I tested shadow yesterday and even with a moderate performance system, it's quite flyable. I have two gtx580 in surround. It works well with high autogen as long as there is only moderate cloud. As i come close too overcast cloud or rain, i have to remove the shadow which is ok as in real life you have no shadow effect overcast.

 

I started to play a lot recently with a series of incremental settings that I saved in Prepar3d Ui. I label them as VFR CLEAR SKY, VFR FAIR WEATHER, VFR UNDER OVERCAST etc.. I more and more change settings on the fly during a flight to adjust to changing weather. I loose some immersion while loading a new set of setting during a flight but on the other hand, I optimize the smoothness and immersion overall. Simulation is always a compromise.

 

I also like simstarter where I replicated those incremental settings into the nine scenarios and I use the jumpstart option to combine rapidly the level of detail adequate for the current weather and a saved flight and plane. Very quick and efficient way to start a flight.

I don't dare to come here without saying yes haha! Jeroen convinced me to buy P3D this weekend so I'm very happy with it! Running at 30 (limited) after the cloud *0.5 fix.

I don't dare to come here without saying yes haha! Jeroen convinced me to buy P3D this weekend so I'm very happy with it! Running at 30 (limited) after the cloud *0.5 fix.

 

LOL Glad to see you're happy!  ^_^

I got a reply from the FTX devs a while back about flickering vegetation shadows and they left the ball in LM's court.

LINK TO POST AT FTX FORUM HERE

That's odd indeed! Maybe this was a one time thing? Perhaps because you haven't used that option before? I can switch shadows on and off 'on the fly' without really noticing any difference in performance, certainly not 33%: no need for a restart here. Is this reproducible on your PC?

I can also switch shadows on and off on the fly without any impacts whatsoever. I also really like how it looks when vegetation and buildings receive shadows. It really adds an extra dimension to the platform.

I can also switch shadows on and off on the fly without any impacts whatsoever. I also really like how it looks when vegetation and buildings receive shadows. It really adds an extra dimension to the platform.

 

Same with me. A few minutes ago I tested the "receive" option for vegetation and buildings at heavy airports and at small airports, with fair weather and major thunderstorms. I can switch as long as I want between shadows off and on - nearly no changes on frames. For this test I have set the frame limiter in P3Dv2 to "Unlimited".

 

Patric

I've had all shadow options checked on for some time.  They don't seem to make any difference in performance for me.  If they do, it's so slight (a couple fps max) that it's well-worth it.

I tryed this tonight had no fps hit that I could see but looks so much better, thanks because I would have not thought to add these to receive.

Love it even more now lol.

I was flying in some heavy forest area (CAP mission), and my fps hit was about 8 fps with extreme dense vegetation.. (which brings it down to 15 on average, which is not doable).

 

 

Maybe they just haven't checked it out...?

 

Yup that was the case.. Turned them on and like the effect. fps look pretty much the same. Thanks again for the tip!

I was flying in some heavy forest area (CAP mission), and my fps hit was about 8 fps with extreme dense vegetation.

 

I have set my vegetation and buildings to "normal", so I can hardly see a performance hit. 

 

Patric

I was flying in some heavy forest area (CAP mission), and my fps hit was about 8 fps with extreme dense vegetation.. (which brings it down to 15 on average, which is not doable).

 

I think you're system (is your profile still up to date?) isn't good enough for extremely dense then... Did you use vegetation (and buildings) cast AND receive or only receive? You should be able to use vegetation and buildings receive. When I still had the 2500K CPU I couldn't really use vegetation cast and extremely dense was just on the edge (and I had my CPU @4.5 Ghz) but vegetation receive was no problem at all. I think that with cloud shadows (but also terrain shadows, when they are fixed) shadows receive is a must, so I would certainly try to get that working. So see what happens when you lower autogen one notch. Or any other 'heavy' setting.

My system is indeed up to date.. Yesterday I did some extensive testing by putting every single item back to zero and getting a lovely framerate haha. After that I put every slider back to maximum to see what the impact was. The performance hit I got was as follows;

 

- Mesh Textus (1m = 9fps, 2m= 8, 5m = 6 and 10m = 1)

- Water textures (lowest setting without reflection was already 11 fps so I turned it off for now)

- It was a foresty area so almost no buildings so had no hit from autogen buildings max

- However autogen vegetation (extremely dense = 19 fps, very dense = 15 fps)

- Objects recieve: interior, exterior, vegetation

- Objects cast: interior, exterior, vegetation (with first slider to 10.000 and second as well = 20 fps)

 

So I have HDR turned off, as well iluminating landing lights. Sunflare is on though. Clouds are set at detailed volumentric on medium coverage with 60mi limit.

 

As I told J van E in our other topic, my CPU is cutoff 100% on the first core while the other aren't doing anything.. so I'm going to see what a little overclock does (running at 3.7 now) and my Catalyst Control Centers tells me I'm running at max 99% GPU activity.. so might need to overclock that as well..

As I told J van E in our other topic, my CPU is cutoff 100% on the first core while the other aren't doing anything.. so I'm going to see what a little overclock does (running at 3.7 now) and my Catalyst Control Centers tells me I'm running at max 99% GPU activity.. so might need to overclock that as well..

First core ~100% is okay, however, the other cores at zero is odd. P3D is multi-threaded, maybe there's room for improvement, but the other cores should be at least at ~20-30% in flight. If not I'd check if there's an Affinity setting or some external program/tool hindering P3D to use the remaining cores (check and maybe try to reset in Task Manager). 

 

Kind regards, Michael

My experience is a bit different.
Very good "vegetation cast" and "clouds shadows", but I see no difference with "vegetation receive" off or on.