M
MCDesigns
Guest
true, but according to that post today the V2 that is out already is different from the V2 that Justin is working on specifically for UTA.
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The Staff of SOH
UTX Alaska Is Released!
- Thread starter MSW
- Start date
true, but according to that post today the V2 that is out already is different from the V2 that Justin is working on specifically for UTA.
S
Sky~6
Guest
Can anyone comment on the FPS....is it hitting hard..?
How's the performance etc...
How's the performance etc...
Holger Sandmann
Charter Member
Hi guys,
Our source data are a mix of 60-m NED2, 30-m SRTM1, 90-m SRTM3 with some Canadian 25-m data along the eastern boundary, basically whichever source worked best for a given area. For example, SRTM doesn't reach north of 60 degrees latitude while the recently released ASTER 30m data are very poor quality for Alaska (and much of the rest of the world, sadly). The edges between the different source files were carefully blended and then compiled as multi-LOD (4-10) FSX terrain bgl files at 38-m grid spacing.
Cheers, Holger
Our source data are a mix of 60-m NED2, 30-m SRTM1, 90-m SRTM3 with some Canadian 25-m data along the eastern boundary, basically whichever source worked best for a given area. For example, SRTM doesn't reach north of 60 degrees latitude while the recently released ASTER 30m data are very poor quality for Alaska (and much of the rest of the world, sadly). The edges between the different source files were carefully blended and then compiled as multi-LOD (4-10) FSX terrain bgl files at 38-m grid spacing.
Cheers, Holger
Hitting pretty hard here. I have a "modest" setup (Q6600, Radeon 4870 (512), 2gb ram) and in most sceneries I can get between 20-30 frames if I don't jack the settings up too much. I can get this throughout alaska just fine as well, but the cities (fairbanks, Anchorage) I'm puttering along in single digits with full Alaska X settings. There are a couple of lower vis settings in the control panel that I'm playing with, and I was able to get about13-18 FPS with those, without too much loss of eye candy (I don't really care if the housing positions are all factually correct) Anchorage completely KO'd my FS the first couple of times I ran it last night, before tweaking.
Tried different settings and can only get 15 - 18 fps and a lot of stutter - or I lose what I bought it for - and this is on a high end system - will play with it more tonight - same settings and fly over heavy scenery elsewhere(NYC) and get 30 or better and smooth, almost all maxed
Might need to do the Autogen tweak to knowck out a few trees... This was a tip from the manual of Tongass X and may help here...
Make a backup copy of the existing fsx.cfg file, then open it with Notepad or Wordpad. Scroll down to the [TERRAIN] section and insert the following two lines:
TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_TREES_PER_CELL=2000
TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_BUILDINGS_PER_CELL=1700
That and I do know something that hits my framerates hard in Tongass is if I have FTX scenery enabled still. Before I fly outside of Tasmania (AU Blue Demo), I switch to FSX default in the tool that came with the scenery or it messes with Tongass and also slows it down for me.
BTW...
Have you tried with GA and Airline traffic and ground airport traffic turned off just to see if that helps?
If they are handling road traffic in Alaska like they did in UTX Canada, you have to drop the slider for Traffic to about 7 as thier handling of cars on the road is alot heavier than the default in FSX. They added more cards and more roads with cars.
C.
Q
quantumleap
Guest
Firstly, the best place to get support on Ultimate Terrain products is over at their support forum here.
Now on to the comments regarding performance impact. As noted in the dialog which appeared when you first ran the Ultimate Alaska Setup Tool, and in the manual, the default 'out-of-the-box' configuration is to have all its scenery enhancements enabled and cranked up to their highest feature level. This means that in the heavily populated areas such as Anchorage and Fairbanks, each residential house is its own object, placed for best fit with the terrain. This will tax a system more than the default FSX New York city for example.
Ultimate Alaska therefore has the most extensive set of configuration options of any of the Ultimate Terrain X series products to allow users to balance features versus performance based on their system both at a simple global area level and down to an advanced per-location level. Despite thus extensive set of options, it also implements a new "Preset" feature which allows quick changes to overall functionality without the need to delve into the advanced settings, and so offers a very simple method to control the balance of features versus performance for the majority of users.
So for users who are not too concerned about the highly detailed and accurate placed housing objects in the major cities like Anchorage and Fairbanks, and would rather have the general landclass based autogen placement of residential buildings to gain some performance because of this trade-off, then just select the AlaskaModels3 preset available to you. Simple as that.
Note that for the presets AlaskaModels1, AlaskaModels1Alt and AlaskaModels2, changing the autogen complexity in FSX or tweaking the autogen levels in your FSX.CFG will have limited use as the objects are not autogen. It would be the scenery complexity in FSX which will have more impact in those cases.
In general however, use the presets rather than moving your FSX scenery and/or autogen complexity settings from what you normally fly at to balance things.
For a lot more information on how and what the Ultimate Alaska presets do, along with explanation of how to balance performance versus features, check out the user guide which was installed with the product.
Jeff
Now on to the comments regarding performance impact. As noted in the dialog which appeared when you first ran the Ultimate Alaska Setup Tool, and in the manual, the default 'out-of-the-box' configuration is to have all its scenery enhancements enabled and cranked up to their highest feature level. This means that in the heavily populated areas such as Anchorage and Fairbanks, each residential house is its own object, placed for best fit with the terrain. This will tax a system more than the default FSX New York city for example.
Ultimate Alaska therefore has the most extensive set of configuration options of any of the Ultimate Terrain X series products to allow users to balance features versus performance based on their system both at a simple global area level and down to an advanced per-location level. Despite thus extensive set of options, it also implements a new "Preset" feature which allows quick changes to overall functionality without the need to delve into the advanced settings, and so offers a very simple method to control the balance of features versus performance for the majority of users.
So for users who are not too concerned about the highly detailed and accurate placed housing objects in the major cities like Anchorage and Fairbanks, and would rather have the general landclass based autogen placement of residential buildings to gain some performance because of this trade-off, then just select the AlaskaModels3 preset available to you. Simple as that.
Note that for the presets AlaskaModels1, AlaskaModels1Alt and AlaskaModels2, changing the autogen complexity in FSX or tweaking the autogen levels in your FSX.CFG will have limited use as the objects are not autogen. It would be the scenery complexity in FSX which will have more impact in those cases.
In general however, use the presets rather than moving your FSX scenery and/or autogen complexity settings from what you normally fly at to balance things.
For a lot more information on how and what the Ultimate Alaska presets do, along with explanation of how to balance performance versus features, check out the user guide which was installed with the product.
Jeff
Oh I wasn't complaining, or attempting to get tech support, I just followed the manual, and as I mentioned, the presets got me some better frames. As installed, however UTX Alaska was unflyable on my system in anchorage and fairbanks. I'm sure that folks who have the new i7's are doing just fine with it (I don't believe the "zero" impact line, but it's all good)
I am currently flying with zero air traffic, but I'm sure I do have some road traffic zipping around, I'll try capping that. I've heard of the per cell tweaks, but I don't think that's my issue, like I said, I can render the pine tree infested parts of the state just fine. All in all, I'm very happy to have Alaska again, and It was not my intention to bitch, but an honest answer is an honest answer, and all things considered, this is one of the more frame rate impacting sceneries I've installed. I don't think this is a surprise considering the notes in the manual.
I am currently flying with zero air traffic, but I'm sure I do have some road traffic zipping around, I'll try capping that. I've heard of the per cell tweaks, but I don't think that's my issue, like I said, I can render the pine tree infested parts of the state just fine. All in all, I'm very happy to have Alaska again, and It was not my intention to bitch, but an honest answer is an honest answer, and all things considered, this is one of the more frame rate impacting sceneries I've installed. I don't think this is a surprise considering the notes in the manual.
S
Sky~6
Guest
Looks nice...(I will leave the comments about comparing this to FTX to myself, I don't want to be unfair)
I'm not sure that's real fair, Alaska X IS an attempt to do something new, and I applaud that, even if it doesn't agree with my machine. nobody's a bigger FTX fan than me, but all Texture flow is at this point as far as I'm concerned, is a youtube video and a marketing term. and my machine crawls at a couple of their more detailed airports too. I'm sure if FTX decided to accurately place every single building in their scenery areas with vector based buildings my machine would gasp for breath as well
I just wanted to report that I believe I got my frame rate issue sorted out. I was doing a few longer flights today while snowed in in PA (24 inches!) and noticed that all of my flights in UTX alaska were getting out of memory errors and crash to desktop after only 10-20 minutes of flight. This was only happening in UTX Alaska, but I was noticing some slowdowns in other areas of the world as well. So I added to /3gb switch to my boot.ini (didn't think that applied to me before, since I only have 2gb of physical RAM) This has apparently worked wonders since not I'm not crashing to desktop anymore, and I can get upwards of 50-60 fps when flying away from the urban centers. Anchorage is now flyable at 16-22 fps, and the rest is very smooth. I do think I will submit a post over at the support forums though because I'm still getting a lot of floating trees over the scenery at various points. I am now at least very much enjoying the scenery!
wilycoyote4
Charter Member
:ernae:http://www.fsdeveloper.com/wiki/index.php?title=OOM_Error&diff=prev&oldid=4623
and read that as well, particularly if you have a 1gb vid card, because you can find your system isn't bootable (It's possible to inadvertantly dedicate all your memory to FSX and your vid card and leave nothing left for windows)
and read that as well, particularly if you have a 1gb vid card, because you can find your system isn't bootable (It's possible to inadvertantly dedicate all your memory to FSX and your vid card and leave nothing left for windows)
B
BladeRun
Guest
I just d/l'd and installed UTX Alaska. I fly for the va TCA Alaska and spend most of my flight sim time in Alaska so this add-on is great for me. I used the above mentioned autogen tweak from Tongass X, which I also have. I also used the enviromental preset AlaskaModels1alt. With my laptop, I'm getting 25+ fps just outside of Anchorage and in the high teens, low 20's while flying over Anchorage itself. For the amount of detail I'm seeing, I'm very happy with the performance. 
Sounds good... please let us know your system spec. thanks Howard