FSX Scenery help

[PV8189]

Hi, I have a pretty good gaming computer with an nvidia gtx 670 graphics card and plenty of everything else.

However my problem is this, my version of FSX which has numerous VFR Real Scenery addons installed on, has never loaded the graphics properly. When I say this, I mean everything looks flat and awful, even when i put all the graphics settings on full. All the addons are enabled and I have tried to reinstall several times and this does not fix the problem. I have realised this when i was looking on youtube at other people's flight sim set ups and recoognised the fact that they all had much better looking graphics than I do. The main problem is that everything is flat and apart from airports and roads all I get is ground, I.e there is hardly any trees or houses or anything and the times when there is the graphics are rubbish and everything looks 2d as if trees are lying on the floor. The graphics for the aircraft and sky are fine, it just seems to be everything on the ground. Also I have VFR London for example and whenever I set up a free flight from any of the London airports, there is literally no city, its all country with perhaps one house or something. Can someone please help because I am fed up of this problem.

Thanks in advance

[PV8189]

Can someone please reply so that I can try and fix this problem.

[Sector@KMBS]

PV8189

Greetings;

Not much help will come forth, lest, you post your system specs. Perhaps this seems unimportant, but a great many issues are directly caused by hardware/OS problems and improper settings! Be specific!!! What version of FSX are you running?

Kind regards;

Steven

[PV8189]

Hi, thanks for replying

This is my system spec:

AMD Phenom II X6 1075T Processor 3.00GHz
4 GB Corsair RAM
Windows 7 64 bit Operating System
4 GB Nvidia GTX 670
2.5 TB hard drive space

How do I check what version of FSX I am running?

Here are the FSX software I have installed on my PC:

FSX
FSX Acceleration
VFR Real Scenery 1
VFR Real Scenery 2
VFR Real Scenery 3
VFR Real Scenery 4
Traffic X
VFR London
Abacus First Class Simulations - Airbus Collectors Edition
Just Flight Airbus Collection - Long Haul
Just Flight 757 Captain
Just Flight 747 200/300 series
Just Flight 727 Captain
Just Flight 737 Pilot in Command
Just Flight DC-10 Collection

Hope this helps, look forward to a reply soon

[Sector@KMBS]

PV8189;
Hi,
You have a long quest ahead of you my friend, sorry to say! Let me first suggest that you try the following settings in FSX. Remember BACKUP first!!!
You are dealing with photographic images with VFR and it does not add any 3d components. So give this a try and fly at 3000 ft to 6000 ft for best visuals.

This is a starting point!

Level of Detail radius – Large
Mesh complexity - 100
Mesh Resolution - 10 m
Texture Resolution - 1 m
Land detail textures - ticked
Water effects - High 1.x or High 2.x

If you do not want to use the FSX water effects then you should set the Water Effects slider to Low 1.X or None.

Let me know and good luck;

Steven

[PV8189]

I noticed a slight improvement in the grpahics when flying in that range band, but it is still nowhere near the graphics I have seen on other set ups on youtube and nowhere near what I want either, I had those settings on better than what you set out so I reduced them to what you said to see if it made a difference but as I say, it didnt make much difference. The traffic and other aircraft at the airport are perfect but when I was on the runway and indeed on descent into Heathrow airport the major UK airport, there was no sin of a terminal, just a control tower.

The villages from 3-6000 feet looked like you were on google maps, perhaps slightly worse, but what is dissapointing in my eyes is that when you descend or indeed are on the ground, there doesnt seem to be anything with height apart from traffic and other parked aircraft, this is the problem to me as it makes it seem like a toy and not a simulator.

Any ideas on how to get all of these scenery addons I bought to look 3d. I mean I dont expect cinema style quality but I would like to be able to see the buildings with height to them, I mean even on their own adverts the buildings seem to have height, yet on my system everything seems to be flat.

[mjrhealth]

Two things will help. One is to overclock you CPU, the faster it ios teh better.
Second all though FSX only use 3 gig of ram it helps in 64 bit win7 to have at least 8. It provided the OS with a lot of extra head room.

Other option. Open FSX go into the scenery library and un tick all you add ons, FSX will rebuild the library. Than do some flying around with the default FSX scenery. Best thing is to create a test flight and save it than just load that flight each time you test, it makes it easier to compare. Than go back into the scenery library and tick one add on , go back do the test flight. It may be one causing teh problem this is the beast way to find out. You will have to do that for each scenery tic, un tick. The other possibility is that the VFR scenery has no autogen as it may be designed to fly at height. You will find out soon enough.

[Sector@KMBS]

PV8189:

mjrhealth has made a good point with his second option! It's a logical course to follow.

I don't think that overclocking or more RAM are the solution(s) to this problem. As you may know, your CPU has a turbo mode that when enabled pushes 3 of the 6 cores to 3.5Ghz. Whether or not you can push it further is much dependent on your Mobo and cooling etc. You did not mention the make of your board or H/S fan setup!
FSX is very much a trial and error play and requires a great deal of patience to say the least. The key to figuring out the beast is to do it slowly!

Good luck;

Steven

[PV8189]

Thanks guys, I will give the tick/untick thing a go. My motherboard is ASUS, tbh I dont think RAM is the problem as in total I have 8GB of it anyway, of which 4GB is dedicated to Graphics within the Graphics card. My set up I think is fine, I will try 8GB of RAM in a few months time when I have a bit spare money to spend but for now I will just have to do a bit of trial and error on each of the scenery packs. I got a Corsair TX750 power supply so can you tell me how to enable the turbo mode you are on about. Sounds good haha

[mjrhealth]

Video ram is different to on board memory. If it is a 4 gig card most of it is no benefit to you. Even with FSX on its highest settings I cant get it to go over 1 Gig on a 2 gig 680. You dont enable Turbo Mode it is automatic, When ever the system needs you need more power it cuts in than throttles back when you need less.