First View
8/25/2008
First acknowledgement: Thanks to xxmikexx for the blog location; I'd been looking for it just a few days before...
In the last few days I've finally gotten around to doing a couple things that were on my FSX "to do" list: downloaded and ran benchmarking flights and spent two evenings getting Tile Proxy running.
Benchmark: first off, I was curious how my stock 2-core E8400 would compare to the 4-core Q6600 (to start with) and others' systems as well. When you spend a grand or so to upgrade, you want to feel that it's money well spent.
My results were satisfying - slightly better than the Q with SP1 and medium settings. When all settings were at max the performance was so minimal it doesn't matter who is 'better'. Then I added my nearly maxed out Ultimate Terrain and the marginal performance sank to an unplayable average of 5. It must be noted that 'max' includes Bloom which I turn on only if a screen shot would be improved - I don't fly with it.
The great result is that I spend most of my time out in rural regions exploring canyons and following roads and rivers. There my average is 57 with fairly high settings and I DO smile about that. There's still the issue of how fast textures can load at the 60cm level of resolution. That's still not great but I just have to stick to the 100kts range. To go faster I have to give up a little of the detail, gain a little altitude and settle for 1m texture level. Good trade off to cruise in the 300-400kts range.
Tile Proxy: a little tricky to get everything set correctly on the first try but once it's pulling down images the results are sometimes awesome! The 'problem' is the varying coverage and the level of detail and coloration in that coverage. Some areas have great detail - more than you can use - while other areas are wholly lacking in any fine detail. One thing that I noticed pretty quick: The alignment of default airports with the imaged photo airports... a lot of discrepancy here, particularly with the small GA airports. I'm getting the feeling that I'll be firing up the airport editor and becoming a roving airport mover. If I recall correctly, when I added the photoreal Oahu textures for FS9, it took two or three evenings to move/adjust all the runways and taxiways to align them to match the photo scenery at PHNL. Great fun! At some point, I'll surely come in from the countryside and find out how well some of the major FSX airports line up with the photo scenery.
First attempt was the Florida Keys and I had mixed results there. Sunday evening I wandered all over the extensive aircraft storage areas at KDMA (Tucson) set at 30cm image resolution - quite a lot of aircraft types can be identified from their distinctive shapes. Next stop, Honolulu.
So much to see! So little time!
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Yesterday was my and my wife's 40th wedding anniversary.
I spent more time with her than with FSX.
Otherwise she'd be a widow and I'd be her late husband and a former Flight Sim enthusiast.
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Loyd
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