Can X-Plane run without graphics

Question

I am modeling airplane flight and would like to speed up the training a lot.  Is there a way to run x-plane fully on the gpu without calculations for graphics?

I currently get and set parameters through the XPlaneConnect plugin and turn down as many graphics options as possible to speed up the calculations.  Moving the x-plane window off screen helps too.  I can reach a little more than 2X time acceleration, but would like to run at 4X (or much faster, like 100X).

My system:
X-Plane 11 Pro
Ubuntu 16
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080
i7-6700 3.4GHz (8 cores)
32 GB DDR4 2133 MHz

I realize Windows will run faster, so I am willing to consider a Windows machine, but even on Windows I would want to run as fast as possible.

Which leads back to my question... is there a way to run X-plane without graphics?

Comments

Maybe you should look for some fake graphics driver that ignores graphics output for a particular program. Some graphics drivers allow settings per application, so maybe you can turn down quality for speed there.

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Ideally, I would like to tell X-plane to not bother with calculations related to graphics.  Would ignoring graphic output help?  I think X-plane would continue to do the calculations but the results would just be ignored.

Answer 1

The best work around (even our developers use this) is to use X-Plane without scenery as it really cuts down loading times. Simply remove all the folders from Global Scenery > X-Plane 11 Global Scenery to go back to "water world." I also often use TXKF airport for quick flight loads in order to investigate bug reports.

Comments

Thanks for your response.  I'll give it a try and report back.

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I removed the folder but only saw a slight increase in speed.  The time acceleration value jumps around, and I didn't try to quantify it - just eyeballing suggests about 0.1x improvement on my system.  I also removed the Custom Scenery folder, but saw no difference.  Sounds like I need to look elsewhere for the bottleneck.

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I believe 6x time acceleration is the limit. Turn down all rendering settings in the application, uncheck all boxes for shadows and parked aircraft. If you can, point the camera at the sky & don't use any clouds. Turn off all AI aircraft as well.

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I've already done that, and it certainly helps (about 1-2X faster for me).  It's not quite enough for my purpose because I need to sustain a time acceleration for the model parameters to be used correctly (e.g., 2X or 4X, not variable acceleration between these values).  

My model (not X-Plane) is probably the issue.  I'll upvote your answer because it seems to be the closest option for running without graphics.  Thanks for your help!