Question regarding Prepar3d 2.5 behavior

[Jesus Perdomo 0]

Hello everyone,

 

I have been a lurker of these forums for about 3 years now, but it is only now that I have decided to make my first post, and unfortunately it is with a question.

 

I have been an FSX user for around 4 years, but recently I was convinced by a fellow simmer that Prepar3d is worth the upgrade, especially since version 2.5 turned out to be very polished. For that reason I decided to give it a try with the Academic version. I have installed a few of my most used add-ons (REX 4, FTX Global and Vector, Soft Clouds and KMIA from LatinVFR) to use with this version of the simulator.

 

Even though everything looked very promising with the use of DX11, tesselation, better lighting and overall graphical improvement over FSX, I have come to notice a few things that are a little bit disappointing in my point of view.

 

To illustrate what I mean, I will add a picture to the post:

 

http://i.imgur.com/6IYsZtN.jpg

 

As you can see, everything above that red line is completely blurred. Is it normal P3d 2.5 behavior to have such a low level of detail radius? I have tried to increase this in the simulator display options and also through the Prepar3d.cfg file, but these tweaks have not had any effect. 

 

Another problem that I am having is that, even though I may get used to live with the short radius of detail, as soon as I start moving towards these "blurries" the buildings pop up in a very noticeable way. 

 

Here are my computer specs"

 

Processor: Intel i7 4790k @ 4.4 GHz

Graphics: EVGA GTX 980 Superclocked

RAM: 8 GB

Prepar3d is installed on a 1TB Western Digital Black

 

That picture was taken using one of the default GA aircraft. 

 

My graphics settings are as follows:

 

FXAA: Off (Set through Inspector)

MSAA: 8 samples

Texture Filtering: Anisotropic x16

Texture Quality: Medium (1024x1024)

Resolution: 1920x1080x32

Vsync: Off (Set through Inspector)

Target Framerate: 30

Tesselation Enabled

 

Lastly, these are my autogen settings:

 

 

http://i.gyazo.com/e4ae13600ba00282069a17dcde230def.png

 

Is this normal behavior, or is there something wrong with my system?

 

 

Thank you all!

[WotanUK 289]

It may well be Level of Detail radius, i only run at 3.5, increasing this setting makes things look better at a distance but has a significant VAS impact.  Some people (Rob) seem to be able to run silly settings at something like 6.5, no idea how.

[Jesus Perdomo 0]

My current LOD Radius setting is 6.5. I have tried increasing that to 9.5 even, and I see no change. I also read somewhere on this forum that that setting doesn't do anything anymore on P3d since 2.4

[Richard Sennett 2,499]

This not normal with your rig and that res monitor and I'm a bit perplexed why this is happening - makes no sense but try not using NI and maybe a nice clean install of your video diver - something is not adding up - do you have all of your motherboard drivers up to date also make sure vector is not messing something up - I would see whats up before installing that and go from there - you need to install stuff into P3D very carefully one at a time

 

6.5 is max that P3D will do but this is not your problem its something else - lod has nothing to do with that much blur

 

Did you overclock your video card - I have seen this on an OC - problem is you may have done damage that will not be fixed unless you replace that card 

[Jesus Perdomo 0]

I will try formatting this drive and performing a clean install of everything, including video drivers. Will report back guys!

 

Also, I will test this without any add-ons, and install one by one as I test. Thanks for your replies. Is there anything else I should be looking at?

[Richard Sennett 2,499]

I will try formatting this drive and performing a clean install of everything, including video drivers. Will report back guys!

 

Also, I will test this without any add-ons, and install one by one as I test. Thanks for your replies. Is there anything else I should be looking at?

 

Dont load vector until your sim is stable and looking good as it does induce stutters

 

If you are formatting make sure you load current motherboard drivers and windows updates and use takeownership program to give rights to all of your P3D folders - its free and works great - double click reg file from the download zip file after you highlight the P3D folder and right mouse click and pick take ownership and let it finish before getting out of it as sometimes you think its done but its not

 

You did not answer if you overclocked that card - did you ? that will cause this

[yorgosGK 7]

Jose we have the same hardware (apart from some minor game players) I just recently shared my settings and 'tweaks'

Maybe you can give them a try? report back with pros/cons

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/465098-thought-i-would-share-my-p3d-v2512944-settings/#entry3204404

[Jesus Perdomo 0]

The card is not overclocked.

 

And George, thank you for those! I will definitely give your settings a try.

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

 

 

And George, thank you for those! I will definitely give your settings a try.

 

Try George's settings first. I am going to suggest again to the Moderators that his post be made a sticky in the P3d General forum as it would save new users a lot of time and trouble.

 

The tendency with P3d 2 is that because it can look so beautiful is for new users to crank all the settings up to the max and then back them off randomly out of frustration. A better option is to start with very sensible settings and then increase each setting independently if you need to do so.George's approach has already done that for people like yourself who have a high end CPU and GPU combo.

[Jesus Perdomo 0]

Bad news guys :( I just formatted the whole machine. New drivers, new installation without addons, just George's P3D settings. And this is straight from the default flight:

 

http://i.gyazo.com/76aa082b0af650e21585f21f29fd4752.jpg

 

And as I move in, they start popping up one by one

 

http://i.gyazo.com/4a52ddfb3dbef98d003a3c75bb9bc85d.jpg

 

I take off, I see very nice autogen next to the airport. Take a right, and cross the waterbody and see those really ugly blurries with no autogen on. Is there something else I should be looking at?

 

EDIT: Here are some pictures of my CPU usage and temperatures during this test flight with vanilla P3D 2.5 on a new installation

 

http://i.gyazo.com/f08bc43d3467afd6962dba68f1610c03.png

 

http://i.gyazo.com/e92a6212280a66c268fa755946f36eb3.png

[Squishy 0]

This is why I'm unsure about the future of P3D...

It's been some years now and several version of P3D.
Yes, some nice effects have been added like reflections and shadows... but in the end, the underlying program is still the same.

 

It's still doesn't work out of the box.

You still end up fiddling with ini files..trying combinations of parameters, FFTF, affinitymask blabla.

Still occasional error, conflict, bug, crash.

Still graphics problems, spinning clouds or other glitches.

Still fighting for every FPS even with high-end 6/8 cores and GTX 980 GPU's which can run every AAA title almost at at 1440p maxed out.

 

And for what? Water still looks better in FSX with REX than in P3D with REX.

With steam edition, they are probably just as stable.

Doesn't require you to pay twice for the same addon.

 

This flightsim needs a completely new engine, supporting DirectX 12 or Vulcan.

Being CPU and drawcall bound, DX12 or vulcan are the ultimate solution for this genre.

 

But perhaps P3D can pull it off........

[Ebs 114]

Jose we have the same hardware (apart from some minor game players) I just recently shared my settings and 'tweaks'

Maybe you can give them a try? report back with pros/cons

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/465098-thought-i-would-share-my-p3d-v2512944-settings/#entry3204404

 

Thanks for that video George, I was pretty happy with my own settings until I saw yours. I mean, our settings were fairly similar but I'm going to give yours a try for a while and see how it works out. (i5 3570k and 970)

 

Bad news guys  :( I just formatted the whole machine. New drivers, new installation without addons, just George's P3D settings. And this is straight from the default flight:

 

 

Something's definitely wrong here Jose, *everything* looks blurry. Make sure FXAA is switched off. Also make sure Anisotropic Filtering is forced to 16x. Something, somewhere is getting overridden, P3D shouldn't look like that on your hardware.

[Richard Sennett 2,499]

Something very wrong here and its not P3D - something video or hardware wise must be causing this - and I have not seen anything close posted here showing such bad graphics

[rparson99 32]

Well... Clearly things are still being sorted which might be adding a negative element to ones experience. But patience is needed.... The tinkering pays off....

[jlsaghaa 6]

Please try those setting : http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/88427-p3d-the-ultimate-settings/page-2

 

read the complete topic and also update your nvidia setting. Dont use nvidia inspector. My cpu is same as your and have a titan black instead of 980 and my P3D work fine !