Autogen distance

[Speed of flight]

Hello all;

I was looking at some of these newfangled interwebs videos of FSX, all highly edited (and perhaps that's the secret) with autogen trees and buildings stretching as far as the eye can see.

Now I have an understanding that FSX can do this, at a nominal FPS impact, but how? Is it a .cfg tweak or edit? Or is it simply a video edit technique? I know that it seems to be a secret club, and folks talk about the "trick", but I'm not sure what kinds of tricks someone could perform short of all the stuff we know about already, like the "highmemfix" tweak and "jobscheduler" fix.

Is it the LOD increase? Or some elitist group that I'll never be able to join like the Free Masons, or the Shriners?

[garymbuska]

Hello all;

I was looking at some of these newfangled interwebs videos of FSX, all highly edited (and perhaps that's the secret) with autogen trees and buildings stretching as far as the eye can see.

Now I have an understanding that FSX can do this, at a nominal FPS impact, but how? Is it a .cfg tweak or edit? Or is it simply a video edit technique? I know that it seems to be a secret club, and folks talk about the "trick", but I'm not sure what kinds of tricks someone could perform short of all the stuff we know about already, like the "highmemfix" tweak and "jobscheduler" fix.

Is it the LOD increase? Or some elitist group that I'll never be able to join like the Free Masons, or the Shriners?

There is no secret club but you do have to take a oath not to tell any one what I am about to tell you All you have to do is to look under the main FSX forum under FAQ and you will see a link about this subject.
But you are partially correct the LOD is what determines how well a area is defined and as a rule of thumb like anything in FSX the more detailed you describe something the harder FSX has to work so it can and will effect frame rates. How much depends upon the system you have and the types of texture used.
I try to think of it this way Imagine a blank piece of paper and you want to show a house on it the more dots you put into a given area the better it will look and then when you start to define all of the different shades it gets even better. But all of this really comes down to what kind of system you have and it is hard to say what is the best system out there, but the main thing you want is CPU speed and power. The more cores you have the more the CPU can do. There are two types of processors INTELL and AMD I personally do not like AMD just a personal choice I am not trying to say that AMD is a bad processor. If you prefer INTEL you want at least a I7 second generation CPU which is what I use There is a third and now a fourth generation of the same chip. But as you go up in speed and cores it will cost you more as I write this the latest INTEL I7 CPU is going for about $1500 That is the CPU only you will need to find a mother board to support it and that will not be cheap either.
I spent close to $900.00 upgrading my system back In January of this year. The only thing I did not buy was a case as the one I have is a very good case. But I had to buy a CPU Motherboard Ram Power supply video card and a new Operating system I went from Windows 7 32 bit to Windows 8 64 bit. The CPU I bought came with a fan not all CPU,S come with fans
But there are plenty of mesh files and all kinds of scenery out there FreeWare and PayWare.

[FoMoCo63]

If there is one thing I've noticed over the years with FSX, and a mans stride to bring the most out of FSX with quad cores and next generation chips. Enormous amount of ram to the point of over kill for FSX is that, the amazing fact is that everything a person is looking for in FSX was there from day one. It was there and available long before the dawn of the technology that people use in their attempt to conquer FSX still to this day. No doubt with todays technology there are some very nice results, and still some with not so very nice results and both using basically the same system(s). Tweeking ah yes, knowing why you are doing it, and what you are doing the most important when it comes to tweeking. No one can tell you this, you must read and aquire the knowledge yourself and come to the understanding, then your ready to begin tweeking.

FSX came out in the fall of 2005 and thats when I purchased FSX and minimum system requirerments were
OS--XP 256 mb ram, Vista 512 mb ram
Processor 1.0 GHz single core
Multiplayer 56.6 K or better
Direct X 9.0c with 32mb ram video card

Also stated on the box was,
Above are minimums needed to run this game. Increased performance will be noticed on more powerful systems.

The year was late 2005, or starting year 2006 maybe on the outside duo cores were just a thought of technology to come into play. The Pentium 7 might have been there but most were running the Intel 4, and AMD 3000 and 3500 series chips. Most were running 2 gigs of ram, and 128mb video cards. Most of what which was available at the time. The FSX I use was created with Direct X 9, and DX10 was just around the corner in software devolpers tools for gaming. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong here.

Bottom line was, even with the higher end of the PC's at the time you still weren't getting out of FSX what was there. No one really had a clue what to do, or even what the possibilies were with FSX for getting the desired graphics that many realize today that are there now.

1-I run a single core AMD 3500 chip 2.2 GHz., with 3 gigs ram, and a 2.0 GHz. FSB, with a GTX 470 nVidia card.
2-I run a Intel Pentium 4 chip single core 1.56 GHz, 2 gigs ram, and a 800 MHz FSB, with a ATI HD3650 card.
Both PC's run XP still. With reading and time invested using many tweek guides, which of most were trial and error in the beginning I found the ball park area I was looking for.

I run REX and a few other scenery add-ons, flight1 aircraft with FPS locked at 30. That will vary from 20 to 30 fps depends on the area I'm in (20 fps is a very respectful FPS as well), and what I'm using for scenery at the time. What you are looking for in FSX I can do on just my PC's, I can view autogen as far as the eye can see when I set up if that's what I want to do, which is great for posting pic's out here. Most the time I'm painting aircraft and in and out of FSX so I keep my settings low so it loads faster for me, so I can view the results.

To me there is no reason in todays technology world that a person can't have a real good FSX and be happy with it. It takes a lot of reading and trial and error of tweeking techniques for FSX. Tweeking should never be done because someone else did it and got good results, you have to start low then work your way up to find just your right settings of tweeks. Don't forget about tweeking your video card as well, that goes hand in hand with FSX.

[Fozzer]

Regarding clear sight into the far distance...

From my few real trips up into the air on our clubs Cessna 152 it was rarely possible to see objects clearly on the ground further than 5 miles away, due to haze, caused by heat, rain, mist, fog, smoke, low cloud, etc.
And for that reason I mostly set my clear sight distance no further than 10 miles...(often 5 miles!) because that's what its like in real life!

Objects should slowly become clearer as you get closer.

Have a look out of your upstairs bedroom window....how far can you see into the distance to see objects clearly...not far?

Reducing the sight distance in the Sim also eases the load on the processor...less scenery to spool off the hard drive!

Using "Unlimited sight" setting is most unreal!

Paul... ...!

[Speed of flight]

Well thank you all very much for your input! I am truly appreciative of the support and insight offered therein.

Seems I blew the lid off of some top secret FSX conspiracy. Turns out, for these videos I've been looking at, the real tweaking was done in the sim. They set all the settings at max, and loaded the sim. Once loaded, they slow down the thing to its slowest setting, hit the record button, and posted it as genuine. Not even that good a trick, really, but it fooled me, that's for sure.

As I read the box myself, I see those specs you are talking about Fozzer. Isn't that bonkers? 512 MB of RAM? Holy moly! Moore's law is incomplete in its wording: he never mentioned that every two years, when a new technology arrives, there's an undocumented phenomenon that occurs. It should disclose that eventually, the public will grow so accustomed to increasing everything so often that we will eventually forget what meager beginnings we come from. For the longest time, I felt on top of the game with my old ATI x700 pro with a whole 512 MB ram on board. GDDR3, even! That was a step up from the board I had that shared system ram. An AMD 3500+! Before that, I had a Pentium 3!

Oh how the time flies! So, my FSX experience is good! As I type this, I'm flying the PMDG MD-11F UPS across Mexico to Cozumel. I use FEX2, REX, all the while cranking 25-30 FPS. That's not bad, I think. Even an Intel has a hard time with that! (Just a jab, no harm intended;)). I'm not bragging, honestly. I am however, happy, and somewhat proud! It's taken years to get this much out of it. Almost all that I've learned about computers, I've learned tweaking FSX and trying for that magic combination. Problem is, as soon as I get there, surely I'll try to tweak it. I guess it wouldn't be a good hobby if you could ever really be "done" messing with it.

I truly enjoy your perspective Paul. Always have.

So, I think I'll leave the current FSX settings alone for a bit. However, that clock speed...

[Fozzer]

When it comes to deciding "scenery settings" in the Sim, I often find its enlightening to fire up a couple of U-Tube flights in a real Cessna 152/172 Trainer, and observe just how limited the Pilot can see into the distance!
The same with studying photographs of the area you are flying over.
With my "realistic" sight settings in my FSX/FS2004 I find that I am often peering into the distance trying to spot the runway through the haze, and sometimes I overshoot at the last minute due to poor visibility, and have to go around again!... ... ...!
The only time I can see clearly into the far distance is during my flights through the Nevada Desert....on a fine day with no Rattle Snakes!... ...!

Of course, with these reduced, realistic settings, my lowly, year 2005, Tower computer system (below), really flies along at 15-28 FPS (locked at 29 FPS).
Its amazing what just a few, slight, in-game adjustments to the default settings will achieve in speed and "smoothness".....and realism!... ...!

I often surprise myself just how well my FSX performs using "sensible" settings!... ...!

Paul...Have Cessna 152. Will travel!... ..!