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FTX Global Base: Trees coming and going ? HELP!


Tom_G_2010

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I just built a dedicated flight sim pc and am loading my software this weekend.  Last night I loaded and tested FSX and FSX Acceleration. FSX was running stable with smooth graphics, not stutters, flashes, or any other graphics issues and and frame rate was 70 to 90 FPS

Prior to loading FTX Global Base they only other add on I loaded was FSGenesis Terrain Mesh.  Following that I again tested FSX and performance was the same.

 

After each test I locked my frame rate at 30 which is how I normally run FSX.

 

Now that I have loaded FTX Global Base I am noticing two issues that I could use some help with:

  1. I am now getting occasional flashes in my video.
  2. As I fly over any area that should have trees I can see the trees popping into view within a few miles of the aircraft as if I were seeding the ground in front of me.  An area will start with very sparse trees and by the time I am flying over it the trees will have filled in to a great extent.  Conversely, looking over the tail I can see the trees thinning out as I leave that area.

The screen flashes seem to only come up several times over the course of about 5 minutes of flying.  However, the trees popping in and out is a very pronounced and visually distracting affect that happens constantly in any area that has even a modest tree density.

 

What could be causing this, and how might it be resolved?

 

 

ORDER # FSS0265224 

PC: Win7 64, I7-4770, 8GB Mem, NVidea GTX 780 #G, Dedicated SSD for FSX

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The trees popping up  is (IMO) the most annoying problem in FSX (not FTXG - you will see it in all scenery that uses autogen - which means pretty much everything except flat photoscenery). You will see buildings doing the same thing. It's because the FSX developers removed a feature called AlphaFade to improve performance when they implemented SP2. With AlphaFade, autogen faded in and out gradually rather than just popping up.The intention was to put it back in later, but of course MS killed the project before that happened. As far as I know there is no fix. Maybe P3D one day . . . . .


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The trees popping up  is (IMO) the most annoying problem in FSX (not FTXG - you will see it in all scenery that uses autogen - which means pretty much everything except flat photoscenery). You will see buildings doing the same thing. It's because the FSX developers removed a feature called AlphaFade to improve performance when they implemented SP2. With AlphaFade, autogen faded in and out gradually rather than just popping up.The intention was to put it back in later, but of course MS killed the project before that happened. As far as I know there is no fix. Maybe P3D one day . . . . .

 

Thanks, I understand how FSX handles scenery, and have noticed this to a small extent prior to loading up FTXG, but nothing like what is happening now.  It looks like I am spraying trees a couple miles out in front of me as I fly and vacuuming them up behind me.  Nothing that dramatic ever happened before I loaded FTXG.

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So, after some testing I think I may be the victim of having too good a pc....


 


I've always kept the scenery faders as far to the right as I could without sacrificing smooth video or dropping frame rate below 25 to 30.  On my old pc that left the scenery a bit sparse and as a result the affect that you describe was not that pronounced.


 


on the new pc I can push them all far right (I don't though) and still exceed 70 FPS.  As a result my scenery density is way up so the affect of loading it to the level I have set is much more pronounced.


 


Kind of sucks, but I think I'll be dialing it back a bit just to reduce that affect.  Unless, of course, there are any suggestions on how to minimize the affect by other means.


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Hi Tom, fwiw you may be able to minimise this effect by increasing your LOD radius in the Terrain section of your fsx cfg file up to a higher value than the normal max of 4.5. I run mine at 8.5 continually, but it may need about 6.5 over heavily built up areas. Any adjustment to frame rate or LOD in game (on the fly) will automatically reset the cfg value back to 4.5, so before starting FSX set the cfg LOD value to your chosen figure, determined by experiment. As well you may consider limiting the tree and building amount in  FSX cfg. This is a copy of the Terrain section from one of my high end PC's (adjustments  in bold only for emphasis)

 

[TERRAIN]
LOD_RADIUS=8.500000
MESH_COMPLEXITY=100
MESH_RESOLUTION=22
TEXTURE_RESOLUTION=28
AUTOGEN_DENSITY=4
DETAIL_TEXTURE=1
WATER_EFFECTS=6
TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_TREES_PER_CELL=1000
TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_BUILDINGS_PER_CELL=1000

 

With these settins the popping into view doesn't worry me, but then I may be so used to it by now it doesn't register !!

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White flashing occurs on my system with bufferpools tweaks.


 


Another option to explore is to reduce your visibility distance to a realistic option, in combination with a moderate LOD radius.


 


As pointed out, it is an FSX-thing, rather than an FTX / ORBX thing.


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