FS One Graphics Issue?

[cpayne]

I am running FS One Ver. 1.0.3 all it working great except 2 issues:
-1) All of my planes and/helicopters when in simulation mode are either all WHITE or BLACK. There are no paint schemes, decals nothing.
-2) When selecting a 3D Simulation the graphics look horrible. The terrain is all very box like and does not look anything like it should. Frame Rates look good no jaggy/studdering.

I am running an AMD 3000+, 512 Corsair Memory, ATI All-In-Wonder 8500 128 MB, and Windows XP Pro SP2.

Thx!

cp

[cpayne]

Spoke to FS One Support...suggest updating my Video Drivers to the latest rev...will try it tonight and see if this works or not.

[FSOneDev]

Spoke to FS One Support...suggest updating my Video Drivers to the latest rev...will try it tonight and see if this works or not.

Ok, let us know if it works. If not, we'll try to help you via the forum.

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Brian
InertiaSoft, Inc.

[Travis22304]

That's strange, I am running simmilar system specs...
• AMD Athlon XP 2400+ (2.00Ghz)
• 512 MB RAM
• nVidia GeForce FX 5200 (128MB, AGP 8x)
and the FS One runs at full 60-200 FPS with everything enabled and turned all the way up, and graphics look great! I can even set it to 4x Anti-Aliasing! All at minimum system requirements! ^.^

PS: My graphics driver is from 2004! I find that it works significantly better than the most current...

[aftontrix]

Travis22304, how do you get those kind of FPS? I have an Athlon XP3200+, 512 mg of PC3200 memory,Radeon X800 GTO, 8X, video card with 256meg memory and 12 pixel pipelines. My FPS are around 50 tops. What am I doing wrong? Any suggestions? Thanks

[FSOneDev]

Travis22304, how do you get those kind of FPS? I have an Athlon XP3200+, 512 mg of PC3200 memory,Radeon X800 GTO, 8X, video card with 256meg memory and 12 pixel pipelines. My FPS are around 50 tops. What am I doing wrong? Any suggestions? Thanks

Something is defintiely wrong with something aftontrix, your system should get much higher frame rates. Please list some of your graphics settings, especailly OpenGL settings. For ATI cards, it is not uncommon the adjust the "quality versus performance" setting to one notch below max quality to get good speed and good texture quality.

Also, it is possible that your real AGP speed is less than 8x. I had a Dell PC years back that needed a BIOS update in order to do more than 2x AGP.

You might also try other ATI drivers. Sometimes older drivers actually work better.

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Brian
InertiaSoft, Inc.

[nemo_uk]

Travis22304, how do you get those kind of FPS? I have an Athlon XP3200+, 512 mg of PC3200 memory,Radeon X800 GTO, 8X, video card with 256meg memory and 12 pixel pipelines. My FPS are around 50 tops. What am I doing wrong? Any suggestions? Thanks

Are using an LCD screen at 60 hz ... do you have V-Sync turned on ?

[aftontrix]

nemo-uk, Yes I have a LCD screen at 60 hz. I have looked everywhere in my video card software and I cannot find where you turn V-sync on or off so I do not know if it is on or off. Is it located in the video card software or someplace else? Thanks

FSOneDev, My open GL settings are: Triple buffering is on, Force 24 bit Z-buffer is not enabled,My system shows my AGP speed to be 8X, I have anti-aliasing off as the edges of the plane are blurred if it is on, my ansiotropic filtering is set to 16X. I have what I consider to be good graphics but then I can't help but wonder if the graphics would be even better with higher FPS. My friend who purchased FS one at the same time I did is only getting FPS in the 20s. He has a comprable system. The only difference is he has a Nvidia 6200 VGA card.

[FSOneDev]

nemo-uk, Yes I have a LCD screen at 60 hz. I have looked everywhere in my video card software and I cannot find where you turn V-sync on or off so I do not know if it is on or off. Is it located in the video card software or someplace else? Thanks

FSOneDev, My open GL settings are: Triple buffering is on, Force 24 bit Z-buffer is not enabled,My system shows my AGP speed to be 8X, I have anti-aliasing off as the edges of the plane are blurred if it is on, my ansiotropic filtering is set to 16X. I have what I consider to be good graphics but then I can't help but wonder if the graphics would be even better with higher FPS. My friend who purchased FS one at the same time I did is only getting FPS in the 20s. He has a comprable system. The only difference is he has a Nvidia 6200 VGA card.

You and your friend's speeds are below what I would have expected -- and below what I have seen with comparable systems -- so let's see if we can get your spped up to what it *should* be...

For your settings, I recommend turning down the ansiotropic filtering (it can sometimes have a significant slowdown -- consider turning it off and see if you notice a speed effect). You could also turn off triple buffering.

You should exit from FS One, make graphics settings changes, and then re-start FS One. Also, be sure other programs are not running -- FS One, like most simulations, requires a lot of CPU and GPU power.

In general, ATI systems seem to handle lots of texture memory quickly, while NVIDIA systems do better with a lot of polygons. So, one thing to try with your ATI card is to adjust:

Options -> Graphics 2 -> Player Graphics Detail

Move the slider all the way to the left (low detail) and see what sort of speed you get. It should be faster. Of course your aircraft detail will be reduced, so you can then experiment with other slider positions, to get a good balance between speed and model detail.

Your friend is using an NVIDIA 6200, which unfortunately is a low-end card. Some of these cards actually share system memory, making them even more slow than other graphics cards. Your friend should consider similar adjustments to their graphics settings (both in the OpenGL settings and the FS One options). Also, have your friend adjust:

Options -> Graphics 2 -> Player Aircraft Quality

Move the slider all the way to the left (low quality) and see what sort of speed your friend gets. It might be faster, since the sim will then be using smaller, faster loading texture data.

Let us know if any of these suggestions help.

---
Brian
InertiaSoft, Inc.

[aftontrix]

FSOneDev,
Thanks for the info. Here is what I tried and ended up with:
I turned off ansiotropic filtering and triple buffering, both individually and at the same time. No change in the FPS. I even changed the quality setting in the VGA card software down and the performance setting up. No change. Nothing raised the FPS above 50.
I then went into Options/Graphic 2 and moved the slide all the way to the left(I have put all of my VGA card settings back to where I had them). The FPS went up to around 150 but the graphics were poor. I moved the slides to the middle. I then got FPS around 120 but still did not like the graphics. I kept playing with the slides until I ended up within a quarter of an inch from the right stop. At this point the graphics look great and I get around 100FPS. This is where I will leave it. Actually, I thought I would gain something with higher FPS but now I am not sure (I thought the graphics and performance were great even at 50FPS). What do you actually get with higher FPS? I do not notice any better performance or graphics from what I was getting with 50FPS.
My friend changed his VGA settings to a lower quality/higher performance and is now getting 120 to 150 FPS. He says the graphics are not as good but he thinks the plane flies better. Anything to this thought? By the way, if I increase my RAM to 1 GIG would it help anything? Thanks again.

[FSOneDev]

FSOneDev,
Thanks for the info. Here is what I tried and ended up with:
I turned off ansiotropic filtering and triple buffering, both individually and at the same time. No change in the FPS. I even changed the quality setting in the VGA card software down and the performance setting up. No change. Nothing raised the FPS above 50.
I then went into Options/Graphic 2 and moved the slide all the way to the left(I have put all of my VGA card settings back to where I had them). The FPS went up to around 150 but the graphics were poor. I moved the slides to the middle. I then got FPS around 120 but still did not like the graphics. I kept playing with the slides until I ended up within a quarter of an inch from the right stop. At this point the graphics look great and I get around 100FPS. This is where I will leave it. Actually, I thought I would gain something with higher FPS but now I am not sure (I thought the graphics and performance were great even at 50FPS). What do you actually get with higher FPS? I do not notice any better performance or graphics from what I was getting with 50FPS.
My friend changed his VGA settings to a lower quality/higher performance and is now getting 120 to 150 FPS. He says the graphics are not as good but he thinks the plane flies better. Anything to this thought? By the way, if I increase my RAM to 1 GIG would it help anything? Thanks again.

Thank you very much for the reply and details. Very helpful.

Basically, what you are really after is a frame rate a bit higher than 60 Hz. Anything much faster is somewhat pointless, since a human generally cannot visually detect 60 Hz or better -- that's why people set their monitor refresh speed higher than 60 Hz (perhaps 70-75 Hz).

Many times, people want to see frame rates of 120 Hz or more. They figure -- if 60 Hz is good, 120 Hz must be twice as good. While this is understandable, it really isn't necessary or even detectable in most cases. In reality, for humans, there is little difference between 60 Hz and 120 Hz, but there is a huge difference between 60 Hz and 30 Hz. Once things go below 60 Hz, you'll start to be able to notice it.

So, once your sim runs consistently at, say 75 Hz, you're all set (really, anything 60 Hz or better). At that point, you may be able to increase various graphical settings in the sim or on your graphics card, while keeping your frame rate about 60 Hz and things should be great. Also, once your frame rate can reliably stay above your monitor's refresh rate, you should consider syncing to vertical refresh via the Display Properties dialog. This will improve your video image quality and prevent image "tearing".

As far as flying better at 100 Hz, our physics calculations are still the same (we calculate physics at a much higher rate than even 120 Hz) regardless of frame rate, but the reaction to controls and the visual feedback to the user is better, which generally makes flying better.

This is why it's so important to have a sim run at 60 Hz or better. Some sims run more slowly than FS one, and when the frame rate goes much below 30 Hz, the realism will be impacted. This is especially true for 3D aerobatics. This is the big difference between a simulation and a game. We tried to have a balance in FS One so that it would run fast and be a better simulation.

As far as the benefit of more memory is concerned, I recommend having 1 GB of RAM. This generally isn't critical and the sim runs fine with only 512 MB, but with 1 GB, it allows more memory to cache graphical texture data and other files in the OS disk cache, which can speed up loading menus and loading before flying in the sim (after the initial load during a flying session).

I'm glad to hear you and your friend have achieved good frame rates. Enjoy.

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Brian
InertiaSoft, Inc.