txnetcop
Charter Member
Hello there!There are a lot of exciting things going on at X-Plane and in the community, and we've got your monthly bulletin about the news and products that make X-Plane great. Check out new scenery buildings, ways to maximize scenery & frame rate, and a modern airliner for your collection.
[h=2]Cities Get a Facelift[/h]X-Plane 10's automatically generated scenery ("autogen") is unique among simulators. It uses the road grid and builds up scenery around it instead of randomly arranging static scenery tiles. The 10.50 update will add a lot of new buildings, including tall skyscrapers, to this system. FAA height data encoded in the underlying scenery will be used to make the buildings roughly match real-world heights. Many of the buildings will also include night lighting textures, so large U.S. cities will look better than ever before at any time, day or night.
Check out more screenshots on the X-Plane site.
View more screenshots
[h=2]Tips and Tricks[/h]Finding the balance between having a lot of scenery detail while keeping your frame rate up is a source of confusion for many X-Plane simmers. Here are some tips on how to get a lot of buildings while maintaining a decent frame rate.
Happy flying!
-- The X-Plane Team
Enjoy,
Ted
[h=2]Cities Get a Facelift[/h]X-Plane 10's automatically generated scenery ("autogen") is unique among simulators. It uses the road grid and builds up scenery around it instead of randomly arranging static scenery tiles. The 10.50 update will add a lot of new buildings, including tall skyscrapers, to this system. FAA height data encoded in the underlying scenery will be used to make the buildings roughly match real-world heights. Many of the buildings will also include night lighting textures, so large U.S. cities will look better than ever before at any time, day or night.
Check out more screenshots on the X-Plane site.
View more screenshots
[h=2]Tips and Tricks[/h]Finding the balance between having a lot of scenery detail while keeping your frame rate up is a source of confusion for many X-Plane simmers. Here are some tips on how to get a lot of buildings while maintaining a decent frame rate.
- Don't overload VRAM. Turn texture resolution way down, then continue with the other steps.
- Start with the graphics card underloaded – small window, no clouds, low FSAA. You can turn those up afterwards. (If the graphics card is bogged down you can’t even see what you are doing.)
- Turn off AI aircraft and turn the cars way, way down as these settings chew up CPU. If you use a payware aircraft that eats CPU (and many of them do), keep it so you can see what your “real” performance will be; saving 10 fps by throwing out the aircraft isn’t great if you actually want to fly it.
- Turn down settings that amplify the cost of autogen, such as shadows and water reflection. This might be the most important step; when those settings go up, every building is drawn for shadows and reflections, not just those in the scene, making the scenery many times more expensive. Try shadows on the aircraft in 3-d and the second lowest reflection setting.
- Finally, increase texture resolution until frame rate suffers, then turn it down one notch. Remember to restart each time to get accurate texture use.
Happy flying!
-- The X-Plane Team
Enjoy,
Ted
