I'm a TrackIR user and as much as I love P3Dv4, I have to admit that the smoothness when panning is nowhere near as good as my experience with FSX:SE.  The FPS counter in the corner constantly reports almost solid 60FPS, yet the sim stutters a lot when I am panning.

I've done a lot of searching on this and have tried to set things up to minimize the stuttering but the results still aren't great yet.   I have Vsync set up on Standard (rather than Adaptive), at 1/2 refresh rate.    I have also tried setting the lowest possible settings in P3Dv4 and still get the stutters and lack of smoothness, so I don't think the problem stems from excessive load on my GPU/CPU.    I've experimented with internal and externally  locked FPS (things got much worse) and unlimited (better, but still a lot of stutters).  I've tried setting the FIBER tweak to 0.01 (slightly improved stutters but Orbx scenery got horribly blurry). 

At a bit of a loss - has anyone got any other tips for increasing smoothness, and addressing stutters that occur even when FPS are high?

TIA.

Tia, can you please share your system specs and the airport/aircraft you're using/reporting on?  It's all relative to those.

Best wishes.

 

 

9 hours ago, DaveCT2003 said:

Tia, can you please share your system specs and the airport/aircraft you're using/reporting on?  It's all relative to those.

Best wishes.

 

 

Thanks Dave.

System is modest:    i7 4790 (non-K) 3.6Ghz, GTX770 4GB, with 16GB DDR3 RAM.    I'm on the latest Nvidia drivers.  I was flying the A2A C172 around the Darrington (1S2) area of ORbx FTX PNW.   

Oddest thing is that FPS are reported as very high!   But stuttering is endemic and FPS 'feel' much lower.

I have experimented with the two Affinity Mask settings relative to my set up (84 and 255).  Neither seem to impact smoothness in any way so at present I've removed the Affinity Mask tweak.

Thanks for any help.

Bill.

What screen resolution are you using? Try fast vsync - it should only work at very high refresh rates but seems to be the best version for me.

2 hours ago, vortex681 said:

What screen resolution are you using? Try fast vsync - it should only work at very high refresh rates but seems to be the best version for me.

Thanks.   I'm using my screen's native resolution;   1920x1080.    What is fast vsync and where would I set that would you know?

2 hours ago, vortex681 said:

What screen resolution are you using? Try fast vsync - it should only work at very high refresh rates but seems to be the best version for me.

Not sure I've heard of Fast Vsync, can you elaborate on this a little please. I get minor stutters in payware aircraft if fps drop below 30 in the pmdg 747/777 in payware airports with trackir this with all orbx products enabled. 

 

Paul Dhanjal 

Well, I seem to have completely cured my stutters, by applying a comprimise with AA.   It seems that my rig cannot cope with the SSAO settings in P3Dv4, so reducing AA to the 8xMSAA setting has completely removed all stuttering and the sim is buttery smooth.

The downside is, I now have an AA level that isn't much better than what I had 10 years ago in FS9.  I have shimmering in the distance and on some aircraft gauges that I've not had to live with for a long time!   It seems that the move from true full screen to these pseudo full screen set ups has reduced the effectiveness of AA in the flight sims that adopt this approach.    In FSX I used 8xQ with a seperate 2x Super Sampling and had absolutely no jaggies at all and not one bit of shimmering.    In P3Dv3, even on the maximum AA setting, the AA is not as effective (and I can't run at that setting any way!).

Seems a heavy comprimise but the buttery smoothness in sim is (almost) worth it.

I hate to say it, but maybe it's time to replace your GTX770.

11 minutes ago, odourboy said:

I hate to say it, but maybe it's time to replace your GTX770.

No budget for that at the moment, but yes!

Either that or a 4k TV. I'm running x8 MSAA on a 50in 4k. Very smooth a jaggies are minimal (but still there) 

1 hour ago, B777ER said:

Either that or a 4k TV. I'm running x8 MSAA on a 50in 4k.

Hey, have you tried a lower setting (even better performance)?  I say this, because with 4K AA is pretty much taken care of.

Agreed, it's probably time for a new GPU, but your processor isn't modest, it stacks up against the latest processors.  I'm running a 4770k at 4.3GHz along side a GTX1080 and it's whiz-bang good. It was even great with a GTX960 although I couldn't run Dynamic Lighting with that card or the frames would tank.

Best wishes.

 

Thanks @DaveCT2003, good to know the CPUs okay, and definitely time to start saving for a better GPU card!

3 hours ago, Jetspaul said:

Not sure I've heard of Fast Vsync, can you elaborate on this a little please.

Fast sync is a recently introduced new version of vsync. See: http://www.tweakguides.com/NVFORCE_8.html - about half way down the page under Update for a description.

Although it's only supposed to work at very high framerates, a number of forum members are now using it successfully. I had a problem with screen tearing whilst panning quickly in the virtual cockpit and worked my way through the different types of vsync to see which was the most effective with the least performance hit.

Standard vsync initially limits your FPS to the monitor refresh rate then, when FPS drops below the refresh rate, it limits you to a fraction of the refresh rate. For example, if you have a 60Hz monitor, initially you'll be limited to 60 FPS. If your framerate drops below 60, vsync then limits your FPS to 30 and so on. Adaptive vsync is better as it automatically works whenever your framerate is higher than the refresh rate and switches off when the framerate drops below the refresh rate. Like standard vsync, this effectively limits your framerate to your monitor's refresh rate (or half of it if you use adaptive, 1/2 refresh rate) but doesn't step down if the framerate drops below. The problem is that if your framerate is regularly below the refresh rate, you're likely to suffer from tearing again. Fast sync somehow manages to reduce (or eliminate) tearing without limiting your framerate at all and with very little noticeable effect on performance (at least in my case). As I said earlier, it's only supposed to work at very high framerates (typically 2-3 times your monitor refresh rate). I typically get framerates between 35 and 65 and I found it works really well - no limiting with FPS set to unlimited and, more importantly, no tearing. You can enable it in the NVIDIA Control Panel as a vertical sync option. I would advise leaving the global settings as "Use the 3D application setting" and just set it under Program Setting as it may not work so effectively with other sims or games.

3 minutes ago, vortex681 said:

Fast sync is a recently introduced new version of vsync. See: http://www.tweakguides.com/NVFORCE_8.html - about half way down the page under Update for a description.

Although it's only supposed to work at very high framerates, a number of forum members are now using it successfully. I had a problem with screen tearing whilst panning quickly in the virtual cockpit and worked my way through the different types of vsync to see which was the most effective with the least performance hit.

Standard vsync initially limits your FPS to the monitor refresh rate then, when FPS drops below the refresh rate, it limits you to a fraction of the refresh rate. For example, if you have a 60Hz monitor, initially you'll be limited to 60 FPS. If your framerate drops below 60, vsync then limits your FPS to 30 and so on. Adaptive vsync is better as it automatically works whenever your framerate is higher than the refresh rate and switches off when the framerate drops below the refresh rate. Like standard vsync, this effectively limits your framerate to your monitor's refresh rate (or half of it if you use adaptive, 1/2 refresh rate) but doesn't step down if the framerate drops below. The problem is that if your framerate is regularly below the refresh rate, you're likely to suffer from tearing again. Fast sync somehow manages to reduce (or eliminate) tearing without limiting your framerate at all and with very little noticeable effect on performance (at least in my case). As I said earlier, it's only supposed to work at very high framerates (typically 2-3 times your monitor refresh rate). I typically get framerates between 35 and 65 and I found it works really well - no limiting with FPS set to unlimited and, more importantly, no tearing. You can enable it in the NVIDIA Control Panel as a vertical sync option. I would advise leaving the global settings as "Use the 3D application setting" and just set it under Program Setting as it may not work so effectively with other sims or games.

Thanks for the info - looks interesting - however the article states that fast sync is only available for 1080 and 1070 cards (and oddly 600 cards too). I'm using a 770 so no good.

Surprisingly I've had the best luck to reduce stuttering with no Vsync or framerate limiters at all. This is reverse of how it was on other versions.