Trying to achieve the Dream of Smooth Stutter Free Simming

[Jimm 437]

If you disable Tessellation, Volumetric Fog, Cloud Shadows, HDR, Wave = Medium and you can't get 60 FPS with your hardware (which is certainly more than able) at an add-on airport with add-on aircraft, then I think something else might be at play ... with my other PC (3960x @ 4.6Ghz and a 970) I have no problem hitting 60 FPS (usually about 90 FPS in VC) with those graphics settings above disabled even at 4K res.  If you give me your exact graphics settings (assume you don't use NI for SGSS AA) I can certainly emulate on my other PC.

 

But more often than not, these 60 fps performance debates usually end up being more than just two add-ons (airport/aircraft) ... it's more like 10 add-ons and all of those add-ons configured with very high settings (ASN 10 cloud layers and enchanced overcast, MT6 or UT2 at 90% traffic, detail ORBX region, Orbx Vector everything checked, REX 4K textures, etc. etc.)

 

For every add-on one adds, complex processing like Tessellation, cloud shadows, HDR, volumetric fog has much more work to do as it now has to take into account 10 cloud layers, many more vector roads and traffic and shadows for that traffic, more aircraft etc. etc.

 

Not really trying to argue/debate with you, trying to help you realize 60 FPS with your hardware.

 

I agree, it would be nice to see 1/2 refresh rate trick work in P3D.

 

Cheers, Rob.

Rob,

 

Your post caught my attention, which raises a question:  Why are we so obsessed with "chasing frames"?  Yesterday, after reading another post on AVSIM about affinity mask and it's need in P3D, I wound up backing up my tweak-laden P3D.cfg file and then deleted it at the source to allow for P3D to rebuild it.  I only changed the optimize_parts entry to 1, instead of zero and then went ahead and performed a short flight.  I have all ORBX scenery installed and use ASN for weather.  I have my frames locked at 30fps (since that has been the general consensus of late) and so now I have a very STABLE sim, not chasing frames.  Some folks elsewhere determined that you really don't "see" a difference after 30fps, as it is more about achieving a smooth and stable flight, right?

 

It should also be noted that I do have a stable sim on my rig, which is a custom laptop running the i7-4790k with an nVidia GTX-980M.  I am not trying to brag, just stating what I have to compare a baseline to run P3D.  I can throw an A2A aircraft, even a Carenado at it (ex. B1900) and tool along at 9000 feet over Australia and it's beautiful, stable, problem free.  If I had the P3D version of PMDG's aircraft bought and installed, I could provide more evidence, but it seems to be a moot point nowadays.  Bottom line, there is no reason to have to push your rig to get such high framerates when you are sacrificing stability and smoothness.  Stutters seem to plague a great many folks, which I have personally determined it to be from drivers, but with my minimal tweaks to my cfg and my settings running one step below max, I have a worthy sim experience.

 

-Jim

[Pete Dowson 558]

Imho , an education program like P3D would benefit a lot from it as more people using FSX/FSX-SE would step over if P3D would have a distortion fix.

 

Yes, it would certainly grab my attention. I'm not using multiple screens, just one 10 feet wide projection seen through my cockpit window.

 

But to get the correct field of view I have to set a wide angle Zoom value of around 0.5. That tilts verticals near the edge really badly So I compensate partly for that by distorting the projection, so it's wider and the top than the bottom (falling off the screen at the top and leaving a slim triangle of screen unused near the bottom.

 

I have another problem which makes it worse. There's no way to move the horizon up and down in FSX or P3D. It is always half way between top and bottom. From the cockpit you tend to always to be able to see much more above the horizon than below, so I need the horizon brought lower on the projected view -- to just below my eye level when on the ground. I have achieved that the only way I know, and that is by tilting my forward view upwards. Obviously this exacerbates the distortion (verticals leaning in) at the edges again.

 

So for me it is all a compromise. Put up with some distortion to get the correct field of view and correct horizon position.

 

Do you think both of these things could be fixed in P3D? I shall go and ask.

 

Regards

Pete

[GSalden 4,681]

Pete,

 

With Ctrl + q or

Ctrl + Shift + q

 

you can move the horizon up/down.

The commands are for view up/down.

 

On my Aces Yoke I have programmed a button to raise the horizon ( more scenery viewable ) and a View Reset button to bring it back to the default height ( this is customable in the Views section of the aicrafts Panel folder ).

 

--------

 

Regarding the Distortion : Denali has proved that it can be corrected. His Distortion Fix did it. Only there was no AA and there was some grainness.

 

 

Regards,

Gerard

[Pete Dowson 558]

Pete,

 

With Ctrl + q or

Ctrl + Shift + q

 

you can move the horizon up/down.

The commands are for view up/down.

 

Er ... yes, of course, and that is what I did, as I stated -- but rather preset the view up to bring the horizon down rather than adjust every time I switch on.

 

But as I also said, this distorts the edges more again (on top of the wide angle distortion) -- as you'd expect from looking upwards. What is needed is a way of having the outside view window itself moving up and down within the full screen area.

 

Pete

[Guest]

 

 

It is just that everyone who reminds LM about the Distortion issue might help getting it solved...

 

Hey Gerard,

 

I have no doubt your issue is real and significant and agree with you on all counts.  Pete has started a new thread so I'll add your original link/discussion with LM to Pete's thread.  But I typically don't re-remind LM of specific issues they've already responded to ... as you can imagine there are 1000's of posters that could ask the same of me for an issue that is important to them.

 

Cheers, Rob.

[Guest]

 

 

 Why are we so obsessed with "chasing frames"?  Yesterday, after reading another post on AVSIM about affinity mask and it's need in P3D

 

Hi Jim,

 

I'm not obsessed at all with chasing FPS, my goal is to hit and stay above my monitor's refresh rate which is 30 Hz.  I'm much more interested in time between frames and keeping that time as consistent as possible.  My comments to get to 60 FPS is based on others  desire to hit 60Hz of their monitor's refresh rate.

 

As far as Affinity Mask, I stopped using Affinity mask values after V2.2 as the default (all cores) worked best after that build.  I don't know why some people seem to get better results with an Affinity Mask setting ... but to each his/her own.

 

Cheers, Rob.

[Jimm 437]

Hi Jim,

 

I'm not obsessed at all with chasing FPS, my goal is to hit and stay above my monitor's refresh rate which is 30 Hz.  I'm much more interested in time between frames and keeping that time as consistent as possible.  My comments to get to 60 FPS is based on others  desire to hit 60Hz of their monitor's refresh rate.

 

As far as Affinity Mask, I stopped using Affinity mask values after V2.2 as the default (all cores) worked best after that build.  I don't know why some people seem to get better results with an Affinity Mask setting ... but to each his/her own.

 

Cheers, Rob.

Sorry Rob, perhaps i should have clarified before that I wasn't singling out your post with my response, it was merely intended to be an example of how many people now seem to be obsessed with chasing frames.  I see what your intentions are and yes, it makes sense that you are trying to achieve something a little different.

 

I cannot honestly say that my exclusion of affinity mask in my cfg file has done better or worse.  These days, it seems not matter what I set P3D at, my sim still runs the same, so I won't look that gifthorse in the mouth...she runs, she's stable and I can enjoy and learn.

 

-Jim

[SteveW 1,792]

Those having trouble understanding the AffinityMask, and Hyperthreading - when using FSX or P3D, might try and consider what happens on a dual core CPU, with and without HT enabled. With the way multi-threaded apps work on Windows o/s, and the way P3D works, a situation to avoid comes up only with HT enabled which creates a well known problem for the JOBSCHEDULER.

[Tomaz Drnovsek 440]

If you disable Tessellation, Volumetric Fog, Cloud Shadows, HDR, Wave = Medium and you can't get 60 FPS with your hardware (which is certainly more than able) at an add-on airport with add-on aircraft, then I think something else might be at play ... with my other PC (3960x @ 4.6Ghz and a 970) I have no problem hitting 60 FPS (usually about 90 FPS in VC) with those graphics settings above disabled even at 4K res.  If you give me your exact graphics settings (assume you don't use NI for SGSS AA) I can certainly emulate on my other PC.

There are too many variables to get a relevant measurement. For example.. using A2A 172 on FlyTampa LOWW on active runway facing the airport I get 42 FPS with "medium" settings. When I disabled everything you suggested (and restarted the sim since Hardware Tessellation requires this) I got 38 FPS. So, actually less than before. That was all with Fair weather, no traffic. That was with 172. With PMDG 737 in the exact same situation I get 30 FPS. So, I can't imagine, with any settings, to get 60. But as I said, too many variables. I usually use weather, maybe some airports are "lighter" than LOWW, less autogen around, more autogen.... I'm not saying it can't be done in certain situations (on ORBX KJAC with A2A 172 I get around 60 without weather for example but autogen in that area is very sparse and weather isn't clear that often) but in most cases it's very hard to impossible to maintain 60 with addon aircraft on addon airport.

30 FPS, on the other hand I can manage in most cases. But for that to be of any use I need a new monitor that can do 30Hz. My current Samsung won't play ball.

 

[gboz 157]

Don't forget that you really need to delete your Shader cache folder before each test run

when doing these config comparisons.

 

gb.

[Guest]

With PMDG 737 in the exact same situation I get 30 FPS.

 

Without knowing much about your graphics settings and other parameters, here is a video I did several months ago in V2.5 with SLI enabled (PMDG 737, ASN, MT6, Copenhagen EKCH, etc.)  

 

 

Graphics settings and add-ons used are included in the video and I did this video without turning OFF those features I listed.  VC 47 ish, external 57-97 ... clear sky, then added ASN weather, etc. 

 

I can do another video with those P3D exclusive features turned OFF to show you the difference, well over 60 FPS in VC.

 

Cheers, Rob.

[WebMaximus 372]

On the topic smooth flight I recently upgraded my 4770k system to a 6700k system with 3000MHz CL15 DDR4 memory and an Intel 750 PCIe SSD for Windows (10) and P3D. I still use a single MSI 980Ti graphics card. Honestly I wasn't expecting a big improvement but sure I was hoping for one.

 

Now after finally having everything installed and tuned the result (and improvement) is amazing! In the NGX with all my addons installed including the global FTX products, ASN and some of the latest Aerosoft airports and with most P3D settings to the far right I rarely see the FPS drop below 40 regardless of situation and even more important everything is really smooth! With my previous system I often experienced the notorious micro stuttering even when the FPS was OK. With my new system I still haven't seen one single stutter in any situation after doing about 6 online flights on Vatsim. And this is in 4K in the NGX...

 

So right now I'm actually experiencing what I always wished for...being able to simulate flight with both the IQ and performance making it feel like I'm actually up there for real and I'm thrilled!!

 

And to add, with the kind of performance I see right now in P3Dv2.5 on my new rig I don't really bother when P3Dv3 will be out since I already have everything I ever wanted.

 

I know many people are having VAS issues but luckily I'm not in that group. Not sure how I've been able to avoid those issues looking at the add-ons I use but guess it's mostly related to my settings where I'm conservative with some of the sliders such as traffic, LOD radius and autogen while I at the same time never use textures above 1024. Most other sliders with the exception for shadows are all the way to the right.

[Christopher Low 5,376]

If you can't accept 30fps in a flight simulator, then you are giving yourself problems before you even start. I can quite happily run with 25 or even less.

[Poppet 710]

With all my bits and bobs turned on,  i bounce between 25/30,  which i'm happy 

[Fi5kuS 57]

I get horrible stutters every 2-3 seconds when using My Traffic for P3D 2.5. It is smooth in the beginning (prepping, takeoff, climb), but during cruise it slowly gets worse. I don't want to talk about the approach and landing. A real stutter mess! And thats only with 20 % AI.

 

Same flight without My Traffic AI - almost smooth as butter. Anyone else experienced this?