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machie

General Prepar Performance questios

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Hi All,

 

So I am a newbie to prepar—I have V2.3... I have been working on installing the sim and as many third party add-on programs as I can without forum help. I must say that the times I have posted for help on the forums I have received great information and help. So here is the deal. I need to get a better overall understanding from the knowledgeable base users about a few important aspects of Prepar.

 

1. Is there a memory fix in prepar like the one in FSX?

 

 

 

2. Can Prepar better utilize hardware than FSX---if so how much to buy to get better frame rates---what I am trying to get at with this question is this----The old FSX seemed to work better with more heavy duty Video Cards and memory and processors---but only to a point due to its initial programing restrictions---is prepar a fundamentally better program or is it really just the same thing with a different look.---I am running my Mega scenery earth 2.0 with high rez cities (I own all of their software so I can pick and choose in the Scenery manager what I want to use as I fly along---If I load up more than two or three states at a time I will crash the Sim to Desktop.

 

Thanks to anyone who might want to chime in on this topic---I am looking for any and all help---so far the sim is running about the same as my old fsx—even below the old level at times---coming into LAX with the Mega southern Cal 2.0 and the LA San Diego High Rez I was only getting about 4.5 FPS—this was much better in FSX.

 

 

 

Cheers and thanks for any help

 

 

 

Dorn

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Hello Dom,

 

first of all it would help if you would state the specs of your macheine :) i dont have any Megascenery installed in my P3D2 as i am not into photoreal stuff. 

 

P3D2 is still a 32bit application so the VAS limit of 4GB will apply. Besides that it is still a CPU bound cause of the old Microsoft FSX code. However due to the fact that it is DX11 it will take massive advantage of new GPU hardware (SLI is still not available in P3D2).

The key to a good performing P3D2 is the balance of your hardware and the settings you apply to it. If you run the lates GPU the CPU will most likely be the bottleneck and you will run into performance problems.

 

Basically the old FSX tweaks including the highmemfix are not working in P3D2 as it is already optimized. Nevertheless there are some different tweaks made official by LM for ex the cloud size issue. Besides that there are some tweaks for HDR and rain but they do not addressing performance.

 

Few questions:

 

Was P3D2 running in a stable state when it was freshly installed on your system?

Did you install P3D2 official compatible add ons or did you use the migration tool? If so uninstall the and do not use them as thy might lead to more CTDs.

Do you use AppCrashView? It gives you information about the reason of the crash of P3D2.

Did you already place the issue to the developer of Megascenery?

Did you read through the LM forums already?


Greetz


MJ


 


My youtube blog________________________Prepar3D v2.5/v3


youtubefooter.jpg

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Mickeyj,


 


Thanks for the response. I now have a bit better understanding of the Program—it’s pluses and limitations.


 


I will answer your questions as best as I can---I am not a very knowledgeable computer hardware person—I have been simming for 25 years but I am really a pilot using a training device when I sim and although I often spend weeks of 12/14 hour days learning a new program I am not a “computer Knowledgeable person” by any measure. For instance when you talk about DX11 I wonder if it is installed by Prepar or you must, in fact, install it yourself.


 


Answers to you questions


 



  1. Prepar was stable and really running well---if I run only the native Prepar stuff I will get frames rates between 35 and 50---even over 50 at altitude.




  2. If the add ons were official or had a Prepar installment option then I disabled the Migration Toll and used the Prepar installer. My mega scenery is installed with both different options since Mega Scenery is changing over to a Prepar ready installer—but not all of their stuff is finished. Question—What are CTD’s




  3. I don’t use App Crash View but my crashes or all due to memory running out (I get a message to this effect)




  4. Even though I am a Mega Scenery Lover and have been a good customer since their very first product issue---and even though I own all of their scenery---I mean every state, every high rez city, every European country I have not received any response to my support questions during the past year---either with their contact form or from their other option of direct email.




  5. I have been in and out of there LM forums and have received help—although those forums are not as active as the Avsim forums.



 


My computer is a fairly good one—I have a $900.00 dollar I7 quad core Extreme 3.3 Mega Hertz processor—(not overclocked).


 


Two NVidia 760 2 Gig video cards


 


Good 3 and four Terra internal hard drives (my mega scenery is installed on a Hybrid drive).


 


Thanks again for the thoughtful reply.


 


 


 


Cheers

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Hi Dom,

 

 

ok lots of good infos there. Lets start with two different app failures that can occur during an sim session.

 

1. the CTD or Crash To Desktop:

-means the app quits without any kind of notification. It can have different reasons. That why it would be good to have this little freeware program AppCrashView. After an CTD or other severe app failures you can open it up and it will give you lots of strange infos about what just happend. It is usefull for the developer so that he can have a look into it and check if it is his add on or the app (P3D2) itself that has failed.

 

2. the OOM or Out Of Memory error.

-this is the most common error which leads to an sim app failure. I try to keep it simple and understandable. P3D2 is an 32bit app means that it can handle 4GB of VAS (Virtual Address Space) ONLY!!! This VAS limit is a hard limit and it is independent of your installed amount of RAM and it has nothing to do with your hardware. 

In practise, every item that will be loaded into the sim will use some VAS. Now if you load a heavy HD scenery with a heavy HD aircraft and really bad weather with HD cloud textures then your flight will last only minutes till the VAS limit i reached and you will get this all known "you have just ran out of memory..." message.

By the way the OOM comes always combined with an error message as mentioned above. 

 

From my side this was the most easiest explanation of a CTD and an OOM. Now you might wanna know  what you can do to avoid that. The best way is to start clean and turn down all your settings to a minimum. Work your way up. Know your flight sim system limitation. 

 

There are lots of good infos about these two errors here in the forums.

 

Lastly, if you do not get any support from the developer i would suggest NOT TO support him anymore!!! you (we) are a customer(s) and not a paying beta tester(s)!!! Even if you are a big fan of the product. There is sometimes a point where you gonna have to drop things and to move on.

 

Oh, one last question (man i loved Inspector Columbo :D) as you have 2 GX 760 installed, are you running the sim in SLI? If so you will go to jail for the next 995 years ;) Neither FSX nor P3Dv2.x supports SLI. SLI will cause major performance problems. However there is some kind of driver feature that will let you use SLI in v2.x but not in a user friendly way. So go ahead and switch off SLI. 4.5 FPS is way to less for a system like yours!!!

I have an 2 year old Intel i7 3770k quad core oc´ed 4.6GHz 8GB RAM and an GTX780ti. On my youtube blog you can see how well P3Dv2.x is performing with mid to high settings in lighting, autogen and scenery complexity. I rarely get CTDs or OOMs. Forgot to mention im neither a hardware guru nor a software kinda guy too. I just read alot and made my own experience :)


Greetz


MJ


 


My youtube blog________________________Prepar3D v2.5/v3


youtubefooter.jpg

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Thanks Mickeyj

 

Lots of clear understandable information in response to my questions---I do not understand anything about SLI--I got the two cards so that I can use a lot of monitors--I have 6 but am only running 4---most of what I do is on only one screen and a second for some cockpit instruments and maps ETC.---where do I turn off SLI---is this a control within the sim?---If it is outside the sim I do not think it could be on since I do not know where to enable it--going to go look at your bolg now

 

Thanks again

 

Cheers

 

Dorn

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G´day Dom,

 

SLI is a function of nVidia. That means that both GPUs are connected with each other. There must be an option either in the nVidia settings or nVidia experience. I suggest you ask google or better youtube for that as i do not have an SLI system Nevertheless you should be able to run an multi monitor setup anyway. You gonna have to check over at LM and place your issues there.

Im running my P3D2 on a small LG beamer.


Greetz


MJ


 


My youtube blog________________________Prepar3D v2.5/v3


youtubefooter.jpg

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Did you bridge the 2 cards together? Its a small length of printed circuit board that connects the 2 cards together. If not, or you do not see that this is the case then they will be independant and good to go for multi monitor displays.


Keith Sandford.

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Thanks Slip Stream---I suppose I am good to go---Just two cards in two seperate slots on the board

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Mickeyj,

 

 

 

Thanks for the reply. I went over to your Blog---great videos--I subscribed and will check in often. I remember that you said that you do not use Photo real scenery---your videos are really great--do you use only ORBX? ----I see a lot of nice weather in your videos--what weather program do you prefer?

 

 

 

Cheers

 

 

 

Dorn

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Mickeyj,

 

 

 

Thanks for the reply. I went over to your Blog---great videos--I subscribed and will check in often. I remember that you said that you do not use Photo real scenery---your videos are really great--do you use only ORBX? ----I see a lot of nice weather in your videos--what weather program do you prefer?

 

 

 

Cheers

 

 

 

Dorn

 

Hello,

 

thanks for stopping by. As you´ve seen in the vids P3D2 is performing very well on my system. I use mainly either ORBX regions or FTX Global+Vector and openLC Europe and some of my favorite freeware scenery. For every video you will see a list of add ons i used in the there.

 

My fav weather app is Active Sky Next. I switched from OpusFSX but upgraded to OpusFSI. Both apps are great. OpusFSI comes with some more features than ASN.

 

For the environment textures i use REX4.

 

ATM im waiting for Deltasim Studio´s LHA vessel to be finished. I would like to do another naval ops video in combination with P3D2´s Observer Management and Simdirector.


Greetz


MJ


 


My youtube blog________________________Prepar3D v2.5/v3


youtubefooter.jpg

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it is late at night here in California but I am going to look into all you mentioned in the bright fresh daylight oof the AM---more later

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sli DOES work with P3D! But if you don't know if you're running sli then you are not. Also it only works with single monitor OR Nvidia surround. No dual or weird quad setups. To answer your questions, no memory fix is needed and P3D does make better use of hardware to an extent. I find my 4770K is holding back my 2x 780 when running P3D but the performance is almost doubled when compared to a single 780. I would suggest putting a bridge on the 760's and running single monitor or 3 monitor surround to see if that improves performance.  

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sli DOES work with P3D! But if you don't know if you're running sli then you are not. Also it only works with single monitor OR Nvidia surround. No dual or weird quad setups. To answer your questions, no memory fix is needed and P3D does make better use of hardware to an extent. I find my 4770K is holding back my 2x 780 when running P3D but the performance is almost doubled when compared to a single 780. I would suggest putting a bridge on the 760's and running single monitor or 3 monitor surround to see if that improves performance.  

 

One moment please :-) I have a simular setup with a I7-4770K@4,7GHZ and one monitor 1920x1200 and one EVGA GTX780SC@1110 MHZ edition. Are you saing that i can improve my FPS by adding another GTX780 in SLI then? My powersuply is a PRO850W from Corsair. Z97-Pro motherboard i think from memory.

 

I dont have a plan to use multimonitor for now anyway.

 

Please help me setup this and maybe show me some default FPS with your system with P3D default loadup. I am having 85 FPS right now on default startup. (FTXGlobal)

 

Please help me with a setup :-) email me ? michaelmoe@email.dk ?

 

And GTX780SC from EVGA is hard to come buy in Denmark right now. Can i use a EVGA Classified GTX780 as well ?

 

Thanks

 

Michael Moe


Michael Moe

 

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One moment please :-) I have a simular setup with a I7-4770K@4,7GHZ and one monitor 1920x1200 and one EVGA GTX780SC@1110 MHZ edition. Are you saing that i can improve my FPS by adding another GTX780 in SLI then? My powersuply is a PRO850W from Corsair. Z97-Pro motherboard i think from memory.

 

I dont have a plan to use multimonitor for now anyway.

 

Please help me setup this and maybe show me some default FPS with your system with P3D default loadup. I am having 85 FPS right now on default startup. (FTXGlobal)

 

Please help me with a setup :-) email me ? michaelmoe@email.dk ?

 

And GTX780SC from EVGA is hard to come buy in Denmark right now. Can i use a EVGA Classified GTX780 as well ?

 

Thanks

 

Michael Moe

 

Well let me start by saying I will NOT recommend buying another 780. I say that because, as anyone who has dabbled in FS knows, every system is different and I would feel bad if I convinced you to spend money and you didn't notice any improvement. I purchased my second 780 for other games that truly benefit from SLI and it was on sale for 50% off. I wasn't expecting any performance improvement in P3D or FSX when I bought it but was pleasantly surprised when there was:) I might have been misleading in saying that my performance nearly doubled by adding the card. What I should have said was FPS had a slight increase, but the true benefit comes with increasing graphics settings and such. Overcast conditions no longer turn a pleasant flight into a stuttering mess. I can add things like SGSS with Nvidia Inspector without a harsh performance penalty. The sim just feels smoother. So to me performance nearly doubled because the sim looked that much better. But like I said, I cannot recommend anyone go that route because I can't guarantee that it will work for you. SLI is not officially supported for Prepar3d so things like driver updates, changing settings or installing addons can have an adverse reaction and bring the whole thing crashing down.

Hope I didn't get your hopes up to high but 85 fps is doing pretty good as it is. 

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Hope I didn't get your hopes up to high but 85 fps is doing pretty good as it is. 

 

No worrys,

 

Wish though i had that 85FPS in FTX UK,with the NGX and EGLL from Aerosoft. Was willing to pay for an extra card for a increase in FPS in general.

 

Michael Moe


Michael Moe

 

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