Almost there...Set & Forget Settings for Eyefinity (& moderately older systems) - Docs Soon

[Skywolf 992]

Hey everyone,

 

I have got some exciting news to share, I am almost there with Set and Forget settings for my P3D - I am in my final stages of testing (hopefully a document should be posted on avsim - with tons of screenshots, and Prepar3D.config settings etc) – while avoiding major OOM CTDs when simming.

 

There is no way I was able to achieve this fluid level of performance with FSX (especially with my i5-750 system).  I tried every trick in the book for FSX, without buying new hardware, and minimizing my tweak time with P3D config.  I wanted performance with triple screen.  Once you sim in triple screen, you can’t go back to single screen.

 

As for software, I do own fair amount flight sim products (see listing below), performance with Orbx Scenries was crucial for me.  For these tweaks to work effectively there are few critical components required and that includes hardware and software.  I am basing the components off of my hardware and making some assumptions along the way.

 

Operating System - Windows 8 64 Bit (or Windows 7 64 Bit)

Hardware - SSD

Ram - 8GB+ DDR3

Flight Sim - Prepar3D 1.4

Addons - FSUIPC Registered (Solves Win 8's joystick problem)

Video Card - Eyefinity Capable / I am sure this should apply to Nvidia Surround

 

My Hardware

 

Cpu - i5-750 (OC to 4.01 Ghz)

Ram - 8GB+ Ram DDR-1866 (OC to 1910)

SSD - 256 Sata III (6 G/bits) - I have a Sata 3 addon card for my intel 1156 motherboard

Video - One XFX AMD 6970 Radeon 2GB Card (not overclocked).

Joystick – Thrustmaster Hotas-X

Monitors - 3x 1920x1200 Resolution Monitors

 

My Software (all software is fully registered/freeware and currently installed, not running any trial or demos).

 

OS - Windows 8 Pro 64 Bit

FlightSim - Prepar3d 1.4 Only (Clean System, No FSX installed)

 

FlightSim Utilities - FSUIPC, FSX to Prepar3d Migration Tool

AI Traffic - My Traffic 5.4B P3D

Weather Generation - OpusFSX for weather

Textures - REX Essentials with Overdrive Upgrade

Sceneries - FSDT KJFK, Orbx - PNW, KORS Airport, All Orbx Freeware, New Zealand North and South Island

Aircrafts - Carenado HD Series (I bought so many during christmas sale), Aerosoft Airbus X, Quality Wings 146.

Misc - FS Flying School Pro 2013 P3D, SimLauncher 8.4

 

During the Testing, I flew a Carenado King, and Quality Wings 146, with My Traffic 5.4B's AI traffic, Orbx Sceneries, OpusFSX for Live weather, Rex textures, few Firefox browser windows, and VLC in the background playing my music.

 

I have road and water traffic disabled, have not tested them properly - I hardly notice that they are missing, but I will test it soon.

 

Stay tuned and lets all keep this thread fun and entertaining (it will probably motivate me faster to get all my testing done, and post results).  I will keep posting screenshots throughout the day/weekend 

 

My core audience is Eyefinity, and though some of the config’s should apply to all P3D users, and I am not promising anything, nor may you get the same level of performance.  I just hope my testing/work helps you out to get more from your system.

 

This should be fun and educational. 

 

Let’s hope for the best, and have a great “happy Easter” weekend.

 

Here are some teaser triple screen shots (around 1MB - embedded links from my team site per forum's new policy) - Screen Shot Resolution 6080x1137

 

 

Teaser 1

 

 

 

Teaser 2

 

[jcomm 5,919]

Oh!  Great to know SkyWolf!

 

I look forward for your tutorial document. Actually I was on Win8, running DCS World beautifully, when I decided to try FSX Gold because of the Aerosoft Airbus X Extended, and found FSX to be a nightmare in Win8 :-(

 

I reverted back to Win7 64 bit, but look forward to know what might have been the reason for my insuccess...

 

Thx for your work!

 

And yes - P3D is really worth migrating to and... it's ALIVE!!!!

[Skywolf 992]

Oh!  Great to know SkyWolf!

 

I look forward for your tutorial document. Actually I was on Win8, running DCS World beautifully, when I decided to try FSX Gold because of the Aerosoft Airbus X Extended, and found FSX to be a nightmare in Win8 :-(

 

I reverted back to Win7 64 bit, but look forward to know what might have been the reason for my insuccess...

 

Thx for your work!

 

And yes - P3D is really worth migrating to and... it's ALIVE!!!!

 

Thanks Jcomm,

 

I really do hope my finding benefit all of us, I can't recall on how many times my ssd has been wiped clean in the past 6 months with FSX and Prepar3d, and then finally figured few things out (just connecting the dots....heh).

 

If my hypothesis is correct, Windows 8 is key ingridient - but Windows 7 64bit will be equally fine.  I tested Aerosoft Airbus Extended X Last night (only once) - need few more tests to confirm my findings, - but from what I saw last night, it performed awesome on my system (way better than I expected, once its tweaks were done).

 

I will post another teaser screenshot in few - This is turning out to be a super exciting day.  I get to make 2 presentations today.  One for my meetup group (later in the evening on topics of my other passion), and other for Flight Simming.

 

It truly is a "Good" Friday

 

PS - If someone can tell me on how to record my entire screen as a video that would be great with ease.  I do not want to hold my cell phone camera and record the P3D footage.

[hesynergy 67]

Doood!!!....Cudos for you!!!!

 

.....I look forward to collaborating with you and this thread!.  I am sure that three monitors would blow all of us away, but I suggest that If you had TrackIR and Ezdok first, you would find that you really didn't need three monitors. 

 

So with that thought in mind, I suggest for the rest of us, who don't have the bucks or space for three monitors, I highly recommend EzDok AND TrackIR to complete your P3d experience....though...

 

I gotta say, I am champing at the bit...figgiting...antsy...and timorously excited as an eight year old on the day before christmas...awaiting my

Occulus Rift Dev kit

 

...which in my heart of hearts, in my brain of brains, I KNOW WILL

 

TOTALLY REVOLUTIONIZE GAME/SIMULATION/SCIENTIFIC VISUALIZATION

 

with just this first iteration and subsequent 5" hi-res display for $300 bucks....It will be a replacement for..multi-monitor, Multi-projector, blended projection display systems costing upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars, How much did NASA, all the Services...Navy, Marines, Air Force, Army, National Guard, and multitudes of labs requiring visual, hi-res presentation of data, spend on their systems???

 

Now let me contradict myself somewhat buxwise.....yes... after 30 years of flight simming and a myriad of joysticks, throttles, combinations there-of, force-feedback and not...

 

...I bit the bullet and bought the ultimate control system outside of a hand made cockpit, the Thrustmaster Hotas Warthog here-after referred to as "TMH"....to Death shall we part...my LAST CONTROLLER.

 

OK....'nuff proselytizing ...here is a problem with the TMH...the joystick button 11 is driving me crazzzzyyy...no matter what control config I come up with see the latest iterations for the TMS and P3d included below...no matter what, button 11 brings up the Fracking lousy opaque P3D ATC window!!!...

 

Do you have this problem with your TMH???...would you please share your control config file?

 

Looking forward to hearing from you and all interested in this thread!!!

 

Regards...Chas

 

The attachment was to be a bunch of my P3d Control XML files zipped....but AvSim would not allow me to upload ...see below

 

"Error You aren't permitted to upload this kind of file"

 

...so here is my shared Google drive.  Let me know if you have problems...

 

 

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B96UbGbeHXMxbWJGc3VWZ2NDYVk/edit?usp=sharing

 

C

 

 

PS - If someone can tell me on how to record my entire screen as a video that would be great with ease. I do not want to hold my cell phone camera and record the P3D footage.

 

I have an Elgato...check it out on youtube

[jobepilot 7]

P3D is very fluid and is far better in performance to FSX, I can have much more advanced settings on my machine with P3D, very exciting times ahead I hope. 

[jcomm 5,919]

At my present settings I have airliner traffic at 100%, GA at 50%, with no impact whatsoever (as far as I was able to measure) in fps! This was certainly impossible in FSX...

 

At the same time I am using AS2012 SP2 for RWW, and "flying" the Aerosoft AXE.

 

It couldn't be better :-)

[drumsonly2002 3]

Great thread. I have P3D and 3 x 1920 x 1200 24" monitors. 2 x GTX 580 cards. Very interested in your findings as your information is important for those wanting a 3 screen set up. Thanks for sharing. 

[Clutch Cargo 384]

Yep, add me to the bunch of curious simmers on your report.  Currently 5GHz machine, 3-across Surround with 27"s with TrackIR, 580's in SLI, all SSDs.  Life is good.  That is until v2.0 is released.  Then life will be better!

[jcomm 5,919]

 

PS - If someone can tell me on how to record my entire screen as a video that would be great with ease. I do not want to hold my cell phone camera and record the P3D footage.

 

This one is free:  Camstudio

[Skywolf 992]

Awesome posts everyone, keep on coming - I am doing two projects at the moment, going to zone-in and finish my main slides (my meetup event)....I am having so much fun with both though.  As soon as I am done completing with my market presentation slides, I will post an interesting screenshot indicating OOMs is gonna be really tough to happen from this point forward - (just few more insane stress tests that I can think off).

 

So far I am concentrating on low level flights with autogen at normal (on 6080x1200 Resolution).  I can't wait to see the performance on your newer systems once my P3D configs/tweaks are replicated on your systems (I hope it is going to be f$#@315 awesome, and everyone has a good time).  I know I am having a blast with my older system like its brand new again.

 

For the below screenshots, I have Paint.net running, Windows Prtscrn capturing Screenshots with VAS usage, Firefox, VLC playing music, OpusFSX, SimLauncher etc.  CPU utilization is at 99.63%

 

Alright,

 

For Kicks, I wish I can give the first person a prize or something for guessing (but I believe it is against forum rules) - but everyone on here will know on how awesome you are - Name the City in the background for Teaser 3 and Teaser 4 shots.  If you can guess where I am in first two pics (Teaser 1 and Teaser 2), then you are truly a bonafide flightsimmin badass.

 

Teaser 3 (The amount of sharpness at 380 feet and fluid flight that I am able to get with tons of stress on the my cpu and ram is mind blowing).

 

 

 

 

 

Teaser 4 (I really do not know how to fly this birdie - I am still a noob to heavies, but look at the speed/altitude, and the amount of autogen my pc has to provide for the resolution - you guys with better system specs, I can't wait to see your results)

 

 

 

 

I hope you all are having fun with this thread.

 

Keep on posting...
:lol:

[Skywolf 992]

Hey everyone,

 

I did my final round of test on my end, and yep I am now facing a problem on I need to how to fill my VAS More :lol: , as there is quite a bit of room. 

 

Faster CPU will yield way better results but i5-750 at 4ghz is doing so well.  Regardless of CPU, VAS is VAS, and it has enough room to load lots of things.  Obviously you do not want to completely fill it up, giving it room kills OOMs.

 

Last teaser before I post all my settings on here - I will be posting everything in few hours.

 

I have water reflections set to everything and super fluid action with ATI 6970, and QW 146 is the aircraft which takes up the most Virtual address space (trust me, I have checked).

 

I have a picture here with the VAS usage after everything else is factored in, and it is hardly climbing up.

 

 

 

 

 

Another one

 

 

 

Last teaser

 

[richy44 5]

Tagging along

[Skywolf 992]

Hey everyone,

 

How goes your Easter weekend.  As promised - here is the document of my findings.  Now this is a rough draft of the document, I am sure once some of the settings are confirmed by others, I would polish this document much better with more tips and tricks for P3D users.  Even though I am an author - grammar police is on holiday for this document - so if you see mistakes, just be entertained.

 

Enjoy and if everything goes as planned, we P3D users can have our cake and eat it too.

 

http://www.balanceduniverse.com/avsim/p3d/docs/P3D_Guide_v05.pdf

 

 

PS - How do I change the topic to Docs added?

[drumsonly2002 3]

Great job, well done. You are an asset to the community. I Thank You!  :rolleyes:

[Skywolf 992]

Great job, well done. You are an asset to the community. I Thank You!  :rolleyes:

 

Thank you for those kinds words, were you able to free up VAS on your end and improve performance?