Nhancer for 257.15 and 257.21 UPDATED

 THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED

Nhancer 2.6 is under development but for now, this is how to use the latest drivers

Here are the files and instructions to enable the Nhancer settings typically used to control image quality and shimmer in FS9 and FSX and get AA working right

NOTE:

This is for driver 257.15 and higher only! And will work for any Nvidia video card that is listed supported for these drivers but I mainly did this for the 400 series.

DO NOTE the 260/275/280/285 FAN/stutter issue I posted above!

Currently the 257.15 drivers are BETA and will not be WHQL till sometime in early June.

This is a temporary fix until Nhancer is updated to use the new Nvidia binary/hex system instead of the XML code they used in the past.

Remember, these are BETA DRIVERS and as such there may be issues with them not as of yet discovered

 W7 x64: http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7-winvista-64bit-257.15-beta.html

 W7 x32: http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7-winvista-32bit-257.15-beta.html

After correctly installing the drivers...

Nvidia GForce SLI profile tool.exe for the 257.15 drivers or above

http://nvidia.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/nvidia.cfg/php/enduser/fattach_get.php?p_sid=BARjmP*j&p_li=&p_accessibility=0&p_redirect=&p_tbl=9&p_id=2625&p_created=1274701918&p_olh=0

First step is to backup the original profiles so you can restore them at any time you wish. In Geforce_SLI_Profile_Tool select to EXPORT SLI PROFILES. Name the file NVIDIA Profiles Default.txt

Next, select IMPORT SLI PROFILES and browse the tool to the unzipped NVIDIA Profiles XXX.txt

Thats it! The tool will tell you: SUCCESS:
NVIDIA SLI profiles imported from XXXXX\NVIDIA_Profiles_CXxX.txt

If you wish to restore the original profiles, simply rerun the SLI profile tool and import the BACKUP you made.

3.

IMPORTANT: I have ALTERED the profiles for 3DMARK06 and the FUTUREMARK VANTAGE benchmark programs with this edit to use the correct settings for benchmarking. There is a BUG in these drivers where the profiles for FSX and 3DMark may NOT show up under the "applications" tab. DONT worry about it, they work fine. Nvidia will need to address the issue of the profiles not showing up but they are set CORRECTLY.

How can you tell the Nhancer settings are working in FS9 and FSX? Simple.. you wont see autogen shimmer, at least not very much and if you bring up the SHIFT-Z data you will see this difference:

Without 8xS and poor filtering:

With 8xS and high quality/filtering:

Notice the text and how there is a drop shadow to the fonts with the Nhancer Combined 8xS setting applied. If you see that in your display then the settings I edited are WORKING. You will also notice the scenery is far sharper/defined and the autogen trees and most buildings are no longer shimmering

This is also why I dont need to expand the LOD radius to an outrageous value like a lot of people do. These settings clean things up in the draw distance. If I do boost it, 6.5 is more than enough and I rarely change that value from the default of 4.5.

Pure photoscenery is different and users should work with TBM 400 and unlike typical scenery with photoscenery you can also work with Fiber Frame Time Fraction values as Christian Buchner from Tile Proxy posted about to obtain clarity and in most cases with photocenery the scenery/autogen load is not as much of a problem as it is with textures and landclass so raising LOD Radius above 6.5 can work much better for pure photoscenery flying

 ENJOY!

 FSX tweaks..

I dont need any silly off the wall tweaks.. these are my FSX.cfg file edits:

[DISPLAY]

TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=80-120

the 480 card loves TBM and honestly, you may not even need this edit. LESS in the FSX.cfg for tweaks is better when starting out. Always start with a CLEAN FSX.cfg file before beginning any tweak session;

http://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=34902&PID=203025#203025

You may be surprised how many tweaks you dont need

UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=30//   =30 for rural, =0 (unlimited) for urban or high load areas and big payware planes
WideViewAspect=True // for my 1920x1200 monitor

RUNWAY_LIGHTS_SURFACE_SCALAR=1.2
RUNWAY_LIGHTS_VASI_SCALAR=1.2
RUNWAY_LIGHTS_APPROACH_SCALAR=1.2
RUNWAY_LIGHTS_STROBE_SCALAR=1.0    // These are to change the airport lights for my personal halo.bmp edits

[Main]
HideInfoText=1
DisablePreload=1

[GRAPHICS]
HIGHMEMFIX=1  

NOTE: I HAVE FOUND some issues with this setting and certain payware with the setting "Launch Folder Windows in a Separate Process" flag set in Windows 7. As my W7 writeup states, DO NOT USE the folder option "Launch Folder Windows in a Separate Process" with this set in the FSX.cfg file

If you do not have texture corruption with payware aircraft in Windows 7 DO NOT USE HIGHMEMFIX !  Its not needed, period!
 

thats it, nothing else.. 

980x 4.43Ghz DDR3 2000 GTX 480 (stock speed)

YMMV

OTHER NOTES:

If you use the ENB MOD you may need to set FSX.exe to run in COMPATIBILITY MODE for WINDOWS XP SP3 or accessing menus with big payware may crash, REGARDLESS of HIGHMEMFIX=1 which actually may cause a crash with ENB running. This may fix that issue

Right Click the FSX desktop shortcut..  click the Compatibility tab.. set:

and click APPLY

Thats ONLY for ENB Mod/ FSX Menu crashes. This can reduce performance so if you dont need this change to avert ENB d39.dll crashes, dont do it!

Going back and forth to the desktop..

Best way to do this:

a. when switching to the desktop do not use any ALT or other key, simply hit the WINDOW button (may take one or two hits on the key to drop to desktop)

b. when going back to FSX, click the MSFS button on the taskbar, then hit the ENTER key

that should take you right back to FSX

 Here is another little tweak you can use to speed up/smooth visual panning however I dont know how this may effect the use of a device like TrackIR

1. Save a copy of the Cameras.cfg file which is found in the FSX.cfg directory as a backup

2. Open the Cameras.cfg file in notpad which is found in the FSX.cfg directory, scroll down and edit the following values (shown in bold below) into these lines:

[CameraDefinition.002]
Title = Virtual Cockpit

PitchPanRate=60
HeadingPanRate=100

[CameraDefinition.003]
Title = Spot

PitchPanRate=60
HeadingPanRate=100

[CameraDefinition.004]
Title = Locked Spot

PitchPanRate=60
HeadingPanRate=100

save and close the file. You should find panning much faster/smoother

to undo simply drop the backed up copy into the FSX.cfg directory and allow it to overwrite

Another little tidbit..   After moving to a 980x/480 system and clocking it, I have found under some circumstances such as flying over forests that setting the frame lock to 60 which matches the refresh rate of most LCDs had a smoothing effect without using bufferpools.

The 980x GTX 480 combo is a real winner in FSX

Here are the lastest benchmark runs using this setup

I did not say fan control ya old fart..   I said fan monitoring,,  just dont monitor the fan speed in the readouts but I have not heard any problems with maintaining fan control.. you may want to check that yourself by running with the afterburner program disabled for a bit and see if you notice any change

Nvidia is aware of the problem

I cant say how well these drivers will work with the 200 series.. I have not tested them with a 285 as of yet

This sounds like it is directly related to being a beta driver problem for the resolution however what settings do you normally run in Nhancer when you use it in the past, exactly what I posted in the FSX tuning thread? If not what are the differences?

Do you make any changes to the Nv CP for multimonitor or do you run single monitor performance mode and if you make changes, what are those changes?

If you use the driver without the profiles I edited, does it do the same thing but just no AA? Restore the backup and see if the same black flicker comes up

What you are describing sounds like something is attempting to access one of the GUIs. One of the things about the 480 I noticed is when you try to access the graphics/scenery settings from within the game the 'load scene' progress window appears for a split second. I have seen that since I got the card and on all drivers.

I need to leave for some hours however when I get back I will look and see if there is anything I can try for you in the profile code. If I come up with something you can try it. If it does not work then you may need to wait for Nvidia to address the issue.. these are new drivers and as such I do expect about a 60 day dev cycle from them before the majority of the problems are addressed.

Please read the 1st 2 posts. They explain this should work for any card the driver supports however with cards other than the 400 series fan monitor software may cause stutters due to a bug Nvidia is aware of and working on. I posted a workaround for that too

and I do not know if these drivers are better for the 200 series or not. I habe not tested them with a 285

Just tried the new drivers and everything works like a charm except for one thing, from time to time I get an all black screen and the sound also stops but this only lasts for maybe a second and then both the picture and the sound is back to normal.

Well...don't have time for more testing tonight, have a real 737NG to catch tomorrow morning so I need to get some sleep now

WebMaximus wrote: Just tried the new drivers and everything works like a charm except for one thing, from time to time I get an all black screen and the sound also stops but this only lasts for maybe a second and then both the picture and the sound is back to normal. Well...don't have time for more testing tonight, have a real 737NG to catch tomorrow morning so I need to get some sleep now

That sounds broadly similar to what I've been experiencing.  Have a look at my posts in this thread and see if anything seems familiar.  The one thing I've noticed is that the black screens always happen immediately after a control or keyboard input.

Am standing by for Nick to see if he can suggest anything but thought I'd flag this for you in the meantime.

Thanks for taking the time to come up with this.  I haven’t got my GTX 480 SC/980X setup put together yet (next week hopefully) but I gave this “hack” a try with the GTX 285/975X in the other tower and it works like a charm.

In addition I just copied the profile data from the FSX section into the FS2004 section along with another game that has transparency texture simmer and it works like a charm on them also.

Thanks again.

PaulL01 wrote:   May I ask, what screen res are you using? But since I mostly fly Xtreme res photoreal I'm still a 7.5-8.5 LOD type of guy, 6.5 just doesn't cut it IMHO.

I run 1920x1200

My suggestions are based on the default system, not photoscenery. In photoscenery it is best to set the TBM to 400, work with Fiber Frame Time Fraction too and some find the addition of MipBias=6 helps although TBM and FFTF is usually the key to photoscenery clarity. And since you are not dealing with a massive amount of autogen with photoscenery then raising LOD Radius can be done without the hard perf loss

Alan_A wrote: Am standing by for Nick to see if he can suggest anything but thought I'd flag this for you in the meantime.

I cant find anything here that would suggest this is something that can be changed based on a profile. More than likely you and WebMax have hit on some kind of hardware/software combination bug with the driver

What I would do, if you wish to try and debug, is remove all devices from the loop other than the keyboard and if you have any kind of "keyboard" software installed I would remove that too, then open the sim and RESET all the key functions to DEFAULT and test a flight

If the problem clears then there is something with your input devices/software causing it. If the problem remains then I would make sure its not a specific aircraft addon causing it by only flying a default plane and also disable any 'modules' such as FSUIPC, etc

OK, finally got to do some troubleshooting.  The short answer is that most of the problems resolved when I disabled the flight controllers and flew with keyboard and mouse.  But I still had the 1-2 second blackouts in response to keyboard commands.  Most of the commands that caused problems involved the use of the shift key.  I'd get the blackout when switching to last view or camera via shift-S or shift-A, but not when I switched to next view or camera via S or A.  This wasn't totally consistent.  I got the blackout the first time I called up the flight data/framerate via shift-Z, but once it had loaded, I was able to use shift-Z with no problems.  Shift-S and shift-A, however, always caused the blackout.

All my hardware is Logitech (I use the illuminated wired keyboard) but none of it is running through Logitech software - everything is connected directly through Windows.

I guess at this point I'm going to have to step back to the 197's and wait for a more refined version.

Newbie question - is there a mechanism for reporting beta results to NVidia?  I've posted in their forum but was wondering if there's a more direct feedback mechanism.

Thanks again for all the guidance.

Alan

I found a problem in XPx64 related to the 251.57 driver and the setting "Enable Write Combine" in the troubleshoot section of the graphics properties. Unfortunately there does not appear to be access to those same settings in Windows 7 under the Screen Resolution - ADVANCED - Troubleshoot tab

So I shot off a message to Nvidia people about this. If the hardware acceleration slider and other features like that were available I was going to suggest you uncheck any "Write Combine" (that may not be used in W7) feature and perhaps also drop the hardware acceleration slider down 2-3 notches and recheck, but if that is not available on your end either then there is nothing I can suggest past waiting for the WHQL release and re-try in which they may have fixed bugs in the BETA

Is it me or the FPS limiter will not work with this driver?

Can somebody come back to me with an answer? The FPS limiter show up when I open FSX with it like it suppose to be but the frame rate is not locked at 30...frame rate goes behind 30...??

NickN wrote:     The ENB mod and the FPS Limter do not work together. If you are using the ENB mod, remove the DLL and the ini file from the FSX folder and the frame limiter should work although its still possible to see the frames kick a touch higher and bounce around a little. the d3d9.dll from the ENB mod prohibits the d9.dll from the FPS limiter from functioning correctly

I did not installed the ENB mod, my frame rate was locked at 30 but the FSX frame rate counter goes up to 40 ish + sometimes.....did you try the FPS limiter by itself to confirm it does work with this driver?

Thank you

As you know I will be building a new rig with the 980X and a 480 card so what is the biggest improvement you saw in FSX with this combo and what else did you see beside the biggest improvement.....

I'm curious since I'm gonna spend well over $2,000.00 just for the mobo cpu and card....should I get an SSD or the raptor still good to go?

Thank you.