rendering problems & visibilty.

[lusitano]

I am a refugee from FsX. My Fs9 works fine. There are many problems I am experiencing with X-Plane not all of them of major importance but my real problem is in getting a decent level of visibility. I understand the reduction in visibility if the rendering options are set too high, but I have a GTX280 video card with 1 Gig of Vram,  4Gig of ram and duo core intel 3.16 processors. My frame rates are about 45-50, and the information shown on the rendering page shows only 400 odd  mb of video ram being used. A lot of the options are set at default; surely with this set-up I should not have to be flying in a fog!! I have the latest video driver onstalled. Can you help me please.  Lusitano.

[Kaphias]

Check the weather tab to make sure the visibility is set high. If that doesn't work, a screenshot of the rendering options page would help us figure out some better settings for you.

[Simmo W]

Hi Lusitano, try this useful link

http://wiki.x-plane.com/Setting_Up_X-Plane_for_Best_Performance

if you start tweaking settings too much at once, it can induce the 'fog of war', so try small adjustments, then relaunch. You should NOT compress VRAM, it doesn't seem to save resources bu makes things look worse. Good luck, you'll be fine!

[lincoln10]

What about other aircraft in x-plane / anyone know how to get other aircraft in the air besides yours at the same time. It's boring flying by yourself without other traffic to contend with. In Microsoft flight sim you even have to wait your turn in line at airports to get clearance from the tower. I have tried to get traffic to appear with no luck. Thanks lincoln10

[lusitano]

Hi Kaphias, I am getting variable results; I have got vv high frame rates, and a reasonably clear picture, but this was flying ove bare featureless terrain ( ELGC tp LFAT). Frame rates drop & vary, and the fog comes down once I get to any thing with features, ( over Paris, incredible scenery, or at LFPG) My frame rates have varied from 22 to 128!! Frankly I am not too conerned with frames rates, the motion always seems fluid and convincing, its the limted visibility and fog which is worrying; also the fact that it does not seem possible to use clouds without affecting performsnce. Surely my set-up should run this sim  without so many rendering limitations. I have taken a screen shot of the rendering page. How do I get it to you? Many thanks for your inerest and help. Lusitano.

[Kaphias]

Hi Kaphias, I am getting variable results; I have got vv high frame rates, and a reasonably clear picture, but this was flying ove bare featureless terrain ( ELGC tp LFAT). Frame rates drop & vary, and the fog comes down once I get to any thing with features, ( over Paris, incredible scenery, or at LFPG) My frame rates have varied from 22 to 128!! Frankly I am not too conerned with frames rates, the motion always seems fluid and convincing, its the limted visibility and fog which is worrying; also the fact that it does not seem possible to use clouds without affecting performsnce. Surely my set-up should run this sim  without so many rendering limitations. I have taken a screen shot of the rendering page. How do I get it to you? Many thanks for your inerest and help. Lusitano.

When you reply to a post, open the "additional options" tab and choose your screenshot from there.

[lusitano]

Hi, I hope its here! Lusitano.

[Simmo W]

Hi lusitano, I'm no expert, but I've got a core i7 920 with gtx 275 and it hums along. I've never bothered with volumetric fog, it seems to hit the fps. How do u survive with no antialiasing? Try 4 or 8. Keep other traffic low at first, that can slow things down. Your CPU might be light on, not sure, maybe others with similar CPUs can chime in. Your graphics card is better than mine. Did you check out the link? I'd try lower detail settings and work up slowly, restart xplane as u are happy. Kaphias is right, try 20 mile visIbility or so. I hear windows 7 is more efficient if u are using xp or vista (I'm stuck with vista for now, it's fine performance wise 

[lusitano]

Hi Simon W I  have altered the anti-aliasing back to 4, it was reading some reccomendations which made me initially reduce it; the result was terrible as you suggest.  I have a suspicion that X-Plane might not be for me, frankly although my set-up is not the ultimate, it is quite good, and should be adequate, or even more than adequate to run this sim, and I am a little disappointed. My fs9 runs fine, as does Rise of Fl;ight & Black Shark. Obviously X-Plane is a v v good sim, perhaps a bit too complex? I would not like to put in print my opinion of FsX!  Thanks for you interest Regards Lusitano.

[Kaphias]

Two suggestions, turn down some options in your "pixel shaders" area and change the "world detail distance" option to very low.

[garrettm30]

Thanks for posting your settings. That is especially helpful in helping you. One thing I noticed is that you have texture resolution set to very high when you should be able to turn that up to extreme without any negative effect at all. As I understand it, that setting essentially has to do with the amount of video RAM your card has. You have said that your card has 1 GB, but the bottom of the screen reports you are only using 342.06 of it. You are supposed to be able to turn up texture resolution within the limits of your video memory without it having any negative effect at all. If you pass that point by very much, then you start to get a veritable slide show.

The trick is to find the aspects your computer does well and cater to those, such as extreme textures in your case, and to turn down the aspects that give you bottlenecks. In my experience, it's the objects that really kill framerate.

[garrettm30]

I just noticed two other things. One is that your lateral view is set to 71°. The greater the view, the more objects X-Plane has to draw. Play with that a bit.

But as for the cause of all that fog, here is the biggie: you have minimum frame rate set to 39. That is rather high, and it is absolutely why you see fog. Let me explain. Let's say you are cruising along at altitude with nothing but the generic scenery floating under you. Your computer is then breezing through with plenty of frames per second because its load is relatively light. Then let's say you are making your approach at an airport with lots of detail. Suddenly the computer has a lot more to deal with, and objects are a pretty big job after all. With the greatly increased load, your frame rate falls well below 39. Then X-Plane says, "Uh oh, he told me to make sure I am putting out at least 39 frames per second. And now look at it, just 20 (or whatever) frames per second! I better do something about it, and quick!" So what does it do? Yep, it's fog. It uses fog to replace detail. It incrementally increases fog to reduce its load until it reaches a load that it can successfully render with at least 39 frames per second.

In short, think of the minimum frame rate as this: the frame rate at which X-Plane starts introducing fog to compensate for a heavy load. It helps with your decision in the tradeoff between details and frame rate. If you think details are more important than frame rate, then move it all the way down to 19, the minimum. Then you can run more details before it increases fog. Otherwise, if frame rate is more important to you, you have two options: reduce options to a point where X-Plane can consistently draw them fast enough, or else turn on the details for you to see when it can handle it, and set the minimum frame rate so that it fogs them out when it can't handle it.

It gives you a whole lot of control, but often more control means more complexity, and therefore, confusion.

By the way, if you have successfully enabled FPS to display, then there is another figure just to the left of the frame rate in the same little box. I think it is called vis ratio; I could be wrong. Anyway, this figure is a ratio of the total visibility you have requested versus the visibility that you are actually seeing. 1.000 means it is showing you 100% of the visibility you have requested. Anything less, such as .870, means that you are only seeing a part of what you requested because the load was too great to maintain your minimum frame rate, in this case, just 87% of your requested visibility. That little tool can help your diagnostics.

Happy flying,

Garrett

[woweezowee]

Hi, I hope its here! Lusitano.

One word: Water reflections. Turn it down. Each step in this setting is something like 5-10 fps for me. I have it at "low" and it is still nice (at least if you were used to earlier xplane versions that came completely without it).

[garrettm30]

One word: Water reflections. Turn it down. Each step in this setting is something like 5-10 fps for me. I have it at "low" and it is still nice (at least if you were used to earlier xplane versions that came completely without it).

That seems to vary according to card. Mine seems to vary 5-10 frames from off to complete. It probably depends on shader units, but I'm about to step off the cliff where my knowledge of hardware ends. Anyway, it's all worth trying to find the best compromise.

[woweezowee]

. Anyway, it's all worth trying to find the best compromise.

Definetaly. I find myself constantly adjusting those settings. Then I think "yeah, it is perfect now". Only to come back to the settings screen a week later and change things again

[lusitano]

Hi Garrett,many thanks for your kind help and interest. The setting for the minimum frame rates sounds important, and perhaps thats where the problem lies. Much gratitude to all who have helped, Lusitano.