FSX Acceleration
AMD Phenom X6 1045T 2.7Ghz (but overclocked a bit, around 3.0ghz if I remember right)
Nvidia GTX 460 V2
16gb DDR4 RAM
Nope, definitely not the best flight sim system. I have no doubt my video card struggles lol. I built this computer for photography work for the most part; never was a gamer until I discovered how real and immersive flight sims had gotten.
That said, it does just fine running GA airplanes in ORBX sceneries. It'll slow a little in complex places like the Misty's add-on Ketchikan harbor. It chokes running the PMDG NGX into Juneau unless I start pulling sliders down. ;-)
That said, I'm running the recommended ORBX settings:
LOD radius: Large
Mesh Complexity: 100
Mesh Resolution: 5m
Texture Resolution: 7cm
So I accept the performance stutters as a function of my mediocre system. But the visibility distance is what I cannot figure out. I'll use a simple jungle strip I've been learning on to demonstrate what I mean with some pics. I'm modeling it on ORBX strips in the area (ORBX AYPY Papua New Guinea "Experience" package). My strip is at Haelogo, a real-world village strip that ORBX did not build.
First, examples of an ORBX strip in the area:
Kagi, on the ground. Note the white cone runway edge markers:
Here is ORBX's Efogi, from a medium final. Note the runway edge cones (small though they are) are actually visible for the length of the runway at this distance:
Now here is my scenery (Haelogo) from an overhead view. Note the white runway edge cones visible for the length of the runway (these are an object from the EZ Scenery library --> FSXP3D_Small_Airport_Objects2 --> item 5. GUID: {31CA1643-4899-ACF6-ED01-C593EA8941AA} )
Here is Haelogo (my scenery) on the ground. Notice that the last couple markers aren't visible, even from this distance:
Here is Haelogo (my scenery) just after takeoff. Notice that the edge markers have all disappeared already (contrast this with the distance the ORBX edge markers are visible from):
And here is Haelogo (my scenery) on short final. Notice that only the closest couple pairs of edge markers are visible; the farthest have JUST popped into view at this point:
I'm trying to learn to understand object behavior from this example scenery. I'm confused by the following:
1. The similar-sized ORBX objects are visible from any distance that they'd be large enough to be visible. Any similar-sized object I attempt to use (barrels etc) all behave the same way; they disappear seemingly too soon.
2. But from the the overhead view of my scenery, my markers are visible from quite far away. The overhead shot I posted looks to be a mile high and you can still see the markers. Yet on the ground or in flight in a normal horizontal view, they disappear within a few hundred feet.
Can anyone understand why this happens? Any ideas what kind of magic ORBX uses to avoid it? I'm not averse to learning to build my own objects from scratch in GMax or Sketchup so I have control over all parameters... but what might I need to do?
Thanks for taking the time to read all this, guys...
Andrew