It sounds like you know what you're talking about, haven't you thought about the LM have had the code for over 5 years and might have changed it by now? They did upgrade it to DX11

 

There has been talk at FSDeveloper about drawcalls impacting performance.

So it may be a thought that 16 1k textures on a single 4K texture sheet making just 1 drawcalls rather than 16 will improve performance.

I don't think anyone's done a "study" on it so whether there's a noticeable difference or if I'm not sure.

I do know that a single 4K texture probably doesn't contain 16 1k textures sheets worth of content on it though, some of them like to go mad with the quality so make them very large.

What work was shifted to the GPU allowed them to drop DX9 in favor of DX11 but the bulk of the remaining code is ESP. It would take a shift to 64bit to rid it completely of ESP code. The shift to DX11 only did allow for some breathing room and better management of GPU memory allocation.

 

I personally have not experienced any OOM with P3D but then again I'm not running a slew of 3rd party add-ons. Currently have roughly 30 add-ons and not all are HD.

I agree with the OP 100%. I have never been able to understand why devs are pushing 2048 textures, and more, for addons. Why? We don't walk around an airport admiring the walls and car parks! We use a sim because we want to fly aircraft. IMO 1024 textures are more than adequate when properly produced. 

 

We lose either way though - if we tone things down in the name of saving VAS, we take flak in reviews over the textures not looking as good compared to other products. If we put all the bells and whistles in, people blame us for their OOMs (never mind the 1GB+ VAS load from that airport scenery they're using, it's always the plane's fault).

Well said, Ryan. When one sits down and thinks carefully about the interrelationship between P3d and the myriad of 3rd party addons, it's a miracle that they all function as well as they do. As part of the recent SimConnect exception bug trackdown, I was amazed to see that with my setup that I had over 20 distinct 3rd party modules (apps, gauges, aircraft and dlls) utilizing SimConnect. One gets spoiled with all that realism and eye candy. It's hard to be realistic and give up anything that improves the immersion. But one has to be realistic. Every few days I run XP10 just for a change and I'm amazed at how wide the gap has become between P3d and XP10 now. And it's all because of 3rd party efforts. If XP10 had even half the support  that FSX/P3d does from 3rd party developers it would easily surpass P3d in quality and reliability, just because it is 64 bit.

Some people enjoy making videos or taking nice screenshots so it's good for them if that's what they are into.

I've never had an OOM, I use everything ORBX has, Fly Tampa,AS Airbus,A2A,AS2016,REX4,NGX blah blah blah, my settings are on the high side in FSX DX10 boxed but I keep textures at 1024 LOD at 4.5 and turn off things in control panels (if available) that are useless to me because I am one of the ones who like to fly and I honestly don't see a massive difference in quality from 2048 or 4096, I do notice but not enough to care really.

In the end it's up to the consumer to research what he/she is going to buy, so the fault can't only be put on the developers, some products work better for some than others so each to their own.

 

Cheers

Greg Z

We lose either way though - if we tone things down in the name of saving VAS, we take flak in reviews over the textures not looking as good compared to other products. If we put all the bells and whistles in, people blame us for their OOMs (never mind the 1GB+ VAS load from that airport scenery they're using, it's always the plane's fault).

 

Yea I have started leaning towards not using airport scenery with jetliners. I wish I could use both but the reality is I spend very little time close to the ground and when I am at the airport I am usually in the cockpit looking at various panels, flightplans and computers. 

Yea I have started leaning towards not using airport scenery with jetliners. I wish I could use both but the reality is I spend very little time close to the ground and when I am at the airport I am usually in the cockpit looking at various panels, flightplans and computers. 

  Although i have to admit, to what has already been touched on a little, that I do prefer higher res on the smaller GA airports as you tend to be up closer to buildings and things as you taxi around the club house. Where in the bigger airport,s you sit at a gate and then you're quite some way from the buildings when you start to taxi.

  Although i have to admit, to what has already been touched on a little, that I do prefer higher res on the smaller GA airports as you tend to be up closer to buildings and things as you taxi around the club house. Where in the bigger airport,s you sit at a gate and then you're quite some way from the buildings when you start to taxi.

True but what I can do is enable my high end airports when I fly with GA aircraft that require less VAS than a complex aircraft. Also, while I have not tried it out since coming back to flight simulation I feel like Orbx airports are not as demanding on VAS so I may start using some of those. Then again Orbx airports are quite a bit smaller . With the jetliners what I really appreciate is a great weather engine. Using ASN with rex soft clouds and I am always quite thrilled with the experience. I don't even have an urge to move over to AS2016 yet...