Orbx Hervey Bay

[delidan77 0]

Hi

Within the last week I have purchased FSX and become memerised by it, although great I am not overly interest in the aircraft but am really interested in attempting to recreate the scenery to be as realistic as possible. Having spent a few years living in Australia I decided to purchase my first add-on in the form of Orbx Hervey Bay Airport. Once I figured out how to install it I was amazed by the results however the more I compare my graphics to those I see on youtube I am eager to find out how to get improve my graphics further. As far as i am aware Orbx uses photographic images of Hervey Bay to create the town, on my system it does look great from directly above but as i get nearer to the ground the images of the house, buildings etc just appear flat. The marina is 3D as are clusters of arears scatted around Hervey Bay and these look great however looking on youtube of the Hervey Bay add-on ALL the buildings appear to be in 3d.

Is this due to my settings or do i need further addons to improve the graphics. I have read the settings Orbx suggests and have adjusted them to match. Maybe its my computor that is not able to produce such graphics.

I apologise for my lack of understanding but I really am a novice in terms of FSX and the information on line is abit overwhelming.

Any advice would be greatly welcomed.

Thanks

[ddavid 149]

Hi 'delidan' - and Welcome to the Hangar. I'm sure the Orbx boffins will put you right on this, but, in the meantime you might check your Scenery Complexity setting (In FSX, Click Options-->Settings-->Display, then select the Scenery Tab and look for the Scenery Complexity slider). Sometimes, scenery developers use a Very Dense or even Extremely Dense setting for their scenery objects (the 3-D buildings, etc). This allows users with slower PC-GPU set ups to enjoy the scenery without the sim 'stuttering' - that is running more slowly that 5 frames per second or so when the action becomes erratic. If you could post a screenshot or two, the problem would become clearer, maybe...

By the way, ask any questions you like - we're here to help!

Cheers - Dai.

[mutley 4,498]

Hi Dan,

Welcome to our forums!

To be honest, I don't think I could give any better advice than that in the user manual, they do go into quite some detail as to the best setting for your machine. The manual sits in FTX Central.

I am sure that you wouldn't be able to run at the highest setting though without severely affecting performance, unfortunately FSX is very processor hungry so tweaking those display settings with the advice from the manual would be the way to go.

Also, ensure you have all the service-pack upgrades, if you are using FSX Acceleration then you are fine. If not, to check your version, load up a flight then click on help, then "about Microsoft Flight Simulator" and check the version there.

Original: 10.0.60905

SP1: 10.0.61355

SP2: 10.0.61472

XPack: 10.0.61637

Updates can be obtained from Microsoft here:

SP1 - http://www.microsoft...s.aspx?id=14380

SP2 - http://www.microsoft...ls.aspx?id=8986

You need to install both.

Cheers,

Joe

[britfrog 180]

ftx do make some amazing scenery, however it is very demanding on the computer, even more so if you get the pmdg ngx to fly in their scenery. Sadly despite what you may read on the box of fsx for computer requirements to run fsx, your p.c. will be really hard pushed to produce what you are wanting, you need a minimum of an I5 or I7 pentium or equivalent from amd, a good graphics card is obligatory, i would suggest at least an nvidiea 460gtx and preferably one with 2gb memory, also you will find that if you increase your memory to 8gb you will get a noticeable improvement even without changing anything else, if cost is a consideration. Failing that if you cant afford to upgrade as Joe says RTM they do offer a good deal of help, but you will not be able to run FSX with all the sliders to the right, and that can be frustrating, however we have all been there at some point in the past.

your point about some houses being 3d and others flat is the way ftx make their scenery 3d where they want to give extra detail, flat so that it requires less computer power in areas where it is less important.

welcome to the site!

[delidan77 0]

Hi,

Thank you all for the advice, I think the issue would be my computor however I will learn to live with the graphics it gives me which are still pretty impressive. I do have another issue now though, I installed Aerosoft London & London City airport last night however when I attempt to do a free flight to explore my computor either freezes or is 0% loaded for ever.

Is this once again my computor or do i need to adjust the settings? Is an Inter Core i3 processor just not up to it?

[britfrog 180]

I am afraid i cannot shed any light on your problem , perhaps someone else can. What i can add is that i have an I5 laptop with 4gb memory, and a normal graphics card, with only a basic fsx setup with sp1 and sp2 and no ftx inside and that takes forever to load up, so I think sadly that your p.c may well be the restricting factor , hopefully someone here may be able to prove me wrong.

[UKJim 502]

I have a dated pc with only a core 2 duo processor and an average video card too. 4gig of RAM too.

I run mine with reasonably good settings where I have a gud mix of 3d autogen and a steady frame rate of about 15fps; although when I'm in the clouds it increases.

I had lots of issues when running on Windows xp 32bit - now I run on windows 7 64bit which improved my performance considerably and do not get out of memory errors.

What OS you running? Maybe upgrade to win 7 64bit?

Also perform a defrag on your drive too this may help?

I've heard too (but not tried it myself) that have FSX installed on a different drive to windows can help performance?

Good luck - don't give up bcuz wen u find the best balance its a great hobby to have

Take care

Jim

[delidan77 0]

How do you know your frame rate? I have my setting at about 25fps at the moment.

[Sabre 28]

How do you know your frame rate? I have my setting at about 25fps at the moment.

Hello and welcome to the forum

Press Shift + z when in the sim - you can press the same combination a couple of times to display various pieces of information.

[jaydor 345]

Delidan,

I think it's maybe to do with your graphics. You are using the inbuilt motherboard/cpu combination reading your specs on the left. It's been a long time since I worked on that platform and may be wrong, but I think it's maybe something to do with the amount of videoram your machine is allowing to display the graphics. You will have to find someone close who maybe can uprate the videoram for you. Like I say that's where maybe the problem lies..

The i3 cpu is good enough for FSX. Are you using a laptop or a PC?

[pacinka 0]

Delidan, maybe you could post a screenshot of your problem?

[delidan77 0]

Thank you all for your responses, I have started getting into FSX again as it has taken me a month or so to purchase the Saitek flight stick I wanted. I have accepted that i am stuck for the time being with an i3 processor but i think i will look to increase the memory on my PC to 8gb, will this improve the graphics? I have been told it wont and that the only thing that does effect the graphics is the graphics card itself. My graphics card is an intel HD 1.65GB, is this sufficent to produce the kind of graphics that i am looking for?

At the moment though I have taken a step back in worrying about the graphics and am currently taking the flying lessons as i see little point in worrying about the graphics when i cant even fly a plane !!!

[britfrog 180]

Thank you all for your responses, I have started getting into FSX again as it has taken me a month or so to purchase the Saitek flight stick I wanted. I have accepted that i am stuck for the time being with an i3 processor but i think i will look to increase the memory on my PC to 8gb, will this improve the graphics? I have been told it wont and that the only thing that does effect the graphics is the graphics card itself. My graphics card is an intel HD 1.65GB, is this sufficent to produce the kind of graphics that i am looking for?

At the moment though I have taken a step back in worrying about the graphics and am currently taking the flying lessons as i see little point in worrying about the graphics when i cant even fly a plane !!!

i am afraid the graphic card is certainly a problem IMHO having 8gb of mem will help the speed a bit by allowing the graphics card to address upper memory areas, but when it comes to fsx and ftx you do need some extra oomph you will probably find by investing in a better graphics card will help the issue but the bottom line is really that you need a bit more horsepower.

[stu7708 244]

I havn't tried the Intel HD Graphics myself, but from what I've read in the form of reviews the latest generation (Intel HD 4000) does a fairly good job, almost on par with dedicated graphics card dating from the same time. But the preformance isn't as good when you look at older genereations. So a dedicated Graphics Card is probably the way forward for you, assuming you have room and slots in your computer and enough juice in the PSU.

As britfrog said, adding more memory won't improve your graphics, but will probably improve preformance in FSX.