Prepar3D Tweak Assistant (PTA)

[keight 26]

thank you. I will try it. I thought the minimum value can be entered is 0.1

[MarkW 1,493]

Has there been any discussion here about the impact (if any) of turning off Shader Cache in Nvidia Inspector as a way to save VAS and its impacts on PTA?  I have heard there is no impact, and I have not seen any, but I have also ready where PTA could not find the shader cache when this tweat was implemented.  thanks.

[Cruachan 705]

Hi Mark,

 

Prior to using PTA I had been in the habit of deleting the shaders folder. This, I discovered, is a no, no where PTA is concerned as it will throw up an error and won't allow you to proceed. When a Preset/changes are applied PTA deletes the content of the shaders folder, not the folder itself.

 

Not sure turning off the Shader Cache would have any positive effect, rather the reverse, I would have thought. Isn't building/rebuilding the shaders folder hard coded in P3D and not something we or anything else has any control over? Perhaps Shader Cache in NI is something different and distinct from the shaders Cache folder in P3D. I suspect that any move to turn it off in the drivers would interfere in some way with the compilation or subsequent use of the shaders Cache in P3D and we would be faced with permanent black screens!

 

All idle speculation, of course..lol

 

Regards,

Mike

[KNOSSOS 122]

Has there been any discussion here about the impact (if any) of turning off Shader Cache in Nvidia Inspector as a way to save VAS and its impacts on PTA?  I have heard there is no impact, and I have not seen any, but I have also ready where PTA could not find the shader cache when this tweat was implemented.  thanks.

PTA works with the source code of shaders and shaders compiled by sim (so called "Prepar3d shaders cache"). Nvidia shaders cache is a completely different thing. That's why PTA will work with Nvidia cache is ON or OFF.

Personally I prefer to turn off NV cache because sometimes it cause an issues (not related to PTA).

 

regards,

[Adamski_NZ 952]

It appears it could depend on many things. The best I could find was this: http://www.overclock.net/t/1553142/shader-cache-setting#post_23848211

[KNOSSOS 122]

Prior to using PTA I had been in the habit of deleting the shaders folder. This, I discovered, is a no, no where PTA is concerned as it will throw up an error and won't allow you to proceed.

Mike

Since PTA 2.04 the tool detects this case (this is not listed in release notes though, just a "silence" change). And if P3D is installed, but P3D shaders cache directory doesn't exist, it will be created and no error messages will be displayed.

[MarkW 1,493]

PTA works with the source code of shaders and shaders compiled by sim (so called "Prepar3d shaders cache"). Nvidia shaders cache is a completely different thing. That's why PTA will work with Nvidia cache is ON or OFF.

Personally I prefer to turn off NV cache because sometimes it cause an issues (not related to PTA).

 

regards,

 

OK great info and this saves some precious VAS.

[Cruachan 705]

Personally I prefer to turn off NV cache because sometimes it cause an issues (not related to PTA).

 

Hi Yuri,

 

If turned off then is this likely to have an impact on other titles? My rig is not dedicated to P3D alone.

 

Edit: No need for a response. Adam's helpful link to that informative post tells me all I wanted to know. In particular, the decision whether or not to turn off NV Cache is summed up by the last paragraph in which is stated: "the answer really DEPENDS, and that is also why it seems to help in some games/applications but not others. I wouldn't just disable it for all, you CAN configure this setting per game using the program settings of NVCP." Reading the rest of the thread helps to understand why this is so.

 

Regards

Mike

 

Since PTA 2.04 the tool detects this case (this is not listed in release notes though, just a "silence" change). And if P3D is installed, but P3D shaders cache directory doesn't exist, it will be created and no error messages will be displayed.

Hi Yuri,

 

Ah, that's good to know, thanks. I rarely perform many manual deletions of shaders content these days. I leave it to PTA. You, Adam et al keep us all busy 😀

 

Regards,

Mike

[B777ER 2,486]

Yuri,

 

So I've run into an odd issue. I've been trying the latest Thopat 1.4 preset. Something is going wrong though as it seems like the preset is not sticking. Almost as if it is turning off and on. In this post, http://www.avsim.com/topic/500202-thopat-10-preset-for-pta2-as-real-as-it-gets/?p=3555564 you can read about what is going on at night. During the day it is happening as well. Again, like the preset is turning off and different textures are being loaded. I have only AS16 running in the background. ASCA is not on my computer. I have REX TD4 with soft clouds. But that is not running either. I've seen this happen with Adam's preset as well. I go into P3D options/settings and just immediately click the OK button and the preset seems to load correctly. Any ideas? I manually loaded some sky textures into the P3D texture folder a while back but I figured REX TD4 would've over wrote them. Really at a loss as to what can be happening.

[KNOSSOS 122]

Yuri,

 

So I've run into an odd issue. I've been trying the latest Thopat 1.4 preset. Something is going wrong though as it seems like the preset is not sticking. Almost as if it is turning off and on. In this post, http://www.avsim.com/topic/500202-thopat-10-preset-for-pta2-as-real-as-it-gets/?p=3555564 you can read about what is going on at night. During the day it is happening as well. Again, like the preset is turning off and different textures are being loaded. I have only AS16 running in the background. ASCA is not on my computer. I have REX TD4 with soft clouds. But that is not running either. I've seen this happen with Adam's preset as well. I go into P3D options/settings and just immediately click the OK button and the preset seems to load correctly. Any ideas? I manually loaded some sky textures into the P3D texture folder a while back but I figured REX TD4 would've over wrote them. Really at a loss as to what can be happening.

Unfortunately I have no suggestions what it can be. Tried to reproduce the issue with the different sky textures and a/c using Navid's moon and latest Thopat 1.4 preset. Works smoothly.

Next time when this happens try to untick "Custom post-processing" and "Custom tweaks".

[Adamski_NZ 952]

OK great info and this saves some precious VAS.

 

Good find, Mark. I just tried it: saved me around 200Mb of VAS. It does seem a little choppy (micro-stutters) every now and again - I presume as it's loading the next batch of textures, but I'll leave it disabled for a while yet.

 

Adam.

Again, like the preset is turning off and different textures are being loaded. I have only AS16 running in the background. ASCA is not on my computer. I have REX TD4 with soft clouds. But that is not running either. I've seen this happen with Adam's preset as well.

 

Just a guess (I don't have AS): I wonder whether it's AS16 injecting new textures, causing a shaders cache rebuild. Have you tried it with the dynamic weather of AS turned off?

[B777ER 2,486]

Unfortunately I have no suggestions what it can be. Tried to reproduce the issue with the different sky textures and a/c using Navid's moon and latest Thopat 1.4 preset. Works smoothly.Next time when this happens try to untick "Custom post-processing" and "Custom tweaks".

Ok, will try that next time. Thank you

Just a guess (I don't have AS): I wonder whether it's AS16 injecting new textures, causing a shaders cache rebuild. Have you tried it with the dynamic weather of AS turned off?

 

AS16 is just a weather injector, no textures that is ASCA. Gonna try what Yuri said above next time.

[Adamski_NZ 952]

Question for Yuri(!):

 

Is it possible to separate out water saturation from terrain saturation? I've tried all sorts of tricks with reflectivity and refraction/limpidity with no real luck. Water and terrain seem to be inextricably linked, so anything I do to inject a bit of "life" into the terrain tends to over-saturate the water.

 

Adam.

[KNOSSOS 122]

 

 

Is it possible to separate out water saturation from terrain saturation? I've tried all sorts of tricks with reflectivity and refraction/limpidity with no real luck. Water and terrain seem to be inextricably linked, so anything I do to inject a bit of "life" into the terrain tends to over-saturate the water.

I'm afraid not. I can't separately adjust water and terrain in coastline tiles (which contain water AND terrain).

[Adamski_NZ 952]

I'm afraid not. I can't separately adjust water and terrain in coastline tiles (which contain water AND terrain).

 

Yes - I can see that would be a problem!!!! Thanks for the quick reply. I may try going back to FEX to create much lighter/paler base water textures. I have terrain looking pretty good, IMHO, but water has always been a problem for me in P3D.