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40 CHAPTER 4. CONFIGURING AND TUNING YOUR X-PLANE INSTALLATION
1. Move the mouse to the top of the window, making the menu bar appear, and click Settings,
then click Rendering Options.
2. The texture resolution drop-down menu determines how much video RAM (VRAM) the
computer will use. If your graphics card has plenty of VRAM, you can set it as high as you
want with no loss in frame rate, but as soon as the texture resolution requires more VRAM
than the graphics card has, the simulator’s frame rate will plummet.
3. To determine how much VRAM is being used at the current settings, look at the very bottom
of this window. The last line reads “Total size of all loaded textures at current settings: xxx.xx
meg.”
While it is in some cases possible to load more textures than can be stored in VRAM without
a performance hit (as not all textures will be used all the time), the size of the loaded textures
should not be significantly greater than the VRAM on the system’s video card.
4. Lower the texture resolution if the current settings require much more VRAM than your
video card has.
After changing the texture resolution, X-Plane must be restarted for the change to take effect.
We recommend putting the texture resolution on its lowest setting, exiting the sim, restarting it,
and noting the frame rate. From there, raise the texture detail up one level and repeat until the
frame rate decreases. This is the point at which all of the video card’s RAM is being used. Back
the texture resolution off to one level lower than where the decrease was noted and restart X-Plane
one more time.
If, after restarting X-Plane, your frame rate is still low, you may want to disable some of the
newer features of the X-Plane renderer, such as HDR rendering and global shadows.
Disable HDR Rendering, Simplify Shadows, and Lower Water Reflections The latest
rendering features in X-Plane 10 (HDR rendering, global shadows, and water complex water reflection)
can be very costly on older computers. HDR rendering is potentially quite GPU-intensive,
and global shadows and water reflections are both CPU- and GPU-intensive. Therefore, if you are
having issues with the frame rate, should be some of the first options to go.
Uncheck the HDR rendering option (located in the Special Effects portion of the window).
Next, set the shadow detail (located in the Stuff to Draw portion of the window) to either
“overlay” or “3-D on aircraft.” Finally, set the “water reflection detail” to “none.” Restart X-Plane,
and you should see a dramatic rise in frame rate. If, however, the frame rate is still unacceptable,
you may need to change the resolution as well.
Changing the Resolution The screen resolution refers to the number of pixels that X-Plane
must fill. The lowest available (and default) resolution is 1024 x 768. Increasing the resolution will
cause a drop in frame rate if your graphics card is not powerful enough.
When using X-Plane in windowed (i.e., not full-screen) mode, simply dragging the window size
down will lower your resolution. When using X-Plane in full-screen mode, open the Rendering
Options by moving the mouse to the top of the screen, clicking Settings, then clicking Rendering
Options. Since the run full-screen at this resolution box must be checked for full-screen mode,
you can use the drop-down menu to the right of that box to choose a lower resolution. Try 1024 x
768 first to see if lowering the resolution does indeed improve your frame rate. Note, however, that
choosing a resolution different from the resolution set in your operating system may cause X-Plane
to display a black border around the simulator.