While clouds are an fps hit in v2.3, my biggest fps hit comes from traffic. A big part of the immersion in flight swimming is seeing other vehicles in action. Without the traffic, I feel as if I'm flying around in some post-apocalyptic world devoid of humans. It's a nice smooth post-apocalyptic flight with high fps, but it gets lonely....

 

So I like to have traffic running and realize there is a price in fps to be paid. I keep airlines at 10%, GA at 30%, cars at 10%, ships at 25% and pleasure boats at 25%. This knocks 10-15 frames per second off of my frame rate which wasn't such a big deal with v2.2 but makes me have to significantly lower other settings in v2.3 to achieve acceptable frame rates.

 

So a few questions:

 

1) Does LM see the loss of fps with traffic use as an issue? If so are they planning to optimize the traffic code?

 

2) Are there any third party traffic programs that are in development built specifically for P3Dv2?

 

3) When using third party traffic programs, it it best practice to turn off the native FSX/P3D traffic flow?

 

4) Any tips for optimizing traffic in v2.3 as it stands now?

 

Thanks in advance!

 

Scott

Absolutely agree, Scott. You've the choice between a >10 % framerate hit and a lonely airport. For me, that's much more of an issue than clouds.

 

1) I observe LM's forum, but can't rememer them seeing this as an issue. No threads on traffic optimization, at least none,  I can remember of.

 

2) Burkhard Renk is worling on a native P3D2 Version of My Traffic. From what I read on his forum things are going quite slowly, certainly I don't expect anything by the end of this year. The developer of Just Flight's Traffic 360 seems ot be working on something, a recent post on P3D2 support says ""I'm hoping to get Traffic 360 sorted out properly soon though. ", but from my experience with Just Flight I'd be surprised about anyting ready soon. There will never ever be a native P3D2 Version of Ultimate Traffic as (i) Flight1 hates Prepar3d and (ii) the developer seems to have got lost in space anyway.

 

3) I use UT2, migrated via the Migration Tool, at present, and this requires both airplane traffic sliders at zero. There's already an AVSIM thread on installing UT2 under P3D2.

 

4) I found UT2 to impose a little less fps hit than the other two (migrated), but it's still enought and I am tempted to try another round of comparison with different settings. However, UT2 has a configuraiton tool giving you a few options to adjust traffic (e.g. to reduce it when reaching a certain fps value).

 

What I really don't get is, why there are four competing weather programs for P3D, but at present no single native traffic program. And I would well be ready to pay for it if it would work withoud drawing performance into the cellar.

 

Kind regards, Michael

Thanks Michael -

 

Great point about the strange disparity in weather and traffic options for P3Dv2.

 

I own UT2 and read Rob's thread about migrating UT2 to P3Dv2. It seems easy to do and I have the Estonia tool. Do you find the migrated UT2 preferable to native P3Dv2 traffic? Which option makes the biggest hit in framerates? I fly mostly GA and mostly outside of larger cities, so heavy metal traffic is less important to me than GA and cars/boats/ships.

 

Best regards,

 

Scott

As far as I see native P3D2 traffic is non-existent. There's no native B737 nor a A320 present etc, and that's what I see: I can crank up sliders pretty high with KSFO being nearly empty. So ANY traffic addon will do better. This is different from FSX which at least had a number of airliners on board.

 

Cars/boats are not influenced by UT 2 in any way. I have ships set to 37 %, I think, boats similar. Also, airport traffic is not influenced by UT2 (and I think by any other addon, but not sure about this). Airport traffic makes another noticeable fps hit, btw., so I have it off, at present.

 

It you'd go the UT2 way, it's a bit of trial and error and certainly depends on your system. I have both Weekly Traffic (Airliners) and Daily Traffic (GA) at 40 %, at present, as a trade-off. In-game settings are all close to the lower end  with the target fps set to 20. I would not say these settings are really optimized, though, it's just what I use at present. This gives me an fps hit from ~23 to ~20 steady at a busy hub like KSFO, after traffic got momentum (which takes some minutes.)

 

Kind regards, Michael

Good points above. I find AI traffic is the largest performance hit for me. I crank up other settings with relatively little fps change but increase AI and the fps will tank. When I fly out of major cities or payware airports I tone down the AI to low and set to high when in other areas.

Maybe someone dares to open an AI traffic topic on the LM forum? Unfortunately, a lot of optimization LM has done in the 2.x series are based on CPU to GPU transfers, which seemingly is not an option for AI traffic.

 

As a sidenote, I left out one package for a purpose: WOAI. I never used this, as the hassle to install and maintain the packages (and fear to screw up my system) always scared me. Maybe someone with corresponding experience might comment on the performance hit of WOAI in comparison?

 

Kind regards, Michael

I would be happy to replicate my original post on the LM site. Good to know that I'm not the only one with this issue....

 

In the meantime I'll give UT a try and will report back with results.

 

Scott

Maybe someone dares to open an AI traffic topic on the LM forum? Unfortunately, a lot of optimization LM has done in the 2.x series are based on CPU to GPU transfers, which seemingly is not an option for AI traffic.

 

Done!

Could this be because Prepar3D 2.3 deploys "heavier" aircraft like the Carenado A36 Bonanza and the Lionheart Creations Mooney Acclaim as AI? I get consistently worse performance when flying with those two aircraft.

Something I've noticed using MyTraffic 5.4b in P3D2 (installed using the setup instructions that Burkhard provides on his forum) is that a given traffic percentage setting generates higher traffic levels than the same setting in FSX.  I used a 20 percent setting for both airliners and GA in FSX, but had to back that off to 15 percent in P3D2 to get equivalent levels. The 20 percent setting generated too many aircraft.  I didn't experience much of a performance hit at 20 percent but got tired of the long waits on the taxiways - too much like real life.  

 

If your traffic add-on is degrading performance, it's worth trying a reduced traffic level (which might still get you a satisfying level of traffic).

 

Of course, your mileage may vary.

Thanks Scott, I jumped in at the P3D forum, might be a good idea to give the developers a hint there's a potential issue.

 

Alan, I can't compare slider settings  directly as UT2 is not throttled via the P3D sliders but via it's own, besides you have the in-game settings for additional controlling of the amount of traffic.  From a test with MyTraffic 5.4b some time ago I recall you might be right, though.

 

Kind regards, Michael