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Compromise and be happy


tup61

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Just wanted to say I spend this weekend testing out various settings in P3D 2.4 and that I found out you have to compromise by losing a few things to gain a few back and be very happy with what you end up with.

I wasn't happy with overal performance of the Airbus in P3D. In the beginning, when the AIrbus was new and great, I didn't mind a few stutters but after flying for a longer period the performance began to bother me. I noticed I had to lower more and more settings to get performance smooth, which in my case (or imho) is an fps somewhere above 25 fps. Anything lower and I notice it. I ended up with autogen (vegetation and building) at Normal, which made the entire world look like Hiroshima, and almost all shadows (vegetation, buidlings, simobjects) off, and STILL performance wasn't smooth. My (custom) fps counter shows the lowest dip, the average and the highest peak, all from around the last minute, and the lowest dip usually was around 10-15, average between 20 to 28 and the highest peak at my limit of 33. Quite frequently the lowest dip would be 6. Only during cruise performance was consistent: specially during approach performance sucked, even with those low settings.

So I decided to check ALL P3D settings one by one and see what direct and immediate effect they have on performance because clearly the Airbus should perform better on my i7 4790K with a GTX780 (6 GB).

To easily test the direct effect of settings I positioned the Airbus above Heathrow at some 1500 feet and paused the sim. Obviously this isn't THE best testing method, but it does simply show you the immediate effect of various settings. It was surprising to see that some settings which I thought wouldn't hurt, did actually hurt. The biggest fps killer was water reflections. I thought only clouds and terrain wouldn't hurt my pc, specially because I could hardly see any water near Heathrow, but turning it off and on had an immediate impact on the shown fps: without reflectins fps was at the max of 33 and with reflections it went down to around 28/29. Some may not find this much but remember this is just one settings of many that influence performance.

Another obvious one was a combination of P3D settings and ASN settings. Having cloud density at max clearly hurt performance: setting it to high helped already. Setting it to medium AND lowering the amount of cloud layers from 5 to 3 in ASN helped even more. At one moment I thought about removing ASN completely because no matter what it hurts performance somehow but flying with the same weather all over the place (using themes) wasn't a compromise I was willing to take after all. The 3 layers and medium settings turned out to be a workable and still good looking compromise.

One VERY important thing I found was TOOL TIPS! Turn it OFF! It didn't hurt overal performance but I found out today that tool tips was the cause of the low 6 fps dip! I first noticed that fps would instantly drop to 6 whenever I hovered the mouse above certain knobs and then it dawned upon me that the drop was caused by the tooltip popup! I turned tool tips off and the drop to 6 fps was gone!

Other settings I changed: LOD radius from Ultra to High. I noticed that out of the Airbus VC I could not see a difference at ALL. It doesn't change the autogen distance but only the textures and at the regular Airbus altitudes I don't think Ultra is worth it.

Special effects are at its lowest: I don't need them. And btw, about not needing things: while reflections were very important for me when flying low and slow, thy are totally not important with the Airbus! Things look more real without them, actually!

Anyway, what I wanted to say is that is pays off to spend a weekend looking at ALL your settings and to check what they all do to performance. The great thing is that I now have vegetation up from Normal to Very dense and buildings at dense, which makes the world look a lot better (autogen is important to me, even with the Airbus), and I even have buildings shadows on cast and receive (quite important for a realistic view during landings imho: I have the object cast distance at 6000, so not the lowest settings) and vegetation on receive. Cloud shadows (very important) are also still on!

I also still have real weather with ASN but just toned down a notch: it looks great anyway.

And the best thing is performance now is rock steady around 30! It was a real JOY to finally land on for instance LFPG (default P3D scenery with Global and OpenLC, I have to add) with totally SMOOTH performance! No more big drops, no more stutters, but consistent performance all the time, from start to finish! (Lowest dips are now between 20-25 but averages doesn't drop below 30 anymore!)

So my compromises cost me a few things but I gained the ones that are important to me and performance is stellar now!

BTW After concluding my tests I deleted the fsp counter from the Prepar3d.cfg. Don't need and want it anymore. ;)

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The question is why do we have to lower all the settings to get good performance on such good hardware of today. That's what I don't understand. Even 30 FPS isn't much. What kind of computer is needed to get 40 FPS in any situation ? Something from the NSA? I don't know.

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Great post, Jereon!

Coincidently, I did this as well today after several CTDs over the weekend that were driving me nuts. BTW, the RAAS included with the AS A318/A319, has issues with P3D due to it using a stereo driver. One of my CTDs were caused by RAAS and interestingly enough, seconds before the CTD, I heard a loud screech through my speakers and P3D froze. No doubt it had to do with the audio and further confirmed by Rob Ainscough who said that FS2Crew is aware of the issue and we are just waiting for a fix.

Anyhow, I completely agree that we have to compromise. Yes, in today's day and age with the awesome hardware we have available, one is always tempted to try and set as much eye candy as we love to see, but the truth is that we need to cut down where we don't really need the eye candy. Of course, this is all subjective and what might be eye candy for you and I, might not be for someone else. That's the beauty of our hobby!

I have an i7-3770K purring along at 4.9GHz, with 8GB 2400MHz RAM and a GTX680 4GB running at 1280 MHz core/6GHz Memory. Not too shabby if you ask me and I still can't max all settings out in P3D!

Granted I am running 4x SGSS both in the sim and NI, so clouds are my biggest FPS killer. I also cut down the cloud layers within ASN from 5 to 3 and set cloud density to MEDIUM. Rob Ainscough also confirmed that running cloud density at MAXIMUM is a huge fps killer.

Under heavy load, my fps drops to the mid-upper 20s with an average I want to say of 40+ fps. Cruise altitude can hover well over 50s and 60s, if not higher at times. The sweet thing is that even under load where you see the most fps swings, performance is stable. I do get those stutters while turning while taxiing but I have no idea how to fix that.

Speaking of averages... How can I get P3D to show the lowest, average and highest FPS?

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How can I get P3D to show the lowest, average and highest FPS?

Add this to P3D.cfg. By default there are 3 TextInfo entries already so this could be TextInfo.4 but I usually remove all default entries and only add this one as number 1 (saves a lot of key pressing ;) ).

[TextInfo.#]
FrameRate=1,1
AverageFrameRate=1,2
LockedFrameRate=1,3
This will show you the lowest dip during the last minute or so, the average, the highest peak during the last minute or so, current fps and your target fps (unlimited or number). 'Furing the last minute or so' means that for instance the lowest dip will stay on screen for a minute or so (could be 30 seconds, I didn't count) and then it is replaced with a new lowest dip. Well, you will see what I mean... ;)
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One VERY important thing I found was TOOL TIPS! Turn it OFF! It didn't hurt overal performance but I found out today that tool tips was the cause of the low 6 fps dip! I first noticed that fps would instantly drop to 6 whenever I hovered the mouse above certain knobs and then it dawned upon me that the drop was caused by the tooltip popup! I turned tool tips off and the drop to 6 fps was gone!

Very interesting theory / possibility; I'm off to test this now :)

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  • Aerosoft

The question is why do we have to lower all the settings to get good performance on such good hardware of today. That's what I don't understand. Even 30 FPS isn't much. What kind of computer is needed to get 40 FPS in any situation ? Something from the NSA? I don't know.

I think that's a question for Microsoft or Lockheed and not for us.

But I know what they will say. It is never intended to have all sliders fully right as it possible on most games and very fast hardware. All the options are there to allow you to tune the sim to the needs you have at that moment. If you fly VFR you want a lot of trees, if you fly IFR you want loads of airliners etc. I have been using that principle all the time (most people not even seem to know you can save settings!) and almost never have low fps.

post-43-0-19158400-1413801936_thumb.png

I got saves for many different kinds of flights.

Besides 30 fps is more then enough for the slow moving things in the simulator. This is not a FPS!

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  • Aerosoft

Very interesting theory / possibility; I'm off to test this now :)

All these things are very depending on the system. For example my system hates it when the mouse pointer is on the FS window. When I put it outside or on the name bar I gain 15 fps. It pays of to try these things. FAR more then messing with the FSX.cfg files.

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Very interesting theory / possibility; I'm off to test this now :)

Just so you know: that 6 fps dip was the lowest dip so I only noticed this as a stutter: it's not that performance went down to 6 fps for a longer period. But obviously it's always better to avoid things like this!

If you fly VFR you want a lot of trees, if you fly IFR you want loads of airliners etc. I have been using that principle all the time (most people not even seem to know you can save settings!) and almost never have low fps.

Besides 30 fps is more then enough for the slow moving things in the simulator. This is not a FPS!

P3D is even better (well, more convenient) in this regard because you can easily select a saved setting config while preparing your flight on the startup screen! I also have different saved settings for different purposes. Right now I only have two though, one for the A2A Cherokee, with lots of reflections and autogen, suited for rural areas and bush (very bad settings for cities and big airports ;) ), and one for the Airbus, with settings like I described above, more suited for flying high and landing near big cities and on large airports. I usually make specific settings for specific planes btw.

And yes, everything above 25 is perfectly fine, for me anyway. I tried to setup the sim so it usually sticks to 30, just to have some headroom. As I said, it really pays off to spend some time on this and to suit the setting to the flying you are doing!

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  • 1 month later...

The question is why do we have to lower all the settings to get good performance on such good hardware of today. That's what I don't understand. Even 30 FPS isn't much. What kind of computer is needed to get 40 FPS in any situation ? Something from the NSA? I don't know.

30fps! - I wish, I struggle to get 15fps sometimes down to 5fps over scenery on my i7 2600 with R9270X card, less in FSX , I've tried every tweak I can find for both platforms.

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  • Aerosoft

30fps! - I wish, I struggle to get 15fps sometimes down to 5fps over scenery on my i7 2600 with R9270X card, less in FSX , I've tried every tweak I can find for both platforms.

Try without any tweaks (apart from the highmem) and you might be surprised.

With your hardware it should be perfectly possible to get fine fps. I got the same on one of my test machines. Just do not ask the hardware to do more then it can handle.

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team

firstly, thanks for all your notes & thoughts above ..... they have helped me better understand how my fsx / airbus / plus addons is behaving in different flight phases & the consequences of such variables as cloud layers, traffic density on performance.

in summary ... on my fx6300 cpu / 2gb DDR3 gpu setup, i am now getting more than acceptable "average" fps with asn / ut2 / utx2 / trackir / cirtual cdu at fsdt airports across a range of weather.

mind you, a lot of sliders are medium and textures limited to 2048 (dxt5).

however, i have one remaining curiosity to fix if i can and that is that my low fps' are mostly (in all phases & irrespective of addon use .. eg weather) about the 10-12 mark & sometimes as low as 4.

my averages / peaks range from 20 / 40 on the ground to 25 / 60 in the cruise which is fine ... but variables with such lows up to 50%.

i just feel somewhere there's this nagging part that i can't isolate that is dragging performance down to stutters i prefer not to have.

so, any advice / similar experiences with would be appreciated.

thanks & cheers
john

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team

firstly, thanks for all your notes & thoughts above ..... they have helped me better understand how my fsx / airbus / plus addons is behaving in different flight phases & the consequences of such variables as cloud layers, traffic density on performance.

in summary ... on my fx6300 cpu / 2gb DDR3 gpu setup, i am now getting more than acceptable "average" fps with asn / ut2 / utx2 / trackir / cirtual cdu at fsdt airports across a range of weather.

mind you, a lot of sliders are medium and textures limited to 2048 (dxt5).

however, i have one remaining curiosity to fix if i can and that is that my low fps' are mostly (in all phases & irrespective of addon use .. eg weather) about the 10-12 mark & sometimes as low as 4.

my averages / peaks range from 20 / 40 on the ground to 25 / 60 in the cruise which is fine ... but variables with such lows up to 50%.

i just feel somewhere there's this nagging part that i can't isolate that is dragging performance down to stutters i prefer not to have.

so, any advice / similar experiences with would be appreciated.

thanks & cheers

john

team

firstly, thanks for all your notes & thoughts above ..... they have helped me better understand how my fsx / airbus / plus addons is behaving in different flight phases & the consequences of such variables as cloud layers, traffic density on performance.

in summary ... on my fx6300 cpu / 2gb DDR3 gpu setup, i am now getting more than acceptable "average" fps with asn / ut2 / utx2 / trackir / cirtual cdu at fsdt airports across a range of weather.

mind you, a lot of sliders are medium and textures limited to 2048 (dxt5).

however, i have one remaining curiosity to fix if i can and that is that my low fps' are mostly (in all phases & irrespective of addon use .. eg weather) about the 10-12 mark & sometimes as low as 4.

my averages / peaks range from 20 / 40 on the ground to 25 / 60 in the cruise which is fine ... but variables with such lows up to 50%.

i just feel somewhere there's this nagging part that i can't isolate that is dragging performance down to stutters i prefer not to have.

so, any advice / similar experiences with would be appreciated.

thanks & cheers

john

team

firstly, thanks for all your notes & thoughts above ..... they have helped me better understand how my fsx / airbus / plus addons is behaving in different flight phases & the consequences of such variables as cloud layers, traffic density on performance.

in summary ... on my fx6300 cpu / 2gb DDR3 gpu setup, i am now getting more than acceptable "average" fps with asn / ut2 / utx2 / trackir / cirtual cdu at fsdt airports across a range of weather.

mind you, a lot of sliders are medium and textures limited to 2048 (dxt5).

however, i have one remaining curiosity to fix if i can and that is that my low fps' are mostly (in all phases & irrespective of addon use .. eg weather) about the 10-12 mark & sometimes as low as 4.

my averages / peaks range from 20 / 40 on the ground to 25 / 60 in the cruise which is fine ... but variables with such lows up to 50%.

i just feel somewhere there's this nagging part that i can't isolate that is dragging performance down to stutters i prefer not to have.

so, any advice / similar experiences with would be appreciated.

thanks & cheers

john

Same problem as you with A319 IAE , A320/A321 IAE/CFM.

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