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[HiFlyer]

X-Plane 10 decided to address this by loading more tiles out to a further distance, but it eats memory like pac man, and I think only the fact that the sim is 64 bit allows them to pull it off. 

Obviously, there's more to it than just loading tiles into memory.

For example here's an interesting quote by Ben Supnik on the subject of LODs:

Not drawing an object is great for framerate. Not only do we save the time on the animations and attributes, but X-Plane never has to process the texture or geometry data, and that’s where the real framerate win comes from. Therefore the most important question for object LODs is “what is the maximum LOD” – that is, what is the farthest distance before X-Plane can stop drawing your object. X-Plane is pretty efficient at recognizing cases where objects, or even whole classes of objects, are simply too far away to draw.

Honestly, they cheat a bit, even with extended DSF. Buildings not all that far away are transparent, and only solidify as you get closer, and a good example of that is New York's Jfk, where the city itself, which is perfectly visible from there in real life, is invisible in X-plane until you are pretty darn close.

Try flying from JFK in FSX, and the City is easily visible.

[Daikan]

Honestly, they cheat a bit, even with extended DSF. Buildings not all that far away are transparent, and only solidify as you get closer, and a good example of that is New York's Jfk, where the city itself, which is perfectly visible from there in real life, is invisible in X-plane until you are pretty darn close.

Try flying from JFK in FSX, and the City is easily visible.

I don't want to take this too far off topic, but the effect you're describing is reproducible for seemingly large objects that are actually a composite of many smaller ones. This is often the case with converted scenery and objects. Therefore it's really important how the objects are constructed and how their LOD levels are configured. And of course, it also depends on the rendering settings as they influence the dataref sim/private/controls/reno/LOD_bias_rat  (among other things) - it's interesting to play with it in real time using dataref editor to see how the max LOD distance changes and how it influences FPS.

[HiFlyer]

Honestly, they cheat a bit, even with extended DSF. Buildings not all that far away are transparent, and only solidify as you get closer, and a good example of that is New York's Jfk, where the city itself, which is perfectly visible from there in real life, is invisible in X-plane until you are pretty darn close.

Try flying from JFK in FSX, and the City is easily visible.

I don't want to take this too far off topic, but the effect you're describing is reproducible for seemingly large objects that are actually a composite of many smaller ones. This is often the case with converted scenery and objects. Therefore it's really important how the objects are constructed and how their LOD levels are configured. And of course, it also depends on the rendering settings as they influence the dataref sim/private/controls/reno/LOD_bias_rat  (among other things) - it's interesting to play with it in real time using dataref editor to see how the max LOD distance changes and how it influences FPS.

In my case I once did the experiment of converting Aerosoft's New York into XPX, and if I remember correctly, the city then appeared at the appropriate distances. X-Plane 10's native depiction of the city obviously handles things quite differently.

It was very interesting to me at the time, as I took lots of pictures of relatively nearby structures that even at max settings were already semi-transparent in X-plane, but which remained firmly visible at the same distances when the Aerosoft Scenery was active. It started me thinking a lot about how sims maintained their frame rates, and makes Outerras frame rates under similar conditions an item of interest.

Right now, Outerra seems to be doing things in yet a third way......

[HiFlyer]

Testing Chaos City. I7 920, downclocked to 3ghz from my Usual 4Ghz just to show that Outerra largely doesn't care about the cpu, as my frame rates were nearly identical at both speeds. Gpu is Nvidia 770gtx 2gb

Recorded with Nvidia Shadowplay, all shadow settings and ambient Occlusion were on. Resolution was 1920 x 1080, AA was at 2x, all other settings at default.

[Jagerbomber]

That's the Steam framerate counter right?  Note that there is an option there to make the number green so you can see it better.

[HiFlyer]

That's the Steam framerate counter right?  Note that there is an option there to make the number green so you can see it better.

Its the sims internal counter. I suggest watching at full screen/1080p and the framerates are very clear, often hovering around 100fps 

[langdon]

@Jagerbomber... what are your machine's specs? In particular  your graphics card?

On an overclocked I5  (4.4Ghz) and a GTX 660 TI I get about half that frame rate.
I'm curious if an upgrade to a GTX 980 is worth it.

Thanks.

[Jagerbomber]

Me or HiFlyer?

I haven't tested massive cities, but in a generally empty location (with trees), I generally get 45-60+ with a GTX 770 (4GB) and an i7, 8GB RAM.

[HiFlyer]

@Jagerbomber... what are your machine's specs? In particular  your graphics card?

On an overclocked I5  (4.4Ghz) and a GTX 660 TI I get about half that frame rate.
I'm curious if an upgrade to a GTX 980 is worth it.

Thanks.

Outerra really doesn't get most of its "Oomph" from the CPU, so in that regard, it's much more like a modern game and a lot less like FSX.

I would say, yes, you will get more a lot more FPS out of a 980gtx, not just in Outerra but also in X-plane and pretty much anything modern.

In Outerra itself, I notice that, at least on my card, that there is a noticeable hit from Antialiasing' and that that is probably one of the biggest drainers on Outerra other than resolution.

[langdon]

Hi,

Thanks to both of you. I actually meant HiFlyer but that would be admitting I was so dense I didn't see that he specifed them already in his post.

Having the specs from you both is good for a comparison.
Christmas is coming. I might have a splurge

That's the one thing that just kills FSX.
I could bolt a refrigerator to my CPU and maybe get a few FPS more.

With OT (or any modern software)
I can inprove the GPU and really affect the frame rate.

Anyone tried SLI yet?


L

[KW71]

Hiflyer, how do you manage to record with shadowplay? It doesn't work for me... Any trick?

EDIT:

Never mind. I found it:

[HiFlyer]

Cool! 

I actually had to figure it out by trial and error, because originally shadowplay caused artifacts, but then after a few updates from Nvidia it finally became compatible with OpenGL/Outerra.

Quality medium is more than enough for a great movie (and smaller files) and you can also set "status indicator" to "on" to get a visual cue of when you are recording or not.

Alt + F9 to start and stop recording.

I edit, add music/effects/titles etc in Windows Movie Maker, which works fine with windows 10 as well.


Download it free here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/get-movie-maker-download

[KW71]

Thanks for the tips, Hiflyer!