Hans Petter's thread

[hanspetter]

I haven't been into blogs but this may be the right time.

This is not really a flightsim topic but since the hardware is a prerequisite for flightsimming I decided to share my experience and maybe get some advice.

My PC came shipped with an Nvidia Geforce 8500 GT card. I have been thinking about upgrading to a more powerful card once the price came down. Now the time seemed right. However, I noticed that my power supply could be a limiting factor -- as far as I know it's 400 watts. I ended up with an Nvidia Gigabyte 9400 GT card. While not being cutting edge by today's standards it's quite good and quite inexpensive.

I unplugged everything, opened the PC cabinet and switched cards. When I powered up again the PC wouldn't boot, not even in safe mode. I tried messing with the CMOS and ended up selecting "safe defaults". That made the computer start asking for a boot disk. I set hard disk boot as all three options but it still insisted on a boot disk. Then I noticed that one of my drives was unplugged. I guess I'd been trying to boot without it. I replugged everything and tried again. Finally I gave in and chose recovery. This was actually a misnomer since it didn't recover anything -- it wiped my C drive and installed factory defaults. So, I had last years Vista OS again and had to go through a lot of updates, reinstall antivirus and all of my favorite apps. Luckily, my flightsims were safe on drive E and my projects and most of my personal documents resided on drive D. I lost some documents though, those that were in the default "My Documents" and I lost registry entries for all of the applications on Drive D and E. The moral is, don't leave anything you can't afford to lose on Drive C! From now on I'll avoid the "My Documents" and rather store license keys, passwords, documents etc on other drives. I rescued FS9 by renaming the folder, doing a basic reinstall, deleting the new installation and renaming my old folder back to what it used to be. This gave me the registry entries. However, I lost my custom FS9.cfg and flights since these were on the C drive under my user profile. Yoke, stick and pedals work but I have to set up all controller buttons and preferences.

Anyway the system is running again and everything's fine. I have gained some extra power and all sims run faster by 20 - 30 percent or so. It's particularly noticeable when there's a lot of scenery objects to be rendered. FU III weather can be cranked up now without reducing fps to a slideshow. FS9 and X-Plane run smoothly even with volumetric clouds over busy airport environments.

Then I tried over-clocking. The card came with a console for over-clocking and I couldn't resist. I chose settings that were shown in a manual and clicked OK. Result, my screen was flickering and I couldn't make out anything. The desktop was there but there was "purple rain" all over the place. Since the mouse cursor was invisible I had to do a hard restart to get out. If anyone knows anything about (moderate) over-clocking I'll be happy to try again.

There's another thing I haven't sorted out yet. My device manger comes up with an unknown device and no driver. A search for a driver results in a string of "unknowns" and finally fails. Since I have the right driver for every piece of hardware that I'm aware of I can't figure out what is responsible for this entry. I can delete it but it keeps coming back as I reboot. Any ideas?

By the way, if anyone uses Vista and gets frustrated by the User Account Control there's a free TweakUAC.exe that puts you in control. If you decide to disable UAC it's gone once you reboot. Windows complains that there's a problem and opens a "balloon tip" urging you to fix it. Well, if you don't care to see balloon tips they can be disabled by a registry entry.

[budsbud]

Hans
Get rid othat dim UAC thing in Vista.
1. Click the Start button, in the "Start Search" box type "secpol.msc" and press Enter.
2. On the left panel double click "LOcal Ploicies" and then "Security Options"
2. On the right panel, double click the line marked "User Account Control: Behavior of the Evaluation Prompt for Adinistrators in Admin Approval Mode.
4. In the drop down box, choose "Elevate Without Prompting" and thgen click the OK button.
5. Click the red X to exit the Local Security Setting dialog box, and the change takes effect immediately.
I have this right out of the book and have used in severeal times, Works just like it said.

Bud

[flaminghotsauce]

Hans, if you are getting smooth flight with volumetric clouds over busy airports, why overclock? I'd say don't bother.

My personal theory is if overclocking is necessary, the hardware isn't good enough.

[hanspetter]

Thanks Bud, I may disable UAC directly the way you describe. Last time I tried to disable UAC a lot of applications became unregistered and reverted to demo / unpaid mode. This indicates that one ought to disable UAC before installing any apps provided he planes to disable UAC in the first place. Applications registered under an active UAC will lose their registration when UAC goes since the data entered will be linked to the specified user account.

Flaming, regarding overclocking I dabbled into it mostly because the card came with overclocking software. I read up on the topic yesterday and found that clock speed is really a question of varying grades of chip quality and marketing. The production of computer chips is no exact science. When the chips are produced most of them end up with higher than rated capability aka "overhead". Only the cutting edge chips are close to their maximum performance at the rated voltage / clock speed. New chips are sorted ("binned") and it's a bit like culling chicken -- some chips are of low quality and will be dumped while most that pass will exceed the requirements. Since the manufacturers want to guarantee a certain target
performance the approved chips will mostly be capable of more than the rated max.

I have seen a lag in drawing scenery when I pan left or right. For a split second there's a white square and then the scenery textures kick in. In the past I saw this a lot. It still happens occasionally. But then, I cranked up the scenery settings. There's always a sweet point and I may decide to cut back. In any event, I haven't experienced hiccups, pauses and low frame rates lately.

[flaminghotsauce]

I read up on that video card. That's a pretty good deal! When I first upgraded to FS9 I had to aquire my first video card and I paid a lot more for a lot less! That would be a good bulk purchase video card for putting together media computers and such as well as gaming.

My 9800GT still does the blank textures for a split second when I switch views. Usually when I come back to the cockpit view. There's a lot of info to be shoved down the pipes in a very short time. I don't notice it when I pan the view around, but I'm in FSX. It runs differently.

I've put some thought into upgrading my CPU and GPU, but that would also include an upgrade to the PSU. Bottom line is, I'd spend several hundred dollars for a minor upgrade in quality, when I'm already flying pretty nicely. I think money will be better spent on other things at this point.

You are running a quad-core machine, right? I thought you and I had very similar machines at one point.

[hanspetter]

My current system reports as,
Intel Core2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40Ghz
3.2GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 9400 GT

You may be able to tell me exactly what a core 2 quad CPU is. I mean, core 2 sounds like two cores while quad sounds like four...
Further, multiple core processors may or may not share the workload. It depends on whether the sim/game delegates tasks to all cores.
My system RAM is actually 4 GB but a 32 bit system won't be able to read more than 3.2 GB.

[flaminghotsauce]

I've always wondered how they came up with that designation "core 2 quad". Seems to me the Core 2 means it's a faster quad-core than the regular quad-core. Or the possibility that they are over-clockable. They cost more, so I'm assuming. I've never read more into it than that.

You definitely have four cores on a die. I have a system monitor gadget in the Vista sidebar that shows all four cores getting to do some work while the sim is running. I have to run the sim in windowed mode to see the monitor, but I can watch the workload go up as I scroll around, pan, turn, etc. Windowed mode uses more resources though.

BUT, once again I'm using FSX. It may delegate work differently than FS9. And, FS9 is more GPU intensive, whereas FSX is more CPU intensive. I think I read XPlane is now able to use multiple cores, too. I had updated it before overhauling my OS. I still haven't reloaded XPlane back onto my machine.

[hanspetter]

The device manager errors were due to a printer. Windows had sort of assigned a driver and I added the manufacturer's driver and ended up with a mix. The solution was to use the manufacturer's driver uninstall before upgrading the driver.

Vista is quite nice without the UAC. I helped a friend set up a Windows 7 evaluation copy. This one looks like Vista in many respects but it's supposed to be sleeker. I noticed one thing that will be of interest to international users -- you can change the display language. With XP you had to get the OS in your language version. Vista gave you a choice of languages during first installation and then the choice was locked. Windows 7 can add any language pack at any time and it takes nothing but a reboot to switch. So, you may choose English menus one day and another language the next -- great for bilingual / multi-ethnic families. Windows 7 has some driver issues at the moment. This is to be expected. However, since it was installed on a fairly old PC some driver issues can't be resolved. For instance, the mobo raid function will never work since the mobo does not have Win 7 support.

I've been flying the Phenom that Tom set up lately. I've also been flying X-Plane helicopters a lot. Their FDs are quite elaborate and are constantly being updated by former and current helicopter pilots. Today I find FS9 helicopters quite easy to fly since they don't model as many issues related to slow flight, power and sink rates. Previously I've pretty much ignored helicopters but I think it's time to work towards becoming a decent sim helicopter pilot now. Fixed wing proficiency is a mixed blessing since the controls are quite different. For instance, coordinated use of stick and rudder is not necessarily correct for helicopters.

[Smithy]

....in regards to the helicopters, they are great fun

I use the

Bell

47
205
206b
& Huey 205A

the 'Bluestream' is ok

The Apache chopper available from westcoastatc download page is very good,
and the best I have is the
Eurocopter EC 135

I think you can get all of them from simviation, or the others

cheers

[hanspetter]

During the latest months I've basically focused on flying helicopters in X-Plane. While I'll certainly get back to fixed wing aircraft again the helicopters represent a challenge that most simmers have chosen to ignore. The learning curve is steep but it helps to read up on rotorcraft flight dynamics. Understanding extra translational lift (ETL), vortex ring state (VRS) and ground effect help a lot. As practice goes one of the most important things to get used to is the time lag -- after a while you learn what's about to happen before it takes effect. This means that you can compensate gently before it goes bad. Another thing is that our ingrained fixed wing understanding of stick and rudder may be unproductive. You won't necessarily move stick (cyclic) and pedals in a coordinated fashion when flying a helicopter.
I'm still an absolute neophyte even though I can take off and land almost anywhere by now.

[Tom Goodrick]

I wondered what you were up to. I understand the interest in helicopters. It is neat to fly low and slow with the ability to set down just about anywhere. I have flown helicopters in FS9 quite a bit although I know they don't have the proper flight mechanics. It is fun in FS9 to land an airplane in an area with which I am not familiar and then fly a helicopter around for a close look at the scenery.

I have a Hughes 500 on floats that I use a lot. It flies nicely.

[hanspetter]

As you know by now X-Plane has kept me busy for more than a year. Since Dec 15 X-Plane 10 has kept me busy. I've been working on an upgrade of a freeware helicopter for more than a year. It started out as a repaint. Then I created some 3D elements to convert it into an oil rig shuttle with the right kind of sponsons and front mounted flotation device. A helicopter pro has taken care of updating the FDs. I'm currently working on a 3D interior. This hobby of ours may go in lots of different directions. I was totally 3D illiterate a couple of years ago but I found AC3D to be quite WYSIWYG and now I can can create and texture any shape of object (but, it takes time!).

Regarding the ongoing discussions and frustrations regarding the two major lines of flight sims I'd like to add,

X-Plane is an ongoing project. This creates frustration when people expect a finished product out of the box. X-Plane ought to be upgraded at frequent intervals, especially in the beginning of a new production cycle. It's just as an OS that downloads service packs and patches. Since I installed v10 I've seen a major frame rate improvement since beta9. One thing that's helpful no matter which sim you run--a 32 bits Windows does not allocate enough ram to the sim unless you tell it to do so. It's throttled by MS and you won't get the full potential of your 4GB memory sticks, not even the theoretical maximum of about 3.5 GB that a 32 bit system can use. There's a simple code to "run" that will free up more.

Regarding lack of joystick pre-configuration it's a big plus in one sense--you can assign any axis to whichever controller you have. There's no "how do I make my rudder pedals work"--just move your pedals and assign them. Cockpit builders can hook up their own devices and they will all be configurable as long as they send an impulse to the computer.


Yesterday I fired up FS 2004 again and found that I could max out most rendering settings now. Despite airport addons and 3D clouds it runs well. I've upgraded the video card again (Nvidia GT 450) by the way. Anyway, it's quite interesting to see the full potential of an old sim. Unless the flight dynamics are being improved from one version to the next there's no reason to upgrade and run the new sim at medium settings when you can run the old one at full settings.

[hanspetter]

My secondary drive has failed to boot every now and then for more than a year. I ran disk checkers and both drives came out fine. However, I did save backups of recent work on my primary drive and I copied all of my flight simulators on a portable drive. Then my primary drive failed to boot intermittently. Since the disks were checked repeatedly I expected some disk manager problem. After all, both drives worked perfectly with no hiccups whenever they booted. One day nothing would boot and the disks were the problem. It seems that the problem is mechanical (won't spin) rather than disk surface related (illegible data). I bought two new 500 GB drives and got my OS transferred. So, my sims are OK while my recent work may be lost. My last hope is that the old disks will start to spin long enough to retrieve some data. In the future I'll do day-by-day backups on memory sticks. Since these have no mechanical components they're less likely to fail.

[flaminghotsauce]

I'm not a bleeding edge guy when it comes to technology. I'm waiting for SSD's to come down in price and go up in quality, and longevity. That is the future. Plus, they're SO much faster. Good on you for backing up to essentially miniature SSD. I have all my payware stuff backed up on them.

I'm already starting to plot out my next computer build. It won't be anytime soon since I'm looking at some pricey components. Like $400 for a CPU, $400 for a GPU, ack! I'm looking to significantly upgrade every aspect. Especially stupid little things like USB 3.0 vs what I have now. I cannot run all my Saitek radios, duh.

[hanspetter]

I bought a disk reader that connects to my computer by means of a USB cable to try and read my old disks. Even after 48 hours in the freezer there was no success. The disks tried to spin for a second and then the power was cut off. Finally I tried to hook one my disks up as a proper slave disk, replacing my current second drive. For some reason this worked brilliantly. I then copied all of my personal files to my new primary drive and then proceeded to do the same with my other failed drive. All of my data was retrieved. I returned the external disk reader for a refund. Still, I wonder why it didn't work. My guess is that my worn out disks created a power surge as they started to spin which in turn caused some safety feature to cut the power--hardly a good idea when the idea is to be able to read old disks and retrieve data.

For FS 2004 I made a basic install on my new secondary disk to get the registry right. Then I deleted all files and copied my old version to this location. Result, everything's back and my registry and my application data "know" that FS 2004 is there. Saved flights / previous flight would not work if I'd chosen to copy it over without a prior reinstallation.