First Impressions of FSX SP1

If you have a payware prog whether it be a model, scenery or utility that you have tried.. tell us about it here.

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DaveB
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Post by DaveB »

Blimey Smith..

You open a can of worms there :shock: I'll have a look at those settings too just in case :wink:

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Bobcat
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Post by Bobcat »

Well I'm getting more frames per second now that's for sure, but I am also getting more stuttering, and this is a completely fresh install, no config tweaks yet, no background process hogs etc. and also the alt key (for bringing up the menu) and shift keys seem really unresponsive now.

Totally underwhelmed - as much as I expected I suppose. FSX is still a fair bit off colour if you ask me - still loads of little things not right, but the stuttering kills it for me (even at 20 FPS locked with an overclocked E6600). The question is, will Microsoft commit themselves to another service pack. I think they will have to or they will lose even more credibility and that could lead to the eventual wind-down of the FS series.

At this rate I can't see many people buying add-onns for FSX in the future - and that will be a disaster for us FS lovers.

I won't give up yet, I will scan the boards for tips and try a few suggesred tweaks over the next few days, but it does seem like FSX is flawed quite deeply and it might be very hard to make a good flight sim out of it - even with looking to use the hardware from two or three years in the future.

Some of the MS bloggers promised so much with this patch, but I am really disappointed. It delivers little in reality and seems to have brought a few new bugs with it. We are not much further down the road to a good flight sim in my opinion - which is a shame as it has so much promise.
:sad:

PS. I tried the above tweaks and it ran about the same on my machine. This is one of the enigmas of this flight sim - people get different results and people start pointing the fingers at each others settings or configs, but it really shouldn't be this hard. FSX, and FS9 previously, are the only programs that I seem to spend more time tweaking than using, I don't do this with anything else, and that to me equals 'slightly broken when sold'.

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DaveB
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Post by DaveB »

Concur with that mate :wink:

My FSX is virginal and living on it's own dedicated drive. The only addon's I have on it are 'FSX Specific' aircraft and the aforementioned GenX (vol1 only) and even this for the best part is not active. It's made my already 'not so good' install a even worse. Perhaps one day I'll get interested in it but SP1 hasn't done much to help :huf:

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ChrisHunt
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Post by ChrisHunt »

Just been for a spin in Rick's great JP5... and here are the results from the Hunty jury:

1. All scenery sliders set to the left stop and no autogen.

2. First reference flight from Valley; weather fair, daytime, frame rate locked to 40 - great frame rates but still got the st st stutters - frequent and very short (but very annoying) significant drops in FPS to low to mid single numbers and teens.

3. Second ref flight from Montpelier; settings as above and still got the stutters.

4. Set FPS lock to unlimited and still got the stutters with indications of wild fluctuations in FPS - fewer down to the very low numbers but big swings between high point of mid 70s to anywhere between low singles to 20s, 30s, 40s etc.

Interestingly I got the stutters also when the only thing visible on the screen was the outside world (good view from the JP5 cockpit) - so no aircraft bits displayed. Remember this was with all scenery sliders set to the left hand stop.

As an aside these stutters occur whether using stock scenery or Horizon's Gen-X photo scenery.

BTW Texture Bandwidth Multiplier set to 40 (one of the first things that I did). No other tweaks applied at all.

On the evidence thus far I'm afraid I have to give SP1 nill points - yes great increase in framerates but the stutters kill it dead. I only hope that MS take this seriously and do something about it and quickly (I don't fancy waiting another 7 months).

Ah well... back to BF2 then.

Regards,
Chris

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Post by ChrisHunt »

Another experiment - this is strange but...

Tried some flying three US locations: Friday Habour, Seattle and Pensacola with 3 aircraft: Microlight, Maule and JP5.

Very occaisional stutter at Friday Harbour and Seattle and with a few more (but not many) at Pensacola. Set weather to clear and same again.

I then went back to Valley (for those not sure where this is it's RAF Valley in Anglesey in the UK) and tried again with the same 3 aircraft and with weather set to clear; result same stutters as before at Valley, e.g. signficantly more than in the US and of a longer duration - what gives?

All flights comprised of a take off and then a slow left hand turning climb up to about 13K (not that high in the microlight).

Experience of flying in the US - fine, give or take a few infrequent stutters it's OK. Experience of flying in the UK - forget it. So; as I don't intend to do all my flying in the US where do we go from here? 'Tis a strange one.

Regards,
Chris

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Post by Garry Russell »

I've shifted this here as it is not a Classic British subject......or freeware :think:

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DaveB
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Post by DaveB »

Yo Dudes..

Taking up what Smithcorp mentioned.. I let FSX rebuild the cfg this morning, not only because of SP1 but because I'd changed the graphics card too and the results don't look half bad.

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With the remake, FSX has tweaked rather more things up than with the old card (I didn't have AI boats on for a start!!) but it was still a little jerky at the default 20fps. I tried unlimited as had already been suggested.. 40 and finally 30 before settling on 25. OK.. Friday Harbour isn't what I'd consider to be an acid test but there is an improvement there so I expect one everywhere!! :lol: Ricks gorgeous Alan Mann repaint looks a dream and the only sign of protestation I got was close to the water.. close enough to kick up spray. You can see that the very impressive FSX water textures aren't up very high but don't forget.. this is a fresh cfg and the only things I've done is changed the screen res and moved the fps lock up by 5 frames.

Prior to SP1.. I had the frame slider up to 30fps and any degree of autogen tree would halve that immediately. Considering I now have tree's and AI boats.. this aint bad.. not bad at all :wink:
System..
Athlon XP3200 (not 64bit variety)
1.28gig DDR333
1x SATA1 160gig
1x SATA2 500gig (pulled back to SATA1) - FSX drive and unpartitioned
Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe (NFORCE2 chipset)
Nvidia 6800GT running 9371 drivers
WinXP SP2

There's hope for us git's with low-end systems yet. All you have to do is fall on the right combination but first things first.. try remaking your cfg then take it from there :wink:

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DanKH
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Post by DanKH »

Well what'll you know ... :shock:

Dave is a convert in spe ! :shock: :shock:

:lol: :lol:
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DaveB
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Post by DaveB »

:lol: :lol:

Now then.. don't go that far. I'll still not use FSX until those lovely folk at FSNavigator bring out FSNav5 :wink:

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DanKH
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Post by DanKH »

Well it seems to me that you actually fly yourself!

I have only sat and watched AI traffic, and that small magic flashing number at the top left of the screen......

:doh:
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Dan
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