Hi all.
In relation to a previous thread started by Maurice in relation to the ESPS Booster I thought that due to a communication break down on my part with the installation of the Booster software it was appropriate to start afresh on this topic.
First of all, the FSPS support team have the thumbs up from me for their continued interest and their support to re-direct me into the correct installation of their software.
This thread really starts with my first evaluation of the FSX Booster software. They allow a demo version of 2 flights within FSX and after that you are required to register and purchase a full licence to carry on using the software.
So, how did it go.
I have completed one flight from my home base of Alicante - Spain to Stansted - UK. This is a flight that I undertake on a regular basis in the default FSX 737 so I thought it only right that it should be one that I could make comment on.
I run 3 X 22" viewing screens and at the moment one screen for the PFD Captains side.
I have previously adjusted the FSX settings to the best I can following an in depth article in PC Pilot magazine and have up to now been quite satisfied with the results.
Obviously, taking off from Spain, I have good weather !!!!! (it is raining at the moment) so I set the weather for fine and day light conditions.
On taxi and take off I would achieve around 15 FPS and this time was able to acheive about 20 FPS. As usual they were fluctuating but I have taken this figure as an average.
Climb and level flight I would normally expect around the 35 FPS. Again it was fluctuating but this time I acheived a maximum of 48 FPS but on average I would estimate around 42 FPS.
Landing and taxiing reduced the FPS to around 20 FPS.
The biggest noticable difference was no stuttering of the outside views.
The next flight will be from Alicante to Heathrow. Heathrow being a dedicated airport installation and just to really try it out, I will reduce the visibility, fly at night and chuck in some rain too. I will report back with my findings then.
So far Maurice, I am impressed with the increased frame rates and lack of stuttering. I don't know what this software does but so far it seems to work.
I have my daughter over to stay for the next week so I may be limited to my access on the sim but will carry on this thread once I have evaluated the software a bit more. All in all, looks quite promising.
Once again, thanks to the FSPS team for their support.
Gary
Thanks Gary for taking the time to do this & report your findings. I wish I could run my own tests but my sim is not flyable yet, so hopefully there will be a few others who may want to try the program & report their findings as well
Cheers,
Maurice
As promised, I have undertaken a second flight using FSX Booster.
Alicante to Heathrow. Heathrow is the Mega Airport version and up to now has really caused frustration as it jumps about like nobodies business. I used a night flight with rain and reduced visibility.
Taxi and take off from Alicante produced an average of 20 FPS and climb out to level flight ranging from 25 FPS - 35 FPS.
Descent into Heathrow gave me 19 FPS to 25 FPS.
As I approched runway 27R and the main airport came into view the frame rates went right down and on taxiing to gate 611, I was only acheiving between 6.2 FPS and 8.4 FPS. That said however, the normal jumping I was getting had been reduced to a stutter.
I knocked off the rain and then acheived 7.4 FPS - 9.6 FPS and on resetting the time back to daylight hours, the frame rates went up to a more or less constant 11.
I am running a 3166 mhtz dual core processor with 8GB ram. I have 3 Nvidia 9800GT graphic cards each running a 22" monitor and one card has a second monitor for the PFD display on the captains side.
Overall, I am very impressed with the FSX Booster. For the normal flights I undertake - like the first trial, the visuals and frame rates seem to be really enhanced. In the second trial at Heathrow, the detail was really good - better than I had acheived previously but the frame rates were still low but it is a big ask to acheive much more unless the system allows it.
Would I purchase the Booster. Yes I would.
Obviously, everyones set up will be different but you get the first two demos for free so you lose nothing by giving it a try.
I would dearly love to know what tweaks the Booster performs but then that would negate it's future use I suppose.
Gary
Thank you for taking the time to fill everyone in on your results Gary.
Scott
Hi Gary,
>>I would dearly love to know what tweaks the Booster performs but then that would negate it's future use I suppose<<
Thats a kind of mistery also to us, because the tweaks are based to advanced calculations and their values are not stable. Also all the tweaks are not applied to all users. Depends from many many thinks. So, really we do not know what tweaks FSX Booster applied for you. Maybe tommorow will not be the same with the previous day even in the same PC.
In general from your post, I see that you archived almost 50% extra frames plus extra smootness. In some cases we have been reported up to 90% frames increase.
FSPS team would like to thank you for your time, thus we will offer to you FSX Booster for free. Just drop us an email to support.fsps@737ng.gr
Regards,
FSPS Team
See.. There are companies who care about our input! Very good FSPS team!
What can I say......Totally unexpected and credit where credit is due, you have an ace product.
Thank you guys for that.
I will email you today.
Gary
Hi,
We would like to inform that a review has been published for FSX Booster at www.flightsim.com
You can read it here
http://www.flightsim.com/main/review/fsxboost.htm (http://www.flightsim.com/main/review/fsxboost.htm)
Regards,
FSPS Team
If you want to see your average framerate in FSX, type in two new lines in fsx.cfg.
I guess you all have the first of the three lines under. Copy and paste the last two:
FrameRate=1,1
AverageFrameRate=1,2
LockedFrameRate=1,3
To show the FPS, press Shift+Z
Allo Chaps,
Curious if anyone else has tried the booster yet, and what their results were?
I DL'd the demo but a little skeptical to try it. Read some reviews on the other site,
and some had poor results.
I installed UK2000 Scenery EGLL and man is it a frame killer, so I was wanting to see
if the booster helped out.
So if anyone has some input it would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers
Mega-Heathrow is much more frame-friendly. I'm running this on several systems and the lowest is a P4 2.8Ghz. It runs great on that system and everything above it.
Mega-Frankfurt is also frame-rate friendly on a low end system.
Both of those airports are for FS2004 though. If running FSX...I'm sorry.
Quote from: Emesis on October 03, 2010, 11:04:26 AM
I DL'd the demo but a little skeptical to try it. Read some reviews on the other site,
and some had poor results.
Why are you skeptical to try it ? As far as they tell us, the tweaks are not permanent unless you get a license and even then, you have to run the program before starting FSX to effect the changes so there should be no risks for you. So go ahead, live dangerously... it won`t hurt (me) at all :)
Maurice
Thanx for the support Maurice :P
The reason I'm a little skeptical is because some of the posts I read were about it messing up your fsx.cfg.
So that's why I was curious if anybody else had tried it, just to get some more feedback.
Mike thanks, I'll check out Aerosoft's Mega-Heathrow.
Cheers
Quote from: Emesis on October 03, 2010, 02:42:12 PM
Thanx for the support Maurice :P
The reason I'm a little skeptical is because some of the posts I read were about it messing up your fsx.cfg.
So that's why I was curious if anybody else had tried it, just to get some more feedback.
Mike thanks, I'll check out Aerosoft's Mega-Heathrow.
Cheers
Hi,
Do not be afraid. All the bugs have been solved.
Regards,
FSPS Support Team
Alright mate, I'll give it a shot and report back with my results on Heathrow.
Cheers
Quote from: Emesis on October 04, 2010, 06:46:52 AM
Alright mate, I'll give it a shot and report back with my results on Heathrow.
Cheers
I am looking forward to your results!
Well after a few problems running the software I was finally able to get it to run. But I guess I'm one of the users that didn't see much of a difference. I started out at Heathrow using UK2000 Scenery Heathrow Extreme and flew over to London City Airport. I used Heathrow Extreme because I know it's a frame killer. Did this several times back and forward while monitoring my frame rate.
I noticed a slight frame increase from around 9-10 frames to 12-13 frames. It did seem to smooth out the frame rate but I still had stutters which would drop down to 4-5 frames. ??? The one thing I did notice were some artifacts such as black lines shooting across the screen and white patches popping up on the ground. Then as I was going back to Heathrow I had a system crash. So there went another one of my free tries. :-[
Now mind you I'm running an older video card, an 8800GTX factory OC'd, but never had any issues with running FSX. I have the majority of my sliders around 75% and receive and average of 30-45 frames. The only major Airports that I've seen unbearable frame drops are Boston, Heathrow.
Personally I'm undecided about this product. The first 2 tries were wasted on an improper setup and issues getting everything in the right order. But FSPS were kind enough to send me another 2 tries and that's when I had the crash. So it's pretty hard to judge this software with such limited number of tries. I think if they had maybe 10 tries per demo that would really help out the evaluation, due to your first tries are wasted just getting everything setup correctly.
On a positive note, their support team is right on top of things and ready to help out. I'm sure it's hard to please everyone since there are so many variables out there with customers computers. So good product support is a necessity. I've always believed that a product is only as good as the support behind it, and the FSPS team are doing a good job.
So would I recommend this software? Well I recommend trying the demo and judge for yourself, every system is different. I think if there were more tries on the demo it would help FSPS in the long run. Because they are on the right track, but the test drive just wasn't long enough to evaluate all aspects in my opinion.