Nope!

 

With four cores (no HT):

 

(On 4 LPs no AM = AM=0 = AM=15)

 

P3D AM=0=(1111)=F=0,1,2,3 <- sim (Dec, Bin, Hex, LP)

ASN AM=14=(1110)=E=1,2,3 <- weather

Ext AM=14=(1110)=E=1,2,3 <- other addons

 

Hi Steve,

 

Just want to confirm I have understood the above correctly!

 

I am also running a 4790k with HT off @ 4.7Ghz.

 

I went ahead and installed Project Lasso (awesome tool), and taking your advice, I removed my previous AM=14 setting, my thinking here was that Core 1,2,3 were for P3D. I then set my addons to run on (0), the idea being that core 0 was for everything else. 

 

Following your suggestion above, I now removed the AM entry in my P3D.cfg. This being ideal if I understood correctly, for my 4 core CPU with HT off?

 

P3D will now be running (1111) as in cores 0,1,2,3 is that correct?

 

Furthermore, your suggestion in this case is to have ASN, and other addons run on (1110) as in running on cores 1,2,3 is that also correct?

 

With the above, core 0 is left entirely to P3D.

 

If I have understood the above correctly, P3D will be sharing all cores except for core 0, why is it that core 1 happens to be the one with the highest load under the following affinity settings? While core 0, seems to have the lowest load. (When  P3D and ASN run together)

 

Thank you for your effort and insight, much appreciated.

Yes!

P3D AM=15=(1111)=F=0,1,2,3

ASN AM=14=(1110)=E=1,2,3

Exactly, with no AM and HT on you will use way too much VAS. Put AffinityMask=1360 into your [JOBSCHEDULER] section and turn on HT.

 

Incidentally, even with HT off and no AM, you'll be running 6 jobs, that's two too many. Two extra jobs is still two extra chunks of VAS you don't benefit from using up. Four jobs is the sweet spot for your CPU. AM=1360=(01,01,01,01,00,00), that's enabling four LPs on four cores. It may seem counter-intuitive but that's how it works at the moment.

 

Steve,

 

Turned ON HT and put the AM into the P3D.cfg. So far so good. Frame rate pretty consistent as I have it locked at 30. Core 4 is close to 100% with 6, 8 and 10 at 40, 20 and 20% respectively.  For the most part the flight seemed overall smoother but still get some minor stuttering here and there. It may take a while but I'll do a few more flights to ensure things are pretty stable. I believe I have P3D loaded down with lots of extras so for everyone's info and comparison, below is all running and the initial reduction in VAS at startup was significant with this AM setting and HT. Gate 73 at CYEG was 2,483,096 !! Normally I was pushing anywhere between 2,800,000 to 3,000,000 (my settings are far from low).

 

REX Soft Clouds

ProATC

ASN

FSCaptain

GSX

UT2

PMDG 737

FS2Crew Reboot

Orbx Scenery

Global Base Pack

OpenLC NA Alaska/Canada

Global Vector (reduced settings)

Central Rockies

Northern California

Northern Rockies

Pacific Fjords

Pacific Northwest

Southern Alaska

HD Trees

Global Freeware Airports North & South America

 

I do have the free version of Process Lasso but not running it at the moment. I know with all the posts in this thread that you can reassign ASN, ProATC and other external programs to different cores but what about those modules in P3D like GSX, UT2, and FSCaptain that use the initial P3D affinity setting. Could you reassign them using PL duriing a flight and on a new sim load they automatically get reassigned?

 

Steve, Thanks again for the help and the technical expertise your providing to the community. Glad I found this thread.

Hi Richard, you're welcome. Modules (.dll) run in the affinity of the sim, so as long as you got the sim running right, they will take care of themselves. Worry about where those addon exe programs go and keep them off the core that is utilised by the first sim thread. Since these are addons they will be bobbing and weaving, and as long as they only interrupt the sim background jobs the sim foreground can keep singing the same note. :Whistle:

Speaking of stutters (long frames) ... I ran into a rather puzzling long frame situation at Orbx KEGE today.  So I ran A LOT of permutations in my graphics settings and discovered that if ANY of the water Reflections options were enabled (including dynamic), I would start to get long frames.

 

Here is the puzzling part, it's not at all locations, just "some" and there doesn't need to be any water around ... it's almost as if some photo scenery is being treated as a reflective surface (i.e. like water) and P3D is calculating reflections on those surface when it shouldn't.

 

Could someone running V3.1 test out Orbx KEGE with and without water/dynamic reflections?  And report back please.

 

Here are the settings I've been using (less reflections): http://www.robainscough.com/P3D_V3.html

 

Cheers, Rob.

Hi Rob,

My understanding is water is everywhere. It's under the land we see. Well it was in FSX I've not heard it changed. 

 

So even when your flying with no water in view, its there.

 

I would be interested if you left your reflections on and tested water to off. 

 

 

I would be interested if you left your reflections on and tested water to off. 

 

Already did that permutation, the water detail settings made little to no difference in long frame frequency with reflections on.  

 

Not sure what you mean by "water is everywhere"?  I thought order was Mesh, LC, Texutres/AG, Vector, Scenery ... per Learning Center.chm 

 

The terrain system in Prepar3D consists of eight main data components, elevation (DEM data), imagery, land classification, water classification, regions, seasons, population density, and vector data. 

 

No mention of water everywhere.

Water Classification

There is not the same broad range of types and variants present in the water classes that are found in the land textures. By default, water classes use one region and have one season, one variation, and no night texture. To give greater visual control, water is categorized by depth, plankton concentration, and whether it is tropical. The depth tends to dictate the darkness of the water color: the deeper the water, the darker the texture. The plankton concentration determines the amount of green in the water color:  the more plankton, the greener the water. Tropical waters are highlighted because they tend to have a more vibrant color. Load up worldwc.bgl to see the water classification map.

 

Like I said, the long frames will appear only in some areas (3rd party scenery where there is NO water) when reflections are ON.  It could be scenery layer over the water layer that was present in the default regions but if that's the case, priority wise it should NOT be doing any reflection calcs.  But P3D V3.1 is behaving as if it needs to do reflection calcs.

 

Cheers, Rob.

Steve,

 

Now that I have P3D31 running as smooth as silk as outlined in my previous post, I was wondering if I should assign AirHauler(which has it's own exe file) to cores 0,1,3,7 with ASN, or other cores?

Treat is like ASN.

Okay I took out FTFF, so the only edit to my config file is AM=116, set ASN to the recommended affinity and everything seems great. I had to go back to unlimited frames for optimal smoothness but I'm not getting blurry textures so I will continue to test this set up. Thanks for sharing your settings David.

Treat is like ASN.

 

 

Ta(again)

And now for something completely different!

 

First off: I am not a frame hunter. I set my frames in P3D V3.0 to 24 fps, and perhaps as importantly, I limit my GTX780 (a humble card by today's standards) to 29 fps. I have the usual Nvidia 8SGSS/4MS/16AA settings for a 2560/1440 ASUS monitor. I fly GA only, between 2,500 and 30,000 AGL, but in a variety of payware aircraft that can scream along at 350 kts at ground level (A2A P-51) and various high-flyers from Carenado and FlysimWare (Lear 35 - a fun aircraft!).

 

What I have found as the best setting, again for *ME* (3770K, 4.2Ghz OC, HT ON, 8GB Corsair "something" RAM, Orbx everything) using Process Lasso to:

• Enable *All* threads (0-7) for P3D
• Set P3D to be a GAME. Big difference in responsiveness.
• Restrict OPUSFSI to 2-7
• Restrict AirTrafficManager to 2-7
• Everything else is noise (SLX, etc).

 

I have ZERO mods to the stock CFG file outside of readability comments. No AM, no nothing. This is first for me, by way - a leap of faith that actually worked!!!!

 

What I see is that ALL threads are active, but most importantly, thread 0 is NOT completely hammered. This is the key differentiation. If I turn off thread 1 using the Process Lasso affinity mask CPU 0/Thread 0 becomes saturated and I get unpredictable performance. Using the settings I from above , I have zero blurries (my personal bugaboo - I can take some stutters now and then but blurries drive me bug-**********)), but do have some known "stutters"  in two states:

1. When OPUSFSI gathers weather information (I do it frequently, since a flight along the California coast can vary dramatically in a matter of minutes)
2. When the Orbx GA traffic package (a great addon for those that like a lot of GA traffic) generates traffic and ATM kills it. This is single digit frame rates, but it is a known phenomena and last about 2 seconds.

 

I find:

• If thread 1 is not given to P3D with all other threads that thread zero is hammered, ergo stutters, poor response. The "aircraft" modelling code is saturated.
• If thread 1 ( and all others) is given to P3D that thread zero is no longer hammered, response is excellent. The aircraft modelling code is no longer saturated, and all the other threads are doing resolving my blurry terrain. 

 

In short, I love Process Lasso (I paid for it, I liked it so much) and my flights are blurry and stutter free! Well, except when weather is injected and airplanes are being shot out of the sky...   

 

Anyway, another way to skin this fat cat!!!

IF I turn off thread 1 using the Process Lasso affinity mask CPU 0/Thread 0 becomes saturated and I get unpredictable performance.

That's right, you cannot move P3D threads once the sim is up and running, causes all kinds of problems. You're explaining that your settings make a difference from a poor situation, they will. However you can improve that further by unmasking only 4 LPs.

Heya Steve, 

 

I used to run only four LP, basically by turning off HT. However, with Orbx terrain I find it better to run as many threads as possible for the terrain engines. When everything is running well my SYSTEM utilization is higher than 70-percent, and Task Manager shows uniform loading across all threads. Kind of hard to stuff +70-percent back into a 50-percent box!   

 

But, things will do doubt change. As a retirement present to me I plan on building a Kaby Lake system which should be a big boost over my existing 3770-K, allowing different things to be done. I hope you are around at the time to advise!   :smile:

Remember I also pointed out the even load across all LP's when selecting the am through process lasso once the sim was running. But Steve advised me against this due to the sim not behaving as it should.