the addon stuff

C. Start completely afresh and uninstall FSX AND the addon scenery and re-install it on the second drive individually reinstall the scenery as required.

 

If you do A or B, you will need to either deactivate/remove and then add/activate the scenery using the FSX settings page OR edit the scenery.cfg file - see my post in the following thread for more details - https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showthread.php?303210-Storage-for-PC

[jorgen.s.andersen]

Brian is absolutely correct - duplicate items are a "Bad Thingâ„¢" and should be avoided. John "Scruffy Duck" Masterman's Simple Airport Scanner should be standard in every FSX installation, it has helped me enormously in avoiding duplicate AFCADs.

 

As to Brian's point 4, AI aircraft ARE simobjects. On startup, FSX builds a file on the C: drive (temporarily for as long as FSX runs), and grabs every title line from the aircraft.cfg files in turn, and copies it into that file. This file gets bigger and bigger, and it takes longer and longer for FSX to go through it, as more titles are copied as it checks for duplicate entries. So if you have a LOT of installed aircraft (both flyable and AI), loading FSX will take time.

 

I don't have that many flyable aircraft, but tons of AI. Just to mention 3 AI aircraft in my installation, I have over 1500 HTAI F-16Cs, over 400 HTAI F-16Ds, and over 900 DWAI Citation IIs, plus all the rest! So my loading time is long! When I get around to getting the C: drive on SSD, this is where I expect some improvement.

 

Hope this makes sense -

 

Jorgen

[captdennison]

Again thanks for all the help and answers-just got Simple Airport Scanner from Scruffy Duck and will run it. on a side note, amazingly enough I have no addon air traffic programs and really hardly see any AI at airport. Guess it is just time to begin saving up for a newer faster more powerful system--thanks all

[longbreak754]

@ captdennison - Based on your last reply and the info posted in your OP, all I can suggest is that you that may increase load times are:

 

A. Check that FSX is actually using the GT5450 and not a basic integrated GPU that may be present on the MoBo.

 

B. Turn down some of the scenery related sliders by a few percentage points and also reduce the FPS rate to 20 or 25. Test and change settings to find a happy medium

[captdennison]

I am not very talented when it comes to compuuters hardware. I see the process showing that all 4 cores are running via the FSPS Multicore, I also see that all 4 cores are running by checking the task manager (Control/ALT/Delete) and looking at Performance, it shows all 4 cores running with loads.

Please tell me how to check to see the computer is actually running thru the NVidea GTS450. I have the Monitor hooked to the card outlet, so I assume it is running, please explain if there is a way to check if you feel I may not be getting full use or the use of my graphics card--thanks

@ captdennison - Based on your last reply and the info posted in your OP, all I can suggest is that you that may increase load times are:

 

A. Check that FSX is actually using the GT5450 and not a basic integrated GPU that may be present on the MoBo.

 

B. Turn down some of the scenery related sliders by a few percentage points and also reduce the FPS rate to 20 or 25. Test and change settings to find a happy medium

[il88pp]

fsx will make use of 4 cores anyway. It is not just single core. the sp2 update made it so texture loading is done b core 1, 2 and 3 and te main program runs on core 0

 

Windows runs on core 0 mostly too.

To give fsx more room many choose to rn fsx only on core 1 2 and 3

You can do that for free, using the AffinityMask= tweak.

Or you can use something like the program you are using. to use only three cores.

 

 

You can see what card fsx uses in the fsx settings menu.

[longbreak754]

As il88pp has stated go to the FSX Settings page and look at the Graphics tab. At the top of the left hand column you will see an entry labeled Device and below it is a drop down menu box that will show the current device selected. Clicking on the arrow button located at the right hand side of the menu box will show what devices are available.