Low FPS at Argyle (TVSA)

[ejwells409]

I purchased your St Vincents scenery a few days ago and immediately ran into an FPS problem.

My System Specs:
X-Plane 11.26 and FSX/Accel | Windows10 64bit
Motherboard: MSI760GM-E51(MS-7596)
CPU: 3.9GHz AMD FX-4300 Quad-Core | RAM: 16GB DDR3 1333
GPU: NVidia GTX 970 (4GB GDDR5)

I loaded into the runway start position (active runway) and initially everything seemed fine until I started to move. I was getting single digit fps and pauses or "lags" that lasted about 6-8 seconds. It was the same all over the Island. I normally have my autogen pretty high so I dropped it to normal but that made little difference. I reduced the water effects to "0" and still the problem remained. I was flying the FSX default Ultralight at the time. I finally gave up and contacted JustFlight. They helped as much as they could with various suggestions but finally advise to contact your support forum.

Having said all this leads me to what I have found . . . .I went back to Argyle and started flying around the Airport itself, nowhere else. Initially I was pausing more than I was flying and stuttering was constant. I flew in that small area for approx. 5 minutes and at the end of that time the fps had climbed back to 30+ and the stutters and pauses were gone. So I headed up and over the hill to check the rest of the Island. . .as soon as I left the airport the stuttering and pauses and low fps returned. I performed the same routine I had just used at the airport and after a sufficient time of flying around the Island the fps had again risen to normal levels.

After not flying there for several days I tried again and the airport area seems to show some stuttering but that disappears after a few minutes. The rest of the Island seems to be a different story as it takes some time before the fps comes back up to the same level as the airport.
Is this something you're aware of or is it something new?

[horst18519]

Please open your FSX.CFG and go to [TERRAIN]. What value do you have for IMAGE_PIXELS_FOR_AUTOGEN_POLYGONS=? It should be no bigger than 1024. I assume it might be 2048 or higher in your case. We suggest a max value of 512.

[ejwells409]

Please open your FSX.CFG and go to [TERRAIN]. What value do you have for IMAGE_PIXELS_FOR_AUTOGEN_POLYGONS=? It should be no bigger than 1024. I assume it might be 2048 or higher in your case. We suggest a max value of 512.

That did make it better. The stuttering isn't completely gone, but the fps is above 20 and there aren't any lags. Why 512? I believe that's what FSX sets as default. With hand placed autogen, 512 can give you trees encroaching in areas where you haven't even placed trees. You're right, mine is set at 2048 and my scenery packages all suggest that setting as max but at least 1024 and no one has ever found that to be a problem, and it has corrected problems with trees moving into areas that are well away from any area I actually placed them.

I may look at a way to run two separate cfg file settings. . . .one for this airport and one for every other airport scenery I've ever purchased.

Thanks for the suggestion.

[horst18519]

It is very easy to use different settings as you can save and load them.

Why 512?
FSX has 2 different kinds of autogen vegetation definitions: rectangles and polygons. Rectangles work pretty simple: trees are placed within a geographically defined rectangle. Polys work different: the vector poly is used by FSX and rastered into a 1-bit bitmap, which is then used place trees within the "white" areas of that bitmap. The higher that value in the fsx.cfg the higher the resolution of that bitmap. If you have very complex autogen polygon definitions (like we have on St Vincent) this process can take quite a long time if the bitmap is 1024x1024 or even bigger. The result though is only very slightly better using 1024 and in my opinion doesn't actually improve using 2048 because the tree models are way bigger than single pixels in the bitmap.

[AFR6752]

I purchased your St Vincents scenery a few days ago and immediately ran into an FPS problem.

My System Specs:
X-Plane 11.26 and FSX/Accel | Windows10 64bit
Motherboard: MSI760GM-E51(MS-7596)
CPU: 3.9GHz AMD FX-4300 Quad-Core | RAM: 16GB DDR3 1333
GPU: NVidia GTX 970 (4GB GDDR5)

I loaded into the runway start position (active runway) and initially everything seemed fine until I started to move. I was getting single digit fps and pauses or "lags" that lasted about 6-8 seconds. It was the same all over the Island. I normally have my autogen pretty high so I dropped it to normal but that made little difference. I reduced the water effects to "0" and still the problem remained. I was flying the FSX default Ultralight at the time. I finally gave up and contacted JustFlight. They helped as much as they could with various suggestions but finally advise to contact your support forum.

Having said all this leads me to what I have found . . . .I went back to Argyle and started flying around the Airport itself, nowhere else. Initially I was pausing more than I was flying and stuttering was constant. I flew in that small area for approx. 5 minutes and at the end of that time the fps had climbed back to 30+ and the stutters and pauses were gone. So I headed up and over the hill to check the rest of the Island. . .as soon as I left the airport the stuttering and pauses and low fps returned. I performed the same routine I had just used at the airport and after a sufficient time of flying around the Island the fps had again risen to normal levels.

After not flying there for several days I tried again and the airport area seems to show some stuttering but that disappears after a few minutes. The rest of the Island seems to be a different story as it takes some time before the fps comes back up to the same level as the airport.
Is this something you're aware of or is it something new?

I see performance problems if there are duplicate AFCADs have you Orbx Vector and if so run the configuration to disable TVSA in the Airport correction tab