FSX SP1 Performance Update going up for download at MS NOW!
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#1: FSX SP1 Performance Update going up for download at MS NOW! Author: JG300-Stoopy, Location: Group W bench PostPosted: Tue May 15, 2007 9:52 pm
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Check it out folks!!!!!!.....

Phil Taylor's Blog

[quote]We are pushing bits for all languages but Japanese thru the internal tools. This could take 2 hrs, it could take 8.

We expect to get Japanese approval to push the bits soon, but that download may be delayed a day or so.

Stay tuned, its real soon now. Really![/quote]

FSX Insider website (where it will hopefully be showing up in 2-8 hours)....

FSInsider

Unfortunately I gotta hit the hay for an early early early morning flight and a two-day trip outta town so all I can say is I hope it pans out for everyone! Also it's gonna be like a 210MB download and install, lotsa goodness included, so be sure to remove any mods and set your FSX back as close to possible to a default install so it has the greatest chance of installing succesfully!

G'Night, good luck, and HAVE FUN!
#2: Re: FSX SP1 Performance Update going up for download at MS NOW! Author: Uhu_Fledermaus, Location: Blaricum, The Netherlands ~GMT+1 PostPosted: Wed May 16, 2007 7:43 am
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280 mB

if someone wants to know the size

And a word of WARNING

Install the SP1 for fsX ONLY over a fresh fsX Install

allready numerous reports about messed up installs with addon proggies that will not work or even fsX not wanting to start
#3: Re: FSX SP1 Performance Update going up for download at MS NOW! Author: Shadow_Bshwackr, Location: Central Illinois, USA PostPosted: Wed May 16, 2007 10:40 am
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Thanks! I'll get this installed asap and see how it goes! (I'm crossing me fingers... :D)
#4: Re: FSX SP1 Performance Update going up for download at MS NOW! Author: JG300-Stoopy, Location: Group W bench PostPosted: Wed May 16, 2007 2:46 pm
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Seems very true from the feedback so far, Fled. Although all the info up to this time has stressed that the patch expect to see original files and any mods should be backed out beforehand. It does make sense.

Although won't be able to try it myself til the end of the week, my take on it is that those who have been modding and tweaking their install to the point of loosing track of what they've done are the ones having the problems.

The good news is that the feedback from those who have it installed is largely vrey very good. Lots of nice comments out there.

I think the 80/20 percent rule of life applies, folks who have no problems are less likely to report results than those who have 'em. Either way, I can't wait to get home and try for myself.
#5: Re: FSX SP1 Performance Update going up for download at MS N Author: Uhu_Fledermaus, Location: Blaricum, The Netherlands ~GMT+1 PostPosted: Wed May 16, 2007 3:25 pm
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the remarks I've seen and heard from various sources say that over a fresh fsX install they have improvement of fps up to 50% in certain areas as in other areas there is no improvement at all.

makes one wonder as to what they did with the patch also there is comment of added support for multicore processors
here a compilation of various "tweaks" for the fsX cfg file to even improve with SP1 installed and working



From Phil Taylors Blog..

FSX SP1:New tweaks

In fsx.cfg
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There is a tweak to control scheduling of threads on cores.
It is not recommended to change these settings unless you have a performance reduction and/or maxed out CPU loads in the PerfMonitor. The tweak is

Edit:Fixed a typo here
[JOBSCHEDULER]
AffinityMask=n
where
n num of cores scheduled
1 = 1 core 0001
3 = 2 cores 0011
7 = 3 cores 0111
15= 4 cores 1111
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There is additional code to reduce blurries. If you get random texture tiles that appear in a solid color this may help.

In some cases, the textures generated from this code can get throttled and will be timed out. The time out config value is

[TERRAIN]

SWAP_WAIT_TIMEOUT=<number_of_frames>

The default is 30 frames.
--
There are new config items to control VSYNC for fullscreen and windowed separately

[DISPLAY]

ForceFullScreenVSync, default is TRUE

ForceVSync, default is FALSE

We have seen cases where when VSYNC is on in fullscreen causing major fluctuations in frame rate especially when setting the rate limiter above 45. If you run into widely fluctuating FPS in fullscreen when aiming for above 45, try turning VSYNC off or reducing below 40.
--
For the dusk/dawn textures some people feel, subjectively, the result is too dark or too light. There are 2 items that allow the transition time to be changed:

[GRAPHICS]

DAY_THRESHOLD

NIGHT_THRESHOLD

acceptible values are 0 to 65535.

Defaults:

DAY: 32768

NIGHT: 4096

These represent the amount of 'ambient' light at the ends of the day/night blend threshold. Zero is perfect dark, 65535 is full day sun at noon in the summer.
--
There is a tweak that helps with panel updates, especially the glass panel. If you use the glass panel and notice very slow updates. There is a 2 part tweak:


[GRAPHICS]

DirtyRegionUpdateLimit=<integer>

By default this UINT32_MAX (i.e. four billion or so) so it has no effect.

Setting it to zero effectively forces full texture updates instead.

Setting it to smaller numbers (1-1000) might improve performance if the card is slow at full texture updates and does not have a high overhead for incremental updates.

[GRAPHICS]

MergeDirtyRegionUpdates=<0/1>

By default this is 0 (i.e. disabled) so it has no effect.
Setting it to 1 (enabled) causes us to merge all of the dirty rects into a single large dirty rect. This means that we will only do a single partial texture update.

This may work well if the card is slow at full texture updates and does have high overhead for incremental updates.
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There is a scenery tweak to eliminate very small objects, which can reduce render time.



[SCENERY]

SmallPartRejectRadius=<pixels>

Basically this culls out small model parts (e.g. air conditioners on roofs of buildings, aircraft doors) if their radius would occupy less than the specified number of screen pixels.

The default is 1.0 (i.e. 1 pixel). 2, and 4 are the next 2 settings we advise. Can significantly improve performance but may cause “popping� of small objects



So at the end of the day there seems to be some light at the end of the tunnel, alltough one swallow doesn't makes it summer yet
#6: Re: FSX SP1 Performance Update going up for download at MS N Author: 401RCAF_Sly,  PostPosted: Wed May 16, 2007 4:47 pm
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Thanks Fled

have installed SP1 and have seen an improvement in fps about 10-15% on a single core Athlon machine.... so it appeares to help even mid spec users..

sLY
#7: Re: FSX SP1 Performance Update going up for download at MS NOW! Author: Kitform, Location: Cleveland. UK. PostPosted: Wed May 16, 2007 7:11 pm
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With a fresh install of FSX a test flight resulted in roughly 80-100 fps, after installing the Service pack I did the same flight without altering anything, my frame rate dropped to 60-80 fps and I also developed a stutter at about 1 second intervals.

Just out of curiosity, I maxed out all the sliders to ultra high settings and the frame rate dropped as expected...20-30 frames. still very flyable apart from this stutter I'm now getting.

Obviously it's far too early to draw any meaning conclusions at the moment but first impressions...I think my system is slightly worse off for installing it.
#8: Re: FSX SP1 Performance Update going up for download at MS NOW! Author: JG300-Stoopy, Location: Group W bench PostPosted: Wed May 16, 2007 7:52 pm
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Huh. You know what's interesting, Kit, is that there's some other feedback from some folks who have hotrod systems like yours along this line......seems to be a common thought that it has to do with the SLI bridge? You're running SLI aren't you? I forget.....

Some other feedback had to do with the texture bandwidth multi setting, and setting it back to the default of 40 (as opposed to 400, a common tweak) was also part of a solution along these lines.
#9: Re: FSX SP1 Performance Update going up for download at MS NOW! Author: Uhu_Fledermaus, Location: Blaricum, The Netherlands ~GMT+1 PostPosted: Wed May 16, 2007 8:03 pm
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Sly, Kit,

a. did you install it over a clean fresh virgin fsX install ?
b. did you install it over the one you had with addons etc etc ?

if option b. is the one you used then it doesn't wonder me that you now suffer, as far as I know, but hey who am I Laughing

as far as my info goes, I'm like a parrot, only repeat what is been told to me, it is specifically stated that the patch should be installed over a fresh clean virgin fsX also defrag BEFORE installing the patch and DEFRAG after installing the patch, for other options and "tweaks read the above post"

hope it helps, I cannot comment as I have NOT installed fsX on my system, sometime in the future when I acquire the new rig I'm thinking of installing it ;), just keeping the DVD's in a safe place so zhe misses doesn't get tempted to use 'm a coasters Laughing

have fun dudes


fled
Cool
#10: Re: FSX SP1 Performance Update going up for download at MS NOW! Author: Kitform, Location: Cleveland. UK. PostPosted: Wed May 16, 2007 8:45 pm
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LOL, I should have really gone to bed, work an all that, but...

Noted your comments Stoopy and did a little more tweaking.

Fled, sp1 was applied to a fresh install of FSX, I didn't have a lot that wasn't stock so it wasn't too hard to delete the lot and do a re-install.

The best I've achieved up to now is about 80 fps with all sliders maxed out apart from the traffic sliders, left them as default for all tests.

The main tweak was the use of the alternative AutogenDescriptions.spb to reduce tree types/numbers.

Over the weekend I'm going to uninstall FSX again and run the same flights with and without the sp1 and try to get to tangible results.

As for SLI, I've tried it in both modes with no significant improvement. I generally run non SLI, until the next isuue of Forceware drivers for my cards are available, I don't think FSX can take full advantage of four graphics cards.
#11: Re: FSX SP1 Performance Update going up for download at MS N Author: 401RCAF_Sly,  PostPosted: Thu May 17, 2007 8:40 am
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Hi Fled

I only have The C130 installed in FSX

I tried to patch to SP1 and it coughed and jumped out of the install

I put in Disk 1 and ran repair

Installed SP1 with no problems

I am seeing an improvement even with my single core processsor Razz

I think the only reason it wouldn't patch is that I had reinstalled the OS (XPpro SP2) last week and the registry entries may not have been present..

I'm happy so far

best of luck Kitty Wink

Catcha for a flight sometime


Sly
#12: Re: FSX SP1 Performance Update going up for download at MS NOW! Author: Shadow_Bshwackr, Location: Central Illinois, USA PostPosted: Thu May 17, 2007 10:59 am
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Ok, I installed the update with no problems... Smile

With my system, I noticed some small improvement of approx. 3 to 5 fps. Still, I'll take it! Smile
#13: Re: FSX SP1 Performance Update going up for download at MS N Author: 401RCAF_Jel, Location: Hiding in Sherwood Forest PostPosted: Thu May 17, 2007 4:13 pm
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Well impressed frames locked at 20 and maintaining it on the whole... some dips which are to be expected around heavily populated scenery areas, but not dipping below 15.

Appears on initial looks to be smoother panning around both in 2d, VC panel and outside views.

My install was a basic one so whacked SP1 over it and haven't played with any tweaks from the various sources as of yet.

Conclusion ... The new puter did was it was supposed to do, helped along by SP1


Jel
#14: Re: FSX SP1 Performance Update going up for download at MS NOW! Author: Kitform, Location: Cleveland. UK. PostPosted: Thu May 17, 2007 5:27 pm
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Well after a little more playing, SP1 is staying.

The main reason is that it's fixed the anomaly at Tower bridge, sea levels have returned to normal Smile

The stutter I was experiencing, probably down to the low spec computer, (Shades fault) Smile

I started with unlimited fps to see what effect the new sp1 had on frame rates and as reported earlier I took a hit of about 10-20 fps so I backed the frame rate down in steps and at about 70 fps the stutter stopped.

So I've now locked my frame rate at the usual 20 fps (no need for anything higher, imho) and she flies as smooth as a really smooth thing.

Now, where did I leave all me helo's...
#15: Re: FSX SP1 Performance Update going up for download at MS N Author: Uhu_Rodion, Location: L'Aquila, Italy PostPosted: Fri May 18, 2007 7:01 am
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SP1 is here to stay.

Installed it yesterday with no problems at all, in spite of having several extra add-on planes.

Some tests with stock and non-stock planes revealed a dramatic improvement in frame rate, more than 50%. Before, I got an average of 6~12, and the worse was when the focus was on landscape. Now it's the opposite: landscape is represented with no less than 15 frames, and cockpit or plane in spot view a little lower, according to the model.

I pushed the sliders forward, and now I get a reasonable 12~15 frame-rate in all visuals, with great improvement in overall graphics.
Smile
Note that my system is rather old, and I run XP-Pro on it.
Mr. Green
But the greatest news come from the forthcoming Expansion Pack... we are getting closer to Cfs4, and through the right way... hehe!


Marco
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