469: My Latest Nvidia Setting

Thanks to all who shares their ideas about adjusting refresh rate to reduce micro-stutters in my last Post.  Frankly speaking, I didn’t really pay any attention to adjust it until recently.

And after a second thought, although I said the trick doesn’t have any effect on my rig, I think it could still be a candidate solution to those who have the issue.

For those who are interested, following is the Nvidia Settings (under native 60Hz refresh rate) I’ve been using in the last few months.

457: My P3Dv4 Setting Up #6 – A New Practical Aircraft Migration

When I was reinstalling A2A aircraft for P3Dv4, I grumbled what the heck the developers are doing in altering the aircraft installation folder from “SimObjects” to “Prepar3D v4 Add-ons” under Documents.  But after reviewing the file hierarchy further, I have to admit that it is in fact a nice user-friendly touch.

The move not only avoids the chance of messing up with original files in P3D, but it also can eliminate the need of reinstalling aircraft after P3D is forced to clean install again for whatever reasons or when update is available.

Under the new structure, the P3Dv4-ready A2A installer (in my case) added the aircraft location to the “add-ons.cfg” in the Prepar3D.cfg directory after
installation.  Then created an XML file called “add-on.xml“, which contains all the sub-folder information, in the root directory of the aircraft folder as well.

Since these two files

449: Checking Affinity Mask Performance in Realtime

Affinity Mask could bring improvements to flight simulators.  But the question is: how can we tell from a hypothetical value (or more precisely a CPU combination) that it will bring positive gains to our system before we put it in the configuration file (fsx.cfg or Prepar3D.cfg) ?

Frankly, I don’t have a good answer myself because there are so many variables involved.   However, following is the approach I take to precheck the performances from different Affinity Masks in realtime, then thru which I pick the one I think the best for my set up.

439: My P3Dv4 Setting Up #05 – Orbx Additions

With the new FTXCentral 3, all Orbx Global and Continental Regions are added to P3Dv4 without any difficulty.   However, since none of the airports from the company is available for the new version at the moment, I therefore installed (copied) my favorite airports — Bowerman (KHQM), Concrete Mun (3w5) and Darrington Mun (1S2) — straightly from previously ripped backups.   No issues spotted so far except control panels for the airports no longer function.

In addition, since I used to set the “Detail Bump Map” as “Fine” via FTX Aero, and because the FTX Aero feature is still not compatible with P3Dv4 yet, I also manually replaced the default “detail1.bmp” in

• “\Scenery\World\texture” with the one copied from
• “\ORBX\Scripts\Aero\Source\Scenery.World.Texture.detail1.bmp.Fine“

438: My P3Dv4 Setting Up #04 – Initial Settings

Followings are the P3Dv4 Settings on my new computer before Orbx addition to come next, with which overall frame rate at present stays around 53 stably except in those extremely dense areas.

436: My PD3v4 Setting Up #02 – FSX Aircraft Migration

This post is originally the first aritcle in the “My P3Dv4 Setting Up” series.   However, since I do normally perform the configuration back up mentioned in the second article first, I therefore rename this post to #02 and the second post #1.   Publishing time adjusted as well to reflect the proper order.

As stated in the About FSX Times of this blog, my goal is to achieve a stable flight simulation system performance with a minimum 30 fps in average.   Luckily, I’ve been able to achieve that goal with some compromises.   But unluckily, that 30-something fps level also acts like a barrier that stops me from passing.

I am not sure yet whether the 64-bit P3Dv4 and my new hardware would help break this spell for good.   But the 120 to 210 fps initially gained from the new system without any tuning seems like a promising start.

As the hardware side of my new cockpit is still not ready, I’ll take it slowly to install addons and to finetune the system.

394: My Newest nVidia Settings

A friend who asked me what my nVidia 3D Settings were for P3D.   I told him that I simply used the default values coming with the driver in the last few years.

In response to his question, I re-examined and tested the impact of each value to my system last week.   Here’s the settings I am satisfied with:

340: My P3Dv3.2 Settings

Since somebody asks and it’s for my own personal record as well, followings are the settings of my Prepar3D settings for version 3.2 system.

Anyone interested to see the details of my Prepar3D.cfg could click on the Realism Image at the bottom.   All changes I made are highlighted in red.   And manually changed items are further bolded.

263: Nvidia 344.65 – A Positive One

Graphics driver is one of the components I habitually pay extra attention to since NEW doesn’t necessarily mean GOOD at the same time in this sector in particular.  After upgrading to P3Dv2.4, I’ve been using the 344.11 driver as it offers a noticeable improvement over older and even newer versions under the P3D platform.

Today, I just have it replaced by the newest 344.65 after testing the new driver for a few days.  Frankly, I might not see measurable improvement accordingly, but overall smoothness enhancement is observable.

There are people reporting that the new driver resolved the SLI compatibility issue.   Unfortunately, it is not the case in my setup.

BTW, during the earlier installation of the P3Dv2.4, I found most induced stutters turning out to be caused by the many additional Orbx addons rather than by the simulator itself.

Sadly, the world isn’t perfect.  Neither does the virtual world.