Is lowering the overall resolution the easiest way to increase frame rates?

[Chairman7w 1]

Hi guys,

 

A fairly new simmer here - I'm playing a 4-yr old PC, and I was just wondering if the easiest / quickest way to increase frame rates is to just lower the overall resolution?

 

Thanks in advance!

 

(running FSX accelerator with SPK2, 8 GB ram on a 4 yr old HP all-in-One PC)

Edited June 30, 2016 by Chairman7w

[brett 2,316]

Not sure I ever heard that one Ed, I would think it should be set to the same resolution of your actual screen size and lower some of your FSX scenery settings instead if your having problems.

[J G 927]

I think it is safe to say that the lower the detail the faster the PC will go.

 

However there are some things to factor in. Detail isn't just screen resolution, in fact far from it.  Detail includes many other things such as traffic, draw distances etc.

 

Personally I would start off with setting the screen resolution set to that of your monitor and then go through the settings to find what works best for you.  It you think along the lines of "would I expect there to be more work to be done to add this function" then lower the detail and then see how that goes.

 

Traffic, for example, can be a frame rate killer. Its obvious if you think about it: The pc has to constantly make calculations for your aircraft; Where is it on the globe? what can the pilot see out of the window? What should this gauge read?  and so on.

If you add traffic the PC will have to track every one of the AI aircraft, its position on the globe, height, is it visible to the FS user? And so on and so forth. that's true for every AI aircraft and so precious CPU resource is taken away from your view of the world and used to do this work. 

 

So to reiterate, go through the settings and try to imagine what the computer must do and if you think it adds significant work then lower the setting and see how the frame rate is impacted.  Experiment and see how you go.