I think it boils down to how many things FSX/P3D has to render compared to your average game. FSX/P3D trying to simulate the whole world little bits at a time is pretty challenging. Compared to the average game world which is very small, and can be hand tuned for performance. Even XPlane which runs on a different engine and renderer (OpenGL) still can't run everything at 60 FPS with all the settings maxed.

 

I think NickN referred to this as the "gamer mentality" (see quote):

 

Yes, but I'm not really talking about games, which I haven't really done much of (not counting far too many hours in Skyrim!!).  I'm talking about sims.  I'm talking about racing and air combat sims, primarily, where the number of physics variables to calculate are quite large, and the maps over which those calculations take place can be quite large as well.  

 

I'd say the tire, engine, suspension, instrumentation and car-body calculations are at least as complex as flight dynamics, and a Ferrari or Lotus doing 200 mph up close and personal with the terrain graphics is not a piece of cake.  That's why racing sims used to be a bit cartoonish, like the early flight sims (FS '95, anyone, anyone, Buehler?), but have gotten more complex and life-like over time.  Same for air combat (Red Baron vs Rise of Flight, for instance).  My point is simply that those other simulation genres seemed to be able to build and release products that work well on modest to good systems without requiring endless tweaking and both look and usually work better.  

 

I do understand that FSX is dead, and that we all throw WAAAAYYYY more stuff at that sim than it was EVER designed to handle.  It's amazing it works at all, really.  And when it's working, it works pretty well.  But we all know the pain of spending a few hundred or thousand dollars to finally get our hardware to the place where it can run FSX maxed out only to find that the code simply isn't written to take advantage of most of what hardware can do now and although it improves, the improvement is definitely measured, and new issues sometimes emerge.  

 

My concern is that P3D seems to me, so far, not to be much improvement, and certainly is NOT free from the same issues of coding compatibility, or the need for what can seem like endless tweaking with mixed results.  I sure had hoped it would be.  I'm disappointed.  

 

And I'm not sure why some of you get so bent out of shape over my saying so, and saying why.  That's what is cracking me up.  I suppose the fanboi mentality is present pretty much everywhere, though.

Agree gents, think the best approach here is a fresh install and remove everything prior.

 

EDIT:  I'll check back in a few weeks ...  :Peace:

Just installed the patch and everything works as advertised here...

Folks have been extremely defensive about P3D v2 since even before release. I really think they are afraid that LM will take it away from us if we are too critical. The memory of Flight perhaps influences that.

Folks have been extremely defensive about P3D v2 since even before release. I really think they are afraid that LM will take it away from us if we are too critical. The memory of Flight perhaps influences that.

Too much patronizing is neither helpful nor constructive. Without constructive criticism, nothing advances. It very obvious LM are big boys and can use the criticism to improve.

Here is what I know. It is not good news at all. A friend of mine works for the NSA and has some connections. As you know, the government regulatory arm is getting to the point where it is almost unbearable. It continues to get involved in private biz and the like. I know you heard of New York and the banning of the 16 ounce sodas? Well, this is reallty the same thing my friend told me. I will explain this as simply as possible as the document forwarded to me has all kinds of pork in it and it is difficult to determine the actual intent. Anyway, all CPU manufacturers (both computernd GPU) have been forced to throttle down their processors 60% for periods of time. This is the max %, as it depends on the countries carbon footprint. China of course is at the max, U.S. is at 45% and so on. I know this is incredibly shocking and hard to believe, but the good news is the throttle down is only for the winter months. Hope this helps. You would think that with all of the expertise and hacking going on today that someone should have found a hack for this one, but not yet.

 

Regards

Bob

 

Never heard of such thing and regulation for energy efficiency is one of my field for more than 30 years. There is standby power regulation being considered or implemented for "things that blink in the dark" and equipment that are operating at low load but fully loaded cpu and gpu has never been on the list of products mode forced to be throttle down, not even in Japan where these kind of regulation are the most stringent in the world. This is a too competitive market for a country to force manufacturer to loss competitive advantage to the foreign competition....

FSX was poorly coded and it took almost 6 years to get it running the way it should have ran when it was released but now it's so old that it can't utilize new hardware to it's full potential. We than waited for P3D V2 which we all had high hopes because it was suppose to run on current hardware but it's also starting to look like a performance dud with a lot of underlying issues. Makes you wonder what supercomputer was used to make this software because if the company producing it has issues with performance like 99% of the people buying this software than why release it?

 

Not only has flight simming become a very expensive hobby but it's also become extremely frustrating and very time consuming. I spend more time "tweaking" than I do flying. When I finally have everything running the way I want, something goes wrong. I know we will probably never see a new sim built from the ground up because of the cost and return factor but it would be nice to have software that actually runs on current hardware and with personal computers slowly dying off and moving towards tablets it makes you wonder how much longer we'll have new hardware to keep supporting our hobby.

 

/end rant.

Huh? Patronizing? How? I was stating an honest opinion. People who accuse others of having a "gamer's mentality" are patronizing lol! (Not specifically accusing you, but you know the attitude i am alluding to.) And you included a line of your own in what is supposed to have been a quote from me. A little confusing.

 

I bought P3D v2 the day it came out, at $200 no less. I fly it all the time. I downloaded the patch on release day and did a clean re-install. I am hardly being "patronizing" to anybody. I am however trying to understand the almost fanatical zeal with which anyone who criticizes P3D is often met here. It is a subject that is frankly quite interesting to me!

 

 

You do racing sims, I'm sure, Rob.  Think of what Assetto Corsa or iRacing is able to accomplish, in terms of physics fidelity AND stunning true-to-life graphics!

 

But those simulations operate within a 5-6 miles radius for the most part ... heck that's not even as large as a single airport in FSX/P3DV2.  3D shooters also have very small object trees and are hand crafted to get the most out of it.  Ghosts, Crysis, Syrium, etc. etc. are visually stunning, but they operate in a far far smaller world/space/map.  At the end of the day it really boils down to polygon count (vertices), textures, shaders, color ... the flexibility built into FSX/P3DV2 actually prevents a level of performance optimization that could be done in a closed system.

 

Imagine if you were flying along in FSX/P3DV2 and had to wait 3 minutes for the next part of the world your flying to load and it did this every 10 miles of flight ... this is basically what happens in 3D shooter, you finish one map/level, you get some transition sequence, dumps that part of the world/map from memory, then you wait for the next level/map to load into memory.  Even iRacing's relatively small world around the track takes a while to load and we can't race from track to track across the country (wish we could, but ... ).

 

In the flight simulation world only contained a 10 mi radius at any point in time, then I'm sure we could load up amazing quality textures, shadows, object count,  etc. etc. (even on mid to low-end systems) ... but it would make for some very short flights.

 

And then we have Tessellation which is not in FSX ... an object with or without tessellation applied can look considerably different, so much so that it may allow the designer to adjust the vertex count on the base object ... BUT as far as I know tessellation is only being applied to terrain (not other objects) in P3DV2 (correct me if I'm wrong).  Heck, one may even want to turn their Mesh complexity down if they're using tessellation ... trial and error and what looks best.  I know when I installed FS Global 2010 FTX Edition the mesh it actually doesn't look as good to my eyes and I'll probably dial it back a notch or two since I like what tessellation does.  Anyway, just another feature not available in FSX and if your hardware (GPU) isn't good at performing tessellation (will vary by GPU) then it's a feature that one should probably turn off (although I don't believe tessellation impacts VAS, all GPU).

well.... CTD right after takeoff from KJFK  (not with fsdreamteam, but do have Aerosoft Manhattan,REX4 at 2048res)

 

Fault Module Name = StackHash_5bd6

 

 

RAM dedicated as 3.3G of 5.5G\16G

VRAM dedicated = 2.G of 2.36G~\3G

Useless?

Seems that way dont it

 

I tried three times to reduce the load on it, and each time my trip only got a little further out,,,, 

 

BUT it always just kept climbing in altitude... AND VAS, until it got to OOM before TOC

 

Useless

Never heard of such thing and regulation for energy efficiency is one of my field for more than 30 years. There is standby power regulation being considered or implemented for "things that blink in the dark" and equipment that are operating at low load but fully loaded cpu and gpu has never been on the list of products mode forced to be throttle down, not even in Japan where these kind of regulation are the most stringent in the world. This is a too competitive market for a country to force manufacturer to loss competitive advantage to the foreign competition....

Hello Pierre,

 

As much as I respect your knowledge, my statement was purely for humor. I guess I was fairly convincing to some degree!

I apologize for my sarcasm!

 

Kind regards

Bob

Sure looks nice though

 

Here is one just before an OOM  with loads of detailing in the back distance leaving KJFK

 

res = 3150 x 1680, is that the OOM source?

 

 

I get what you're saying, Rob, about the size of the world simulated.  And the whole world is mighty big.  But does FSX or P3D really load the whole world?  I don't think so.  That's why when you move from one spot to another far away by means of the map, or by "transporting" to someone else in Multiplayer (using the Ctl F, Ctl O option), there's nothing there, and the sim has to take time to draw it all in.  The part that is drawn for us as we fly is pretty big, sure, but it is also landclass and texture draped over a not terribly complex mesh for the most part, with autogen plopped down on it.  

 

I'm no programmer of any kind whatsoever, so I don't know, but I believe you when you say that it boils down to polygon counts and shaders and, I would add, physics calculations and then rendering a screen that portrays those physics.  But I also wonder if the poly count in FSX/P3D is really higher than it is for everything that has to get rendered and re-rendered while zipping around a track, or shooting down an enemy plane with pixel bullets.  

 

Maybe.  I'm suspicious, though, of the claim that is always trotted out in defense: it's a big world.  

 

Perhaps I'm suffering from "gamer" mentality.  Or, perhaps, we are all willing to put up with problems no other simulation seems to suffer from because this is what we've got.  I'd love it if DCS really were to build a new terrain engine.  If it even came close to Orbx, I'd fly nothing else.  The physics are better, and they sure know how to do shadows and HDR and tessellation.  But I guess as much money as we each individually spend on this hobby just doesn't add up to enough to justify a real effort to produce a leading-edge flight simulation.  

 

It's a shame.

 

But I'll bow out of the conversation before any more redneck brain cells explode.  :-)   I started my participation in the thread to say I uninstalled, and the reasons why.  My part of the conversation has become more about the relative state of flight sims in general, which is wandering off topic.  

 

 

I spend more time "tweaking" than I do flying.

 

This is very opposite to what I've had to do with P3DV2 vs. FSX ... V2.1 seems to want NO changes in my Prepar3d.cfg ... I've left it completely alone.  The only "tweaking" I've done is via in simulation Display options (and nVidia Inspector) ... but I guess I don't really count that as "tweaking" because I'd have to do similar in other games/simulations.  Any real tweaking that I've done is more focused around 3rd party products and nothing to do with LM's core product.  V2.0 definitely had some bugs, not debating that, V2.1 probably has some bugs too (haven't ran into any yet once I did a clean install) but give it time and I'm sure I'll find some bugs ... I fully expect to.

 

Maybe I'm coming across as being defensive (unless that wasn't aimed at me), but that's certainly not my intent if I am -- just trying to point out the reality of what a simulation means especially one that has an "open" architecture that is trying to retain some compatibility with external products dating back to 2001.

 

Honestly, it's mind boggling that it's working as well as it is while also moving forward in visual quality and performance.  Bare in mind, when trying to compare to 3D shooters (Ghosts, Syrim, etc.) those products are developed with a large teams of resources close to 1000 artists, developers, sound engineers, and designers.  LM is about 15 a I recall?  1000 people will have a much higher probably of making a product "Just work" than 15 people.  Who wouldn't want a product to "just work" for every possible PC configuration?  I'd like that, everyone would like it too ... but I'm not blind to the resource reality, P3DV2 doesn't sell 7 Million copies in the first week of release like some of the big title 3D shooters.

 

I keep having this wild dream that LM and LR join forces (for the overall good of the community) ... but even with that, we're looking at 21-22 devs, still a "far cry" (pun intended) from 1000 people that worked on Ghosts or Crysis.

But does FSX or P3D really load the whole world?  I don't think so.

 

You can see at least 1/2 the globe if you zoom out far enough ... but either way, it's world is much larger than any 3D shooter or iRacing or other racing simulator.

 

 

Perhaps I'm suffering from "gamer" mentality.

 

I don't think you are suffering from anything, it's a natural response ... you see a game like Ghosts/Syrim/iRacing and you're blown away by the details and reality (heck me too).  Just need to remind yourself it's a very small chunk of reality -- like I said, if the P3DV2 world were only 10 miles in radius it could squeeze all the visual goodness in there also but flights would be very short ... obviously can't do that, so at FL330 looking out the window at 300mi radius (possibly more pending weather of course).

 

FYI, physics processing is often restricted to <10% CPU (will vary from product to product) ... many products will actually cap physics process at a certain percent and it's usually very very low (meaning if you exceed your 10% CPU allotment, you have to simply the physics).  For example, iRacing physics are far far far from real, they are bound to operate within very low LCD (hardware wise) on the end user front ... I'm not saying they're bad physics but there is no way they accurately sample air flow over a vehicle to produce accurate down force values.  iRacing physics are pretty far off if you compare lap times from real world counter parts, on average at least a 3-5 second difference (fastest to fastest) ... that time difference may as well be an entirely different car type/class, that's how far off iRacing is ... there is just no way they can dedicate that much processing time to physics (and keep all their customers happy), the rest must go to the graphics pipeline, network code, device input code, etc. etc.  I'm not getting down on iRacing either, compared to other racing games/simulations they are pretty good.

Bunch Homer philosophers aint we.