ANSWERED Should FTX Global night lights cause performance hit during day?

[Flic1]

Hello - I have FTX Global installed along with UTX-USA.  It looks great and I am very happy with the results as they seem to work together very well.  I have the night light configurator tool also and have gotten it looking pretty nice at night.  I do have some performance hit at night with the lights which is understandable.  I have replaced the UTX night lights with the FTX lights.....really looks nice.  The issue is that I am having a severe performance hit during the day.  I have a saved flight that I have tested with FTX vector lights being checked and unchecked in FTX Central.  WIth them checked, during the daytime I am getting between 5-10 fps and  a lot of stuttering, especially overflying the city in the PMDG 737 NGX.  If I uncheck this, I am back up to my normal 20-30 fps and smooth.  I don't have an issue unchecking Vector lights for daytime flights but I do fly a lot during the day/night transition so would rather keep this checked.  Should this be causing such a dramatic performance loss during the day???

 

Thanks for your help!

 

Eric

 

FTX Global - Order #285865

[Holger Sandmann]

Hi Eric,

 

that doesn't sound right but it's really a question for the UTX guys as they are the ones who know how they implemented our night lighting system. I found a thread on their forums discussing the technical details and fps impact -- href='http://www.simforums.com/Forums/released-ftx-lighting-tool-for-utx_topic48423.html%C2'>

 

Generally speaking the impact during day and night would be the same meaning if there's a difference between day and night then it has to be something else. I'm a bit confused about your description of the differences with the vector lights switches in FTX Central as I'd think they would only be relevant to the FTX regions and Global Vector not the UTX implementation. What happens when you uncheck the vector lights in FTX Central, do all the road lights disappear at night?

 

Cheers, Holger

[Flic1]

Holger - Thanks for the response.  Yes, I need to have vector lights checked off in FTX Central for the road lights to work for the UTX roads.  I just ran the saved scenario both at night and day with Vector checked and had similar bad performance.  Once I uncheck vector lights the performance then goes back to normal.  Maybe this has to do with UTX and the way they generate the lights? Although it is still odd it would effect daytime also.

 

 

Edit:  The more I look into this I believe this is caused on the UTX side.  I believe it is adding a bunch of FSX autogen on the roads which is why I'm having issues day and night.  I guess I need to just get FTX Global Vector!  I believe I can still use UTX for landclass for the time being.

 

Eric

[Holger Sandmann]

Hi Eric,

 

there are two types of 3D night lights that we place, one is as autogen within the landclass ground textures themselves and the other along roads as vector autogen. The latter has more fps impact and thus, the more urban roads you have in a given area, the more impact there will be on fps. Both types are displayed day and night it's just that during daytime the custom textures make them invisible.

 

For our regions and FTX Vector those checkboxes allow people to selectively deactivate the vector autogen while the other type still displays.

 

I'm pretty sure that you can deactivate different types of roads in the UTX control menu so you could experiment with reducing overall road density.

 

Cheers, Holger

[Flic1]

Holger - Thanks for the help, I understand how this works now!  It appears I'll just have to keep FTX vector lights unchecked for my daytime flights.

 

BTW - I ended up getting FTX Vector over the weekend and it works very nicely with just the UTX landclass enabled.

 

Eric