P3DV2.1 stutter or no stutter

[nyc01 0]

Small addition to my previous post: I added AM=14 to my cfg again and also limited fps to 34: it's a LOT smoother again. I had it set to unlimited and removed AM from the cfg because LM said that was better... apparently not for my PC...!

 

 

Have you tested it yet with the frame rate locked to the refresh rate of the display with v-sync enabled?

[Brian Doney 127]

Just be careful with that Jeroen.

 

If it's working well for you, great, but that is one of the specific tweaks that LM have mentioned that can contribute to compromised paging performance, which can then increase the chance of an OOM. Granted, if you are back to legacy autogen for now, then it may not be as much of an issue, or an issue at all.

 

Personally, I think I'm going to go dig out my FS2K2 discs  :lol:

[Guest]

Have you tested it yet with the frame rate locked to the refresh rate of the display with v-sync enabled?

 

I have locked framerate in the sim to 34, so a few fps above half of the display's refresh rate, and with v-sync enabled.

 

 

 

one of the specific tweaks that LM have mentioned that can contribute to compromised paging performance, which can then increase the chance of an OOM. Granted, if you are back to legacy autogen for now, then it may not be as much of an issue, or an issue at all.

 

It indeed doesn't seem to be an issue at all. Without pop free autogen it seems pretty hard to get an OOM. I just redid my earlier flight above the area in FTX NCA where there are the most trees and after an hour with autogen at Extremely dense, VAS is still at 3.4 (where it has been for at least 35 minutes now). With pop free autogen on I did get an OOM within 15 minutes and autogen at Very dense. But let's discuss this in my topic about that...

To get back on stutters: I am using that special Bioshock NI tweak and when I fly near or in clouds, performance drops a lot which also create stutters. Hopefully one day we will get a more fps friendly method to get good AA!

[nyc01 0]

I have locked framerate in the sim to 34, so a few fps above half of the display's refresh rate, and with v-sync enabled.

 

 

 

If the display runs natively at 60Hz how are you getting it to run at ½ of the refresh rate/30Hz?

[SRAces 76]

Rob,

 

I'll throw my 2 cents in.  I don't get any stutters even at 15fps due to a high end 3rd party aircraft being loaded.  I did notice that where I could get upwards of 90-100fps with the Maule in 2.0 around a default airport.  My fps is more in the 35-40fps now even with the frame rate on unlimited.  Like others that tweaked FSX, I had my FSX setup running pretty smooth.  But once I switched to P3D, there was no going back.

 

The only tweaks in my P3D.cfg file is the Affinity mask at 84 (I run an I7-950) and the texture Bandwidth multiplier at 60. (running a GTX780).  I run UT2 and do not use any internally generated AI aircraft.  I have been playing around with Nvidia Inspector to find the best settings for my system and am getting there.  I do run my P3D settings rather high, but I let Nvidia Inspector handle my Anistropic and Anti-aliasing work.  Most of the time I have AA turned off in P3D and the MSAA on 2X and the Anistropic on Trilinear.  Turning those up seems to be more of an FPS killer in my setup.

 

I'm still trying to get my REX clouds to look as good as they used to.  Some of the new changes make them look more chalky than the HD textures they were before.  I have had a couple of occasions where I had to flip the textures from 4096 to 2048 and back in the game because I had the tree rendering issue in an Orbx add-on airport start.  I can deal with that until Orbx updates everything.

 

My main P3D flying buddy has issue I do not have, but he runs Track IR and utilizes the functionality in FSUIPC.  I do not program anything in FSUIPC.  Have Track IR, but with three 22 inch monitors in Surround mode, it's better without it for me.  Not an easy challenge.  I hope you get it figured out.

 

Regards,

 

 

Steve

 

 

Here's what it looks like in my system.  Hard to go back to FSX when it looks this good.  (large size image link)

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/100884826/CYBD-CYXT_3.jpg

Edited February 22, 2014 by SRAces

[Guest]

 

 

I hope you get it figured out.

 

 

Thanks Steve, still working on it and slowly getting better -- (posted this over on P3D forums)

 

Some good progress on the stutter front tonight.

 

I tried out Kory's suggestion of FFTF = 0.10 and it did help with the stutters and didn't have any negative impact on ground texture loading (blurries). Also tried the suggestion to run at a Locked 60 fps (even though I'm running below it) and that also seemed to help. These two settings helped reduce the stutters considerably for me ... I still see them every once in a while, but they are far far less. FFTF also seemed to have a significant impact on frame rates, going from 0.33 default to 0.10 I gained 9-10 fps.

 

I still get some texture loading issues with FTX NCA region, but it doesn't matter what FFTF value I set in the FTX NCA Region (went as high as 0.99), I will still get texture loading delays (hit pause and wait a few seconds to see the higher res textures load). But for other non-FTX areas such as Seychelles (Aerosoft) ground texture loading is fine (gotta love those Islands).

 

However, I'm still very confused as to why my GPU usage is low (still around 25-30% range no matter where I fly).

 

On a side note: I tested with very high FPS and all graphics settings turn down to lowest or OFF and the stutters were still very much present and obvious when using default FFTF value of 0.33.

 

So there is some relationship between FFTF and locking at 60 fps (even though I run below 60 fps).

 

Just passing along the results from tonight's P3D adventures.

[Guest]

If the display runs natively at 60Hz how are you getting it to run at ½ of the refresh rate/30Hz?

 

Er... my display runs at 60 and in the sim I have limited fps to 34, which is a bit above half of that refresh rate. I am not entirely sure what you are meaning to ask. ^_^

[SRAces 76]

I've had the blurry issues a few times myself.  You see them the most if you have AI traffic and go to that AI plane in external view and switch back and forth between a few planes and the one you are flying.  LM indicated they fixed issue in the original legacy code that was causing the micro stutters.  My CPU usage is similar to yours.  I have found in previous versions (FSX and P#D v1.4) that if I overclocked too high the stutters came back, so I had to reduce the overclock to get it smooth again.  That was when the CPU was heavily used.

 

You comment about the FFTF is interesting.  A friend that flies multiplayer with me in P3D uses the FFTF entry in his config file and reduces his to a value between the .10 and the .35 limit.  All of it seems to be tied to everything syncing properly and that 's probably the reason there are so many variations of issues folks have. I re-installed all the simconnects under each folder in the folder called "redist" in P3D when I got some stutters after installing an add-on.  That cured the stutters.  Those are in FSX labeled folders.

 

In all my experiences with FSX through P3DV2.1 it seems that sometimes the sequence of how you load add-ons can also affect the performance.  I suppose if everything doesn't line up correctly to talk to each other, that would cause delays or the stutters.  Used to be an EZDOK fan, but switched to the cameras in Opus Weather as EZDOK caused too many issues in the sim for me.

 

Right now I have just my Orbx sceneries (main ones and just a couple of individual airports), Opus Weather, GSX and 3 add-on aircraft loaded.  I just want to make sure everything is good and I'll slowly add and test each additional add-on (plane, scenery, etc.) one at a time before I move to the next.

 

Have a great weekend!

[stryder011 2]

Something new I tried tonight brings me back to one of my original suggestions in a discussion with LM when Prepar3D v2.0 was first released last year. I decided to try the same exact way I used to run FSX before Nvidia added the ½ refresh option, running the display at 30Hz. I went into the Nvidia control panel and set the resolution to 1920x1080@30Hz and then fired up Prepar3D with the frame lock set at 30 fps and v-sync/triple buffering enabled. As I suspected when the frame rate is locked at the refresh rate of the display (as long as you can maintain 30 fps) there's no stuttering at all.

 

You have to turn eye candy settings down considerably in Prepar3D even with the highest end hardware in order to consistently maintain 60 fps which is obviously why I'm still seeing some stuttering with the frame rate set at unlimited and v-sync enabled. With those settings every time I drop below 60 fps some stuttering will occur as v-sync divides the refresh rate.

 

Unless Lockheed Martin makes resolution options in the menu available with a 30Hz refresh rate (which I have seen in other sims/games) or Nvidia's ½ refresh rate option finally works with Prepar3D I don't see any other way to completely get rid of the stuttering (unless you are using a G-Sync display).

 

You my friend are a genius!

Followed your advice and am too stutter free now .. finally after weeks of struggling with this. 

 

Only caveat is that now all my other games are running at 30fps :-) I hope inspector Nvidia's ½ refresh rate option will be fixed for P3d soon so we don't have to hard code our monitors down to 30Hz

 

Vysnc and triple buffering is set to on in the P3d, and frames are locked at 34fps.

The only other tweaks I'm using in my cfg are 

AffinityMask=255

FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION=0.10

 

The trick is to set it up your sliders so you can maintain a constant 30 or slightly above fps for most of the time and that will with the monitor set to 30Hz will get you stutter free flying.  Now please understand that this is no way a claim that there are no stutters, there will always be some micro stutters here and there but the overall flying is smooth. 

 

Thanks again!

[rparson99 32]

Good fine...!!

[Guest]

I got rid of most of my stutters, so it seems. I changed a lot of settings in the end.

 

- I removed the AM=14 again from my cfg

- I limit framerate to 34 in the sim and enabled v-sync plus triple buffering

- I lowered autogen to vegetation dense and buildings very dense and turned pop free autogen on again in the cfg

- I set special effects to low and waterdetail to off (I don't like the big animations anyway)

 

At the same time I set LOD to max and tess factor to ultra.

 

The only tweak I now use is the shadow distance at 12000 tweak. I made a few other changes to the cfg but those have nothing to do with performance.

 

With these settings I hardly see stutters and VAS stays stable at around 2.7 above FTX NCA with my regular flights (which usually take 30 to 45 minutes). I will do some more flights in area's with heavy vegetation but I think for now I will stick with this. But hey, I said the same about sticking with pop free autogen off yesterday LOL B) :lol:

 

[Guest]

 

 

The only tweak I now use is the shadow distance at 12000 tweak.

 

Hey Jeroen, glad you are making progress ... I've heard about the shadow distance tweak ... can you give me details?

 

Idea around Texture Resolution of 1m?

 

Cheers Rob.

[Guest]

 

 

I've heard about the shadow distance tweak ... can you give me details?

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/427529-simple-solution-for-shadows-and-loss-of-fps-or-the-tweaking-has-begun/

 

Long story short, change this:

 

SHADOW_DRAW_DISTANCE_LOW=4000
SHADOW_DRAW_DISTANCE_MID=6000
SHADOW_DRAW_DISTANCE_HIGH=8000
SHADOW_DRAW_DISTANCE_ULTRA=12000

 

to this

 

SHADOW_DRAW_DISTANCE_LOW=12000
SHADOW_DRAW_DISTANCE_MID=12000
SHADOW_DRAW_DISTANCE_HIGH=12000
SHADOW_DRAW_DISTANCE_ULTRA=12000

 

in your cfg (and any saved settings cfg's). It will give you the distance that you by default only get with the highest ultra shadows at low, med and high shadows, without the loss in performance that ultra gives.

[nyc01 0]

Er... my display runs at 60 and in the sim I have limited fps to 34, which is a bit above half of that refresh rate. I am not entirely sure what you are meaning to ask.

 

 

 

Exactly, the refresh rate is 60Hz and and you are running the sim at 34 fps so how is going to be possible to stutter free performance with those settings?

 

There's no way currently to force the refresh rate to 30Hz so your display is still running at 60Hz.

I tested with very high FPS and all graphics settings turn down to lowest or OFF and the stutters were still very much present and obvious when using default FFTF value of 0.33.

 

 

 

With the settings turned all the way down the frame rates were in the 300-400 fps range on my system. At those settings with the frame rate locked at 60 fps with v-sync/triple buffering enabled the stutters were gone because the frame was able to consistently match the refresh rate.

[Guest]

 

 

Exactly, the refresh rate is 60Hz and and you are running the sim at 34 fps so how is going to be possible to stutter free performance with those settings?

 

I'm no expert but this was LM's idea. ^_^ If your monitor runs at 60 and fps can't reach that number the framerate will drop to 30 and so you should try to at least stay above 30 to get good performance... or something like that. LM adviced to limit at 33 or 34 in order to have some headroom: if you limit at 30 fps will be under 30 and you will never be able to really reach that fps of 30. Again, I am no expert but these settings give me better performance (stutterwise) than running unlimited.