Increase the speed of scenery tile loading

[jason99vmi 157]

I think I almost have my P3D setup smoothed out. But one thing I noticed last night while trying out my new Orbx Norway scenery is that the tiles when flying over top load but load slow and tend to keep sharpening.

 

Is there any way to increase the speed of the textures becoming more clear and crisp?

 

I assumed this was always linked to the LOD radius which I currently have at 6.5. Would FFTF help with this. I have FFTF turned off because the few times I tried 0.1 it didn't seem to help any.

 

Small but maybe big footnote I recently junction linked all my Orbx scenery over to my HDD off of my SSD. I know this might have decreased the load times of scenery.

[vgbaron 3,508]

Seems like you have answered your own question. You can try increasing the FFTF, lowering a few settings.

 

Vic

[TheBoom 31]

Yet another thread describing blurries in P3D 3.2. I hope LM are taking note.

 

FFTF determines the amount of processor overhead going to scenery rendering as opposed to other tasks. The lower it is the worse the scenery loading is going to be. Hence setting it to 0.1 is the reason you think it doesn't help.

 

You will need a value of around FFTF 0.5 minimum. Using an external fps lock with the FFTF value seems to help alleviate the blurries in 3.2.

 

If you still see blurries try TML=60 and reduce if you see white flashes.

 

Do note that both the above tweaks can cause stuttering and fps loss. It's a trade off between visual quality and performance with 3.2.

 

Moving the scenery off an SSD to a HDD will increase initial loading times but should not affect scenery rendering on the go.

[jason99vmi 157]

vgbaron, on 03 May 2016 - 1:28 PM, said:

Seems like you have answered your own question. You can try increasing the FFTF, lowering a few settings.

 

Vic

Well yes, but would like to keep Orbx off the SSD since it freed up room and keeps the SSD from reaching that tipping point where performance decreases.

 

TheBoom, on 03 May 2016 - 1:31 PM, said:

Yet another thread describing blurries in P3D 3.2. I hope LM are taking note.

 

You will need a value of around FFTF 0.5 minimum. Using an external fps lock with the FFTF value seems to help alleviate the blurries in 3.2.

 

If you still see blurries try TML=60 and reduce if you see white flashes.

 

Do note that both the above tweaks can cause stuttering and fps loss. It's a trade off between visual quality and performance with 3.2.

Well its not what I would call blurries just hoping to get the textures to sharpen faster. Yeah I will try FFTF at higher values. I had it at 0.25 when I was running FSX since that was the suggested value for Orbx scenery.

 

Thanks. just didn't know if I was missing another tweak somewhere.

[Guest]

 

 

But one thing I noticed last night while trying out my new Orbx Norway scenery is that the tiles when flying over top load but load slow and tend to keep sharpening.

 

Well, that's just how the system works. Some call this blurries, others don't see it anymore, but no matter what you do, you will see textures being loaded nearby. No tweak will help with that. Lower all settings to the lowest possible, add all possible tweaks, get an fps of 200 and you will still see textures being loaded. Get used to it. :wink:

[BrettT 63]

I have been experimenting with this same issue and although I can't say I have gotten rid of the problem, what seemed to help improve the condition was to get rid of my Affinity Mask (at a slight penalty to smoothness, though not visibly so to me) and to re-enable hyperthreading.  I know there are some lengthy discussions here about AM and its benefit.  I am not debating those at all and have used them a good bit.  Unfortunately, I found I paid a "quality" price for it in the form textures taking way to long to "pop" into place.  Playing with the FFTF also had an impact on improving the condition but seemed to produce more stuttering.  Ultimately, I just decided to go with a clean config file and have been enjoying the scenery I paid good money for.  This has just been my experience and I don't pretend to be an expert.  Hope this helps you in your quest.

 

Kind regards,

 

Brett

[TheBoom 31]

I have been experimenting with this same issue and although I can't say I have gotten rid of the problem, what seemed to help improve the condition was to get rid of my Affinity Mask (at a slight penalty to smoothness, though not visibly so to me) and to re-enable hyperthreading.  I know there are some lengthy discussions here about AM and its benefit.  I am not debating those at all and have used them a good bit.  Unfortunately, I found I paid a "quality" price for it in the form textures taking way to long to "pop" into place.  Playing with the FFTF also had an impact on improving the condition but seemed to produce more stuttering.  Ultimately, I just decided to go with a clean config file and have been enjoying the scenery I paid good money for.  This has just been my experience and I don't pretend to be an expert.  Hope this helps you in your quest.

 

Kind regards,

 

Brett

Yes I've been reading posts that say removing AM or letting P3D use the first core seems to help the situation.

[glider1 90]

I'm using a different approach. The method is for advanced users, is experimental and labour intensive so try it at your own risk.

 

- Make sure that your P3D settings are not excessively optimistic but reasonable for your system.

- Turn on HT

- Put all your addons and system apps on LP's 6-7 (core 4).

- Modify your P3D dll.xml file so that it asks you whether you want to load a dll when P3D32 starts.

- Return your config file to defaults except add in an FFTF of 0.1 to get better framerates

- Start task manager

- Start P3D32

- When P3D asks you whether you want to load a dll, you now have the chance to manually add an AM via task manager

- Let the main sim job have the first core (LP1) leaving (LP0) free for the operating system.

- Put the second job and third jobs on core 2 (LP2-3)

- Put the 4th sim job on core 3 by itself at LP5 leaving LP4 free for the operating system.

- Now answer the dll loading popup questions and let the sim run like normal.

 

The benefits of this approach are:

- You hopefully notice that the cpu load is much more even. Previously, the sim jobs would max out at 100% but now the load comes down much quicker.

- Textures and terrain will load like normal

- The sim will be smoother because of AM

- Framerates will be better because you don't need excessive FFTF values.

 

This is a labour intensive approach, but it works for me while I wait for 3.3. I think it works because the AM is set while P3D hasn't yet initialised the simulator, when it is waiting for you to respond to the dll.xml popup.

[GSalden 4,656]

I'm using a different approach. The method is for advanced users, is experimental and labour intensive so try it at your own risk.

- Make sure that your P3D settings are not excessively optimistic but reasonable for your system.

- Turn on HT

- Put all your addons and system apps on LP's 6-7 (core 4).

- Modify your P3D dll.xml file so that it asks you whether you want to load a dll when P3D32 starts.

- Return your config file to defaults except add in an FFTF of 0.1 to get better framerates

- Start task manager

- Start P3D32

- When P3D asks you whether you want to load a dll, you now have the chance to manually add an AM via task manager

- Let the main sim job have the first core (LP1) leaving (LP0) free for the operating system.

- Put the second job and third jobs on core 2 (LP2-3)

- Put the 4th sim job on core 3 by itself at LP5 leaving LP4 free for the operating system.

The benefits of this approach are:

- You hopefully notice that the cpu load is much more even. Previously, the sim jobs would max out at 100% but now the load comes down much quicker.

- Textures and terrain will load like normal

- The sim will be smoother because of AM

- Framerates will be better because you don't need excessive FFTF values.

This is a labour intensive approach, but it works for me while I wait for 3.3. I think it works because the AM is set while P3D hasn't yet initialised the simulator, when it is waiting for you to respond to the dll.xml popup.

Will try your approach and see what it does.

You can use Proces Lasso for assigning addons to specific cores permanently...

[bartgast 2]

Will try your approach and see what it does.

You can use Proces Lasso for assigning addons to specific cores permanently...

 

Have you tried it?

[GSalden 4,656]

I use it for all addons ..,

[jason99vmi 157]

GSalden, on 04 May 2016 - 08:12 AM, said:

I use it for all addons ..,

Gerard- I think he meant glider1's process above.

 

Is there a learning curve for Process Lasso or is pretty straight forward?

 

Yeah I'm one of those people who tried AM and it created the really blurred landscape.

[Cargostorm 151]

 

 

Yet another thread describing blurries in P3D 3.2. I hope LM are taking note.

 

I think that is the tradeoff in the current version P3D V32: people have been reporting that fps have been improved, but seeing more blurries than before. You can see a similar effect if you change the FFTF values. So far I do not think there is a solution, unless one wants to go back prior 3.2.

[SteveW 1,792]

Maximum scenery loading speed comes at the expense of maximum rendering performance.

 

Let's look at the four core CPU with HT. Enable HT and use no Affinity Mask (no jobscheduler section). We get all eight logical processors (LPs) filled with activity. The first two LPs (LP0, LP1, both residing on the first core, core zero, and sharing its entire throughput) and the third LP (LP2, the first LP of the second core, core 1) contain the main rendering processes. The fourth LP (LP3) to the eighth LP (LP7) contain the scenery loaders, managed by the thread on LP4. Also the third LP, the third sim thread job, joins in with scenery collection. So we have 6 LPs dedicated to scenery collection with this configuration. We should ensure our addons avoid LPs 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4, and run on the last three LPs (LP5, LP6, LP7) of this configuration, or performance will be poor.

 

I suggest trying this technique first to see if scenery performance improves.

 

To improve rendering performance will reduce scenery loading speed. We can separate the first three thread jobs onto a core each, meaning an Affinity Mask is required to mask off one LP of each of the first three cores. This only leaves one core for two scenery threads. But then the small increase in loading speed is offset with lowered rendering performance by the inclusion of the fifth thread job to manage. This is also compounded by the problem of where to run addon exe's. We end up with the AM=85 and AM=116 types of configurations.

 

Those with six, eight, or more cores can easily provide extra LPs for scenery loading, but still these come with the same cost to ultimate rendering performance.

 

The first stage of improving rendering performance on the four core HT enabled would come by using the popular AM=254 rather than no AM. The important LPs are still LPs 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4, again, keeping our addon exe's to LPs 5, 6, and 7 (the last three).

 

 

Regarding asserting affinity on addon exe apps:

 

Ensure the addon starts with the desired and intended affinity. Lassoing apps can lead to those apps spreading across all LPs before being corralled onto fewer LPs by the lasso. Addon exe's can be started with affinity settings reliably by use of the .bat methods described here: Start an app with Affinity batch file (.bat). I would prototype a setup with these methods first. The first method shown in the link should work on most systems, some systems may have permission issues preventing the technique shown in the lower method from working reliably.

 

The FFTF value, [MAIN] FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION=0.33 (33% is default setting), is the ratio of time of each frame that the fibres are loading scenery, to the time the fibres data is exchanged with the main rendering processes. So if we are setting to 0.1, this reduces the time these fibres load scenery to minimum. This will have more effect when we have more scenery loading threads.

[jason99vmi 157]

The first stage of improving rendering performance on the four core HT enabled would come by using the popular AM=254 rather than no AM. The important LPs are still LPs 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4, again, keeping our addon exe's to LPs 5, 6, and 7 (the last three).

Once again SteveW you are a scholar and a gentleman. Have not tried AM=254. Will definitely give this a try and keep the addons to 5,6,7.