Gate B28 at FB's KSFO in FTX NCA in the CS Super MD80 Pro at 6pm w/ cloud shadows off: FPS 25

[loge 42]

 

 

I can assure (as in have discussed this with Wes B.) you there is A LOT of code being implemented to support existing 3rd party airport designers ... some of there processing is NOT good for how P3D DX11 operates (specifically how objects are being injected) and hence produces significant performance impact. Many are still using older techniques from FS8.

 

The interesting thing though is that many *default* airports in P3Dv2 have pretty poor performance: La Guardia & Philadelphia to name just two.  Do you think that perhaps LM haven't actually optimized their own content, since they are focused more on the core platform?  If so, that's good in a way, as it suggests that future addons may provide better performance than the default, or at least much greater detail for similar performance.

[Guest]

 

 

Do you think that perhaps LM haven't actually optimized their own content, since they are focused more on the core platform?

 

I haven't noticed a performance issue with La Guardia -- haven't tried Philadelphia - will test it out tonight.  But if you want to confirm if LM's content has changed, you'll need to find the files and do a compare with FSX and see if anything is different.  I personally can't imagine LM have done all that work -- I thought I recalled them reworking all the AutoGen files but I honestly don't know about the rest.

 

Cheers, Rob.

[Noel 4,563]

I loaded into LAX and saw 30fps solid (even in motion and flying around LA), with cloud shadows and I'm running a GTX 660. Of course, I didn't load in any third party anything. Just Prepar3D 2.2. That's my point. I don't see where loading in anything for FSX is a valid starting point to deciding how the new sim's rendering engine performs or will perform.

 

I think to get optimal performance for aircraft in P3D v2... developers are going to have to change the way they code the complex systems.

 

I think to get optimal performance for scenery in P3D v2... developers are going to have to change the way they create their scenery. They're going to have to redo texturing, 3D object design... lots of things to bring their 3D models into a better performance range. Things that didn't matter one bit in FSX are absolutely critical in Prepar3D.

 

In the long run, I think it will work out... as P3D is at least an actively developed platform with a developer that wants to actively interact with both consumers and developers.

 

As for will SLI fix it... nope. But then I'm also one who points out that moving to 64-bit won't fix bad code either.

Fully agree w/ your comments w/ this caveat:

 

'I don't see where loading in anything for FSX is a valid starting point to deciding how the new sim's rendering engine performs or will perform.'

 

​It's starts becoming a matter of practicality.  When will 3PDs really start to 'change the way they ...' ?  As a practical matter most users will not want to stick w/ canned P3D except for maybe weaker hardware systems, and then kicking and screaming.   I don't recall reading any comments in any forum re what it takes to code optimally for add ons for P3D, and equally importantly, just exactly how much upside is there in 'coding optimally'?  105%? 120%?  These things do matter and will influence what folks can do w/ the sim going forward.  I do share your optimism re the team and their potential.  I sounds like you agree, SLI will likely not solve this issue.   Changing the way the scenery is rendered so that indeed the GPU was being utilized better, that would help.   There's something wrong when you have a single GPU, marginal frame rates, and yet your GPU is running at 45-50%.   Therein lies the avenue to exploit for 'optimization' I would assume.

The interesting thing though is that many *default* airports in P3Dv2 have pretty poor performance: La Guardia & Philadelphia to name just two.  Do you think that perhaps LM haven't actually optimized their own content, since they are focused more on the core platform?  If so, that's good in a way, as it suggests that future addons may provide better performance than the default, or at least much greater detail for similar performance.

 

The interesting thing though is that many *default* airports in P3Dv2 have pretty poor performance: La Guardia & Philadelphia to name just two.  Do you think that perhaps LM haven't actually optimized their own content, since they are focused more on the core platform?  If so, that's good in a way, as it suggests that future addons may provide better performance than the default, or at least much greater detail for similar performance.

Thank you, this has been my question to which often the canned response is that you can't expect add ons to perform like optimized/default.  You're exactly right:  CPU-boundedness, presumably since the GPU is way underutilized in this scenario AT default airports.  I don't see how Quad-SLI will touch this either because all indicators point to CPU-boundedness as the critical performance restricting factor in these situations.  Until there is a slider that gets the rendering accomplished by offloading some of these basic rendering tasks to the GPU.   I am assuming this is in part what tessellation does, and if that's the case places like the airport mentioned, and even KDEN which is a pretty non-complex area compared to places lie NYC or LA.  Try it some time--go point yourself nose-in parked at a gate and see what appears to be something that should require almost no processing power be significantly thwarted relative to the image rendered for some unforeseen reason.

[Guest]

 

 

I don't see how Quad-SLI will touch this either because all indicators point to CPU-boundedness as the critical performance restricting factor in these situations.

 

If that were the case, I should see a noticeable difference in performance going from 3.9Ghz to 4.8Ghz in these situations ... I don't +/- 1 fps.

 

I listed 3 technical details above ... also forgot to include tessellation which I believe is applied to terrain only but there is no reason it couldn't be applied to any object with textures?  If one is designing terrain for an airport they would/should run it thru tessellation to see how it reacts to the process ... it's entirely possible less detail can be provide in the base which would then still look good with tessellation applied.  This is P3D exclusively also, implications are obvious ... no need for 4096 textures or even 2048 textures when one might be able to make 1024 texture look as good as a 4096 texture using tessellation.

 

Anyway, lots of P3D specific items.

 

Cheers, Rob.

[WarpD 824]

Rob,

 

When I mentioned sloppy code... I didn't say it was in the core sim. Just sayin'....

[Noel 4,563]

 

 

If that were the case, I should see a noticeable difference in performance going from 3.9Ghz to 4.8Ghz in these situations ... I don't +/- 1 fps.

 

Rob, it's all in the 'in these situations.'  Which situations are you referring to?

 

I just now duplicated what I've seen every time in the type of situation I'm describing, easily seen at FB's KSFO in NCA in the MD80.   On taxi frames went to 19-20 while headed N-NE on the way to 28L.  After TO and bearing north just a few thousand feet up:  17 frames.   GPU is hovering around 45%.  I have cloud shadows on at 30,000M with cloud density on low.  As predicted, if I then add cloud density all the way to maximum, the GPU hits 99% and it's all over.   This part will be helped, but not the 17 frames that I can see.   And absolutely positively I get a bump in frames commensurate w/ more overclock as one would expect if at that moment the sim was CPU-bound, at least until the cloud density was increased.

 

It could quite possibly be something is amiss in my installation I haven't ruled that out.   Maybe when 2.3 comes along esp if SLI is supported I may wipe and reinstall.  Right now I'm using patched everything and have recently uninstalled FSX so as I say it's possible something's amiss.   The problem is I can take off out of less complex areas and have ultra smooth performance in the same plane w/ a frame rate of 45.  The floating buttery smooth happens, for me, at 60 frames w/ VSYNC on.  This assures 100% smoothness not only during flight but in panning the VC in the MD80.   KSFO seems to be real hard on this install, especially in NCA.  That's maybe a given but the issue again--the GPU is hovering around 50% utilization, CPU 100%, and overclocking absolutely increases frame rate proportionally and there is certainly a point below which non-smooth flight starts ensuing.  As I say, for this situation, I don't see SLI helping.

[Noel 4,563]

 

 

I can assure (as in have discussed this with Wes B.) you there is A LOT of code being implemented to support existing 3rd party airport designers

 

That's a very good thing to know thanks for that.  

[vck 0]

 

 

I just now duplicated what I've seen every time in the type of situation I'm describing, easily seen at FB's KSFO in NCA in the MD80.   On taxi frames went to 19-20 while headed N-NE on the way to 28L.  After TO and bearing north just a few thousand feet up:  17 frames.   GPU is hovering around 45%.  I have cloud shadows on at 30,000M with cloud density on low.  As predicted, if I then add cloud density all the way to maximum, the GPU hits 99% and it's all over.   This part will be helped, but not the 17 frames that I can see.   And absolutely positively I get a bump in frames commensurate w/ more overclock as one would expect if at that moment the sim was CPU-bound, at least until the cloud density was increased.

 

Noel

 

I have a relatively lower end system (i5-4440 @ 3.1 Ghz and a GTX 770) and it can handle KSEA with all the scenery slides fully to the right, with 10km cloud, 20k terrain shadow, and fair amount of traffics in rainy day, no add-on, no tweak. My GPU always reaches 99% first and stay there while the CPU doesn’t max out. I just cannot handle KSEA with Orbx PNW on. Sliders to the left does not cure the stutter even the FPS looks OK. So my conclusion is that PNW is not optimized for P3d and a low end CPU can handle the autogen in the most challenging area in native P3d while feeding as much data as a higher end GPU can take. Therefore the bottleneck must be my GPU. I made two videos under the following conditions:

• No Add-on, No tweak
• FXAA: on, MSAA: 4 samples, Anisotropic 4X, 2048 texture, and unlimited FPS
• Seattle KBFI Rwy 31 L in day time with grey and rainy weather
• All scenery sliders max out with tessellation  
• Medium shadow map count, 10 km cloud and 20 km terrain shadow, no HDR
• 25% sea and air traffics

 

Airplane used in the first video is a Mooney Acclaim. Altitude throughout the flight is below 1500 ft. Average frame rate around 25 with some occasional short dips. The flight went well until the last moment when I tried to force the airplane to the ground. I was out of trim with some minor PIO. It shows that proficiency in flight sim probably can prevent real world disaster.

 

 

The second video is a Boeing 737 in the same condition. Again the average FPS is around 25 and the flight is smooth enough for hand fly without autopilot. I actually tried the same condition in KDEN but the result is the same – smooth flight with GPU max out.

 

 

I just got an i5-4560K from Amazon wondering if I should return it because I am afraid it won’t improve P3d on my computer. May be you or some other folks with a fast computer can help to run the above cases and let me know your results. I will definitely keep it if perceptible improvement can be achieved. Thanks. 

 

Vince

[Noel 4,563]

 

 

So my conclusion is that PNW is not optimized for P3d and a low end CPU can handle the autogen in the most challenging area in native P3d while feeding as much data as a higher end GPU can take. Therefore the bottleneck must be my GPU.

 

Hi Vince,

As near as I can tell we haven't seen a word really other than Rob A's comment regarding textures used for FB's KIAD, about what 'optimization [to use the core rendering engine optimally]' might actually mean for P3D.  But I tend to agree there needs to be add'l optimization especially in the area I mention above:  high scenery complexity, CPU 100% and GPU 45-50%, all w/ frame rates that compromise smoothness.  With add-on scenery, certainly PNW or NCA so far, performance on strong hardware isn't all that good in these types of scenarios, and the elephant in the PC case is the fact the GPU isn't being fully used--at all. What more, changing sliders doesn't have a very prominent effect in this type of situation.

 

Bottom line as always--get the most potent hardware you can muster, and overclock it.  Can't hurt!

[Noel 4,563]

Noel, out of curiosity, what are your Affinity Mask settings and have you enabled Hyper Threading?

 

Also have you experimented with the Fiber Frame TIme Fraction setting?

AM=62 and have HT disabled in my hexacore CPU.   Processor monitors display the predicted utilization w/ that AM:  Core0 4-6%, Core1 100%, all others 0-70% based on scenery complexity and rate of simulation.

 

Yes, no difference noted w/ FFTF.

 

I do have fabulous performance in many situations, just gets dicey in the types described.  In fact, I would be surprised to learn this is not exactly what happens to others in this same situation w/ the same hardware.  RobA and I have the same hardware basically yet he hasn't seen the CPU-boundedness as evidenced by overclocking effect that I measured.   The issue for me is the fact there is a lot of unused processing power when GPU utilization is only at 50% in these types of scenarios.   Somehow that has to be addressed, and if RobA is correct it could likely be thru collaboration between LM & 3PDs involved w/ scenery and other add ons.

[bonchie 2,305]

You aren't happy with 25fps in Orbx NCA + FB KSFO + a complex liner like the CS 80?

 

On my FSX setup (4.7ghz 2500k, GTX 570) with just FB KSFO and that plane I'm only around 25-30. I can only imagine what throwing in Orbx NCA would do seeing what I get in their Australian scenery at detailed airports, nevermind the OOM errors.

[Noel 4,563]

You aren't happy with 25fps in Orbx NCA + FB KSFO + a complex liner like the CS 80?

 

On my FSX setup (4.7ghz 2500k, GTX 570) with just FB KSFO and that plane I'm only around 25-30. I can only imagine what throwing in Orbx NCA would do seeing what I get in their Australian scenery at detailed airports, nevermind the OOM errors.

You're missing the point which is that there is 50% of the GPU sitting idle in this scenario.  The CS 80 is 'complex' but ultra lean on performance requirements which you must surely know.  Throw a PMDG or anything truly demanding in this scenario and I don't think anyone would be pleased, and least that's my best prediction NOW.   P3D starts displaying less than excellent smoothness, particularly in VC panning, when frame rate drops below 25 or so.  Oh sure, it's flyable.  But the real joy comes w/ the floating buttery smoothness one sees in less complex situations.  On my setup the CS MD80 would hit 35+ frames in this scenario during taxi, and go up from there.  On TO out of this setting now in P3D frames drop into the low 20's high teens until up out of the bay area.   

[bonchie 2,305]

I get 2-3 more FPS in the CS 80 over the PMDG 737. I don't find it "super lean."

 

But if you really want close apples/apples, turn off all tessellation, all shadows but exterior aircraft, drop the autogen down a notch, HDR lighting, etc. and see what it gives you.

 

Now that P3D2 pretty much "looks" like FSX, is performance still worse then FSX? If so, then go back to FSX because at that point your only major gain is not having autogen popup and better VAS usage.

[Noel 4,563]

 

I get 2-3 more FPS in the CS 80 over the PMDG 737. I don't find it "super lean."

 

I find it beyond super lean.   Maybe something is wrong w/ your installation or something the CS80 exploits in my hardware is missing in yours.   This holds up in both P3D and FSX for me.  It is clearly in the same ballpark as default planes in both of my installs.  The difference in FSX between the PMDG 737 and the CS 80 is apples and oranges.  Further, none of the points you make are relevant to the issues I bring up which one more time have to do w/ unused GPU processing in the context of poor frames rates in high demand situations.  Let's agree to disagree and move on.

[WarpD 824]

My guess is that something is very wrong w/ your installation.

And if I said you had the same problem with Prepar3D... would you accept that claim?