TIPS - Things to consider

FSX/FS9 - Optimization....continued
...always a controversial topic of discussion... :-)

...with many strong opinionated people out there.  For all those whom are open to trying out new ideas, new suggestions and tweaks that are working for the massive...here's a couple of other things to think about which will once again....bring your flight simulator a step above your existing performance curve.

1. WideviewAspect or Add Some Zoom

The default FSX visual zoom setting is one (1). This is unrealistic in that our actual human ocular visual field is not correctly simulated by a default zoom level of one in FSX. When you view Scenery (or any other photo scenery) with a default zoom of one in FSX it tends to look very blurred and low resolution.

There is a setting in FSX that is not actually accessible within the program options but is key to making the world around you look much more realistic in terms of peripheral vision and an appropriate zoom factor/aspect with which we see in everyday life and that setting is WideViewAspect.

locate  your  FSX.cfg file and change the setting from false to true (see below)

WideViewAspect=True

2. Hard Drive Performance

The thing that can bog down scenery from displaying crisp and clear textures is hard drive performance. To get the best display performance, you want to minimize the hard drive bottleneck such that files can be read from the hard drive as fast as practically possible.

SSD (Solid State Drive) are much better for performance won't be an issue at all since SSDs give you file read performance approaching that of memory. i.e. very fast! So you won't experience the physical hard drive bottleneck that you will with physical hard drives. 

3. Where possible, put Larger Photo Scenery on a separate hard drive

The system bus on today’s modern PC has a much higher throughput than hard drive data transfer rates. This means that you can read two sets of different data from two hard drives simultaneously at maximum data transfer rates compared to having to read those same sets off the same hard drive. Reading from the same drive, file access needs to be queued and a lot more file access delays are introduced whereas reading from 2 separate drives can occur simultaneously.

When you are flying Flight Simulator, your hard drive is often accessing files from the system drive while concurrently accessing Photo scenery files so often SCENERY file access is delayed waiting for other operations.

When your scenery data is on a separate drive, the Photo scenery files such as UK VFR files that are accessed while you fly are not competing with file access from your system drive.

The result is that you are giving your Photo Scenery files the best chance to load as quickly as possible in order to display the highest resolution scenery.

4. Optimize scenery file placement on your hard drive and defrag them

TIP: Did you know that the speed at which files are accessed and read from your hard drive is highly dependent upon where those files exist on your hard drive and how scattered your data is across your hard drive? File access speed can vary by up to 600%.

It also defragments fragmented files that are created as you add and delete files to your hard drive.

We recommend that you use UltimateDefrag to optimize your hard drives for Scenery and Flight Simulator performance. The difference in performance is clearly apparent as you see your Flight Simulator load faster and your highest resolution scenery pop into place as you fly.

Contrary to popular belief, this does not improve framerates. What is does do is minimize file access delays thereby making your scenery display high resolution images faster. It cures a phenemonon known as “the blurries”.

It is a good idea to do an UltimateDefrag optimization each time you add a new scenery area or any other add on to your Flight Simulator.

5. Some Additional Tweaks You Can Apply

Here are some tweaks put together by Dean Bielanowski of PC Aviator Australia.

Getting the BEST out of photo scenery Visuals

To ensure you are seeing the best photoreal texture quality with your new photo scenery such as Horizon sim UK VFR, it may be necessary to make some adjustments to your FSX display settings, as well as to your video card settings to ensure these elements are not the cause of "degradation" of the scenery textures.

Use this information below as a GUIDE ONLY. We do not claim it will work for all video cards, or for all users. But if you are not seeing the same level of detail and clarity in the scenery state(s) that you see with our screenshots, then you will likely need to tinker with your settings to achieve best results.

It might be worth trying out several adjustments primarily to potentially make the scenery render in full resolution. We found this REALLY helped produce the best views...

1. In your FSX.cfg file, change LOD_RADIUS from 4.5 to at least 7.0 or 8.0. (make a backup of your fsx.cfg file before adjusting of course in case you want to revert later). This will result in slightly longer initial load times, but the scenery will render much sharper further into the distance... It makes a big difference. The radius number you use will depend on your PC and video card specs somewhat, but try not to exceed 9.0 at the very maximum. 7.5 seems a good option for those with GTX560+ or GTX660+ cards.

There's even more content on MegaSceneryEARTH's website, around this topic of discussion, the bits i believe in and have tested myself which do work I have highlighted above.

That's all from me for now.  I will get back to you on more things to think about to get your PC flying (no pun intended) ;-)

Darryl

sources: LINK: http://www.megasceneryearth.com/store/