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virginblue737

Tweaking, Needed or not needed in P3D?

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Hey guys, 

 

So just wanted to know your thoughts, within P3D what are the best tweaks / settings used to crisp up the textures and reduce the blurries but yet get good performance, or is it better to just leave everything default and not edit anything ? 

 

Keen to hear your thoughts. 

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If you are running unusual hardware like a six core processor you may have to do affinity tweaks. If you use addon scenery like ORBX you probably will need fiber fraction for those times when the ORBX scenery hampers performance in very uneven ways. If you have addons that tax the CPU you may need affinity mask to release core zero. Otherwise, play with in built settings in P3D and forget doing tweaks.

 

cheers

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Here's my experience.  Hopefully not bad advice.

 

First thing to do is decide what is higher priority for you. Crisp ground textures or high frame rates.  If you have an extremely high end system, you can probably get both, but most of us probably not.

 

If you prioritize high frame rates, set the frame rate limiter to Unlimited and just accept the fact that the ground textures will be blurry sometimes. Seems to me like many of the manually entered CFG file tweaks get ignored when frame rate limiter is set to unlimited so don't waste your time. You should be able to get very good frame rates even with a bunch of eye candy and AI traffic enabled.  Again, the trade off is blurry ground textures.

 

If you prioritize crisp ground textures, then set the frame rate limiter to the lowest number you find acceptable. For me, it's about 22 FPS. This will enable the manually entered CFG tweaks to work. You'll get better looking ground textures and less tearing, but frame rate will suffer, especially when you start turning on eye candy.  You might be able to get 2-3 extra FPS if you get lucky and find the magic combination of CFG tweaks that works best for your system, but most likely the default settings are going to be as good as it gets.

 

One other thing I've done is started using SIMstarter.  This allows you to set up tweaks and scenery addons based on the type of flight you are doing. For example, if I'm flying a GA aircraft, I have different settings than if I'm flying PMDG 737.  I have the ORBX sceneries enabled for GA, but not for 737.  If you have UT2, you can even set it up to load a different traffic configuration automatically.  When I fly GA, I have lots of GA AI aircraft and not many airliners.  When I fly 737, I have lots of airliners and minimal GA traffic.  That kind of thing.

 

I've got an old i5-2500K and GTX 970 running a 43" 4K monitor and am actually very pleased with the performance overall.  I do get some long frames when lots of detailed scenery visible, but not too bad.

 

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I stopped tweaking a long, long time ago. Also because a lot of the old tweaks are now simply part of the settings pages in P3D itself or have been added by default already in the cfg's. Imho it's not necessary to tweak anymore. I did try a few tweaks a long time ago but although they sometimes made a difference it never was for the better. Seems to me that tweaks usually unbalance the carefully designed LM balancing act. Add a tweak here and you probably screw up a few settings elsewhere without knowing what exactly is going wrong. In short: don't tweak, enjoy what you've got and everything that's not too good you will get used to in a day or two.  :wink:

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Well,

You need to goto you nvidia global setting and set two things.

Texture quality to the best setting.

Power to max performance.

 

Are they tweaks?

 

moving on,

 

Do you need tweaks in P3D v3.x, in a word NO, should you use any? YES, To be fair I only use a AM, a must if you have HT on, if OFF then no need.

Well thats not true,

I add sometimes, Texturemaxload XX is good with photo scenery. Also a swapwaittimeout tweak, both these are LM guild web pagers.

 

As for Textures being loaded better with FPS lock? well within FSX then yes I always had to run 30 locked to get good texture loading. Given I dont use Orbx regions as there so hard hitting for the high flying I do, but with Global-vector-OLC, my texture loading is as good as it gets and that with unlimited fps. It will be down to your PC. Also I have P3D on a very fast SSD. Try and see yourself. I tried both and tested with the textureMaxload and swapwaittimeout etc etc and textures still load the same without being locked. That's coming from running FPS locked at 30 for years because within FSX locked = far better texture loading.

LM http://www.prepar3d.com/SDKv2/LearningCenter/getting_started/performance/tuning_guide.html


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Like Jeroen, I have stopped tweaking my P3D (2.x and 3.x) since all the tweaks that others praised so much had no significant impact on my system (W7 64, i7-3930K @3.2GHz, GTX Titan, SSD for System and P3D).


Jürgen Martens, DK7HN

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Can a CPU @ 3.2 keep a Titan supplied?


David Murden  MSFS   Fenix A320  PMDG 737 • MG Honda Jet • 414 / TDS 750Xi •  FS-ATC Chatter • FlyingIron Spitfire & ME109G • MG Honda Jet 

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DCS  A10c II  F-16c  F/A-18c • F-14 • (Others in hanger) • Supercarrier  Terrains = • Nevada NTTR  Persian Gulf  Syria • Marianas • 

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You need to goto you nvidia global setting and set two things.

Texture quality to the best setting.

Power to max performance

I don't even do that anymore: I wonder if anyone actually noticed ANY difference with these settings? I didn't. ;) For quite some time I made a habit of tweaking as little as possible so that also goes for Windows 10. I frequently reinstall my OS (a few times a year) and while I tweaked the hell out of everything a few years back I don't do that anymore. I only do 'cosmetic' changes, so I change a few things because they look better of work more convenient. With nowadays hardware I am done tweaking in ALL regards, sims, OS, nVidia, whatever. The more default, the better.

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I found less is more with my setup.  No Nvidia Inspector, no Hyper Threading, No Affinity Mask.  Heck I don't even use vsync.  Just set unlimited....

 

 

The only "tweak" I added in the config file was to add more buildings and trees to the max.


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Minimal tweaks, but I still use 2XSSGA in NVI, because despite having the optimum display settings in P3D, the addon stuff like PMDG and some addon airports still have jaggies. NVI helps reduce those a bit. However, I think they improved the graphic engine in 3.1 because I get very little FPS loss in clouds now using NVI. I've tried the increased resolutions with NCP, but it makes all the instruments too small and too hard to read. I do lock my frames at 41 and it rarely moves from there. Maybe into the 30s and upper 20s in some very dense addon airports, but it is still smooth.

 

i4770k OC 4.4 and a 980ti


Lee H

i9 13900KF 32GB Ram 24GB RTX 4090

 

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I think what's been happening over time is that tweaking is dying a slow death due to two related factors. First, P3d continues to be improved and optimized by LM to make better use of the GPU. Second, people are retiring old GPUs and some are even buying brand new systems to take advantage of item number 1.

 

Tweaking was a logical response to combat the outdated code in FSX combined with substandard hardware. In most cases, it accomplished nothing and sometimes made performance and/or stability worse.

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I add sometimes, Texturemaxload XX is good with photo scenery

 

Hi David-

 

Do you notice a significant increase in distant PS textures with this? Also, any additional stuttering?

 

Are you using a different TBM setting too?

 

Thanks,

Mark

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P3D is a complex simulation with hundreds of possibilities for alterations and adjustments. As such there will be many tweaks possible, but the fact is, there are very few that could be said to be essential.

 

1. Depending on the CPU and Hyperthreading setting, an affinity mask *will be required* since the sim operates most effectively with 4 LPs allocated, and other processes should be kept clear of the main P3D thread. P3D works without that, just it's less efficient. P3D will split itself up over as many LPs (logical processors) as it finds. With a four core HT disabled, that's not an issue, but with HT enabled presents 8 LPs, twice as many as needed. With 6, 8, and especially 10 core CPU's and no AM, OOMs will start to plague the sim since each LP allocated eats into available VAS, especially on a 64bit O/S, and the threadpool becomes overpopulated beyond 6 LPs anyway.

 

2. Depending on the aircraft used, or scenery, Sparse Grid supersampling may be required with the NVidia cards (enabled in NI). Example; check out the difference between the B58 instruments (no SG required) and the A36 (SG needed). Since with some aircraft regular supersampling won't work, we can use SGSSAA, but DSR or FXAA may work well as an alternative.

 

3. Setup. Make all performance adjustments without AA enabled. Once a satisfactory performance is maintained, then bring in AA until it starts to cap the fps.


Steve Waite: Engineer at codelegend.com

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I am going to have to agree to disagree with some folks here.  The usage of tweaks and other settings changes outside of what is shown in the settings panels in P3D are going to vary for everyone.  We could go on and on about what is best, what works, my tweaks are better than yours, nyah nyah, but in the end, everyone's systems will react differently.

 

It seems that in recent years, tweaking FSX, FSX:SE and P3D has become more of a hobby than actually using the simulators.

 

I use minimal changes with v3.1.  As Jay stated, P3D is evolving constantly and consistently, which is a good thing for those folks who are faithful P3D users.  I found that a lot of the tweaks I once used as "biblical settings" are no longer needed.  I can even run my fps at unlimited and get better performance, which I found odd, but I won't look that proverbial gifthorse in the mouth.

 

-Jim


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Can a CPU @ 3.2 keep a Titan supplied?

 

1. It is not a Titan X

 

2. The clock frequency is only one of the parameters that determines the power of a CPU. Why is a i7-5960X @3.5GHz regarded as more powerful than for example a i7-6700K @4.2GHz or a i7-4790S @4.0GHz?


Jürgen Martens, DK7HN

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