Blurries then Terrain.dll crash

[Jim Young 2,356]

 

 

I should probably add that it's more of a temporary workaround than a proper fix.

 

Tweaks don't work very well.  You have to keep changing parameters and fly around for an hour or so to see if they are fixed.  Things look good while in the VC and you think you have it fixed and then you go to the external views and things don't look right again.  They work with one aircraft and flight plan but not another aircraft or flight plan. Or, they might look right but, when you go back into the VC and look out, the scenery is not sharp and clear again.  Another factor about tweaks (if they do somehow work) is that they are mostly just for your machine and also depend on what you have enabled in the scenery.cfg and what was loaded via the dll.xml, and your P3D settings.  It all gets extremely frustrating.  Now I do not use tweaks and have my scenery settings set to close to the defaults.  I did turn off cloud shadowing and still have the internal shadows and I get crisp and clear terrain most of the time. 

 

Oh why did Microsoft, Lockheed Martin, and Dovetail Games develop programs that are not crisp and clear all of the time?!! :smile: Maybe one day the techs will discover the holy grail of settings to eliminate "the blurries".  Meanwhile....

 

What frustrates me is the fact every few months we have these same conversations and some indicate tweaks work for them and then more and more individuals get frustrated and spend more time adjusting their settings and trying different so-called tweaks than flying and enjoying their flight simulator (you can see above where someone posted a link to Bojote's tweaks and that was many years ago and we are still looking.  I think even Bojote got frustrated as he has not posted here for years).  Those who have tweaks and believe in tweaks will say tweaks are great and people like me who do not use tweaks will say tweaks are bad and to not solve anything.  Since the beginning of the 2016, we gained over 4300 new members and now they will all be seeking this holy grail tweak (or maybe not) and we will make the explanations again.  Most of us have bought some pretty expensive add-ons to learn to fly and enjoy and I think that should be our priority as we just might live longer.

 

Respectfully,

[TheBoom 31]

Tweaks don't work very well.  You have to keep changing parameters and fly around for an hour or so to see if they are fixed.  Things look good while in the VC and you think you have it fixed and then you go to the external views and things don't look right again.  They work with one aircraft and flight plan but not another aircraft or flight plan. Or, they might look right but, when you go back into the VC and look out, the scenery is not sharp and clear again.  Another factor about tweaks (if they do somehow work) is that they are mostly just for your machine and also depend on what you have enabled in the scenery.cfg and what was loaded via the dll.xml, and your P3D settings.  It all gets extremely frustrating.  Now I do not use tweaks and have my scenery settings set to close to the defaults.  I did turn off cloud shadowing and still have the internal shadows and I get crisp and clear terrain most of the time. 

 

Oh why did Microsoft, Lockheed Martin, and Dovetail Games develop programs that are not crisp and clear all of the time?!! :smile: Maybe one day the techs will discover the holy grail of settings to eliminate "the blurries".  Meanwhile....

 

What frustrates me is the fact every few months we have these same conversations and some indicate tweaks work for them and then more and more individuals get frustrated and spend more time adjusting their settings and trying different so-called tweaks than flying and enjoying their flight simulator (you can see above where someone posted a link to Bojote's tweaks and that was many years ago and we are still looking.  I think even Bojote got frustrated as he has not posted here for years).  Those who have tweaks and believe in tweaks will say tweaks are great and people like me who do not use tweaks will say tweaks are bad and to not solve anything.  Since the beginning of the 2016, we gained over 4300 new members and now they will all be seeking this holy grail tweak (or maybe not) and we will make the explanations again.  Most of us have bought some pretty expensive add-ons to learn to fly and enjoy and I think that should be our priority as we just might live longer.

 

Respectfully,

 

Yes, at the end of the day the fixes are for the developers to do, not us. But for now we do whatever we can to keep the sim as immersive and playable/flyable as we can to the most of our ability and patience.

 

Like you said, every system is going to be different. Just because your sim runs perfectly on default settings does not mean mine is going to be the same (as proven unfortunately). Same for the "tweaks", they're not going to work or not work the same on every system.

 

However, these 3 "tweaks" are still very much in play, according to LM themselves.  

 

SWAP_WAIT_TIMEOUT=

TextureMaxLoad=

FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION=

 

They all have default values configured into the sim itself, and they definitely have an effect to a certain extent. That extent is again going to depend on the system in question along with  configurations of the sims and addons.

 

All that being said, as opposed to my vanilla (default) config, there is definitely a noticeable improvement over 2 different flights and aircraft (PMDG NGX and Aerosoft A320). It's not perfect, but it is still better than doing nothing at all.

 

Which again, ultimately is the only thing within my control. Until the developers decide to fix issues over several systems and configurations before creating new versions and asking a whole new price for them, it is all we can do.

 

Regards

[Jim Young 2,356]

However, these 3 "tweaks" are still very much in play, according to LM themselves.

 

Why didn't Lockheed put them in the config and just talked about them in the Learning Center?  They specifically state "there has been a significant amount of work done since P3D2 to reduce the need for these config tweaks, but the following tweaks should still work, and may help advanced users optimize their experience".  Note the words "advanced users".

 

Again, leave them out and enjoy P3D!!  You can also try some of the settings used by our moderator, Rob Ainscough - http://www.robainscough.com/Prepar3D_Settings_2.html but I would be careful as your system may not be as powerful or you are not accomplishing the same tasks.

 

Best regards,

[TheBoom 31]

 

Why didn't Lockheed put them in the config and just talked about them in the Learning Center?  They specifically state "there has been a significant amount of work done since P3D2 to reduce the need for these config tweaks, but the following tweaks should still work, and may help advanced users optimize their experience".  Note the words "advanced users".

 

Again, leave them out and enjoy P3D!!  You can also try some of the settings used by our moderator, Rob Ainscough - http://www.robainscough.com/Prepar3D_Settings_2.html but I would be careful as your system may not be as powerful or you are not accomplishing the same tasks.

 

Best regards,

 

Definition of "advanced users" may vary. 

 

I would like to improve the current sim experience from a blurry and unimmersive mess it is to something that would keep me interested in it and not dump it along with the money spent on it. 

 

I'm not afraid to use tweaks or anything else out of the ordinary to achieve that. I know what the settings can or can not do and which of these will affect the sim in a certain way be it positive or negative. Hence I am an "advanced user".

 

Or am I? 

 

My point simply is, if they are going to help me achieve my goal then I am going to try them, whether they work or not, whether I'm a programmer or a tester or merely a simmer. If they don't want me using the tweaks then don't include them in the learning center, or better yet, remove them completely from the sim. Of course, the best scenario would still be fixing the sim so that it works properly out of the box instead of causing users undue frustration and annoyance. Before you say I am the only one, have a look at some (or should I say many) of the threads since 3.2 came out.

 

You tell me to enjoy P3D. How am I supposed to do that if its simply not enjoyable? I know some people can turn a blind eye to blurries and other graphical anomalies but I'm not one of them unfortunately.

 

Yes I have looked at Rob's setting many times, as I've mentioned before.  My settings are in fact quite less demanding then his (I'm surprised he doesn't get OOMs). The fact of the matter is, no amount of tweaking the in-sim settings solved the blurries, which is why I have resorted to other means.

 

The fact that they (the "tweaks") did something to ease the situation for me speaks for itself.

 

Regards,

[Jim Young 2,356]

I hope you are successful in stopping the blurries in all cases while using P3D.  Many have tried.  Many have been somewhat successful.  Most still have the problem and have learned to accept it.  "The blurries" are caused by only one thing and one thing only - high p3d.cfg and display driver settings.  You system cannot render the textures fast enough.  Will tweaks fix that?  I think they will make it more difficult because, if a tweak is improperly employed, it could cause further bottlenecks causing further issues for rendering. 

 

Best regards,

[TheBoom 31]

I hope you are successful in stopping the blurries in all cases while using P3D. Many have tried. Many have been somewhat successful. Most still have the problem and have learned to accept it. "The blurries" are caused by only one thing and one thing only - high p3d.cfg and display driver settings. You system cannot render the textures fast enough. Will tweaks fix that? I think they will make it more difficult because, if a tweak is improperly employed, it could cause further bottlenecks causing further issues for rendering.

 

Best regards,

I'm midway between acceptance and fixing if I'm honest.

 

Hmm I'm curious, where do you find the display driver connection? I've been reading threads since fsx but no one has mentioned the blurries being linked to the GPU.

 

My p3d config is moderate, maybe equivalent to robs medium settings for p3dv3.

 

I have a 6700k at 4.7ghz and a 970 with a moderate overclock. I'm quite certain my hardware isn't the problem.

 

But if it's likely linked to display driver settings as you say I might try rolling back my drivers and give it a shot.

 

Regards,

[Jim Young 2,356]

 

 

Hmm I'm curious, where do you find the display driver connection? I've been reading threads since fsx but no one has mentioned the blurries being linked to the GPU.

 

The settings I provided with the link to Rob's settings shows GPU settings he uses.  His NI settings are obscene and too high for most but fortunately he does not use them for all situations.  The AA Transparency SuperSampling setting eats up resources anytime it is above 2.  So does the AA Multisampling and the Anisotropic (AF) setting of 16x's.  It may help reduce the jaggies and clear up some textures but it is hard on any flight simulator.  So you use those settings at your own risk.  Most are already set in the P3D settings but they can be enhanced by the settings in the Nvidia Inspector (NI).

 

Best regards,

[TheBoom 31]

The settings I provided with the link to Rob's settings shows GPU settings he uses.  His NI settings are obscene and too high for most but fortunately he does not use them for all situations.  The AA Transparency SuperSampling setting eats up resources anytime it is above 2.  So does the AA Multisampling and the Anisotropic (AF) setting of 16x's.  It may help reduce the jaggies and clear up some textures but it is hard on any flight simulator.  So you use those settings at your own risk.  Most are already set in the P3D settings but they can be enhanced by the settings in the Nvidia Inspector (NI).

 

Best regards,

I only use MSAA x2 and AF x 16. I don't see how those could cause blurries anyway. I thought you meant that something else within GPU settings are responsible for the blurries.

 

Regards,

[Jim Young 2,356]

Yes, those high settings in the display driver settings will take up resources too.

 

Best regards,

[TheBoom 31]

Yes, those high settings in the display driver settings will take up resources too.

 

Best regards,

Do you mean MSAA 2x is high? That is the lowest possible AA setting in P3D. Nonetheless my GPU isn't pegged at 99% except in very dense clouds which is quite rare.

 

The blurries are definitely not being caused by those settings. I did just read a thread where someone claimed AF 16x can cause blur textures in some cases. But to confirm, what I'm seeing are not just blurry textures but slow loading textures AKA blurries.

[glider1 90]

 

 

But to confirm, what I'm seeing are not just blurry textures but slow loading textures AKA blurries.

 

As a quick test while you are flying, you could try increasing the priority of the P3D application to high or real and see whether you notice textures loading (back filling) a *bit* faster. There is no silver bullet, just a finely nuanced balancing act. It can mean the difference between textures that never load at all because the threads never gets processing time, or textures that load slowly, but at least fast enough relative to your other processing priorities. I did that yesterday with my i6700k 4.7OC. High priority backfills the textures a little bit quicker, "real" a bit quicker again (but still only a bit quicker not miles quicker). Problem with real is that other threads don't get a chance to complete and you start to get more stutters. The trick is that P3D and your addons both need to be fed processing time so that none of the threads are in waiting. That is how the simulation becomes smooth. If any thread is in waiting be it P3D or addon, issues start creeping in. You need to balance the entirety of P3D processing with your addons.

[TheBoom 31]

As a quick test while you are flying, you could try increasing the priority of the P3D application to high or real and see whether you notice textures loading (back filling) a *bit* faster. There is no silver bullet, just a finely nuanced balancing act. It can mean the difference between textures that never load at all because the threads never gets processing time, or textures that load slowly, but at least fast enough relative to your other processing priorities. I did that yesterday with my i6700k 4.7OC. High priority backfills the textures a little bit quicker, "real" a bit quicker again (but still only a bit quicker not miles quicker). Problem with real is that other threads don't get a chance to complete and you start to get more stutters. The trick is that P3D and your addons both need to be fed processing time so that none of the threads are in waiting. That is how the simulation becomes smooth. If any thread is in waiting be it P3D or addon, issues start creeping in. You need to balance the entirety of P3D processing with your addons.

I always set to high but try to refrain from using realtime. Realtime stops the display from going into power saving. Another thing I noticed recently is Windows will automatically change the priority back to high if I set it to realtime. Even with a external program like Process Lasso.

 

I think difference is quite subtle though. I don't see a very noticeable change between normal and high.