Flightgear really this slow on XP?

Don't tell me to install Linux. I know that. It's currently not an
option.

I downloaded and installed FG on a fairly capable XP system (1.6ghz AMD
256 RAM and a good video card) and was blown away by the frame rate.
Like
one second per frame even in the lower resolution modes?

I shut down all the background tasks I can, task manager shows 99% free
resources, but hey... this is windows.

I've got to be doing something wrong (besides using XP). What is it?
It's
got to work better than this. How do you get it to run so that it's not
just a big joke?

In article .com,
says...
Don't tell me to install Linux. I know that. It's currently not an
option.

I downloaded and installed FG on a fairly capable XP system (1.6ghz AMD
256 RAM and a good video card) and was blown away by the frame rate.
Like
one second per frame even in the lower resolution modes?

I don't know anything about FG, but the system described is really not
"fairly capable" these days. I thought I had a lot of RAM until
recently when I looked for the requirements for a game I wanted. I have
7xx.
--

Epi

------------
She's my drinkin', drunken, druggy lover.
....and god I swear I love no other.
Not like my drinkin', drunken, druggy lover.
------------
http://www.curlesneck.com

wrote:
Don't tell me to install Linux. I know that. It's currently not an
option.

I downloaded and installed FG on a fairly capable XP system (1.6ghz
AMD
256 RAM and a good video card) and was blown away by the frame rate.
Like
one second per frame even in the lower resolution modes?

I shut down all the background tasks I can, task manager shows 99%
free
resources, but hey... this is windows.

I've got to be doing something wrong (besides using XP). What is it?
It's
got to work better than this. How do you get it to run so that it's
not
just a big joke?



I agree with Epi. You need more RAM. 256k is only enough to run XP
and Word. I think you will find that 512k RAM will do a lot for the
frame rate.

That MB should be able to use the older 2100 or 2400 RAM. You can get
a 512 stick for about $50 or less. A 256k stick can be had for cheap,
cheap.

John

wrote:
Don't tell me to install Linux. I know that. It's currently not an
option.

I downloaded and installed FG on a fairly capable XP system (1.6ghz
AMD 256 RAM and a good video card) and was blown away by the frame
rate. Like
one second per frame even in the lower resolution modes?

I think your difficulty lies in your definition of fairly capable.
For running MS word perhaps, but for flight simming that amount of RAM and
that chip, would have not been capable even three years ago. The problem all
along with MS Flight Sim is that the requirements of the players have forced
Microsoft to put in capabilities such as more and more realistic weather and
scenery that only a top rated PC will run it properly and that has meant
1024Mb RAM and 2.6Ghz CPU for the last two years. As for video cards, there
seem to be only one or two around that people are truly pleased with. My 128
Mb Matrox Parhelia is now very old hat I gather.


Cheers,

Quilly











An individual reply goes into my spam filter

Thanks, there may be something to that. I should have mentioned that
everything is slow, even when the plane is not flying. It looks like a
DOS program, and I was wondering if it might be all the overhead of
running in an XP window, that there might be a boot disk I could make
or something. It does seem to be something other than just RAM.

On 7 May 2005 06:08:35 -0700, "jmiguez" wrote:


wrote:
Don't tell me to install Linux. I know that. It's currently not an
option.

I downloaded and installed FG on a fairly capable XP system (1.6ghz
AMD
256 RAM and a good video card) and was blown away by the frame rate.
Like
one second per frame even in the lower resolution modes?

I shut down all the background tasks I can, task manager shows 99%
free
resources, but hey... this is windows.

I've got to be doing something wrong (besides using XP). What is it?
It's
got to work better than this. How do you get it to run so that it's
not
just a big joke?



I agree with Epi. You need more RAM. 256k is only enough to run XP
and Word. I think you will find that 512k RAM will do a lot for the
frame rate.

That MB should be able to use the older 2100 or 2400 RAM. You can get
a 512 stick for about $50 or less. A 256k stick can be had for cheap,
cheap.

With XP and the apps that run in the back ground I'd want a minimum of
512 and preferably one gig.

To the OP. Bring up the "Task manager" and see what you have for
memory use and page file swapping. I'd bet it's doing a tremendous
amount of page file swapping. (swapping chunks of programs and data
from RAM to the HD and working piecemeal).

On this machine, several upgrades back, going from 512 to 1 Gig made
an unbelievable difference. I do a lot of photo processing. It went
from 20 to 30 seconds on loading a 65 meg image to about a second. I
can run the scanner, the canner software, Photoshop CS AND process 4
to 6 images at a time AND run Word too.

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com


John

On Sun, 8 May 2005 11:09:05 +0000 (UTC), "Quilljar"
wrote:

I think your difficulty lies in your definition of fairly capable.
For running MS word perhaps, but for flight simming that amount of RAM and
that chip, would have not been capable even three years ago. The problem all
along with MS Flight Sim is that the requirements of the players have forced
Microsoft to put in capabilities such as more and more realistic weather and
scenery that only a top rated PC will run it properly and that has meant
1024Mb RAM and 2.6Ghz CPU for the last two years. As for video cards, there
seem to be only one or two around that people are truly pleased with. My 128
Mb Matrox Parhelia is now very old hat I gather.


Hi Quilly

S'funny you mention three-year-old PCs as my own machine is just about
that age.

AMD XP1800+ (1.54G clock speed, I beleive), 512 MB DDR RAM, GeForce3
Ti 200 video - and all else pretty much as one would expect for a
machine three years old.

On the plus side, I use FS8 which, I'd guess, requires a lesser PC
than FS9. FS8 runs acceptably well. The only problems I have (other
than forgetting that my AV does its daily check at 18:00) is when
landing at a large airport and when I have all sliders set well
towards max.

James