The "Flight Simulator X puts my PC at its knees" thread.

[TteFAboB]

I have a Pentium 4 3.2ghz with that fake 2-core trick, 2GB of good RAM and a Radeon 9800 256mb.

I'm still trying to tweak it, but with special effects at max and the best Aircraft quality, I have to lower everything else except for Airline and General Aviation traffic to the lowest setting or bare minimum to stay above 20FPS. And the FPS will go down to 10 or 15 if I look at crumped AI traffic. What the hell Microsoft, how about adding low polygon, low texture models for the damned AI? It's not low enough, make them a flat paper 2D texture.

What did MS do wrong? I don't understand anything about programming, but since that never stopped me from commenting before: it seems the road, airport and naval traffic completely crushes my CPU, innefficient coding? Or is it meant to run on quadruple-CPU PCs? What's the point of adding all this glitter if your average CPU can't handle it? Can that new Intel chip handle it? Or should I save to buy four of them?

When you put everything at the best settings, the world is beautiful, truly stunning, despite the 3 to 5 FPS. Merit where merit is due, congratulations to Microsoft for creating a world worthwile to do long flights in, appreciating the scenery. But with the settings down to a minimum, it's the same world from FS2000 or whatever: dull, boring, repetitive, empty.

Any performance tips are welcome. I can only suggest removing all traffic. And start saving for CPUs and Graphic cards that are so advanced you won't be able to play your older games anymore. :-?

FSX is truly fantastic if you can run it. I can't.

[Linton]

If you are going to spend all that money on hardware and be disappointed why don't you spend it on some real flying lessons instead?

[Bort]

Yikes! This is not good. I've been waiting for FSX for a while now, being rather heavily addicted to FS9 and now I'm a bit worried. I have a 3.2 Ghz P4 that I haven't done anything fancy to and I just got a new graphics card, an ATI Radeon X1800 that is by all means spectacular. Whereas the old graphics card I had, an ATI X750, was always fussy and melted down after 6 months of use, this one is thus far bulletproof. I have played the demo for FSX and while it was slower than FS9, it isn't awful. Regardless, I will almost certainly end up buying FSX sooner rather than later, although the latter seems more likely after hearing this. :damn:

[TteFAboB]

If you are going to spend all that money on hardware and be disappointed why don't you spend it on some real flying lessons instead?
Show some mercy will you? :cry:

I've found a compromise. Reduced all traffic to 0%. Airliner, General, road/airport and naval. Now my world has better scenario but I'm the last human on Earth. Bleh. Will suffice untill I have enough money to buy 4 processors.

It seems the problem is mostly with traffic. It's a CPU hog. Reduce traffic and you can run a, hmm, decent scenario.

[Bort]

I just remembered this, a while back I read on the message boards at AVSIM in a post from a Microsoft developer that they had tinkered with the graphics, drawing power away from keeping up frame rates to improve texture and distance draw qualities. Maybe that's whats bogging down the game?

[SubSerpent]

Is the game even out yet?!? I see it for sale at EBgames.com on the 17th of October!

If you are refering to the Demo I wouldn't put a lot of stock into that. Sometimes the Demo's aren't quite up to par with where the actual game is! Also, Microsoft may release a few patches to help configure the game to run better on different types of hardware a little later on.

Same thing happened with Lock-On Modern air combat when it first came out. Lots of people were highly dissappointed that UBISoft released a game that only played (barely) on high end systems of the time. I had to shelve it for years before I had a system capable of playing it with lots of detail and good FPS.

[TteFAboB]

I just remembered this, a while back I read on the message boards at AVSIM in a post from a Microsoft developer that they had tinkered with the graphics, drawing power away from keeping up frame rates to improve texture and distance draw qualities. Maybe that's whats bogging down the game?

Sounds like a plan. Reducing detail draw distance to minimum and other settings to as low as my eyes can take it, as seen in this screenshot:

http://img82.imageshack.us/img82/9725/settingsqu9.th.jpg (http://img82.imageshack.us/my.php?image=settingsqu9.jpg)

Will generate these, a bit sparse and far from the bext quality but FPS become acceptable: 11-15 in heavy areas and 20-24 in light areas.

http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/9628/20061010053937ot5.th.jpg (http://img85.imageshack.us/my.php?image=20061010053937ot5.jpg)

http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/3924/200610100650343tt8.th.jpg (http://img85.imageshack.us/my.php?image=200610100650343tt8.jpg)

http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/4881/200610100917703sw1.th.jpg (http://img85.imageshack.us/my.php?image=200610100917703sw1.jpg)

Now to tell you what I'm missing, compare this water:
http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/8346/2006109234819546xg3.th.jpg (http://img213.imageshack.us/my.php?image=2006109234819546xg3.jpg)

And this forest:
http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/7687/2006109234849937pu2.th.jpg (http://img222.imageshack.us/my.php?image=2006109234849937pu2.jpg)

And the density of the scenario:
http://img183.imageshack.us/img183/2087/2006109234757906bm7.th.jpg (http://img183.imageshack.us/my.php?image=2006109234757906bm7.jpg)

http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/981/2006109234943109tn7.th.jpg (http://img213.imageshack.us/my.php?image=2006109234943109tn7.jpg)


Only the water was at the highest setting, the rest was just a notch or two above the first three pictures. And that's without the sailboats, ferries, ships and cars, trucks and busses moving around.

Is the game even out yet?!? I see it for sale at EBgames.com on the 17th of October!

Hehe, I pre-ordered it at a local store, it surprised me too, I wasn't expecting to receive it so soon. Anyway, rest assured, it's not the demo, it's the real thing, and it's impressive, if only my PC could run it at the level it deserves to be run at.

EDIT: Small mistake, I was running at the default resolution, increasing it to my desktop resolution added 1-2FPS. :D

[Seeadler]

I can play the latest demo (not the pre-demo from last month) with all settings to "ultra" in 1280x1024x32 and get 35-38 FPS.

System:
- AMD64 X2 4400+
- Geforce 7800 GTX + Forceware 91.47driver
- 2 GB Ram
- DirectX 9c August update

[Dowly]

Aww.... oh well, I´ve ordered it already, no turning back. My PC can do wonders, but I really doubt that it will give up now on this one.

[snowsub]

I've got the latest demo installed & the Deluxe version on order (26th here in Oz :cry: )
And I'm getting anywhere from 15-30 FPS depending on the area (15 @ St Maartin) and averaging 20 odd.
I've got the texture & water settings to average, cars & boats to low and AC to full.

At least the verkiness of the FPS is not really noticable.

But I'd like to see what that setting will do at a city like NY. Though atm since this'll be my first serious FS I'll be doing short runs around the east coast of Australia, mainly on GA aircraft then progressing up to the big boys :lol: .

Personally I can't wait :up:

My system Specs:
AMD Athlon 65 3000+
2 gb DDR-400 Ram
Nvidia GeForce 6600 GT
and the game will be running on a SATA drive.

But mid to late next year I'll be upgrading my system and hopefully be getting all the good stuff and really see how it fly's.

I was debating whether to buy FSX or FS9 but chose FSX so I can get on at the ground floor with the mods for it, there's such a plethera of them for FS9 it's very intimidating :o

[timetraveller]

This has also been a common problem with train simulators I've fooled with over the last few years, which attempt to recreate all scenery, much of it in 3D, out to several miles distant. When you start to get many objects on the ground that are 3D objects and each must be rendered as a seperate object (and not simply a ground skin), your polygon count goes sky high.

Our solution was always to turn down the drawing distance too. All that detail has a cost to it.

TT

[TteFAboB]

I can play the latest demo (not the pre-demo from last month) with all settings to "ultra" in 1280x1024x32 and get 35-38 FPS.

System:
- AMD64 X2 4400+
- Geforce 7800 GTX + Forceware 91.47driver
- 2 GB Ram
- DirectX 9c August update

Is that processor and video card better than mine?

EDIT: Damn my vid card is so outdated. Nevermind...

[The Noob]

Well, it seems like this secret Video from the Microsoft Conference room was fully correct.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=tcW3hbnR2EI

:rotfl::rotfl:

[SUBMAN1]

I've flown aircraft since I was a child, but have to say, if you are after real flying lessons, there is something to be said for gliders. I've got most of my time in powered aircraft, but I still miss the feeling of making it or breaking it based on thermals.

-S

[Seeadler]

Is that processor and video card better than mine?
EDIT: Damn my vid card is so outdated. Nevermind...
yes your bottleneck is the Radeon 9800, see several tests on www.tomshardware.com. The (http://www.tomshardware.com. The) Radeon 9800 was a good video card in 2003-2004 but in the comparison with today's video cards such GeForce7800/7900 or Radeon X1800/X19000, it went powerfully into the background with actual games.

[Sulikate]

Mine is a Athlon 64 3000+, 1.5GB DDR, GeForce 6600 256MB... I can run the demo in medium settings, no AA:nope:

[SUBMAN1]

I can play the latest demo (not the pre-demo from last month) with all settings to "ultra" in 1280x1024x32 and get 35-38 FPS.

System:
- AMD64 X2 4400+
- Geforce 7800 GTX + Forceware 91.47driver
- 2 GB Ram
- DirectX 9c August update

I'll do a test to. I have a similar system - only diff is I have an ATI x1900 XTX.

[Sulikate]

I just bought the Deluxe Edition... I'll try it and report the results here.

* I hope it runs better than the demo.

[TteFAboB]

Indeed. I just discovered that my video card is completely outdated! This is so sad!

And now I'm stuck with it, because this new ATI card that is far superior to mine will not run DX10, so it's not worth the 400$. But that means I'll have to spend 5 months or so with an outdated vid-card! 5 months of FSX with crappy settings! 5 months with Medieval TW2 with ugly Shader 1.0!

Bleh. 400$ is too much for a temporary card that will need to be replaced by something that will cost 900$ or whatever. Is there an intermediate card out there? Something almost as good as SUBMAN's card, but cheaper than 400$ (ATI's new X1950 XTX) while still better than my pre-historic 9800?

[SUBMAN1]

Ouch! Trying to DL this from MS, and they are giving me only 45K/sec!!!! This is going to take forever at that speed! i am showing 3 hours right now!

-S

PS. I even have 8 hooks into it! I hate to be only DL'ing with only 1 thread!

[GT182]

FSX is based to run on Windows XP.... Vistas isn't even out of testing yet so that's why it's XP based, kinda hard to build a game on an OS that isn't finished. As for DX10 that will not be out until after Vistas is finally finished. So that all means FSX should play just fine with XP and DX9.... right from the devs at MS. All the extra glam and glitter will be with Vistas and DX10, but that's still a ways off. And graphics cards for DX10 aren't even out or on the shelves yet. So we still have awhile to wait once Vistas is fully finished.... again from the devs.

[tedhealy]

Indeed. I just discovered that my video card is completely outdated!

Bleh. 400$ is too much for a temporary card that will need to be replaced by something that will cost 900$ or whatever. Is there an intermediate card out there? Something almost as good as SUBMAN's card, but cheaper than 400$ (ATI's new X1950 XTX) while still better than my pre-historic 9800?

The x1900xt can be had for ~250$ give or take. There are plenty of cards right at or below the 200$ mark that are much better than the 9800. Nvidia 7800 or 7900 series would be a nice hold over.

[TteFAboB]

Thanks Ted, that's great news. :up:

[MothBalls]

It runs pretty good on my ALX, I don't have any real problems with it.

It's always been an issue for developers. They have the ability to takes things to the next 3 levels, it's just that everyone doesn't have the hardware to run it, so they scale back and add options for lower end systems.

The old Janes series games, when released, had resolutions nobody could run. Eventually hardware caught up. Three years from now my high end system will be sitting in the garage next to my Kaypro CP/M luggable machine.