21-10-2006, 09:22 AM
Okay, I set myself up yesterday and did a battery of tests for performance with FSX. First, once again, the system specs:
ABIT motherboard - socket 939
AMD Athlon 64 4000+ @ 2.45GHz
ATI 9800XT 256MB AGP video
SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS sound card
1GB PC3200 RAM
CH Yoke
CH Pedals
CH Throttle
Also, I removed the default TrafficAircraft.bgl and replaced it with my traffic from FS9, that being:
Ultimate Traffic (all)
Ultimate GA
Plus a few odd airlines not in UT (or not to my liking in UT - example: I put in PAI's WN with all the liveries)
I set myself up this time over the approach to 31L at KJFK, so I had water, a major airport, the city of New York and KLGA all in the shot.
Here's what I found.
Between 1024x768x32 and 1280x1024x32, I saw a difference of about 5 FPS (I know, FPS isn't everything but, it is the only real gauge we
can all recognize. If someone says 20FPS, we all have an idea how comfortable that looks for us.)
Same thing for checking the high resolution 3D cockpit box.
ALL of the Scenery page's left side, with the exception of water detail, provided visual changes with no real measurable difference in FPS.
Water effects to High.1x dropped me by 10 and the full (high.2x) dragged over 20FPS out of me. I find High.1x to be reasonable - similar
to FS9 water.
I never use shadows on anything because they tend to amplify any performance problems, so I didn't test them yet.
Here's where the power is needed!
Scenery Complexity: This hit me for about 20 FPS, give or take. As my biggest things are AI traffic and airport details, this one must
remain full for me.
AutoGen Complexity: Another 10-20. However, with the greatly improved ground detail, I don't even bother using autogen.
Finally, the real killers:
Airline Traffic: Very high impact - stock or UT. Even 50% was hurting.
GA Traffic: Same deal to a lesser degree. I have a ton of GA traffic - the bgl alone is about 60MB
Airport Vehicles: Medium hit - enough to notice, let's put it that way.
Road vehicles: OH! OHHHH!!!!!! The pain! Shut it off! Make it stop!
Ferry/Ships: Low impact
Leisure Boats: Low impact
Again, keep in mind that this was at a highly detailed airport with a high detail city behind it and another airport, plus water. When I went to
KMHT, I was cruising up route 3 following the traffic flow and everything was nice and smooth.
I'm going to take a shot in the dark here and guess that the things that impact performance the most (scenery structures and vehicles)
are more directly linked to processor power - period. I've read several other posts with folks who have comparable systems to mine but
with much more ram and even 512MB PCIe cards but still getting around the same results.
One interesting thing to note - maybe I just never noticed it before. While testing, I always leave target frame rate at unlimited, so I can
see the full spread of values. However, once I set up a decent balance at KJFK, I lined up to take the B738 in and see how she'd fly. I set
the target to 30 and my actual FPS value dropped from about 25 to 13! I dragged it all the way to 99 and it was the same but, when I
pushed it one notch over to unlimited, it shot back up to 25+. Of course, it was fluctuating all over the place. Hmm...
Now, my pros and cons - for what it's worth.
Pro:
Much more detail in terrain textures
Realistic roads for VFR
Better detail in all airports - even low-detail
(I checked out KROC, one of my favorite spots to land in upstate NY and, though there were no jetways, the terminal was shaped
properly. It did look very similar to the freeware scenery I have, minus the textures and jetways of course.)
MouseLook. Makes looking around the VC much easier - plus has head latency built in.
Default ATC seems to be a bit improved - though not apparent right away.
I was flying a circuit around KBOS, then decided to call the tower for a full stop. They directed me to runway 4R. As I lined up, I saw two
aircraft in front of me lining up as well - Uh oh! Go around coming? Nope! "Pacific 15, cleared to land runway 4R, #2 for landing, follow
the aircraft on final. Caution the Boeing 737 landing runway 4L." Cool! I didn't catch their touchdown because the A321's auto-throttle
locked on me and I could get it off (I ended up doing 400 kias over the field! That's a problem!) but, it might have been one of those nice
parallel touchdowns.
Sound.AI: Each aircraft now also has a folder for AI sound effects, although, I haven't gotten this to work yet. I put all 3rd party sound files
(VERY high quality) into all my UT traffic folders as Sound and Sound.AI but so far, I haven't gotten any results - still the default 737-800
sounds from everyone. I'll have to check it out.
Con:
I'm not going to say performance because, as someone who's been around since FS1, I know the pattern - the current hardware
available is never sufficient to handle all the features MS builds into FS.
At first, I didn't really care for the enormous ATC window but, you can resize it so, now I'm happy again.
Very slow airport vehicle traffic - hopefully, this will be patched.
Jetways don't work with previous AI traffic. Traffic X should be very well received.
That's all I can think of for now. Back to work!
ABIT motherboard - socket 939
AMD Athlon 64 4000+ @ 2.45GHz
ATI 9800XT 256MB AGP video
SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS sound card
1GB PC3200 RAM
CH Yoke
CH Pedals
CH Throttle
Also, I removed the default TrafficAircraft.bgl and replaced it with my traffic from FS9, that being:
Ultimate Traffic (all)
Ultimate GA
Plus a few odd airlines not in UT (or not to my liking in UT - example: I put in PAI's WN with all the liveries)
I set myself up this time over the approach to 31L at KJFK, so I had water, a major airport, the city of New York and KLGA all in the shot.
Here's what I found.
Between 1024x768x32 and 1280x1024x32, I saw a difference of about 5 FPS (I know, FPS isn't everything but, it is the only real gauge we
can all recognize. If someone says 20FPS, we all have an idea how comfortable that looks for us.)
Same thing for checking the high resolution 3D cockpit box.
ALL of the Scenery page's left side, with the exception of water detail, provided visual changes with no real measurable difference in FPS.
Water effects to High.1x dropped me by 10 and the full (high.2x) dragged over 20FPS out of me. I find High.1x to be reasonable - similar
to FS9 water.
I never use shadows on anything because they tend to amplify any performance problems, so I didn't test them yet.
Here's where the power is needed!
Scenery Complexity: This hit me for about 20 FPS, give or take. As my biggest things are AI traffic and airport details, this one must
remain full for me.
AutoGen Complexity: Another 10-20. However, with the greatly improved ground detail, I don't even bother using autogen.
Finally, the real killers:
Airline Traffic: Very high impact - stock or UT. Even 50% was hurting.
GA Traffic: Same deal to a lesser degree. I have a ton of GA traffic - the bgl alone is about 60MB
Airport Vehicles: Medium hit - enough to notice, let's put it that way.
Road vehicles: OH! OHHHH!!!!!! The pain! Shut it off! Make it stop!
Ferry/Ships: Low impact
Leisure Boats: Low impact
Again, keep in mind that this was at a highly detailed airport with a high detail city behind it and another airport, plus water. When I went to
KMHT, I was cruising up route 3 following the traffic flow and everything was nice and smooth.
I'm going to take a shot in the dark here and guess that the things that impact performance the most (scenery structures and vehicles)
are more directly linked to processor power - period. I've read several other posts with folks who have comparable systems to mine but
with much more ram and even 512MB PCIe cards but still getting around the same results.
One interesting thing to note - maybe I just never noticed it before. While testing, I always leave target frame rate at unlimited, so I can
see the full spread of values. However, once I set up a decent balance at KJFK, I lined up to take the B738 in and see how she'd fly. I set
the target to 30 and my actual FPS value dropped from about 25 to 13! I dragged it all the way to 99 and it was the same but, when I
pushed it one notch over to unlimited, it shot back up to 25+. Of course, it was fluctuating all over the place. Hmm...
Now, my pros and cons - for what it's worth.
Pro:
Much more detail in terrain textures
Realistic roads for VFR
Better detail in all airports - even low-detail
(I checked out KROC, one of my favorite spots to land in upstate NY and, though there were no jetways, the terminal was shaped
properly. It did look very similar to the freeware scenery I have, minus the textures and jetways of course.)
MouseLook. Makes looking around the VC much easier - plus has head latency built in.
Default ATC seems to be a bit improved - though not apparent right away.
I was flying a circuit around KBOS, then decided to call the tower for a full stop. They directed me to runway 4R. As I lined up, I saw two
aircraft in front of me lining up as well - Uh oh! Go around coming? Nope! "Pacific 15, cleared to land runway 4R, #2 for landing, follow
the aircraft on final. Caution the Boeing 737 landing runway 4L." Cool! I didn't catch their touchdown because the A321's auto-throttle
locked on me and I could get it off (I ended up doing 400 kias over the field! That's a problem!) but, it might have been one of those nice
parallel touchdowns.
Sound.AI: Each aircraft now also has a folder for AI sound effects, although, I haven't gotten this to work yet. I put all 3rd party sound files
(VERY high quality) into all my UT traffic folders as Sound and Sound.AI but so far, I haven't gotten any results - still the default 737-800
sounds from everyone. I'll have to check it out.
Con:
I'm not going to say performance because, as someone who's been around since FS1, I know the pattern - the current hardware
available is never sufficient to handle all the features MS builds into FS.
At first, I didn't really care for the enormous ATC window but, you can resize it so, now I'm happy again.
Very slow airport vehicle traffic - hopefully, this will be patched.
Jetways don't work with previous AI traffic. Traffic X should be very well received.
That's all I can think of for now. Back to work!
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