Frames per second -- the discussion

[toprob]

There are little bits of discussions going on in various threads, relating to FPS, but I'd quite like to see them consolidated here. Since I've already been through this process 6 or 7 years ago with FS2004, I'm particularly dealing with FSX, hence the choice of subforum.

First, a bit of background and a few suggestions. I don't want to get into a discussion of what constitutes good FPS -- this is covered in dreary detail throughout the FS forums, with no hope of arriving at one answer. Neither do I want another tweak-fest -- there are a lot of tweaks out there to improve some aspects of FSX, but there is no magic tweak which will somehow take away the normal limitations of the current FSX/hardware combination.

These are my own opinions, and are not aimed at anyone in particular, so please don't take offence if I cover something you've mentioned in another thread:)

Scenery Addons:

There are two types of addons which affect performance. One is the type of thing which adds some elements to the sim to improve realism. Real NZ, VLC and Orbx do this. The other is the sort which improves performance by removing some things, such as thinning out autogen or reducing the size of textures. These are two different things! They are probably mutually exclusive, although there's no reason why they can't work together, it would just take a lot of research and work by you, the user.

Both are subject to laws of physics, which can be shown as very simple math -- A + B = C, where A is the performance overhead of the default FSX, B is the overhead added by the extra detail, and C is the new performance level. 'B' can either be negative or positive, depending on whether the goal is to improve performance or improve realism. So either we add detail, which lowers performance, or we take away detail, which improves performance.

Realistically, we can't have both. Personally I'm only interested in improving realism -- I have experimenting with reducing the size of textures, though, but without any interest from users. So I concentrate on addons which add on, rather than take away.

The sort of scenery we love to get steamed up about is normally the sort which offers so much, but at a performance price. Given that we can't have both, now is a good time to stop and ask ourselves if we still think we can have both -- well, do we? I bet some of use still do. But we can't. No, we can't.

Settings and Sliders

Hmm, this is another contentious area. Many users just don't want to use the sliders or settings, as it means giving something up. Makes sense, doesn't it? We all paid good money for FSX, so we want it to give us everything we paid for. Plus we are all human -- we want what everyone else is having. Still makes sense.

So we'll put together a simulator which allows this. Given we know already that we can't have both performance and detail/realism, (no, we can't) then we would have to take things out of the default FSX to make our new 100% performance, no sliders simulator. This would be a great idea, and suit everyone. Kind of like the first simulator I used on the Commodore 64 -- it ran at 1 frame every two seconds, but it did so for everyone. Nobody got any better or worse performance.

Seems so simple and logical, that Microsoft must have been asleep not to realise it.

Except if you have invested a bit more money than most in a system designed for speed. Or over the first few years of owning the product, you upgrade your system to keep up with current gameplay. Or if you want your local airport to look more like the real thing, rather than a strip of dirt and an orange tube on a stick.

Or maybe you just want better clouds, because the current clouds detract from your immersion. Or you want a nice GPS to help you train for real. Or you wanna see your house.

Now lets try another simulator idea then. This time we'll give the guy who wants the clouds the ability to turn them on, plus if he wants buy some beautiful payware clouds which will make him feel like an angel zooming about up there. We'll give the guy who wants a realistic airport the ability to choose how much is displayed, and a way to buy a nice payware airport. We'll give the guy who is seriously into hardware the opportunity to make the most of his new super-computer.

Now these are all different people we're talking about. They all want various things in their simulator, some want more than others. It would be nice to give them the choice. Hence a whole bunch of sliders and switches in FSX to let them choose. Of course some still want everything -- which as we now know, they can't have. No they can't.

It is possible to go too far either way -- we can turn down the settings so far that we just get bored with the sim and wander off, but generally things go the other way -- we put too much in.

FSX is a bucket.

When FSX was first released MS referred to a 'bucket' setting. This was the initial settings which FSX decided your system could reasonably handle. This didn't work too well, because it wasn't clever enough to know what things affected performance, but it did define their idea of FSX performance being a bucket. The other reason why it didn't work is because they didn't get users thinking of it as a bucket. So, I have a bucket, and I know it is a set size, but I don't want it to overflow, no matter how much I put into it. But I can't have it both ways. That would be crazy.

We can turn on the tap and fill up our bucket, or we can dribble a little in as we need it, but one thing is certain -- once the bucket is full, it'll just keep overflowing if we try to put more in. We can buy a bigger bucket, but no matter how much we want to, we can't get more into our old bucket.

Turning up the settings beyond what our computer is capable of is one way to overflow the bucket, but developers can do this as well, by trying to cram too much into the scenery. Cramming stuff in is what they should be doing, and we want them to do it, but we expect them to know when to stop. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. One day our sims will all have birds flying and crickets chirping, but that's take a really big bucket. Don't get me wrong, we'll have those buckets, it's just that we don't have them now.

In the meantime, though, they can give us a huge range of stuff to put into our bucket, including birds and crickets, and let us choose what we want until the bucket is full. And if we want to try something else -- like an actual high-performance, high detail aircraft, for instance -- then we can just empty the bucket out a bit by reducing the settings, so it can fit.

Now that sounds like a brilliant system I've just thought of, except that it is FSX already.

Every time someone derides FSX because of performance, they are really complaining about the size of their bucket:)

[s0cks]

You're not seeing the point.

The whole point is the FSX engine is badly optimized. We need only look at the Service Packs for proof of that. The game shipped without multicore support. Multicore support has been "patched" in. Fine, this certainly helps, but this means the whole core engine design was coded using single threaded technology and ideas. This is the exact reason why a 2 core 4GHz CPU runs FSX faster than a 3GHz Quad Core CPU, even though the quad has far more computational power over 4 cores.

I shouldn't need a HUGE bucket to be able to run a 4 year old sim at its best settings - the way it was meant to be played.

I admit that the addon scenery has an affect, but again, if the engine was better optimized we could have more complex scenery at better framerates.

But really this is all a mute point anyway. The MSFS team is no more, and there will never be an FS11, so we'll have to live with what we have. But that doesn't change the fact that its a bad engine.

I'm actually intrigued to run a test where by I set the FSX settings to match the exact same settings as FS2004 (when FS2004 is maxxed) and see which runs better. I guess it should be the same, but I'll laugh if its worse!

[toprob]

One of my points is that we have what we have to work with -- no amount of wishing can make our systems faster or FSX better-optimised. Yes, FSX would have been different if they took a different path, but they didn't.

And you are assuming that the way it is meant to be played is with full settings. I'm saying that if you don't assume this, then you'll be happier with FSX. I assume that I need to choose which of the many, many features I want to see.

I love the way FS2004 performs on my poor system. I would have loved it back in its day, but now all I see is chunky graphics. I do love the smoothness, though. One day I'd love to see that in FSX.

[ZK-MAT]

One can get too hung up with FPS, watching it like a hawk and despairing those times it drops past what a personal benchmark one has set. The truth is that the FPS can go quite low before you really see any real difference .. movies at the theatre play at 24 fps for example and to me they don't seem jerky.

I find I notice jerkiness at 10 fps or below, but that's usually only when I have brought up the fps counter and are concious of it. Other times I may see jerkiness, but then it's over and I get back into what I am sitting in front of my pc to do ... fly a plane. I remind myself I am not flying in MS Flight sim to watch a movie about a plane flying over the countryside, and stop sight seeing (can do that using Google Earth) and hop back into the virual cockpit and concentrate on the flying part. Using IL2 as a comparison, when most of the time I am exclusively in the cockpit, the game lags and stutters often when there is a lot of action - either due to server load or an individual's system. It does not detract from enjoying the game.

The thing that does irk me however is micro stutters. I sometimes bring up the fps then to see if there's a co-relation, and usually there's not, and I accept that my system is ancient and dial down the settings or look for a work around.

Sure, one can moan that MS have not produced a product that performs as they want it to, but in life many things don't perform as they should. So we either put up with what we have, modify our own behaviour, or avoid the situation. Those options are available in computer gaming too.

If everything was perfect we'd have nothing to strive for. I voted "No".

[toprob]

QUOTE (ZK-MAT @ May 10 2010, 06:34 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The thing that does irk me however is micro stutters. I sometimes bring up the fps then to see if there's a co-relation, and usually there's not, and I accept that my system is ancient and dial down the settings or look for a work around.

Yes, I find that I've adapted my flying a bit to deal with this -- for instance, Spot View tends to suffer badly from the jerks, whereas Fixed Spot is not so much a problem, I also tend to concentrate on the instruments when turning so I don't notice the stuttering scenery out the window:)

By the way, I voted yes, for reasons which I can't even begin to explain...

[markll]

QUOTE (toprob @ May 10 2010, 07:32 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

By the way, I voted yes, for reasons which I can't even begin to explain...

LOL Rob....FWIW, I voted yes as well, on the assumption that the question was not time sensitive - I really DO think we can have it all with FSX, but realisticly not till our PC specs are well beyond what is the minimum required hardware spec for FSX.

[Timmo]

This post might get a bit philosophical so I aplogise in advance

Can we have it all? The answer is a most definite 'no!' Think about what 'it all' is- It is reality.....a simulation can never be reality, because by definition it is a simulation (i.e. a crude copy) of something. If we could have it all, there would be little need for a simulator.

Given that a computer does not have infinite processing power, it follows that the finite resources must be shared amongst a thin sliver of 'reality'. So a programmers job is to decide which parts of reality to assign processing power to replicate. I think MS got it fairly right given the complexity of what they were trying to model- Aerodynamics, aircraft systems, air traffic systems, world navigation, world geographical scenery and 3d objects all wrapped up in a nice graphical presentation. Flight sim really is a complex undertaking and each part takes time to develop.

In terms of development, FSX was developed at a difficult time- Multicore machines weren't really in vogue at the start of development and there was no way to know that hardware developers would follow that route.....so, yep, it may be sometime before FSX really hums because it is limited by the clock speed of a single processor regardless of how many cores you have.

Some wise person once said that the worst feature that MS/Aces included in flightsim was the FPS counter......try turning it off and you'll notice your sim performing much smoother

[s0cks]

I wouldn't start using the "native eye can't see xx FPS", its a very wrong and outdated view. The human eye can see upto around 72fps. Hence why a CRT at 60Hz (60 refreshes a second) can give you a banging headache. With movies and TV you cannot see jerkiness because it is motion capture. Very different. When you record real life, you also record motion blur which tells your brain something is moving fluidly. Some games have basic motion blur, but its nothing near the same.

Any gamer will tell you it is easy to see the difference between 30fps and 60fps (especially with fast action). A good example in FSX is to start panning around an area that gives you 20-30fps, now move the view so your looking top down. Notice the huge increase in pan speed and fluidity? That my friend is 60fps+

I really just cannot see how anyone can be "immersed" in a 15fps slideshow. I don't sit there with my FPS counter up, but I sure as hell notice when it goes below 25fps - and bringing up the counter confirms it.

[ZK-MAT]

I think I have said this before - different strokes for different folks. No one forces you to use FSX, we like to focus on positives on the forum where possible. FSX isn't the right game for you, at this point in time.

[markll]

QUOTE (s0cks @ May 10 2010, 10:44 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I wouldn't start using the "native eye can't see xx FPS", its a very wrong and outdated view. The human eye can see upto around 72fps. Hence why a CRT at 60Hz (60 refreshes a second) can give you a banging headache. With movies and TV you cannot see jerkiness because it is motion capture. Very different. When you record real life, you also record motion blur which tells your brain something is moving fluidly. Some games have basic motion blur, but its nothing near the same.

Any gamer will tell you it is easy to see the difference between 30fps and 60fps (especially with fast action). A good example in FSX is to start panning around an area that gives you 20-30fps, now move the view so your looking top down. Notice the huge increase in pan speed and fluidity? That my friend is 60fps+

I really just cannot see how anyone can be "immersed" in a 15fps slideshow. I don't sit there with my FPS counter up, but I sure as hell notice when it goes below 25fps - and bringing up the counter confirms it.

So, it might be logical to assume that for every single frame rendered through the GPU by FSX, fsx also does a similar amount of calculations of things like flight simulation variables, positional updates for user and AI aircraft, etc, etc, etc. But thats not actually the case.

What you get for every frame rendered, is actually a whole lot of stuff done behind the scenes, many times faster than the graphical framerate. For that reason, flight down to around 15fps IS actually pretty smooth. Sure, you can tell on screen that it's not rendering as fast, but the point is that unless you're a total eye-candy , and most FS users are not, 15fps for brief periods is actually ok, because the flight calculations are still smoothly done.

So your graphical framerate isn't as fast, but calculations are still done at what is an acceptable rate for most people.

[dbcunnz]

The thing about FSX that I would have liked to have seen would be to have a choice of what you loaded onto your PC like I never fly outside the Pacific region covering NZ the Pacific Islands and Australia I don't need North and South America, Canada, Asia, Middle East, Russia, Europe or Africa but I have it all loaded on my PC because there is no way to load FSX without all that stuff I do not need.
The big question is would it make any difference to the performance of FSX if you could just load the South Pacific region??
As for frame rate I am happy with anything over 15 fps

Doug

[s0cks]

QUOTE (markll @ May 10 2010, 11:43 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

So, it might be logical to assume that for every single frame rendered through the GPU by FSX, fsx also does a similar amount of calculations of things like flight simulation variables, positional updates for user and AI aircraft, etc, etc, etc. But thats not actually the case.

What you get for every frame rendered, is actually a whole lot of stuff done behind the scenes, many times faster than the graphical framerate. For that reason, flight down to around 15fps IS actually pretty smooth. Sure, you can tell on screen that it's not rendering as fast, but the point is that unless you're a total eye-candy , and most FS users are not, 15fps for brief periods is actually ok, because the flight calculations are still smoothly done.

So your graphical framerate isn't as fast, but calculations are still done at what is an acceptable rate for most people.

That's simply not true. 15 frames per second is exactly that. My plane is flying through the air at 15fps. It's clearly noticeable - even from VC view. The dials don't move as smoothly, AI doesn't move as smoothly, plane response is down (or rather joystick response). Unless you fly full auto-pilot and don't pan your head I fail to see how anyone can't notice 15fps? Ok, so a slight dip isn't the end of the world, but for some people 15fps is there average framerate over certain areas. Hell even 20 feels slow to me. I think what you are referring to is stutters, which is different to framerate.

It's one of the reasons X-Plane automatically drops the view distance if your FPS drops to an unacceptable level, because the immersion and enjoyment of flight cannot be had when you have sluggish controls and visuals.

[toprob]

QUOTE

The big question is would it make any difference to the performance of FSX if you could just load the South Pacific region??[/quote]
No you are only loading a certain radius of scenery and objects so anything from overseas would not matter ..

Last edited by creator2003 on Tue May 11, 2010 12:16 am, edited 1 time in total.

[toprob]

There has to be something wrong with quoting yourself, but:

QUOTE

I don't want to get into a discussion of what constitutes good FPS -- this is covered in dreary detail throughout the FS forums, with no hope of arriving at one answer.[/quote]

There is no way that anyone is going to be convinced that they are enjoying something when they are not, and certainly nobody is going to take away my enjoyment of FSX by saying that I don't really enjoy it. It is true, however, that there are as many opinions on this as there are simmers, and that's a very important part of what I was driving at. No matter how many different ways there are to use FSX, we have a lot of ways to make it work for us. For me, this means turning the detail up when I want to go sightseeing, even if it means dropping the frame-rate low, or I can turn the detail down to give me the edge in a race around pylons.

Everyone has that control, even though some will enjoy it more than others, and some, as always, will make a complete dog's breakfast of it.

So despite our differing opinions on this, we all have the same tools to adjust things as we want. Unless what we want is IT ALL!!! Which the results of the poll so far suggest that we can't have...

There is a lot of truth in all the varying posts here, but most of it is irrelevant to me. Yes, I know that some experiments suggest that I should enjoy the sim only if I can run it at least 100FPS, but I don't give a rat's, because a) I can't reliably get 100FPS, and b) I enjoy it at lower FPS anyway.

Because there is so many ways to adjust performance in FSX, it can appeal to a lot more people. But I don't think it's going to appeal to everyone, nothing does.

I'm happy (as an administrator) to let this thread continue, since I knew it would be controversial, but remember the rules -- don't get personal, and don't attack individuals, companies or organisations.

As I said, there is a lot of truth here. Yes, I do believe that updating the controls is tied to the frame-rate, so I have less control over the aircraft at lower frame-rates. But I know this, and work with it. X-plane's habit of dropping visibility drove me balmy, and was one of the many reasons why I didn't persevere with it. Brilliant idea, just not for everyone.

This thread exists to help people understand the issue of performance, and what they can do to deal with it.

[s0cks]

I guess it will always be personal preference. I come from a background of playing videogames of many different varieties, but mainly first person shooters. In a first person shooter a framerate over 30 is a must, and over 60 is ideal. I've become so used to this that it irritates me when i start to see low frames - and personally I notice it a lot, and hate it. The problem is, I'm also used to seeing the best. For the past 4 years or so I have always had a computer capable of playing the latest games maxxed out. It breaks my heart to see the fantastic stuff that can be done in FSX only to know it is going to be a slideshow.

The other problem with this is that most people will take screenshots and promote their addons/scenery at the max settings, even though it is probably unplayable for most. I think there a lot of people conned into making the move to FSX on average rigs, only to find they can't really run it how they had seen and wanted to.

It is also kind of sad, to me, that so many people are happy to sacrifice smooth flight for eye candy. After all this is a flight simulator, not google earth.

However, you can have it all, it just costs money.

[creator2003]

The first person shooters are only displaying about 10-1000 meters so you can build alot more eye candy into them, thus your great flp rates ,on my rig p4 3.0ghz single core i can also play cod5 full settings with very little impact ,when it comes to the sim balance is all i need ,most addons ive had run good on my PC until i meet super realistic overkill airports ,again when building a airport for X i take into account what else is within 50 miles 100 miles because the scenery mite be right near another high end airport ,if i was thinking of adding to first person shooter i just make another level and load ..

[s0cks]

Not always. Take a look at Just Cause 2 for example. A huge area of land with fully modeled cities, townships, villages, forests, deserts, etc... There is also AI aircraft flying around, as well as cars and boats. When flying up high the view distance is incredible to say the least, and the detail and smoothness stays phenomenal throughout. And this is a game where you can go from flying high, to posting a letter in a postbox.

Technology has gone a long way. Remember that CoD5 uses a modified Quake 3 engine - i.e. OLD! Still I understand that as a game it has much less calculations to perform, but I don't get how it can still manage to render these wonderfully complicated cities, whereas FSX struggles with, what is essentially very basic 6 to 8 sided buildings and 2D trees. And don't even think about having shadows for autogen.

[markll]

QUOTE (s0cks @ May 11 2010, 12:01 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

That's simply not true.

Actually, yes it is. YOU are wrong. But whatever. Lets agree to disagree. The way I see it, you've got three choices. 1) Accept FSX for what it is. Its not going to change any time soon, maybe you *can* just put up with it. 2) Upgrade your machine with the specific aim of improving FSX perf. 3) Stop flying FSX and find something else!

After all, FSX itself is not going to change. Lets not forget that it was written a very long time ago, in PC technology terms. It was written prior to the popular availability of multicore CPUs, prior to DirectX 10, prior to PhysX and Havoc physics engines and prior to the ability to transfer parallel processing tasks away from the GPU to the CPU. Oh, and it was written for 32 bit operating systems, with generally less than 2GB of RAM on board.

You mention Just Cause 2. Well, that game has been able to take advantage of all these advances in PC gaming technology. FSX has not. Hell Just Cause *1* was probably still being written when FSX was released. I really don't understand why you feel the need to complain about a 5 year old piece of software and how it performs. Please, either just like it or lump it ok?

[markll]

Actually s0cks, just what IS your system spec? I'm curious because you seem to be implying that you can run modern FPS games at full detail at a million miles an hour (in framerate terms ) yet FSX won't run very well at all. I've got what could probably be considered a mid-range rig (dual core Athlon II at 3ghz, 4GB of DDR2, and a GF 8800GTX w/ 768MB of VRam, running Win 7 x64) and I can easily get 30+ frames per second in FSX in many in-flight scenarios.

Maybe there is some tweak or cfg file setting that might make all the difference for you, and if you're able to give us a list of your specs someone might be able to suggest something?

[s0cks]

QUOTE (markll @ May 11 2010, 12:54 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Actually s0cks, just what IS your system spec? I'm curious because you seem to be implying that you can run modern FPS games at full detail at a million miles an hour (in framerate terms ) yet FSX won't run very well at all. I've got what could probably be considered a mid-range rig (dual core Athlon II at 3ghz, 4GB of DDR2, and a GF 8800GTX w/ 768MB of VRam, running Win 7 x64) and I can easily get 30+ frames per second in FSX in many in-flight scenarios.

Maybe there is some tweak or cfg file setting that might make all the difference for you, and if you're able to give us a list of your specs someone might be able to suggest something?

Not sure how I am wrong, as you so eloquently put it, 15fps, is 15fps. It doesn't matter how much more calculations are going on in the background, what you see is what you get.

But anyway, I never said that I couldn't run FSX well. With close to default (only NZ 20m mesh and topo), I get 25-50fps over Auckland City with most sliders cranked (FTX is another story), I'm just trying to make the point that the game is badly optimized, and those hoping to run FSX with a decent amount of eye candy on mid-range systems need to be warned, otherwsie they are in for a shock. What I am running is:

Quad Core Q6600 @ 3.0GHz
4GB DDR2-800
nVidia GTX275 896MB
Windows 7 Professional 64bit