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Realistic fps

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I'm giving XP another go... and installed all the recent stuff.

Now before deep into anything else, let's start from the basics, what's the realistic frame rate I should expect? I'm asking because I read so many opinions and different results, that I'm confused what's the overall performance I should see on my system.

 

I'm running it on a 6core @4.3Ghz, 980Ti, 24GB RAM, SSD.

With HD Mesh Scenery v3 and SkyMaxx, sitting on the runway at EDDL i'm doing 32fps, on air around 24 fps.

If I enable w2xp_europe_osm it drops under 17fps.

Are those almost correct or should I expect more at my resolution (1600p) ?

 

My settings:

 

BfhXXHC.png

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I'm asking because I read so many opinions and different results, that I'm confused what's the overall performance I should see on my system.

 

The reason why there are so many opinions and different results is that there is such a huge range of variables, both involving hardware and software, mixed in with what different people deem to be 'acceptable' FPS.  I know of a few people that would be completely satisfied with the FPS you're getting, and others (such as myself) who would be turning back settings to get higher frame rates.

 

Two things immediate stand out to me from your description and screenshot.  You have shadows set to global; in very dense scenery or with a lot of objects / autogen visible, this uses a lot of resources. I tend to just run 'overlay' or '3D on aircraft'.  I also note that you mention SkyMaxx. Depending on your SkyMaxx settings (and the current weather you're flying in), you might see performance increases by turning down settings within SkyMaxx.

 

I run a similar setup at a similar resolution (2560x1440), and I know that those two items demand a very careful balance in dense areas on my system.  I'd likely expect to see similar performance in the region you've mentioned, with shadows on global, and depending on what my SkyMaxx settings are.

 

Personally, I'm kinda lucky in that I enjoy flying primarily where I live - Western Canada; which means that the urban centers are smaller, and so I can get away with near maxed autogen settings and a fairly balanced SkyMaxx configuration.


Jim Stewart

Milviz Person.

 

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My humble opinion, apart from the comment by Jimmy regarding shadows:

 

Runway follows terrain contour - Checked: This doesn't take resources and is more realistic.

 

Wouldn't you like more realistic roads and less autogen trees? I have the trees at lowest possible level. Objects at lowest possible level to still have road lighting.

 

I read an article on "World detail distance" that said that you shouldn't really set it higher than "low" because it has a massive impact on performance vs. little gain.

 

Also a screenshot of what you're seeing together with CPU/GPU load would be interesting!


Jaime Beneyto

My real life aviation and flight simulation videos [English and Spanish]

System: i9 9900k OC 5.0 GHz | RTX 2080 Super | 32GB DDR4 3200MHz | Asus Z390-F

 

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You can take one indicator as a basis:

Put yourself in the freeware Boeing 737 v5 by EADT (which is known to have a huge FPS impact at the moment) and fly circles above New York / Manhattan, prefarably using Drzewieckis New York city and airports sceneries (because these require a bit of power). Create bad weather with 3 cloud layers (overcast, cumulus, etc.).

 

This way, you are in one of the most demanding situations you can get -- FPS-heavy scenery, aircraft, and weather.

 

Now experiment with your settings until you get in this heavy situation 25 FPS. If you can reach 25 FPS in this setting, you will have much better FPS in less extreme situations and with more optimized aircraft.

 

 

Please note that you need a minimum of 20 FPS for real-time simulation. If you have less, the sim is not only slowed down, but also systems of more complex aircraft may start to work incorrectly. So anything below 20 is a no-go.


Mario Donick .:. vFlyteAir

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My settings:

 

Global shadows are very difficult to render and will tax your video card, that and having HDR at 4x SSAA+FSAA will definitely put sweat on you 980, in other words, you are basically telling XP's rendering engine to cast shadows on every single building/tree at 4x HDR.

 

Keep HDR at 4x SSA+FSAA and set shadows to 3D on aircraft, you should see improvement with these settings. 


Windows 11 | Asus Z690-P D4 | i7 12700KF 5.2GHz | 32GB G.Skill (XMP II) | EVGA 3060Ti FTW Ultra | TrackIr v5 | Honeycomb Alfa + Bravo

 

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Now experiment with your settings until you get in this heavy situation 25 FPS. If you can reach 25 FPS in this setting, you will have much better FPS in less extreme situations and with more optimized aircraft.

 

Yeah but that might be overkill if the OP won't fly in heavy sceneries, aircrafts or weather.

 

I remember the definition of "busy day" of an airport, the day that's used as a capacity design target: "The second busiest day of an average week of the busiest month".

 

You don't take the busiest overall day of the year as your "design day" because your infrastructure will be completely oversized the other 364 days. Does this mean that there will be jams? Sure! Sacrifices must be made.

 

Same applies to XP-10, in my opinion.


Jaime Beneyto

My real life aviation and flight simulation videos [English and Spanish]

System: i9 9900k OC 5.0 GHz | RTX 2080 Super | 32GB DDR4 3200MHz | Asus Z390-F

 

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Also, bring your water reflections down to low (or even try none) until you get things sorted.  It's another FR killer.

 

John


John Wingold

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Yeah but that might be overkill if the OP won't fly in heavy sceneries, aircrafts or weather.

 

I was taking a very general approach, of course -- the one that works for me and my so very weak PC. :)


Mario Donick .:. vFlyteAir

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I was taking a very general approach, of course -- the one that works for me and my so very weak PC. :)

 

I understand :)

 

But Mario, precisely if your PC is weak, you might want to let it "struggle" a bit at those very demanding situations. Otherwise you will fly with pretty much the lowest possible settings even at less demanding situations.

 

When your system is TOP NOTCH, then you can allow yourself the luxury of tailoring it for the highest possible demand situations. Just my opinion at least :)

 

One thing I miss about X-Plane, (maybe this is possible with some plugin), is saving a set of rendering options. For example, say you want to do VFR with a light airplane and very heavy scenery: Preset 1. Next day I'm interested in IFR flight in a heavy airliner and don't care much about scener: Preset 2, and so on and so forth :)


Jaime Beneyto

My real life aviation and flight simulation videos [English and Spanish]

System: i9 9900k OC 5.0 GHz | RTX 2080 Super | 32GB DDR4 3200MHz | Asus Z390-F

 

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But Mario, precisely if your PC is weak, you might want to let it "struggle" a bit at those very demanding situations. Otherwise you will fly with pretty much the lowest possible settings even at less demanding situations.

 

You need to find a compromise, of course. For me, it took a long time to find a compromise I'm happy wwith. Now I have certain minimum requirements which my PC has to meet under all circumstances: HD Mesh v3, "very high" textures, trees "filled in", 1920x1080 resolution, FPS 20 to 24 FPS. All other graphical options are less important and thus sacrificed -- no HDR, no AA, no reflections, shadows just on "overlay" ("static" produces wrong shadow shapes very often), not even per-pixel-lighting. Drawing distance is managed by the 3jFPS plugin.

 

Unfortunately there is no way of saving rendering presets. :sad: A while ago I created two batch files. They were used to start X-Plane. One of them was for higher settings, used for creating good looking screenshots; the other was for actual flying. They simply copied preference files to the X-Plane preference folder. The files I had first set up in X-Plane and then copied to the batch file's location.

 

It worked fine, but I noticed that I'd need a dozen variants to meet all needs -- one for big cities like New York, one for Alaska bush flying, one for making review & PR screenshots, etc. It was to much, so I deleted all of them and then found the compromise I described.

 

Edit: Actually this batch-file stuff could be made into a nice application... give it a friendly user interface, maybe with a nice world map. It could ask you "where do you want to fly today?" and "what type of aircraft do you want to fly"... anyway.

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Mario Donick .:. vFlyteAir

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I did some tests and applied all of your suggest.. the fps increased (in the range of 40's) .. but certain settings makes gfx (under the realism aspect) really poor:

 

(number of) Objects: if set this to low the 3D objects are too sparse and the scenario texture emerges. The HD mesh v3 is nowhere near the quality of ORBX i were used to (with P3D), especially when flying < 4k. To compensate the lack of quality I have to set it to "a lot" or "tons", in fact a big advantage over P3D is the presence of this 3D buildings to make the scenery more realistic.. remove it and everything looks subpar.

 

(number of) Trees: i set this to sparse... i notice the difference, but honestly the trees are so ugly that it's better to not see them (I were used to the ORBS HD Trees.. that are a couple of steps ahead). However reducing it seems to give a nice fps boost.

 

World details distance: if I set this to low, everything beyond a certain distance is not rendered.. it's ugly as F! It's like the world finishes some miles ahead of me, it's like watching a Amiga videogame in the 90's.. :) .."medium" setting is more acceptable, while "high" would please any taste (including mine).

 

Shadow details and water reflection: I set the shadow on "3D on aircraft" and it gave a great boost, also water reflection to low.

 

So with this sets:

 

t0mA7oo.png

 

This is the look (unfortunately the image is compressed):

 

uabalXH.jpg

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Make sure you run some night tests too!

 

I for instance wouldn't want to fly without the awesome road lighting at night! For that you need objects set to "a lot", if I recall correctly.


Jaime Beneyto

My real life aviation and flight simulation videos [English and Spanish]

System: i9 9900k OC 5.0 GHz | RTX 2080 Super | 32GB DDR4 3200MHz | Asus Z390-F

 

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(number of) Objects: if set this to low the 3D objects are too sparse and the scenario texture emerges. The HD mesh v3 is nowhere near the quality of ORBX i were used to (with P3D), especially when flying < 4k.

 

Number of objects needs to be set to "tons" at minimum, because otherwise on some payware airports important structures are missing (for example jetways at terminals) or nice landscape details (for example in Aerosoft's Pullman-Moscow). (In my opinion, the developers of such airports should instead have used the "airport detail" option, but well...)

 

 

The free (donationware) HD Mesh can't really be compared to (the quit expensive) OrbX products. The HD Mesh is still using X-Plane's default textures and landscape rendering algorithms, but it allows them to work much better than with the default mesh. OrbX replaces not only textures, but also has a lot of hand-placed details.


Mario Donick .:. vFlyteAir

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Yes, I hope they'll do a similar product (ORBX) for XP.. it's expensive, but it's a one time purchase... what I'm missing also is REX, I have SkyMaxx Pro + Connector for XP but it's nowhere near the awesome and realistic sky/weather I have in P3D.

 

So I installed back w2xp_europe ...I lost 15 fps just for it. :( ...I'm not sure if I will keep it, while it adds a lot of nice buildings makes the towns more alive, those buildings does have unrealistic lighting making the whole scenario to look a way too fake. I think I will stay with just the mesh.. and that's it. Anyway this is the result with w2xp:

 

nMJn7Sx.jpg

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I would also advise to lock your frames to 1/2 of monitor refresh rate (30fms assuming you have a 60Hz flat monitor) using nVidia Inspector, you will see a difference in smoothness. 

 

You have good hardware specs and should be able to sustain  30fms with some rendering settings at very high or even extreme.  

 

And yes w2xp is a frame killer, I wish I could have it installed but I cannot stand to fly with less then locked 30fms everywhere.

 

Also, is your processor Intel or AMD? if Intel, do yo have hyperthreading enabled in your bios? It does make a difference in XP.


Windows 11 | Asus Z690-P D4 | i7 12700KF 5.2GHz | 32GB G.Skill (XMP II) | EVGA 3060Ti FTW Ultra | TrackIr v5 | Honeycomb Alfa + Bravo

 

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