Fsx Guide Cpu
Highmemfix=1 – place under GRAPHICS headline in your FSX.cfg file. Fix required for correct memory addressing during texture loading (helps prevent OOM errors). Not necessary in FSX Steam Edition. Not a tweak per se but I feel it is important to mention that you need to have a proper FSX version installed. That means:. FSX with SP1 and SP2 (installed in this order).
FSX with Acceleration pack (service packs included – do not install). FSX:SE (Steam Edition – service packs and Acceleration included – do not install) Other tweaks All other fsx.cfg modifications and tweaks are not obligatory. Some may improve your performance or quality. There are some outdated tweaks – leftovers from earlier version of FSX (SP1 or base version without any Service Packs) or even earlier version of Flight Simulator. FSX Settings vs fsx.cfg I will indicate in this guide which values change positions of sliders in FSX settings. Be aware that changes in FSX settins may overwrite your fsx.cfg tweaks.
In my opinion it’s best not to use FSX display menu at all. Fsx.cfg structure It is a simple configuration file that uses single line commands containing a name of the setting and value with “=” character in between.
This guide will explain everything I know about FSX including. First, FSX is VERY CPU dependent, it can suck the performence of an I7 CPU.
Section headers are wrapped in square brackets. For example: GRAPHICS. Double slash – // – marks comment – a part of line (or the whole line) that will be ignored by FSX. Your fsx.cfg may include more lines that I described here. I omitted elements that should not be edited and some that are not relevant to performance and graphics.
Tweaking – the general idea and procedure As I already wrote – make sure that you have SP2 or Acceleration or FSX:SE installed. Add UIAutomationCore.dll to your FSX folder. Then navigate to your fsx.cfg location and make a backup copy. Then you may proceed with obligatory HIGHMEMFIX. Now you are ready to start tweaking and testing your FSX. There are no settings that are always correct!
Remember this. Use settings that are appropriate to your setup (Hardware + FSX + Add-ons). Different add-ons (planes, sceneries, even weather settings) may require different tweaks and different configuration. All your tweaks and settings have to be adjusted to your personal preferences. Some people will be ok with 20 frames per second and better graphics. Others will settle with lower quality and constant 30 fps. My personal preference is to keep the highest quality that will allow at least a stable 18-20 frames on approach to the heaviest scenery that I use at the moment. It means that I have constant 30 frames inflight and I have no stutters in this difficult part of flight.
You need to consider VAS (virtual address space). Too much scenery or autogen objects may cause OOM (out of memory) error. The same may happen when loading a large number of high quality textures. Currently I am using several fsx.cfg files for different situations – depending mostly on the autogen and objects of the scenery I use, plane I fly and textures that both plane and scenery use.
Test, test and once again – TEST! It is a process of trial and error. Use this guide and set your FSX.
Then test it. Then tweak it again and test.
If you see improvement – use your new settings. If not – try something different. Even if you have a “perfect” set of tweaks – do a small change from time to time. And let it work for a few days. Maybe it will be better.
Fsx Cpu Comparison
Do a long test It is hard to test tweaks in a single flight. Even if you have a test flight (same weather, airport, plane, date, time of day, traffic) – you may see different results with no change at all. You may see improvement even if the long term change is for worse. So do not trust a single test unless the difference is obvious and very strong. FSX setting first - FSX.cfg tweaks later (overwrite problem) Some fsx.cfg settings may have higher values then full right position of a slider in FSX settings. From what I observed these are:.
LODRADIUS. TEXTUREMAXLOAD.
clouds settings That is why you should not do any changes in FSX display settings after you set this values in fsx.cfg. How I described this tweaks The following guide will follow my fsx.cfg file and I put section headers as text headlines (bold font, square brackets). Settings and values will be placed under their sections. My comments (and the meaning of each setting) will be place after comment mark – //. If an option is written behind a comment – it is not included in my fsx.cfg and I do not use this option.
I placed it in this guide only to explain why. Some tweaks are (or will be) explained in detail in another article. There will be a link to this article – look for arrow (») character. Effects on performance Settings that heavily affect FSX performance are red. Setting that somehow affect FSX performance are orange. Settings that slightly affect FSX performance are green. There is no sense in placing gray settings in your fsx.cfg.
These may be neutral or harmful. Black settings do not affect performance. Suggested values When you see the values – this are my current settings for my FSX Acceleration with payware planes and sceneries, Active Sky Next weather, REX Direct sky textures, REX soft clouds, EZDOK camera for controlling views. My FSX runs on Intel i5@4.2GHz with GTX660Ti GPU, 8GB of RAM and Windows 10. What is important Display BLOOMEFFECTS=0 // in my opinion it harms performance too much to consider the slight improvement in quality UPPERFRAMERATELIMIT=0 // set this to 0 and limit frame-rates using graphics card tools (for example nVidia Inspector).
GRAPHICS ACSELFSHADOW=0 lub 1 // if you need to improve performance – start here; I turn it off when flying over complex sceneries AIRCRAFTSHADOWS=0 lub 1 // if you need to improve performance – start here; I turn it off when flying over complex sceneries GROUNDSHADOWS=0 lub 1 // if you need to improve performance – start here; I turn it off when flying over complex sceneries HIGHMEMFIX=1 // A must have! TEXTUREMAXLOAD=1024, 2048 or 4096.
// In short – choose one of this values and make sure that your add-on manual does not suggest setting higher (2048 or 4096) value. The higher, the better. Performance cost may be significant if your add-ons actually use 2048 of 4096 texture mip-maps. You will see no impact at all if your add-ons use mip-maps of lower size or does not use mip maps at all.
I like to see the lens flare. Performance impact is negligible – it’s more aesthetic choice than performance tweak. I turn it off for bad weather flights – sun flare can be seen even under overcast clouds.
I am not sure if the minimal value is 0 or 1 but my test show no difference between these settings. By definition – both 0 and 1 should have the same effect. If you look for performance improvement – you can try setting it to 2, but the quality loss (objects appearing suddenly in close distance) is in my opinion unacceptable. SmallPartRejectRadius=4 looks awful – 4px objects appearing in sight make a very strange effect. TERRAIN TERRAINMAXAUTOGENTREESPERCELL=6000. 6000 for higher forest density. Low values may be considered but read tweak description before trying to change this. The default value for far right slider is 4.5. I use 5.5 by default and increase it for some sceneries to 8.5 or even higher. if I experience high VAS usage – I decrease it’s value to 4.5 or even 3.5 in some very rare cases. Mesh complexity – I see no sense in decreasing this value.
In the range between 80 and 100 performance impact is negligible. If lowering this value causes visible changes in terrain shape – performance may be slightly better. 25 equals to 1m of mesh resolution.
I have only a few sceneries that use 1m mesh. Advanced sceneries usually use 5m or 10m mesh. Setting FSX to use 1m mesh does not change terrain shape and does not impact performance if the scenery uses lower resolution mesh (lower resolution = higher value in meters). TEXTURERESOLUTION=29. Ground textures resolution.
May impact the resolution of photoscenery and ground textures (roads, runway textures, runway and taxiway markings etc.). I chose the highest setting. If this setting is higher than texture resolution – there will be no change in what is displayed and no change in performance. How good the water will look. Water slider coded in fsx.cfg.
Fsx Guide Pdf
1-3: slider in the range of 1.x. 4-7: slider in the range of 2.x. 4 – sun, sky and plane reflections. 5 – additional cloud reflections.
6 – additional terrain reflections. 7 – scenery objects reflections.
I mostly use values of 5, 6 and 7 – depending on what I fly and where. In a floatplane high settings may improve the experience (at the cost of performance).
Using 5 or 6 in airliner makes no sense. 6 (terrain reflections) makes no sense over flat terrain (terrain reflections will not be visible but there will be a performance loss compared to 5). TrafficManager AirlineDensity, GADensity.
Traffic sliders coded in fsx.cfg. High performance cost (both on framerates and on VAS). If you have an additional AI traffic software – performance loss may be huge. Depending on where I fly I use values between 30 and 100. I do not use AI traffic (0) in online flights on Vatsim network. AIRPORTSCENERYDENSITY. Airport vehicles. I always keep it at 1.
Road traffic – performance killer. I use no more than 6 or 8. When flying over sparsely populated terrain – 0. LeisureBoatsDensity, ShipsAndFerriesDensity. Default maritime traffic does not cause severe performance issues. I set both values according to region where I fly – tons of yachts, boats and ships look great in Greece but make terrible impression at the coast of Somalia (I visit Mogadishu often). Weather CLOUDCOVERAGEDENSITY=8. FSX setting slider allows to set it in the range between 0 and 8.
Going up to 12 will increase cloud density – especially for default clouds or OPUS FSX software. I do not see a reason to use this value (12) with Active Sky Next. CLOUDDRAWDISTANCE=12. A very strange tweak that I am still testing. Theoretically – this is a cloud drawing distance.
Theoretically max. Setting in FSX equals to 110 miles but I am sure that I can see cloud cover edge at a smaller distance. I played with values between 12 and 35 – sometimes I felt that there is a difference, sometimes there was no difference at all. I will update this part when I reach some conclusions.
DETAILEDCLOUDS=1. I see no choice here – 1.