Level of detail.

[Mithrin]

Hi Orbx team, please allow me to voice my concern as a customer of your products. See it as that, nothing more, nothing less.

As much as I love the detail, I've stopped buying any new payware fields that have come out. The last one I got was Tamworth I think and even with everything off in the panel it runs in the low tens. I got a good system but I just can't settle for anything under 20 fps when I buzz the field at 200kts in a high quality plane. I just thought as a fairly consistent buyer of your products I'd let you know why I changed my buying behaviour. I had hoped you would stay away from the Aerosoft thing; great looking stuff but louzy on the frames. All the persons I fly with share this same opinion btw, the good thing is that those are only say 5-10 persons. Just something to ponder on, however if sales speak against me then I'm just out of luck. I can clearly understand that. I'm pretty sure you got a great bunch of guys in there too and I just hope you will/are focussing on optimal models, with no unneeded polygons etc,etc,etc.

I do appreciate the panels you release with each airport now. I get rid of a lot of stuff yet it still doesn't run great. This is a pity for two reasons. If the candy is there I wanna taste it and two I got a pretty good system.

That being said I do appreciate the dedication you guys put into those fields. I will be buying Darrington and Twin Oaks for sure, simply cuz I have more feel for that region.

I hope this is being picked up the right way. I do admire you guys quite a bit actually and this is just my personal opinion and slight concern.

Thank you for listening and Happy New Year,

Erik

Oh and my system's main components.

Asus P6T

I7 960

6Ghz 1600

Velosomethingdrive 10.000rpm dedicated to FSX.

[Hugh Johnston]

Thanks Erik.

I know that every texture I create and every model I make I think about its impact it will have in the game and on my system. I think all of us would think the same. But in saying that I also remind myself that I am building for the future of FSX and not the past. Technology will always get better so to me I would rather slightly over build an airport then under build it. With this in mind that's where the control panel comes in handy but like you said sometimes it just isn't enough to take the strain off your computer. It is also harder building larger airports because generally there are a few more buildings to model. I guess it all comes down to compromise.

I hope this gives you a bit of insight but remember that there is only so much that we can control but what we can control we try our hardest to get the best out of it without too much compromise 

[Blitzer]

Hi Erik,

Sorry to hear your experience with Orbx airports is not as you'd like, particularly given your hardware. Are you over-clocking your CPU at all and if not have you considered doing so? Other than that it may be worth reviewing your other FSX settings to see if performance cannot be improved in this way or what other FSX add-on yo have running. I know for example that the water setting on my PC plays a big factor in performance so I settle for Low x2, and that if I were to stop using Ultimate Traffic that I would also expect to see a boost in performance. As it is I tend to settle for a mixture of add-ons and compromise a little and put up with lower FPS than I'd like for teh highly detailed areas of some airports. Unfortunately, no two systems appear to reap the same performance when it comes to FSX, I think there are simply too many factors that play a part and the only real solution is to spend sometime adjusting settings and finding a compromise you are personally happy with.

[squeeker]

Erik, sorry to hear of your experience -  I'm certain that your excellent system could deliver more.

I'd just like to report that on my older Q6600 2.4ghz (non overclocked) with 4gigs of 800mhz ram, and a 512mb 8800GT, I get an absolute minimum of 12FPS (and only momentarily) around YSTW with all the control panel options ticked.  Most of the times the FPS are in the high teens to early twenties, and max out at 24FPS(which is where I have the max set)

That's with the following variables:

carenado mooney with HD cockpit (at around 80kts)

running full screen at 1920x1080

autogen density set at extremely dense,

scenery complexity set at very dense,

traffic (GA and airline) set to zero.

water effects set to none

cloud draw distance 70miles

cloud coverage density: medium

road vehicles 7%

I can gain an extra 3-4FPS by

moving scenery complexity to medium

changing cloud coverage density to low

changing cloud draw distance to 60miles

With some real tweaking efforts, I'm sure I could achieve much better than this too.

I know there's a lot of difference between our systems, and it's not easy to draw direct comparisons, but if I can achieve this on my machine, it should be easy to get really  good FPS on an I7 960.

I'd just like to urge the ORBX team to keep making future fields as complex and detailed as they reasonably can. Moore's law seems to be holding up, and I for one am willing to compromise with a few lower frames for the time being on an older system, when the cheap stock system of the near future will easily cope..

I love the detail 

[Russ White]

Thanks for the comments guys, performance is an important issue especially for me and Marty doing the BIG airports. Performance can quickly become an issue when the airport contains many square kilometers of apron area populated by masses of AI and terminal buildings as big as small towns! So we have to be very careful about our design process, and ensure as much performance is retained as possible. But you cant have everything for nothing!

Personally i am always battling against myself in the war between ultimate detail and performance. It would be great to make a really detailed airport and have it run at 50 fps on a stock mid range PC, but we all know thats not the case, so we have to make compromises.

The trouble with making an airport too frame friendly is that it would then look too basic and hence miss the esscence of what makes an FTX airport package so special.

Russ.

[joemills]

Would it be possible to create two versions as Gary Summons has done with his Extreme Airports  and charge a lower price for the more basic scenery. This could be the best of both worlds.

Maybe this would be creating an awful lot of work for the developers I guess and maybe its not such a good idea. I am just being a bit of a devil`s advocate.

Cheers, Joe.

[Mithrin]

Thanks Erik.

I know that every texture I create and every model I make I think about its impact it will have in the game and on my system. I think all of us would think the same. But in saying that I also remind myself that I am building for the future of FSX and not the past. Technology will always get better so to me I would rather slightly over build an airport then under build it. With this in mind that's where the control panel comes in handy but like you said sometimes it just isn't enough to take the strain off your computer. It is also harder building larger airports because generally there are a few more buildings to model. I guess it all comes down to compromise.

I hope this gives you a bit of insight but remember that there is only so much that we can control but what we can control we try our hardest to get the best out of it without too much compromise 

Thanks for the reply! Yeah it does help understanding the decisions made my be Orbx team! I do realise I am picky when it comes to fps. This is mainly because I fly short approaches and I usually level out only 3-5 secs before touchdown. Unfortunately during such turns you need good fps to judge your turns, corrections, wind conditions etc correctly. Over default terrain I've tested and I get fps high in the hundreds.

And in reply to squeeker and Blitzer, I got watercooling in. I really only just setup this system. It's been running stable for a week now so I am going to start on the overclocking soon. Hopefully going from 3,2 to near 4Ghz will give me some extra fps. Also I will make a fast, low and slow and regular profile for FSX Go. Usually over photoreal I just really want a long LOD range but I guess when flying treetop level that range could be pushed back a little.

I guess I'm just a bit frustrated that I've just spend what for me is a lot of money on a new system and I still can't run FSX on full sliders. 

I would love to get an even more extensive control panel for each airport. Compare the cessnock one with tamworth. Tamworth has many more options and the more different options the better it is. People will always have personal preference when it comes to things like extra trees, cars etc. Though I wanna stress that I think you've gone pretty far with this already, especially compared to most other developers. You could think it's time consuming but on the other hand if this is planned properly at the start of a project then it shouldn't be that much extra efford to create extra scenery groups, or is that too much of a layman's viewpoint?

Russ, thanks for your reply! I'm glad to be able to turn off clutter far outside of the airport area but I have to agree that extra detail does make a place come alive. That's why I always used to love the old Georender fields, pioneer for his days that Richard Goldstein. Speaking for myself I'd be more than happy to pay the same price for a really small field done at Orbx detail though I realize that many folks do prefer to fly tubeliners into bigger airports.

Well you guys just keep doing what you do best and I'll keep pushing my sliders and .cfg files around a little more. Thanks for your honest and open replies, it was a joy to experience that this is indeed quite possible in flightsim land.

[wavn]

Hi Mithrin,

Like you, I have a new (high end) system and I have also YSTW.

Flying with the CS 727 and arriving at YSTW, I get about 20 f/s and at the runway with the building insight about 16f/s (windowed mode / VC cockpit view) which is for me satisfactory.

Flying the CS 757 the fps are in the same conditions about 3-4 f/s lower.

Display setting:

- 2560*1600*32

- anisotropic / anti aliasing

- global text: very high / advanced animations

- target frame: unlimited

- scenery: extr. dense

- autogen: normal

- mesh: 100/19 m

- text: 60 cm

- airline density (both): about 35%

Also not everything maxed, but nevertheless pretty high

YSTW: not included: farms / rural objects; township objecs

System:

- Win7 64

- Intel core I7 950 / 12Gb

- GTX295 / 1.8Gb

Ok, it can always be better, but I am until now quite satisfied with the acquired fps 

Bye,

Willem

[realatp]

I've got YCNK & YSTW and an i7 920 to 3.5 ghz. I can bring her down to the low teens around STW with the control panel all check-out. For this reason I think I will continue to buy the smaller payware airports (less things to model). There is no-way I'd ever buy YMMB YMML YSSY YPDN or bigger airports like that. In FSX with FTX Enabled around the airports I get about 30 FPS. Seems like alot? Its not, just start Radar Contact with a little Active Sky, stir in some REX 2.0 and finish it all off with some PMDG and you get a mess of Frames. I'm sure anything FTX releases will be awesome, but, different stroke for different folks. Peace, gretting from the only true conservative country in the world; CANADA.

[Ryan Mason]

I like squeeker have a super low end pc compared to most with i7's (see below) and I get 15-20 fps in the dodosim 206 which is pretty much like a CS727 on frames, if you have FSX to go try my profile settings on that and see if it makes a difference as its keyed to my systems so should be easily handled on your rig.  Regarding the high detail/low detail airports, I think it really detracts from the orbx vision and also would be a massive amount of work, it would require the creation of 2 airports side by side and while the lower performance one may have less hit on fps it will take just as long to model as it would mean new constructing in basic form of all buildings etc.

[John Dow]

Well the good thing about the decision by Microsoft to discontinue FS development is that we now have a stable platform for the next few years.  So, as long as ORBX keeeps its doors open, their products will be available. 

I tend to fly in and out of the bush strips now, and only visit a complex airport if its in the vicinity of a flight I am doing.  Give it a couple more years and an upgrade, and I'm sure the fields of today will be similar to the fields in FS2004 that absolutely fly in my now midrange system.

One tip you might consider that has helped me immensely is to set really low values for the autogen tweak.  I have buildings set to 800 and trees to 1200 and I can't see a whole heap of difference unless I get anal and decide to concentrate on counting, and I reckon I'm getting 5 fps boost in a lot of places.

I also recently added a very conservative bufferpools figure and a slightly higher texture bandwidth figure and I have a feeling I might have scored an additional 2 fps in dense scenery as well. 

I have also limited my fps to 22 for a long time now, I don't need any more, I can't see any difference unless I concentrate on looking into the very corners of the screen in a turn, and I have no temptation to chase unrealistic fps figures.

Your system should deliver 22 fps everywhere except perhaps YMML, though no matter how good a system, it's inevitable that there will be occasional dips into the teens in certain polygon and texture loading situations, so perhaps some more tweaking could be beneficial to you for sure.

[Ian Routley]

Hi Mithrin,

Thanks for the feedback.  Just to echo what has been said, for me the design process is squarely focussed on performance-vs-detail.  Barely a significant feature is added without assessing its impact on frames .. and pursuing every effort to eek the best detail vs-performance.  In some cases this involves completely re-designing some areas of work.

The maximum LOD radius is the cruncher in some respects, but my other observation is that i7 rigs really come into their own about the 3.6+Ghz mark.  I do remember the slight disappointment I had during the first week or two running my i7-940 at stock speeds .... underwhelming.

I design / test / and fly with full sliders right, but autogen limited to 1000 / 1000 (or no tweaks at all) - because you have to see every bit of scenery to make sure it is right, but also to know what the impact is.

With regard to the "lite" versions of the scenery - it is more practical to build this into the more flexible Control Panel / Scenery Slider architecture - so people can have the "experience" they want.  And yes ... to produce and test such scenery would almost double the man-hours needed to produce it!

[Blitzer]

And in reply to squeeker and Blitzer, I got watercooling in. I really only just setup this system. It's been running stable for a week now so I am going to start on the overclocking soon. Hopefully going from 3,2 to near 4Ghz will give me some extra fps. Also I will make a fast, low and slow and regular profile for FSX Go. Usually over photoreal I just really want a long LOD range but I guess when flying treetop level that range could be pushed back a little.

Mithrin,

I know I was quite dissappointed when I first switched from Vista to Win7, I was expecting things to be better performance wise but my experience was intially that performance was worse and quality lower. It was not until changed my graphics driver settings directly via the desktop that I got back to the quality and performance I was used to. My point is that it sounds like you just need to spend sometime tweaking your settings to find the "sweet-spot" for your new set-up. I also think you will be pleased with the performance increase you will experience once you start to over-clock. Certainly my own experience over-clocking helped FSX quite a lot when it came to increasing FPS.

I hope you get everything to your likeing soon - please post back to let us know how you get on and what done it for you.