Some of you may have noticed I have been a bit negative about P3D for a while, specially after buying my brand new PC specially for P3D and not getting the kind of performance that I was hoping for. Well, I am happy to report I am back in sim heaven. This has to do with a few things:

 

1. My PC wasn't setup well by the shop that assembled it. For instance the BIOS hadn't been updated (which was a MUST for my i7 4790K), the SSD's were connected to the wrong ports and the RAM weren't in the right slots... (Yes, that's the last time I ordered a PC from that shop.)

 

2. Although fixing this myself helped a little (not as much as I expected though) it was 2.3 that seemed to make a bigger difference. Not at first, because it seemed things only got worse (shadows bugs: see my moaning posts about that elsewhere...) but then I discovered 2.3 enabled me to turn on a few options I didn't try before. The main ones that completely changed the sim for me were volumetric fog and HDR (with a big thank you to Selcuk73's tweak!!!). How good everything looked without a noticable performance hit!

 

3. Then I found out I could set a lot more options full right without performance penalty, which made things look even better. I have to say though that there IS a performance penalty in big places like FTX PNW Seattle but in the places where I usually fly (rural, bush) performance still shines so that's not a problem at all. It still IS flyable around big cities!

 

4. And today I added ASN to it all. What a difference that made...! And without the performance penalty I was expecting...! The mood it creates, together with volumetric fog and HDR really brought me back into sim heaven. (Great customer support too from HiFi btw: due to my switch from FSX to P3D and the new PC I somehow lost ALL my AS-related information so I had to buy the full license instead of the update: however, one support ticket and without any questions asked I received a very old license key within no time, enabling me to get the update anyway!) I have flown without a weather engine way too long. ASN is absolutely great (see my post about that in another topic).

 

All in all I am a very happy simmer again by now. I mean, look at my settings below: they are pretty high imho! And performance usually is around my limit of 33, sometimes dipping to mid twenties but still quite smooth (well, sometimes it gets a bit choppy when I look around with TrackIR but that's a price I gladly pay: I'll have to see if my old FSX trick to set TrackIR to high priority helps in this setup). Of course I don't use any tweaks in the cfg.

 

System: i7 [email protected], GTX780 6GB, 16GB CL8 RAM, Windows 8.1 Update, running at 1920x1080. nVidia at default apart from Power management at Performance (on the Global tab) and Vsync at Adaptive (on the P3D profile tab). No Inspector. (And yes, AA could be better but it's okay with my zoom of 0.70, wide aspect set to true.)

 

P.S. In case you wonder why I haven't enabled EVERYTHING: water detail is set to Off because I don't like the waves (maybe I should get REX4 for that) and not because of performance. Terrain shadows are at 0 because of the bug so also not because of performance (will turn it on again after patch). Shadow quality is at High because I only notice a difference when parking (shadows of buildings etc. are sharper) but not during flying and I suppose High does help me with performance a little. User vehicle reflection is off because I never ever leave the VC to having this on is useless. Cloud shadow cast: I don't notice shadows beyond 40.000 so no need to set it higher. Object shadows: same story, higher settings aren't useful (lower gives me an obvious build up of shadows). And AI is at off or low because I don't like AI (I am happy with the static aircraft that FTX gives me and a few cars on the road.)

 

P.S. 2: I do ALL my flying in the A2A Cherokee 180.

 

Glad your on board with P3D now - it will get better also - anyone having issues with P3D look elsewhere its not P3D

Glad to hear you got sorted out with ASN Jeroen! It REALLY does make a difference. P3D2.3 is a beautiful product. Not perfect yet but the response by LM is exceptional. They are actually listening to our comments and trying to make changes.

 

Now you can enjoy!

 

Vic

I'm certainly enjoying it all! I just did a flight with the free HDE v2 clouds installed: they look good, a lot better than the default ones, but they seem to hurt performance a bit, even with the 512x512 DTX3 ones installed. I wonder if REX4 clouds will perform better but buying that one for the clouds only is a bit too much, I think... And I am not too fond of the 'over the top' clouds that REX used to deliver in the past. I like the default sky colors and don't like water animations that much plus I fly in FTX regions only so I don't need REX4 for all that.

 

Anyway, other than that things are great! I just landed at a very simple small airport and there were a few trees at my left during approach: the rather long shadows of the trees on the ground REALLY made it look so great...! At that moment I thought: THIS is how it looks in real life!!!

Hi Jeroen,

 

"Terrain shadows are at 0 because of the bug "

 

What's the bug with the terrain shadows?

 

Thanks, I'm glad that all is working out for you....

 

Bruce..

 

Found it..:

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/449915-patch-coming-for-p3dv23-terrain-shadows/

Terrain shadows don't display correctly.  You get splotchy dark areas on what should be the sunlit sides of hills and stuff.  Drop your terrain shadow slider to 0 if you see that.

 

LM screwed up some value names in the shader code for 2.3.  They're fixing it soon.

Glad your on board with P3D now - it will get better also - anyone having issues with P3D look elsewhere its not P3D

For the most part, p3d has surpassed FSx in every way possible. However, it still has not quite reached the smoothness that I experience with fsx and the 1/2 refresh rate set in the nvidia driver / inspector.

 

Panning around can still be choppy, and there are still noticeable "out of sync" moments between frames.

 

Once that can be solved, p3d is the bomb.

For the most part, p3d has surpassed FSx in every way possible. However, it still has not quite reached the smoothness that I experience with fsx and the 1/2 refresh rate set in the nvidia driver / inspector.

 

Panning around can still be choppy, and there are still noticeable "out of sync" moments between frames.

 

Once that can be solved, p3d is the bomb.

 

Few decent nvidia drivers may solve that - thinking thats what needs to happen - weirdos have seem to have forgotten this community spends a bundle on their graphic cards

I wouldn't use 1/2 refresh rate, set it to adaptive only in nvidia control panel. 

- set vsync off in sim.

- set frames to either unlimited or 30, 32,33, whichever works best.

Personally, I prefer running fps unlimited, and in precision x lock frames to 33. I'm getting a very nice experience in the Orbx PNW

and the Q400. Of course, this is with a gtx 670.

 

  Jazz.

just my .02c

No point setting 1/2 refresh because it doesn't work as no driver support from nvidia. Has to be supported in dx11 titles.

 

Adaptive has zero effect either, at least as far as I can see.

 

Fps limiter, unlimited, locked, vsync on, off, triple buffer, on, off.....all tried.

 

Still not as smooth as fsx right now. I hope that will change when LM and nvidia actually have a driver that works properly with all functionality available.

Adaptive has zero effect either, at least as far as I can see.

 

Fps limiter, unlimited, locked, vsync on, off, triple buffer, on, off.....all tried.

 

 

Same here... in fact I'm not sure P3D respects the vsync setting in the UI as I cannot turn it off, regardless of in-game, driver, or NI settings... whether set globally or per application.

 

It seems to me standard vsync is applied no matter what.

Hi Jeroen,

 

Glad to hear that you are happy again with P3D.

I looked at your settings, and I was wondering why you prefer to set your frame rate at 33, and not unlimited.

At the same time I also wonder why LM sets it to 20 fps by default.

Hi Jeroen,

 

Glad to hear that you are happy again with P3D.

I looked at your settings, and I was wondering why you prefer to set your frame rate at 33, and not unlimited.

At the same time I also wonder why LM sets it to 20 fps by default.

 

I'm happy too! (I should have send you an update...  ^_^ )

 

I prefer 33 because right now it seems to work best. Unlimited gives me higher fps (also when things are stressing and fps is in the twenties) but limiting seems to smoothen out the spikes somehow. I have to add that it is very hard to test this and to find the right setting... I settled for 33 because LM once advised to set it a few fps above half of the refresh speed but in my case I doubt if that makes sense because I have Vsync off. (I am also still in doubt if I should keep it off, but I have no tearing at ALL and as Novation said: it seems vsync is on anyway.) 

I am (almost) sure that in certain situations unlimited may work better (or any other setting than 33) but it's all about compromises: you just have to find a setting that seems (!) to work best in most situations. I don't like to load different settings depending on where I am during one flight.

 

BTW Yesterday I did a flight that had me flying over Portland and there performance dropped considerably with my rather extreme settings: average fps went as low as 15 at a certain moment. However, I was only passing the city and when I simply looked straight ahead, I hardly noticed the lower performance. Looking around with TrackIR was jerky but I could still do it and enjoy the scenery. (Could it be that people who never complain about performance don't use TrackIR...? I sometimes freeze TrackIR and almost always things look GREAT! ^_^ ) I was glad however that later on fps was around 30 again... It's a lucky thing that I usually fly over rural places and in the bush.

As I said, it's all about compromises: I want a lot of graphic options set high so low performance in certain situations is the price I have to pay, which I gladly do now.  ^_^ I also know now (finally) that my PC is working perfectly fine and I am getting the most out of it, and that knowledge helps me to accept things aas they are. (When you think something is wrong somewhere, it's harder to enjoy what you've got!)

I must admit I prefer limited too.

 

I fly mostly low and fast, and I find that while unlimited may yield higher frame rate, the frames don't always "have the time" to get completely rendered.

No point setting 1/2 refresh because it doesn't work as no driver support from nvidia. Has to be supported in dx11 titles.

 

Adaptive has zero effect either, at least as far as I can see.

 

Fps limiter, unlimited, locked, vsync on, off, triple buffer, on, off.....all tried.

 

Still not as smooth as fsx right now. I hope that will change when LM and nvidia actually have a driver that works properly with all functionality available.

+1