3 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Just one more comment about this flight. 95% of it was over open ocean, relatively clear skies and the number of Ai aircraft was generally in single figures until I got close to the Florida coastline.

So can anyone explain why the VAS consumption increased slowly over time. It's baffled me. If anything I would have expected it to drop as distant scenery was unloaded.

1 hour ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Just one more comment about this flight. 95% of it was over open ocean, relatively clear skies and the number of Ai aircraft was generally in single figures until I got close to the Florida coastline.

So can anyone explain why the VAS consumption increased slowly over time. It's baffled me. If anything I would have expected it to drop as distant scenery was unloaded.

Hi Ray,

I'm guessing a trigger is involved and your flight over an unvarying ocean/scenery did not encounter a predefined set of conditions that would action VAS memory purges. This can only be speculation on my part and not based on any known fact. However, it does not seem unreasonable and could be tested if you felt so inclined.

Regards,

Mike

14 minutes ago, Cruachan said:

Hi Ray,

I'm guessing a trigger is involved and your flight over an unvarying ocean/scenery did not encounter a predefined set of conditions that would action VAS memory purges. This can only be speculation on my part and not based on any known fact. However, it does not seem unreasonable and could be tested if you felt so inclined.

Regards,

Mike

Hi Mike,

How could such a situation be tested?

4 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Hi Mike,

How could such a situation be tested?

Uh,oh, shouldn't have invited that one...LOL! To be honest I really haven't a clue.

Perhaps starting flights at varying distances from a heavily populated coastline/airport. Could try setting up a flight on autopilot from, say, 2,000 - 10,000ft (height may be a factor) and slew a set initial distance from the coastline and on a heading towards the coast (1000 miles?). Save the flight situation and then reload the saved flight before starting the flight. Record the VAS usage as you travel towards and over the coast/airport. Then fly the same path from the opposite direction, starting over the heavily populated coastline/airport and fly out to sea for the same distance, or whatever distance it takes before you notice VAS purging activity.

Regards,

Mike

Come on Mike.

Let him fly without further testing. Everything is well now ...  

LOL

1 hour ago, Cruachan said:

Uh,oh, shouldn't have invited that one...LOL! To be honest I really haven't a clue.

Perhaps starting flights at varying distances from a heavily populated coastline/airport. Could try setting up a flight on autopilot from, say, 2,000 - 10,000ft (height may be a factor) and slew a set initial distance from the coastline and on a heading towards the coast (1000 miles?). Save the flight situation and then reload the saved flight before starting the flight. Record the VAS usage as you travel towards and over the coast/airport. Then fly the same path from the opposite direction, starting over the heavily populated coastline/airport and fly out to sea for the same distance, or whatever distance it takes before you notice VAS purging activity.

Regards,

Mike

Mike,

I set you up. To be honest if I thought the results of any test could be used by LM to improve the VAS handling I might be inclined to try it. But we both know that isn't going to happen.

The only way of retrieving VAS when over a desolate area is to save and reload the flight. If there was any possibility of P3D running out of VAS inbound to KMCO that's what I would have done. In fact, before FS Labs patched Concorde that was the only way you could get from EGLL to KJFK such was the VAS consumption in FSX.

Providing I keep my settings at reasonable levels I don't anticipate problems. However, tomorrow I will be extending the cloud draw distance as the current radius is far too small. Hi-Fi experts have advised it shouldn't impact to any great degree with VAS or fps.

5 hours ago, Sumits81 said:

Well done, Ray. Great to see a fellow P3D'er doing well in-sim :)

@SteveW I was reading somewhere there may be a better way of setting/assigning cores to P3D via an external software (Project Lasso might have been mentioned). I'm no expert on the subject but the author of this article suggested texture loading was better. Is this a placebo effect or is there any tech-truth to it?

Cheers

You can't alter the affinity of P3D once it's started or it'll hurt the sim, period, use the AM. We can do software to help get more out of it when it's starting up on a 'busy' system, but do it properly that software would need to know the AM arrangement specified in the Prepar3D.cfg prior to the startup and then it would have to intervene with the process of the jobscheduler during the initialisation of the sim - a special P3D mode - not straightforward. Whether there's any improvement to be available depends heavily on the combined processes running during the sim and whether the system has spare cores. With four core systems and a sim demanding four cores we have to mix all those processes sharing bandwidth, but they don't share equally, a tiny 5% CPU use showing for a process can stagger the sim. We see more range to the performance of the sim from what these other processes do, so changing AM values usually just reorganises stuff to produce slightly different results. The goal is to get the AM right in the first place and then worry about the other stuff.

Hi Gerard, Ray

Yes, probably best to ignore me when I indulge myself by following these flights of fancy 😀 I guess it's something deeply embedded in my psyche, along with a background in medicine, which drives that compulsive desire to understand what is going on. Ah well, old habits die hard and certainly no bad thing when you are knocking on 70!

Regards,

Mike

Don't worry Mike. I also have a desire to understand what it is I'm changing rather than just change blindly. The discussion on AM especially has opened my eyes to its importance.

That's why I love flight sim. Keeps the brain working - far better than watching daytime TV!