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GEKtheReaper

General usage, Performance issues

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Hello guys,

after years of using EZCA (even upgraded to EZCA V2), I decided to give ChasePlane a try. The featured videos, the "ease" of use, the much better and fresher UI and some of the new features like virtual doors, led me to the decision. But was it a good one (see 4.3)?

Let me talk about my experience with CP:

1. Purchase: Easy. The product page well describes CP, what it can, what it can't an what it's suppose to do upon release. You feel yourselfe in good hands.

2. Installation: Piece of cake from within vfxCentral. No more disabling AV, no more adding exclusions, no more "false positives", no more "Run as Admin"....just a simple click an forget!

3. Configuration: You might need to have a look at 1 or 2 videos but its mostly self explanatory.

4. Usage (well here comes a part which I didn't expect).

4.1. Camera sets: Setting up cameras is realy easy. The tricky part is setting up your camera "shakes" or head movement effects. Since most of the users don't get to sit in cockpits (or collect movements with accelerometers), you don't know how turbulence, wind, ground,...affects the ACFT. So you have to check if the Camera effects look right for you. When I first set up the NGX, the head movement during taxi was simmilar to those when driving a tractor on a field (same thing during turbulence). So I had to try to finetune the effects, which was indeed easy but since you can't "preview" your new settings, you have to taxi and finetune and taxi more...you get my point.

a) Can you guys implement a button which can simulate the effects (e.g.: TAXI button/ TO ACC button / Light Turbulence / havy turb / ...).

b) I hoped you guys would provide some effect presets for ACFT (not all of them but the major ones like PMDG, Aerosoft,....). I'm realy new with CP so excuse me if I state something wrong but I didn't found the possibility to download those presets.

4.2. Virtual doors does not work for me (I have the experimental Alpha installed). It would not accept the switch between a cockpit door and a outside door. The GUI always tells me that it can't switch between inside and outside views and wants me to convert them either all inside or all outside.

4.3. Transition between cameras: In my case these are mostly NEVER smooth. I have a transition time set for 1500msec and mostly always the transition is done with stutters Also panning is kind of stuttery. In outside views all vehicles (e.g GSX vehicles) move with stutters. And this is very annoying. The whole sim seems laggy.

4.4 Prediction seeting: Verry nice touch and a good idea! To work, you have to set it at a higher value if you want to see the effect during taxi (so not to constantly pan). The problem: it's sensitivity does not decay with speed! So if you are on TO or inflight, your head "predicts" the ruder correction the same as during taxi (it's impossible to fly that way).

General: The SW has a lot of potential and I'm sure that most of the issues will be fixed in time. Since I use the SW only for flying purpose (not streaming, recording...) It' s a MUST that the transitions are smooth and the sim doesn't get laggy. If I can't find a fix to the stuttering, I will have to revert to EZCA for the time beeing.

Would appreciate any ideas / suggestions / help. My specs can be found in my signature.

Regards,

Gerald

PS: I forgot to ask: Please add a save button! If you have set up your cameras and are at the point of finetuning, CP does not automaticaly save your settings (it takes a while to sync with the server). If you change views before the sync, you loose your setting. The grren checkmark also does not come alive after finetuning some effects.


Gerald K. - Germany

Core i7 10700 / ASUS ROG Gaming-E / ASUS Strix  RTX 3090 OC / 32 Gb RAM GSKILL.

"Flightstick" = X56 HOTAS RGB Logitech

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Hi Gerald,

Thank for your review/questions/suggestions about ChasePlane Alpha! We take feedback very seriously and we appreciate you taking the time to write your thoughts. I will try to answer as best as I can. If you have more questions or would like me to elaborate on a subject, let me know.

4.1.a We thought about implementing a Preview feature for the turbulence system. While it's definitely on the list of things to do, we are currently focused on getting the camera system stable and ready for v1.0 by mid-2017. We have a massive list of features on the to-do list including that one! Every time we get feedback like this, it moves up in the list.

4.1.b. We use aircraft data (Weight, wheels diameter and RPM, etc.) to calculate our various turbulence types. That way, we are able to get various feels for every aircraft. A large aircraft will feel much smoother than a small one because that's what the data says. When the community opens it's doors, you will be able to get presets from other people and find the ones you prefer!

4.2. We made a quick tutorial on how to create Virtual Doors on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_1r7_lgIb8 The interface changed a bit but you should be able to get them to work following this tutorial step by step. If not, contact us through our Support page and we'll check that together.

4.3. We try to minimize CPU usage as much as possible. When the sim is running, are you using 100% of your CPU?

4.4. The Anticipative turbulence type is still in its infancy. There are a lot of things we want to change in the way the prediction is calculated based on the aircraft's situation on the ground and in the air. We want to push those changes before V1.0

For the save button, Turbulences/Advanced settings are saved automatically and position changes have to be saved manually. If this is not what you are talking about, let me know.

We have a WIP User Manual here: 

We add content frequently when people ask questions unanswered by it. 

Best Regards,
Keven

 

  • Upvote 1

Keven Menard 
Technical Director, //42
.

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Keven,

thank you for the extensive reply!

 

4.3. I will have to apologize to you and the team for point 4.3. I think I have a general sim issue since I suffer from Framedrops! Trying to find the culprit (i suspect it to be FSL Spotlights). I have only 1 CPU Core running at 100% (the overall load is at ~60%). Affinity mask is set up correctly and CP is set to run on the cores with the lowest load. I think EZCA is a little framerate friendlier and thereby I didn't notice the low FPS (maybe it was exactly at the border between good and bad).

4.2 Virtual doors: I watched the video before posting and it didn't work for me (tried it only in the NGX). Will give it at try with other ACFT.

4.4 was missunderstood. What I ment was the "Human Anticipation thingy" during turns (where the head turns in the direction of the ACFT turning). To actually turn the head, you have to set the setting pretty high. The high setting is good while taxiing but should get less if the speed goes up. During TO your head will spin from left to right while trying to hold the center line...

Thank you again for your time in answering to my points!

Regards from Lake Constance!

Gerald


Gerald K. - Germany

Core i7 10700 / ASUS ROG Gaming-E / ASUS Strix  RTX 3090 OC / 32 Gb RAM GSKILL.

"Flightstick" = X56 HOTAS RGB Logitech

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