StargazerWoods wrote:I feel your pain. I genuinely do.
I built my rig before I rediscovered commercial flight simulation. This machine, at the end of '11 / start of '12 when it was built, was a planet buster. I figured it would see me through a number of years before I needed to upgrade properly and it's doing a reasonable job.
So when I realised that I wanted to put down the Spitfires and the B29's and pick up a more sedate but technically demanding type of flight, I went straight for FSX; the last in the line but still a handful of years old by then and will run maxed out at a billion frames a second.
No!
I was stunned to find it lagging and bogging down amost everywhere. A few tweaks here and there in cfg files made small improvements, but it was only after I started scaling back the autogen and then shadows and the AA and the this and the that, things started to come back to me. I've now found a great balance that looks great and flies nice. The only execptions so far are mega international airports like San Fran, LAX, Heathrow and a natch of it at in New York JFK.
Someone might wish to correct me on this, but I think I read somewhere once that FSX was built up from what was there when it was FS9 which itself was built up from what was there when it was FS2000 which itself was built up from what was there when it was FS98 and so on and so forth. As a result, the processor loading for the sim is monstrous as the program runs through code cobbled onto code cobbled onto code.
This sounds like a valid theory to me. I'm a hack programmer at best, I taught myself a bit of VBA in spreadsheets and now I write subroutines that would probably make pro-developers cry out in despair, but I know how easy it is to write something that is bonkers complicated, then have the need to redevelop a new version and decide to cheat by copying the old version and just building it up hoping nobody will notice. Also, the complexity of a piece of software can be judged by how loud my PC gets.
Just running Windows: Low whirring noise of my case fans... Noise rating: 1. Running WatchDogs: The fans in the Gfx card spool up to turbo and turn my PC into a Formula1 wind tunnel making a noise much like that of vaccum cleaner with a sock stuck in the pipe... Noise Rating 10. FSX encourages a slight increase of the fans but only a little... Noise rating 2.5. This suggests that the card is doing very little and that it's all in the CPU. Mine's no slouch, a Sandybridge I7, but it still gets a bit overwhelmed on occasion when FSX is running.
I've heard the Steam edition of flight sim is a little moe stable and has been tidied up a bit but I've not tried it. Feedback looks pretty good though so it might be worth a shout if you're having mega troubles getting it to run smoothly. Otherwise, just trawl the web for anything that claims to be an FSX.cfg tweaking guide and follow it. Some of them don't make an awful lot of difference but some will make a world of change.
Good luck,
Rob.
Bubblehead wrote:Is the FSX Steam an add-on to the existing FSX:Acceleration? Is FSX:Steam less graphic demanding? If I decide to go with FSX:Steam do I uninstall FSX:Acceleration altogether?
Bubblehead wrote:Hagar: Do you happen to own the Hagar brand men's trouser company? my favorite brand pants?
Joshing aside, is the FSX:Steam is near as demanding as the Box FSX?
mjrhealth wrote:FSX is a 32 bit programme. it cannot use more than 4 gig of ram, but it is wrthwhile getting more to give win room to move. 8 is enough 16 ample. FSX us CPU bound, so speed is teh essence. Though it basically runs on 1 core , it can use the other cores for loading textures and they do help. As for graphics card, a 2 gig Nvidia card is the way to go. I believe the AMD cards may still have issues with FSX shading. A nice machine with 4 cores ate 4.6 gig will make all teh difference.
garymbuska wrote:mjrhealth wrote:I am no expert when it comes down to 32 bit programs that run on a 64 bit machine like mine. But I think you are wrong in this case I do not think there is such a thing as a 32bit program.
ftldave wrote:garymbuska wrote:mjrhealth wrote:I am no expert when it comes down to 32 bit programs that run on a 64 bit machine like mine. But I think you are wrong in this case I do not think there is such a thing as a 32bit program.
FSX is, indeed, a 32-bit program. 64-bit Windows operating systems run 32-bit programs via WOW64 emulation. FSX doesn't take full advantage of today's advanced video cards, is cpu-bound, unlike modern-day sims and games.
Excerpt from TechAlert.com:
Under Windows 64-bit, 32-bit applications run on top of an emulation of a 32-bit operating system that is called Windows 32-bit on Windows 64-bit, or WOW64 for short. WOW64 intercepts all operating system calls made by a 32-bit application.
For each operating system call made, WOW64 generates native 64-bit system calls, converting 32-bit data structures into 64-bit aligned structures. The appropriate native 64-bit system call is passed to the operating system kernel, and any output data from the 64-bit system call is converted into a format appropriate for the calling application before being passed back.
Like 32-bit applications, WOW64 runs in user mode so any errors that occur in translating an operating system call will only occur at that level. The 64-bit operating system kernel cannot be affected.
Since WOW64 runs in user mode, all 32-bit application code must also run in user mode. This explains why 32-bit kernel mode device drivers and applications that rely on them, will not work under Windows 64-bit.
The WOW64 emulator consists of the following DLLs, the only 64-bit DLLS that can be loaded into a 32-bit process:
Wow64.dll – the core emulation infrastructure and the links to the Ntoskrnl.exe entry-point functions.
Wow64Win.dll – the links to the Win32k.sys entry-point functions.
Wow64Cpu.dll – switches the processor from 32-bit to 64-bit mode.
Ntdll.dll – 64-bit version.
Wow64.dll loads the 32-bit version (x86) of Ntdll.dll and all necessary 32-bit DLLs which are mostly unmodified 32-bit binaries..However, some of these DLLs have been modified to behave differently on WOW64 than they do on 32-bit Windows. This is usually because they share memory with 64-bit system components.
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