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Eziocin

Again on Boyote's cfg file, affinity mask and FFTF=0

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First of all let me say thanks to all you guys who are contributing by experimenting new tweaks to make FSX a better sim...!The contents of this post are already enbedded into another post that I made on the FFTF=0 thread but it probably went unnoticed so I am reposting it here as I would like to share some considerations with you.My Fsx.cfg settings are as below, ....................[bufferPools]RejectThreshold=131072UsePools=0.........................[DISPLAY.Device.ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series.0]Anisotropic=1AntiAlias=1Mode=1680x1050x32..............[GRAPHICS]ALLOW_SHADER_30=1SHADER_CACHE_VERSION=50...............HIGHMEMFIX=1.......................STALE_BUFFER_THRESHOLD=2147483647 ..................TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=2048..................[Main]FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION=0DisablePreload=1MAX_TEXTURE_DATA=215040TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=70TextureMaxLoad=30UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=20[JOBSCHEDULER]AffinityMask=14[TERRAIN]AUTOGEN_DENSITY=1DETAIL_TEXTURE=1LOD_RADIUS=4.500000MESH_COMPLEXITY=100MESH_RESOLUTION=22SWAP_WAIT_TIMEOUT=2TEXTURE_RESOLUTION=25WATER_EFFECTS=4[sCENERY]MAX_ASYNC_BATCHING_JOBS=2SmallPartRejectRadius=4........................................My system is Intel QuadCore Q9300 @ 2.50, 8 Gb RAM, ATI HD5870, Win 7 64b. Not really a cutting edge pc for today's std and FSX demand, but I have a very well tuned system overall and playing around with settings I can run FSX pretty decent.My FSX set up for these "test flights" was with PMDG 747, REX2, ASE, GEnvX, FS2Crew 2010 voice, and the results below do not change significantly using Orbx addon sceneries (Australia SP3, NA PNW), or Megascenery Earth, or Realearth X Alps for Italy.With such configuration and with the fsx.cfg settings above, I made some flights (YMML-YBCS, KDEN-KSEA, LIMC-LIRF....) and the sim was smooth as I had never experimented before (I have to keep AI traffic = 0, but this is the price I have to pay to fly decently on this PC): everything from taxi to take off to flying in the clouds to landing was smooth with fps stable around 18-20, but……the ground textures were heavily blurried…During the last flight I switched the Sim to windowed mode and opened the Task Manager in the "Performance " section. I noticed that core 0 was very low loaded (about 15% or so) , Core 1 was saturated (100% steady) and cores 3 and 4 were oscillating around 75 – 80% of the maximum load. I tried the following action: opened the "Process" tab, right clicked on FSX, opened "set affinity" and unticked Core 1: looking back at "Performance" I noticed as I expected Core 1 load drop almost to 0. Ticked again Core 1 and this time looking back at "Performance" I noticed that core 1 had ramped up to about 70% and stabilised at 70%, with the remaining cores (including Core 0 that was now taking a significant load) stabilising also around 70%. Going back to the flight, this time (unlike the previous flights) textures started to load, not very quickly but they loaded while the fps remained constant. So the major results of this action was that now the sim could actually load sharp textures (even if slowly, but at least they loaded), whilst in the previous situation textures remained blurried at all time. (btw, textures loading was much quicker in spot view than when in VC view).My conclusion was that by "deselecting and reselecting again" Core 1, I had bypassed the affinity mask =14 command, and to prove it I restarted the same flight with "affinity mask=14" removed from FSX.cfg, but, rather surprisingly, the FSX behaviour was exactly the same as described above.So, under the assumption that Affinity mask = 14 means that you have only 3 cores running the sim while Core 0 is only for the fibers (which I believe is indisputably true, please correct me if I am wrong), my conclusion from the above is that under such configuration (at least with my settings), there is something which is preventing core 0 to produce “full power” in loading texture, hence the blurriness. And I also believe that this is directly related to how much the other three cores are loaded: I tried the same flight with Realair Duke (much less CPU demanding than PMDG747) and all textures were very crispy and loaded pretty fast. The other possible conclusion is that I have understood nothing about "Affinity mask" and I have to do some homework, which is most likely to be the truth ! If that's the case apologise me for the time you wasted in reading this post...! I would appreciate if someone could comment on my considerations above.ThanksRegards


AMD Ryzen 7800x3d, Asus ROG Strix RTX4090, Asus x670e-e, G-Skill F5-6000J3038F16GX2-TZ5NR

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Don't know about the affinity mask, but the heavy blurring comes from the FFT=0. Move it to at least .1 or .15...and where did "MAX_TEXTURE_DATA=215040" come from?You will get more bang for the buck by rolling back a number of the terrain parameters than by spending time on the affinity mask - if it's better performance you're looking for.



i7 4790K@4.8GHz | 32GB RAM | EVGA RTX 3080Ti | Maximus Hero VII | 512GB 860 Pro | 512GB 850 Pro | 256GB 840 Pro | 2TB 860 QVO | 1TB 870 EVO | Seagate 3TB Cloud | EVGA 1000 GQ | Win10 Pro | EK Custom water cooling.

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Don't know about the affinity mask, but the heavy blurring comes from the FFT=0. Move it to at least .1 or .15...and where did "MAX_TEXTURE_DATA=215040" come from?
MAX_TEXTURE_DATA=215040 comes from the formula you can find in David Roch's "BP=0 conclusion" post under the Avsim Tutorials Section"...if UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT exists, then:MAX_TEXTURE_DATA = (TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD * (TextureMaxLoad * TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULTIPLIER)) / UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT..."I know that FFTF=0 generates heavy blurries, but it also makes better FPS and smoothness, so I am trying to find a way to minimize or elimitate blurries under FFTF=0 option...., and I have found that playing around with affinity improve things but I don't know if I am moving in the right direction. ! Regards

AMD Ryzen 7800x3d, Asus ROG Strix RTX4090, Asus x670e-e, G-Skill F5-6000J3038F16GX2-TZ5NR

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heavy blurring comes from the FFT=0I recall Nick mentioning some time ago that FFTF was moot on quad cores. Has that changed?Mark

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MAX_TEXTURE_DATA=215040 comes from the formula you can find in David Roch's "BP=0 conclusion" post under the Avsim Tutorials Section"...if UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT exists, then:MAX_TEXTURE_DATA = (TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD * (TextureMaxLoad * TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULTIPLIER)) / UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT..."
I must be missing something here, Hooky: The formula is nice to have and quote, but the MAX_TEXTURE_DATA parameter is the output of the formula being run by FSX. You can't give it a value in the cfg file?? Where's that ******* guy when you need him!!!


i7 4790K@4.8GHz | 32GB RAM | EVGA RTX 3080Ti | Maximus Hero VII | 512GB 860 Pro | 512GB 850 Pro | 256GB 840 Pro | 2TB 860 QVO | 1TB 870 EVO | Seagate 3TB Cloud | EVGA 1000 GQ | Win10 Pro | EK Custom water cooling.

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I must be missing something here, Hooky: The formula is nice to have and quote, but the MAX_TEXTURE_DATA parameter is the output of the formula being run by FSX. You can't give it a value in the cfg file?? Where's that ******* guy when you need him!!!
Don't worry...! I may be missing something as well..! I am hardly making my way into the jungle of FSX settings and tweaks....If someone can clarify he's more than welcome..!But, however, we are deviating from the main purpouse of my initial post, which was to highlight the fact that apparently if we play a little bit with the "affinity" settings in the Task Manager we are a better balanced load among the 4 cores than if we set "Affinity mask=14" in the FSX.cfg. Does it lead us anywhere good ?I'd like to come on a conclusion on this statement, although I repeat again that may depend by me not understanding properly the "Affinity mask=.." command.Regards

AMD Ryzen 7800x3d, Asus ROG Strix RTX4090, Asus x670e-e, G-Skill F5-6000J3038F16GX2-TZ5NR

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Don't worry...! I may be missing something as well..! I am hardly making my way into the jungle of FSX settings and tweaks....If someone can clarify he's more than welcome..!But, however, we are deviating from the main purpouse of my initial post, which was to highlight the fact that apparently if we play a little bit with the "affinity" settings in the Task Manager we are a better balanced load among the 4 cores than if we set "Affinity mask=14" in the FSX.cfg. Does it lead us anywhere good ?I'd like to come on a conclusion on this statement, although I repeat again that may depend by me not understanding properly the "Affinity mask=.." command.Regards
Your understanding of Affinitymask is correct.On a quad, 14 does what you stated in your first post, and 15 will use all cores.I get smoother flight with 14, but with 15 you do have 3 cores loading textures, vs 2 with 14.

Bert

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MAX_TEXTURE_DATA=215040[JOBSCHEDULER]AffinityMask=14
Hookipa,So far all the replies you have received are correct. MAX_TEXTURE_DATA is just a reference to an output value. Not a fsx.cfg settingTHe AffinityMask explanation by Bert, is correctand the BLurries you get with FFTF=0 were already explained by Word Not Allowed, please read his thread. When you use FFTF=0 the MAIN thread is resonsible for terrain/texture loading, and will be able to keep up ONLY if there is enough CPU available, if you use CPU intensive add-ons (aicraft) you WILL see blurries, only alternative is to use FFTF=0.1

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heavy blurring comes from the FFT=0I recall Nick mentioning some time ago that FFTF was moot on quad cores. Has that changed?Mark
FFTF controls the ammount of time allocated to fiber work. Multi-core machines use secondary threads (texture managers) to load terrain/textures, so FFTF has much less impact when used on a QUAD core, but there *IS* still some impact.FFTF effectiveness also depends on your frame rate lock setting. You'll notice, for example that if you set FFTF to 0.90 using locked frames inside FSX terrain blurries will completely dissapear, but you'll take a HUGE CPU hit. This is because when you fly with your FRAMES locked inside the sim, a lot of fiber work is still linked to the main thread. However, when you fly with FPS set to UNLIMITED inside FSX, no matter if you set FFTF to 0.90, or 0.50 you will NOT notice *ANY* diff, because the mayority of the fiber work is OFFLOADED from the main thread to the secondary threads. In fact, when you run with your FPS set to UNLIMITED the default FFTF of 0.30 is not fully used! because there is VERY LITTLE fiber work left on the main thread. Thats why when running frames UNLIMITED the only FFTF values that make a difference are those between 0.10 - 0.33. Thats also why when running frames set to UNLIMITED there is ABSOLUTELY nothing you can do to prevent blurries. they will ALWAYS be there.

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Imagine getting free assignable loaders and fibers in Flight - man what a mess would that cause :( :( :( (not saying it's gonna be, just hypethetically)

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