Question about dynamic lighting performance (note: Mod edited title for accuracy)

[dal330200 216]

Hi everyone,

I've been scouring the forums here and at LM trying to see if anyone is any closer to fixing this atrocious dynamic lighting problem.  LM blames PMDG, PMDG seems to blame LM, and meanwhile we can't get decent performance at critical stages in flight.  I absolutely love PMDG, their aircraft as well as customer service, but until this lighting is fixed, I just can't fly at night.  So, I'm either relegated to using v3 or x-plane. Where are we at with coming up with a fix for this?  I remember one of the early 777 updates seemed to fix the problem but I think it was scrapped for some reason or another.  It was too bad because I didn't have any problems after that update, and now I do, especially in the NGX.

Please do something about this.

John

[PMDG777 231]

6 minutes ago, dal330200 said:

Hi everyone,

I've been scouring the forums here and at LM trying to see if anyone is any closer to fixing this atrocious dynamic lighting problem.  LM blames PMDG, PMDG seems to blame LM, and meanwhile we can't get decent performance at critical stages in flight.  I absolutely love PMDG, their aircraft as well as customer service, but until this lighting is fixed, I just can't fly at night.  So, I'm either relegated to using v3 or x-plane. Where are we at with coming up with a fix for this?  I remember one of the early 777 updates seemed to fix the problem but I think it was scrapped for some reason or another.  It was too bad because I didn't have any problems after that update, and now I do, especially in the NGX.

Please do something about this.

John

Easy, disable SSAA antialiasing and only use MSAA. Performance impact with dynamic lights is minimal.

Btw, PMDG require full names - first and last - in their forums.

[Nighthwk 566]

I'm using 8x MSAA with all exterior lights on at midnight in both the 777 and 747 with a 1-2 fps drop at max. It's not the sim, it's your settings. If performance was really as bad as people think it is then surely LM would have caught it and fixed it throughout the beta process, especially with all of the other developers having access to the beta, thr point is that it isn't the sim's fault otherwise LM would have foxes it before the release.

[scandinavian13 5,192]

9 minutes ago, Milton Waddams said:

It's not the sim, it's your settings.

It's actually the sim, and its implementation, really. We can obviously have an awful implementation to make it worse, but the rendering in the sim is really where the base level is set. Seeing that they're updating and improving the lighting in the next HF to optimize it, I'd argue that the sim is a big part of it.

[Nighthwk 566]

9 minutes ago, scandinavian13 said:

It's actually the sim, and its implementation, really. We can obviously have an awful implementation to make it worse, but the rendering in the sim is really where the base level is set. Seeing that they're updating and improving the lighting in the next HF to optimize it, I'd argue that the sim is a big part of it.

Well it's good to hear that they are improving it, nonetheless. It's just weird hearing some people reporting a 15 fps drop when some people are reporting no drop. That led me to believe that it was their settings, thanks for setting me straight!

[kjjj11223344 48]

In the queen at least, dynamic lights aren't much of an issue for me. Except when I have the landing and runway turnoff lights on. That's enough for me to go from 30-40 smoth fps down to 15-20. The thing is, normally 15-20 is more than fine for me, but this 15-20 is stuttery and laggy.

[aceridgey 330]

To those who say use MSAA, I still get huge perf loss using x4 msaa with 980ti, so don't assume things guys

[dal330200 216]

Ugh the signature police again.  My full name is under my screen name.   As far as MSAA vs SSAA, I've been using 4x MSAA it worked fine in the 777 but doesn't seem to work as well in the NGX.  I haven't tried the 777 since the last update though.  My settings are far below ultra, and I can go all the way to the left on the sliders and still experience this problem.  Tried multiple nvidia drivers, did a fresh install, turned off shadows and dynamic reflections- all which helped with the 777 before, but not with the NGX.  I'm also starting to wonder if it's a scenery issue as well, like at FB KSFO or FSDT CYYZ?  In any case, I'm just going to get a refund on v4 while I still can and go back to v3 and xplane instead.  This is just one of many little annoyances I'm discovering that makes v4 just as irritating as VAS was in v3.  Maybe in a few months when v4 gets her sea-legs, it will be worth flying in.

John

 

[dal330200 216]

4 hours ago, Milton Waddams said:

I'm using 8x MSAA with all exterior lights on at midnight in both the 777 and 747 with a 1-2 fps drop at max. It's not the sim, it's your settings. If performance was really as bad as people think it is then surely LM would have caught it and fixed it throughout the beta process, especially with all of the other developers having access to the beta, thr point is that it isn't the sim's fault otherwise LM would have foxes it before the release.

It's not my settings, my settings are just fine, and the biggest problem is in the NGX, the 777 was fine the last time I tried it.

[Captain Kevin 586]

45 minutes ago, dal330200 said:

In any case, I'm just going to get a refund on v4 while I still can and go back to v3 and xplane instead.  This is just one of many little annoyances I'm discovering that makes v4 just as irritating as VAS was in v3.  Maybe in a few months when v4 gets her sea-legs, it will be worth flying in.

Pretty much why I stuck with FSX. With the already very limited time I have to fly given the nature of my job, I don't want to spend it trying to troubleshoot stuff, given all the issues I've seen so far. I will consider it once I am satisfied that most of the major issues have been sorted out....and even then, once I have the money to buy a desktop. As it is, I'm running a laptop that's almost out of hard drive space with no hope of having any more short of an external, which isn't exactly convenient, given my situation.

[dal330200 216]

I agree.  I think v4 is a good platform, but it's still rather naked and buggy in a lot of ways, and we have a lot to learn along the way.  I had a good thing going in v3, and as they say, if it ain't broke, why fix it?  v4 will be around for a while.  For now, I just want to fly and not be bothered with starting over trying to make everything work properly.  Let's see how things look a few updates down the line. I've been playing around with v4 for 6 weeks now, and I've probably only completed about 5 flights without any hassles.  Time heals most bugs hehe.  Still, I take my hat off to PMDG for doing their best. 

[NMahinK 10]

I for one have not seen any performance decrease when upgrading to P3Dv4, if anything I have seen a huge increase in performance, and I use higher settings in v4 than I have in v3. I didn't even know there was a dynamic lighting FPS decrease at all until I read the forums.

[scandinavian13 5,192]

6 hours ago, dal330200 said:

Ugh the signature police again.

Wouldn't hassle you if it were in the proper spot, in the signature block.

[fakeflyer737 992]

12 hours ago, scandinavian13 said:

It's actually the sim, and its implementation, really. We can obviously have an awful implementation to make it worse, but the rendering in the sim is really where the base level is set. Seeing that they're updating and improving the lighting in the next HF to optimize it, I'd argue that the sim is a big part of it.

So they're working on improving the lighting so the NGX wont kill the FPS so bad at night?

[PMDG777 231]

9 minutes ago, fakeflyer737 said:

So they're working on improving the lighting so the NGX wont kill the FPS so bad at night?

That's how I interpreted Kyle's response. I guess being a new major change for the sim, there's a lot of optimization to be done that will take some time. Think about Windows 10 when it came out, it was laggy and had a lot of bugs but now it's actually quite good (and arguably better than Win 7).