Autogen settings compared – Effects on performanceDense autogen may have adverse effect on FSX performance. The effect changes with the location and the scenery you use.A modern (2015) PC should have no problems running default FSX scenery at Extremely dense setting (AUTOGENDENSITY=5).If you use add-on sceneries adjust density setting to your scenery and to the place where you fly. Extremely dense autogen causes no harm over desert but may crash your FSX when flying over Canadian forests. Effects on qualityView gets better as the density grows.
RecommendationFor payware sceneries i recommend using the following settings:High-end PCs (quad core @ 4.5GHz+, 8-16 GB RAM, nVidia 770 or better): AUTOGENDENSITY=5Mid range PCs (quad core @ 3.8-4.5GHz, 8-16GB RAM, nVidia 660 or better): AUTOGENDENSITY=4Low-end PCs (quad core 3.8GHz or slower, dual core, nVidia 550 or earlier): AUTOGENDENSITY=2 or 3There are basic settings that should be adjusted for scenery requirements and possibly – the weather. In some cases AUTOGENDENSITY=5 will be out of range even in the best PCs (because of OOM risk in 32-bit application like FSX).Low-end PCs may run autogen at AUTOGENDENSITY=4 without a problem if the scenery allows it and if other factors affecting performance are not at play.After years of tests on several different PCs I can say that AUTOGENDENSITY=4 is the safest setting and gives an acceptable autogen density.If you use default scenery – add 1 to the settings above. For freeware sceneries – sometimes it’s safe to add 1, sometimes you need to lower the setting. The lower the better NO!It’s tricky how the autogen causes performance problems but my observation is that in many cases the difference between sparse and very dense autogen can be negligible. If you look for performance boost – make sure that you aim in the right direction.If you experience FPS drops flying in bad weather – changing autogen to sparse will probably make no difference – resources released will be too small to cause better FPS.On the other hand – if the problems increase when you are close to a large city or a forest – you should adjust autogen settings.
Adjust for the sceneryI fly at AUTOGENDENSITY=5 or AUTOGENDENSITY=4. Enemy front walkthrough. But there are a few sceneries where I go as low as 3 (Dense). It happens mostly over freeware sceneries that use unoptimized autogen and over some payware sceneries where autogen is too “heavy”.Read about trees and building tweaks:.
This is a suggestion I received from FlyInside when I indicated I was not thrilled with the switch actions in the PMDG 777 while using Leap Motion.“If you're interested, you can actually give FlyInside some hints about individual buttons in the cockpit to improve interaction. Go into your Prepar3D directory, and run 'FlyInsideAnnotator.exe'. You can choose an aircraft, click on individual parts, and change which types of mouse clicks are used, reverse direction, etc. It's a bit clunky, you need to click the 'Save' button for each part that you edit.”Has anyone attempted using annotator and if so were you successful?Don.