Traffic Optimizer for P3D

[Nemo 1,303]

First I want to thank Duke for this formidable piece of work, which could be a great step forward for tubes flying in more demanding sceneries.

 

Unfortunately I have also to report a serious issue I had recently. I am a bit hesitant since I am not sure if Dukes app was the only responsible for this.

 

Anyway, the app worked perfect for me and @ KSEA RW 34R fps inceased from 23/24 to 27/28. Some time later I had an application crash during changing traffic settings and fs time. P3D also shut down. After restart everything seemed to be fine again.

 

But then it happened, I closed P3Dv2 (optimizer was still running) than I got a app crash of the optimizer. Since then I was unable to start P3Dv2 again. Opening LM screen appeared, "generating scenery" message came up and closed as usual but than after some time (before reaching the scenario start up screen) P3Dv2 did close without any message. Nothing cured this behavior. System restart, deleting shaders, deleting p3d.cfg even the LM p3d repair function did not help.

 

At the end, I realized that I had system restore function active, which I normally don't have. Lucky man I was, since doing a win81 system restore did cure it.

 

As I said, I am not 100% sure that the crash of the traffic optimizer was the only reason for that issue. But I did nothing else than some testing of the optimizer. Maybe it happened due to a wrong sequence of closing the programs, dunno.

 

Just wanted to share my experience and maybe there are ideas what else could have been the reason of this malbehavior of P3Dv2?

 

Cheers,

Harry

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

Whether it is or it isn't related to TO, crashes that occur before the main P3d window shows up are usually due to corrupted configuration files (dll.xml, exe.xml, prepar3d.cfg, terrain. cfg, scenery.cfg and your default flight). Here's some general information, for future reference.

 

In order, try each of these and then start P3d again after each change.

 

1. Edit prepar3d.cfg and set the default flight to <blank>. Alternatively, show the scenario window on startup and pick an aircraft and an airport.

[USERINTERFACE]
...
SITUATION=

or


SHOW_SCENARIO_WINDOW=1
...

2. Rename Prepar3d.cfg to Prepar3d.cfg.orig  and let P3d rebuild the cfg file from scratch. See if that allows the app to start properly.

3. Rename dll.xml to dll.xml.orig to disable any add on modules. See it that helps. 

4. Rename exe.xml to exe.xml.orig.

5. Delete everything in the compiled shaders folder and let P3d recompile the shader binaries.

5. Hope that you have recent backups for terrain.cfg and scenery.cfg.  You probably won't need to get this far, though.

[Nemo 1,303]

@ jabloom

 

 

Thank you for you comments. You are right, but  I did most of that what you suggested. Deleted p3d.cfg, deleted shaders. Scenario window was set. I also expected that the P3D repair function would do the rest. But this was probably not the case. Next time when this happens i will follow your suggestions more  carefully. But what scares me is that the issues happened during testing OT under different flight situations. Nothing else installing or tweaking. But maybe it was only a bad coincidence

 

 

Harry

[Mickeyj 35]

I followed this thread now for a few days and i thought i give AI traffic another shot. I was using UT2 now for a few years but left it behind as AI drains too much performance even with the ramdisk solution.

 

Anyway i tried the Optimizer with the WOAI packs. First it is far better than UT2 in terms of performance which was a bit suprising for me. 2. the optimizer is perfect. BIG THANKS to DUKEAV you rock man

 

I have a few nice Aerosoft airports and they are better crowded with traffic. Now they are right perfect Even KDEN by Flightbeam gives me better performance with WOAI+Optimizer than UT2 ever did before. So i leave the AI on for now.

[Gregg_Seipp 565]

 

 

I was using UT2 now for a few years but left it behind as AI drains too much performance even with the ramdisk solution.

 

Hmmm.  I have a license for UT2 but, when I built my new rig, I left it off.  I'd been sitting here wondering how it might work with this app.  Not sure if UT2 optimizes in a way that has the cut-and-dried distance parameter.  (And, if the OP is looking for other kinds of features that might be cool, the ability to filter above an altitude or type aircraft would be nice.  But it's a good tool as it is.)

 

Gregg 

[pmb 5,137]

Gregg, as far as I read the optimizer does not work with UT2 as this injects traffic in a non-standard way.

 

Of course you are invited to explore a possible solution for us UT2 users :-) On the other hand, UT2 has a similar tool with in-game settings incorporated.

 

Kind regards, Michael

[dukeav 46]

@nemo - I hope you are back running again. There is no reason why this should crash P3D since its a separate process, but I'll try changing the traffic settings and see if this happens.

 

Meanwhile I suggest everyone else not change traffic density within P3D while this app is running. Close the optimizer, make changes to traffic and then start it up again.

 

@MJ - thanks for the feedback, that made my day

Hmmm.  I have a license for UT2 but, when I built my new rig, I left it off.  I'd been sitting here wondering how it might work with this app.  Not sure if UT2 optimizes in a way that has the cut-and-dried distance parameter.  (And, if the OP is looking for other kinds of features that might be cool, the ability to filter above an altitude or type aircraft would be nice.  But it's a good tool as it is.)

 

Gregg 

 

Altitude filter should not be much to do. What would the use type filter be?

 

But before that I need work on getting origin/destination loaded automatically.

[Gregg_Seipp 565]

 

 

What would the use type filter be?

 

If I understand the question, it would be for low flyers and bush flyers.  E.g. if you're puttering around airports with smaller than a 3000 foot runway you probably don't care about airplanes above 15,000 much.  (Of course, the opposite is also true...if you're up above 20,000, you probably don't care about airplanes below 3,000.)

[Gregg_Seipp 565]

One little feature that would be really practical is to remember the settings from the last run.  If I set 50 and check the checkbox, if it would remember that and load up with those settings.  If we had that then we could just start it from FSUIPC when FSX/P3D starts.

 

Gregg

[dukeav 46]

One little feature that would be really practical is to remember the settings from the last run.  If I set 50 and check the checkbox, if it would remember that and load up with those settings.  If we had that then we could just start it from FSUIPC when FSX/P3D starts.

 

Gregg

 

I have uploaded a new version:

 

1. Remembers last settings of target, airports, optimization on/off

2. Minimizes on start up

 

Don't have a proper solution for figuring out source and destination airports yet.

[Penz 39]

1. Remembers last settings of target, airports, optimization on/off

Once again, nice stuff Duke. Great suggestion Gregg! :smile:

[Nemo 1,303]

I am very happy with that new version. No problems anymore.

 

Thank yo so much for this phantastic app!

 

Cheers,

Harry

[gfd 15]

I have to add my kudos. I have a question and a suggestion. Say I limit traffic to 100 aircraft and that that will result in all aircraft further out than 20 miles being deleted. This is hypothetical. How will that affect the volume of aircraft in my vicinity while I'm flying. Wouldn't I run out of AI at some point? Probably obvious, but enlightenment appreciated.

 

A suggestion: would it be possible or even desirable to allow the user to decide whether or not to delete traffic on the ground, in the air, or both?

 

Thanks again for the application,

 

Graham

[SquadronLeader 61]

Can someone help me download this - I keep ending up on a google drive and cannot get this file to work

[Penz 39]

In the middle section of the google drive top pane there are some icons, one of them is a vertical arrow pointing down to a horizontal line.

 

Click that one to download the ZIP.