Don't know why I thought I'd waste my time trying this tweak. It's past midnight at home, and rarely do I fire up the sim during the work week. Anyway I decided to give it a try. I am using FSX SP1 (which works best when I run Tileproxy).It easily increased my performance a third. DFW with Autogen maxed and scenery density maxed, textures at 1M, my fps stayed nailed at 30 whereas before my fps would be in the low to mid 20's. Aerosoft's Venice went from the mid 20's to a very consistent 30 (my fps are locked at 30). Then I decided to give the tweak a try in a ground texture rich environment--Tileproxy. For those who don't know how I use Tileproxy, I have it config'd to load 1m textures out as far as I can see, usually to about 30 miles or whatever I have my vis set at. I flew around for some time and whipped my aircraft into tight, 360 degree turns. Not even a hint of a stutter or texture lag.As with any tweak I will wait for the "other shoe to drop"... So I will back it out if I see something amiss or have any instability. If neither of those happen I'm keeping this one....My specs...Vista Home Premium, 64 bitIntel Quad Q8200 @ 2.33 MHZ8 GB RamNvidia 9500GT with 1 GB RamHD 640 GB - Serial ATA-300 - 7200 rpm -John

For those that went from a Bufferpools of a few million to zero and got better results: it may pay off to try some other low settings as well. I always used 4900000000 (or something like that: I always forget how many zero's I used :( ) but when I went to Windows 7 with my GTX285 (1 Gb), I lowered it to 500000 (500.000), which is 0.5 Mb (FSX default with SP2 is 4 Mb). The difference was staggering!!! Much smoother performance!!! Later on I also tried a setting of zero (sometime ago, way before this topic was opened) and although it was still better than default or 490000000000000000 :( , 500000 was the sweet spot for me and I am still using that. Now I didn't post this to say 500000 is better, I only posted this to say that 500000 is better on MY system and I know there are more people who benefit from a low setting (below the 4 Mb default) instead of simply zero. So for those who are coming from very high numbers and now have succes with BP at 0, I just wanted to add that you might even have MORE succes with other low (below 4 Mb) settings like for instance 500000. Hey, it won't cost you anything to try it, at most a few minutes and who knows it might improve things even more! :(

Hey Mitch,Just took a look at the screen shots, they look great.-----------------------------------------------------I took them just as the textures were swapping out from Day, to Dusk. Like I stated before, you can't beat FSX for VFR or low IFR. You can't.The FL's still rule with FS9!Mitch

I'm also using 185.50 drivers and got flashing stuff when I set BP=0. Win 7 64bit. GTX 285 1GB. I get occasional stutter from time to time on turns but overall I'm happy.. so, I'll leave it for now... these days I prefer to fly than tweak ;)I must admit I don't really understand what Mitch means by setting BP to 0 and that gives him better looking textures...

Well,I did it.I swapped my 185.50 driver to the 196.34 and changed my BP to 0. It was very smooth, without any micro stutters. However I had serious texture flashing. It reminded me of the days before I had Nick's cloud flashing fix. The ground textures were firing off all over the place. flash - flash - flash - flash but the FPS were steady and smooth.One side effect was that my GPS would not work with this driver. It would turn on just fine, but could not be adjusted, nor would it update. The colors and crispness of textures were excellent. but in my case the flashing could not be lived with. I changed my BP back to 550000000 and the flashing stopped completely but the GPS still would not work, even after a restart.I undid it.I went back to 185.5 and the large buffer pool. My performance returned without any other problems except the (very) occasional black square ground texture near the start up sequences. I get a steady 24-30 everywhere over anything, so I can't complain. Yesterday I had a long term FS9 user (logged over 7,500 hours) test my FSX and he considered it better than his wildest dreams for realism and smoothness.So, here is what I think after testing this under different generations of drivers. The BF to 0 does increase both FPS and smoothness. However in my rig, either because of some hardware or software difference, texture flashing becomes unmanageable. I will be willing to revert to BF 0 as soon as that flashing problem gets figured out. Thank you all for your patience with me as I waffled back and forth.Stephen

Well,I did it.I swapped my 185.50 driver to the 196.34 and changed my BP to 0. It was very smooth, without any micro stutters. However I had serious texture flashing. It reminded me of the days before I had Nick's cloud flashing fix. The ground textures were firing off all over the place. flash - flash - flash - flash but the FPS were steady and smooth.One side effect was that my GPS would not work with this driver. It would turn on just fine, but could not be adjusted, nor would it update. The colors and crispness of textures were excellent. but in my case the flashing could not be lived with. I changed my BP back to 550000000 and the flashing stopped completely but the GPS still would not work, even after a restart.I undid it.I went back to 185.5 and the large buffer pool. My performance returned without any other problems except the (very) occasional black square ground texture near the start up sequences. I get a steady 24-30 everywhere over anything, so I can't complain. Yesterday I had a long term FS9 user (logged over 7,500 hours) test my FSX and he considered it better than his wildest dreams for realism and smoothness.So, here is what I think after testing this under different generations of drivers. The BF to 0 does increase both FPS and smoothness. However in my rig, either because of some hardware or software difference, texture flashing becomes unmanageable. I will be willing to revert to BF 0 as soon as that flashing problem gets figured out. Thank you all for your patience with me as I waffled back and forth.Stephen

I wonder if some of my success with the Tweak has to do with my Nvidia AA settings. To maximize performance, I have the FSX AA option checked. But I have my Nvidia setting at 4x and Anti Aliasing mode set to "enhance the application setting". My Aniso setting is 16x which gives rather clear textures. This setup keeps my environment shimmer free. Although I could opt for a higher AA setting I've always been content with the setup as is and I've left it alone for about a year. I am also using an old driver set--178.33. It always worked well for me and thus I never felt compelled to change it. Generally my work mentality carries over to home when it comes to my video drivers--"if it ain't broke....."-John

Hey Stephen,Your video board is overclocked right, I wonder if that has anything to do with what your seeing.Just A Thought

Well,I did it.I swapped my 185.50 driver to the 196.34 and changed my BP to 0. It was very smooth, without any micro stutters. However I had serious texture flashing. It reminded me of the days before I had Nick's cloud flashing fix. The ground textures were firing off all over the place. flash - flash - flash - flash but the FPS were steady and smooth.One side effect was that my GPS would not work with this driver. It would turn on just fine, but could not be adjusted, nor would it update. The colors and crispness of textures were excellent. but in my case the flashing could not be lived with. I changed my BP back to 550000000 and the flashing stopped completely but the GPS still would not work, even after a restart.I undid it.I went back to 185.5 and the large buffer pool. My performance returned without any other problems except the (very) occasional black square ground texture near the start up sequences. I get a steady 24-30 everywhere over anything, so I can't complain. Yesterday I had a long term FS9 user (logged over 7,500 hours) test my FSX and he considered it better than his wildest dreams for realism and smoothness.So, here is what I think after testing this under different generations of drivers. The BF to 0 does increase both FPS and smoothness. However in my rig, either because of some hardware or software difference, texture flashing becomes unmanageable. I will be willing to revert to BF 0 as soon as that flashing problem gets figured out. Thank you all for your patience with me as I waffled back and forth.Stephen

I'm also using 185.50 drivers and got flashing stuff when I set BP=0. Win 7 64bit. GTX 285 1GB. I get occasional stutter from time to time on turns but overall I'm happy.. so, I'll leave it for now... these days I prefer to fly than tweak ;)I must admit I don't really understand what Mitch means by setting BP to 0 and that gives him better looking textures...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Hi,What I meant to impart, is as I was flying, the textures were so ah geez...how to describe, ah...'tight' and 'crisp', whether in a 3 minute bank, or merely flying straight and level. Now, this is viewed 'live' and not captured in a screenie, where you have to reduce, and change from .bmp to .jpg as in my case in able to post. I noticed a very fast rendering of textures...they being in focus as I viewed them. I'm not saying that it was a night and day thing. No...I had great texture quality BEFORE this applied tweak. It has just added to the mix. It's better than the level of 'better' that was before the tweak. For myself, I am leaving it in the .cfg file, for it certainly did not degrade FSX, in my case....

Another opinion...This tweak works or certainly does not hurt.Flying over NYC locked at 30fps with smooth pans.I don't recall it being that smooth before.i7 @ 3.8GHz , GTX280 , XP32.

After few tests, some good hours and lot of coffee I think there is a balance to find between TBM and BF=0 to avoid artefacts.For me it is TBM=60, using nVidia latest driver, Dx9 + nHancer + FSX display fps limited @ 25. (no fps limiter!)And the result is really spectacular!Brighter colours, smooth flight, something I've never seen before with FSX.Thanks for this great topic :--)

And the result is really spectacular!

The first ever recorded suggestion to use PS=0 :) (It's in French, so I don't have any idea what they are talking about)http://www.libertysim.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10833BTW, David, check this post: http://forums1.avsim.net/index.php?showtopic=233158

Hi David,Great looking shots, and I would have to agree about Bufferpools=0, it will be staying in my cfg.

The first ever recorded suggestion to use PS=0 :) (It's in French, so I don't have any idea what they are talking about)http://www.libertysim.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10833BTW, David, check this post: http://forums1.avsim.net/index.php?showtopic=233158

:( I'm very probably getting old!!

HD Video, with:Manhatan X, REX, UT, GEX, SCENERY & AUTOGEN @ 100% and [bufferPools] PoolSize=0http://static.venetubo.com/venetubo_local/...tion=attachment

Best FSX tweak so far. I can finally fly PMDG J41/B747/MD11 into poorly optimised airports such as Aerosoft EBBR or ELLX. Up to 10 fps improvement!Thank you!My config: - BFG 285 GTX OCX 1 GB (downclocked to standard specs 648/1476/2664 at the moment due to overheating problem)- 196.34 beta drivers- nHancer 0 x AA / 16 x AAF- FSX SP2 with in-game AA and AAF _enabled_ running at 1920 x 1200, TBM=60- Windows 7 RC 64 bit