On 5/3/2018 at 7:51 PM, jh71 said:

hm, can you check if you have "Use Vsync" under Graphics disabled.

It would lock your framerate to the screen frequency. I have never heard it locking to 15, but it is worth checking.

If you use the standard vsync, it "locks" (synchronises) your framerates to the monitor refresh rate. However, using a 60Hz monitor as an example, if your framerates drop below 60, vsync then "locks" them to 30. If your framerates fall below 30, vsync continues to drop them using fractions of the monitor's refresh rate (30, 20, 15 and so on).

12 hours ago, vortex681 said:

If you use the standard vsync, it "locks" (synchronises) your framerates to the monitor refresh rate. However, using a 60Hz monitor as an example, if your framerates drop below 60, vsync then "locks" them to 30. If your framerates fall below 30, vsync continues to drop them using fractions of the monitor's refresh rate (30, 20, 15 and so on).

Well there you go.   Nicely explained.  Lots of folks see this phenomena.

On 1/6/2017 at 11:27 PM, Mountain Man said:

The online manual has instructions on how to optimize performance:

 

http://x-plane.com/manuals/desktop/#configuringtherenderingoptions

 

The simple version is to set everything to minimum and proceed to adjust one setting at a time until you see the framerates dip, then dial it back one notch and move on to the next setting.

Yep I went from 20-23 fps and tried everything and then methodical followed the guide and am 30-35fps testing using default 747

Edited May 8, 20188 yr by zmak

14 hours ago, vortex681 said:

If you use the standard vsync, it "locks" (synchronises) your framerates to the monitor refresh rate. However, using a 60Hz monitor as an example, if your framerates drop below 60, vsync then "locks" them to 30. If your framerates fall below 30, vsync continues to drop them using fractions of the monitor's refresh rate (30, 20, 15 and so on).

Is it best not to use V sync if frames are at 30 or below?

2 hours ago, zmak said:

Is it best not to use V sync if frames are at 30 or below?

v sync helps with screen tearing, but not much else. I think most people leave it unchecked.

I use vsync locked at 1/2 refresh rate through the nvidia options. This locks my frame rate to 30 (on a 60hz monitor). As I don't care about VR or TrackIR, I hardly see any advantages of going above 30fps and this option leads to very smooth visuals on my system.

36 minutes ago, mgeiss said:

I use vsync locked at 1/2 refresh rate through the nvidia options. This locks my frame rate to 30 (on a 60hz monitor). As I don't care about VR or TrackIR, I hardly see any advantages of going above 30fps and this option leads to very smooth visuals on my system.

The problem is if you go below 30, then it halves your framerate to 15. If you overload, then it becomes unplayable. If you can not maintain 30 or higher, then it is best to disable this option.

If you set vsync within the driver to "adaptive", it will automatically disable vsync if you drop below the intended value (at least that's how I understand the option). However, I'd rather lower all eye candy options before allowing the sim to go below 30 fps.

I have the latest X-Plane 11 Update. I run XEnviro on easy mode. I have ReShade latest version which I have the preset "Sharpness Clear Technicolor standard HDR.ini and ColournessFull ticked. The X-Plane sliders Visual effects on Minimal. Texture Quality on  Minimal and Antaliasing  on 8X. My frame rate was very poor between 15 to 20 max. When I installed the above listed and made the adjustments as set out my frame rate jumped to between 30 to 35 with awesome quality in the picture. i hope this is of some help as I was totally frustrated with the frame rate on installing XEnviro. 

On 5/8/2018 at 1:41 PM, mgeiss said:

I use vsync locked at 1/2 refresh rate through the nvidia options. This locks my frame rate to 30 (on a 60hz monitor). As I don't care about VR or TrackIR, I hardly see any advantages of going above 30fps and this option leads to very smooth visuals on my system.

2

For years now, this has been THE setting to run X-Plane with. Sad it's not the officially promoted mode by Laminar (I think they could add it to the settings if they wanted to). So many inexperienced uses struggle with stutters (sync related, not performance). There's simply no other way to achieve the smoothness this mode offers - if your settings allow you to run the simulator at or above 30fps.

 

On 5/8/2018 at 2:19 PM, jh71 said:

The problem is if you go below 30, then it halves your framerate to 15. If you overload, then it becomes unplayable. If you can not maintain 30 or higher, then it is best to disable this option.

That is false information. Using "vsync locked at 1/2 refresh rate" setting, frames will drop below 30 to whatever you're capable of running, there is no "switch" to 15 FPS. Check your settings. But of course yes, the setting becomes useless if you can't maintain 30 FPS.

On 9/5/2018 at 1:22 PM, Colonel X said:

That is false information. Using "vsync locked at 1/2 refresh rate" setting, frames will drop below 30 to whatever you're capable of running, there is no "switch" to 15 FPS.

That's not entirely correct. See https://hardforum.com/threads/how-vsync-works-and-why-people-loathe-it.928593/ and http://www.tweakguides.com/Graphics_9.html for some good explanations of how vsync works. To quote from the text in the first link, when using standard vsync "the framerate can only be equal to a discrete set of values equal to Refresh / N where N is some positive integer. That means if you're talking about 60Hz refresh rate, the only framerates you can get are 60, 30, 20, 15, 12, 10, etc". This also applies if you're using vsync 1/2 refresh rate - it won't just run at some arbitrary intermediate framerate.

Where it becomes different is if you're using adaptive or adaptive 1/2 refresh rate. With those settings, vsync will only be enabled whenever the framerate exceeds the monitor's refresh rate (or 1/2 of it, as appropriate), so you could then run at some random lower framerate but with the possibility of some tearing.

Edited September 10, 20187 yr by vortex681

On 5/7/2018 at 4:23 PM, vortex681 said:

If you use the standard vsync, it "locks" (synchronises) your framerates to the monitor refresh rate. However, using a 60Hz monitor as an example, if your framerates drop below 60, vsync then "locks" them to 30. If your framerates fall below 30, vsync continues to drop them using fractions of the monitor's refresh rate (30, 20, 15 and so on).

That is, again, false information here. Using regular VSYNC will limit your FPS to 60 in case your FPS exceed that limit. It will not lock to 30, 15 or anything else. Using it in X-Plane, you probably won't notice it's on, because you will probably never exceed 60 FPS and thus the "lock" will never kick in. Using VSYNC "half refresh rate" will limit to 30 (and again, not to 15 or anything else).

2 hours ago, Colonel X said:

That is, again, false information here. Using regular VSYNC will limit your FPS to 60 in case your FPS exceed that limit. It will not lock to 30, 15 or anything else. Using it in X-Plane, you probably won't notice it's on, because you will probably never exceed 60 FPS and thus the "lock" will never kick in. Using VSYNC "half refresh rate" will limit to 30 (and again, not to 15 or anything else).

You're correct if you use adaptive vsync (or adaptive 1/2 refresh rate vsync) but not if you use standard vsync (or standard 1/2 refresh rate vsync). The whole point of vsync is to prevent screen tearing by delivering whole frames from the frame buffer, synchronised with the refresh rate and this can only be done at either the monitor's refresh rate or at some directly divisible fraction of it. With standard vsync and a 60Hz monitor, the game may be producing 75fps but only 60fps are being sent to the monitor. If your in-game framerate subsequently drops to 50fps, only 30fps are actually being sent to the monitor (one every second monitor refresh cycle) so that the monitor continues to get whole, synchronised frames to display. Unlike adaptive vsync, standard vsync continues to operate below the monitor's refresh rate so has to limit the number of frames per second sent to the monitor so that they remain synchronised with the refresh rate. 

Please see my most recent post above (10 Sep) for some links which describe the process much better than I can. 

You really shouldn’t make claims based on stuff you read (particular on some forum from some guy who thinks he figured something out from reading some other stuff on some other forums) which you may not fully understand yourself.

I use vsync, and before building my current machine, dropped below 30 all the time and never ever reached 60, and my frame rates were NEVER some fraction of 60. Using several frame rate counters, the rates varied across the spectrum. The counters count the actual FPS of the screen refreshes. Even though they count averages rather than each individual frame, the result would be closer to the fraction integer.  My frame rates were frequently in the mid-20s for extended period. In my new machine, FPS is often locked at 60, but when it drops below that, it doesn’t drop to 30. It ranges through the 40s-50s.  

There is no “in-game” frame rate separate from the actual frame rate of the monitor. 

37 minutes ago, Griphos said:

You really shouldn’t make claims based on stuff you read

Other than watching a video (and there are some good ones explaining vsync) it's difficult to know how else you'd get the knowledge. Because I had a lot of problems with screen tearing in the past, I read into it extensively (from actual books!). I only linked those explanations because they describe the process well and it saves me having to repeat much of it.

41 minutes ago, Griphos said:

There is no “in-game” frame rate separate from the actual frame rate of the monitor.

There is if it's less than the refresh rate and you're not using vsync (or you use adaptive vsync).

Whilst I can't argue with your figures, I can argue confidently about how standard vsync works. Unless the graphics card can send a whole frame to the monitor every time it refreshes, then you'll get tearing to some extent. That's where vsync comes in. If you have a 60Hz monitor and get 40FPS from the game (33% slower than the refresh rate) every time the monitor updates the screen, the video card can only draw 2/3 of the next frame leaving 1/3 of the previous frame which will make the image look torn. Vsync delays the next screen update until a whole frame can be drawn so, in this case, it would have to wait for a further monitor refresh cycle - that is 2 cycles for a single frame to be drawn so effectively 30FPS. It can't be a higher FPS as that would be out of synch with the refresh rate and would, again, produce tearing.

Adaptive vsync doesn't have this problem as it only works if your framerates are above the refresh rate, in which case it then limits your FPS to the refresh rate. Once your framerates drop below your refresh rate, adaptive vsync turns off allowing whatever framerate you have to be displayed (but with the possibility of tearing).