32 replies to this topic

[Crunch]

So, I seem to have this dilemma.  I hear people saying how smooth 30 fps is for them, I take it this means stutter free given the general definition of "smooth". My issue is I cant fly at 30 fps, if I do FSX stutters all over the place. I have to sync the frame rate, being 60, with the monitor refresh rate (60hz) in order to have a smooth flight experience. It must maintain 60 fps in order to be stutter free.  Needless to say this leaves me limited to what I can fly in FSX, and what type of scenery I can run. FSX settings seem to have nothing to do with this out of sync issue. This seems to be an issue with Windows Vista / 7 vsync. No driver version I've have found solves this either, nor any amount of tweaking / tuning.

From what I'm gathering on the net, it seems a good number of people are having this issue, not just with FSX but with other games also.  However, some claim that 30-35 is perfectly "smooth" on Windows 7 or Vista. I'm at a loss, has anyone found a solution to this problem, it seems to be a mystery on the net.

[djMot]

30FPS is perfectly smooth for me.  Yes there are the occasional micro-stutters, but nothing distracting enough for me to want to go on a tweak-quest. 

I'd be interested in seeing your fsx.cfg.  I recently went back over mine and dropped some baggage that really was causing some grief for me.  I know right where to look.

What addons are you using?  Any scenery like FTX?  Or just generic textures and mesh like UTX and GEX?

[djMot]

Incidently, if you have not already, you may wish to get the latest nvidia driver and the nvidia Inspector.  This is a good post for setting up Inspector for use with FSX/9.  If you're using nHancer, please note that (last I looked anyway) it does not work with the latest nvidia drivers.  You have to use Inspector instead.  I'm liking the new drivers and Inspector.

http://forum.avsim.n...f-all-settings/

[Crunch]

30FPS is perfectly smooth for me.  Yes there are the occasional micro-stutters, but nothing distracting enough for me to want to go on a tweak-quest. 

I'd be interested in seeing your fsx.cfg.  I recently went back over mine and dropped some baggage that really was causing some grief for me.  I know right where to look.

What addons are you using?  Any scenery like FTX?  Or just generic textures and mesh like UTX and GEX?

I attached my .cfg file. Its very clean, the only tweak I use is bufferpools / poolsize, but perhaps you could find some  things i missed. As I've found out over the years most "tweaks" dont work or actually make it worse.  My FSX is very clean, add on wise, I only use GEX and REX. I do have some FTX scenery but they tend to muck things up so I dont use them.  Its seems the less you install the happier FSX is.

I' using, 268.77 and Nivida inspector.

Thanks.

[Virtualwombat]

First, IMHO autogen (and clouds) are the enemy of smoothness in FSX.  Loading too many trees or buildings causes these problems. With my system I cut back the autogen in the FSX.cfg file and that immediately makes a difference.

Second, have you tried running Bjote's tuning site? It might make a difference or it might not, but it is certainly worth a try.

http://www.venetubo.com/fsx.html

Third, have you tried the external frame rate limiter? That is worth a go too.

Cheers,

Noel.

[djMot]

30FPS is perfectly smooth for me.  Yes there are the occasional micro-stutters, but nothing distracting enough for me to want to go on a tweak-quest. 

I'd be interested in seeing your fsx.cfg.  I recently went back over mine and dropped some baggage that really was causing some grief for me.  I know right where to look.

What addons are you using?  Any scenery like FTX?  Or just generic textures and mesh like UTX and GEX?

I attached my .cfg file. Its very clean, the only tweak I use is bufferpools / poolsize, but perhaps you could find some  things i missed. As I've found out over the years most "tweaks" dont work or actually make it worse.  My FSX is very clean, add on wise, I only use GEX and REX. I do have some FTX scenery but they tend to muck things up so I dont use them.  Its seems the less you install the happier FSX is.

I' using, 268.77 and Nivida inspector.

Thanks.

Odd -- I don't see the attachment, but no matter, you told me what I mainly needed to know.  Bufferpools was KILLING my performance.  Remove it altogether and see how things go.

[djMot]

Noel has suggested an interesting fsx.cfg automatic configuration page.  You answer some questions about your hardware, then upload your fsx.cfg.  It rewrites it and you can download it and put it into effect.  Backup your current fsx.cfg before overwriting with the tweaked version you download.

Out of curiosity, I tried it.  Didn't produce great results, but didn't kill the sim either.  It might work for you.  Worth a try, right?

[Crunch]

I tried the .cfg thing just for fun. It didn't seem to do much, however, something loaded when I started FSX with the new .cfg file. and I've been wondering what that was. Anyway I put back my old cfg. I've been "tweaking" FS since 2004, and my thoughts are on it are the best tweak is no tweak (except for poolsize at a low number (800000) which seems to work very well, a little tip I got from Realair a while back).

My problem isn't so much with FSX performance, it seems to be more of an Windows 7 issue with vsync and the constant stuttering I get when my fps is at anything but 60 fps (matching the monitor vsync). Basically I can very easily maintain 30 fps with the heaviest of scenery on my rig, the fps stays pegged to 30 but stutters like nuts ( a constant non stop stutter).  My machine is heavily tuned and benchmarked, all the numbers are where they're suppose to be.

I've done some research, and others have the problem with other games also. This also is also a constant with all other games I play, if the fps drops below 60, stutter. No one seems to know of a fix. The issue doesn't seem to happen with XP, only Vista and Windows 7 ( i dont recall having this issue on XP).  It's a strange thing, but I'm not the only one having this issue it seems.

Thanks.

[djMot]

I've never had any sort of heavy stutter on Win7 or even on Vista.  Have you tried any of the utils that shuts down unnecessary services before starting a game?  Game Boost is the the name of the popular one I think.  Someone help me out with that; I think that's what it's called.  And it's free.  But as you can tell from my not really knowing its name, I don't use it, and haven't felt the need.  FSX flies really smooth for me.

What about your AV?  Have you set it to exclude your FSX folder?  Which are you using?  ESET NOD32 and Microsoft Security Essentials are the only 2 I would recommend.  The latter is free, and remarkably lite and competent. 

I presume FSX is installed in its own folder, not just in Program Files.  You mention a VR drive in your system system specs, and you sound very knowledgeable, so I wouldn't expect you're stuck in that trap.

I don't know.  I've accidentally forgotten to shut down my development server, and even flying with memory hogs like Dragon Naturally Speaking and Skype running and still experience no ill effects.  I still look to your cfg file.

Did you kill the BufferPools section?  I'm dead serious - when I went on my most recent tweak-quest, killing that one section altogether pulled FSX back fro the brink if a clean re-install for me.

My machine just DL/Installed Win7 64 SP1.  I have to reboot now.  That's another thing that might help you.  For all there is to love about Win7, there's some real lame things too.  Frickin' icon cache being one of them.  Abysmal Windows Explorer performance being another.  I'm hoping all that crap is accounted for in SP1.  We'll see.  Here I gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.     

[caaront]

I also have much better results running at 60 FPS.
And my Track IR 5 is much smoother there also, at 30 FPS it is jittery when I turn my head.

[Crunch]

I've never had any sort of heavy stutter on Win7 or even on Vista.  Have you tried any of the utils that shuts down unnecessary services before starting a game?  Game Boost is the the name of the popular one I think.  Someone help me out with that; I think that's what it's called.  And it's free.  But as you can tell from my not really knowing its name, I don't use it, and haven't felt the need.  FSX flies really smooth for me.

What about your AV?  Have you set it to exclude your FSX folder?  Which are you using?  ESET NOD32 and Microsoft Security Essentials are the only 2 I would recommend.  The latter is free, and remarkably lite and competent. 

I presume FSX is installed in its own folder, not just in Program Files.  You mention a VR drive in your system system specs, and you sound very knowledgeable, so I wouldn't expect you're stuck in that trap.

I don't know.  I've accidentally forgotten to shut down my development server, and even flying with memory hogs like Dragon Naturally Speaking and Skype running and still experience no ill effects.  I still look to your cfg file.

Did you kill the BufferPools section?  I'm dead serious - when I went on my most recent tweak-quest, killing that one section altogether pulled FSX back fro the brink if a clean re-install for me.

My machine just DL/Installed Win7 64 SP1.  I have to reboot now.  That's another thing that might help you.  For all there is to love about Win7, there's some real lame things too.  Frickin' icon cache being one of them.  Abysmal Windows Explorer performance being another.  I'm hoping all that crap is accounted for in SP1.  We'll see.  Here I gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.     

NOD32 AV is what I use. My computer is tuned heavily so everything is at minimal, of course that doesn't mean I cant learn more, I'm always looking for new info. I tried game booster, convenient program but not necessity if you're already tuned. 

Interesting on the bufferpools, but that depends on what you had it set to. On a 285, if you had it set to a huge number like 150000000 or something ridiculous like that it will definitely kill your performance.  Try 800000, it works like a charm on 8800 and 2 series cards ( a little trick I learned from Realair a while back while taming the B60), bu theres other "tweaks" this may conflict with.  And yep all games are on the Raptor, which i keep defraged with PerfectDisk 11.

[Crunch]

I also have much better results running at 60 FPS.
And my Track IR 5 is much smoother there also, at 30 FPS it is jittery when I turn my head.

From what I've been reading there's a reason for the jitters when frame rate is not in sync with monitor vsync. If the frame rate doesn't not match the monitor vsync, for example, the fps is at say 50, the monitor is now waiting on the video card for input. So from what I've read basically the same frame gets drawn twice by the monitor while it waits for the next frame from the video card. Thus the "jitter".  This however does not explain why some people find it smooth and some dont. Perhaps it could have something to do with monitor type / brand. 

[MartinW]

I'm using one of the latest 120Hz monitors. My frame rate is unlimited in FSX, and set to 60 frames per second in nVidia Inspector.

Very smooth indeed.

i7920 at 4GHz
GTX 580
6gb DDR3
Windows 7 64-bit

No tweaks at all. [Apart from memfix]

I suggest you try without any cfg tweaking, rebuild your FSX cfg, and try it then.

Tweaked cfg's can cause more issues than they fix.

Edited by MartinW, 10 February 2012 - 11:00 AM.

[timest999]

Martin, may I ask which monitor?

[MartinW]

This one Tim...

BenQ XL2420T 24" 3D LED Monitor

Very, very pleased with it.

It took a few days to fine tune the myriad of settings to achieve my favoured image, but very pleased.

Some say 120Hz is no advantage, but I can testify to the fact that dragging stuff around the desktop is very smooth indeed.

In games, COD/BF3, I notice set to 60Hz it's not so smooth, but at 120Hz it's excellent. Some would say that doesn't make sense, given that 60FPS should be smooth to the human eye. It could be because the monitor is optimised for 120Hz, or some other technical reason, not sure, but it certainly is super smooth at 120Hz.

It's designed for 3D of course, so it's a TN panel. Viewing angles aren't top-notch like an IPS panel, but good enough for me, doesn't bother me.

The benefit of course in games is that it's very responsive being a TN.

[Applebeau]

best tweak is fastest hardware, whereis tweak is mentioned i mean tweak the bank details so the wife wont see 3000 missing.
My system
i7 920 4.2
6GB 1600MHZ
GT470 oc
150 raptor drive for fsx
no tweaks except
TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_TREES_PER_CELL=1000
TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_BUILDINGS_PER_CELL=800
[Main]
DisablePreload=1
[Graphics]
HIGHMEMFIX=1
fps locked in fsx to 30
nod32 virus disabled when playing fsx
windows indexing turned off and msconfig checked for un wanted programs, been happly playing fsx like this for months now.

Paul

[timest999]

Oh my gosh Paul LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[airbusa321]

Just a fun fact... The human eye perceives images at about 120 FPS. Therefore, if your frame rates are a factor of 120, it should be smooth.

And gosh dang Paul.

[buckman]

Fps can be very confusing Motion Picture Group (Mpg 4 ect...) standards are 29.7 fps, Frame rates for gaming whole different ball game. This site may help explain a little bit more.www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see

[airbusa321]

Just to be clear, I think it's fine.

[Airborne73505]

How does one sync their frame rates with their montior refresh rate. I'm using a 1080P HD TV and the TV itself is 50/60hz according to the panel on the back. Does this mean i have to lock FSX at either 50 or 60 and/or via an external FPS limiter?

[algarete]

Yes 30 FPS is smooth for me..

Edited by algarete, 21 April 2012 - 05:43 AM.

[algarete]

How does one sync their frame rates with their montior refresh rate.  I'm using a 1080P HD TV and the TV itself is 50/60hz according to the panel on the back.  Does this mean i have to lock FSX at either 50 or 60 and/or via an external FPS limiter?

The human eye processes about 20 - 30 FPS, but can go as high as 60 - 100 FPS when in panic. Therefore anything above 30 FPS can't be notice unless you panic most people don´t notice a difference between 50 and 60 FPS. Unfortunately FSX will always lag and yes you can lock it at 50 or 60 but if you get micro-stutters just bring it down a little.

Edited by algarete, 21 April 2012 - 04:57 AM.

[airbusa321]

Ok, so maybe I was a LITTLE off

[algarete]

In fact research has found that the human eye can process about 200 - 300 FPS

Edited by algarete, 22 April 2012 - 01:01 AM.