FG System Requierments

[SP-K79]

Sorry for the long time to reply.

Thank you guys for the info. It was very helpful.

I played around with FG and it is better now.

[DF_Hammack]

I guess I'm just lucky.... of course I don't fly any big planes, and don't do any multi-player (yet), but I am running an old HP 505B (Athlon II, 2.8GHz, w/ 4GB mem) with an over-the-hill nVidia GT610. Motherboard AND memory only cost me 20 bucks.

You really ought to consider Linux, at least for FlightGear (you could run a dual boot). With Linux, FlightGear (2016.2.1) runs super smooth, using all the bells an whistles. There is an old saying that more is better. I can't deny that, but working within a budget, you get what you can afford that does the job. At least for now, this does the job.

Windows is pretty, and for better or worse, it is the standard, but it puts a HUGE resource hit on your computer. Linux, with a minimalist window manager is much more resource friendly. Linux, using KDE, Cinnamon, or Mate is VERY user friendly. XFCE is a happy median between the more resource hungry window managers and a more minimalist approach. Using Linux is not so different from using Windows. In short order, you won't notice much difference. If you are custom configuring FlightGear, you won't have any problem with Linux

I run Linux Mint with XFCE. Using WINE along with Q4WINE, there are very few Windows apps that I can't run.....

[skelehat]

Hello,
I dont really want to open a new thread but want to ask something. I have 8 GB ram, a GTX650 and a core2duo cpu but my fps is awful on flightgear. No matter how I set it up (lighting, etc) it's never above 30 fps. Using arch linux (parabola) right now. My question would be the following:

- This spec should be more than enough so I just need to change drivers,
OR
- I'm considering upgrading to an i5 cpu for a while and maybe it's time to finally do so?

[legoboyvdlp]

Make sure you don't have the FPS limiter enabled. Also, 30 fps is truly impressive -- sufficient for a safe flight
Do you have ALS and the Transition shader -- specifically that one -- enabled? (Check View > Rendering > Custom Shaders)

[skelehat]

30 fps is truly impressive -- sufficient for a safe flight

Well I can certainly play and it's okay, but I'm afraid it wont be enough when I want to start using head tracking and such. Also with ALS enabled it's usually closer to 15, I'd really like to go above 30 to about 40-50 minimum. I wonder if an i5 would improve it enough to justify buying it...

[wkitty42]

the transition and urban shaders are what killed a lot of things for me... those plus having too large an area in the LOD settings... especially when it came to areas with a lot of trees...

@skelehat: my system is an 8core 4Ghz AMD Vishera... my video is (currently) a GeForce GT 730 with 1M RAM... for the most part, depending on where i'm flying and at what altitudes, i get 20 - 30 FPS with my settings (LOD and others) which include ALS with all sliders maxed except for urban... in some cases, i do get up to 40+ FPS but there's little to see visually... like yesterday when i made a 33000 foot flight from ZBAA to ZSCN... there was a lot of clouds and haze and my FPS was in the mid to high 40s...

it should be noted that flightgear is probably more CPU bound than it should be but things like this are being looked at and worked on as time progresses... it is known that some things can/should be offloaded to the GPUs on the video card but that will take some more time and effort...

[skelehat]

@skelehat: my system is an 8core 4Ghz AMD Vishera... my video is (currently) a GeForce GT 730 with 1M RAM... for the most part, depending on where i'm flying and at what altitudes, i get 20 - 30 FPS with my settings

Wow that's quite surprising to me, I assumed others would get much better FPS rates easily. Honestly I should just get okay with my current fps then, turning off ALS... It's a bit of a let down, not gonna lie.I accept though that it's quite a daring task to even maintain and code this giant project of Flightgear so I'll just roll with it, thanks for enlightening me.

[wkitty42]

ummm... i DO use ALS! i won't leave home without it

LOD settings can also cause low FPS depending on where you are flying, your altitude and if you have random objects or increased trees (above 1.0)...