Big frame rate hits

[cowpatz]

Lawrie I am getting some fairly big frame hits when operating into several of your airfields. The worst seem to be Whangarei and Whakatane although I have not been into the others recently to check on the actual frame rates. Normally in the cruise I can get 25 to 29 FPS but this drops quickly when heading into these airfields. On short finals I can get down as low as 5 or worse with some ground manoeuvers resembling slide shows making taxiing difficult. I notice both of these airfields have extensive chain link fences. Could this be the problem?
I know my computer specs are not flash 2700 Mhz AMD, 2 GB RAM, Radeon X800 AGP Video, however I would have thought I could get better than that and I am getting good frame rates in the air with cloud. The sliders are set fairly well down too.
Can you suggest a course of action here Lawrie to resolve this vexing issue?

[Snowman]

QUOTE (cowpatz @ Jun 23 2008, 08:43 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Lawrie I am getting some fairly big frame hits when operating into several of your airfields. The worst seem to be Whangarei and Whakatane although I have not been into the others recently to check on the actual frame rates. Normally in the cruise I can get 25 to 29 FPS but this drops quickly when heading into these airfields. On short finals I can get down as low as 5 or worse with some ground manoeuvers resembling slide shows making taxiing difficult. I notice both of these airfields have extensive chain link fences. Could this be the problem?
I know my computer specs are not flash 2700 Mhz AMD, 2 GB RAM, Radeon X800 AGP Video, however I would have thought I could get better than that and I am getting good frame rates in the air with cloud. The sliders are set fairly well down too.
Can you suggest a course of action here Lawrie to resolve this vexing issue?

Well, my machine isnt that much different to yours...............
AMD Athlon XP3400+ , 2.25GB DDR-400 RAM, 256mb ATI Radeon X-800 AGP Video Card.
Fences can be an fps killer,........ particularly metal and chain-link types, although, i dont have any problems at either airport you have mentioned.
I have all sliders maxed to the right, including AI.
One thing i ALWAYS do before i take a flight is make sure no other apps are open and running in the background, and i re-start the computer to clear RAM before i fly.
I get a small drop in fps when looking directly at the chain link fences at Whangarei, but the lowest ive seen it drop to is 22 fps there.
Whakatane is fine in mine. Whakatane only has a little chain link fencing around the terminal area, the rest is wooden type fencing which has no impact at all on my machine, whereas Whangareai is ALL chain link fencing.
Fps can also vary widely at one particular airport, depending on the complexity of the aircraft you are actually flying as well. Very well detailed aircraft, with well detailed VCs, can be a big fps hitter, as can the number of AI aircraft operating there.
You could go into Whangarei's "Scenery" folder and remove any file with name xxxxxFce.bgl in it. Any filename in my sceneries ending with "Fce" before the .bgl is a fence file. Move them to a temporary folder somewhere, and then go fly into Whangarei and see if it makes any difference.
The other differences could be in the FS9.cfg file that Microsoft so kindly HIDES away in a different location...................
Ive done many tweaks to that over the years to improve performance, and stop blurries of photoreal scenery at higher speeds, etc etc etc
So much so, ive forgotten what ive done and when. ( if i have to do a re-install of FS, i always make a copy of the FS9.cfg file first, so i can copy it back in). There are many tutorials available for editing the FS9.cfg file.
Apart from the entirely drastic move of getting a newer computer, or removing my scenery and seeing if theres another out there, or putting up with default scenery, im not sure what else to suggest. Everybodies setup is different in one way or another.

Lawrie.

[cowpatz]

Just as a follow up Lawrie, I took out the fences and my frame rates with the default Cessna in 2D panel mode went from 7 to a minimum of 22 when on finals. I have yet to try it at Whangarei but I suspect the same may happen there. I was finding that every time I looked in the direction of the airfield the frame rate went down from 28 or 29 down to single digit figures.

[cowpatz]

Just tried Whangarei with similar results. It must be the fences. I have taken all of them out but I will try putting back the non-chain link fences and see what happens.