The 'Official' Screenshot & Tips thread 4 FSX enthusiasts & flight simmers.

Nice shots there SB, looking good. Glad you are having fun and a good result now with your flight sim.

Vuvuzela: It mainly down to practice and experimenting, nearly all my shots (95%) are done via the FSX internal camera option (or the ones that come within the specific aircraft.cfg file, ie variable of cameradefinition.001 etc). You always start with cockpit view, which personally hardly ever use for taking screen shots, pressing S will get you into the external view. Here you can press A to cycle through 4 different default external views, spot, spot locked, flyby and bird's eye view. You can control the zoom in all of these shots simply with + & -, in flyby and birds eye you cannot pan the shot but you can in the other 2. If you have a hat switch(8 way) on your joystick you can control both the spot views with that switch, otherwise you can use SHIFT & arrows keys to manipulate the angle/panning of the shot. I tend to use spot locked the most with my hat switch and zoom, this gives me the majority of my shots. Pressing S again will get you the tower(s) view, pressing A here will cycle through different tower view or a tower from a different airport, I rarely use this for shots but it is nice to see replay takeoffs & landings from this view. Pressing S again will get you the camera views as defined in the aircraft.cfg file of each aircraft. For instance, the hanglider will have 3 views here, a rear view and 2 side views, pressing A will toggle between them, again use zoom + & - if need be. I often use this as well and even sometime define my own camera angles by editing new ones in the aircraft.cfg (this is not easy though and I usually copy and past them between aircraft).

And that's it, there are also 2 other camera software addons for FSX that are very good, EZwalk & EZdock, 1 is freeware and the other is payware. I use the freeware one occasionally in my shots as well.

Hope that help.

Cheers

PS. My raid array on my FSX PC died during this weekend, resulting in a complete loss of my FSX setup and install. Instead of reinstalling everything again (which will take bloody ages) I decided to wait till I buy my new FSX PC sometime before Xmas, as otherwise I need to install it again on a different PC. So probably won't be giving many posts here for a while till I am fully up and running again, @end of December/January. Which is why when I do get my new PC, I will take a spare drive purely for backing up the entire FSX folder with it so I do not waste a ton of edits/tweaks/installs/addons & adjustments that I have made over the past @6 months. I highly recommend to anyone who has made many alterations & additions to their FSX to do the same, believe me, I am kicking myself now for not doing it sooner.
 
Sorry to hear about your troubles Soya. That will take ages to rebuild I'm sure.

Will you be RAIDing again or using SSD next time?

Edit: I just have been tweaking again tonight and have applied the bufferpools tweak. It has made an amazing difference and the sim feels much smoother. I guess it works for some and not for others. Have overclocked the 5850 and using 8xAA, 16xAF with no real stutters at all now! FPS limited to 30 in game. Might try the external limiter again.
 
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ringo747 said:
Sorry to hear about your troubles Soya. That will take ages to rebuild I'm sure.

Will you be RAIDing again or using SSD next time?

Edit: I just have been tweaking again tonight and have applied the bufferpools tweak. It has made an amazing difference and the sim feels much smoother. I guess it works for some and not for others. Have overclocked the 5850 and using 8xAA, 16xAF with no real stutters at all now! FPS limited to 30 in game. Might try the external limiter again.
Click to expand...

I'm trying to get the external limter working but it doesn't seem to work:confused: Limited in game cuts me down from 50fps to 15fps so I'm desperate to get it going.
 
ringo747 said:
Sorry to hear about your troubles Soya. That will take ages to rebuild I'm sure.

Will you be RAIDing again or using SSD next time?

Edit: I just have been tweaking again tonight and have applied the bufferpools tweak. It has made an amazing difference and the sim feels much smoother. I guess it works for some and not for others. Have overclocked the 5850 and using 8xAA, 16xAF with no real stutters at all now! FPS limited to 30 in game. Might try the external limiter again.
Click to expand...

Are you using MSAA or SSAA? Also what have you clocked your 5850 to?

@ Soya, unlucky mate, just think how much better fsx will be on your new rig!
 
Set the following in CFG file...

Code: 
[BufferPools]
UsePools=0

This will really be a hit on your gfx card. I am getting a constant 30 (limited in game) with 8xAA although I get the occasionally stutter.

Edit: Are you using the Shader Model Fix?
 
ringo747 said:
Set the following in CFG file...

Code: 
[BufferPools]
UsePools=0

This will really be a hit on your gfx card. I am getting a constant 30 (limited in game) with 8xAA although I get the occasionally stutter.

Edit: Are you using the Shader Model Fix?
Click to expand...

yeh i am

edit: just had a go and seem to be running happily at 30fps. Will have a tinker with the bufferpools later
 
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I think everyone with different setups has varying success with cfg edits. I had been using AffinityMask but recently have discovered it wasn't helping things at all.

I adjust the TML and the TBM, add the vSync fix, enable widescreen ratio and thats pretty much it. Don't bother with anything like FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION or BATCH_ASYNC_JOBS.
 
Soya said:
Vuvuzela: It mainly down to practice and experimenting, nearly all my shots (95%) are done via the FSX internal camera option (or the ones that come within the specific aircraft.cfg file, ie variable of cameradefinition.001 etc). You always start with cockpit view, which personally hardly ever use for taking screen shots, pressing S will get you into the external view. Here you can press A to cycle through 4 different default external views, spot, spot locked, flyby and bird's eye view. You can control the zoom in all of these shots simply with + & -, in flyby and birds eye you cannot pan the shot but you can in the other 2. If you have a hat switch(8 way) on your joystick you can control both the spot views with that switch, otherwise you can use SHIFT & arrows keys to manipulate the angle/panning of the shot. I tend to use spot locked the most with my hat switch and zoom, this gives me the majority of my shots. Pressing S again will get you the tower(s) view, pressing A here will cycle through different tower view or a tower from a different airport, I rarely use this for shots but it is nice to see replay takeoffs & landings from this view. Pressing S again will get you the camera views as defined in the aircraft.cfg file of each aircraft. For instance, the hanglider will have 3 views here, a rear view and 2 side views, pressing A will toggle between them, again use zoom + & - if need be. I often use this as well and even sometime define my own camera angles by editing new ones in the aircraft.cfg (this is not easy though and I usually copy and past them between aircraft).

And that's it, there are also 2 other camera software addons for FSX that are very good, EZwalk & EZdock, 1 is freeware and the other is payware. I use the freeware one occasionally in my shots as well.

Hope that help.

Cheers
Click to expand...

Thank you so much for that. I'm going to try what you said tonight.
thanks again!
 
More tweaking tonight and I am back to using BufferPools and AffinityMask both! You can never win with this.

The best thing so far was adding TextureMaxLoad to the [Display] section. This is different from TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD under [Graphics].

TextureMaxLoad=12 is used with TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT (40) and the internal frame rate limiter (30). This has really improved things for me tonight.

Note that if you have frames set to unlimited then this all is irrelevant.
 
think it must depend on the time, weather and whats on tv :D

Really considering a dedicated FSX drive, another 64GB C300, just wonderin if you can move fsx from one drive to another without reinstalling?

Want to be able to have all FSX, REX, UTX and a/c all on one drive and the one I have wont fit it :(
 
I think a fresh install would be better. You don't need to install REX on the main drive. Install it somewhere else and then select your desired theme and it gets written to the FSX directory.
 
Fair point. I have about 12GB to play with left on this drive leaving a little bit of free space. Think i just secretly want another ssd :D

On another note, been looking at the CS 757 and its quite impressive, but also seen the quality wings 757. Any opinions on which is better. I personally value a better flight dynamics model over systems prog, dont know if that affects anything...
 
lukext said:
think it must depend on the time, weather and whats on tv :D

Really considering a dedicated FSX drive, another 64GB C300, just wonderin if you can move fsx from one drive to another without reinstalling?

Want to be able to have all FSX, REX, UTX and a/c all on one drive and the one I have wont fit it :(
Click to expand...

+1 I get it just right, and then for some reason it all goes to pot and I spend days trying to get close to where I was. I also want a dedicated FSX SSD. And another one for my steam folder. And another for all my other apps... I want more SSDs.

I'm quite taken with the CS models, beautiful and detailed too. Their C130 is still my fav AP and I'm still learning more about it months on. The 707 is next on my list :)
 
You folks should not forget the fact that each flight or stage of a flight, can make completely different demands on your system, especially when using 3rd party addons. For instance, I tend to use different configurations files depending on what I am using, where & what I am flying (heavy airports usage, takeoff/landing phase, cruising high altitude, VFR etc). So if you stick with one particular config, it might be smooth on a single flight or part of that flight, but load up another flight/area or get to a different stage of that same flight, and stutters/problems may creep into your flying. Nearly all cfg tweaks can be put into a separate cfg file and loaded up via the graphic options even during a flight. For example, take the Texture_Max_Load variable which defaults at 1024, you can either run REX or another similar program before loading up FSX to force it to stay at 4096, or you can manually change it in FSX.CFG but as soon as you edit the graphic options within FSX it will return to default (unless you running REX or something to prevent that which takes up some resources). Now instead of changing the FSX.CFG variables, which btw only get read at FSX startup and not during any time while FSX is running so it is overwritten by many defaults as soon as you edit the graphic options during any stage while running FSX, try creating a separate cfg file. This can be done by simply using the save option within the FSX graphic menu, give the file a particular name, find it on your PC (somewhere within my documents) and use that particular file to add things like TML=4096. So once you are flying you can load those cfg files during any stage of a flight and it will use the variable stated within. Using this method, for instance, you could have 1 cfg files with TML at 1024 during a busy airport part and load another cfg file shortly after take off with TML at 4096 (this is just an example). Using this method you can also easily edit things like autogen etc within the file to make your particular flight over a particular area as smooth as possible. I tend to end up giving my cfg files names like Busy airports, Flying over NL2000v4, High alt cruising, Using complex Aircrafts etc, all you need to do is find out what are the best settings for your system for a specific aircraft & flight and save those settings to a specific cfg.

Hope that makes sense.

Lukext: I personally would recommend CS 757 but mainly because of the excellent UHDT world liveries that are available for it via McPhat. So far they have done 3 world airline releases, 5 liveries each, in UHDT paints all excellent quality plus they are about to release a 4th one soon. Once you go HD or UHDT, believe me, everything else just looks 'Dull'.

Devrij: Don't forget that scenery addons (not all of them) can be stored on a different drive if need be when you install it. For instance, pretty sure NL2000v4 can be installed to a different drive then FSX. This should free up much space on the FSX drive, you may even want to try moving scenery manually if you get desperate on space. Simply find where the folder with scenery & textures is stored, copy (move it once you tested it) it to another drive, edit or change the scenery library file to make sure it points to the correct area and Bob's your uncle. btw, at CS is selling the 707 at a $20 discount, might be worth it to you now?
 
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Well I have tried moving my scenery folder but Im having issues

FSX Directory: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X

New FSX Scenery Directory: F:\Luke\Games\FSX Scenery\Scenery

Then found the scenery file in appdata and changed:

[Area.001]
Title=Default Terrain
Texture_ID=1
Local=Scenery\World
Layer=1
Active=TRUE
Required=TRUE

to

[Area.001]
Title=Default Terrain
Texture_ID=1
Local=F:\Luke\Games\FSX Scenery\Scenery\World
Layer=1
Active=TRUE
Required=TRUE

for example for all of the required entries.

However when I load up fsx in this config I get a message saying that dem4km.bgl (a file in base scenery) is missing or corrupt. Have got everything backed up so have reverted back for the mean time.

Any ideas or am I just being stupid and missing something obvious?
 
Soya said:
Devrij: Don't forget that scenery addons (not all of them) can be stored on a different drive if need be when you install it. For instance, pretty sure NL2000v4 can be installed to a different drive then FSX. This should free up much space on the FSX drive, you may even want to try moving scenery manually if you get desperate on space. Simply find where the folder with scenery & textures is stored, copy (move it once you tested it) it to another drive, edit or change the scenery library file to make sure it points to the correct area and Bob's your uncle. btw, at CS is selling the 707 at a $20 discount, might be worth it to you now?
Click to expand...

It is definately worth it for me, but unfortunately I'm skint and have xmas presents to buy :( I have my scenery on the SSD mainly to improve loading times and also to try and fix the clarity issues I'm having with the NL2000v4 scenery... which though I love it and think it's beautiful, I am beginning to hate for the frustration it's causing me :p
 
Yeah, I cracked :P Tiny Tim shall go wanting this xmas

CS707.jpg


EDIT: JPEG compression ruined this one :(
 
Well, I decided to try out the C130 from CS. Pretty good. Will probably get the B52 next. Not sure which civil one I want, the 757 seems good with McPhats textures, but I love the 727.

Anyway, in the absence of soya, I thought I would put up my first screen shot (this is just plain old fsx, no rex2 etc)

C130Flares.jpg
 
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