Advanced Question Making the most out of my rig

[Grover]

ive had a rather nice computer rig set up for quite a while now, which has only ever struggled with Moach's VC (whatever the cause of that was/is)

looking at some other people's screenshots, and reading about different atmospheric models, i wondered:

what settings can i change to make the most out of my rig?

so, first of all, are the OGLA/D3D9 clients an improvement over the basic orbiter graphics, if so, how and how can i install it to max out any settings it has?

also, are there any changes to the Orbiter engine i can make to set parameters to the most realistic and resource consuming settings?

anything to make my Orbiter experience better than it already is is a bonus!

thanks guys

 

[RisingFury]

If I understand you correctly, you're looking to increase realism at expense of performance, because your computer can handle it. If so...

For Orbiter's engine:
-Under Parameters tab, check everything and increase the MFD refresh to 0.05.
-Under Visuals, check everything.
-Under Extras->Time propagation->Linear state propagators and Angular state propagators, uncheck everything except for the first and set that one to RK8.
-Extras->Celestial body configuration->Atmosphere configuration->Earth->NRLMSIS-00.
-Play with the Extras->Visualization parameters->Planet rendering options, but you'll need to tune that one to get best out of what your computer can offer and what your preferences are.

 

[Columbia42]

Using D3D9 will certainly increase the performance of Orbiter (sometimes by an enormous amount), especially if you are using Win7. If you are using Orbiter 2010-P1 (100830), install the zip file in the first post of the D3D9 development thread (http://www.orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=18431). If you are using an Orbiter beta later than 100830, the installs for that are near the end of the thread. As for maxing out D3D9 settings, they are pretty much the same as the normal Orbiter ones.

 

[orb]

If you are using an Orbiter beta later than 100830, the installs for that are near the end of the thread.

Actually, for the later than 110822, as betas released between 100830 and 110822 use the same D3D9 client as 100830.

 

[Ripley]

...
-Play with the Extras->Visualization parameters->Planet rendering options, but you'll need to tune that one to get best out of what your computer can offer and what your preferences are...

Isn't it better (eye-candy wise) to max out the graphics settings on the graphics card control panel (because nowadays they are powerful beasts), and tone down the eventual eye-candy application's flags, like the one in bold, to "release pressure" on Orbiter engine itself?