The 680 is plenty of card for P3D.

Just don't use cloud shadows and you will be fine.

What are your settings Emin? I have a 680 and have very good performance with the SFX enabled.

 

Are you using Nvidia Inspector and have any tweaks within the cfg? 

 

 

Believe me, nothing so fancy except VC shadow and cloud shadows (10.000m). Scenery complexity and autogen density is at normal, traffic sliders at zero which is usually not acceptable to me. I don't want to see empty airports or flat house textures instead of autogen houses when I fly over cities. I don't use nvidia inspector. Only tweak I have is affinitymask=15, that's all. 

 

 

The 680 is plenty of card for P3D.

Just don't use cloud shadows and you will be fine.

 

Thanks, but then why should I need P3d 2.2 ?  Cloud shadows are game changer and only reason I want to use v2.2. I already have p3d 1.4 working great, super smooth with nvidia vsync.

 

I don't think my conclusion is wrong. The newest p3d is great but you need something like gtx titan to enjoy it fully. 

Then don't use P3D 2.2 or get a bigger GPU if your entire decision is just about cloud shadows. 

 

The 680 is plenty for 90% of the new improvements in P3D 2.2. 

There's definitely something awry with your config as I have cloud shadows and traffic enabled and am still able to maintain more than acceptable fps over complex scenery (like YVR in PNW).

 

I'll share my settings when I get home this evening so you can try out some as a baseline.  

Then don't use P3D 2.2 or get a bigger GPU if your entire decision is just about cloud shadows. 

 

The 680 is plenty for 90% of the new improvements in P3D 2.2. 

 

Yes, you're right I don't use it until I get a bigger GPU.  I've installed it because I wanted to try it myself. But, honestly other than shadows and tessellation which requires enormous gpu power, what are those new improvements worth using P3d 2.2? 

  

 

There's definitely something awry with your config as I have cloud shadows and traffic enabled and am still able to maintain more than acceptable fps over complex scenery (like YVR in PNW).

 

I'll share my settings when I get home this evening so you can try out some as a baseline.  

 

Yes, may be something is wrong. Thank you very much for sharing your setup with me. I'll try them. 

There's a million threads on it.

The multiple new shadow options are a big part of the visual improvements and depending on your card, you may or may not be able to use all of them. But HDR lighting, no more popping up autogen, and better VAS usage to stop OOMs are just as important in my view.

Then don't use P3D 2.2 or get a bigger GPU if your entire decision is just about cloud shadows. 

 

The 680 is plenty for 90% of the new improvements in P3D 2.2. 

That's certainly good to read...as I don't plan to migrate from my 2GB GTX680 anytime soon....it's a great card, and runs very cool as well!

Okay Emin - here are my settings. I'm running on a 680 and the rest of my specs are listed in my profile. No settings forced through Nvidia Inspector (default profile).

http://imgur.com/TnnkR1g

http://imgur.com/XcetNMR

http://imgur.com/vkFhhae

http://imgur.com/Dj5sCbe

http://imgur.com/y0q206y

 

Within the cfg, these are the two entries I've added:

[Main]
FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION=0.11

 

[JOBSCHEDULER]
AffinityMask=245   //this is my current setting for my quad core with Hyperthreading enabled; with HT disabled, 15 worked best for terrain paging and smoothness.

 

I use REX 4 textures (shared theme Dylan1) and OPUS for weather and "shake cam" ^_^

 

Good luck.

Thanks Dylan. I've tried your settings. It's stuttering but I've managed to get 25 fps average. Not bad if I can get rid of these stutterings. Also, I realized something, when I open browser window at monitor screen that I am not using for sim, fps goes down to single digits. I minimize that browser window then fps come back. Very interesting. I am running P3d windowed mode in a projector screen but I have 3 extra monitors still plugged to screen card. I didn't think this has such a big impact.

It needs to be made clear that cloud shadows work ok unless there is thick cloud coverage. Lots of large clouds will kill performance, so if you use real weather injection then your performance can vary massively from day to day, place to place. Overall it is easier to disable cloud shadows and not worry about it. But if you need them, then make sure you fly in relatively fair weather (or manually edit your cloud layer thickness to less than 1000ft).

It needs to be made clear that cloud shadows work ok unless there is thick cloud coverage. Lots of large clouds will kill performance, so if you use real weather injection then your performance can vary massively from day to day, place to place. Overall it is easier to disable cloud shadows and not worry about it. But if you need them, then make sure you fly in relatively fair weather (or manually edit your cloud layer thickness to less than 1000ft).

Thanks for the the tip. Which weather program is best optimized for P3d ? Opus or ASN? 

What are your settings Emin? I have a 680 and have very good performance with the SFX enabled.

Like you I'm quite happy with my 680 running P3D.

 

I have backed off the cloud settings a bit.  That's about all I have sacrificed.

 

Ken

 

 

But if you need them, then make sure you fly in relatively fair weather (or manually edit your cloud layer thickness to less than 1000ft).

 

Also, it helps to limit the number of cloud layers. Active Sky has a setting for this, I don't know about other weather add-ons.

 

As for the requirement for a powerful graphics card: This depends on what you fly, and where you fly, and what compromises you can live with. I run P3Dv2.2 on a Q6600 @ 3GHz with a measly GTX570, and couldn't go back to FSX because I'm using cloud shadows, terrain shadows, volumetric fog, HDR lighting, all sorts of water reflections... the whole deal.

 

No magic, just careful slider settings, accepting that supersampling AA is out of the question on my hardware (Luckily, I find that vegetation shimmers a lot less in P3D over FSX, which looks outright ugly without some supersampling) and an affinity mask of 15 for my 4 cores. Oh, and a max. of 3 cloud layers.

 

Autogen shadow casting totally murders my system, but receiving works with only little loss of FPS. I can accept this as I have hated looking at brightly lit houses shining deep in shadowed valleys for years now. Vehicle shadows are completely off, a tradeoff that enables an astonishing density of road traffic - an amount that would have killed my system in FSX.

My machine gets overwhelmed by, and can't deal with, scenery complexity (this phenomenon is discussed elsewhere). When this happens, turning off all the shader goodies won't help a lot. Flying complex heavy kit into large cities won't happen with v2.2 on my machine, at least not anywhere near even 15fps. FSX is a whole lot better for this on my rig. However, flying the default Mooney Acclaim (which I can't seem to get tired of) anywhere away from large cities in P3D is absolutely, by far, the best thing that ever appeared on my monitor. It is faster than FSX while looking SO much more real, and I am amazed at the detail and performance LM manage to unleash on my rusty old rig.

 

 

 

But, honestly other than shadows and tessellation which requires enormous gpu power, what are those new improvements worth using P3d 2.2?

 

Other than shadows? You mean, other than a feature that makes literally everything in the sim world (the ground, buildings, vegetation, cockpit, plane) look much more realistic?

 

In my opinion, the two biggest visual shortcomings of FSX - when compared to reality - are the lighting, and the fog layers engaging in z-buffer fights with the ground. The lighting now is vastly improved (on could say that it now exists at all, and didn't before), and the fog layers are now fantastic.

 

When the weather is nasty, you still have this happy-sunshine lighting on the ground in FSX. P3D now does not try to look spectacular or beautiful, it tries to look real, and that means that if weather conditions are grey and ugly, it actually looks grey and ugly as it should.

 

And those terrain shadows.... the first time I descended into Aspen about half an hour before sunset, and suddenly saw a short flicker in the cockpit as I flew through the shadow of the jagged top of a ridge, immediately followed by the darkness of staying in that shadow.... I knew that my FSX days were over. Eventually, I'll get a new rig, and get to those cities, and get to fly my esteemed AirbusX. But I'll be just fine with what I have for a while.

 

And for me, any doomsday scenario about the future of simming that came up after the closure of ACES, is now history.

Well...soon will have my first execute of P3D v2.2

 

Wish me luck....

 

Thanks, lol.

 

"Yeah..yeah..yeah....wanted the 64 bit...but the 'Curious Mitch' got the best of me. Now for an evening of playing around...downloading triple install ORBX stuff...and installing....playing around....well, all you before me, down this path, know THAT DRILL!"....

 

sigh...

 

 

And those terrain shadows.... the first time I descended into Aspen about half an hour before sunset, and suddenly saw a short flicker in the cockpit as I flew through the shadow of the jagged top of a ridge, immediately followed by the darkness of staying in that shadow.... I knew that my FSX days were over.

 

 

I had the exact same feeling, sat on the runway awaiting takeoff clearance I watched as a cloud shadow advanced down the runway towards me, darkening the VC as it passed and then the sunlight in the cockpit as it moved behind my position. magic

 

Like you I also have a GTX570 and it copes surprisingly well with the Cloud shadows