seems strange that such an FPS improving tweak is not mentioned anywhere I can see by LM or PMDG,after all they must be aware of the free  performance increase available in  their product,may be they are all sitting at home trying it out as we type

peter,

I would agree with this. LM might want to set the record straight and save a whole bunch of people a whole lot of time... :>)

 

1/ If we have Hyperthreading on, we have to use an AM to keep more than one thread starting on a core, since a core contains two LPs. If two LPs (logical processors) on a Core, are occupied by the main P3D thread, and a service thread, then that Core is contended between the needs of the two threads. Instead we want to ensure the main thread a has Core to itself, uncontended by other threads on that Core.

 

SteveW so on a 4 cores HT=on using an affinity mask of 254 (11111110) i mix the main P3d thread with OS' one on core 0? Should i reserve  both core 0' LPs to system? (AM=252=11111100?)

 

tks

SteveW so on a 4 cores HT=on using an affinity mask of 254 (11111110) i mix the main P3d thread with OS' one on core 0? Should i reserve  both core 0' LPs to system? (AM=252=11111100?)

 

tks

There's no "OS" thread, rather, think what addons will be running that are .exe, they have their own affinity. What your AM does is ensure that the main P3D thread has a core to itself, that is from other threads of P3D (not other system threads).

 

So really you ask about leaving an entire core for those other threads. It could be handy depending on your addons.

 

Also you are ganging up two service threads per core elsewhere on the CPU, this can lead to contention and stutter. I would try 84=(01,01,01,00), 168=(10,10,10,00), 21=(00,01,01,01), etc. Masks like 244=(11,11,01,00), do the job of 1) keeping the main thread to a core, 2) leaving a core free, and 3) *intensify* the use of the cores by the service threads to maximize those other two cores. Too many threads will destabilise the main thread in the end, and it won't maintain smoothness overall.

Steve,

You sure have my trust when it comes to AM.

 

I use 84 but after reading the above I will give 244 a try. 

 

Thanks.

Why do you think i put in big RED text Advanced, "Test on your own PC."

If people dont know how many core's or if they have HT on, then I hope they have the common since to work that out.

Thanks for the feed back but I think if people cannot take note of red text then there is no hope.

Your guide is really good but I need to take issue with your assumption that everyone has the knowledge and maybe some common sense.

 

Please let me cite one real world example. Some years back people were complaining and receiving compensation because they had touched the outside of a kettle that is used to boil water and burned themselves. At the time, the instruction manual did not state that that the user should be CAREFULL and not touch the outside of the appliance after it had boiled water because it was going to be hot.

 

If you buy coffee or any other hot beverage from anywhere now, you will see a warning on the cup that the contents are going to be hot. Yes, a lot of it is due to the compensation culture but it acctually originated from the fact that some people had read the instruction book and it didn't tell them they were going to burn themselves on a hot kettle. Common sense is relative.

 

As I said, your manual is clear, it's pretty, it's well written. The area around Affinity Mask is vague. Because the rest is so well written and clear it's taken for granted that 84 is the number to use. You tell the reader to test on their PC, so what number do they use? 84? You see where this is going lol.

 

AF almost needs a chapter to itself as it's the one area that is the least understood.

 

These are simply my observations.

Steve,

You sure have my trust when it comes to AM.

 

I use 84 but after reading the above I will give 244 a try. 

 

Thanks.

Thanks David. Have a look at the Setup tutorial/guide discussion, that's quite interesting too.

There's no "OS" thread, rather, think what addons will be running that are .exe, they have their own affinity. What your AM does is ensure that the main P3D thread has a core to itself, that is from other threads of P3D (not other system threads).

 

So really you ask about leaving an entire core for those other threads. It could be handy depending on your addons.

 

Also you are ganging up two service threads per core elsewhere on the CPU, this can lead to contention and stutter. I would try 84=(01,01,01,00), 168=(10,10,10,00), 21=(00,01,01,01), etc. Masks like 244=(11,11,01,00), do the job of 1) keeping the main thread to a core, 2) leaving a core free, and 3) *intensify* the use of the cores by the service threads to maximize those other two cores. Too many threads will destabilise the main thread in the end, and it won't maintain smoothness overall.

 

very informative, thanks.

 

from what I understand about AM is to have a test-and-see approach rather than a theoretical choice "a priori".

 

from what I saw on my system AM like 84 (and other using only a LP per core) give insufficient texture loading (infact CPU use around 30%) and so blurries ...

much better without inserting AM in CFG, but I think there is room for improvement as 254 instead give slightly better results ....

have a test-and-see approach

Yes, it depends on what you have running already, and what will run as a consequence of the sim starting. And networking, P3D and FSX, are network bound with the simconnect named pipe service.

The value defaults to zero once you start P3D.

Well given this breath taking statement you made perhaps I can see where your coming from.

 

 

"Advanced, Test on your own PC. (LM say there is no need for a AM)"

If this is not good enough then perhaps I should explain how to turn your PC ON in the guild! Given your example above about hot water.

Well given this breath taking statement you made perhaps I can see where your coming from.

Sorry?

 

The statement holds true. If you change OPTIMIZE_DENSE_CLOUDS=0 to OPTIMIZE_DENSE_CLOUDS=1 in your main Prepar3d.cfg file and then select a profile you saved earlier, which still contains OPTIMIZE_DENSE_CLOUDS=0 from the startup screen, it will overwrite your Prepar3d.cfg file with OPTIMIZE_DENSE_CLOUDS=0

 

The [Weather] section in you main prepar3D.cfg file is overwritten with the settings in any user saved config file. When I made that statement I was unaware of this and soon after posted a correction.

 

Why have 'a go' at me because I posted some observations regarding affinity mask in your instructions. I went to great lengths to point out that I thought your instructions were very good indeed.

No

You did not give any info at all just a simple statement that was very misleading. If you had added what you just did then that's good. You did not, just a brash statement without looking into it.

 

I was not having a go at you per-say just that at some point you have to trust that people reading it have an IQ above 2 digits, hence the remark about explaining how to turn your PC on. Not aimed at you. 

 

Sorry am not into telling people a kettle is hot, unless the person is under 5 years old and they need to learn, frankly I find this pathetic.

 

Perhaps aircraft should have a warning on the back of every seat, Warring crashing can damage your heath. .........  :smile:

I know you was not making it up, that's how the world is these day.  :unsure:

With a fixed fps we are also giving the sim time to load textures, and also addons responding to the frame event are not pushed to run as fast as possible which progressively eats into the sim performance as the simconnect subsystem ramps up to cope with the unnecessary stress.

 

Even though the theory you are telling sounds perfectly reasonable, in practice these settings just don't work on my system. If I set a target of 30 fps in P3D together with VSync and Triple Buffering and set the Frame Limiter to 30 fps in NI, then the sim is just a stuttery mess. It perfectly holds the 30 fps in the default scenario with the F22 in Langley (frame variance as displayed by P3D is 0.1%). However, it stutters like hell. If I unlock the frames (unlimited in P3D with VSync and Triple Buffering + no limit in NI) then even when the sim is not able to hold 60 fps (which is obviously smoother than 30 fps), I see much less stutters. Same thing in aircraft that are heavy on frames like the PMDG 777. Much smoother with limited frames. So even if the theory makes perfect sense, it just doesn't work for me...

Haha ^^ regarding the aircraft.

 

I wasn't making that stuff up about the kettle... it really happens and it's all completely true. Sent you a PM, let's take this offline.

Well of course it's true. There's been a commercial airing on television for the past month or so proudly declaiming to the teeming masses of couch potatoes that "Six is greater than One!"...

 

...what an amazing discovery! I hope Steven Hawking has been watching.