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General Category => Screenshots => Topic started by: virtuali on April 16, 2008, 11:34:56 pm

Title: O'Hare in FSX with AI traffic at 100%
Post by: virtuali on April 16, 2008, 11:34:56 pm
Just to show what our O'Hare scenery in FSX can do:

skAI Traffic Package in FSX with 100% density! And note: this is an FS9 traffic package, we think that something exported with the FSX SDK might do even better. Frame rate is still very usable.

Please, use the scrollbars to see the whole image, because it's 1600x1200.



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Title: Re: O'Hare in FSX with AI traffic at 100%
Post by: thepilot on April 17, 2008, 01:42:56 pm
With cloudy weather, framerates will drop to 12...
Title: Re: O'Hare in FSX with AI traffic at 100%
Post by: _Dre_ on April 17, 2008, 01:58:45 pm
What are the computer specs please?
Title: Re: O'Hare in FSX with AI traffic at 100%
Post by: virtuali on April 17, 2008, 03:28:19 pm
What are the computer specs please?

It's a PC that wasn't even top of the line (just the graphic card, perhaps) in the summer of 2006, when it was bought, Core 2 Duo 2.66 mhz, 4GB, nVidia 8800 GTX, Vista SP1 32 bit. No overclock at all, I even forgot to defrag the hdd and, under XP, fps would probably be faster as well.

You can buy a Quad for less than half of the price today, and the new 9800 has roughly the same performances or even better, at half of the price.
Title: Re: O'Hare in FSX with AI traffic at 100%
Post by: _Dre_ on April 17, 2008, 03:32:01 pm
Thanks.
Title: Re: O'Hare in FSX with AI traffic at 100%
Post by: virtuali on April 17, 2008, 03:43:06 pm
With cloudy weather, framerates will drop to 12...

Doesn't happen here:

22.1 fps is with Overcast cloud and no rain.
20.2 fps is with rain
19.3 fps is with Thunderstorms

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Title: Re: O'Hare in FSX with AI traffic at 100%
Post by: virtuali on April 17, 2008, 03:50:27 pm
See what's happening at 50% AI: some guys have disappeared, of course, but still is quite pleasant to look at, at 30 FPS!

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Title: Re: O'Hare in FSX with AI traffic at 100%
Post by: axiom13 on April 17, 2008, 04:47:13 pm
what are your display settings in FSX? I have a Nvidia GTX 7900, 4 gb ram, 3.80 ghz Intel Core Duo Processor, Vista 64 bit, and i can barely get 4 fps with traffic at 30%. all my settings are at medium high.

axiom
Title: Re: O'Hare in FSX with AI traffic at 100%
Post by: virtuali on April 17, 2008, 05:16:58 pm
I've posted my settings in the Greystone thread, you can simply load them, and try what's happening on your system.

Note that the AI package I'm using, although it has been made for FS9 (so it might even improve, should the various developers release native FSX models), it's very well done and optimized for fps.

My settings are quite high but, there are some settings you can put very high, without noticeable impact on fps, others that need to be carefully weighted.

For example, under DX9 you shouldn't use Bloom, because it eats up half of the frame rate. At KORD, there's no much need to use Water 2.0, "1.0 high" it's just fine. But, even if you want to use shader 2.0 for Water, I don't see the point of putting too high, the quality increase is slim, but the fps impact is high.

Since we have custom AI ground vehicles at KORD, I simply put the default to 0%. I had 100% (or 50% in the last screen) for airlines and GA traffic only.

Autogen was at Dense (so, 2 notches down from maximum), because I find that it draws more or less the same autogen that FS9 at Extremely Dense. Scenery complexity is at Dense as well, because I can live with the fact that not *all* buildings in Chicago downtown are shown, but "just" most of them.

Settings are meant to be used, depending on the kind of flight you want to do, location, airplane used, weather, etc. They are not a "fire and forget" thing, that you can set once and never touch again. That's probably why MS added an option to load and save settings, so you can create a set of them, depending on the situation.

At Greystone, for example, I can easily crank almost everything to the right, and still getting a good frame rate.

However, your 4 fps looks a little bit suspicious, especially with Vista 64 and 4GB and, especially, with a 3.80 Core Duo processor!! I'm not sure if it's the videocard your bottleneck, before telling you to go out and buy a 9800 (same or better performances than the 8800 GTX, half price), I would check also your whole system config, Windows optimization like turning off unneeded processes and background programs.

For example, since I'm not using the PC for internet, email and basically everything else except flight sim (I'm a Mac user for all the rest), I don't use any firewall or any resident antivirus. If I need to scan a suspicious file, I turn on the antivirus on the fly, then I turn if off.

I also turned off all the annoying Vista background services, like automatic Defrag, Boot optimization, File Indexing, Windows Defender and even the Aero interface...

There's also the issue of several "tweaks" that were commonly used in FS9 and FSX up to SP1 (like the Texture Bandwidth Multiplier), that in SP2, if set with the same settings as in FS9, results in worse performances. You might want to try fresh, moving your FSX.CFG away, and let FSX create one from scratch.
Title: Re: O'Hare in FSX with AI traffic at 100%
Post by: thepilot on April 17, 2008, 05:38:16 pm
Frame rates look ok but I see a loss of quality (if it's not due to resizing...)
Title: Re: O'Hare in FSX with AI traffic at 100%
Post by: virtuali on April 17, 2008, 05:39:58 pm
Frame rates look ok but I see a loss of quality (if it's not due to resizing...)

It's all due to compression: the original BMP at 1600x1200, 32 bit uncompressed it's 5 MB, not a 150K JPG as I've posted.

Title: Re: O'Hare in FSX with AI traffic at 100%
Post by: thepilot on April 17, 2008, 05:44:23 pm
I dunno, but my frame rates always drop when it's cloudy (FE textures).
21 frames are pretty OK but I think I wouldn't achieve it.
Title: Re: O'Hare in FSX with AI traffic at 100%
Post by: virtuali on April 17, 2008, 06:02:58 pm
Here's another one, resized to 800x600, but using PNG lossless compression. It's slightly sharpened in Photoshop, to make up for the resizing from 1600x1200 to 800x600.

Traffic at 50%, but still pretty crowded, plenty of Autogen, Clouds with Rain and Thuderstorms.

Alright, I give you the secret: airplane shadows are turned off. That alone, with so many AI, impacts for 7 fps. However, I would be at 22-23 in the same spot.




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Title: Re: O'Hare in FSX with AI traffic at 100%
Post by: axiom13 on April 18, 2008, 02:27:11 am
i can only et 20 fps with all traffic off, and scenery complexity at sparse, that means no jetways. As soon as I bump up scenery complexity or turn on traffic at 30% fps drops to 4. I know my specs are good, i don't feel like they are working.

axiom
Title: Re: O'Hare in FSX with AI traffic at 100%
Post by: Razgriz on April 18, 2008, 09:15:24 pm
Alright, I give you the secret: airplane shadows are turned off. That alone, with so many AI, impacts for 7 fps. However, I would be at 22-23 in the same spot.

Mine looked crappy and not on with anti aliasing so I decided to turn it off one day and i was like WOW!  I found that out by chance.  I'll check out shadows on the ground and others.
Title: Re: O'Hare in FSX with AI traffic at 100%
Post by: axiom13 on April 26, 2008, 06:53:22 pm
is the gem paused in those pics?

axiom
Title: Re: O'Hare in FSX with AI traffic at 100%
Post by: Dimon on April 28, 2008, 05:34:59 pm
With all due respect I think that this is not a fair trick ;D, because T5 is the "easiest area" of KORD from the standpoint of FPS performance. Things differ if you switch your angle to T2 packed with UAL jets.

nevertheless - I love this scenery.
Title: Re: O'Hare in FSX with AI traffic at 100%
Post by: virtuali on April 28, 2008, 08:52:26 pm
Things differ if you switch your angle to T2 packed with UAL jets.

Not really: skAI at 50% (like the previous shot at T5) is still pretty packed.

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Title: Re: O'Hare in FSX with AI traffic at 100%
Post by: axiom13 on April 29, 2008, 12:23:46 am
yeah, but was the game paused when these pics were taken? cause i get 25, 20 easy with the game paused, as soon as i unpause it, the frames drop to 8-5.
axiom
Title: Re: O'Hare in FSX with AI traffic at 100%
Post by: virtuali on April 29, 2008, 12:44:10 am
Doesn't make any difference here, if FSX is paused or not. The last screenshot wasn't paused, as can be seen by the lack of a "Pause" red sign.
Title: Re: O'Hare in FSX with AI traffic at 100%
Post by: smasma on June 02, 2008, 12:22:25 am
Virtuali,

I am having a small problem with skai.  I have the skai installer and I ran it.  It automatically installs the files into a folder in the to the Programs Folder.  When i installed it and opened FSX there was no ai traffic.  The ai sliders in fsx were at 100%.  Do I just put the folder automatically installed to the programs folder in the FSX folder?   Thanks
Title: Re: O'Hare in FSX with AI traffic at 100%
Post by: Razgriz on June 02, 2008, 02:12:22 am
You have to convert it, because it was made for FS2004.

Go to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\Aircraft

and put everything inside of that into

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\SimObjects\Airplanes

Then it should work.  I'm not sure how to do the rest as I forgot.
Title: Re: O'Hare in FSX with AI traffic at 100%
Post by: smasma on June 02, 2008, 11:54:27 pm
Is that all I should do to make it work correctly or are there any other things I have to do to make it work?

Thanks
Title: Re: O'Hare in FSX with AI traffic at 100%
Post by: bkircher on June 08, 2008, 02:43:25 am
You guys have to remeber that he is in a default aircraft and they are almost always double the fps than a addon one.

I have a
AMD64x2 2.4
4gig ram
320, 500 gig hds
Nvidia 8800GTS 640ddr3
22" hd moniter

no overclocking what so ever, max ai, 28% cars, 100% airport cars, medium to high fs settings, and I am getting say with the posky 737 ill get 10fps
Title: Re: O'Hare in FSX with AI traffic at 100%
Post by: kyle joseph on June 26, 2008, 04:31:20 am
I dont use AI much now because all the AI i have found cause a drastic framerate hit...