Performance improvements in P3D v4 ? [beta testers?]

[Anxu00 176]

Could someone (beta testers?) comment really about performance gains with v4? I have not seen any report on this important topic.  What turned me off with P3Dv3 were the microstutters I kept running into, not VAS.  I went from 2.x to 3.x and have updated my system twice [currently at i7-2700k oc 4.8 GHz, GTX980 4GB] average system, but it works fine with everything else.  Since it's not practical for everyone to invest more dollars into building new systems (if more hardware is what needed, which I have not seen evidences of that so far with P3D v3, and with v4 is just more RAM), I would like to know if the whole sim is now smooth with reasonable settings in V4, so that the flying experience is not marred by stutters on approach, in turns etc.  I am sure that V4 will be finally be helpful with the airliner simmers, however, if VAS issue is now solved but the sim is still a stuttering mess, then I am out for good, especially the upgrade will need more money: new p3d license, new FSUIPC license and who knows what else.  I have seen folks looking forward to use their ORBX stuffs again now without VAS concerns, but without improvements in performance, all of that will be for naught.

[Bobsk8 12,586]

I think a comparison should also be made with a default install of the present version to a default install of the new version. There were many reports of FPS gains and performance when the last version came out, but that was before any add ons were added to it. Load it up with scenery, aircraft, weather, clouds etc, and maybe no gains in FPS at all. 

[TechguyMaxC 516]

Kostas Terzides (Active Sky developer and P3D v4 beta tester) said there's a decent gain in v4:

2 hours ago, kterz said:

Hi,

Most of us have been using 64bit CPUs and 64bit OS since many years ago. The big difference is that now the sim will actually be 64bit (it will be compiled using x64). So, in addition to the gains in memory what does this mean for the performance of an application?

 

- First it will avoid the indirection layer of WOW64 32bit emulation used in Windows. This leads to to a slight increase in performance.

- In x64 mode an application has access to twice as many registers compared to 32bit (the so called x86 mode). This means that local data calculations will not need to access the main memory, more cache memory will be available and thus we'll gain speed.

- It uses double the number of XMM registers (the ones used for floating point calculations, vectors etc).

- Functions are called with the "fast call" convention, avoiding (in many cases), CPU cycles to create stack frames etc.

- On the other hand, a single pointer is now 64bits, meaning it's double in size, so for relatively small data (such as a small array), this means you'll need double the amount of memory.

 

So, what's the net effect? A simple recompile of an application to x64 bit without any other changes/optimization as an average will lead to a 20-30% increase in speed, but this depends on the type of the application. For a whole world flight sim, where the "basic stuff" (such as the lat/lon coordinates) need to have double precision (aka 64bit), this is even more important and so CPU performance will likely see even more benefits.

The one thing you have to keep in mind as far as modern games are concerned is that the main bottleneck in most cases is not the CPU. It's either the GPU itself (depending on the power, the AA level and the amount of semi-transparent objects that need to be rendered such as the clouds) or CPU-GPU communication. In a whole world sim, the disk-RAM also play an important role as we need to update objects and textures on the fly

As far as P3D v4 (since I've been a beta tester), I think we get the expected performance gains. I've seen (on my modest machine, with everything default except for AS/ASCA) a steady increase in frames from 25-55 in P3D v3 (depending on the conditions) to about 35-75 in P3D v4. Of course YMMV and things will probably get worse as we add more addons and stuff, but I think it's a good starting point.

Kostas Terzides,

Active Sky developer

 

 

 

[PWJT8D 446]

My understanding is that it will be much smoother and one reason is the way scenery will be loaded. In v3, most of the autogen and scenery was only loaded within your viewpoint. If you looked to your left let's say, there would be a delay with unloaded textures popping up. I believe this was designed to save VAS? The sim would dump textures not in your view.

Now in v4 there is no longer the high risk of OOM so when all the scenery and autogen loads in your area, it all loads and stays loaded. No longer the need to keep dumping already loaded textures not in view until you leave that area. 

A good example of this is a video by Umberto showing the new FSDT KCLT.

https://youtu.be/lgssk5UOTb0

 

[Guest]

Every new version is supposed to be smoother. And if 64bit would be the holy grail of smoothness on its own, why does default FSW already stutter like hell in places? Video's tell me nothing (also because they can be manipulated). Besides, we all know that what one person calls smooth the other calls stuttering. So imho there isn't much use in speculating about this: you simply have to see it on your own PC. 

[Anxu00 176]

3 minutes ago, J van E said:

Every new version is supposed to be smoother.

Sadly that was never the case for me, I gained in raw FPS in the move to P3D v3, only to see stutters fest with ORBX stuffs.  After thousands spent, I am skeptical of the call for even more money.  At some points, I may just have to cut losses on the stuffs I bought and get not much satisfactions with them rather than throwing more money at it.  And not just money, it's also times cost.  This time, I will just have to really wait.  At least now LM fixed the AA issue so that the visual is not too jagged, but then again at what performance cost. 

[Clutch Cargo 384]

That's one thing I watched closely when reading the multitude of threads about FSW.  Nothing was really "praised" about (or really even mentioned),  about improved performance or the suppression of micro-stutters.   FPS seems about the same from what I gathered. So I am hoping P3D will improve on that

[anden145 2,285]

We'll have to wait and see.
But it sure sounds promising... 

[Noel 4,487]

Microstutters have completely disappeared for me in V3, truly.  My current hardware is now starting its 6th year of near daily use, but this discovery only happened for me in the last 6 months or so.  What got me to this nirvana was the right affinity mask, and setting vsync to monitor refresh rate set thru nV control panel to 30mHz.  As long as I am able to maintain 30fps the sim is completely buttery smooth.  The trade off w/ using 30mHz refresh w/ P3D set up for internally unlimited frames is that once it is unable to maintain 30fps it gets even choppier than other ways I have set this up.  This being said it's fairly easy to maintain 30fps provided I move sliders for a given flight according to this logic:  if it's CPU limited, then down go scenery detail sliders.  Sometimes in very demanding scenarios I've had to go down as low as medium for scenery detail and autogen to sparse during takeoff out of say KPHX HD in the NGX, then after getting out of Phoenix area I can go back to extreme scenery detail and high autogen, all the while maintainining 30 fps.  I run GPUeze to monitor GPU use and when approaching 100% I will back off GPU dependent sliders (lighting sliders) as this can start to impair frame rate.  This is all in ORBX regional sceneries, PMDG & Maj Dash 8.  By being judicious in how I set a given scenario up almost always I'm able to stay at the 30fps threshold.    

What would be really cool is a utility which automatically in realtime modulates these sliders according to relative stress on GPU and/or CPU so that the user doesn't need to stop the sim and adjust manually.  This 'optimizer' really could be built in to P3D w/ user control over what mattered to a particular user.

[JIMJAM 12]

I keep hearing more "space" for the computer to do its thing and for programmers to do theirs.

Our part as good simmers will be to buy lots more STUFF and push those settings even higher.

I expect like a bigger house you see those huge new rooms and go, "Look at all that space." So you buy more stuff, a huge wrap around couch and don't even worry about the size. Next thing you know you can barely walk through it. If we are blessed with more speed and performance we a simmers have a duty to quickly eat it up.

 

[twojastara 85]

John Venema said that AI and road traffic has been super optimized:

 

Quote

Forget VAS and OOMs, and FPS is excellent (see the FPS counters in some shots above with all sliders maxxed). Furthermore, AI and road traffic has been super optimised without no FPS impact so you can roads and skies filled to the brim.

Whole post is here:

http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/135405-prepar3d-v4-64bit-orbx-preview-4k-screenshots/

 

[JIMJAM 12]

After walking away from FSX for 2 years after being in sim s since day 1, I would rather have 3 root canal procedures done in Tijuana through my ear canal and been trapped on a elevator with the women for The View than reinstall my 2 pages from Simmarket, 15+ from Flight1, Orbyx,Rex, Active Sky......... Recently I broke down and got the migration tool and got back a few precious A2A warbirds. What it would take besides a fps boost and faster traffic are things I cannot discuss on these family forums.

[spitzer45 99]

Firstly hello all simmers, this is my first post:)

My friend's friend was beta tester for v4, he told in brief;

Autogen distance draw slider is hard for fps, 

Blurries mostly gone.

Vas is not an issue anymore.

I think for biggest advantages like autogen draw distance and cured blurries of v4 we will need a new GPU like 1080ti. Otherwise it is not much different from v3. Just my opinion. We will see tomorrow.

 

[Poppet 703]

 

41 minutes ago, spitzer45 said:

Firstly hello all simmers, this is my first post:)

My friend's friend was beta tester for v4, he told in brief;

Hello Spitzer45

You were on the FTX forums today claiming you were a v4 Beta tester ?   But now your friends friend is a v4 Beta tester ? 

Spitzer45,  You are very welcome to the Avsim Forums but maybe keep "the Stories" down 

[addman 33]

Sure, performance will probably be better IF you have the hardware for it. A lot of people, like JV for example, are sitting on high-end rigs with 1080ti's or Titan XP's and are reporting fps and performance increases. Most people don't have that hardware so most people will probably not see that much of an performance increase or increased visual fidelity unless they also fork up a lot of cash on a new PC. My two cents...