FS9 - improvements/freeware/other

[TSR2]

Hi Dan,

I've read Phil's blog and agree with that in principle, but this horse (In FS9) go much better AA performance when foring it on the hardware.

To be honnest, even now I have FSX I still force it as the hardware is more capable and I still get significantly better results than with application controlled... just my experience mate. ;-)

I don't have any other changes at all though ;-)

[DaveB]

Interesting topic. I've just changed it back to 'application' and while I get my spinning aircraft back.. .. AA isn't as precise as it is when done by the card itself. Not particularly easy to tell but I've a feeling it's a tad slower when left to the application too :think:

ATB

DaveB :tab:

[TSR2]

Thats what I get too Dave, even in FSX (although no spinning aircraft issue in FSX.

[DanKH]

Congratulations on you r long lost cartwheel Dave...

(the spinning isn't an issue as well in FS9 if running non-full-screen .... so there... )

Well there you go, it just proves that no matter the horse, it still depends on the rider .... or not...

So the conclusion here must be, as always, do what you find suitable for your setup, and don't rely too much on others "advices" ;-)

[DaveB]

Yup.. I know about the spinning aircraft returning if NOT running fullscreen but FS9 runs better in fullscreen (for me anyway). Certainly not an issue in FSX but that's the only thing that isn't!

ATB

DaveB :tab:

[TSR2]

No two the same... the joys of FS!

[nigelb]

Chaps,

I know its been a while, but did the general consensus on AA not tell folk to enable it on the hardware (i.e. in the nvidia control panel) and switch it of in FS9?

As I recall, (and I've just done a quick google) this was the recommended way?

:think:
As I recall that is correct! I can remember trying the AA setting both ways and switching it off in FS9 and letting the hardware control it gave me better results. Your mileage may vary, as I imagine the results are very depedent on the hardware, drivers and who knows how many other factors.

[Quixoticish]

Chaps,

I know its been a while, but did the general consensus on AA not tell folk to enable it on the hardware (i.e. in the nvidia control panel) and switch it of in FS9?

As I recall, (and I've just done a quick google) this was the recommended way?

:think:
As I recall that is correct! I can remember trying the AA setting both ways and switching it off in FS9 and letting the hardware control it gave me better results. Your mileage may vary, as I imagine the results are very depedent on the hardware, drivers and who knows how many other factors.

I believe enabling it in FSX only gives you x2 AA anyway which in my opinion is unacceptably low on a standard TFT resolution (1280x1024) on anything but a low end graphics card that can't support it any higher. Far better to enable it in the Control Panel for your graphics card so you can enjoy jaggy-free x4 or higher AA. Plus if you're using an ATI card you can force other goodies enabled if you use the Control Panel such as adaptive AA and temporal AA.

[AndyG]

....... and temporal AA.

Do the temporal AA go and fix your car before it breaks?

Andy

[Charlie Bravo]

Regardless of where he enables AA, the Turbocache cards have no support for that function in the hardware. This is what I found when I was reading up yesterday:

There are major performance hits that come from using compression dependant methods, including Anti-Aliasing. This is because the GPU does not support any compression techniques, and the way that the pipeline was re-designed to minimise latency issues means that things like Anti-Aliasing run pretty slowly due to the way that textures are thrashed across the PCI-Express bus in most, if not all instances in a typical game scenario.

Having read info on other sites as well, it seems the Turbocache cards only have a 64bit memory bus, meaning that even if the card had 512mb of it's own memory, it still would'nt be able to squeeze all the data through quickly enough.

If thats baffled a few people, think of a 64 bit memory bus as being a small country lane. Expensive graphics cards have up to a 512bit memory bus which you could consider as being a motorway and therefore it's able to handle a higher throughput of data at any given time (unless it's the M1 ;-) )
That is how shops like PC World fool people into thinking that the hardware they supply in the ready built PC's is good. They tell you it's got a graphics card with 512mb RAM onboard but don't tell you that it's a basic model with a slow GPU (graphics processing unit) and a poor memory speed/bus. They work on large numbers and not the facts.