3rd Party planes causing massive fps drop

[revporl 19]

Hi

My XP11 install runs really well, I'm getting around 40+ fps with high settings typically on a fairly modest system using default aircraft

However, I've imported a couple of Carenado planes (B58 and C90) from my Steam XP10 install to my LR XP11 install and they seem to work fine, and they look lovely but cause an absolutely massive framerate drop to about 17-18 fps

Is this because of an incompatibility between XP versions (and I'll have to buy new planes when they're released) or a massive leap in the fidelity of the aircraft and what setting would be best to reduce to allow them to run at higher fps?

The scenery settings don't seem to make any difference at all as they only affect the outside world, not the cockpit. 

 

Thanks,

Paul

[Colonel X 1,430]

I remember about 10 years ago in FSX, I bought a 757 from CaptainSim, it brought my FPS down from 45 to 10. Many payware AC's later, my verdict is that there are two kinds of developers: the ones that are aware about performance and optimize their planes, and the ones that just don't care. If you run into such a situation where an unoptimized plane eats 50% of your performance, don't bother, just delete it and move on.

[Jimm 437]

54 minutes ago, revporl said:

Hi

My XP11 install runs really well, I'm getting around 40+ fps with high settings typically on a fairly modest system using default aircraft

However, I've imported a couple of Carenado planes (B58 and C90) from my Steam XP10 install to my LR XP11 install and they seem to work fine, and they look lovely but cause an absolutely massive framerate drop to about 17-18 fps

Is this because of an incompatibility between XP versions (and I'll have to buy new planes when they're released) or a massive leap in the fidelity of the aircraft and what setting would be best to reduce to allow them to run at higher fps?

The scenery settings don't seem to make any difference at all as they only affect the outside world, not the cockpit. 

 

Thanks,

Paul

Carenado has a reputation of creating stunning visual models, but lack the complexity in their systems.  I found no difference between the performance of their FSX/P3D models and the XP ones.  I have two of them, the CT208 and the DA42, both of which look great, but when it comes to flying them, there are drops in sim performance.  The same holds true for Aerobask aircraft as well, but with theirs, the systems do perform as they should, not to mention that part of the decrease in performance, is due to the 4k textures and implementation of nav data.  I find with payware aircraft that have more visual concentration, the performance is not as high.

One recommendation would be to increase the flight models in XP, to help alleviate some of the poor performance, which can be found within the settings menu, under the general tab, subheading Flight Model.  placing it at 3 or even 4 may help.  

You mentioned compatibility, and that too may be a bigger reason for the drop in performance.  There has been some discussion of late about Carenado's path to bringing older XP10 models up to date with XP11, and they would be developing new aircraft for XP11 directly.  If you are using an aircraft that was specified XP10 (or 10.5) compatible, there may be a chance that this is causing some issue.

[ryanbatc 12,857]

Doesn't increasing flight models make the CPU work harder?  That would drop fps 

anyway payware is almost always more detailed than default acft - I'm not surprised the OP noticed a drop in fps.

[Jimm 437]

4 minutes ago, ryanbatcund said:

Doesn't increasing flight models make the CPU work harder?  That would drop fps 

Where did you hear that? 

For the record, on my system, increasing flight models has no decrease in frames.  Increasing to a number, such as 3 or 4, doesn't hurt performance.

6 minutes ago, ryanbatcund said:

anyway payware is almost always more detailed than default acft

True, and if one were to only fly payware, then adjusting the sim's settings to compensate would be the best course of action, and that too would be directly related to what the individual user intends to use the simulator for.  Some like to sit and planespot, while others concentrate on flight ops, so again, adjusting settings to match intent is equally important.  Personally, I enjoy a realistic looking aircraft, but I also want the aircraft to perform as it should.  As Rob pointed out, some developers are active enough  in the community to listen to customer's issues and work to fix them, while others stay silent and just push more and more content, regardless of their reception. 

[ryanbatc 12,857]

Possibly on the developer blog but I can't find a source link

Thsts how I understood it - the CPU has to increase computations per frame with a higher number.  It makes for a more accurate flight model but makes the CPU work harder.

[Jimm 437]

2 minutes ago, ryanbatcund said:

Possibly on the developer blog but I can't find a source link

Thsts how I understood it - the CPU has to increase computations per frame with a higher number.  It makes for a more accurate flight model but makes the CPU work harder.

Well I wouldn't purposely steer anyone wrong with my suggestion.  Look at it this way: try it, if it doesn't work for you, put it back.  Anything in the settings can be experimented with, just as it had been shown in another thread about adjusting XP11's settings.

[Colonel X 1,430]

Of course using more flight models increases workload and decreases performance - however on an extremely marginal level as flight calculations are a rather pedestrian task and could be managed by a better pocket calculator.

[Paraffin 2,197]

I see a drop in frame rates with the Carenado planes, and other more complex aircraft. From a baseline of 40-45 fps with the default C172, the one that hits the hardest is the Pilatus PC-12 where I get a drop of 8-10 fps. The Carenado C208B Caravan and the Aero Commander are about half that. 

This is normal for aircraft running more complex plugins and more detailed textures, although you're seeing a much higher reduction than I am. What are your system specs including monitor resolution?

There will be a new XP11 versions of the Carenado fleet at some point (with the ones released after XP11's announcement free updates, the others full price). We can hope that they'll take a look at optimizing plugins for better frame rates. On the other hand, it may not help much if the frame rate is also being hit with new physics-based rendering features. I'm guessing the frame rate hit will average out about the same with the new XP11 models. 

[Jimmy RFR 406]

Something that needs to be taken into account is that (and this is purely speaking from my own experience) there are times where X-Plane performance does not degrade in a linear fashion. That is to say, that when you hit the tipping point of what your computer is capable of, occasionally you can have performance fall quite a bit more than you otherwise might think.

For example, you can start the sim with a default aircraft in some place that has little / no density, and good performance, let's say you get 60 fps. You could then swap over to a 3rd party aircraft with more complexity / higher resolution textures, and note that the impact is minor, let's say 5 fps. So now you are getting 55 fps, and quite happily flying around.

The next time you load the sim, however, you could load up a big third party airport, in someplace dense. Now let's say the impact of that scenery is pretty major, and you're now getting 35 fps. Now you switch over to that third party aircraft, thinking to yourself, "Well, I only had a 5 fps hit the last time I flew this, that'll leave me with 30 fps, perfect!". Well.... not necessarily. If that third party aircraft is enough to put your system past the 'tipping point', if it adds just enough stress on your system, it's not unusual in my experience to have the resulting impact be far larger than expected.

This has been my experience with aircraft, scenery, weather, AA sliders, etc. You can track the impact of any individual setting or add-on in a linear fashion, but only to a point. At a certain load level, the adjustment of a single component in combination with everything else can cause performance to plummet hard.

Complicating matters further, this 'tipping point' seems to be different for everyone.

 

[revporl 19]

Hi folks,

Thanks for that. tried increasing number of flight models but made no difference. I guess for now its one B58 for flying smooth and fast and another for pretty screenshots! I agree about the tipping point hypothesis.

For the record my spec is modest:

    Windows 7 Professional 64-bit SP1
CPU
    Intel Core i7 860 @ 2.80GHz    
    Lynnfield 45nm Technology
RAM
    16.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 (9-10-9-26)
Motherboard
    Gigabyte Technology Co. Ltd. P55-USB3 (Socket 1156)    3
Graphics
    S24E510C (1920x1080@60Hz)
    2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 (ASUStek Computer Inc)    
Storage
    1863GB Seagate ST2000DM001-1CH164 (SATA)    
Optical Drives
    TSSTcorp CDDVDW SH-224FB
Audio
    Realtek High Definition Audio

Resolution is 1920x1080

 

As I say, I generally get very good performance with highish (say 3/4) settings across the board.

 

Thanks again,

Paul

 

[ryanbatc 12,857]

Ahhh - that CPU is ancient hehe.  And I thought my 2500K was old.

your video card is ok but on the low end for XP11.  I'm guessing your vram is saturated when you load the nicer Carenado aircraft.  My GTX 970 sure is and that's 4 GB

[revporl 19]

Ha ha all things considered it does very well! Except with the Carenado's!