Automated Tweaking and Tuning tool for FSX

[bigmike 24]

I use nearly the same settings.The reason i ask this is,that i think,that the highest settings mustnot automaticly be the best one.When i look at the settings predefined by Microsoft in a "naked" FSX,there must be a reason behind this.That doesn`t mean,that these settings are the nonplusultra.Everyone is free to set the sliders whre he wants.But which settings gives the best results with(perhaps) unnecessary high settings,which could result in lower FPS?I don`t know,if you understand what i mean(my poor english!)Michael

[bojote 20]

But which settings gives the best results with(perhaps) unnecessary high settings,which could result in lower FPS?

Very subjective. No slider setting will please all audiences. Off the top of my head, I can tell you for sure the ones that DO impact CPU considerably are Clouds (when set to 120nm), Mesh resolution when set to 1m, and 'obviously' Autogen/Scenery complexity. You'll have to test yourself to determine what YOU like and feel confortable with. What settings I use is completely irrelevant because what *I* like can (and IS) completely different from what other users are using. For example, I don't use Ultimate Terrain X night lights, I use the FS9 ones (the ones that float and remove autogen) I also use FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION set at 0.1 which gives me a little bit of blurries, but less frame rate volatility.My tweaking tool (originally) suggested to move sliders to the left and the feedback was negative because there is NO one solution fits all approach to FSX. So, please, don't rely too much on 'other' settings and recomendations when it comes to slider settings, just use some common sense and use what you please. The tweaking tool *WILL* help you with 'other' tweaks so just worry about the obvious ones.

[bigmike 24]

Okay,i understand.I just found out,that an cfg.tuned by your tool on Dec.08.2010gives me now far better results with the new driver 266.58,than a cfg. tuned yesterday.Michael

[TedG 1]

Hi,I just wanted to again say a "thank you ever so much" to ******* for the tool and providing assistance.Just in the way of further feedback after a reload of the correct "tweaked" .cfg file I made a couple small changes:First I discovered in reading the forum that nvidiaInspector actually works with the brand new drivers. I immediately applied those changes and it makes a nice difference with the anti-aliasing set as suggested.Second the initial setting of TEX_BANDWIDTH_MULT was 40 from the auto-tweaker. I changed that to 70 per Nick's recommendation.And finally I enabled "Unlimited Frames" from the old "locked 30" that I had used for yoinks. No external limiter. As a result-simply put-an even smoother running FSX sim (even with the F1 ATR hi-res VC with REX HD textures and full-bore UT2 traffic). OK I'm not getting 120FPS :( but then again I don't have unrealistic expectations and a smooth-running 15-20fps at low altitude with weather/UI traffic/dense urban autogen blah blah is plenty for a non-combat oriented flight sim in my book especially on a relatively bog-standard Quad core. So thanks again *******. Big time!If you'll excuse me now I'm not touching that .cfg thing again and off to fly and enjoy!

[CoolP 283]

Off the top of my head, I can tell you for sure the ones that DO impact CPU considerably are Clouds (when set to 120nm), Mesh resolution when set to 1m, and 'obviously' Autogen/Scenery complexity.

Can you confirm the performance impact (of the highlighted setting) on current systems, *******? I thought that FSX uses the max available mesh resolution and you only limit the value with this slider if you want to stay lower than the actual data base. So, if these 1m resolutions aren't available in your installed scenery, the impact shouldn't happen, regardless of the slider "max" position. As most of us won't have mesh with more than 2m resolution installed, this slider could remain completely to the right and shouldn't influence the performance at all.To my knowledge, the 1m mesh is very rare and therefore this setting should only affect you if you are in the areas where it actually is available from your installed scenery. If one can actually spot the difference is another question though, I doubt it.There's an older thread regarding all mesh related settings and the tenor on mesh resolution is the one I'm following currently. Going lower than 2m should cause trouble on some sceneries from Orbx as objects are misplaced then, so the main question remains if the step to the "1m" slider setting really affects overall performance (haven't experienced this so far).Of course, it makes perfect sense to keep that slider on a setting matching your installed mesh, no doubt.

[DylanM 1,069]

Hi Ted,Funny because I pretty much discovered the same tweaks as you that work great in conjunction with Bojote's! :( The biggest thing I noticed is you can enable the internal frame rate limiter in combination with a FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION setting of 0.1. This seems to negate the bug with the frame rate limiter, and cancels out any signigicant frame rate drops or stutters (my fps limit is set internally and externally to 30). Like you, I also bumped up my TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT. On my system, I found setting to 120 gave me sharp ground textures even in very dense urban areas and the FFTF gave me almost the same fps as having only the external limiter on. As far as my settings inside FSX, they are set as recommended by ORBX with AG at very dense and AI and GA traffic at 30%.

Hi,I just wanted to again say a "thank you ever so much" to ******* for the tool and providing assistance.Just in the way of further feedback after a reload of the correct "tweaked" .cfg file I made a couple small changes:First I discovered in reading the forum that nvidiaInspector actually works with the brand new drivers. I immediately applied those changes and it makes a nice difference with the anti-aliasing set as suggested.Second the initial setting of TEX_BANDWIDTH_MULT was 40 from the auto-tweaker. I changed that to 70 per Nick's recommendation.And finally I enabled "Unlimited Frames" from the old "locked 30" that I had used for yoinks. No external limiter. As a result-simply put-an even smoother running FSX sim (even with the F1 ATR hi-res VC with REX HD textures and full-bore UT2 traffic). OK I'm not getting 120FPS :( but then again I don't have unrealistic expectations and a smooth-running 15-20fps at low altitude with weather/UI traffic/dense urban autogen blah blah is plenty for a non-combat oriented flight sim in my book especially on a relatively bog-standard Quad core. So thanks again *******. Big time!If you'll excuse me now I'm not touching that .cfg thing again and off to fly and enjoy!

[Berlopez 33]

Hello everyone: I just registered...Normally I tweak my FPS in my FSX-cfg file...Now I'm running FSX\Gold\ Acceleration after a misshap I had last year with my mcAfee antivirus; Yes I got hit by theire bug/ Bad update and it ruined my Vista OS completely! I managed to save the computer by formatting first to XP and then to win 7 32, So far I'm happy with it all.Under [Display] in the FSX.cfg I change the:UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=20...Or even higher and I get that performance; Dispite my small machine.

[BoeingFan88 2]

Hello,What graphics card option from the drop down menu would be the best choice for a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M CUDA with 1 GBThanks,Joel

[Guest genbrien]

HiI tested your tool, and I was wondering something I could change to have more load on the GPU(ati6950 2gb)?One of the changes it bring was to add : [bufferPools]RejectThreshold=131072Right now, with every settings to max, my CPU is nearly used to 100% but my GPU is between 22 and 27%..... never exceded 30%and should I change something:TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=1024TEXTURE_QUALITY=3IMAGE_QUALITY=0TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=40TextureMaxLoad=12I want to have the best IQ possible, but its quite a bummer that less than 30% of my GPU is usedThx

[CoolP 283]

I want to have the best IQ possible, but its quite a bummer that less than 30% of my GPU is used

You could crank up the AA settings and see your GPU getting loaded. Transparency AA should do this and enhances the IQ by a big margin. Those 2GB of your card will help the AA to be stable at high resolutions, so they are useful too.As far as I can see these AA settings even drive the strongest GPUs around to the limit in FSX while this only takes some 8xSQ or so together with a moderate transparency AA, so really no excessive overall settings at all.Add clouds to the scene and you will see that GPU struggle, may it be high-end or not.

[Guest genbrien]

You could crank up the AA settings and see your GPU getting loaded. Transparency AA should do this and enhances the IQ by a big margin. Those 2GB of your card will help the AA to be stable at high resolutions, so they are useful too.As far as I can see these AA settings even drive the strongest GPUs around to the limit in FSX while this only takes some 8xSQ or so together with a moderate transparency AA, so really no excessive overall settings at all.Add clouds to the scene and you will see that GPU struggle, may it be high-end or not.

I forgot to say that 25% if with 4AA and full overcast/thunderstorm weather (with REX textures) but on ground FPS are as low as 5-6I know I can crank AA like mad, but without AA FSX still struggle, but it aint using all the help it can get. That's why I was wondering if ther eis a way to tell FSX to use more memory or load more data or something

[CoolP 283]

Holger Sandmann just posted some interesting stuff on the actual performance impact of detailed mesh and especially on the slider positions in FSX. Head over to Orbx for a short read if you like. http://orbxsystems.c...p?topic=31833.0Seems like I have to revise my statement on that slider in general, but from reading, the "too high" setting there shouldn't harm performance much.I'm posting this because this point came up in one of Bojote's posts lately.Genbrien, go further as 8AA if you like (there are more than a few "8" modes available, differing from the actual components used. If Supersampling is included, the load should go up and shimmering should be greatly reduced) and, most important, try using transparency AA on your card. IQ really improves then, so does the GPU load, it goes up.As you have an AMD card, I can't help you with the actual settings to achieve some other (higher) modes as I'm only Nvidia-aware in FSX concerning the somehow higher AA modes. Those dev's GPUs easily run into limits when using Supersampling and transparency AA, especially in cloudy skies.Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about going 16x oder 32x or so, I'm just suggesting some Supersampling and TAA to get rid of shimmering for example and therefore increasing IQ without the need to measure but just to look.On other games (and therefore engines), those strong cards don't run into big trouble with enhancing IQ with these modes mentioned, on FSX, they actually do and even the mighty GTX580 struggles then.Could be that AMD cards react differently of course, but I doubt that they survive IQ settings without increased GPU load. So if your card is running rather low right now, you've some headroom to go for even higher IQ. That's what not cheap hardware is for, isn't it?

[mmann 72]

Holger Sandmann just posted some interesting stuff on the actual performance impact of detailed mesh and especially on the slider positions in FSX. Head over to Orbx for a short read if you like. http://orbxsystems.c...p?topic=31833.0

Note also the implications on scenery integrity affected by the mesh resolution setting. For one of my Orbx PNW scenery projects I created the floatplane ramp at Courtenay Airpark Water Aerodrome. It is dependent on the mesh resolution being set to 10m and not 5m as Orbx recommends. So keep in mind that adjustments to this slider can affect the usability of certain scenery objects as well.Regards, Mike Mann

[FrankFasi 0]

After using Bojote's tweak (via the online utility), I noticed the performance improvements right away. However, in tower view, my planes were disappearing when about a quarter of a mile away. I tried it with smoke turned on--the plane would disappear, but the smoke would continue. If I circled back the plane would re-appear, quite large already when it pops back. I switched back to my backed-up FSX.cfg file and the problem went away immediately. Does anyone have any guesses as to which tweak might cause this to happen? I'd like to selectively edit my tweaked FSX.cfg file so as to keep most of the non-offending tweaks. Thanks in advance.My system: core i7 950, ATI 5700 1g, 4 gig RAM. Win 7 64, FSX Acceleration.

[bojote 20]

After using Bojote's tweak (via the online utility), I noticed the performance improvements right away. However, in tower view, my planes were disappearing when about a quarter of a mile away. I tried it with smoke turned on--the plane would disappear, but the smoke would continue. If I circled back the plane would re-appear, quite large already when it pops back. I switched back to my backed-up FSX.cfg file and the problem went away immediately. Does anyone have any guesses as to which tweak might cause this to happen? I'd like to selectively edit my tweaked FSX.cfg file so as to keep most of the non-offending tweaks. Thanks in advance.My system: core i7 950, ATI 5700 1g, 4 gig RAM. Win 7 64, FSX Acceleration.

I would be most interested in knowing exactly 'what' tweak is causing this!! you are the first person to ever report this and the tweak tool is used by hundreds each day.If you discover which tweak is causing the 'dissapearance' of AI I'll give you access to the secret V.I.P tweak page.