It appears that memory management is significantly improved as one would expect.

Is there any significant improvement in utilization of multi-CPU cores?

Fred K

21 hours ago, Anxu00 said:

No current HW can produce 60 FPS with the add-ons even with P3Dv4 in all situations.

Why can't you operate your monitor at 30Hz or find one that will work well at 30Hz?  

Why can't you turn graphics settings down so you can operate at 60 FPS in all situations?

Why can't you adjust 3rd party scenery to reach your FPS goals?

There are plenty solutions to obtaining stutter free performance, it's always a game of compromise regardless of what flight simulator platform you use ... it sounds like you are unwilling to compromise, as such, flight simulation is going to always be a frustrating experience for you as I don't see any future hardware within the next 2-3 years that will let you max everything out and still get minimum 60 FPS.

Recent videos I've published on V4 are showing worst case scenarios at extreme+ graphics settings in some of the most demanding add-ons like Orbx SoCal/NorCal with everything enabled.  I was expecting 7 FPS average (about what I get in XP11 when I did a similar test at maxed out), I got an amazing 20 FPS average at 4K.  This was a test scenario that I couldn't even accomplish in V3 as it would OOM.  Did my videos stutter, yes of course they did, my videos were about extreme testing.  Of course I get a lot of comments about stutters from those that didn't even bother to look at my graphics setting and V3 scenery used which I pointed out in the video description.

Cheers, Rob.

 

15 hours ago, MarkW said:

Rob, will you be making another guide showing which items have the biggest impact on Frame Rates and Stutters?

Yes, but work and taking care of my 85 year old windowed mom is taking much of my energy.

A quick overview of performance consumers in V4:

1.  3D Autogen vegetation (SpeedTrees now cover the entire globe) is about 15-20% FPS hit pending AG tree settings, CPU, GPU

2.  Dynamic Reflections at Ultra is about 21% FPS hit provided you have an aircraft that supports them and will vary based on weather (wet) and location

3.  Dynamic Lights ... the only reference I had was with aircraft and some V3 airport beacons, they will drop FPS by about 12-33%.

4.  AG distance combined with building/tree shadows, this will vary considerably based on location, major cities will have a much higher impact than rural locations

If you want to watch your GPU overheat use these:

Under [TERRAIN]

TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=10

Adjust existing values:

OPAQUE_SHADOW_TEXTURE_SIZE=8192
TRANSLUCENT_SHADOW_TEXTURE_SIZE=2048
OPAQUE_SHADOW_DRAW_DISTANCE=4000
TRANSLUCENT_SHAD0W_DRAW_DISTANCE=4000

Visuals are spectacular (if you want to win a screenshot contest combine that with 8XSSAA at 4K and you'll win across any platform), especially the clarity of shadows ... but I'd ONLY do this in a remote airport/location, unless you're crazy like me and test in places like Orbx SoCal and NorCal.  It was certainly a good test to see how much power I can draw from my house, triggered my APC to kick in to ensure I was getting appropriate line current.

Of course we didn't have the option to do any of this in V3 as it would OOM.  V4 we have the option, even if we don't have the hardware yet.

Cheers, Rob.

 

16 hours ago, Anxu00 said:

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.  

I just picked up an end of line Hisense 50M3300 4k TV.  They're going cheaper now as they've become obsolete TVs as a newer range has been released.  However they do 25, 30, 50 and 60Hz refresh at 4k resolution.  Quality for simming is excellent, and only a smidgeon over £300....

50Hz is sweet, especially with trackIR, I spent an hour gently whizzing round in the F16 at low level and the smoothness and speed of terrain updating, even at 400knots+ looking around with TrackIR was phenomenal!

6 minutes ago, Rob Ainscough said:

Of course we didn't have the option to do any of this in V3 as it would OOM.  V4 we have the option, even if we don't have the hardware yet.

 

And, in flight simming for over 30 years, I think it's always been the case the any major new release would exceed the capabilities of the current high-end hardware if you tried to run your settings at max.  Over the next couple of years hardware would start to catch up (and then there was another new release that once again redrew the line further out).  

It can be fun and informative to see how your hardware handles max settings but, if the goal is enjoying the sim experience, then you find the level your hardware can handle.

15 hours ago, gboz said:

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.

I saw that too. Wonder if it affects ORBX regions too. Thats a strange way of implementing Speed Trees if true. 

On 2017-5-30 at 11:12 AM, Tabs said:

Physical memory usage (VRAM and system RAM) yes, but VAS is a meaningless measurement with v4. We have something like 16 exabytes of address space now, which is an unfathomable amount that nothing is going to exceed.

I didn't realise how big an exabyte was!

 

Just a terabyte is 250 times bigger than the 4GB of address space in 32bit. 

An exabyte is 1000,000 bigger than a terabyte and there are 16 exabytes to play with. 

 

Wow, I think I'm going to buy an exabyte of Ram, just to be safe  That should cover any memory leaks in nvidia drivers.

 

Stu

1 hour ago, Rob Ainscough said:

Yes, but work and taking care of my 85 year old windowed mom is taking much of my energy.

Are you euphemistically referring to FSX here Rob or your real-world actual mom?

1 hour ago, Rob Ainscough said:

4.  AG distance combined with building/tree shadows, this will vary considerably based on location, major cities will have a much higher impact than rural locations

 

Is this a setting in P3D's UI or do you have to edit the config file? I remember older fsx LOD settings at 4 or 6, what is the maximum setting allowed?

1 hour ago, Rob Ainscough said:

Yes, but work and taking care of my 85 year old windowed mom is taking much of my energy.

 

 

Thanks for the tips Rob.  Its always the case, real life getting in the way of our hobbies. 

10 minutes ago, FlyBaby said:

Is this a setting in P3D's UI or do you have to edit the config file?

AG distance is available in the UI.

Yes, real-life Mom and real-life work.

Cheers, Rob.

Lol..tried just now to set texture_size_exp=10 and after a half an hour still got a black screen, mouse pointer jerky, and  no response at all from my pc..only the hard reset was the cure, just an experiment, Rob was right, "you need a very powerful gpu"

2 hours ago, denny9 said:

Rob was right, "you need a very powerful gpu"

You'll need a GPU with 8GB VRAM or more ... in my testing using TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=10, I used anywhere from 7.1GB to 10.8GB VRAM.  However, this setting doesn't seem to do much for "existing" V3 PR scenery ... at least in my testing ... I'm not sure if it's due to how the PR scenery was created (i.e. very high resolution textures were NOT used for the PR in order to save on VAS) or some offset issue with LODs?

Non-PR scenery and it works exceptionally well.

I'm hoping a scenery dev will explore this more and see if higher PR resolution base works better with this setting.  LM checked and they didn't see any code issue and suggested the PR source just wasn't high resolution.  This could be accurate as scenery devs would be VERY conscious of OOM issues with V3/FSX and hence didn't use high resolution PR textures to save on VAS.  Of course with V4, we no longer have that High resolution restriction soooo ... 

Cheers, Rob.

7 hours ago, Rob Ainscough said:

Why can't you operate your monitor at 30Hz or find one that will work well at 30Hz?  

Why can't you turn graphics settings down so you can operate at 60 FPS in all situations?

Why can't you adjust 3rd party scenery to reach your FPS goals?

There are plenty solutions to obtaining stutter free performance, it's always a game of compromise regardless of what flight simulator platform you use ... it sounds like you are unwilling to compromise,

I was not aware of the trick to run the monitor at 30 Hz and will look into this, thanks for that tip.  I run P3Dv3 at reasonable settings not extreme as well as lower the 3rd party settings, I rarely run into OOM issues, just stutters, so if this 30 hz trick works then it would solve my issue, and I would have no reason to move to v4.

1 hour ago, Anxu00 said:

so if this 30 hz trick works then it would solve my issue, and I would have no reason to move to v4.

It's not a trick, just an option that might be available to you pending your monitor support for 30Hz.  Reasons to move to V4 are many, but since FPS performance is your metric, then you should see a 15-20% FPS improvement (apples to apples compare) with V4 compared to V3.

In my P3D V3 guide I outline monitor refresh rates, unlimited/locked settings, etc.

Cheers, Rob.