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Guest OneTinSoldier

PROBLEM: Autogen rendering is major FPS hog!

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Hi all.Autogen objects are just like any other object in that they are composed of polygons that are drawn at runtime. ( Some autogen actually are library objects! )Anytime you have a excessive number of polygons in the viewport, you will have FPS dropping. This FPS effect will be gone as you leave the 'populated' area, and the number of polys is reduced. ( If you use a rear view, the FPS might drop again, as the viewport now has more polys ).When landing, the polys are not released from the rendering engine, as the sim doesn't know you are landing. You may suddenly pull up, and then the autogen would need to be displayed. This is the same as viewing from behind a large building... the autogen ( and their polygons ) are still in memory and will show instantly when they are revealed by your change of position."Again, it's not the autogen itself that is killing frame rates. It's what happens after about 5-10 minutes of flying, so we're dealing with some sort of memory leak and/or excessive rendering of buildings that aren't even visible."Not a memory leak, perhaps they are actually rendered, but the autogen polys, and their position and texturing, are accounted for in memory, in case they were to be suddenly revealed due to your viewport's change of position. If they were not, the sim would dead stop when a bunch of autogen were suddenly revealed from behind a building or a change in horizon.Scenery designers can alter the distance at which objects are shown, but if this were done too severely, then the autogen would be "popping' all over the place. It is the distance from the aircraft, and the viewport direction that control object rendering.Bottom line is that MS did about as good a job with autogen as they could. If it is annoying, they even allow us to tune it down or turn it off.By resetting the display while at an airfield, you will force the sim to redraw all the objects. This redrawing will flush the memory holding the objects and redefine them according to the current viewport direction and distance. That should reduce FPS. The same thing could be done in flight, and the FPS should be reduced until your viewport alteres, or you change the view direction.Is autogen a memory hog? Not really, but a hog in the rendering routines, which keeps track of the position and size of all those polygons. As is usual with FS, this version will run with incredible framerates in 5-6 years, as our computers become much more powerful. I first ran CFS2 in freeflight with about 25FPS, and lots of bogging down in quick combat. I now run it with 200+ FPS.Dick

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Something else major has changed in FS2004 which just kills FPS.It would appear FS2004 is using the FS2000 engine..Anyhow, I can't use FS2004 smoothly, and will be sticking with FS2002 because of performance issues. I see no point in spending more money upgrading my system to a 3.0Ghz machine just to see a little increase in FPS, for a poorly coded game (FS2004). So many people have posted performance problems with 3.0Ghz machines, which should not be the case...Two Screen shoots, one of FS2004, and FS2002. If I were to add clouds to FS2004, I'd get better performance using a slide projector..Just a little disappointed with FS2004, but very happy to still have FS2002...:-wave

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I wanted to get in on this topic too. I'm running a lower power system compared to most of you guys. Windows ME, 700 pent III, 256 MB, nVida 440 MX 64MB. Because of my system's power I have to remain in the 800x600x32 screen resolution to get frame rates that are as close to yours. I'm locked at 20fps.This is most frustrating to me, because of my lower power system I have to tweek to get the most out of it. I use fps to indicate what I'm accomplishing with my tweeking. The slow down in fps as the simulator is used screws up any tweeking feed back that I attempt to refine. You guys with XP, I guess, can monitor the vitual memory as it fills up, I don't think I can because I have ME. A simular thread with the same problem is being discussed under "landclass".When I noted the decline in frame rates I would go into the "settings" page and change something to get them back up. I would sometimes increase a slider that you would think would decrease fps, but when the program updated automatically because of the slider change the fps came back up for awhile. With this kind of feed back from fps, how can I tell what is really happening with my tweeking??Last night after reading these postings I did turn down autogen and noticed that the fps stayed up longer, but don't really know until I have had more time with it in this condition.Could the beta testers not just have flown long enough to notice this?Something sure seems to be filling and causeing the slow down. When I exit FS9 and shut down the computer, it seems like it does take longer for the computer to shut down.

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Great post and right on! :-)I call it the fuIII syndrom.Before fuIII sims came out with no sliders e.g. what you saw is what you got. Video drivers had no options. Simple, and few complaints.FuIII was the first program to have sliders for future growth. Of course everyone (myself included) looked at the sim with the default half sliders-considered it an improvement-and then immdediately turned the sliders all to the right to see what the sim could do.After seeing how amazing it looked with everything maxed out-one could hardly go back. Of course the downside was performance suffered-and the complaining started.The complaints :"I paid good money for this sim and shouldn't have to run it at only half stops"-"This sim runs too slow on my present high end computer" etc. etc.Something that was an advantage (sliders for future technology) suddenly became a disadvantage-and I think was the ultimate kiss of death for this fine sim in its time-a real shame.....I can only wonder at how the programmers felt at this innovative feature (sliders that allowed performance customization and growth for the future) ending up sending them all to the unemployment line.There are simply few ways for a programmer to add more code, more calculations, more features, and keep performance the same. Simple math-add one line to the code and there goes one more computing cycle.Perhaps by doing away completely with the slider page everyone could be satisfied with the same mediocre performance on a wide variety of machines. It would probably end many of the complaints-but we would all be stuck with a product with less innovation and no growth potential.Me-I would prefer the option to choose (sliders), and even have the ability to grow when I get my newer system in a year.As far as autogen-I just like the way it looks maxed out. It gives me more of a real feeling of flying seeing all the buildings. So when I get near a major airport, and the frames slow down I know that is the price to pay. I also know if I turn it off, I will have no price to pay-but it won't look as cool. Isn't it nice to have choices?http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/Geofdog2.jpg

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Hi 3Green.I can't say I have that problem.I can max my settings in FS2002 and FS2004, and go to the flight at Meigs ( it's in the "other" saved flight listing ). With clear weather, sitting on the runway, both flights give me FPS in the low 40's.I have 1 gig PC2700 memory, Athon 2600+, ATI Radeon 9500Pro MSI KT4 Ultra motherboard, WindowsXP with all updates and Directx9.0bThe point is, the FPS of both situations is nearly identical... around 42FPS.I do note that your response has been identical in several threads. You do not like FS2004. That I do understand. I do not understand why you choose to troll.Dick

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For the record I have to state again:Beta testers notice much and report much. That is the long and short of it, and what a beta tester does for any product.That is the beginning and the end of a beta testers job.If the pay wasn't so good I suppose none of us would do it. :-)http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/Geofdog2.jpg

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Right Dick,The major slow down near complex airports cam be:(autogen polygons + textures) + (scenery polygons + textures ) + Aircrafts in the ground (polygons + textures)Probably FS can be optimized and programmed in a smart way to deal with autogen, I see most autogen as simple cubes with textures.I remember in FS2002 after 1 hour of flight using ATC at 100% the frame rate going from 40 to 2-3 FPS, then moving the slider to 0 and back to 100 the frames coming back to 40, so the memory filling up with ATC and FS engine doesn't cleaning the memory. It can be the case with autogen.My autogen is OFF now, I know many people like autogen trees and buildings, I'd like to have an option to turn off only the buildings or only the trees. Using sharp textures for the terrain, the autogen doesn't look proportional for the terrain and looks like a game in my opinion. The real life buildings are a lot more condensed and smaller objects than autogen..Ulisses

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Hi Ulisses.I actually had forgot about the effects of ATC and other aircraft. They also can really bog down the sim. I usually fly with ATC off... to each his own. :) Dick

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Guest OneTinSoldier

Hi Geof A,I agree with your post. I expect to take a hit and pay a price if I turn all my sliders up. And, I like to have them upfor the same reason you do. I just like the way it looks, a lot better, and great for screenshots too, hehe. That's the way I've left them and have lived with it. But it just seems so strange, even after reading Dick's(rhumbaflappy) explanation that, I fly over a city when I first start out and have good FPS. Then while I'm still in the vicinity of the city it starts to degrade, by a large degree, and if I do a 360 and fly right back over the same city, it remains in a poor state.rhumbaflappy,If I were doing Mach 6 over the city I could understand why things would need to remain accounted for in memory(the entire city) for me to get a smooth looking transistion of objects as I pass over them at that speed, especially in case I changed the viewport/viewpoint. But since I am not going Mach 6, I have trouble understanding a need for excessive polys to remain accounted for in memory as I am not going to be suddenly over on the other side of the city in an instant. The real point I want to make though is I had no problem with my viewport being full of polys when I first passed over, as far as FPS goes. Do you see what I'm getting at? Because I pretty much understood what you were getting at.Regards,One Tin Soldier

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Hi One Tin Soldier.As far as BGLs, the header of the Bgl controls the area covered.. and all objects in that Bgl must be accounted when in that header boundry ( latitude-longitude ).Autogen are tied to ground textures and now some are also tied to VTP lines. Some autogen are actually library objects while some appear to be a form of advanced building code, and some ( trees ) are of an unknown type. We can see the distance where the autogen pops into view, but I suspect they are accounted for before they are actually seen in the viewport. If you go to a top-down view in FS2002, you can hit the minus key until you can see the actual extents of the ground-tiling. In FS2004, I can't see this limit, so I don't know how far the textures extend to the horizon... but that extent must account for the autogen, even if they are not rendered.So there are 2 memory/CPU problems. The visual rendering extent of objects, and the bounding extent of loading the objects into the sim ( including aircraft ).I don't know how the sim decides to "release" objects, but I suspect it has more to do with the bounds of the Bgls and the groundtiles, than it does with the actually rendering distance. Perhaps before rendered, the objects 'accounting' takes little CPU load, but once rendered, they are not released until the BGL/groundtile bounds are exceeded, and maintain a higher 'accounting' as if they are still being rendered. That would explain the FPS not rising back as quickly as we'd like.If forcing a refresh of scenery while on the tarmac actually creates better FPS, that supports the idea that the sim refuses to "release" the objects once they are rendered, until you leave the header bounds. The refreshing of the scenery ( easily done by turning the mesh slider down one notch and re-entering the sim ), effectively releases the objects because now the sim sees them as having not yet been rendered.Another thing I noticed. Near Niagara or Chicago for example, the densly populated suburbs have a greater FPS hit for me than the city itself. And that would make sense, as there are more trees and shrubs and buildings in the suburban areas... more polys.. and I use extreme settings for autogen and scenery objects. I don't use ATC, so my airports only need to account for buildings ( very little autogen ). So sometimes I do have better framerates at airports than I do in the surrounding suburbs. This is all guesswork, but is the only explaination I can find. And if true, it would be essentially the same for FS2002. The big difference is that FS2004 hcan have denser autogen.. more polys to account for, and more polys not released until we physically leave the bounding area or force a reload of the scenery.Dick

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Guest OneTinSoldier

Dick,Ok, I hear ya bud. Thanks for that explanation. That does make things seem a little clearer. And believe me, I understand about doing some guesswork too. :)Cheers,Jimmy RichardsOne Tin Soldier"Variable, this is EasyRhino. Do you copy? Over." Loud and clear EasyRhino. "Do we have a gig? Over." That's a Roger, we have a gig. Target is painted, start the music. "Roger that Variable. Into attack. Pickling target. Target is acquired and lit. LGB comin' down!" EasyRhino, circular error probability zero. Impact with High Order Detonation. Thank You, have a nice day.

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Bumping---Of all the performance-related issues, this thread seems to have the most significance. Other "frame-rate" threads appear to be "hardware-specific"; but this appears to be a UNIVERSAL issue... Apparently, Autogen is failing to efficiently release memory for EVERYBODY.Regards,Marc

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Last evening I was flying the PMDG737 with virtual cockpit enabled. I noticed that as soon as I go into VC, my FPS drops from 25 (locked) to around 8. Display/AI/scenery settings etc. have no influence. Even with every slider to the left this happens. I have not tried the PMDG737 without VC yet, nor have I tried if this happens with default MS planes.The most interesting thing of this all is that after the FPS drop, my FPS goes up to 25 again when I press Alt twice (when I'm not in VC). IE make the menubar appear/disappear. Anyone else noticed this? :-hmmm My machine: AMD XP2600+@333, Asus A7N8X Deluxe, 512MB PC2100, Radeon 9500 Pro, WinXPPro. FS2004 running in seperate partition, all background apps killed...

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Guest OneTinSoldier

Maddog Marc,I would have to agree. It would seem to me that Autogen memory is not getting released properly. So far, to me, there is no other explanation for why I would get very nice performance for the first ten minutes or so, then have it go to crap for no apparent good reason. I'm talking over urban areas here, and I think this problem is also related to degraded FPS on approach to airports. With this, and numerous other reports of Autogen related problems/bugs, it is a serious indication to me that the autogen is not only not working as designed but has some serious flaw in the code. I personally have been under the impression, and stating, for some time, that there should be a patch for FS2004 that addresses at least the autogen bugs, if nothing else. The autogen has been the most glaring bug issue with FS9 since it's release, in my opinion.Sincerely,One Tin Soldier

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Can you check what your fs9.cfg MAX TEXTURE LOAD is at?double it and try again.. might help. It did wonders here. From 512 to 2048 with an GF3 64mb card.Johan[A HREF=http://www.phoenix-simulation.co.uk]Phoenix Simulation Software[/A]-----http://www.people.zeelandnet.nl/johdUnofficial PSS Website

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