Community Discussion > Flight Simulation Matters
X-plane: The voyage of discovery begins........
EHM-1997 Alexander:
--- Quote from: EHM-2381 Ted on March 10, 2011, 11:03:58 am ---While the MU-2 looks great I'll hold off on that one as the reviews suggest it is quite a difficult aircraft to manage.
--- End quote ---
That's exactly why you should get that plane, it really demonstrates the flight model differences between x-plane and msfs.
You have to master the MU-2 but it's so satisfying when you do. Both props rotate in the same direction and the aircraft has a strong left roll tendancy. The aircraft also leans over on the ground depending on fuel distribution.
Approaches are really interesting, because you effectively trim the aircraft for your power setting and when making changes on approach, you either have to re-trim efficiently or wrestle the aircraft down ;D
Despite all of this, the aircraft is relatively easy to pick up and fly. You don't have a huge manual full of procedures to read before you get started.
EHM-2381 Ted:
Here is a question for you as every time I get Xplane where I want it that "fog of death" as you call it shows up.
I notice in the rendering details box that the sim is calling like 3-450Mb of video RAM. How can this be an issue if my gfx card is a 1Gb card? It's like the software only sees half the available gfx memory?
System:
ASUS P5P41TD
Core2 Quad @2.5GHz
4Gb DDR3 RAM
Nvidia Ge430 1Gb
WINXP SP3
EHM-1997 Alexander:
As I mentioned in another post, it won't be the video memory that will be the bottle neck, it'll be the cpu or the gpu speed - even if it has more than enough memory for the 3d objects and textures, that doesn't mean it's fast enough to draw them.
Try reducing the strength of some of the autogen or try turning off per pixel shaders etc.
A Geforce 430 is a fair, but not particularly strong video card.
Here's a comparison between the 430 and the 570 in my rig: http://www.hwcompare.com/9013/geforce-gt-430-1gb-vs-geforce-gtx-570/
and between the 430 and the 4870x2 (my last card): http://www.hwcompare.com/7021/geforce-gt-430-vs-radeon-hd-4870-x2/
the 570 is 3-9 times faster than a 430, with only 1.5 times the ram. Ram is only a small part of the picture (the 570's ddr5 ram is also faster than the 430's ddr3).
Even with the 570 and an overclocked i7, I don't run everything maxed in x-plane - you just have to be selective with the settings. dropping per pixel lighting has a large boost to performance. Having large textures should be too much of an issue. You want a stable set of options that will remain smooth even when the nasty weather and detailed scenery shows up.
A lot in flight sims is down to the cpu as well - your quad core is a decent enough processor, but is also 2 generations old now.
Don't think I'm saying you have to throw out the machine and buy a new one, I'm just highlighting that these will all limit how far you can crank up the settings.
If you have the visuals where you want them but you get fog of death then you either need to drop the visuals selectively, or up the hardware.
EHM-2381 Ted:
Aha-my misunderstanding regarding the system requirements. Thanks for the detailed explaination.
EHM-2381 Ted:
Ok I have to say that I am getting a bit frustrated here. Not a big deal as it is an experiment but I am having major headaches getting the Xplane to display anything close to FSX.
I have tried knocking everything down to default (and lower), different resolutions from my native 1280x1024, knocking off dynamic weather and just displaying CAVOK etc etc and I still cannot get the FPS above 19-20. Given that the world detail is a hell of a lot less that what is displayed in FSX I am sort of questioning myself here.
I do find it hard to believe that a fairly modern (although not OC i7 or something) system with a reasonable GPU is not capable of at least letting me get a solid 24fps minimum so I can forget messing about with the rendering options already.
*deep breath*
I would actually take this over to the xplane.org site and see if I could bug them for some guidance as I see folks there with terrible-specc'd Macs and other lower PC's claiming far higher settings-but they require some 2-post rule in order to post anything lol.
I am not going to give up for the time being but I am spending quite a bit of time not flying trying to dial this thing in. I really want to like the sim as I can see the potential is there-but after flying the Twin Otter in FSX last night and rolling a 757 around earlier today I'm going to take a step back.
I'll come back to it in a few days.
p.s. I did get the Shade Tree Micro PC-12 and it does look and fly very well with a solid VC that makes sense and generally matches up with the FSX versions. I am glad I held off on the MU-2 as trying to figure out how to fly a non-contra-rotating twin while faffing about getting the sim running nicely would be a bit much. The flight model is spot on-maybe just a bit over-torque"y" on the ground in my opinion.
Anyway-I am going to just fly this weekend and enjoy myself. I knew this would be an experiment ;D
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version