LonelyplanetXO
Charter Member
Ahhh, the exquisite pain of tinkering. Over the last three years Lonelyplanet had made many attempts to get FS Ex going, each resulting in the same toy-throwing tanty after many of hours of fruitless wandering through the FSX config. 4.8fps last time. Now up to 12 but CTD... aaarrrghhh!F*** it!**the Cat ducks as mouse, wine glass or any handy thing flies across the room at a velocity FSX aspires to**.
Finally though, this time there seemed to be light at the end of the tunnel. Convincing himself that point of light was pending salvation (when a brighter virtual pilot might have considered the possibility of an inbound SAM) he jumped headlong into a lot of $$payware$$.
Well, why not? This time the results had been positive. The damned thing had held solid and stable for a period despite reasonably heavy loading.
Behind the attempts to be fair, was reasonable logic. This is not an old machine; his gaming rig is a 18 month old quad core; not I7, but as pointed out by others, something that really should work at some level with the EX. "Why can everyone else run this?", he thought.
Why indeed.
As we know the payware was an abysmal failure prompting once again, poor old Lazerus (the cat) to seek refuge under the desk, knowing well what was to come.
The next morning Lonelyplanet, retreating back to FS9, (and having gained forgiveness from Laz - Jellymeat is a wonderful thing) made an unfortunate discovery. The Nhancer tweaks that he'd been playing with had affected his current sim. FS9 was sick, running slow, stuttering and suffering blurries. Perhaps in a particularly idiotic moment he'd changed the wrong nhancer profile. "Bugger!" he thought.
Which got him thinking... "you know what? I can fix FS9 but I'm kidding myself to imagine I understand the intricacies'of FSX. So the problem is that I really dont know what I'm doing"
It's said that the first epiphany of age is a realisation that the more you know, the less you understand. So I suppose we could interpret that as the first sensible FS EX related thing that's occurred to him.
Over the next couple of days Lonelyplanet, who fortunately doesn't have a life, immersed himself in the Avsim bible learning the teachings of Jesus. And with each re-read, a realisation that he hadn't really got it at all. The outcome of the next day's tinkering was either (a) 25fps locked and solid but with terrible, tearing graphics or (b) nice graphics but 10-12 fps. Either way, it beats 4.8fps over YBBN.
Finally he noticed a link at the foot of a forum post providing Jesus' own config, built for an I7 and another one scaled back for lower spec machines. Comparing these with his own efforts showed only minor differences but LPXO did observe something. Jesus' tweaked parameters are mathematically related. You can't change one parameter without also changing others. The key was in understanding the relationships.
Another two days later and having ditched OrbX YBBN which was unfairly biasing results, our flightsim guru (not) finally saw a measure of success. The Epic in Brisbane with OrbX Gold scenery but without YBBN, 10-15FPS with some blurries; unsurprisingly increasing with groundspeed. Locked 25 everywhere else with no blurries....Carenado's Mooney ran better in city areas, prompting another ludicrously optimistic payware investment; the Lotus L39. It seems that model is seriously optimised because it provided predicted blurries in Brisbane; (maybe the 350 kias @ 1500' had something to do with that...) but higher FPS and ran perfectly away from the city; despite heavy cloud cover, courtesy of REX2. Unsurprisingly groundspeed and fps are inversely related.
A few more tweaks then a 325nm flight in the Mooney... again, city flying not so good but as the DME counted down for Lismore the magic began.
Cruising at 160kias around 2000' beneath a detailed 8/8ths cloudbase, disturbed only by occasional mild turbulence, the frames were glassy and a high res photo-like environment unfolded. Relaxing at the controls, the scene reminded him of better days; gazing through the canopy of his Glider over rural South Auckland.
Sooo he thought..this is what all the fuss was about.
It seems the trick to getting on the good side of the Ex is both hardware and patience. The hardware is the best you can do. An I7 is ideal but less will suffice, to some degree. Is it CPU or GPU? Seems to be both so best you can do. The patience however has been resolved for us. Fortunately for us sinners..ahem, simmers; Jesus has come. He's given us his time and done all the hard work and found the keys to optimise your FS config, then presented his findings for all, for free. Microsoft stopped three feet from gold with FSX. But the EX can be saved!
LPXO
Finally though, this time there seemed to be light at the end of the tunnel. Convincing himself that point of light was pending salvation (when a brighter virtual pilot might have considered the possibility of an inbound SAM) he jumped headlong into a lot of $$payware$$.
Well, why not? This time the results had been positive. The damned thing had held solid and stable for a period despite reasonably heavy loading.
Behind the attempts to be fair, was reasonable logic. This is not an old machine; his gaming rig is a 18 month old quad core; not I7, but as pointed out by others, something that really should work at some level with the EX. "Why can everyone else run this?", he thought.
Why indeed.
As we know the payware was an abysmal failure prompting once again, poor old Lazerus (the cat) to seek refuge under the desk, knowing well what was to come.
The next morning Lonelyplanet, retreating back to FS9, (and having gained forgiveness from Laz - Jellymeat is a wonderful thing) made an unfortunate discovery. The Nhancer tweaks that he'd been playing with had affected his current sim. FS9 was sick, running slow, stuttering and suffering blurries. Perhaps in a particularly idiotic moment he'd changed the wrong nhancer profile. "Bugger!" he thought.
Which got him thinking... "you know what? I can fix FS9 but I'm kidding myself to imagine I understand the intricacies'of FSX. So the problem is that I really dont know what I'm doing"
It's said that the first epiphany of age is a realisation that the more you know, the less you understand. So I suppose we could interpret that as the first sensible FS EX related thing that's occurred to him.
Over the next couple of days Lonelyplanet, who fortunately doesn't have a life, immersed himself in the Avsim bible learning the teachings of Jesus. And with each re-read, a realisation that he hadn't really got it at all. The outcome of the next day's tinkering was either (a) 25fps locked and solid but with terrible, tearing graphics or (b) nice graphics but 10-12 fps. Either way, it beats 4.8fps over YBBN.
Finally he noticed a link at the foot of a forum post providing Jesus' own config, built for an I7 and another one scaled back for lower spec machines. Comparing these with his own efforts showed only minor differences but LPXO did observe something. Jesus' tweaked parameters are mathematically related. You can't change one parameter without also changing others. The key was in understanding the relationships.
Another two days later and having ditched OrbX YBBN which was unfairly biasing results, our flightsim guru (not) finally saw a measure of success. The Epic in Brisbane with OrbX Gold scenery but without YBBN, 10-15FPS with some blurries; unsurprisingly increasing with groundspeed. Locked 25 everywhere else with no blurries....Carenado's Mooney ran better in city areas, prompting another ludicrously optimistic payware investment; the Lotus L39. It seems that model is seriously optimised because it provided predicted blurries in Brisbane; (maybe the 350 kias @ 1500' had something to do with that...) but higher FPS and ran perfectly away from the city; despite heavy cloud cover, courtesy of REX2. Unsurprisingly groundspeed and fps are inversely related.
A few more tweaks then a 325nm flight in the Mooney... again, city flying not so good but as the DME counted down for Lismore the magic began.
Cruising at 160kias around 2000' beneath a detailed 8/8ths cloudbase, disturbed only by occasional mild turbulence, the frames were glassy and a high res photo-like environment unfolded. Relaxing at the controls, the scene reminded him of better days; gazing through the canopy of his Glider over rural South Auckland.
Sooo he thought..this is what all the fuss was about.
It seems the trick to getting on the good side of the Ex is both hardware and patience. The hardware is the best you can do. An I7 is ideal but less will suffice, to some degree. Is it CPU or GPU? Seems to be both so best you can do. The patience however has been resolved for us. Fortunately for us sinners..ahem, simmers; Jesus has come. He's given us his time and done all the hard work and found the keys to optimise your FS config, then presented his findings for all, for free. Microsoft stopped three feet from gold with FSX. But the EX can be saved!
LPXO
