SP1 Beta Testers: Performance Differences?

[scandinavian13 5,192]

Anyone who places "my system is..." and includes anything other than [Windows x86 | Windows x64] in a post about Out of Memory errors nullifies their opinion in my eyes.

 

OOMs have nothing to to with owning a super rig, or a computer shaped object bought off of a shelf at the local Best Buy.  The only thing that matters is 32 or 64 bit operating system, and the amount of add-ons you've packed into FSX.  Including the rest of that simply tells me that people continue to misunderstand this very simple issue:

 

You're given a budget of $3,220,176,896 on an x64 system.

The sim uses some of that money, and then any add-on you load into it takes out the rest.  Complex aircraft and scenery cost a lot.  Add "photorealistic" in that, and you're going to be spending some major $$$.

If you go over budget, the sim crashes.  End.  You can't float a loan from the Addressable Space Bank...

 

Doesn't matter if your computer has a 500TB SSD drive, 128 Gigs of RAM, or a giant graphics card that could crush quantum physics with ease...if the comp can't stuff information in the next bit of addressable data, you get an implosion.

 

 

 

The fact that people are getting errors now when they didn't in the past isn't surprising.  We didn't have the huge amount of scenery add-ons back when the 744 was out.  If anything, people had basic mesh, a couple add-on airports, and modest graphics settings - most cards/processors couldn't handle much higher back then.  Now, people are maxing sliders thinking "I'll be fine," on top of all of their memory-heavy scenery and aircraft.

 

Again: it's not just the aircraft - it's your sim too.  If you're going to blame the 777, you can blame your add-on scenery, too.

 

EDIT: Used the wrong number for the budget...because lack of coffee...

[Don t moderate me this way 882]

 

(...)

 

Fact that PMDG 777 VAS is not a big topic, but instead new features are, says a lot about how much you can trust the message on avsim.

even Word Not Allowed and froogle are no longer here.

 

(...)

 

 

PMDG B777 VAS has been a big topic on AVSIM (try 'search' ...) but, at the same time, we all have to concede that some stuff must be eating up the other 3.1 GB of VAS.  

[ZoomAir 1]

Please enough with the lectures on x86 and x64 we all know VAS is nothing to do with how super your system is its the 4gig address limit.

 

Adding my specs was suggested earlier and still a good idea

 

As I found, watch out lecturing people on avsim, we are all nerds over here, I build embedded PC's for robots in my day job, so please no lectures on computer architecture I drown in that all day.

 

 

Like I said before, its pretty clear, default a/c don't give OOM, all properly developed add-on a/c should as a minimum meet that standard.

Even with modern scenery like gex,utx FsGlobalUltimate  only thing in my hanger causing OOM is POMDG 777. 

 

 

All the graphics and complex systems simulation is useless if its comes at the expense of system wide stability.

 

That's why these days I also have fun with JustFlight type add-ons that play their position in resource consumption.

 

PMDG were able to do this perfectly with MD11, got a bit worse by NGX, and by 777 they were carried away, and went too far on simulator resource use.

[KriVa 307]

Like I said before, its pretty clear, default a/c don't give OOM, all properly developed add-on a/c should as a minimum meet that standard.

Even with modern scenery like gex,utx FsGlobalUltimate only thing in my hanger causing OOM is POMDG 777.

.

With that last sentence, you're actually validating the point Kyle is making, not countering it. If you run too much add-ons, the sim will crash, even with default planes.

The 777 is not causing the OOM, the combination of everything else AND the 777 is causing the OOM. If you want to use a complex add-on like the 777, you need to balance the rest of your sim out, especially on long haul flights.

FSX has a very well known bug where it won't release some parts of the VAS it has already used for some scenery. This means the amount of usable VAS gets smaller and smaller when your flight progresses.

This is a problem with FSX, not the 777. And it's just one of the many things to keep in mind.

Expecting an extensive add-on like the 777 to use the same amount of VAS as the default planes do, is plain nonsense, sorry. The default planes don't even have a decent flight model, let alone systems simulations, autopilot calculations, fly by wire calculations, ...

You just can't expect these two to match, on any level.

[Robert McDonald 167]

Gently, I must submit that you are all dancing around basically the same problem.  32-bit vs. 64-bit.  Blaming PMDG for the VAS issue is a little over the top, even without VAS crashes, to be blunt, FSX runs pretty poorly even on strong hardware, once you flood all the hang-ons into the equation.  It boils down to unreasonable workloads.  Someone says it best "reasonable settings" are mandatory for ANY sim, and even the vaunted XPlane can have stutter issues if you have extremely large photo realistic scenery and a small amount of video ram on your graphics card!

 

The troubles are what I call the "better and better" phenomenon.  You start off with basic FSX or P3D, you think:  Hey, this is great!  Then, you see some videos on YouTube that blow your current setup away... the scenery you're watching online is much nicer than your default "LEGO" airports in FSX.  You buy KSFO by FlightBeam, and one or two other complex airports.  Then you add a virtual cockpit jet, say the NGX or T-7.  Pretty soon you want the Ground Services X... and bit by bit, little by little, you start to kill your frames.  Toss in a bunch of ORBX and bingo...you are teetering with simulator overload!

 

Then you start the tweaking, trying to eke out more frames, much like the drag racer trying to trim a few more 1000's of a second off their elapsed time for the 1/4 mile.  At some point you begin to become frustrated, because not being a computer engineer, you are disliking all the tuning and wishing you could spend more time airborne.

 

Ultimately, you have to 'decide' what is most important, and draw a line in the sand.  The frames I get in the X-world are spectacular enough that I no longer fly my FSX/P3D stuff, but that's just me. Orbx (FSX/3PD) NorCal is stunning and pulled me back for a hot minute, but all of the other issues even in P3D pushed me out the back door again. Whatever 'works' for you and makes you happy, that's what you should fly.  From a science viewpoint, I think Laminar has the inside track.  Not to say that the X-world doesn't have warts.  There are several problems, not least of which is lack of Lego airports, and the lack of 'seasons' (think summer/winter/spring/fall).  There is a timetable for the distance view blur at high altitude, but it's not 'official' (there are beta images online).

 

Still and all, I am satisfied with my setup - comparative videos are up on my YouTube channel (FSX - P3D - XP).  If you begin to expand beyond a single monitor, I urge you to look at the multi-PC multi-Monitor solution when you visit.

 

Cheers.

[Hirdy2013 104]

Just to get back to the OP.

 

I think what we would like to know is, based on the beta testers systems, is there any difference in performance from running the original T7 to running the T7 SP1.  

 

Simply - have any of you found there to be improvements in performance on what you HAD to what you have now.

 

Hirdy

[KriVa 307]

I don't know if there's still debugging software running in the background of the current builds. If there is, there's probably no point in answering that question right now, since that kind of software may influence the results in relation to the RTM version.

[ZoomAir 1]

@Kriva

 

The magic of football is doing it  without your hands, the magic of swimming is doing it horizontal with both feet off the ground, the magic of a great add-on plane for a simulator is one that fits inside the simulator without breaking it.

 

Given the right amount of time I could code you 5D FSX 777 more realistic than the real thing, only catch is that FSX will never boot again after you install it, and Kriva will be the first to purchase.

 

So Kriva Like I said before, I have pretty much all fsx a/c in my hanger, and only one is doing OOM guess which one ? If you cant understand what that means as far as unit testing goes, I cant explain any further nor take you seriously from this point on.

 

Maybe PMDG should cut back on systems simulation so folks can make a few landings before crash

[scandinavian13 5,192]

 

 

So Kriva Like I said before, I have pretty much all fsx a/c in my hanger, and only one is doing OOM guess which one ? If you cant understand what that means as far as unit testing goes, I cant explain any further nor take you seriously from this point on.

 

No offense, but you keep digging yourself deeper and deeper into a hole of proving  that you truly have no idea about how this whole thing works.

 

We all see the picture you're trying to paint, but the landscape that's behind the picture looks nothing like it.

 

You're having crashes with the PMDG 777 because it's more resource intensive than a lot of the add-ons out there.  Scenery is also a huge hitter (in many cases a lot worse than aircraft). Nobody ever complains about it, though, because up until now, most planes really weren't huge consumers of VAS.  Of course, because of that, people are blaming the aircraft, when in reality, it's the scenery that's usually not as optimized as it should be.  I'm not saying the 777 doesn't consume its fair share of VAS, but it's not the sole large consumer.  You're given a budget to work with.  The 777 consumes a bunch of it, but it, in and of itself, won't push you over the limit.

 

 

 

Maybe PMDG should cut back on systems simulation so folks can make a few landings before crash

 

That's like telling Hooters to start staffing male waiters...

 

Systems are what PMDG does.

 

If you don't want simulated systems and prefer to be staunchly grounded in refusing to adjust your other settings, I'm sure there are plenty of other add-ons that you could use instead.  As I mentioned before: you're given a budget.  You have to play within that budget, or you're hosed.  If you want to max that budget out with all your other add-ons then you're going to have a miserable time.  That's nobody's fault other than your own.

 

Also, since I'm apparently lecturing you:

Signatures are required in this forum, by the way.  Please sign your name to all posts - this can be configured such that it's automatic in your user control panel.

[Robert McDonald 167]

+1 for Kyle's post.

 

Anyone who is serious about top-drawer jet simulation spells relief "P-M-D-G".  

 

Those who want to fly for the scenery?  Almost 'any' airplane will do.  

 

I can share that the X-crowd is drooling at the thought that one day we will have a 64-bit PMDG airplane in our hangar.

[Kerlix 99]

 

 

 

It's all about balance. The ground is lava and if either side touches it, FSX blows up. If an addon is more resource intensive, then disable or turn down another addon. As far as addon scenery/airports, I personally don't care how good the roads/taxiways/runways/buildings look from 30k+ feet up.

[scandinavian13 5,192]

 

 

The ground is lava

 

I feel like that game is born into children.  I don't think anyone ever taught it to me.  I just knew it.

[JohnSmith 0]

Just to get back to the OP.

 

I think what we would like to know is, based on the beta testers systems, is there any difference in performance from running the original T7 to running the T7 SP1.  

 

Simply - have any of you found there to be improvements in performance on what you HAD to what you have now.

 

Hirdy

 

Yeah I came back and noticed there was an entire debate about VAS. I feel like I'm at fault haha.

[Tabs 2,790]

Like I said before, its pretty clear, default a/c don't give OOM, all properly developed add-on a/c should as a minimum meet that standard.

Even with modern scenery like gex,utx FsGlobalUltimate  only thing in my hanger causing OOM is POMDG 777. 

 

 

All the graphics and complex systems simulation is useless if its comes at the expense of system wide stability.

 

That's why these days I also have fun with JustFlight type add-ons that play their position in resource consumption.

 

PMDG were able to do this perfectly with MD11, got a bit worse by NGX, and by 777 they were carried away, and went too far on simulator resource use.

 

If that's what you're after then our addons probably aren't for you. Honest truth. If you value being able to 100% max your scenery, AI etc. more than the visual fidelity and systems realism of the airplane you're flying, then another company's airplane is going to be best for you. We make realistic addons - if we dumb down our systems and graphics, then quite frankly we're not PMDG. Fly by wire systems and ECLs and EICASes and FMCs and wx radars all use memory - that's just a fact. The 777 uses more memory *because it does a lot more*. There is no magic way for us to make a realistic simulation of such a complex aircraft that has the memory footprint of a default MS aircraft. That is just unreasonable and demonstrates a lack of knowledge about how software works if you consider that a requirement.

[77west 139]

If that's what you're after then our addons probably aren't for you. Honest truth. If you value being able to 100% max your scenery, AI etc. more than the visual fidelity and systems realism of the airplane you're flying, then another company's airplane is going to be best for you. We make realistic addons - if we dumb down our systems and graphics, then quite frankly we're not PMDG. Fly by wire systems and ECLs and EICASes and FMCs and wx radars all use memory - that's just a fact. The 777 uses more memory *because it does a lot more*. There is no magic way for us to make a realistic simulation of such a complex aircraft that has the memory footprint of a default MS aircraft. That is just unreasonable and demonstrates a lack of knowledge about how software works if you consider that a requirement.

A most sensible appraisal of the situation Ryan.