P3d v3 VS. P3d v4 *Performance Faceoff and Side by Side!*

[Guest]

I was very very fortunate to find the identical set of 2x4GB 2400mhz CL9 DDR3 on fleabay yesterday. It seemed to be last available set on the planet and its blazing fast. So I have my 16GB all be it 4x4. Its used but I would be surprised if it fails mem test when I get it. I only had 2 problems with V2 and V3. The big one was OOM's and the other was big frame drop and stutters on approach to complex addon airports. Given the 15 to 20% performance increase and the end of OOM's I am sure I am going to be very happy. I never had any performance problems except those approaches. Also I have the added benefit of my eyesight being poor enough not to be able to tell the difference between 1080p and 4k so 'ill be sticking with 1080p at 30hz. One of the last thing I did with V3 was to experiment with 50hz and it was very promising. I just couldn't quite get the setting high enough for convincing immersion but that will be one of the first thing I revisit with V4

[Dazkent 113]

As a long time FSX user I have been watching the development on P3D with great interest, I bought V2 and V3 and even though it has lots of eye candy it never seemed to run as smooth as my boxed edition of FSX. If this version does run smooth on a single screen at 1920x1080 with sliders set to average settings then I will seriously think about swapping over.

I was initally very positive about this release and now after watchihg the comparison video I am not so sure as i saw plenty of stutters, Maybe is was ORBX SoCal? Am hopefull that some users will post videos using what i would term mid range pcs. Can't afford a 1080 right now lol

 

 

[TechguyMaxC 516]

5 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

 

 

Is it not good programming practice to make your code as efficient as possible?

I don't think efficiency means what you think it does, in this case, and I offer a hypothetical question as evidence to why:

Which is more efficient?  Utilizing as much of the hardware present as possible and avoiding the need to page to storage which is orders of magnitude slower than system RAM, or unloading everything as quickly as possible only to risk said need to page to storage which creates massive bubbles in your pipeline a.k.a. stutters?

[TechguyMaxC 516]

5 hours ago, Anxu00 said:

You probably are not a software developer to say that.  64 bit or not, memory needs to be managed efficiently, leaving only items that are improving performance and that's all.  Using all of it is just bad coding.  

I do not mean offense by the following, but your statement here does not make me think you are a developer either.  Full disclosure: neither am I, but I do have some background in programming having first learned Pascal in High School and then studying C/C++ in college for a short while (before deciding it wasn't for me).  

A good engineer, be it of software or hardware, will always make a full assessment of the environment before deciding on a course of action, a plan of attack if you will.  If you know that your 64-bit flight sim is coming to market where 8GB is the *baseline* for RAM, you can provide options to the customer to use more.  Much more.  Especially when enthusiasts (the people who are going to make use of said sliders) already have 16GB RAM or more.  RAM is, almost always, upgradeable.  Therefore, it is not wrong to write an application which can take advantage of ever-increasing amounts of RAM.  Some would say that's very forward-thinking, and a good engineering decision.

[Anxu00 176]

6 hours ago, TechguyMaxC said:

I do not mean offense by the following, but your statement here does not make me think you are a developer either.  Full disclosure: neither am I, but I do have some background in programming having first learned Pascal in High School and then studying C/C++ in college for a short while (before deciding it wasn't for me).  

A good engineer, be it of software or hardware, will always make a full assessment of the environment before deciding on a course of action, a plan of attack if you will.  If you know that your 64-bit flight sim is coming to market where 8GB is the *baseline* for RAM, you can provide options to the customer to use more.  Much more.  Especially when enthusiasts (the people who are going to make use of said sliders) already have 16GB RAM or more.  RAM is, almost always, upgradeable.  Therefore, it is not wrong to write an application which can take advantage of ever-increasing amounts of RAM.  Some would say that's very forward-thinking, and a good engineering decision.

I am in fact a software developer, and from what I saw so far, LM let memory accumulates.  At some point, it will hit the actual physical boundary that a person has as RAM and start swapping.  In the video, flying around ORBX SoCal ended up consuming 10 GB, ORBX SoCal was near OOM with 32 bit, but why does it suddenly balloons to 10 (if everything else is the same?).  If the application is not efficient, it does not matter how much RAM you keep adding in, you will still end up with OOM.  Beside expecting everyone to go out and buy more RAM is ridiculous, people usually have 8-16 GB in now average systems.  LM needs to design for the middle, not the extreme.  I could only hope they improve in the near future.

[TechguyMaxC 516]

1 hour ago, Anxu00 said:

I am in fact a software developer, and from what I saw so far, LM let memory accumulates.  At some point, it will hit the actual physical boundary that a person has as RAM and start swapping.  In the video, flying around ORBX SoCal ended up consuming 10 GB, ORBX SoCal was near OOM with 32 bit, but why does it suddenly balloons to 10 (if everything else is the same?).  If the application is not efficient, it does not matter how much RAM you keep adding in, you will still end up with OOM.  Beside expecting everyone to go out and buy more RAM is ridiculous, people usually have 8-16 GB in now average systems.  LM needs to design for the middle, not the extreme.  I could only hope they improve in the near future.

Surely you know, then, that increased VAS usage over time does not necessarily indicate runaway usage.  Your assertion that physical RAM will eventually be consumed and overflow into virtual memory is an extrapolation from the video, but the video doesn't show memory usage exceeding 10GB and it certainly doesn't show the sim crashing.  Time will tell, but I'd bet LM has spent at least a bit of time on memory management rather than just letting the sim run all-out with no regard for memory consumption, particularly as it approaches the limits of physical RAM in a given system.  

[kevinfirth 1,392]

2 hours ago, Anxu00 said:

LM needs to design for the middle, not the extreme.

Can you imagine that philosophy being applied to the military industrial complex by LM?   Design for the extreme, because that will be the middle tomorrow..

[Anxu00 176]

8 hours ago, kevinfirth said:

Can you imagine that philosophy being applied to the military industrial complex by LM?   Design for the extreme, because that will be the middle tomorrow..

Those folks have unlimited money to spend I gather?  Anyway, back to my point upgrading has cost.  Beyond memory management I would like to see evidences that stutters are gone for the average simmers with average system like me.  

[kevinfirth 1,392]

11 minutes ago, Anxu00 said:

Beyond memory management I would like to see evidences that stutters are gone for the average simmers with average system like me.

Difficult one.  The cure for stutters is a relatively simple one, but involves compromise you may find unpalatable IMHO.

Stutters can be caused I believe primarily by long frames.  The cause of long frames is one of a combination of a) inadequate hardware for the desired visual; or b) mismatched hardware settings between the pc and your display.

a) is managed by either ponying up for better hardware or reducing ones expectations (ie settings!) and b) requires you to have display hardware that is capable of matching the output of your hardware. (and knowing how to set it up)

There is no magic cure for stutters...personally I saved for years to buy cutting edge kit - its capable of putting out frames at an acceptably smooth rate at excellent settings - and the fps is matched by the refresh rate of my display, depending on the fps I know I'm going to get based on the type of flight.  

Sadly I'd say that your wallet is likely to be the biggest factor in eliminating stutters, if you want the best visuals :(

[Tomaz Drnovsek 440]

6 minutes ago, kevinfirth said:

There is no magic cure for stutters...

For me, in FSX, it was 1/2 refresh rate vsync setting. When above 30FPS it was smooth as silk, no stutters at all. Sadly, LM removed true full screen in P3D v2 + so now you need 30Hz monitor to come close to that. Otherwise you need 60FPS or more to achieve smoothness and that's, if you're using addons, pretty impossible in P3D. Those are my experiences with smoothness in the sim.

[W2DR 1,859]

On 5/30/2017 at 6:54 AM, Boomer said:

8MB is all the RAM anyone will ever need... ;-)

According to Bill Gates all we'll ever need is 640K .....

[Anxu00 176]

12 hours ago, 0Artur0 said:

For me, in FSX, it was 1/2 refresh rate vsync setting. When above 30FPS it was smooth as silk, no stutters at all. Sadly, LM removed true full screen in P3D v2 + so now you need 30Hz monitor to come close to that. Otherwise you need 60FPS or more to achieve smoothness and that's, if you're using addons, pretty impossible in P3D. Those are my experiences with smoothness in the sim.

Unless I go back to FSX, not an option for me because my monitor is a Dell XPS 30" @ 60 Hrz.  No current HW can produce 60 FPS with the add-ons even with P3Dv4 in all situations.  My move to P3D has been expensive and right now I don't see evidence that v4 will be much better in the stutters department.  Spending more thousands is a no-go for me.  

[gboz 157]

In the comparison video, at least in the v4 settings menu, he has the 3d v4 trees turned on which is apparently a bit of a frame rate killer for v4. So not quite a apples to apples comparison?

gb.

[MarkW 1,490]

On 30/05/2017 at 0:00 PM, Rob Ainscough said:

If you compare Apples to Apples ... meaning you use equivalent V3 to V4 settings and don't use some of the additional features in V4, then you will see a 15-20% FPS increase in V4.

What an end user does with V4 graphics settings and add-on that will trigger stutters is entirely END USER'S CHOICE.

As far as memory, I've not exceed 16GB RAM with everything maxed out + some add-ons that I know use considerable memory.  If you push the LOD beyond what's provided via the UI you'll use 10.9GB VRAM.  My RAM and VRAM usage may increase in the future as we see more add-ons leverage higher resolution textures and more complex/realistic systems.

Cheers, Rob.

Rob, will you be making another guide showing which items have the biggest impact on Frame Rates and Stutters?  I have an older machine as have been rather shocked at how far i can push the sliders.  I just made sure to keep speed trees off.  I know this will change once all of the heavy addon aircraft are installed, however, it is encouraging.

[denny9 2]

I5 3570k gtx 970 8 Gb ram 1600mhz 

At 4k with my current specs settings my CPU in ksea is fluctuating between 50 60% and the GPU between 70 to 85%.. I can sustain a very stuttering free flight at ksea with all sliders set to the max, what a joy 

There's some settings at low or off like traffic off clouds at low, but all related to scenery and eyecandy is on or maxed out,in my cfg I added texture exp at 8, but I think is not really necessary for the big hit my gpu receive, I must reserve a little headroom for the orbx scenery incoming so..

One thing I don't understand, if I try at  klax or in a rural zone, pop up autogen is still present like the old fsx days, no matter if I turn off all the sliders.. I have posted a comment about this in the mentioned video but nope..there's something else that I don't know? Maybe an update in the near future?