Found UTX an absolute must for USA! Helps VFR nav, when using maps to follow roads, rail. Since then, FTX (Orbx) came out which is only for Australia at present, and yep it's an AWESOME improvement! They have said they are doing PNW, Alaska & others but not 'till next year, so I live and wait in hope! :d I like PNW and Alaska especially, most of the mountains we have in Oz are just a little lower than PNW!
Found UTX an absolute must for USA! Helps VFR nav, when using maps to follow roads, rail. Since then, FTX (Orbx) came out which is only for Australia at present, and yep it's an AWESOME improvement! They have said they are doing PNW, Alaska & others but not 'till next year, so I live and wait in hope! :d I like PNW and Alaska especially, most of the mountains we have in Oz are just a little lower than PNW!
It is even more importand for Europe 
I'd say, it is a must to have. It improves especially Central Europe and intruduces fantastic landclass. Besides that, you can enable/disable all kinds of roads in the addon. The control panel is very useful.
One for you Jankees - Dutch coast.
I'd say, it is a must to have. It improves especially Central Europe and intruduces fantastic landclass. Besides that, you can enable/disable all kinds of roads in the addon. The control panel is very useful.One for you Jankees - Dutch coast.
W
wildcat400
Guest
I'm at work now. Will post before and after pics after work.
heywooood
Mayor Emeritus of Taco City
you know - I was using UTX / GEX and was happy with it - then I had to reinstall FSX and after getting it in and running clean as FTX / Acceleration RTM and flying from KORS Orcas Island I was liking the frame rates I was getting even with the sliders for terrain and texture higher than they were before - and I had not even done the autogen trees and buildings tweak yet!
So I loaded UTX and flew - and half my trees were gone and the FPS had dipped...hmmm
added GEX thinking maybe there were some better frames to be had with it - but no...the FPS was down 5-10% and I was not as happy with the look of things.
So I am using XGraphics, FS Water Configurator and GEX lite (mostly un-checked) and then I use FTX free Tasmania for the down under flights or when I want a little different scenery and thats it.
I hope REX is not a frame hog....but if it is - I can live with what I've got now.
So I loaded UTX and flew - and half my trees were gone and the FPS had dipped...hmmm
added GEX thinking maybe there were some better frames to be had with it - but no...the FPS was down 5-10% and I was not as happy with the look of things.
So I am using XGraphics, FS Water Configurator and GEX lite (mostly un-checked) and then I use FTX free Tasmania for the down under flights or when I want a little different scenery and thats it.
I hope REX is not a frame hog....but if it is - I can live with what I've got now.
jmig
SOH-CM-2025
It de-enhanced my home airport. Took away the water landing strip that is there. But, I agree with the rest. It makes a big difference to FSX. I like it.
Q
quantumleap
Guest
UTX USA covers just the continental 48 states and Hawaii, so you will not see any enhancement from it at that location.
Jeff
W
wildcat400
Guest
Oh. I guess I need to pay attention to what I am buying. :redf:
I took a pic yesterday of one of my hornets over California. Let me load up fsx real quick and take a pic in that same area that I was at. Then I will post before and after pic for those who requested.
EDIT: I'm going to install the updates first, then take the screenshots.
EDIT x 2: Before I install these updates, I need to locate the "UTX USA Setup Tool". Where is that at!?
Q
quantumleap
Guest
Windows Start Menu->All Programs->Flight One Software->Ultimate Terrain x - USA->Setup Tool
or if you want to go to the executable itself in the folder it is installed in
FSX->Flight One Software->UTUsaFsx->UtSetup.exe
(where FSX is the main Microsoft Flight Simulator X folder where you would find the FSX.exe)
Jeff
W
wildcat400
Guest
In my opinion. Looks like garbage still:
I downloaded all three updates, and set my scenery settings sliders down some.
What should I set my scenery sliders at to make this work?
Ok, I decided to shoot some more info out there: Video card: Nvidia G Force 9600 GT, monitor is capable of showing up to 1440x900. It's for sure not the card or monitor (ok, I am not getting carried away huh?) I just want this to work, and it's frustrating.
I downloaded all three updates, and set my scenery settings sliders down some.
What should I set my scenery sliders at to make this work?
Ok, I decided to shoot some more info out there: Video card: Nvidia G Force 9600 GT, monitor is capable of showing up to 1440x900. It's for sure not the card or monitor (ok, I am not getting carried away huh?) I just want this to work, and it's frustrating.
Q
quantumleap
Guest
As your system showed signs of performance related issues in FSX outside of UTX areas, this really is something outside of what additional features UTX offers and looks like. I'll try to cover a few general performance items and point at links to follow later in this posting but first comments on the latest screenshots.
- Again not knowing where the screenshots are taken I cannot compare them to what I might see (please press SHIFT+Z in FSX to show the co-ordinates). The first one shows what are scenery objects from Kennedy Space Center but that is definitely not the area around Cape Canaveral or Merritt Island in Florida. If I was to guess I'd say it is some other addon, not default or UTX scenery, for Vandenberg AFB. The second screenshot definitely shows UTX night lighting objects are active (what look like balls of light in the top left) but again not knowing where it is makes it difficult to comment further (especially as there is no indication as to what you think is wrong with UTX in it).
While you tell us what video card you have, FSX (like all versions of MSFS) is a CPU intensive app, it is therefore the available processing speed of that which determines how well it looks. You therefore need to provide full details of your system so that others can make suggestions i.e. we'd need to know CPU and speed, RAM, video RAM, OS at least.
There would also be a need to know what other background processes, apps and system trays are running at the same time as FSX. They will all steal from what FSX needs to perform to its best.
You'll also need to give more details on your current FSX slider settings, and if you have made any manual tweaks to your FSX.cfg
As an FYI, some of the other FSX features which have more performance hit are:
- light bloom (similar to 2x water causing multiple renders per screen so best to leave it off)
- AI aircraft (as FSX now has to calculate, place and handle all these now in addition to your own aircraft)
- road traffic
- weather (more so if an external tool is used to inject it as that will be stealing cycles from the CPU - also even the Active Sky people usually recommend cloud draw distance of 60 miles)
- ground scenery shadows (best left off)
- aircraft casting shadows on itself (best left off)
- autogen
While you show issues outside of UTX, here is a thread from the Ultimate Terrain support forums about Diagnosing UTX Performance Issues.
Anyway, the above should give you a few things to get you started on the road to getting some improvement in your FSX experience.
Jeff
- Again not knowing where the screenshots are taken I cannot compare them to what I might see (please press SHIFT+Z in FSX to show the co-ordinates). The first one shows what are scenery objects from Kennedy Space Center but that is definitely not the area around Cape Canaveral or Merritt Island in Florida. If I was to guess I'd say it is some other addon, not default or UTX scenery, for Vandenberg AFB. The second screenshot definitely shows UTX night lighting objects are active (what look like balls of light in the top left) but again not knowing where it is makes it difficult to comment further (especially as there is no indication as to what you think is wrong with UTX in it).
While you tell us what video card you have, FSX (like all versions of MSFS) is a CPU intensive app, it is therefore the available processing speed of that which determines how well it looks. You therefore need to provide full details of your system so that others can make suggestions i.e. we'd need to know CPU and speed, RAM, video RAM, OS at least.
There would also be a need to know what other background processes, apps and system trays are running at the same time as FSX. They will all steal from what FSX needs to perform to its best.
You'll also need to give more details on your current FSX slider settings, and if you have made any manual tweaks to your FSX.cfg
As an FYI, some of the other FSX features which have more performance hit are:
- light bloom (similar to 2x water causing multiple renders per screen so best to leave it off)
- AI aircraft (as FSX now has to calculate, place and handle all these now in addition to your own aircraft)
- road traffic
- weather (more so if an external tool is used to inject it as that will be stealing cycles from the CPU - also even the Active Sky people usually recommend cloud draw distance of 60 miles)
- ground scenery shadows (best left off)
- aircraft casting shadows on itself (best left off)
- autogen
While you show issues outside of UTX, here is a thread from the Ultimate Terrain support forums about Diagnosing UTX Performance Issues.
Anyway, the above should give you a few things to get you started on the road to getting some improvement in your FSX experience.
Jeff
W
wildcat400
Guest
1st pic is a addon for Vandenberg AFB.
2nd pic (night shot) is NAS Patuxent River (see the runway below the jet)
What I think is wrong with the 2nd pic is that the ground (in my opinion) looks fake. Just splotchy.
Details of my pc from what I can tell you: Triple Core Processor with 3 gb's of RAM. And that is all that I know. Besides from what I already said above about my video card and monitor.
What other apps are running in the background? I Have no idea how to check that.
Slider settings for FSX:
Level of detail radius: Medium
Mesh Complex: 68
Mesh Resolution: 1m
Texture Resolution: 30cm
Water Effects: Low 2.x
Land detail textures box is checked
Scenery Complexity: Normal
Autogen Density: Normal
Ground Scenery shadows box is unchecked
FX detail: Medium
2nd pic (night shot) is NAS Patuxent River (see the runway below the jet)
What I think is wrong with the 2nd pic is that the ground (in my opinion) looks fake. Just splotchy.
Details of my pc from what I can tell you: Triple Core Processor with 3 gb's of RAM. And that is all that I know. Besides from what I already said above about my video card and monitor.
What other apps are running in the background? I Have no idea how to check that.
Slider settings for FSX:
Level of detail radius: Medium
Mesh Complex: 68
Mesh Resolution: 1m
Texture Resolution: 30cm
Water Effects: Low 2.x
Land detail textures box is checked
Scenery Complexity: Normal
Autogen Density: Normal
Ground Scenery shadows box is unchecked
FX detail: Medium
W
wildcat400
Guest
Just unchecked some of the boxes that you suggested to. Flying over KNHK. The tower is directly aft of my beech baron.
Q
quantumleap
Guest
You still don't say what your CPU speed is (as I noted previously this is most important when it comes to FSX) or what OS you are running.
As for your comments on the 2nd screenshot looking splotchy, that's the default painted on night texture for you. That texture would look the same whether UTX was installed or not. Remember UTX does not modify the default textures, products like Ground Environment X would do that.
From you last picture I see that you are running with the frame rate limit set to unlimited. Try setting it to 25. This means that resources are freed up to allow loading of scenery textures (which is a reason for the blurries if there is not enough time to do that and the FSX scenery engine will drop this first to try and keep the framerates as high as you set).
Turn water down to 1x (2x means to show the scene it renders the image in two passes effectively halving framerates and so stealing processor time).
Change you mesh resolution to 38m (unless you have 1m mesh which I doubt, 38m is the default supplied in the US).
Change your texture resolution to 1m (this means that the size of texture files it has to load are smaller again freeing up CPU resources).
As for what other processes and apps are running on your PC, not knowing which OS you have means I cannot give you exact instructions but try holding down CTRL+ALT+Delete which under XP will bring up the Windows Taks Manager directly, or on Vista you would then need to select "Start Task Manager" (on Vista you can also start it directly by CTRL+SHIFT+ESC). In the lower left corner it will show you how many processes there are, and the "Processes", "Services" and "Performance" tabs will give more details.
One final thing, have you installed the SP1 and SP2 service packs to FSX?
Jeff
As for your comments on the 2nd screenshot looking splotchy, that's the default painted on night texture for you. That texture would look the same whether UTX was installed or not. Remember UTX does not modify the default textures, products like Ground Environment X would do that.
From you last picture I see that you are running with the frame rate limit set to unlimited. Try setting it to 25. This means that resources are freed up to allow loading of scenery textures (which is a reason for the blurries if there is not enough time to do that and the FSX scenery engine will drop this first to try and keep the framerates as high as you set).
Turn water down to 1x (2x means to show the scene it renders the image in two passes effectively halving framerates and so stealing processor time).
Change you mesh resolution to 38m (unless you have 1m mesh which I doubt, 38m is the default supplied in the US).
Change your texture resolution to 1m (this means that the size of texture files it has to load are smaller again freeing up CPU resources).
As for what other processes and apps are running on your PC, not knowing which OS you have means I cannot give you exact instructions but try holding down CTRL+ALT+Delete which under XP will bring up the Windows Taks Manager directly, or on Vista you would then need to select "Start Task Manager" (on Vista you can also start it directly by CTRL+SHIFT+ESC). In the lower left corner it will show you how many processes there are, and the "Processes", "Services" and "Performance" tabs will give more details.
One final thing, have you installed the SP1 and SP2 service packs to FSX?
Jeff
W
wildcat400
Guest
Hi Jeff,
Sadly, I have to leave for work in a few mins. But tonight (11:30p.m. est) I will do all that you have suggested in your last post.
Real quick though: I am running Windows Vista with service packs 1 & 2 installed. CPU speed: No clue where to look (I am computer illiterate can't you tell?)
Holding down ctrl, alt, delete tells me:
under processes: a ton of apps are running (guess I should close the ones out that I don't need huh?)
services: lets just say: there are a ton of files listed there.
Performance: as of right now (it is fluctuating): 16% cpu usage, 1.05 gb memory
And like I said in my opening of this post, I will adjust my settings accordingly later on.
Q
quantumleap
Guest
OK, if you are running Vista...
To find out about your system, Start Menu->Control Panel->System. Under the System section you will see a line for Processor, tell us what it says. Also there is the "Windows Experience Index", if it has not been run, run it and then tell us what value you get for each of the five sections plus the overall index number.
Regarding the Windows Task Manager, to give you an idea, just before I run FSX, if I look at the number of Processes shown in the lower left corner it is around 35 (and I still have anti-virus and firewalls running at that point). Now while you can easily quit other unncessary apps before you start FSX, you cannot just go into the processes and services list and hack away at them to cut them down unless you know what you are doing (or else you could stop something that is required for the OS to run properly).
Here's a link to a PCStats web-site "Beginners Guide: 99 Windows Vista Performance Tips and Tweaks" which you may find useful.
Tell us how you get on once you have tried the FSX settings changes recommended.
Jeff
To find out about your system, Start Menu->Control Panel->System. Under the System section you will see a line for Processor, tell us what it says. Also there is the "Windows Experience Index", if it has not been run, run it and then tell us what value you get for each of the five sections plus the overall index number.
Regarding the Windows Task Manager, to give you an idea, just before I run FSX, if I look at the number of Processes shown in the lower left corner it is around 35 (and I still have anti-virus and firewalls running at that point). Now while you can easily quit other unncessary apps before you start FSX, you cannot just go into the processes and services list and hack away at them to cut them down unless you know what you are doing (or else you could stop something that is required for the OS to run properly).
Here's a link to a PCStats web-site "Beginners Guide: 99 Windows Vista Performance Tips and Tweaks" which you may find useful.
Tell us how you get on once you have tried the FSX settings changes recommended.
Jeff
I've been flying FSX/Accel for 2 weeks on my new box without UTX and believe me it's bland. Too much sand or too many trees depending on where you fly. I want to fly it stock for a few more weeks before I start throwing on the 4 dozen or so addons I have. I'm getting very good performance right now, still tweaking at getting AA and AF on my 280 working as best I can and then start logging how performance gets affected as addons go in. I want to get through all the missions first again too.
And Harleyman's right, get the CD's. I've got all the UTX's on disk, GEX USA/Canada/Alaska too, (awaiting GEX Europe on disc). I know updating with patches is never a problem. I've never had to do a re-download yet. Not lookin' forward to it for those items that will not offer a CD version that I purchased. I back up everthing that I DL along with all documentation, keys, etc. For some reason I don't know if that was a waste of time or not, maybe you can only reinstall with a direct connection to the Flight1 site. The last time I purchased something that way they changed the procedure, none of the screens looked familiar to the ones that appeared with my past purchases. I got it to work but like I said, never done a re-install and that's where most folks seem to have problems from what I've read, from time to time. I'll find out in a few weeks.
And Harleyman's right, get the CD's. I've got all the UTX's on disk, GEX USA/Canada/Alaska too, (awaiting GEX Europe on disc). I know updating with patches is never a problem. I've never had to do a re-download yet. Not lookin' forward to it for those items that will not offer a CD version that I purchased. I back up everthing that I DL along with all documentation, keys, etc. For some reason I don't know if that was a waste of time or not, maybe you can only reinstall with a direct connection to the Flight1 site. The last time I purchased something that way they changed the procedure, none of the screens looked familiar to the ones that appeared with my past purchases. I got it to work but like I said, never done a re-install and that's where most folks seem to have problems from what I've read, from time to time. I'll find out in a few weeks.
W
wildcat400
Guest
Under processes: Processes: 63 cpu usage 8% Physical memory: 45%
I stopped several processes from running while I am flying: Yahoo messenger, Aol messenger, a TON of HP processes were running (for my printer), and I will turn AVG (anti-virus software) off while flying also. Other than that all of the rest of them running are for windows themselves.
I also changed my changed my framerate to 26, turned the water down to 1,
changed the resolution mesh to 38m, and changed the texture resolution to 1m.
I also did a performance score for the windows expierence: Processor calculations per second: 5.3
and everything else listed there is 5.9
So my subscore is listed at 5.3
Sooo now, I will start FSX up (after I make some grub) and see what I have.
I stopped several processes from running while I am flying: Yahoo messenger, Aol messenger, a TON of HP processes were running (for my printer), and I will turn AVG (anti-virus software) off while flying also. Other than that all of the rest of them running are for windows themselves.
I also changed my changed my framerate to 26, turned the water down to 1,
changed the resolution mesh to 38m, and changed the texture resolution to 1m.
I also did a performance score for the windows expierence: Processor calculations per second: 5.3
and everything else listed there is 5.9
So my subscore is listed at 5.3
Sooo now, I will start FSX up (after I make some grub) and see what I have.
W
wildcat400
Guest
Looks better with new settings incorporated. I also tweaked my pc up thanks to that link that quantumleap provided above.
With my frame rate set at 26 is 12.4 good? As you guys can tell I am not a computer guru. So when I think of 26 fps max, I am thinking that I should be getting 24-26 fps. Or... am I incorrect?
By the way that pic is directly over FEDEX Field (home of the Washington Redskins NFL team)
With my frame rate set at 26 is 12.4 good? As you guys can tell I am not a computer guru. So when I think of 26 fps max, I am thinking that I should be getting 24-26 fps. Or... am I incorrect?
By the way that pic is directly over FEDEX Field (home of the Washington Redskins NFL team)
Cazzie
SOH-CM-2024
wildcat,
Try lowering your frame rates to 20 as I do. I know 20 doesn't sound like much, but one thing I have noticed on my computer's set-up. FSX does not stutter or hesitate, it is a constant. If I turn the info text off, I can rarely tell the difference in the 20 fps and when it drops to maybe 18 fps in heavy traffic.
You definitely have UTX in. Looks good. :ernae:
Did you see the little review I did hear comparing the three: Default + GTX + UTX?
http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/showthread.php?t=3800
Caz
Try lowering your frame rates to 20 as I do. I know 20 doesn't sound like much, but one thing I have noticed on my computer's set-up. FSX does not stutter or hesitate, it is a constant. If I turn the info text off, I can rarely tell the difference in the 20 fps and when it drops to maybe 18 fps in heavy traffic.
You definitely have UTX in. Looks good. :ernae:
Did you see the little review I did hear comparing the three: Default + GTX + UTX?
http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/showthread.php?t=3800
Caz