Simviation Forums

Hey all,

I've been messing around with the quality settings, trying to get the best balance between performance and quality that my system can handle.  I'm pretty happy for the most part (i need MORE RAM).  Anyway, has anyone figured out which sliders have the most effect and least effect on FPS?  

Dakota

Anti Alaising seems to knock the crap out of my system, but I've heard others say that it dosnt effect theirs at all. So it looks like its different for everyone depending on your system specs.

dakota-flyer,

I think everyone is pretty much in agreement that the biggest hit seems to come from the biggest "feature" of FS2004....... the beautiful 3-d clouds.  The higher you run the numerous cloud settings..... the heavier the hit on the system.

The second biggest impact on performance seems to come form high levels of AI planes.  Keeping track of that stuff not only taxes the video card... but the CPU as well.

best,

...............john

Anti-Aliasing has no problem with my system, however, what really kills my FPS, is Auto-Gen scenery.

Extremely Dense, I'll pull 5-10 FPS, but on the lowest, I'll pull a smooth 40.

And yes, clouds have a big impact on things as well.

-HF

i hope fs2006 willl be fixed
i have 3.4ghz
2gig of RAM
x850 xt pe
and my game still runs slow sometimes, its just perthetic!
PS the 9.1 patch helps it a bit, but dosnt fix it.
PS i dont have the latest drivers.

Agreed Cobz

My old pc was a:
P4 1.5GHz
768MB RAM
Ge Force MX 440
and it could pull ok frames for the spec, around 20 I think.
My new one:
P4 3.2GHz
1 GB RAM
Radeon 9200
struggles more than I think it should, and although it gets better frames than the old one, Anti-Aliasing slows it down a fair bit, otherwise its ok.

the quickest way to get your frames up is to tone down the autogen density and scenery density sliders

also, air traffic really hits the system hard

Two things which will hit you are:

1) Settings on the sim. (Usually the higher the harder on the FPS. This is particularly so with clouds, AI and autogen.

2) What your graphics card settings are. This will make a massive difference as to what you set them as. I messed around for ages with my settings, they were ok, but I didn't get full satisfaction until I appealed for someone to show me with their card what they have them on.

Someone came up with the same card and posted a shot and a couple of tweaks later and I was there! My card is a R9600XT. If you have that I'll show you what I have it set to.

Ben

Found something that works surprisingly well - turn off all shadows (aircraft & scenery), this has resulted in a considerable improvement in performance in my case.   Although it's nice to have the extra realism of shadows on a bright day, it's not so nice during a major storm, when taxiing along the runway and shadows can be seen everywhere...that's not realistic at all!  This, along with minimizing the 3-d cloud setting, seems to make a world of difference.  

Thanks all,

I'll be trying all suggestions.

Whenever I do long-haul flights with a XP-38, I fly it at its maximum service ceiling with leaned fuel mixture [I set Aircraft Realism to Hardest] and in a trimed setting [no autopilot - hate that].

Since I usually flight at extreme altitudes, I set scenery levels to minimum [after I reach my altitude] with only the AI at Max. At these setting, I get 20-26 FPS.