The key word in all this AM talk is "tinker". If you think it works for you... great! But the OS does a much better job of scheduling processes than any human can do manually.

 

 

Firstly, how did you find out you were only outputting 59Hz?
Secondly, what did you 'change to match' in NI (Nvidia Inspector I assume)?

 

Heya Ian, 

 

I right-clicked on the desktop and selected "Screen Resolution", advanced features. There is showed the 59 fps. I had seen this before, and changed it to 60, but it reverts back to 59. 

 

Given that limit, I did indeed use NI to match rates.

 

And yeah, there is quite a bit of tinkering in this little hobby of ours!

 

 

Rob, do you still use AM and if so what value ?

 

In v2.4 and now v2.5 I no longer use any Affinity settings ... leave it at default which will be all cores.

 

Cheers, Rob.

 

 

And yeah, there is quite a bit of tinkering in this little hobby of ours!

 

And there always will be tinkering unless our hobby is injected with 4-5 million more financially willing users (read not pirated).  If you look at top game titles they often sell 7-8 Million copies within just a few weeks of release, sales tapper down rapidly after initial release ... these top game titles have a employed 1000 people working on the title to provide necessary testing and polish (and many of these titles have no SDK at all).

 

Now compare this with 1 or 2 - maybe 4 artists/devs that work on a single FS title ... you can see why the door to fix and tinker exists.  Allocation of resources to fit the scale of the market ... and keep in mind 60% of usage comes from non-paying users (yes the numbers are that high).

 

I see two solutions:

1.  Show people the value of software and what it takes to produce software

2.  Find more people with money to spend on this hobby

 

Cheers, Rob.

In v2.4 and now v2.5 I no longer use any Affinity settings ... leave it at default which will be all cores.

 

Cheers, Rob.

Thanks Rob.

 

What is your advice on addon programs and their affinity settings : TrackIR , Fraps, Weather Engine ( ASE , REX or Opus ) ?

I see two solutions:

1.  Show people the value of software and what it takes to produce software

2.  Find more people with money to spend on this hobby

 

Cheers, Rob.

There is one more aspect I just found mentioned in a German language forum and tend to agree.

 

Flight simulation industry could be much more active in the media and notably on the internet. Forums, conferences, cross banner advertising etc. are nice for those already active in the field. Microsoft Flight Simulator was something a lot of folks got to know because of the media presence of Microsoft in print newsletters, magazines, the Internet, press conferences and releases, even TV ads. Where are such by Lockheed Martin, ORBX, Laminar, Aerosoft etc. geared to the broad public not yet active in the field?

 

Best regards, Michael

What is your advice on addon programs and their affinity settings : TrackIR , Fraps, Weather Engine ( ASE , REX or Opus ) ?

 

I don't set TrackIR affinity any more like I did in the past.

 

I don't use Fraps (better quality but just too hard on performance especially at my resolutions) any more -- ShadowPlay exclusively which is limited to 1440p recording for my Titan Blacks but is so much better on performance front.

 

OpusFSI I use networked, ASN I use networked, FSGRW I use local ... none seem to have any significant performance impact.  I use REX for textures only.

 

 

 

Where are such by Lockheed Martin, ORBX, Laminar, Aerosoft etc. geared to the broad public not yet active in the field?

 

Problem is that advertising doesn't come cheap ... major coverage advertising is even more expensive.  If I were to venture a guess, I'd say YouTube is the highest exposure medium right now ... but again, if you do anything commercial in the YouTube front it's not cheap.

 

To be honest, I think Pete Wright (Frogglesim) deciding to do a weekly "what's new" YouTube video is a very good idea ... that same idea needs to be expanded to all 3rd party and FS platforms.  Needs to get bumped in search priority (google/youtube) ... for sure it can attract a lot of dead wood but heck, I can surf YouTube on my smart TV, my phone, etc. etc.  Now I don't subscribe to frooglesim's channel and I don't necessarily agree with his opinions, but he is trying to "make it known" and regardless of platform or accuracy of his information, that's an important "try".

 

I would estimate that 85% of the folks that subscribe/view to my YouTube channel (which I really don't promote or even attempt to make any money from at all) never read my video descriptions (why I put text overlays in my videos) ... for better or worse, the play button and only the play button is where most seem to reside.  I'm not passing any judgement here, it's just the way it is.

 

Sorry John, got way off topic here.

 

Cheers, Rob. 

As hardware becomes cheaper, in a few years a completely immersive experience will be available to a critical mass, a percentage of the mainstream public, that will ignite growth to a larger user base.  

 

I've been wondering if all the simconnect work is going to affect rendering.  If that code was threading all around the P3D code, even the rendering code, like a cancer strangling it, even a few percentages shaved off could relieve that bottleneck on the main thread, or more particularly, the pathways from it to the other threads (which is more likely what is causing problems, too much pushed through at certain times, bandwidth ... not memory).

 

I am convinced that once an experience is uninterrupted with technical demands for the average user that P3D use will explode to that kind of user base, non-technical users.  Our type will still be the critical core.   Companies the size of LM pay tens of millions for that kind of connectivity to it's prospective clients.  This is a no-brainer for them.   And if they keep listening to the core users (e.g. me it's beginning to be about fixing the ATC, which I know will probably be a third party fix) it will carry the FS flag easily beyond the next decade into the future.

 

Sorry if this seems off topic; been lurking alot past month and decided to blurt some nonsense out right here right now.

Thanks Rob.

 

What is your advice on addon programs and their affinity settings : TrackIR , Fraps, Weather Engine ( ASE , REX or Opus ) ?

All I can relate to you with regard to your question is my own personal experience. I have two CPUs each with 6 physical cores. I tried an AM preventing P3d from using cores 8 through 11 (the 4 "top" cores on CPU1). I then forced ASN, TrackIR, Traffic Optimizer and GTN 750 to one of those 4 cores. Those 4 cores rarely showed more than 20% use, except for the GTN 750 core which was generally showing 50-65% usage. Keep in mind that an AM can't prevent other unmasked processes from using a core also.

 

The result? No discernable change in smoothness, frame rate or anything else. BTW, turning HT on (and having 24 threads) did nothing of note either.

The key word in all this AM talk is "tinker". If you think it works for you... great! But the OS does a much better job of scheduling processes than any human can do manually.

Tinkering may be fun and actually producing good results for some individuals under certain scenarios. However, I have to agree with jabloomf that tinkering without knowing what’s going on under the hood probably will be futile at the end. On the other hand, I am getting consistent satisfactory results by applying the following three changes based on common sense and some useful tips found in this forum:

 

• Stop all the unnecessary services and applications. Make sure CPU usage under task manager shows no more than 1% before starting P3D. A clean system brings about the biggest improvement in FPS and smoothness on my system.

 

• Balance the GPU and CPU loads – Cranking up the shadow settings for complex scenery and lower it in less complex areas.

 

• Don’t use the wide-view aspect ratio. Turn it off usually results smoother simulation – I believe this has been discussed in length on this forum.

 

After making the above changes, I can crank up all the scenery sliders to the max while achieving smooth performance flying over Seattle in dusk/dawn with ORBX PNW. See the videos below. My definition of smoothness is that there is no jerkiness between control inputs and airplane responses. I also believe that the smoothness will be lost if I run any other add-on because I only have a mid-rage system ([email protected] GHz and a 2GB GTX770 card)

 

Piper Cherokee KBFI at Dusk

 

 

747-400 KBFI at Dawn

 

 

Vince

Sorry John, got way off topic here.

 

No worries, Rob - always enjoy your perspective.

 

Per your earlier comment about piracy and sales volume.

 

Piracy sucks, and all those pimple-faced denizens of the sub-world with orange dicks (you know, from wanking off while eating too many Cheetos) really are just scabs on the underbelly of life. They contribute nothing to the greater good.

 

But, I do want to remind you where LM really makes the dough. For example, assume we have 2,000 upstanding members of AVSIM that fly P3D and actually paid for it. Further assume that half purchased the Student license at 60 bucks each, and remaining half are Professionals at $200 a pop. That adds up to $60,000 + $200,000, or $260,000 total, which seems like a lot of money. I can assure you, however, that amount does not come close to the monthly subscription fee that LM likely enjoys at a Government installation where they bury the license cost in hardware installations, facilities, and software. Nor does $250K cover the burdened cost of a well-paid software engineer. I also believe that LM solicits inputs from the Orbx-MilViz-Carenado-Opsu-HiFi Techs of the world in order to build a catalog that they can pick and choose from. My understanding is they have no interest in developing an improved weather engine. But, if ASN or Opus creates something they can use (and think of the royalties!), they can incorporate that capability for "special mission" planning. Maybe that is how they found out the F-35 is useless in bad weather!     But a 3rd-party development community is nothing but upside for LM, from which they can select and implement in their high-margin flight school installations.  

 

Lockheed Martin is one of the most successful government contractors out there, ranging from data centers to chairs, and they know what they are doing. Having finally gotten to the point where I enjoy flying P3D V2.4 (versus running in tweako-mania mode), I am just glad that someone is sharing that technology and that there is a road map moving forward.

 

On the dark side, though, I do see declining opportunities for the flight simulation market. It is kind of like my other hobby, restoring 1960's Fords. That market is drying up, the inventory is rusting away, and the "old white guys" that fostered that entire industry are in decline. General aviation is in decline, for so many reasons, that it is inevitable that the market for flying simulators declines as well. Still, when I am taxiing around KMRY and make the turn over Monterey Bay, I have to believe it has never been as good as it is now!

 

Well, we certainly did get off topic there, didn't we! 

 

 

Lockheed Martin is one of the most successful government contractors out there, ranging from data centers to chairs, and they know what they are doing.

 

Yes they are extremely diverse, not just military contracts -- LM is into all kinds of technology.

 

Yes, it was a little disappointing to see Tom's demographic survey showing those old crusty men like myself having the highest user count.  But hey, the young get old and crusty too eventually.

 

Cheers, Rob

On the other hand, I am getting consistent satisfactory results by applying the following three changes based on common sense and some useful tips found in this forum:

 

• Stop all the unnecessary services and applications. Make sure CPU usage under task manager shows no more than 1% before starting P3D. A clean system brings about the biggest improvement in FPS and smoothness on my system.

• Balance the GPU and CPU loads – Cranking up the shadow settings for complex scenery and lower it in less complex areas.

• Don’t use the wide-view aspect ratio. Turn it off usually results smoother simulation – I believe this has been discussed in length on this forum.

...

Vince

I completely agree with this approach. At least this type of strategy is based on facts, not speculation.

 

Don't get me wrong about tinkering though. Experimentation is a good thing. The trouble is that such tweaking is not a substitute for better hardware.

Can someone point me to the wide-view aspect ratio chatter?  I was not aware of this performance tip.  I don't know if it matters since I'm using a fixed FOV, but I am curious.

With WideviewAspect set to False you Fov is more narrow than with it set to true.

So less view to the sides.

 

Because less has to be calculated the sim might run a little smoother.

Myself, I use True..

 

Everything you want to know of WideviewAspect . See also Part 2 and 3.

 

http://youtu.be/qjbCFNSofpk

 

BTW Denali : did you made any progress on improving your Distortion Fix ? I have 3x 32" and while it is working the scenery is less sharp when using the fix...