Prepar3D 2.2 and AI aircraft

[RTK1972 288]

Gentlemen,

 

anybody of you experience huge frame rate drops and stutters even if 5% ai traffic is activated ? tried defalut ai, mytraffic and world of ai......

 

Carsten

[DocBird 79]

Well, I clearly see that the AI traffic contributes to the workload of the CPU(s). I have disabled my Traffic360

But even the default AI traffic is heavy on the CPU. Low settings, however, can be handled by my system. But if I set the traffic (also the cars/ships) too high that brings my system down, especially in more populated areas!

[pmb 5,137]

Yes, me.

 

I had framerates around 15-20 at Sydney YSSY with really high settings, to be honest, including cloud shadows. I was unable to get higher values by playing with AA, autogen, shadows etc..

 

Next I tried a clean prepar3d.cfg. Default settings gave me 60-70 fps. Starting form the pretty conservative default settings, I raised sliders one by one, including both autogen settings to the maximum, still maintained > 30fps. However, default settings for AI (Airlines/GA/Airport Traffic) after install were just 0. As soon as I raised these I was bumped back unter 20 fps, regardless of the other settings. No traffic addon installed, just default traffic! I don't even think about adding any traffic addon, might get me negative fps.

 

Kind regards, Michael

[Gregg_Seipp 565]

That sucks.  Flight Sim is lonely enough without something else moving around.

[simmerhead 885]

Problem with default traffic is that it incorporates "heavy" default aircraft like the Carenado A36. I only use custom AI traffic, and have renamed the default traffic bgl to OFF. Works great, but still, lots of AI aircraft will chocke your computer as it is very CPU intensive.

[Christopher Low 5,341]

I regularly see up to 100 UT2 and freeware AI planes active on the ground alone at UK2000 Heathrow Xtreme in FSX, and my framerates are acceptable when you consider that I have all sliders at maximum (apart from water at Mid.2.x), and AA/SS/AF set to 8xS/2xSGSS/16x respectively. Are you saying that P3D can't handle this kind of load?

[Artus_407 0]

I regularly see up to 100 UT2 and freeware AI planes active on the ground alone at UK2000 Heathrow Xtreme in FSX, and my framerates are acceptable when you consider that I have all sliders at maximum (apart from water at Mid.2.x), and AA/SS/AF set to 8xS/2xSGSS/16x respectively. Are you saying that P3D can't handle this kind of load?

Well there seems definatly to be some problems for p3d with the fsx ai models....

[Glynn 405]

 

 

Are you saying that P3D can't handle this kind of load?

 

Christopher, you need to consider that P3Dv2.2 has been out all of three days now and the third party Ai providers understandably have not built compatable packages yet.

Added to that the default ai traffic files call on the default aircraft which now include the formerly payware aircraft that LM has provided as part of P3D. that would also kill FSX's frames if you where to use full detailed payware as Ai

Also your Maxed out sliders in FSX are only giving half of what P3D puts out even with its sliders set low.

 

Having said that, I have MyTraffic X running very well under 2.2 without any frame rate problems but Mytraffic X is a fully DX10 compliant package, possibly if I threw some old FS9/DX9 models into P3D my frames might take a dive.

 

Prepar3D v2.2 has a lot more headroom than FSX especially with VAS usage which is now much lower even with the increased levels of autogen, terrain shadows, cloud shadows and cockpit shadows.

 

Here is a link to some screens I took just before going to bed last night, look at the frame rates and this is before any tweaks to the .cfg file just basically ballancing the sliders for my hardware.

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/439184-those-amazing-shadows-p3d22/

[pmb 5,137]

Christopher, you may be right and there is certainly room for improvement. However, I recall from former FSX times, 100 AI planes at Heathrow having taken their fps toll as well, at least on my system. Actually, AI planes (Traffic 360 or My Traffic in UK2000 Heathrow Extreme) were the worst FSX fps killers on my system.

 

Kind regards, Michael

[ChaoticBeauty 6,692]

Problem with default traffic is that it incorporates "heavy" default aircraft like the Carenado A36. I only use custom AI traffic, and have renamed the default traffic bgl to OFF. Works great, but still, lots of AI aircraft will chocke your computer as it is very CPU intensive.

 

Is it possible to disable specific AI aircraft like the Carenado A36?

[Brian Doney 127]

I will eventually start testing this more thoroughly...I have a nearly complete set of AI models I recompiled for FSX, and I plan to test them as well as eventually recompiling them with the P3Dv2 SDK.

 

What I can say so far is the low poly FSX models seem to perform well enough. I have noticed that specular highlights seem to be lost for FSX models, but so far I haven't really done much testing with P3Dv2 SDK compiled models to see if that would restore them (not really a big thing either way).

 

I do think I preferred the older style shadows that FSX and previous used for simobjects, as the perf penalty is very high at comparable quality. That's also a pretty minor point though. The new shadows do seem to respond to actual conditions far more accurately.

[Artus_407 0]

I will eventually start testing this more thoroughly...I have a nearly complete set of AI models I recompiled for FSX, and I plan to test them as well as eventually recompiling them with the P3Dv2 SDK.

 

What I can say so far is the low poly FSX models seem to perform well enough. I have noticed that specular highlights seem to be lost for FSX models, but so far I haven't really done much testing with P3Dv2 SDK compiled models to see if that would restore them (not really a big thing either way).

 

I do think I preferred the older style shadows that FSX and previous used for simobjects, as the perf penalty is very high at comparable quality. That's also a pretty minor point though. The new shadows do seem to respond to actual conditions far more accurately.

Your help is much appreciated !

 

Thanks Brian !

[twharrell 38]

I use WoAI exclusively and run my commercial slider at 40% and GA slider at 20% and my sim is smooth. Even if FPS drop to 20 or less, it's smooth. I'm loving it. The only thing I don't like is AI taxi and landing lights don't work in v2.2, as the models are FS9 models.

 

Todd

[Brian Doney 127]

Well, smooth or not I still want to know/test the impact quantitatively.

 

I get the feeling that a lot of the reported smoothness has to do with the much more tolerable experience of being GPU limited, over being CPU limited, which just always sucks.  

[hesynergy 67]

...

Here is a link to some screens I took just before going to bed last night, look at the frame rates and this is before any tweaks to the .cfg file just basically ballancing the sliders for my hardware.

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/439184-those-amazing-shadows-p3d22/

Mad dog, check my specs ...I have never seen 40 FPS much less with Clouds, in my friends Lancair Legacy....>40FPS.?...on an I-5 / GTX570??????.... I am close to saying, "if you give me your config, I'll put your children through college!!"

 

You are freakin' magic!!

 

Shaking my head...it ain't right....it just ain't right!

 

Chas