141 replies to this topic

[John Venema]

Hello all,

We've decided to heed customer feedback, and in a similar vein to how Ultimate Terrain X can disable its night lighting effects, we have tested some simple ways to disable the FTX lights and found substantial performance gains in city and urban areas, particularly places like Seattle, Portland, Vancouver, Sydney and Melbourne.

We always knew that the FTX lights took a hit on FPS, but due to the way lights are implemented in the FSX code the light effect is polled for by the engine even during the day even when it is not used which incurs a needless performance hit during daytime flying.


So today we're releasing two very simple apps called FTX Day and FTX Night. Their usage is very straight forward:

- If you are mainly flying during the daytime, run the FTX Day app and the lightpoles and effects will be switched off
- If you are flying at dusk/night/dawn, run the FTX Night app and the lightpoles and effects will be switched back on

When you run the installer, you'll see two icons on your desktop:





Just click the icon for the mode you want to use before starting FSX and you're all set. Note you can run it/change it while FSX is running, you just have to refresh scenery library for the effect to occur - Menu tab > World > Scenery library > press OK

In some cases, using DAY mode can more than double your FPS in urban/city areas.

Here are some comparison screenshots over Seattle and Melbourne. The first is with NIGHT mode, the second with DAY mode:


















You can grab the beta installer from here - http://myftx.com/FTX...DAYNIGHT100.zip

We will look at integrating this into FTX Central soon.


Ooops! Apologies for all the replies which have been nuked. Tim merged two topics and somehow the forum lost everything. I've reposted this original topic now.

[Frank .A]

I'm simply amazed at the FPS gain here! 15 FPS to 41! A gain of 26 FPS. Wow. I'm going to download when I get on my FS computer.

[Tim Harris]

Yes sorry about that chaps

[Kwiss]

Just a quick question John, why is the lighting effect still active during the day? Just interested to know why

[Misha Cajic]

But of course as anyone would understand, I don't want to disable the lights during night time. That just defeats the purpose!

[John Venema]

Just a quick question John, why is the lighting effect still active during the day? Just interested to know why

Just one of the many bugs in the ageing FSX engine. We suspect the effect attachment code is SCASM harking back to FS2006 or even earlier.

[John Lovell]

Praise to Orbx!... they saw the light!

Thanks guys, this is great news, cant wait to try this!

[amentiba]

A very good idea !

Have just arrived at the office so can't test it before leaving tonight... But i will talk about it on some frenchy forums, be sure of it


Quick question : can't it be possible to automate this switch inside FSX engine ? I mean : if i choose day to have better perfs but if i start my flight arount 04.00 PM and landed at 07.00 pm, with this tool i will have no lights... (no FTX lights or no lights at all ? )

[Nyxx]

This really could be a break though, DL it tonight.

I wonder how much it would help area's like 74S?

[BiggerBoat]

Gave this a try with a saved flight over downtown Seattle. When I go to day mode, autogen disappears and the textures turn into a bit of a mess. In night mode, all is right again. Tried this twice, with the same result. FSX did update its scenery library every time I toggled. I closed out FSX entirely between updates.

[Tigerclaw]

I'll be looking forward to giving this a try later on. I need all the help I can get with fps

[alan2]

Accident Tim ?....
I installed and got the stutters ..(Dell latop .2 screens) so closed fsx and cleaned out caches and defragged. Mind you I was doing 3 to 4oomph over Perth with some blurries @ 2000ft.
I tried more rational flights but it was stuttery.

My fps is around the same ,low/high teens but it feels smoother. I think the sim is having one of those days, so I will spend some more time playing and see if it settles down.

[Heiko Glatthorn]

When you have your FPS locked low, then you won't see a difference of course. Set it to unlimited first to judge where the sweet spot is. If it's smooth with unlimited, leave it there. I just found out that i can run unlimited with the latest beta drivers and Day setting... That's a first.

[alan2]

I dont use the external limiter , maybe I should.
I'll put the sim into unlimited and see what happens.

[alan2]

I feel stupid now Heiko, of coarse you would have to up your fps limiter !!

Just went from Melbourne to Lillydale and there was an improvement . My machine must be considered on the low side of middle these days I suppose. Whilst not glassy smooth it was the best flight to date and scoring 15 plus fps generally over the city area. A big improvement on smoothness . Lillydale ,naturally , is a breeze.

This is looking good , thanks guys, I still need to check this out further but its a keeper I am sure .

Quick Question......if we change airports in the same session would we have to do ...scenery library>OK ..again ? , or is it only on initial start up

[Jean-Paul Mes]

I tried both locked @ 30 fps and unlimited around KSEA and saw a major improvement in both cases. Well done !

[Ron Attwood]

Supposing you wanted to uninstall it, what do you do? Or, alternatively, does selecting 'Night' revert FSX to to the standard state?

[Tim Harris]

Hello all,

I'll answer some questions

- amentiba: At the moment we have not found a way to dynamically switch autogen objects on the fly without incurring a scenery library reload, this is why we leave it as a changeable option for now

- Biggerboat: I have no idea why it would cause loss of autogen for you, it is just a simple file swap, perhaps try loading fresh rather than from a saved flight

- Alan2: you only need to select the 'Day' button once, and unless you reinstall a region pack it will stay as is until you change it again

- Ron: just select 'Night' to revert to 'normal'


For those not seeing a substantial change in performance: the most change is noticed in and around large areas of city, industrial or suburbs as the system load will be lightened, not seeing a big change may be due to your already optimized settings or possibly GPU AA settings, frame limiter or even a FSX.cfg tweak, so if you do not experience some performance increase while using the 'Day' option let us know where you tried it and any extra system info you think may be of use.... FSX and computers are fickle beasts and nothing is ever the same as history has proven

For those that do see an increase.. enjoy


Hope that helps!

Cheers
Tim

[kamarad]

Good news to revigorate older pc.

Is this affect the runway approach light also or just the nightblighting?

Pierre

[Tim Harris]

Hi Pierre,

This only affects the autogen lightpoles, all your other light effects remain as is

Cheers
Tim