Engine smoke and water spray kills my FPS

[SteveFx 258]

It's a puzzle, I see no issues with a 970 and I recall none with a 660 either. Since it's aa related it has to be the GPU. How big is your monitor?

[sebyh 1]

My monitor is standard HD 24inch 1920 x 1080. I agree Steve its a puzzle, something local to my PC. I doubt my GPU GTX680 has any issue. From what you have said I am starting to think it could be a GPU setting some where or a line in my FSX CFG file.

 

Fsx dx9 and dx10 are equally affected.

 

This is one of the test I made. As soon as the smoke is in view I go from 30 to 6 FPS or lower.

[sebyh 1]

Steve here a couple more shots.

1st I turned on engine fire failure and I went from 30FPS to 16 and the lower screen grab I go to 4FPS when I pan the view to get the smoke to fill the screen. I have Rex soft cloud and when I fly through clouds I do not have the issue, its just with smoke and spray.

 

[SteveFx 258]

That's very dense smoke and spray, I don't see anything like that...my smoke and spray are much reduced and hence probably loading the GPU a lot less.

What does your effect.cfg in the effects directory look like?

[sebyh 1]

This is the contents of my FSX effects.cfg in my FSX/Effects folder, is this what you are asking for?

; These particle spite limits are applied based
; on the "Special Effect Detail" settings slider.

[sprite Limit]
Medium=5000
High=9999999999
Low=1000

; These particle emit rate modifiers are applied based
; on the "Special Effect Detail" settings slider.

[Emit Rate]
Medium=0.700000
High=1.000000
Low=0.300000

; If an emitter has its LOD flag set and the viewpoint is
; further away than this at the time the effect is started
; then the emitter will be disabled.

[Detail]
Forced Distance=250

; The [Emitter Detail Distance] and [Emitter Detail Modifier]
; tables work together. If an emitter is further away than a
; distance specified in the distance table then the rate it
; emits particles at is scaled by the factor specified in the
; modifier table.

[Emitter Detail Distance]
Medium=5000
Far=10000
Very Far=15000

[Emitter Detail Modifer]
Medium=0.700000
Far=0.500000
Very Far=0.000000
 

[sebyh 1]

Hi Steve,

 

I may have solved my issue, by change settings back and forth testing something suddenly changed. I now get at worst a 10FPS drop so I am getting 30 to 20 FPS.

 

Under very heavy forest fire and smoke views I some times the graphics break down to flashing triangles, but if I drop special effects slider from High to Medium normal graphics are restored.

 

This is the contents of my FSX effects.cfg in  "fsx/Effects" folder, is this what you are asking for I hope(this is with my effects set to high).

 

; These particle spite limits are applied based
; on the "Special Effect Detail" settings slider.

[sprite Limit]
Medium=5000
High=9999999999
Low=1000

; These particle emit rate modifiers are applied based
; on the "Special Effect Detail" settings slider.

[Emit Rate]
Medium=0.700000
High=1.000000
Low=0.300000

; If an emitter has its LOD flag set and the viewpoint is
; further away than this at the time the effect is started
; then the emitter will be disabled.

[Detail]
Forced Distance=250

; The [Emitter Detail Distance] and [Emitter Detail Modifier]
; tables work together. If an emitter is further away than a
; distance specified in the distance table then the rate it
; emits particles at is scaled by the factor specified in the
; modifier table.

[Emitter Detail Distance]
Medium=5000
Far=10000
Very Far=15000

[Emitter Detail Modifer]
Medium=0.700000
Far=0.500000
Very Far=0.000000
 

[SteveFx 258]

Let me check tomorrow

[sebyh 1]

I think its got to do with the level of Anisotropic filtering. But will not have time for testing for a week or so. I will get back to it later and report back.

No Rush at all Steve. Thank you for your time.

[ankh21 17]

Mh,

 

i have similar problems with an addon called "PowerProject" and the PrecipitFX contrails. The "PowerProject" adds power stations with steam and smoke effects for the cooling towers. I had to exclude converting effects in the DX10Product.ini to limit the drop in frame rates, changing AF Settings didn't show significant results.

But i wondered, that my GTX 580 (today an oldtimer) showed a DECREASE in GPU usage when the steam effects appear on screen. So in my "simple" thinking i came to the conclusion, that some effects are not related to the GPU, but to the CPU. In contrast to that, e.g. REX Soft Clouds highly affect GPU usage, especially with high settings of AA. But these clouds were designed for DX10, so the rendering depends on the GPU?!

But i know too little of the FSX graphic secrets, that is just my experience.

 

Mattthias

[sebyh 1]

Itneresting Matthias, that information is helpful. I need to find some time for more testing but I think we are slowly narrowing the cause and a solution.

 

Seb

[Mikelab6 89]

Hi Seb & Steve.  I am having the exact same problem as you Seb.  Very low fps when smoke and fire are displaying.

 

Did you find something else ?

 

thanks !

 

Mike

[wulfbindewald 5]

As I have the same problem I crosschecked with one of the wildfires located within the Orbx KWYS Yellowstone scenery and got similar results acc. to the pic, mail #17. The effects.cfg file content is the same as shown above.

 

I tested it with a GTX680 and GTX980 with similar fps reduction results from 30 to ~10 or less depending on the zoom value or distance to the fire and smoke. 

Furthermore I got many artifacts and flashing triangles all over the screen as reported above in DX10 only when zooming narrow/close to the fire. I remember that this effect occured independent from any NVidia driver since 2013+

 

IMHO the wildfire and smoke visualization seems to overload the GPU. 

 

Wulf

[wulfbindewald 5]

EDIT to my previous mail: The resolutions 1200*768 or 1920*1080 (FullHD) or 3840*2160 (4K) show similar flashing triangles and the lower resolution shows better fps.

[sebyh 1]

EDIT to my previous mail: The resolutions 1200*768 or 1920*1080 (FullHD) or 3840*2160 (4K) show similar flashing triangles and the lower resolution shows better fps.

 

Hi Wulf, thanks for the info. I am glad its not just me. I have been busy with real life and have not had any time test any further. But I think my test seemed to show turing effects slider down a bit in FSX might help the situation.

 

Seb