Tips for those with lesser systems?

[Souichiro]

Hey everyone!

As some of you might know.. my system isn't really that good.... a Pentium 4 2,66 ghz and a gforce 4200 8xti card and 768 mb of ram... basically not the best out there.. I know there are worse systems out there and also some similar systems... I know Omag's system is nearly the same as mine.. and Mr Mugel's also I think...

Anyway

For those with a lesser system.. what do you do to make your shots look good?

I heard Krigl or Kris once mention that he used stuff like Fog to blur out the distant scenery so that fs would have to load less and enhance the scenery up close...

Clipper also gave me a wonderful .CFG edit a while ago which greatly enhanced the scenery loading! Clip? which one was that?

As for me.... Well my favorite flying time is Building storms or Nice day from Silverwings... I usually fly in my favorite area's with which I'm familiar..

My Alps region looks quite ok, Sandmann mesh and Lennart's textures+ Silverwings residue..... I've taken up a lot of dawn/dusk flying lately.. Also I'm quite satisfied with my England and St Maarten area... basically I stick to area's I'm used to. Also A trick which might be very usefull is to zoom out bij pressing the - key. I use F1-view and with that tool I zoom back in and out. Somehow using the minus key sharpens up the lot. Use it once or maybe twice without getting to much distortion.

Basically Those are my tricks as far as I can remember them right now.. Should you have any more questions I'm willing to answer them. I ask of you your tricks in screenshooting.

The most important thing in life and also in fs is Working with what you can do. And not to be limited by what you can't

Now for some shots of my favorite area's

Austrian Alps


St Maarten ( TNCM area)


Another Area I didn't mention British Columbia in Canada with definite use of the - key


A bit of Uk scenery


Hope you enjoyed this thread and found use for the tips..... Hope you can give some of your tips as well!

Cheers

Soui

[Fozzer]

Hi Soui...!

All your tips are fine for all those heroes that fly at 30,000+ Feet AGL...

...what we need are tips for all those who land at ground level, and fly at 100/500 feet AGL, banked over, and skimming smoothly over all the Autogen tree-tops and buildings.... ...!

That's where the problem lies......!

Paul...Low and Slow... ...!

P.S. Fab pics.....at 30,000 feet AGL... ... ...!

[Souichiro]

You might want to check out Silverwing then Paul...

Especially suited and purposely built for low and slow... Might wanna ask Rollerball for more info

http://www.fsimcafe.com/Downloads/ShowD ... uctID=1468

[Clipper]

Ahh yes, the scenery cfg. That's a story in itself. But, to make a long story short, this is the scenery cfg. The results are quite dramatic....keeps close and distant scenery in razor sharp focus..

. Backup your current working FS9.CFG first!!!(found at C:\Documents and Settings\Your User Name\Application Data\Microsoft\FS9)

TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=100.000000
TERRAIN_MIN_DEM_AREA=10.000000
TERRAIN_MAX_DEM_AREA=100.000000
TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=21
TERRAIN_TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=8
TERRAIN_AUTOGEN_DENSITY=5
TERRAIN_USE_GRADIENT_MAP=1
TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1
TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=8.500000
TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=8.500000
TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=1242456

BTW, great set of pics and some sound advice Soui.  :)

[Jakemaster]

There is a way to make your max unlimited visibility lower...

Under the Weather section of the fs9.cfg, change MAX_UNLIMITED_VIS from 96560 to 36210.

It makes the unlimited visibility alot lower which is more realistic and blurry textures in the distance blend in with the blurry fog

[Mr.Mugel]

[DISPLAY]
UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=20
TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=100
TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=10
//RUNWAY_LIGHTS_SURFACE_SCALAR=.9
//RUNWAY_LIGHTS_VASI_SCALAR=.9
//RUNWAY_LIGHTS_APPROACH_SCALAR=.9
//RUNWAY_LIGHTS_STROBE_SCALAR=.9

This helped a lot for me, it sets the limit to framerates to 20, but you can

[Souichiro]

Thanks all for the wonderfull tips! Anything more?

[Ijineda]

TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=8.500000  
TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=8.500000  

those are responsible for the sharpness in the distance, right? but it doesnt seem to work for me...sometimes I try 4.500000, another time 10.00000 and I couldnt notice any difference.

another thing: I have a ATI 9600, but in my FS9.cfg is written:

[DISPLAY.Device.NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440-SE.0]
Mode=800x600x32
MipBias=6
AntiAlias=1

That was my old graphic cards...and theres NO entry for a 9600.  strange thing is, that inside the menu of FS9 (Settings/Display/Hardware) it says "RADEON 9600 Series .0"  
Wheres the problem?

[Jakemaster]

TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=8.500000  
TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=8.500000  

those are responsible for the sharpness in the distance, right? but it doesnt seem to work for me...sometimes I try 4.500000, another time 10.00000 and I couldnt notice any difference.

another thing: I have a ATI 9600, but in my FS9.cfg is written:

[DISPLAY.Device.NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440-SE.0]
Mode=800x600x32
MipBias=6
AntiAlias=1

That was my old graphic cards...and theres NO entry for a 9600.  strange thing is, that inside the menu of FS9 (Settings/Display/Hardware) it says "RADEON 9600 Series .0"  
Wheres the problem?

Change the CFG one or delete the CFG and make a new one (FS makes a new one automatically)

[Mees]

I have all maxed out and the .cfg exacly like what you guys posted, and i take at 1280X1024 so the detail shows very very far as you can see from my shots

[Ijineda]

thanks, worked!  :D

but again to those two lines:
TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=8.500000  
TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=8.500000  

how comes the extended radius is the same one as the default one? shouldnt it be like 2 times bigger? searching the web, I also found this line:
TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=4.500000  
with this value, is sais, everything will be sharp as hell. lesser value = sharper? or vice versa?

[Double_Farvel]

I tried out these tips and my fs is looking better...thanks guys

[Alonso]

THANK YOU PEOPLE!

And thanks for this thread Soui! eveything looks great and fast!

EDIT: So I just opened FS and  :o surprise! here are the results.
http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/yabb/ ... 1163114655

I think this is the real objective of the Studio, and it really helps!  ;)

[Souichiro]

[quote]THANK YOU PEOPLE!

And thanks for this thread Soui! eveything looks great and fast!

EDIT: So I just opened FS and

[krigl]

Several nice tips in here, including the old cfg chestnut - could this go into the tutorial sticky?

My tips:

1. Much of the work is before flying: keep your wastepaper basket, temp internet files and desktop clear. Disable stuff from the tray on bottom right before starting, regularly defrag and do ad and spyware scans. Floss regularly and use soft toilet paper. All these things are basic to freeing up resources for your sim. If you don't do them, you should.

There's a lot more you can do - check out Nik's contributions from the FS Autostart thread in the FSX forum - this should also go into the Studio V tutorial section in my humble opinion. . I haven't tried it yet, but he has at least one positive item of feedback....

Check out Nik's tips here:

http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/yabb/ ... 1163028653

I've posted them in a seperate thread too so the maximum people get to see them.

2. Do the limiting visibility with fog thing, or Jake's reduce unlimited distance thing, to avoid stepped, hard horizons. 30 km visibility is probably the best most pilots get, I would imagine, anyway, even on a clear day. Do the cfg tweak too, of course.

3. If you don't know how to/don't want to optimise performance for the sim, or you do it and it doesn't help, then you can fall back on the old 'fly at low detail, get to a good positon, crank up the settings, wait for all to load, then shoot' trick. That's what I used to do... and probably what I'll be doing when I start running FSX in 8 months or so...

I don't expect there's anything new for you in what I've posted, but you never know....

Cheers

krigl