P3D V2 and VAS

[jcomm 5,961]

remember, it's a "plausible" world and thus makes a bunch of crap up to fill in scenery

 

Absolutely not true.... about X-Plane 10... I'm sorry to have to say...

[Paul J 349]

WarpD I agree with you on the 4096px, but we agree that a 4GB is easily consumed by a level of scenery complexity that is beyond the scope of the ESP architecture when it was programmed (for the systems demands of back then...) Modern simulation / world engines use a completely different architecture...

?????? What completely different architecture are we talking about, then?

[Claviateur 789]

Paul J, in fact someone explained to me that the way FS or similar old generation world engines for simulators, were designed in terms of world rendering and its content + skies + 3D elements handling, it relies allot on a database of large textures, layed out in terms of tiles based on some rules in order to build the world...

 

This technology and software architecture was fund on CPUs and not the yet to come powerful GPUs... Allot of effects were also based on textures and not dynamic GPU effects rendering... Now without boosting the textures sizes, they are all around...

 

Now I am not too techy about FS engine details but the VAS issue as far as this gentleman explained it to me, is related to the way the software is designed vs the PC technology of its time...

 

The complexity of the add-ons we have today was not a requirement in the mind of the developers. Thus the engine was not ment to digest and to build the virtual complex default texture based world as well as complex add-ons such as the ones we have today...

 

In any case, this person even if he is not a flight simmer, works in the virtual reality development field and was part of level D simulator visual systems etc. He also describes the visual systems of motion simulators of having a not so modern architecture and very demanding to maintain... However he is very familiar with the way FS, P3D, XPlane were designed...

 

All in all, he is the one who told me about Unigine as an example of a modern world simulation engine and the way it was built. It seems, as far as I understood, that the modern simulation engines are procedural code that builds the world in a completely different fashion from FS or P3D or even XPlane... And they leverage PC ressources in a completely different way. More GPU I believe 

 

Cheers

Michel

[styckx 1,872]

I've yet to get my VAS past 3GB.. I just installed the most terrifying scenery (I have) to fly and set auto-gen to max and it only hit 2.8GB.. Now I will uninstall it because I never liked it..

 

[simmerhead 885]

I've concluded my OOM comes from my GTX580. 1,5GB VRAM is just way too little to have any fun in P3D2. I can turn down the settings and make it look like P3D 1.4, but then what's the point? P3D2 is definetly an improvement over previous sims in terms of visuals, but out of my league for now.

[styckx 1,872]

Nothing wrong with 1.4 settings.. It's still going to be more efficient and look better.. 

[odourboy 1,290]

Does P3D2 exhibit the same habit as FSX of slowly consuming memory over time (I hate to use the term 'memory leak' for fear of aggravating Tabs ) resulting in an OOM when you're T7 is on final approach into KJFK after a ten hour flight?

[E6BAV8R 88]

I've concluded my OOM comes from my GTX580. 1,5GB VRAM is just way too little to have any fun in P3D2. I can turn down the settings and make it look like P3D 1.4, but then what's the point? P3D2 is definetly an improvement over previous sims in terms of visuals, but out of my league for now.

 

A program does not OOM because of your video card memory.  If the program is riding against the limit of your video card memory you'll suffer performance loss (low FPS or slow rendering of objects) but not software OOM. I see that you have 16GB RAM, which is more than a Godly amount, so it is the software - in your case.

 

Does P3D2 exhibit the same habit as FSX of slowly consuming memory over time (I hate to use the term 'memory leak' for fear of aggravating Tabs ) resulting in an OOM when you're T7 is on final approach into KJFK after a ten hour flight?

 

If you are actually "slowing losing memory over time", as opposed to memory being used to load objects around you, than you have a memory leak.  I'm extremely optimistic if you do, though.  For example, I just took off out of FlyTampa Dubai in the T7.  I was at 3GB VAS moving around the airport but when I departed the area, and am now over the ocean, I'm sitting at 2.6GB VAS usage.

[stevem72 10]

?????? What completely different architecture are we talking about, then?

 

Paul

 

I think that Michel is referring to the way FSX was originally coded as the main "tech race" back at that time was in regards to processor architecture and the race for more cores/more speed etc etc.

 

I think Phil Taylor once stated that the FSX code was written based (gambling) on the fact that the emphasis with regard to the " tech race" moving forwards would always primarily be on the processor and the search for higher speeds/more cores etc etc.

 

They knew it would run poorly out of the box in 2006 but were reliant on fairly rapid improvements in processor speed/cores etc to improve the experience.

 

Unfortunately for Microsoft/Aces (and us), that emphasis shifted onto graphic card improvements where the bigger performance gains were then being made, and away from processor architecture leaving FSX floundering for quite a while (and still to this day some might say!!)

 

In reality, even in 2014, we still only have 4-5ghz processors (and thats at the top end) whereas i think Microsoft/Aces gambled that bigger gains/strides would have been made to allow FSX to "shine" earlier and that we would have been at 4-5ghz by around 2008/2009 and not 2014.

 

Regards

 

Steve

[simmerhead 885]

A program does not OOM because of your video card memory.  If the program is riding against the limit of your video card memory you'll suffer performance loss (low FPS or slow rendering of objects) but not software OOM. I see that you have 16GB RAM, which is more than a Godly amount, so it is the software - in your case.

 

From what I can measure, it is my GFX-card reaching its limit:

 

[Hubinwa 27]

I've yet to get my VAS past 3GB.. I just installed the most terrifying scenery (I have) to fly and set auto-gen to max and it only hit 2.8GB.. Now I will uninstall it because I never liked it..

 

Terrifying indeed!   I see you were at 18.6 fps. How did FSX handle it before you went P3D2?

[simmerhead 885]

What I've noticed is that P3D2 is still "usable" when you come down to 10-12 fps. It stutters, but not like FSX and airplane is perfectly controllable. So that's a good thing.

[styckx 1,872]

Terrifying indeed!   I see you were at 18.6 fps. How did FSX handle it before you went P3D2?

 

No idea.. I left FSX when I bought P3D 1.3.

 

To be fair and honest though. I just flew around Philly (with SSJ KPHL) for awhile and got my VAS up to 3.3GB...  We'll see. I honestly don't mind having to turn stuff down..  What P3D does, and the scale it's doing it on is amazing. 

[Paul J 349]

Hi SimmerHead: you need to read what E6BAV8R wrote again!

 

A program does not OOM because of your video card memory.  If the program is riding against the limit of your video card memory you'll suffer performance loss (low FPS or slow rendering of objects) but not software OOM. I see that you have 16GB RAM, which is more than a Godly amount, so it is the software - in your case.

 

You 580 is not the problem, my friend. You're guessing. It responds well to bufferpool management, and never once did I get an OOM while using DX10 (which is the early version (sic) of DX11) and running at 5 gig. The secret to FSX is understanding the architecture, and managing the whole PC - not just tweaking FSX - and that includes stopping the search engine (#4 in the list of running processes)  It's no good crying over OOM's, and blaming Microsoft when all you need to do is read what is written in the forums day after day. Manage your expectations: Learn as much as you possibly can about the PC, about the differences between DX9 and DX10; why use a 580 instead of a 560Ti - or even a 560: what is it that makes the 480,  580 and the 680,  such good cards. Study, study, study.

It's not by accident that some folks don't have OOM's, CTD, BlueScreens, hesitations.

 

Enough pontificating!

 

All the Best, and hang in there! It will get better.

 

pj

[Tabs 2,790]

From what I can measure, it is my GFX-card reaching its limit:

 

 

Something's probably loading in that sucks up that remaining 600MB of VAS quickly before Process Explorer can show it. You're already really close to the limit. Saturating the video memory doesn't cause OOMs, especially not in a DX11 application where the VRAM doesn't get shadowed into VAS like it does in DX9. The other night I was tuning BF4 settings while watching GPU-Z and when it went over the VRAM limit it just started doing a ton of stuttering and really slow/non-responsive FPS. The OOM error only comes from running out of process VAS.