P3D3.2 looks really good, but hesitations are really bad!

[Psybear 23]

Anyway, the ANSWER to my originally posted problem:

 

It was the video driver. I installed the latest from nVidia, 364.xx.  My friend Thomas told me that the 364.xx series were bad on his system -- lower frame rates and bad stutters -- and that he'd gone back to 361.43 and it solved all that.

 

So I tried that ... and it made all the difference!

 

Good to know Pete. Thanks.  Also the best thing I did for P3D was to install it on a dedicated Samsung 850 Pro with Rapid Mode. :wink:

[xenonsk 129]

I've had same problem. Then I have resized clouds and this helped me. Go to ShadersHLSL, open cloud.fx and find GetScreenQuadPositions. Change it to: GetScreenQuadPositions( quad, width*0.5, height*0.5 )

[robert young 2,897]

Yes. FPS drops to the low teens at times. My video card is a 970gtx 4gb.

 

Hi Erich,.

 

Are you sure it is soft clouds? I have them and they are not causing any stutters. Nor for that matter is AI - either UT2 or MTX.  Nor is anything in particular causing any stutters. If you look at my specs in an earlier post on this thread you would have thought that I am a candidate for slow FPS and stutters. I have neither. But what I do is to make sure I have no fancy tweaks and keep detail down to the level my system can cope with. I have found that the 361.43 Nvidia driver is the most steady and reliable at the moment, but there could be other drivers that are just as good.

 

Assuming you have 4 physical and 4 virtual cores, have you tried affinity mask of 116 and move some other processes to core 0 while P3d runs on other cores? What detail are you running? Have you tried using a default, simple aircraft first and turning all detail down then gradually add detail, HDR, shadows etc until you see stutters or slow downs occuring?

 

The quad tweak in the cloud fx file just reduces the spread of clouds by reducing their individual cell width and height. You can largely do the same thing by adjusting the coverage slider in P3d from max to "high" or "medium". Have you tried running the clouds at a lower resolution?

[ErichB 3,643]

Hi Erich,.

 

Are you sure it is soft clouds? I have them and they are not causing any stutters. Nor for that matter is AI - either UT2 or MTX.  Nor is anything in particular causing any stutters. If you look at my specs in an earlier post on this thread you would have thought that I am a candidate for slow FPS and stutters. I have neither. But what I do is to make sure I have no fancy tweaks and keep detail down to the level my system can cope with. I have found that the 361.43 Nvidia driver is the most steady and reliable at the moment, but there could be other drivers that are just as good.

 

Assuming you have 4 physical and 4 virtual cores, have you tried affinity mask of 116 and move some other processes to core 0 while P3d runs on other cores? What detail are you running? Have you tried using a default, simple aircraft first and turning all detail down then gradually add detail, HDR, shadows etc until you see stutters or slow downs occuring?

 

The quad tweak in the cloud fx file just reduces the spread of clouds by reducing their individual cell width and height. You can largely do the same thing by adjusting the coverage slider in P3d from max to "high" or "medium". Have you tried running the clouds at a lower resolution?

 

Hi Robert

 

Actually, I was being an idiot.

 

In ASN i reduced the max cloud draw distance to 60m from 100m, the maximum ground visibility to I've set to 40m and the max upper vis to 60m.   I also completely switched off terrain shadow cast.  All these items have returned the fluidity to 'normal' . I always run my clouds textures at 1024. 

 

The stuttering has disappeared, but I have annoyingly blurred textures in FTX regions.  I'll try a couple of previous suggestions to deal with those.

 

Cheers

[lsummer101 1]

Hello to all 

Great read this thread. wish i would have found it sooner as i am very close to divorce after three full days in the sim room trying to get this stuff to work. I have tried every one of the suggestions and it has made some great improvements to the overall sim but the studders and bluries continue.  My last (yea Right) effort will be to install the Driver recommended by Pete. I made this attempt to install this tonight but windows wont let it install as i updated my driver yesterday to the latest one, the installer wont over right it as its newer. i tried to install from device Manger but it to told me the driver is newer. Any idea how i get the older driver to install?    

[Tokitaumelie 164]

Hello to all 

Great read this thread. wish i would have found it sooner as i am very close to divorce after three full days in the sim room trying to get this stuff to work. I have tried every one of the suggestions and it has made some great improvements to the overall sim but the studders and bluries continue.  My last (yea Right) effort will be to install the Driver recommended by Pete. I made this attempt to install this tonight but windows wont let it install as i updated my driver yesterday to the latest one, the installer wont over right it as its newer. i tried to install from device Manger but it to told me the driver is newer. Any idea how i get the older driver to install?    

 

Display Driver Uninstaller

[lsummer101 1]

thanks Donor i got it installed and holy molly night and day  the stutter is still there on hard turns but decreased greatly. more tweaking tomorrow..  

[Savanyú Jóska 0]

Hi,

 

it is interesting since i have much less stutters in P3D as in FSX-SE (with same addons FSX DX9).

I am now about to leave FSX completely as i am absolutely satisfied with Prepar3d.

 

I5 4670K no OC

16GB RAM

Gigabyte gtx960 4gb gaming g1.

 

Attila

[Anxu00 176]

I wonder what's the final verdict is from Pete after a couple more spins in the week-end. :smile:

[Pete Dowson 558]

I wonder what's the final verdict is from Pete after a couple more spins in the week-end. :smile:

 

I didn't get time for any actual flying, I hope maybe to get one in tomorrow. But we're off on another holiday early the next morning, so ...

 

Tests without actual flying still give me poor performance at Aerosoft Heathrow with decent (realistic) levels of traffic and real weather.  And that's with settings turned down so things look almost the same as in FSX-SE, which is definitely faster on my system in those situations.

 

Elsewhere, especially in the countryside, P3D does look better, and performs better too. But I fly A-B in a 738 and most of the countryside gets viewed, cloud layers permitting, from FL200 or above. My main requirement is for good performance on approaches and takeoffs, and decent scenery at and around airports.

 

I don't need good looking cockpits because I have a real one and none on screen, and I don't need shadows, so those are off. The whole screen at 1920 x 1080 is just the outside view.

 

I'll try test flights to and from Heathrow, maybe tomorrow, maybe when I get back. I have both FSX-SE and P3D3.2 set up with identical scenery layers now, and settings to make both of them look pretty good. 

 

Pete

[Guest]

I have both FSX-SE and P3D3.2 set up with identical scenery layers now, and settings to make both of them look pretty good.

 

My experience with both using limited settings that FSX-SE (i.e. trying to make P3D look as bad as FSX-SE) vs. P3D - P3D performs about 55% better in terms of less long frames (stutters) ... I don't fly FSX-SE regularly, just for quick tests.  FSX-SE "as is" does perform better than FSX "as is" but it falls behind P3D V3.2 by a rather large margin, especially when using the PMDG 777 series (except when using Taxi camera).

 

Current nVidia drivers are 364.51 ... I'm using those but to be honest I haven't noticed much of a difference from prior drivers.  You might want to try DDU for a clean removal and install from manual download of drivers.

 

Suggestions:

1.  Find a way to operate your display at 30Hz

2.  If 1080p then use DSR or SGSS AA 2X with MSAA 2X

3.  If MT6 then anything above 40-50% AI traffic will results in unrealistic levels of AI traffic, I've spent over 30 minutes stationary waiting for ATC to allow me to continue to taxi - that's NOT realistic even at a busy airport.  But because I like to spend more time flying and less time sitting on a taxi-way, I set AI to 10% - provides a good mix after about 15-30 mins departure prep as traffic ramps up

 

FSX/FSX-SE biggest advantage is that cloud AA is disabled DX9/DX10 allows for that, DX11 does not.  But the clouds in FSX/FSX-SE look more like 2D paintings.  REX soft clourds and P3D volumentric fog enabled provide very good results with ASN.

 

But if you are running with NO VC, you should be seeing a good FPS increase even at dense clouds and airports.  I don't use any tweaks in my P3D.CFG, not a single one -- I have experimented with many, but I always return to base no tweak .cfg.  The only tweak (which is really a P3D tweak - is I've turned off HT as that seems to work best for my 5960X @ 4.6Ghz).

 

Based on your resolution and hardware and no VC, you should have no problem maintaining 60Hz/60FPS.

 

Cheers, Rob.

[Pete Dowson 558]

My experience with both using limited settings that FSX-SE support (i.e. trying to make P3D look as bad as FSX-SE) is P3D performs about 55% better in terms of less long frames (stutters) ... I don't fly FSX-SE regularly, just for quick tests.  FSX-SE "as is" does perform better than FSX "as is" but it falls behind P3D V3.2 by a rather large margin, especially when using the PMDG 777 series (except when using Taxi camera).

 

Yes, I'm getting better performance EXCEPT in the circumstance I described: Heathrow with heavy (ie realistic) traffic and weather.

 

I've always noted from your own and other reporters on P3D's excellent performance that you have either zero traffic or very low settings. I'm afraid that is not an option for what I want from the simulator.

 

I'm not really interested in add-on aircraft such as the PMDG 777. I use Prosim's own 738 which has no cockpit, no gauges, nothing to distract from the outside view on screen.

 

Current nVidia drivers are 364.51 ... I'm using those but to be honest I haven't noticed much of a difference from prior drivers.  You might want to try DDU for a clean removal and install from manual download of drivers.

 

I did a clean install for 364.43 and that one was awful -- that was the latest one at the time and was the reason for me going back to 361, which fixed stutters and the awful ~1 sec hesitations. I'm reluctant to try any other 364.xx release at present. When I get back from my imminent trip, in mid April, I may see what's on offer then.

 

1.  Find a way to operate your display at 30Hz

  Did that. No difference but looked worse. 

 

2.  If 1080p then use DSR or SGSS AA 2X with MSAA 2X

  Tried all those. No difference, except DSR at 2x and 15-33% smoothing makes things look too soft.

 

3.  If MT6 then anything above 40-50% AI traffic will results in unrealistic levels of AI traffic,

  I use MT6 in combination with UT2. MT6 is turned down, to 30%, but isn't the ful thing anyway, just filling in all the missing airlines from UT2 and provideing the charter and military flights

  I fly airports I know very well and know what sort of traffic levels I would expect to see,

 

But if you are running with NO VC, you should be seeing a good FPS increase even at dense clouds and airports.

 

It's good everywhere except in the circumstances I mentioned. It's much better, for instance, than FSX-SE at EGCC, my home airport. I'll be trying other dense airports like Paris De Gaulle and Schiphol when I have more time, but my "benchmark" has always been Heathrow.

 

I don't use any tweaks in my P3D.CFG, not a single one -- I have experimented with many, but I always return to base no tweak .cfg.  The only tweak (which is really a P3D tweak - is I've turned off HT as that seems to work best for my 5960X @ 4.6Ghz).

 

I've tried no tweaks, and some tweaks recommended here -- mainly AM to keep it off core 0 but still give it 4 cores, one of them HT, and use a new facility in FSUIPC to set the AM of other EXEs to avoid those cores. To do this I enabled HT for the first time since I had this PC, 2.5 years ago.

 

I've also enabled Windows Aero mode for the first time, after someone recommended it here. It did help a little.

 

Based on your resolution and hardware and no VC, you should have no problem maintaining 60Hz/60FPS.

 

As I say, and keep saying, it is very good everywhere excepting only in the circumstances i stated.  A lot of the time it would far exceed 60 fps if i let it.

 

Pete

[jimcarrel 688]

Hey Pete, those 361.43 drivers are the best thing since Maple Syrup on my machine. Absolutely love them. One reason is that now I can hold 28.8 fps, while locked at 29 frames, running the Duke Turbine with the GTN 750, ASN and Orbyx scenery. 

 

I've never been able to almost lock "dead center" on a frame rate.

[Claude Troncy 4]

 

 

1.  Find a way to operate your display at 30Hz

Bonjour,

I am new (one week) to P3D and the first problem I encountered was the microstutters related to the way the full screen mode is implemented. It is different than in FSX SE (Window exclusive mode).

Now, I if I understand well, this behavior can be eliminated by a monitor capable of 30Hz refresh rate.

Such a monitor is not cheap, and how can I be sure it works. I saw on the forum people not convinced.

I tried adaptative sync in Nvidia Panel with TB, no Vsynch in P3D, and frame limiter to 35hz in NI. It is better but not as fluid as FSX SE (for the vsynch problem)

I think that going from DX9 DX10 to DX11 was not so evident with the fullscreen management, but is there a chance that the window exclusive mode came back in P3D.

Now I have a 780gtx 3G, with DSR 4X, 0% smoothness. I thought the GPU memory would be short... but no. (No agressive AA in P3D or NI)

Cheers

Claude

[Pete Dowson 558]

Okay, I've found out what was dragging P3D 3.2 down at EGLL. It was Orbx FTX England.

 

I've now installed UTX 2.1 Europe and put that on top (higher priority) of Orbx FTX Global. FTX Vector is disabled completely (but I did that a while back). I've disabled FTX England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland and N.Ireland. It's actually a bit of a relief. I was dreading finding problems at the UK2000 airports of which I have all.

 

With that arrangement, performance in my benchmarks at Heathrow is up there with FSX-SE's, or maybe slightly above, and definitely looks a "go". I even tested it with autogen a notch up at both 'dense' and it didn't deteriorate much, and with MT6 traffic slider back up to 55% it's still not much down, though I'll normally use 30-40% along with UT2.

 

No time for flying at present though! That'll need to wait will I'm back from holiday.

 

Pete