NZ Topo Giving Poor Performance

[s0cks]

Hi there,

When turning on the topo in my addon scenery for FSX I get a massive performance hit. While hovering around the Auckland area and north shore I get roughly 20-40fps depending on where I am or what I'm looking at. With the topo installed this drops to a miserable 10-20fps. Disabling the topo fixes it. I thought perhaps it had to do with traffic and autogen but it didn't make much difference unless I turned them WAY down.

I have the FSX fix and am running Vista 64bit. Fresh install of FSX with only SP2, and NZ 20m Mesh installed.

Thanks.

[Christian]

QUOTE (s0cks @ Mar 18 2008, 12:35 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hi there,

When turning on the topo in my addon scenery for FSX I get a massive performance hit. While hovering around the Auckland area and north shore I get roughly 20-40fps depending on where I am or what I'm looking at. With the topo installed this drops to a miserable 10-20fps. Disabling the topo fixes it. I thought perhaps it had to do with traffic and autogen but it didn't make much difference unless I turned them WAY down.

I have the FSX fix and am running Vista 64bit. Fresh install of FSX with only SP2, and NZ 20m Mesh installed.

Thanks.

Hmm, this is a tough one. I don't get this fps on any of my systems. SP2 is known to be very system dependent, so maybe a 'video driver bug' as MS likes to call it. I'd try installing the latest video card driver and see if that makes a difference.

Christian

[s0cks]

I've not had much luck. I have the latest video card drivers but this is very strange.

To give an example, with Road Traffic set to 0% I get 16-20fps on a takeoff run from NZAA with the Ultralite. If I disable to the Topo I get 35-38fps!!! How can this be? It makes no sense to me, but then I'm not a scenery designer.

I've posted in a few other forums to see if anyone knows anything. I understand most people have had no performance problems witht the topo in FSX so it must be system related.

[HardCorePawn]

What sort of harddrive is FSX installed on? Is the topo scenery installed on the same drive?

Perhaps there are issues reading the data from the drive which is causing FSX to choke?

[s0cks]

Looks like its SP2. Uninstalling SP2 fixed it. Guess I'll have to live without it

[creator2003]

HHHmm i run sp2 and no problems , i take it you have it all in the right scenery order ,and your quad core is working as a quad core when fsx is running etc ..from my understanding there is something you have to do to get it working as even a duel core with fsim ,as they were ready or didnt make it duel compat when they released it ...
im so surprised that its not working sweet for you i have a very low end system ,not even half what you have and i get 40 flps over anywhere in Auckland ,plus i dont even run nhancer at the moment ,and no tweaks ...
sp2 i think is a must have update ,i wouldnt settle for anything less ...plus you wont be able to run addons that are now design with sp2 in mind ,"thats all of them in the future including robins corns stuff ..

[s0cks]

Sorry creator, I meant I'll have to live without Topo. I agree that SP2 is a must-have.

What do you have your traffic and autogen set to? I normally get 35fps-ish over Auckland with pretty high settings as you may have seen from my tweaking post. I was actually rather happy with FSX at that point. I've just tried FTX too, which has crippled my system. Literally a 60% performance drop over Sydney. The NZ topo drops my performance by 50% also. I've tried everything short of a complete OS re-install. Uninstalling SP2 seemed to fix the problem... but I didn't uninstall properly (you are supposed to do a repair install after removing SP2 according to the readme, but I didn't). Note: FTX was still poor on SP1 and SP2.

[creator2003]

No traffic at all never ever i play m/player for that ,agn i have about normal to high always ,ftx well you are not the only one that gets a drop around sydney ,but i suppose it what you do with traffic and stuff that is effecting your performance there ..
topo or traffic whats more important ?? traffic you hardly see or awesome coastlines that give the best view of NZ ..ther must be something that is conflicting with it or its the traffic settings ,traffic has always been a hit on flps even when you cant see them around
agn in fsx is like 50 times the amount ever in fs9 ,so low to normal is more than enough ..
it will always be a give and take with any sim its just what to give up and what to take on ...

i would still if i was you continue working out why this would be happening ,this mite take weeks or months but the topo would be worth every hour trying . if there like 100pls running fine with it and only 1 that ive heard of not having any luck it will be your end of the sim and not the product ..
sad but true..
mike

[s0cks]

I totally agree. I think its system related also. Regarding traffic, I love AI and I never play m/player. I never had any problems with traffic before Topo or FTX, but for the sake of argument I turned it all off and also road vehicles but it barely made much of a difference (except at the airports for obvious reasons). I'll keep at it. I might try FSX on another computer I have here. Its not as fast but it would be a good start.

[creator2003]

I take it and i think ive asked already that you have the scenery order in the right way and have installed the update for fsx for the topo ??your topo folder should be below the addon scenery library ,if you have 20meter mesh aswell it should look like this



?

[s0cks]

No difference it seems wherever I move the Topo in the list. I set them like yours and it was just as bad. Here is a sample:

With topo (18fps) over southern Auckland:


Without topo (36fps) in same area:


I enlarged the FPS so you could see but the image compression didn't help! Hehe.

[s0cks]

YES!!! We are getting somewhere now! What does this do:

obj_powerpylon.bgl ??

I would assume it puts in all the power pylons, but what does it ACTUALLY do? I'm no scenery designer. Does it call a certain model or texture? If I remove this file from the topo scenery I get my awesome framerate back!

Some file stats so you can check yours against mine:

File size: 1.11MB
Modified: 22nd July 2005 10:21:20am

Thanks creator, you urged me to keep troubleshooting and now we are getting somewhere.

[toprob]

QUOTE (s0cks @ Mar 18 2008, 01:14 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

YES!!! We are getting somewhere now! What does this do:

obj_powerpylon.bgl ??

I would assume it puts in all the power pylons, but what does it ACTUALLY do? I'm no scenery designer. Does it call a certain model or texture? If I remove this file from the topo scenery I get my awesome framerate back!

Some file stats so you can check yours against mine:

File size: 1.11MB
Modified: 22nd July 2005 10:21:20am

Thanks creator, you urged me to keep troubleshooting and now we are getting somewhere.

The default FSX topo includes accurate pylons, so this would only double them up? (FS2004 didn't include them.) From memory it called a different model from the default, as I remember getting a pylon double-up with Auckland City, which included default pylon objects, when the topo was released, and the two different pylons were quite different.
Anyway, I suspect that you could do with this file.

[s0cks]

Thanks for the reply, but I don't see a doubling up on my system. Without the topo the default pylons exist but not in the same place. With the topo the defaults vanish and are replaced with the acurate ones, but my framerate takes a dive. If I remove the obj_powerpylon.bgl I get NO power pylons. The topo pylons appear to be the same model as default....

[Christian]

QUOTE (s0cks @ Mar 23 2008, 03:09 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thanks for the reply, but I don't see a doubling up on my system. Without the topo the default pylons exist but not in the same place. With the topo the defaults vanish and are replaced with the acurate ones, but my framerate takes a dive. If I remove the obj_powerpylon.bgl I get NO power pylons. The topo pylons appear to be the same model as default....

Hmm, in theory the pylons shouldn't cause a frame rate drop. Someone in another forum mentioned that maybe something is wrong with you library file. In any case, I guess missing out on the pylons isn't too bad a deal if you get your fps back. Otherwise you probably have to do a reinstall...

Cheers,
Christian

[s0cks]

Well I've done 3 fresh installs in as many days! Pretty sure the install is fine. I'm stumped but I can live without pylons for now. Thanks everyone for your help.

[s0cks]

Thought I would bring this up again 2 years later. Same computer but now with a GTX275 + Windows 7 and the SAME problem. Removing power pylons fixes the dive in framerates. The only other thing I found was that running in DX10 fixes the problem. I'm starting to think its a very strange issue relating directly to my hardware.

I'm wondering with 2 more years of experience if you guys have any other ideas?

This might also explain the terrible performance I get with FTX, but who knows. I'm starting to think that FTX is just a massive system hog. I may upgrade soon, but I'm still baffled about this, and I hate unsolved mysteries.

[Christian]

QUOTE (s0cks @ May 24 2010, 11:15 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thought I would bring this up again 2 years later. Same computer but now with a GTX275 + Windows 7 and the SAME problem. Removing power pylons fixes the dive in framerates. The only other thing I found was that running in DX10 fixes the problem. I'm starting to think its a very strange issue relating directly to my hardware.

I'm wondering with 2 more years of experience if you guys have any other ideas?

This might also explain the terrible performance I get with FTX, but who knows. I'm starting to think that FTX is just a massive system hog. I may upgrade soon, but I'm still baffled about this, and I hate unsolved mysteries.

Hard to know what's the cause as there are maybe only a handful or even less people with this problem...

[s0cks]

QUOTE (Christian @ Aug 16 2010, 05:56 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hard to know what's the cause as there are maybe only a handful or even less people with this problem...

Fixed with computer upgrade. I can only assume it was a hardware issue.