I can test at those settings and report back, but again to clarify, my focus is VAS usage not frame rate performance

 

Thank Rob for the info. To those others, its a video recording not the actual sim. Im always hearing this. I saw XX video and it blahabah. Frames are and will be different recording and playback than actual in sim.

The clouds and Orbx textures look great - I do miss those. But are you kidding about the stutters? From the get go I see constant stuttering.

Something is wrong at your end then, because I saw nothing but butter smooth video.

 

Perhaps some internet latency issue when streaming the video?

I downloaded the video to both my PC and my MacBook, and while I see a lot of stutters on the PC, I do not see any of this on the Mac.

 

At around 5:20 in to the clip it is very noticeable watching how the buildings exit the frame on the PC, while they are smoothly gliding out when I view the same scene on the Mac.

 

 ..espen..

 

BTW: There must still be a bug related to the shadows from the clouds. Looking out the right hand window at around 10:10-10:40 you can see how the shadows disappear in a straight line.

I hate to keep talking about performance, but please take a close look at the settings I used to make this video (only difference being I locked at 24 fps not 30 fps): http://www.robainscough.com/Prepar3D_Settings_2.html

 

Lighting

Shadow Map Count: Ultra

Shadow Draw Distance: 40385

Internal Vehicle: Cast/Receive

External Vehicle: Cast/Receive

SimObjects: Cast

Terrain: Receive

Buildings: Cast/Receive

Clouds: Cast

 

Keep in mind that shadow draw distance in v2.1 is 12000 (max), now I have it at 40385 (it'll go all the way up to 80000).  

 

For those that perceive stutters I'm suggesting you are either noticing a low frame rate, or your hardware and/or video player and/or video drivers might have issues.

 

Also bare in mind the video I produced and uploaded to my Google drive is highly compressed, it's not the original Fraps recording ... that's over 20GB.

 

But like I said, Locked frame rate seems to remove the "stutters" (as I define them) so long as I can sustain my locked frame rate or higher ... in other words 2.2beta is now working like 2.0, in 2.1 the locked frame rate had no impact on stutters (only solution to minimize stutters was to dial back graphics setting, specifically Autogen).

 

Now, Clouds do continue to have a big performance hit (and you can see lots of them in my video) when using NI to get SGSS AA ... I've asked LM if they can disable AA on clouds completely.  Wes indicated it is possible but there might be side affects but he believes they can eventually solve the AA being applied to clouds ... which means they will have much less of a performance impact (when that might happen - if it does happen, I have no idea).  NI and SGSS AA isn't "technically" supported by LM.

 

I'll do a longer flight this weekend form Vancouver to San Francisco in the QW BAe146 and report back VAS usage.

 

Cheers, Rob.

 

 

Did you download the source video file from the link I provided earlier to my google drive and then view it? Interested to see if you still see stutters?

 

I did: still stutters... But don't let that worry or bother you: if it looks fine to you, that's all that matters!

I did: still stutters... But don't let that worry or bother you: if it looks fine to you, that's all that matters!

 

Doesn't bother me, but I am curious.  I make a lot of FS videos (outside of the testing I'm doing for LM) and the more compatible I can make them with everyone's hardware the better -- I try to represent "as is", but clearly some people aren't seeing "as is".

 

I just viewed my video (YouTube) on an iMac (2009) and it was smooth.  Obviously there seems to be some environmental differences that seem to influence visual quality of playback of my recordings/uploads.

 

FRAPS compression is proprietary so it has to get converted to something else prior to upload (actually I think YouTube can convert FRAPS native files now, but at 20GB for just a few minutes still not practical for uploading).  I use Adobe Premiere Pro CC to do the conversion of FRAPS footage from 20GB down to about 800MB (in this case).  There are many options and compression formats supported by Adobe PP.  YouTube recommend a target rate of 8Mbps, but I typically aim for 12-16Mbps and use H.264 that is housed in an mp4 file.

 

Sounds like it might be worth experimenting with video compression to see if I can find a format/settings that works well on more computers/devices.  But with so many factors, I might be chasing the impossible ... but it's a good challenge and I think worth some effort.

 

Cheers, Rob.

Rob, Y U NO OVC Conditions??

 

But seriously, I'm concerned about the major stutters I get inside overcast conditions in 2.1. It's unusable, and I can't bring myself to reduce cloud coverage to low. *shudder*

 

Will this be addressed? Btw I'm using your NI settings for AA.

 

 

Rob, Y U NO OVC Conditions??

 

No idea what this means?

 

 

 

Will this be addressed? Btw I'm using your NI settings for AA.

 

I can't answer that, it has been reported and LM are aware and it is possible to turn off AA for cloud processing.  You'll have to turn off SGSS AA if you don't want clouds affecting performance as much.

From what I can gather, VAS usage has been a hot topic over at the aerosoft Dublin forum......

 

 

From what I can gather, VAS usage has been a hot topic over at the aerosoft Dublin forum.....

 

Yeah, I'm not sure what is going on there ... I've never seen any airport consume 1.4GB VAS before ... in contrast, Aerosoft's Thessaloniki and Oslo 2.0 work very well both fps and VAS.

There is such a thing as micro-stuttering http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_stuttering (actually, this article doesn't seem to be the definition for stuttering, not micro-stuttering)

 

When I was last researching this issue, about a year ago, someone had created hardware that hooks on video and measures it and rates video performance as a function of microstuttering.  I'm looking for my links on this.  There were some interesting posts suggesting how to correct the problem.  It's a driver/hardware issue.  Unfortunately we will probably have to wait for Nvidia to get P3D specific on a driver upgrade.   And it does seem that some people do not see it as well as others.  Unfortunately I am plagued with such acuity too.  

 

http://techreport.com/review/21516/inside-the-second-a-new-look-at-game-benchmarking (again, not sure if they are actually talking about simple stuttering, and not micro-stuttering.  I've included for reference to the concept that the micro-stuttering issue is often blurred with stuttering)

 

Update:  FCAT is the name of the tool.  (both links are about true micro-stuttering)

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/154089-after-almost-20-years-gpu-benchmarking-is-moving-past-frames-per-second

 

http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2013/03/26/with-our-new-tool-what-you-see-is-what-you-get/

Disabling cloud AA  is a must, people want to run P3D with clean graphics like FSX can. I would post a thread at the P3D forums, but I'm not sure it will even be considered.

Thank for the video.  I have looked at it several times at different resolutions and can see no signs of stuttering.  Perhaps the strobe light on the left wing was causing interference with the video download of the guy who mentioned it. 

 

I think the video and looking at what your display settings are may have just pushed me over  the edge to P3D.

 

 

Chuck Nance

Also, the SFO area flight on drive is beautiful, in spite of the micro-stuttering I can see.  But in many games that has to be overlooked, or isn't noticed in the action.  If that's what is to come P3D reigns supreme.  Nowhere to go but up.   If FSX was in this kind of shape 7 years ago imagine where we'd be now.  The future may be blissful.

 

 

There is such a thing as micro-stuttering

 

Agree, but what I think we have in this case is a difference of opinion in identification of micro-stutters.  What I see in my video is just a low frame rate ... easy enough to identify, trees move at a rate that exceeds 1 screen pixel over time in 2D space (a calculated 3D space being projected in a 2D matrix - aka the monitor).  As your article points out, notice the motion picture industry uses 24 fps as a standard ... but ask an camera person what they are NOT allowed to do ... answer is "rapid pans/motion" (unless an intentional effect).  But, in simulations we have rapid pans, head movements, etc. -- all the things ya not supposed to do when making a movie.  

 

I don't think this is a driver issue, it's really just a matter of low frame rates where motion exceeds the ability to capture all the information.  Why some people see stutters and some don't (or see less) is most likely because of the differences in our individual brains and how good or bad they are at filling in visual stimulation that isn't actually there.  Something like 70% of what we see is actually filled in by the brain.  

 

Don't confuse Visual acuity ... that's "detail" not related to motion interpretation by the brain.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_acuity

   

So to summarize, I don't think it's a driver hardware issue (in my case anyway) ... it's just a low frame rates and differences in how people's brains perceive those low frame rates.  I can probably test this case by posting a video at 60 fps and at 20 fps ... some will think fluidity is close to the same, other's will see a drastic difference ... it's all about how much the brain fills in for you and what's familiar.  

 

It's an interesting topic, but probably best left to a dedicated thread about it.

 

But in the meantime, whatever I can do to try to provide a more fluid visual for more people, the better (I'll keep exploring this in my movie making process).  However, what I'm trying to do in my testing is simply see how VAS responds to what I consider graphics settings that exceed the capability (on a performance level) of today's hardware.  That's a first important step, once VAS is out of the way, then LM can focus on other aspects such ask Multi-GPU support and other feature goals (whatever their priorities may be).

 

Cheers, Rob.