I had a chance to experiment a little with P3D last night. I am running 2700K OC 4.6 with HT enabled with GTX680 4gb, so I decided to run all four logical cores with AF=85 and this removed the blurries and slow texture load that I was seeing and that others were reporting. I also found that disabling tesselation really improves performance particularly in heavy urban areas, but at the cost of night textures, especially water which becomes a milky white as a result. I have since re-enabled tesselation but dialed it back from Ultra. Sim is certainly more stable and fluid then FSX, but there is definately a bottleneck somewhere when it comes to texture and autogen loading that impacts fps. Heavy cloud cover certainly affect fps much more than in FSX for me as well. 

Hmm, not seeing any change for here except when I use FFF entry of 1.5 or so, there is a little improvement in fluidity, but just a little blurriness at 200 kts or so. I did a little testing last night and still, for me, using fsx and dx10 has proved the smoothest all around. Maybe it is just my hardware.

 

Bob

 

 

DirectX 12 possibly will only be available if you have Win9 as your operating system...

 

Doesn't look like this is at all confirmed, and I have read some stuff that says from an architectural standpoint there is nothing that says it couldn't be implemented for Win7.   As of March 2014 Windows 8 and 8.1 combined have ~11% of total Windows market share, Win 7 49%, Vista 3%, XP 28%, or so.  But also, since March 2014 Win 7 has increased its market share at a faster pace than Win 8.1.  So I don't think anyone can yet say w/ re to DX12 and Win OS.   If DX12 is the game changer then they may use it to try to bump up sales of Win 9 and beyond, or take advantage of all the Win 7 users out there to sell more games to that can utilize DX12.

 

 

as the cloud moves between one's view and the sun there will be a massive drop in frame rates (i.e from 60 fps to 20 fps) ... it can be just one and only one cloud, AutoGen settings completely irrelevant.  It seems to be something to do with the cloud shadow casting distance and view position/direction.

My FPS tanks when I have shadows set to ultra with ASN generated weather.  I do not think it matters which Wx addon one has P3D will have FPS issues which I hope can be repaired by LM.  Thanks for the feedback.

 

Robert

My FPS tanks when I have shadows set to ultra with ASN generated weather.  I do not think it matters which Wx addon one has P3D will have FPS issues which I hope can be repaired by LM.  Thanks for the feedback.

 

Robert

Wait.. you set shadows to ultra... and then complain about the sim's performance?? Claiming that L-M needs to repair it??? Seriously??????

Wait.. you set shadows to ultra... and then complain about the sim's performance?? Claiming that L-M needs to repair it??? Seriously??????

Woah, where did I say that LM needs to fix it?  I wrote that it is an issue with Wx addons and LM P3D and I hope it is fixed.  And where did I complain BTW, I just wrote what I observed friend.

Active Sky Next hasn't resulted in any noticeable drop in FPS for me . . . but I'm not trying to fly with shadows on Ultra either (I have it set on Medium). The other thing is that ASN (and the other weather addons) gives you a LOT of cloud options, so it is very easy to push the settings way beyond what anything but a super computer can actually handle. I've left nearly all of ASN's setting on default, and I'm VERY happy with the result.

 

I am getting an average of 25-30 FPS flying around NYC (on a cloudy day), with autogen set to very dense/very dense/dense, with cloud shadows on medium, and with FTX Global and Vector installed. That is pretty much double the FPS I was getting with v.2.1 (which didn't even have cloud shadows). 

Interesting, I have my shadow map count at Ultra and did some testing with cloud shadows and found zero difference in performance ... Ultra or Medium, fps was the same.  

 

The only issue I've had is the sun low on horizon with a cloud between my view and the sun will cause 50% drop in fps ... I believe Brian reported this here: http://www.prepar3d.com/forum-5/?mingleforumaction=viewtopic&t=6363 .  I have a flight (fxml) and weather (wx) that I setup which will duplicate the issue easily and quickly ... shadow map count medium or ultra made no difference.

 

Trying to figure out a work-around as Dusk/Dawn is my favorite time of day to fly.

 

Cheers, Rob.

I have shadow set to Ultra and have not noticed any perceivable difference performance. Dropping the tessellation slider down a bit did, in my case.

Really is a PITA without FSUIPC, but I am too impatient to wait and it is raining here today...so LET TESTING BEGIN !

 

Can somebody post a comparison with HDR lighting on and off? I would like to see the difference it makes, especially with runway lights.

Ok, I took the plunge and I'm slowly but surely moving some of my addons into P3Dv2.2. Is there a preference for a mesh product? I have FS Genesis mesh for FSX. Will that do all right or is there something better.

Trying to figure out a work-around as Dusk/Dawn is my favorite time of day to fly.

 

Cheers, Rob.

 

There are actually two separate issues we talked about in that thread, the sun angle/cloud shadow interaction at dawn and dusk, and that the lighting effects for taxiways/runways seemingly chewing up a disproportionate amount of CPU time.

 

I was playing around with it earlier, and at default ORD, at dawn (so lights active) in heavy cloud with shadows enabled, I managed to get down into the teens  :lol:

Ok, I took the plunge and I'm slowly but surely moving some of my addons into P3Dv2.2. Is there a preference for a mesh product? I have FS Genesis mesh for FSX. Will that do all right or is there something better.

 

I can tell you from personal expereience that FS Gensis mesh will work perfectly well in P3DV2.2. Just point the installer to your P3D location.

 

Lyn

Can somebody post a comparison with HDR lighting on and off? I would like to see the difference it makes, especially with runway lights.

 

 

Not the best shots, but I hope they'll do:

 

HDR Off:

 

 

HDR On: