Important for ATI users

[stefano]

Hi to all.
I have found something, that i don't want to call a tipe or a trick for FSX, bt something that has increased the performance almost at 90% with me.
I am an ATI user with a X 1600 XT, bought not more than 2 weeks ago.

A little story to make understand what is happened.
I have bought FSX two days ago, even i was awared about the problem about the performance, but i did antway as a little challenge to see what was different from FS9.
I have applied all the tips about the cfg file and changed only the textures of the couds, and weel, the performance was absolutly not very good with my sistem, a Pentium 4 3 ghz, x 1600 xt and 1 Gig of ra, low frame rate, stuttering and so on.
Than yesterday i have upgraded the ATI driver to 6.12. fired up FSX and..... magic the FPs was rised at 20/19 sticked at 20.

So i went to see what was happened and i found out that the setting in the ATI control panel were the default setting, that means:
AA and AF setted to LET THE APPLICATION DECIDE  and the STANDARD setting to performance.

So... i tried to reise up the seting in the game almost to max, BTW i have the autogen renamed, and with all almost at maximum the FPS are always around 20, in almost all the mission also with complex graphic situations.

I don't know if this is a bug of ATI, or of FSX himself, or is my PC that doesn't like to set AA, but i have taken notice that also in some 3d applicatioins, the AA is giving problems.

I want to tell to all the ATI users, both with X series or other, if they have had the same issue i had and if they can fix or gain smoothness like i have had setting AA and AF to the application to decide, and ican tell you that when FSX is smooth, os really smooth like the best silk!!

I will post some screenshot when i have found the best setting for me and ofcourse all the setting in the game i have given.

I will also send a mail to TI and if i can to Microsoft to tell them about.
Anyway stay tuned for more info about this!

Cheers to everybody

Stefano

P.S.
Of course if someone can expalin to me why this is happening is more than welcome!!!

[commoner]

:-?..anyone explain to me what Stef is saying...........can't get my little old grey cells round that one.............commoner :-/ :-?

[Y]

Hi stefano,

When you get the ATI tabs up in display properties what tab do you get up and what do you look for then? I am very interested in this tweek.

Steve

[gilly_is_alive]

Thanks stefano! I have a radeon mobility x700 on my laptop.  If you right click on your desktop and go to properties, then go to the settings tab and then click advanced you can change the graphics card settings (Direct 3D or OpenGL).  For ATI cards you can select the level of anti aliasing and antiscopic filtering.  I think what stefano is trying to say is set these options to "let the application decide".  i dont get my copy of fsx until Christmas morning but i have alreday got my graphics card set the way stefano suggested.  Perhaps there are similar settings for a GeForce?

[Ravang]

Thank You so much for this tip I was getting slow fps too with my X1650 and I was like this can't be right but this fixed it [smiley=2vrolijk_08.gif]

[stefano]

Hi and sorry if i have been a little confused in my descriptions  :) but i was a little excited because of this so  i will try to explain in the right way what is to do.

Click on the desktop with the right botton of the mouse and you get the menu, the first line (with me) is ATI (CATALIST) CONTROL CENTER, you click on this and is opening the window of the control center where you control all the feature of the Video card.

If is in basic mode, you will have a window telling you that you are in  basic mode  or if you want to choose the advanced, click on advanced and than next and the new window will open.

Now on the left you will have all the menu about the card, 2d setting, color, monitor and so on.

Clic on 3d and on the right you will have a window showing a car, is a prewiev of the final result, under you will have the setting for Antialiasing, Anisotropic filter, and so on.

What i have done, and is what is coming as default when you install the driver, is that i have unchecked the box up on the left in the STANDARD SETTING and choose PERFORMANCE.

Doing this, automaticly the setting in the ANTIALIASING AND ANISOTROPIC FILTER  are setted with a thik in the box that is tellingLET THE APPLICATION DECIDE, up on the left.

I left all the other setting as they were,and are :

ADAPTIVE ANTIALIASING unchecked

HIGH QUALITY AF in the menu of the anisotropic filter unchecked

CATALYST AI  setted as ADVANCED

MIPMAP DETAIL LEVEL set to high quality( all to the right)

ALL SETTING,  i have the WAIT FOR VERTICAL REFRESH on the third thick on the right and is ON

API SPECIFIC  i have only checked SUPPORT DXT TEXTURE FORMAT.

That' s it, this little thing has given me the best performance, i have to try to set the FPS to unlimited to test wha is the average  FPS, but i am very happy about 20 fps and we don't need more.

Now is only question to set the different setting in the sim to achieve the best performance.

The only thing i have changed in the game are the clouds and the autogen renemed, but i want to give the autogen a chance, so i will rename as default.xml and see what is happened.

But doing this i have seen also improvement of the perfomance in 3d max.

Hope that i have explained in the best way all the steps, and sorry again but i really was excited also to tell to all the community this to help all who has helped us and me with FS9.

Anyway who needs help about this, let me know.

Stefano

[stefano]

Thank You so much for this tip I was getting slow fps too with my X1650 and I was like this can't be right but this fixed it [smiley=2vrolijk_08.gif]

Has this helped also you?
I am very happy to have found this, maybe is a bug with ATI, i want to send a mail to them to see if they know this problem.
Well if this is helping all the user, i can reach the sky with a finger from happiness!

I hope that this kind of setting is possible also with NVIDIA card, but i cannot tell this...

[NicksFXHouse]

Hang on a second... if you set the ATI drivers to "LET THE APPLICATION DECIDE" They will default to lower settings and that would explain the natural increase in performance.

Take some screenshots of this increased performance and post them because it does not sound like you are getting the superior image quality 4x and 16x would provide with those settings.

[stefano]

Hi
I post some screenshot taken using the standard setting in the control panel.

In all the screenshot the fps were between 15 and 21, but the flight was always smooth.
I have used Fraps to take them, so i think that also this was taking some resources.

Approach to Juliana



Approach to Eagle Creek


Vacation in Switzerland



I have still to try other setting bith in the game and in the control panel, try without Norton running.

My ingame setting :

Graphic:
Fps locked at 21
Resolution= 1280x1024x32 native
Filter trilinear and AA activated
Global Texture Resolution= very high
Lens Flare on
Light bloom off
Animation on

Aircraft:
Panel 2d
Show cockpit tips on
High resolution VC on
exterior setting all on

Scenery:
Level of details radius = large
Mesh complexity= 12
Mesh resolution=1Mt ( maybe better i set to 38mt
Texture resolution=1Mt
Water effect= Low 2.x
Scenery complexity= extremely dense
Autogen density= sparse
Ground scenery shadow= off
Special effect= medium

Weather:
Clouds draw distance= 70Ml
Thermal none
Detailed clouds
Clouds coverage density= medium

Traffic:
no traffic , only some ships.

Video card setting ( ATI X 1600 XT)

Standard setting= Optimal performance
AA= let the appliaction decide
Adaptive Antialiasing= let the application decide
Anisotropic filter= off
CATALYST AI= advanced
Mipmap level= performance
Vertical refresh=on
API specific= support DXT texture.

FSX cfg file: (This is something i have to work on too)

TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=200

FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION=0.20

TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_TREES_PER_CELL=1500
TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_BUILDINGS_PER_CELL=3000

Wel these are my actual setting, i have not changed anything yet, but i will experiment with AA and AF from the video card and so on.
The thing that was make me thinking was that i had blurry text with the ATC window open and the menu of FSX.
I knew, from 3d application, that sometime this happened with AA enabled, and i have had this issue last night, when i was trying the new version of Terragen, the text in the node window was blurry, so this remind me about the AA. and that i had enaled nothing in the CP after installed the new drivers.
Of course i don't want to say that this can solve all the problem with FSX, expcially with a system like mine, even though MS classifed a P4 with 1 Gig of ram and Video card with 256 Mega of Vram as Medium high system.
I am aware that is not the best system, for cpu, ram and video card, but actually i will wait for another, also because i am, personally, not very convinced about Vista... this is only my opinion.
Anyway, as i said before, i will go on to try setting and setting and see what is the best for me.

Cheers
Stefano

[RAF_OldBuzzard]

It's just a guess, but I'm betting

[DizZa]

Oh, and for ATI users, crank up your Anisotropic filtering (X16, HQAF, Quality + Full trilinear) to get rid of the ground flickering. This will come with a hit, however on my system, the CPU is bottleneck, so I just crank up Driver settings neways ;P

[NicksFXHouse]

[quote]It's just a guess, but I'm betting

[DizZa]

ARGH.
Do not set MIPS in ATI drivers to high performance in drivers, that will REALLY mess up ALL your ingame textures making them blurry as hell. I find performance won't totally mess up your textures, though, I recommend just leaving them on Quality

Same with Texture quality. (I use ATI tray tools with more options than default ATI).

[NicksFXHouse]

ARGH.
Do not set MIPS in ATI drivers to high performance in drivers, that will REALLY mess up ALL your ingame textures making them blurry as hell. I find performance won't totally mess up your textures, though, I recommend just leaving them on Quality

Same with Texture quality. (I use ATI tray tools with more options than default ATI).

Also, with ATI, using hack tweaks never produced good results.. Nivida on the other hand is different and the use of NVTray to increase the D3D quality to the highest level ( -6 ) along with bypassing the Nvidia driver lockout which will allow HIGH QUALITY be run with all the texture optimizers is a must. The Nvidia driver panel will disable all texture optimizers if the mip or image level is set to HIGH QUALITY. NVTray bypasses that.

[kilotango]

Hi again Nick.
Have tried some of your settings. Your mip and mesh are slowing down my old rip (his 9800 iceq) with 5-7fps. I run 20-30fps at airport with 30% traffic and 50% others (not airport vehicles) at medium settings, also autogen.
Would you please try this old trick.
Run the sim. Set fps at minimum. Close sim. Make sure this is under graphics in cfg: LOD_TARGET_FPS=10
Restart the sim and set fps to unlimited. Close and start again.
What do your pc mean about that?