Agrajag

IF what I'm seeing is correct (from the FPS data that includes CPU and GPU load) then my issue now is CPU-based. The time to draw the images is always TINY while the CPU jumps from .50 to .990 once I get near the ground anywhere. Seems to me I can turn up more that's handled by the GPU (a GTX 770 with 4GB). Let's set what 10.30 brings, if anything, on this issue.

Thanks everyone. So it's pretty much what I remember from before. So you can't get rid of it but may be able to slightly reduce it. It's one of the big things left over from the FS days that I'd like to cross off the list. I actually don't mind the END look of it. It's the transition that's hard to accept. It's just goes from in focus to a blur in one pixel. I'd be happy if they'd just smooth out that transition, even if the answer was to blur a bit more detail coming forward (though not much). Ultimately it has to go as the hardware we run gets more capable.

Now that you say that, I realize that's true. It does update that which is why I used the _DISABLED entry. Good point. That looks like this: SCENERY_PACK_DISABLED Custom Scenery/KSEA Demo Terrain/ I disable the above as I use other terrain for that area and this demo terrain gets in the way. The same approach can work for anything.

Here it is not looking too bad at DFW at roughly 16,000 feet. Sometimes it's much worse. However, this is a shot I just took before bed:

The tongue emoticon suggests a bit of sarcasm. Now that I finished a flight, it seems obvious that it's there all the time. I turned everything off but texture detail and it had zero effect on the fog.

I remember reading long ago that X-Plane generates a distant fog to keep performance acceptable. I have a somewhat decent system (i5 4670k, 16GB RAM, GTX-770 4gb, etc) and have a really prominent fog line at 16,000 to 25,000 feet in my Dash-8. I now see people saying this can mean your settings are too high. The problem is that I'm seeing this while the sim is telling me I'm getting 60fps. I'd be fine with less than that to get the distance fog pushed way back. Right now it's about 1/4 of the screen in height. Is this something everyone gets or are my settings really too high? I tried literally turning off everything in the right half of the middle rending area (airport details, roads, world distance, etc.) and it seemed to have zero impact on the bar. I do run HDR if that matters.

I don't believe the game loads all custom scenery but it might. I'm no expert there. That might be worth looking into. If that IS the case then we need a utility to load before we actually launch the game that simply creates a scenery.ini file that fits the session you're going to fly in. I'm pretty sure that the data being in the Custom Scenery folder is irrelevant if there's no entry for it in the INI file, or better yet it's disabled with the "_DISABLED" command.

Absolutely it takes longer. You're replacing very basic default data with highly detailed information. The real delay comes from photo sceneries. I had to give them up last year until I moved X-Plane and all its data to an SSD drive. Now it loads in 90 seconds or less. Before it was taking many minutes to load.

Hmm... Okay. I just got VS working wonderfully for that, but of course without any speed limitations. I now see where you got your numbers from. 5% descent is way below -3000 so no issues there. I thought I tried IAS for this but clearly didn't. I'll go try that shortly.

I own the FJS Dash 8 and have for some time. I have the manual here, and open, and don't see it really discussing how to pull this off. It says this: IAS MODE (momentary action) Click to engage. Activates vertical commands to hold indicated airspeed. Will engage first to your current speed IAS then use NOSE DN/NOSE UP trim wheel to change airspeed. Airspeed being held is indicated on the PFD. 2. VS MODE (momentary action) Click to engage. Activates vertical commands to hold vertical speed. Will engage to your current vertical speed then use the NOSE DN/NOSE UP trim wheel to change vertical speed. Vertical speed being held is indicated on the PFD. Again, the problem is, it's disengaging as soon as I set an altitude and the manual points out that only one button can be active per axis (one for vertical, one for horizontal). I suspect I might just have the order wrong as I can certainly set an altitude before take-off, then set an IAS and and then ALT SEL. That works when I then engage the AP after take-off.

eMko, which manual? The Dash doesn't have that. Do you mean the X-Plane manual? I do have a VS and IAS button on the AP but the issue there is that the Dash's AP will only allow one control at a time to be engaged. As soon as I touch ALT or ALT SEL for the descent, those would turn off. U2, there are no speed brakes on the Dash, at least none that are mentioned anywhere in the manual or that I've seen any control for.

I love my FlyJSim Dash 8 but one thing I still haven't figured out is how to restrict my speed when descending. I'll get an instruction to descend from 16,000 to 5,000 and to stay under 250 knots. The issue often is that by the time I get the instruction, I need to do a >5 degree nose down and suddenly I'm over 300 knots. Using flaps doesn't really work as they retract the instant you go over 200 knots. What am I missing? Currently my answer is to pull the throttles all the way back and, often, into reverse. FlyJSim says they should never go below 35% during flight. Given that reality I have NO idea how to keep the speed down.

Depends on what you want to do. First, SimHeaven has different areas. I mainly use his "Cities". Those include HD Mesh v2. So, I do download HD Scenery Mesh v2 for surrounding areas but then remove it for cities I get from SimHeaven. The cities I then load as middle priority. HD Mesh lowest, SimHeaven middle and then any airport stuff on top. One thing to be aware of. There's currently an issue with HD Scenery Mesh v2 that is known and being addressed at some point. alpilotx didn't filter out some things from the OSM data that should have been. Thus, unless you're comfortable with using WED to do exclusions (I'm not), you'll have defunct trains running across airports and, more likely, cars and trucks driving all over the airports as "service roads" were included and the game renders those as full roads. It's a bit distracting for now. Once that gets filtered out, this combination will be incredible.

I should mention that I'm not at all unhappy with the way the system itself is performing (unless these transitions and freezes are tied to that). I'm getting 60fps in most places and no lower than 30fps with those settings. That's in heavy impact areas as well. I am open to any changes in settings. Frankly, I had no real feel for "runways follow terrain contour". I assumed that meant non-flat runways which is a huge feature over Flight Simulator.

Ah... Shift Spacebar works even for the settings pages. Live and learn.

Hardware is as follows: Asus Maximus VI Hero motherboard with an i5 4670k (running at 4.2GHz). 16 GB RAM (Ripjaws). Gigabyte GTX 770 with 4GB VRAM. Rendering settings are getting up there. Did you mean X-Plane's or yours?

Thanks. The pity is that I was just getting really happy with the immersion factor. At lower settings I feel like the clouds just live around me and nowhere else. I also don't believe I have the NOAA plugin (I certainly didn't manually install it knowingly). I'll take a look next time I'm in there. Just xSquawkbox via VATSIM. I suspect VATSIM is doing the updating.

Loving SMP. Makes the world so much more immersive. My issue is that it will often jar me out of that immersion with two things: 1. I'll be flying along (on VATSIM 99% of the time) and the entire sim will freeze for a few seconds and, presto, I have clouds. 2. I'll be flying along with a completely clear sky. Then clouds suddenly appear as if from nowhere. Then they disappear. It's not as if I emerged from them. If I look behind me there's nothing. Is there anything I can do to reduce these sorts of harsh transitions?

Thanks for the help! Everything looks great now. Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

Thanks John. Again, not complaining. Just wanting to be sure I'm seeing this the way I should be. One thing occurs to me before I even see the billboard option would be to randomize it and have several more of them.

Okay, so then here are two images to make it a big more clear. Notice the "UU" shape in the upper left? I see a version of that exact formation in most skies where clouds aren't filling the sky. In the second image, notice the black-ish spots (from above you see through them)? Why are there exactly three in each and every group and are they supposed to be identical repeats of the same group of three?

I just bought SkyMaxx Pro and, already, I'm fairly certain there's no going back to the default skies of XP10. However, a couple things early on have stood out that I'd like to inquire about. First, I seem to see a lot of the exact same clouds, or slight variations of them, in every sky. The most prevalent example of that is one cloud element that's shaped like a W but with four legs. Sometimes it's inverted and sometimes its more blown about but its always there and it's always four legs. Never three, never five, etc. I also have a lot of groups of clouds of three. Storm? Hey, there's three dark clouds, some gray space and then three more dark clouds, then more space, then three more dark clouds. I can get pictures if need be but, again, I assume many of you are familiar with what I'm talking about. Also, are the jet trails up there above me (I fly mainly turboprops at no more than 16,000 feet) animated or are they just lines in the sky? (I don't care which -- just curious) As far as my settings, here's what I'm currently running with: XP 10.25, Intel i5 4670k (@4.2GHz), GTX-770 w/4GB, 16GB PC, Asus Maximus VI Hero motherboard.

So, while flying a route from KORD to KMSP (via VATSIM), all was totally fine. Third flight of the day. No incidents at all. I'm closing in on a VOR (EAU) when I notice the plane (FlyJSim Dash) is suddenly just deciding to bank hard right. I wrestle it back. I turn of AP. I set up everything again. I engage AP and the plane immediately tries to climb at 25 degrees up (or more) and bank right again. No NAV, HDG or any AP entry will work. I ended up just manually flying into MSP from EAU all the while fighting the plane. I notice the elevator trim is all the way up. I get that fixed and just set a HDG and follow it manually. How can I go about finding out what caused this as, clearly, I'd rather not have it happen again. What did I add to the mix? Well, I had just bought X-Mapper Pro for my iPad but I hadn't touched it other than to zoom in as I got closer to my destination. Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

This is going to happen. Bank on it. As Microsoft continues to lose home PC market share, the agnostic benefits of being able to access content from any device via a browser will continue to gain traction. What's to rue?

I'm one of the people that believes the future is pretty OS-agnostic because it's all heading to the browser. More and more as things move to the cloud, I'm able to set people up with something that allows them to just use a browser and they're happy. Lately I've even been able to get away without having to bother with Office -- which is a HUGE deal for many. I show them Google Docs (which is fairly terrible head-to-head against Office) and it's good enough for 90% of people. The rest is mainly browsing the Net and Gmail, etc. As more games come for browsers none of this will matter a whole lot. Sort of like going back to the DOS days -- which in this case is a good thing. Leave the complexity for the office. Home users don't need it.