FPS drop with light on PMDG 747 in V4

[Bakern 31]

8xSSAA on daytime, 2xSSAA on eve\nigh time, problem solved. ;-)

[scandinavian13 5,192]

23 hours ago, magnetite said:

There's some games released in 2016-2017 that use DX11. I'm playing some right now.

The amount of games that take advantage of DirectX 12 is relatively small.

Fair. They also actually utilize the GPU properly, however. FSX and P3D do not. Look at your processor loads.

20 hours ago, Martyn Pearson said:

Maybe like 20 games use Dx12? Far better-looking lighting effects can be found anywhere in loads of <=DX11 games without requiring Titans. Dx12 is not the answer to this problem.

Fair. They also actually utilize the GPU properly, however. FSX and P3D do not. Look at your processor loads. Again: we can't make the sim environment do this. LM has to.

18 hours ago, calzonister said:

Could PMDG consider temporarily re-implementing the old lighting system as found in the v3.x version, for the time being?

I don't think so. You're welcome to submit a ticket to request it, but I don't see us taking steps backward on this one.

[AirCanada235 103]

If this was a problem "across the board" and not localized to a few users PC's - then I think there would be more cause for alarm.  Lets remember folks - PMDG is the top developer for aircraft within our hobby - not some fly-by-night operator.  I am confident that any major show stopping issues would have been caught.

[PinkPony 171]

1 hour ago, AirCanada235 said:

If this was a problem "across the board" and not localized to a few users PC's - then I think there would be more cause for alarm.  Lets remember folks - PMDG is the top developer for aircraft within our hobby - not some fly-by-night operator.  I am confident that any major show stopping issues would have been caught.

This certainly is a problem "across the board", and completely out of the control of PMDG. The dynamic lights have a significant impact on performance, that is when too many of them are enabled. The 8th spotlight causes big stutters on my system. (landing lights (4) +runway turnoff (2)+ taxi (2)). v4 currently allows up to 250 spotlights..... I run a i7 @ 4.7Ghz with a GTX1080. With up to 7 spotlights, my system is as smooth as can be, in the -400 at Flytampa YSSY, with AS16 + ASCA etc. 

From what I was told, there is a large thread in the LM v4 Beta forum, regarding the impact/performance of dynamic lights, so I am hopeful that LM will address this...



 

[Morvious 43]

Yesterday I tested the Queen and noticed the FPS drop as well.
I did a reset on the sim (default settings) and started with the settings below and worked my way up to the settings I had yesterday to see what was causing this.

My current PC:
I7 3770K (changed to default clock for this test)
Asus GTX 980 SLI
16 GB RAMSSD drive 1 for Windows
SSD drive 2 for P3D only

Benchmark settings P3D:
Radius of detail MAX
All other settings on Dense & High

1440P
FSAA? off
2 x SSAA
16 x AF
Vsync ON + tripple buffering
Wide aspect view enabled

AffinityMask is set to 254 to eliminate CPU1 which is mostly used by background tasks but after removing this setting from the .cfg I didn't see any change.
 

With MSI afterburner / Riva tuner I was able to note the CPU, GPU and RAM usage while testing various settings within the sim.

First set of tests were on a default small airport in Brasil (SNLI) + ORBX FTX Global
Second test were with the same settings on KSFO (Flightbeam KSFO HD + ORBX FTX Global + FTX LC NA)

Test 1: 22:00 local time All lights off
CPU 1 usage < 10% (Windows)
CPU 2 usage > 95%
CPU 3 / 8 usahe < 20% which shows that P3D V4 is not much optimised for multicore envoirements (Din't expect that to change anyway)
GPU 1 usage 33% with 1600MB used memory (SLI scaling works but there is low GPU usage)
GPU 2 usage 35% with 1600MB used memory
RAM usage 4200MB total (Windows + Sim + everything else)
37 FPS from VC

Test 2: Same airport, cockpit lights on - Only small difference in memory usage on GPU's and RAM

Test 3: Cockpit lights off, external lights on
GPU memory usage went up 60MB / GPU
RAM usage went up 600 MB total
34 FPS from VC

I did try to change HDR lightning, reflections, shadows etc. without any changes in FPS as noted above.

On KSFO I noticed the same behaviour on test 1 expect 50% GPU usage, 2400MB memory / GPU usage and a total of 5000MB RAM usage.
No large FPS hit when turning on external lights.


I changed the SSAA setting to 4x and did all test again like above. Even on the default airport when turning on the external lights the FPS dropped to single digits.
Changing other settings did not help at all(unless turning off dynamic lights)

On 4x SSAA my CPU usage dropped about 25%.

For now I have to fly 2x SSAA but my sim looks like crap in distances (flickering lines). Hope P3D can find what is causing this massive CPU drop. Although I understand that my CPU can be a bottleneck there are also people with a 7700K / 1080TI setups  reporting the same issues.

[McDaniel 44]

Workaround idea: If I just use the inner or outer landing lights, in other words just one pair, I am fine. The GPU load stays under 90%.

So how about to be able to deactivate the dynamic light thing for one pair of the landing light's, just show them lith without the light emerging....hard to explain in english :-)

I guess the brightness (iluminating scenery) of 1 pair landing lights with dynamic lighting is good enough, in my point of view.

Or even just have one light source, dynamic active, for landing light and one for taxi light....

Daniel McDaniel

[rdtv91 73]

Using MSAA I'm pleased to say my GPU load now with dynamic lights, vol fog & reflections set to low is now never more than 80% (GTX980TI) compared to always capped at 100% with the SSAA within P3D v4, just had a flight last night and the dynamic lights add such an immersion I've never experienced before in previous iterations of P3D.

 

 

Jonathon Ryans

Edited June 7, 2017 by rdtv91
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