The top "VAS-hungry" settings in P3D and FTX Global Vector

[WebMaximus 372]

After experiencing severe VAS issues after I upgraded to P3Dv3.4 I went back to P3Dv3.3 and although it did improve the VAS situation considerably using the same settings and add-ons I'm still a bit on the edge in some situations. What I find strange is I didn't see the same issue a couple of months ago using the exact same setup and settings.

 

The only thing I can think of that changed is the textures in P3D and many of my add-on airports now show fall textures rather than summer textures (doing 100% of my flying in Europe) so maybe fall texture consume more VAS than summer textures?

 

Anyway I was thinking I need to find what settings will have the most impact on VAS.

 

I'm doing all my flying in the NGX and I have all global Orbx products installed including Vector plus a number of payware airports. I know Vector is known to consume lots of resources both looking at FPS and VAS but I'm already using rather moderate settings with only highways and primary roads enabled for example. I do have all sub-options checked for both of them though such as underlays, traffic, tunnel exits, traffic lights, bridges and so on.

 

As much as I like reducing VAS I don't want to end up with a simulator that won't look pretty anymore and I do have the hardware required to use plenty of bells & whistles. However for VAS as we all know the problem isn't hardware but P3D being a 32-bit application with a 4 GB VAS limitation regardless the amount of RAM and GPU memory available in our systems.

 

In P3D I figured maybe decreasing the distance for shadows a bit could help winning some VAS back without hurting the visual experience too much. I also decreased road, boat and ship traffic from 15%->10%

 

In FTX Vector I kept highways and primary roads checked but unchecked all sub-options except for traffic because I do want to have some traffic on the ground to avoid the feeling of flying over a ghost town. I also disabled all settings under the various tab such as golf courses, power lines etc.

 

What I would like to know to avoid disabling stuff for no good reason is:

 

• what settings in P3D and FTX Vector will have the biggest impact on VAS
• how does the road traffic setting in FTX Vector relate to the road traffic setting in P3D
• if there are any other great tips how you can reduce the VAS usage without sacrificing too much of the visuals in P3D

 

I know there are already numerous similar threads on this topic so sorry for repeating but when I did a Google search I failed to find any info on how the FTX Vector traffic for instance relate to the traffic setting in P3D. One guy said you don't want to use both because then you will have LOTS of traffic that will consume LOTS of VAS and FPS. However the documentation for FTX Vector recommends using 16% for road traffic in P3D so I wouldn't really know what to think.

 

I will start doing some testing on my side but many thanks in advance for your input and what you did on your side to tame the VAS beast and spend your time enjoy flying rather than constantly looking at the VAS counter in the upper left corner...

[downscc 1,327]

I found a few good quality airport sceneries that came with over large photoscenery files, which I consider any single file over 100MB.  Fly Tampa Montreal for example had a photo file over 500MB, that is a big chunk of VAS that suddenly disappears... their KMDW is the same.  I turn off those bgls and let the Orbx scenery I already have handle the eyecandy outside the fences.  This is just one tip.

 

Another item is that I try to be realistic, I like the sliders to the right and good looking scenery and my B77L... so something has to give.  I always keep an eye on VAS and will save, quit and load the flight before TOD to keep away from the edge, usually any VAS remaining below 750MB is reason to reload before TOD although I've seen P3D maintain a 500MB remaining value by working to free memory as we progressed.  This works for some places but going into LAX there's just too much scenery and P3D will need something closer to 800MB than 500MB at TOD to stay alive.  It takes a minute or two to save, quit, restart P3D and load the scenario but it is worth it in my mind to remove the fear of OOM just before I reach the gate.

[WebMaximus 372]

Will check for huge bgl:s, that's a good tip!

 

I know many people "solve" the VAS issue by saving and reloading but in my case that is not an option since I do all my flying online on Vatsim.

[Kuragiman 227]

Fly Tampa Montreal for example had a photo file over 500MB, that is a big chunk of VAS that suddenly disappears... their KMDW is the same

 

Bare in mind the size of the file in the folder does not equal the VAS usage.   I flew with 5 MegaSceneryEarth STATES yesterday (That's well over 10 gigs worth of BGL files   ) but still had a successful flight from KMEM to KBUF in the States.   Now I am flying with UTX/GEX from KBWI to KBUF and I am out of memory after this short little 1hr 30m flight.  I am flying it right this second and I am on final with 100 megs of VAS left.  @_@   With NORMAL autogen and Dense scenery complexity and 1024 textures.    In 3.2 of P3D I would still be around the 700-800 megs left range... so SOMETHING has clearly gone awry.   I use to be able to fly all the way across the US from coast to coast with these settings and not OOM.    Unless my add-ons suddenly went stupid in my absence I am placing the blame on the 3.4 code.   Something is not right.    Am I to be forced to fly with Autogen OFF, scenery complexity set to min with 512 textures, no shadows, no traffic just to complete a flight?  No thank you.  If even made the effort to be a good boy and not put ANYTHING into the simulator that did not have a Native v3 P3D installer.

 

PS:  And... I crashed 500 feet off the runway with an OOM... -_-  I....am... not....  amused.....   :mad:

[Michael Moe 493]

One thing for sure is taking its tale is LOD. Having it at 4.5 i managed in the NGX to land at Heathrow from EKCH with openlceu but no vector and no roadtraffic.

I also had clouds (1024 dxt) one notch down from max all though it clearly can conflict with AS2016.

 

400 mb left and tml at 2048

 

 

I think we should test roadtraffic some moore.

[WebMaximus 372]

As for LOD I already have that one set to 4.5

 

I noticed another thing I would like to get rid of but I'm not sure if it's possible...the car imprints on the Vector roads. Maybe they can somewhat serve as a compromise from altitude if you have any moving traffic on the roads disabled but personally I just don't like it. Having cars on the roads that don't move just looks "frozen" and stupid IMHO.

 

I know in UTX there was an option where you could choose if you wanted car imprints enabled or not but I haven't seen an option for that in FTX Vector.

 

I also did some experimenting with having traffic enabled in Vector vs P3D and from what I can tell they are not related...they seem to affect different roads in the simulator. When I for instance had traffic unchecked in Vector but set to 10% in P3D I did see moving traffic on some of the roads. Enabling traffic in Vector I got traffic also on the roads that previously didn't have any moving traffic.

 

So to me it looks like there are both native P3D roads as well as Vector roads where the traffic option in P3D will only affect P3D roads where the traffic setting in Vector only affects traffic on Vector roads.

 

Oh boy this is some hobby we have spending a couple of hours on things like this...I guess we're all partly crazy

 

And I thought I would be doing some more flying tonight...yeah right...

[Kuragiman 227]

 

 

Oh boy this is some hobby we have spending a couple of hours on things like this...I guess we're all partly crazy And I was thinking I would be doing some more flying tonight...yeah right...

 

I followed NickN's guide to setting up GEX/UTX for the best in VAS usage and performance.   I run with 4.5 on my LOD as well.   It's a Mad Mad World~     I just wanna fly~  

[simmerhead 885]

I'm a very happy GA-flyer with no VAS issues, and reading stuff like this makes me even more happy that I never invested in the complex tubeliners. Good luck to you! 

[WebMaximus 372]

I'm a very happy GA-flyer with no VAS issues, and reading stuff like this makes me even more happy that I never invested in the complex tubeliners. Good luck to you! 

 

Thanks and maybe it's time to start looking into GA instead. Can only imagine how nice it must be never having to worry about VAS or performance issues in the same way you always will have to when flying complex tubeliners.

 

That or try to hang in there until/if we will have a 64-bit version of P3D that will hopefully fix some of these issues.

[downscc 1,327]

 

 

Bare in mind the size of the file in the folder does not equal the VAS usage. I flew with 5 MegaSceneryEarth STATES yesterday (That's well over 10 gigs worth of BGL files )

 

That is confusing, you mention file size and then the size of all files as if they were the same...don't think you mean that. However, it is true that if a single file is 500MB then all if it is loaded in memory, the bgl files are not loaded in pieces but in whole.  Most photo scenery files are less than 100 MB and I take no issue with them (in this context), it's the single file that is larger than half of my remaining VAS that I get rid of.

[WebMaximus 372]

That is confusing, you mention file size and then the size of all files as if they were the same...don't think you mean that. However, it is true that if a single file is 500MB then all if it is loaded in memory, the bgl files are not loaded in pieces but in whole.  Most photo scenery files are less than 100 MB and I take no issue with them (in this context), it's the single file that is larger than half of my remaining VAS that I get rid of.

 

Not sure what happened here...I though I was making a new post but instead my previous comment got replaced by my new post...hmm...

 

Anyway what I said before it was replaced was that I noticed how some of the bgl files that come with Aerosoft LEPA are more than 1 GB so that makes me wonder how I ever managed to fly into LEPA without facing an OOM issue.

 

 

Then on to something else.

 

Looking at the various FTX Vector settings I wonder about the traffic lights setting.

 

Flying over a dense area I can only imagine how many traffic lights there are down there so that single one option should consume lots of VAS space I guess. I wonder if it will only affect VAS when flying when it's dark or if it will also affect your VAS when flying during daytime when no lights are normally seen in P3D.

 

Lots of question marks here...

[AnkH 2,232]

The only thing that really helped me is turning down the settings for IFR flights. As P3D offers a preset feature for the settings, I take advantage of using them. For tubeliners such as the AS A32X series, I use a preset called "IFR medium", with autogen buildings and trees turned down to the middle setting (think its called "medium") and LOD down to "high" (that's 4.5 if I am not wrong). Never experienced a OOM since. For VFR flights, I use my "VFR high" preset, basically with everything maxed out. For FTX Vector however, I use for both scenarios basically only the coastlines, rivers, highways and primary roads (only highways with traffic). So most things turned off in FTX Vector. Also those traffic lights: turned off.

[WebMaximus 372]

Thanks for the input!

 

I already have LOD at 4.5 and autogen density set to Medium. I wonder if decreasing the settings in P3D for shadow distance would do any good from a VAS perspective? That might be the next thing I'll try.

 

As for Vector I just tried a flight with traffic lights disabled but that didn't seem to do much of a difference so maybe I'll have to start disabling more stuff in there.

 

After doing some reading and searching in various forums it appears FTX Vector is maybe one of the most demanding titles when it comes to VAS consumption so if I can't solve my VAS issues in any other way maybe it's time to start looking into alternatives such as UTX2 and maybe I'll look into the new GEX product as well and ditch Orbx Global stuff all together.

 

I don't mind spending some money as long as it will fix my VAS issues and I know replacing FTX Global with GEX won't do any difference when it comes to VAS. If I would go that road it would be more to have a clean installation with products playing nice together since I know GEX is made to work well with UTX just like Orbx global products play well together.

 

The only thing I'm a bit afraid of is what will happen with Orbx ESSA because I know having FTX Global is a requirement for that airport. Not sure though if that means I won't be able to use ESSA at all without FTX Global or if it will only mean it won't look as nice.

 

Anyone tried Orbx ESSA with the GEX/UTX combo?

[GSalden 4,651]

Currently I am doing test approaching at Frankfurt rw 25R.

There is mostly an overcast with several cloud layers, a fortest with lots of trees, villages with houses and trees , Frankfurt City with lots of buildings.

 

Frankfurt MAP Frankfurt

MyTraffic 6

OpenVFR Germany autogen ( uses FTX Global houses and FTX HD trees )

ASCA clouds + AS16

 

In my case I have a triple view setup so extremely taxing.

No VAS issues but my aim is to get it as smooth as possible with a nice and real looking environment.

[Michael Moe 493]

Thanks for the input!

 

 

 

As for Vector I just tried a flight with traffic lights disabled but that didn't seem to do much of a difference so maybe I'll have to start disabling more stuff in there.

 

After doing some reading and searching in various forums it appears FTX Vector is maybe one of the most demanding titles when it comes to VAS consumption so if I can't solve my VAS issues in any other way maybe it's time to start looking into alternatives such as UTX2 and maybe I'll look into the new GEX product as well and ditch Orbx Global stuff all together.

 

 

 

VAS and Vector vs UTX2.1 is pretty identical . Maybe 50mb on some occasions. Dont waste time and money here if its a VAS question.

 

I have gone back to Vector as it blends better with OPENLCEU and NA.

 

But i have seen VAS use as high as 400MB on both products so tweaking them or disable the most for tubeliners is a must here

 

Michael Moe