Few questions on fps hit in the Chicago area

[Arnaud]

Hey Martin,

I bought the Fly Midway earlier today and tested it a little.
No doubt, an outstanding scenery, absolutely nice.

I have few questions though on the fps hit that might occur.

The first scenery I bought was Dubai, and I was stunned by its 'zero impact on the fps'. I guessed at the time that it was due, first of, to the very well done low polys and LOD design, and also on the almost non existant autogen around the airport.
Then I bought San francisco: even more impressed, because I get as good fsp than with Dubai, with a lot aof autogen around the airport.

(I have a pretty strong PC, based on P4 3.2gzh, 1Go DDRam and ATI 9800XT gfx card).

Now, Midway... I dont get as much fps, and my question is: would it be due to the enormous amount of autogen all around the area, and to the proximity of O'Hare and all its trafic ?
I believe the answer is yes, but I wished you confirm that.

I have my trafic set to 100% (only AIA and low polys models, so no question on the AI impact), autogen and everythink set to max, mip mapping set to 4 and no weather programm add-on.
While I get 20 fps (limit set to 25 for me) at both DXB and SFO, I often
fall to 10-12 in at Midway during final approach (with the fps killer PMDG, which is my test plane).
To end with, my screen resolution is 1280/1024.

Another question was: how to turn off the transparent/pax windows once the scenery is installed? Is there a way to do that, or shall I simply unistall and re-install the scenery without that feature? And would that help in a significant way for the fps?

Last, english being not my native language, what is the so called 'jet-ways'? I dont understand what this is. Is it 'jet Airways' ? I installed the tweak for those ORD jetways, but I have no clue what it is.

Sorry for all those questions, and again, I applaude your very very nice work.


Regards,

[martin[flytampa]]

Basically the fps performance of Dubai, San Francisco and Midway is the same when they are compiled (placed) at the same location. What that means is that Dubai compiled at Midway location would be the same as you see now in Midway, just like Midway compiled in the UAE would run like Dubai itself. The fps impact of our scenery data (latest releases, not old stuff) is about -2 to -4 from what I measured. Everything above that is caused by external factors like having 40+ AI parking spots in the Afcad compared to the default scenery where there are only around 5.

In the case of Midway the major impact comes from AI, but like I wrote in the manual, not from the visible AI models. My tests while developing this scenery indicate that it is simply the amount of traffic that you might not even see on screen but is being processed by ATC. There are literarily hundreds of aircraft in the air around Chicago when using MRAI and other "real" schedules. In this case it doesn't matter how low poly your AI models are, its the processing of all this movement itself that takes away performance.

Easiest way to test these things yourself is to temporarily turn off Autogen, see what effect it makes. Then turn of AI, see the effect and so on.

Jetways are the walk-bridges that connect to the aircraft door. The default Microsoft jetways that are present at some of Microsoft's airports like KORD, KJFK etc have a 20+ nm visibily setting, meaning that 100+ jetways from KORD were being rendered/processed even when as far away as Midway (that hurts especially the 31C approach since you're looking right at KORD with that heading). What I ended up doing is re-building the Microsoft jetways but with this visibility problem fixed. You can observe this by loading up default KORD. You will notice how the jetways disappear at around 2000 meter range.

To change the windows to non-transparent you simply re-install the scenery into the same folder, this can be done as often as needed changing any options that the installer offers. The fps increase will be minimal if any. The only cases where these windows and animations can have a major effect is when using older graphics cards I believe.

[Arnaud]

Thanks Martin, for confirming what I was thinking myself.

I've already came to the same conclusion when flying in the NYC area,
filled with hundreds of airborne AI planes, and where the fps even far away from LGA, EWR or JFK are pretty low.
In this area I made the test some time ago to de-activate AI or autogen,
and the results were very clear: AI processing takes a lot of ressources,
no matter we use low polys models or awful things like PAI stuff.

About the jetways, I understand now, and I'd just add that its really great
that you could tweak them that way. Very interesting.
I wished I could do that for all other default airports, like Heathrow and many others.

Anyway, again thank you. I will now enjoy Midway the way it deserves in the meanwhile.

Regards,

[tjsynkral]

From what I saw (friend's computer... still no MDW ) KORD's jetways look better, too... there was a problem before of "holes" in the wheels on them in the default scenery. I was impressed that MDW even makes ORD look better.

[martin[flytampa]]

The look of the KORD jetway replacements should be pretty much the same. I didn't modify them to really look better at all, simply used the same texture from Microsoft. Making them look different would have been possible, but that wasn't the goal in this case

[tjsynkral]

It's more of a bugfix... Microsoft's jetways look fine, except for the whole octagon-shaped wheels with round tire textures. Somehow you straightened that out with the update.

[martin[flytampa]]

Bugfix is the correct word. But the only bug that i intended to fix was the visibility range so they vanish as you go further away from them. All visual changes that you might notice up close weren't really done on purpose:D