Why is P3D handling VAS so poorly?

[Midnight Music 252]

If I can suggest, when flying complex tubeliners like PMDG, turn off the ORBX regions, they are VAS guzzlers. Use them for GA only or short flights and just live with Global, LC and a minimalist Vector. It still all looks great and you will save a ton of VAS on longer flights.

 

[fluffyflops 1,857]

Ray I feel your pain trust me I do.

I was experiencing the ndivia drivers leaks so went back to .33  

I was getting much better vas usage from that but getting ntddll errors.

Like the guy said above it doesnt matter how you cook it, P3d is a awfully coded sim from years ago.

Ive just updated with the new drivers and will do a test flight down to barcelona.

Keep your chin up mate, its frustracting as hell.. but its a common issue these bloody drivers

 

[Cruachan 705]

2 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Thanks Mike. I'm on those at present. That aircraft is not going to affect your VAS usage much.

I need to have a consistent test with just P3D settings or Nvidia drivers changing. That way I can properly judge the impact of any change.

Hi Ray,

The point I was trying to make is that despite my moving between multiple situations of varying complexities and scenery densities P3D was doing a good job of releasing VAS memory that was no longer in use. I could not do that before in one session as something in the Nvidia driver structure had changed after 376.33 to interfere with P3D's purging routines. LM have been discussing the matter with Nvidia and, if this afternoon's experience has any weight, I have to assume that it has had some effect (hopefully I'm right about this) in convincing them that the problem did exist...not that you are likely to read anything from Nvidia confirming the issue was being caused by their drivers.

Regards,

Mike

[fluffyflops 1,857]

3 hours ago, Schlotterknie said:

300MB left after parking the aircraft at Heathrow is just wonderful... I don´t get the problem...
You´re flying a detailed aircraft from a very detailed airport (Oslo) into the area of London Heathrow which is very well known VAS-killer. I would understand if you complained about getting an OOM but leaving your virtual Concorde with 300MB VAS still available after approaching Heathrow is what I would truly call a happy end.

However, if you´re really unhappy just because you don´t have tons of free VAS after anyway succesfully approaching EGLL extended I´m not getting tired to recommend following these 5 major points:

1. Disable Hyperthreading...
2. Use GeForce driver 381.65 or above (! clean install !)
3. Disable shadercache and multithreading in the Nvidia driversettings (control panel or inspector).
4. Leave "OPTIMIZE_PARTS=0" in your cfg.
5. Make use of "ENABLE_MEMORY_OPTIMIZATION=1" in the cfg in the GRAPHICS section.

 

Ive just reinstalled with new drivers.. and followed the above advice.. no OOM leak for me on my 980ti.  I owe you a beer mate

[Ray Proudfoot 8,947]

3 hours ago, Schlotterknie said:

You won´t get better performance with FSX/P3d keeping it enabled. That more than 10 years old FSX/P3D-engine just doesn´t know how to make use of it. Even with a modern, properly optimized application the performance gain of HT is to neglect. HT is not much more than a marketing gag by Intel. I really recommend you at least to try it, it´s just a switch in your BIOS. Takes a minute do change it. Disabled HT saves 300-500MB of VAS on my system with absolutely 0 performance loss.

To disable your shadercache and multithreading of your driver (saves about 100MB) you don´t need to install NV inspector. You can do that quick and easy with the Nvidia control panel and it´s also without perfomance loss.

I have never disabled Hyperthreading since I've had this PC and I don't understand its relevance to VAS. Rob Ainsclough's excellent document makes no reference to it. Why if it's going to save VAS?

I may try it but only after I have exhausted other possibilities. Thanks for the tip.

[Ray Proudfoot 8,947]

3 hours ago, Midnight Music said:

If I can suggest, when flying complex tubeliners like PMDG, turn off the ORBX regions, they are VAS guzzlers. Use them for GA only or short flights and just live with Global, LC and a minimalist Vector. It still all looks great and you will save a ton of VAS on longer flights.

 

Lee,

I don't fly 'tubeliners'. I fly Concorde. I have no PMDG aircraft. I have no ORBX regions or Vector - just FTX Global which has never been a VAS eater even with FSX.

It seems to me the only way to reduce VAS is to lower scenery settings but I was led to believe P3D was far better at handling complex scenery and autogen than FSX. I'm not convinced.

 

[Ray Proudfoot 8,947]

3 hours ago, tooting said:

Ray I feel your pain trust me I do.

I was experiencing the ndivia drivers leaks so went back to .33  

I was getting much better vas usage from that but getting ntddll errors.

Like the guy said above it doesnt matter how you cook it, P3d is a awfully coded sim from years ago.

Ive just updated with the new drivers and will do a test flight down to barcelona.

Keep your chin up mate, its frustracting as hell.. but its a common issue these bloody drivers

 

Thanks Pete. I thought P3D was better at handling VAS than FSX. It seems to be better in the respect that having bottomed out around 250-300Mb it doesn't actually run out. I have flown from Aerosoft Heathrow to a 3rd party Dublin both of which are VAS eaters and even with Concorde I didn't run out. But it does go extremely low and it doesn't seem to release VAS once you fly out of a complex area. FSX does so why not P3D?

I don't know how much LM had improved the original Microsoft code but perhaps the main benefit is how much can be handled by the GPU rather than VAS handling.

Reverting to the .33 drivers should clarify things tomorrow. Maybe part of the problem is in the recent drivers.

[Ray Proudfoot 8,947]

44 minutes ago, Cruachan said:

Hi Ray,

The point I was trying to make is that despite my moving between multiple situations of varying complexities and scenery densities P3D was doing a good job of releasing VAS memory that was no longer in use. I could not do that before in one session as something in the Nvidia driver structure had changed after 376.33 to interfere with P3D's purging routines. LM have been discussing the matter with Nvidia and, if this afternoon's experience has any weight, I have to assume that it has had some effect (hopefully I'm right about this) in convincing them that the problem did exist...not that you are likely to read anything from Nvidia confirming the issue was being caused by their drivers.

Regards,

Mike

Thanks Mike. I haven't noticed P3D releasing VAS. Maybe after I install the 376.33 drivers I will.

Perhaps the problem is with Nvidia but as you say they're hardly likely to admit it. More testing tomorrow.

[Cruachan 705]

Hi,

A few folk will persist in decrying the standard of coding that has produced P3D. Yes, it is based on Microsoft® ESP™ and yet the Lockheed Martin Prepar3D Development Team have done a heck of a job in finding ways to bring considerable polish to this ageing 32bit simulator. Over the years they have listened patiently to their community of supporters and have accepted numerous requests which, once implemented, have done wonders to improve our experience. This in itself must have been a Herculean task on top of the time taken to improve the sim's performance and stability. I really don't think we have too much to complain about. Instead, I suggest that we should be very grateful for what has been achieved to date, including the preservation of coding architecture that has allowed the addition of so many wonderful 3rd Party enhancements.

I am running Windows 7 Pro 64bit which is regarded by many as past its sell by date. Windows 10 is the 'modern' goto operating system yet still only commands a 25% share of the market while W7 is not far short of 50%. Why? Because the latter is stable and still accomplishes everything the enthusiastic and not-so-enthusiastic user really needs without any of the unwelcome Microsoft induced hassles. What issues I have experienced are generally from the use of 3rd Party products and not the operating system itself.

We may be getting a 64bit version of Prepar3D, but I'm willing to bet that many, like me, will be reluctant to bin our highly customised 32bit variant anytime soon.

Mike

[Cruachan 705]

5 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Thanks Mike. I haven't noticed P3D releasing VAS. Maybe after I install the 376.33 drivers I will.

Perhaps the problem is with Nvidia but as you say they're hardly likely to admit it. More testing tomorrow.

Hi Ray,

I could be wrong, but it's possible you may encounter problems going back to the 376.33 drivers as stuff changed in the drivers when the 10xx series cards came out. No harm in trying, I suppose, but it seems a shame to use less compatible drivers with your GTX 1080 card.

Regards,

Mike

[Ray Proudfoot 8,947]

6 minutes ago, Cruachan said:

Hi Ray,

I could be wrong, but it's possible you may encounter problems going back to the 376.33 drivers as stuff changed in the drivers when the 10xx series cards came out. No harm in trying, I suppose, but it seems a shame to use less compatible drivers with your GTX 1080 card.

Regards,

Mike

They are compatible drivers Mike. Just depends on performance as to whether I stay with them whilst these ongoing Nvidia driver problem exist.

[Cruachan 705]

45 minutes ago, tooting said:

However, if you´re really unhappy just because you don´t have tons of free VAS after anyway succesfully approaching EGLL extended I´m not getting tired to recommend following these 5 major points:

1. Disable Hyperthreading...
2. Use GeForce driver 381.65 or above (! clean install !)
3. Disable shadercache and multithreading in the Nvidia driversettings (control panel or inspector).
4. Leave "OPTIMIZE_PARTS=0" in your cfg.
5. Make use of "ENABLE_MEMORY_OPTIMIZATION=1" in the cfg in the GRAPHICS section.

Hi Pete,

3. I wouldn't touch the shadercache and multithreading settings as I doubt you will notice any changes. Indeed, it may prove to be couterproductive. I have never changed these default Prepar3D Nvidia settings.

4. OPTIMIZE_PARTS=1 is the default entry and should be left alone.

5. If such a tweak exists then you can be sure it is already hard coded into the sim.

Regards,

Mike

[Schlotterknie 35]

13 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

I have never disabled Hyperthreading since I've had this PC and I don't understand its relevance to VAS. Rob Ainsclough's excellent document makes no reference to it. Why if it's going to save VAS?

I may try it but only after I have exhausted other possibilities. Thanks for the tip.

Higher VAS usage with HT is inevitable. The question is just how high the amount of an increase will be. On some systems lower to none, in others (like mine) VAS consumption increases by 500MB or more.
Each thread running on a logical or physical core reserves memory to send data to the CPU. Hyperthreading means more threads and more threads means more memory reservation. More or less... that seems to depend.

Just try out disabling it. It´s only a matter of seconds to flip that switch in your BIOS and flip it back if you don´t like it. Test it in combination with disabling the shadercache and multithreading in your Nvidia control panel. None of that will harm your system and you can easily step back.
I also recommend using the latest Nvidia driver 382.05 (since 381.xx VAS handling as obviously been improved) instead of rolling back to 376.33 as you mentioned. That old driver really was the best available for half a year, but not anymore.
Always do clean driver installations!That means to use DDU and delete the P3D shader cache after every driver installation.

Good luck...! (and good night  )

[Schlotterknie 35]

3 minutes ago, Cruachan said:

Hi Pete,

3. I wouldn't touch the shadercache and multithreading settings as I doubt you will notice any changes. Indeed, it may prove to be couterproductive. I have never changed these default Prepar3D Nvidia settings.

4. OPTIMIZE_PARTS=1 is the default entry and should be left alone.

5. If such a tweak exists then you can be sure it is already hard coded into the sim.

Regards,

Mike

You can doubt whatever you want but those things lower VAS consumption on my rig without any doubt. It´s a matter of fact... I bet that no PC or sim is going to explode if that changes are at least tested...

[Ray Proudfoot 8,947]

2 minutes ago, Schlotterknie said:

You can doubt whatever you want but those things lower VAS consumption on my rig without any doubt. It´s a matter of fact... I bet that no PC or sim is going to explode if that changes are at least tested...

Please post details of your rig.