Any More Solutions For the Pop-ups?

[cmpbllsjc]

Umberto, a few weeks ago I started another thread on this here, http://www.fsdreamteam.com/forum/index.php?topic=2434.0, where you advised on using the Addon Manager to adjust the popup range. Well, after setting it at first to 4 then to 10, I am still getting more pauses with KFLL than I am with all the other airports I own, which is everything minus KJFK and the new Hawaii stuff. I read in another thread where someone was having a similar issue and I think you said that you could manually set the popups in the fsx.cfg to 20. I tried this and while it helps, I am still getting about the same level and amount of slight pauses as I was having it set at 10.

Aside from the popup setting of 20 is there anything else I can do? I was looking the KFLL/scenery folder at the bgls to see if there were any titled things like a cars.bgl, trees.bgl, or something to that effect, that maybe I could take out when I am flying airliners into the airport to keep the pauses to a minimum. Actually though it seems like most of the pauses aren't coming from the buildings, cars, tress, or anthing like that, but it seems that there are 3 or 4 layers of the ground textures that cause the pauses before popping into view. I know it would require some work on your end, but is there a way some of the ground textures could be compiled or loaded differently to help cut down on the pauses. Maybe they could be offered as an optional bgl we could use.

I'm not sure what it is with KFLL that causes me more trouble than the other airports I own. KLAS seems to be not only larger but most likely has more objects in it and it's smooth as silk when on apporach. I even own the older KMCO by Cloud9 and while it doesnt have custom ground textures its still very smooth as well.

If there's no other options I will accept that and I wont post about it anymore and just live with it, however if there is something I can do on my end or on yours please advise. Overall, I love the airport and have no other issues with it, but it is my most used airport by FSDT so I would love to smooth it out more if possible.

Thanks in advance.

Sean

[virtuali]

Actually though it seems like most of the pauses aren't coming from the buildings, cars, tress, or anthing like that, but it seems that there are 3 or 4 layers of the ground textures that cause the pauses before popping into view.

They are not 4, but 2 in some places and 3 in others. There's not much that can be done for the ground, other than trying to see if it improves by lowering one notch the "Max texture Size" in the settings.

I know it would require some work on your end, but is there a way some of the ground textures could be compiled or loaded differently to help cut down on the pauses. Maybe they could be offered as an optional bgl we could use.

The only thing that might be used, is the FS9 textures resizer, should work with FSX as well. If, by changing the Max Texture size slider, you see an improvement, which means the issue is too many textures.

I'm not sure what it is with KFLL that causes me more trouble than the other airports I own. KLAS seems to be not only larger but most likely has more objects in it and it's smooth as silk when on apporach.

The fact that is larger is not a problem. In, it's more difficult to work with lots of objects packed in a very small area, like KFLL, when 90% of the scenery is concentrated on the relatively small area of the main terminals.

I even own the older KMCO by Cloud9 and while it doesnt have custom ground textures its still very smooth as well.

KMCO, not having any custom ground layer, is not remotely comparable to all the others. That's the price you pay for having a multi-layered custom ground AND compatibility with FS9, both things that KMCO doesn't have.

If there's no other options I will accept that and I wont post about it anymore and just live with it, however if there is something I can do on my end or on yours please advise.

Try the texture size solutions first.

[skimmer]

cmpbllsjc,I get a bigger fps hit from FLL as well. I found a posting on a FSX forum,cant remember right now but i will find it and let you know, that was from a past Aces team member who was posting a fix for scenery blurries at far distance. I tried this and I get much better fps at all heavly populated airports. Like JFK and FLL. See attachment for what it says. I also keep the setting in addon mang at 0 . maybe this will help 

[skimmer]

http://www.fsstation.com/articles/flight-simulator-x-performance-tweaks.html                     This was it,cmpbllsjc

[cmpbllsjc]

Thanks for the reply Umberto. I tried lowering the Max texture size one notch to 512. I tested it but honestly didn't see much diference. Still get the slight pauses when on approach but FPS are good even with 100% traffic I still get 25 to 30 FPS. I tried turning off all traffic including autos to see if it made a difference, got a few more FPS but the pauses were still the same as it loads the scenery on approach.

Anything else you might suggest Umberto? If not, I understand that is the limitation with the way the scenery is built and I wil live with it. Not sure if a faster computer or more RAM would make a difference. I have an E8400 at 3.85 ghz, 2gb RAM at 1066, and a GTS250 1GB OC video card. I know that by todays standards 2 GB of RAM is pretty low, but honestly my sim runs really well for the most part since I had Michael at FS-GS do the setup.

[virtuali]

Anything else you might suggest Umberto?

As I've said in my previous message, it might be worth check the FS9 texture resizer as well. It *might* be a little bit better of the internal FSX texture resizer because, that one will first load a 1024x1024 texture, and it will send it as a 512x512 to the video card. With the texture resizer, the texture is loaded from disk as a 512x512 so, it might work better for the pauses.

You can also try lowering the Scenery Complexity density slider a bit because, at KFLL, the default objects are quite heavily modeled (the default scenery includes all the port area)

[cmpbllsjc]

As I've said in my previous message, it might be worth check the FS9 texture resizer as well. It *might* be a little bit better of the internal FSX texture resizer because, that one will first load a 1024x1024 texture, and it will send it as a 512x512 to the video card. With the texture resizer, the texture is loaded from disk as a 512x512 so, it might work better for the pauses.

Sorry I forgot about the texture resizer. I will give that a try. I guess I need to back up the default texture folder first just in case it doesn't make a difference.

I'll post back and let you know.

Thanks

[cmpbllsjc]

cmpbllsjc,I get a bigger fps hit from FLL as well. I found a posting on a FSX forum,cant remember right now but i will find it and let you know, that was from a past Aces team member who was posting a fix for scenery blurries at far distance. I tried this and I get much better fps at all heavly populated airports. Like JFK and FLL. See attachment for what it says. I also keep the setting in addon mang at 0 . maybe this will help 

Thanks for the info and links skimmer. Well, honestly FPS and blurries are not an issue at KFLL, just the slight pauses while more items are loaded into view. Actually I though that by default, even though the fsx.cfg doesn't show it, it was set at FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION=0.33? Maybe not, I will give it a try and see, but I doubt it will have an effect on the way the scenery is designed to load the objects or ground textures.

Thanks for the info though.

[cmpbllsjc]

Umberto, I downloaded and unziped the the texture resizer to fsdt/kfll/texture folder and when I run the .bat I get an error and it say press any key to continue. When I press any key it just quits. Is this because the resizer was written fir the FS9 version? Here's a screen shot showing what I mean. Maybe because all the FSX textures are .dds? Are the FS9 textures .bmp's?

[virtuali]

Yes, of course...sorry for the mess, I forgot that...here's a modified version for dds

[cmpbllsjc]

Yes, of course...sorry for the mess, I forgot that...here's a modified version for dds

That's ok, lol. I will try this one and let you know if there is a difference.

Thanks - Sean

[cmpbllsjc]

I ran the texture resizer and it actuall made things worse, not performance wise but look at the screen shots and you will see what I mean.

The performance was still the same with the pauses every 7 seconds or so on approach to 9L. With my popups set to 20 I get one long pause of about 4 seconds while the initial scenery loads, then after that while getting closer I get a quick pause of a second or two every about every 10 seconds, until I am on the ground.

BTW, the last zip when I ran it I got a message the first time that I needed to include a few of the files from the first zip. Once I placed them in the texture folder it worked, but did something to the way it displays in the sim. No problem though, I made a backup of the whole scenery folder prior to running the tool.

Aside from the misaligined textures after the conversion the pauses where the same. Also tried lowering the complexity slider a notch but that didn't change it either.

[virtuali]

Aside from the misaligined textures after the conversion the pauses where the same. Also tried lowering the complexity slider a notch but that didn't change it either.

Yes, that not really a problem, you'll probably have to remove all the -yflip commands in the .bat file. However, that was just to see if it changed anything for the pauses. I suspected it didn't: as we know, FSX is able to multithread texture loading on different cores so, having to load more textures shouldn't stall the sim, as in FS9, which is why we usually don't release FSX versions of the resizer.

I think there's not much more you can try.

[cmpbllsjc]

Ok then, thanks for the help. It was worth a try.

Regards

[cmpbllsjc]

One last thing I forgot to ask before I drop the subject, but as FSDT's scenery designs become more refined thru the years with different process by which you design and script the scenery to be rendered, is this something that maybe in the future we could see some of the existing sceneries updated if a better process is found?

Here's the reason I ask. Not to compare FSDT to Imaginsim or Tropical Sim, but I have noticed with some of their sceneries as you move closer or farther from an airport you can actually see individual objects appear or disappear, rather than groups of objects. For example Tropical Sim has an airport in Rio that I use in FSX often and as you are approaching the airport you will see individual trees pop into view rather than all the trees at once. Another example is Imaginsim KATL, if you put an aircraft in slew mode and move forward or backward from the airport you will actuall see individual jetways and ground objects vanish or appear depending on whether you are comming or going. The only difference I see between those examples and that of KFLL is that each object seems to have a radius of which it will appear/disappear rather than a group of objects trying to load at once. I was thinking that maybe at KFLL too many objects are being told to load at once, therefore causing the more obvious pauses to load. Although you did mention that since KFLL is a small airport that is densly populated with objects that maybe the reason for the more obvious pauses. However, if smaller groups of objects were to load based on distance maybe the loads from the disk would be more gradual and less noticable. If that is a possibility I would be willing to work on this myself if you could provide be the tool or knowledge to decompile the scenery bgls and adjust the LOD settings or groupings myself. I know that my request may seem a little extreme, but sometimes we as simmers are willing to go above the normal consumer to tweak a scenery to work seamlessly with simulator, especially when the scenery is one of our favorites.

If this is something I can do please let me know as I have plenty of free time that I can fiddle with this during the day. I would be neat to see if I can get this scenery a little more dialed in to smooth out the loads.

Thanks