Road Traffic Immersion- Find Reason for Performance Hit?

[HighTowers 1,434]

We all know about the incredible hit road traffic gives, but i have to say i tried it again, and the immersion is so much better with road traffic. Makes things way more realistic looking like there is life around the airport on final. 

 

So has anyone figured WHY there is a performance hit with road traffic?   Why cant the vehicles be converted to a very very light texture , even if it looks crappy (cant see them close up anyhow), just the moving traffic would add a ton to the experience.  It can be done with AI aircraft, so its optimized with the respective light maps and alpha channels etc.  but road traffic, ive never seen anyone attempt to make them better.  

 

Theres gotta be answers other than an fsx bug why it takes such a toll.  But what do i know

 

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

 It can be done with AI aircraft,

 

 

Well, the problem is that AI aircraft and AI boat traffic are both implemented using the SimConnect SDK and that allows 3rd party developers to easily tweak the behavior. A good example of that is DukeSan27's beautiful freeware, Traffic Optimizer for P3d and FSX. Unfortunately, road traffic  is implemented as part of the Living World SDK which is almost entirely undocumented except for the ability to change the file LWcfg.spb which is found (for P3d for example) at:

 

C:\Users\Ray\AppData\Roaming\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v2

 

One can decompile the spb file with the utility spb2xml. Then if you put the resultant file LWcfg.xml in the same folder, it will override the default Living World SDK settings. For example, this is how ORBX's utility slows down road traffic. By editing LWcfg.xml you can change  (by FSX/P3d Region) which vehicle models are displayed and weight how many of each vehicle are used. Here's a code snippet if you feel like pursuing this further:

<LivingWorld.LivingWorldSettings>
    <LivingWorldRegion>
      <RegionID>A</RegionID>
      <RightSideDrive>true</RightSideDrive>
      <FreewayTraffic>
        <TrafficSpeed>100.000</TrafficSpeed>
        <ModelEntry>
          <ModelID>{F3B82B48-30BB-4921-8D20-BF422A0B5059}</ModelID>
          <EntryWeight>6</EntryWeight>
        </ModelEntry>

IN addition to road vehicles, the models for boats and ambient traffic (airports etc.) are also defined in LWcfg.xml.

[Richard Sennett 2,499]

Well, the problem is that AI aircraft and AI boat traffic are both implemented using the SimConnect SDK and that allows 3rd party developers to easily tweak the behavior. A good example of that is DukeSan27's beautiful freeware, Traffic Optimizer for P3d and FSX. Unfortunately, road traffic  is implemented as part of the Living World SDK which is almost entirely undocumented except for the ability to change the file LWcfg.spb which is found (for P3d for example) at:

 

Funny I just downloaded Orbx traffic program last night will this help with fps hit without getting deeper into it ? thanks

[Purr 111]

Rich,

 

Which orbx program are you referring to?

 

Alex

[steve howlett 137]

As far as i know Rich it only slows them down.

otherwise they are all moving at about 200mph....which in the UK is probably quite realistic :smile:

 

  steve

[TheGrunt 44]

otherwise they are all moving at about 200mph....which in the UK is probably quite realistic :smile:

Not at least during rush hour on M-highways leading to and from London, what I've seen travelling there. 1 mph is more close to the truth in my experience

[galfed 3]

FlusiFix for years offers the ability to slow down traffic. No other changes to the FPS hit are made, only the car speed can be adjusted to a normal level.

[Richard Sennett 2,499]

Rich,

 

Which orbx program are you referring to?

 

Alex

 

Here yo go Alex

 

http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/20979-tool-orbx-slower-vehicle-traffic-worldwide-version-300/

[pmanhart 176]

OP, do you happen to have simobject shadows enabled?

 

The Road Traffic on it's own affects framerates negatively, but add in their ability to cast shadows and/or receive shadows and it will impact FPS even more.

[Clutch Cargo 384]

Odd, as that appears to be one of the objects that do not effect my performance, lot's of AI auto traffic.  I usually run it at 23-25% for autos, 5-10% for pleasure boats and 100% for ships.  I use shading  for the autos as it looks really immersive in the afternoons with shadows of each car along the highway.  I even add additional traffic with new roads in my scenery.  I do recall Los Angeles gave me a hit but that was with a lot of add-ons going on there so I think that was more of the culprit.

 

Guess I am lucky as I have no super-duper PC.

[Purr 111]

Thanks Rich! Didn't know about this. Well, it's unfortunate that it seems traffic is going to be pretty hard to improve performance on, but on the other hand, with fsx there were things deemed impossible to change that some bright mind out there found a way to hack around!

 

Alex

[Bjoern 1,151]

I only notice a performance difference between cars on and off in areas like NYC where it competes for resources with 400 AI aircraft and (badly optimized) landmarks.

[Gregg_Seipp 565]

BTW, if you're using FSX SP2 you may have to open the XML file the tool creates and fix it...

 

I did a Replace All <WorldBase.ContainerTitle> to <SimContain.ContainerTitle> and I now have slower traffic with FSX SP2.

 

Gregg

[HighTowers 1,434]

Thanks for the interesting programming edits. Ill try that one. The others i believe just slow them down which is fine in itself for realism, but i was just trying to understand why they take such a toll when its really a minute feature. Coming into a big airport, you shouldnt have to turn down road traffic, because you expect there be tons of traffic in big city approach. If your doing rural or less urban, then its not a big deal. If the hundreds of vehicles are similar to the vegetation issue, which was causing a hit in the early V2 days of p3d, but was found to be a performance hit problem.   So take the same principle in order to get the vehicle to be extremely light on VAS, and very little burden on cpu. Of course I may not be understanding it right but the idea is there lol. 

 

And like Alex said, there were things before that were impossible to overcome, one of the notorious being weather radar, but now we have it.  So if someone can figure out vehicle traffic, I think this would be another huge hurdle.  

Cause ive seen them in xplane and they movement look great like that with no seeming hit on performance.  Dont need to see close up details. its flight simulator. Its just the immersion factor.