P3dv4 blurry laggy slow texture loading popping and stutters

[Wanthuyr Filho 83]

3 hours ago, Rob Ainscough said:

The Shift+Z P3D FPS counter isn't very accurate, but it's normal to see FPS fluctuate between 29-31.  I prefer to use other FPS monitoring tools that don't poll as frequently (i.e. EVGA Precision OCX, nVidia's FPS overlay, etc.).

If you are below your monitor's refresh rate, then you'll see stutters.

Also, different monitor manufacturers will often work better with a specific output color format ... so you might want to experiment with the section of RGB full vs. YCbCr444 ... 10bpc monitors are nice (I have one on my other FS PC) but 10 bpc isn't being used by P3D V4.  If you are getting a lot of visual "Gradients" (i.e. dusk sky) then check your Output Dynamic Range (FULL for RGB, disabled when using YCbCr444 or YCbCr422).

I'd recommend you experiment with all these settings in NCP to see what looks best for you.  Often when people report P3D as "too dark" it's because their Output dynamic range is set to limited or wrong output format for the monitor or monitor does support 8 bpc or better.

Cheers, Rob.

I use a Samsung 4k TV, 55 inches, the so called QuantumDot technology... In the past I played with all those settings regarding colours, what works best for me is indeed RGB with the Full option, the gradients are much better looking and with the correct PTA settings the final result is great for me. It also seems to be more consistent with screenshots taken and seen in other computers.

As to the FPS counter I definitely don't use it in a regular basis, I just asked to make sure it was expected, which I actually thought in hindsight, though I observed some 35 FPS occasionally.

As yet I made just one flight, from KSAN to KTEX using the B-717, and it didn't appear to be much better than my previous settings (NO VSync - locked internally to 31 FPS - 60 Hz refresh rate which is the maximum Win10 will allow me in NCP). During cruise I haven't noticed stutters at all, but during the taxi out and initial climb I noticed some, nevertheless these findings happened before as well. Anyway it's too soon to come into serious conclusions, I will keep like that and try more for several weeks at least.

It seems to be a pity that P3D doesn't run in true fullscreen,

Ah! I almost forgot! During this last flight I observed the CPU (4770K without HT running at 4.5) behaviour and contrary to what I used to observe previously, I got the Core-0 running more free than the others, which were somewhat higher, but none of them consistently at 100% all the time. Previously the Core-0 would be continuously at 100% and the others much less depending on the phase of the flight. I even removed AM for ChasePlase and ActiveSky and will now begin another flight in order to evaluate.

[John_Cillis 2,406]

For me the biggest impact in P3d performance was trying to use 8X AA.  It produced a noticeable stutter and did not improve the rendering all that much.  Went back to 4X and everything smoothed out, photoreal scenery renders crisp and blurry free way into the distance, although I am sure the anisofiltering, which I have set at 16, helps.  I've done no Nvidia tweaks, seems the defaults with my drivers were set up fine from the factory.  Not true for other Nvida cards I have had, where I did have to tweak per the recommendations made here in the forums like the ones in this thread.

Stutters in the sims can be maddening, on my old system some Carenado jets and tprops would choke it, and performance was telling in the sim.  I still miss my old system mainly due to the add-ons I had on it, although I got what I needed for my new system relatively quickly.  I had to take a guess on what system to get, wanted to make sure it was at least 3.5 GHZ or better (3.6).  I felt P3d and XP11 would need that much cpu, and of course some here have better with 4GHZ+ machines.

This is only my third system in eighteen years, I usually wait for "what was" high end to fall in price as new more modern systems come into play, so I stay about a generation behind.  I relied on the forums here and the regular seasoned members to decide what to get and what sims to get.  We've been a club for close to two decades now, lots of people to trust who know their stuff when it comes to getting optimal performance out of these sims.

John

[Wanthuyr Filho 83]

6 hours ago, Peter Webber said:

My settings are the same as yours with my 30Hz 4K monitor. If your system can keep up, the FPS will always vary around 30 which is normal. Only if your system cannot maintain 30 FPS which is the refresh rate of the monitor you will see the frames drop drastically below 30.....This is where Adaptive vsync comes in handy to turn off vsync if your setup cannot maintain 30 FPS but this does not work in P3D Windowed mode.

It certainly won't cope with 30 FPS every time, as it didn't during my first test-flight, but also it didn't "drop drastically" as it maintained about 25, 20, which looks acceptable to me. Anyway it's so soon for conclusions, I'll keep flying. :-)

[Wanthuyr Filho 83]

Now, John, you gave a good idea, considering that my VGA keeps running 99~100% load most of the time when airborne and I run it with 8xAA (not SS, which is a total hammering at least in 4k resolution) I will try now with 4xAA and in addition to stuttering I will also observe the VGA load.

I forgot to mention before, the downside of running 30 Hz refresh rate is really having a sluggish mouse pointer. I will survive that if the overall result shows better...

[Guest]

4 hours ago, BamaKevin said:

What setting are you using with your Sony  4k tv?  RGB?

I'm currently using YCbCr444 at 30hz.  But this really depends on your monitor, experimentation is the best option.

Also be aware one's monitor may have a different set of control/options based on RGB vs. YCbCr444 (consult your monitors manual).

Be aware that each nVidia driver update will reset this value to whatever the driver default decides.

Cheers, Rob.

[theskyisthelimit 48]

On 9/9/2017 at 11:07 AM, Tony P said:

Ok - Here are a few other things to note.  

I only have two mods in my prepar3d.cfg which is TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=8 in [TERRAIN]  I've been told this is the default but I have noticed a difference in texture loading while in flight. Especially looking externally and panning around.   The second thing is TBM in [DISPLAY] Mine is set to 160.   Thats it for the cfg file.

In the NVidia control panel - Under Manager 3D settings I have Single display performance mode and Prefer Max Performance under power management.  

Like I mentioned earlier - All of the sliders in game are set to max except Autogen Draw distance (Medium).  Also I have Dynamic 3D Autogen Vegetation off.    I'm using NO FXAA,  8xMSAA (AA),  16x Aniso and 4096 Texture Res.  VSync is off and Target frames are unlimited.  

Hope this helps.

 

Thanks..

I tried all this, not much different unfortunately, however.. i dont really think the "stutter" i have is that bad at all.. i find the best is to go with Vsync on and triple buffer, unlimited in sim, no tear control setting/vsync in NI at all..  60hz screen anything less just has to induce stuttering at times, even slight, even at 35-45 fps..  I still swear though, xp11 with lower than refresh rate frames never feels that sluggish

I did discover something by accident though.. for the heavy fps prone area of SCA/KSAN with ftx.. if you disable the FTXAA_ORBXLibs entry in scenery.cfg.. its  near 60 fps at all times (vs a min of 35, average of maybe 45 in my case, max 50)..  i'm not real clear what i'm losing by doing this.. maybe certain objects.. but a before/after screen shot didnt seem to show any real big loss there?

 

[AnkH 2,268]

Ok, my guess that blurries might be related to addons added via the add-on.xml method was nothing but a guess. Not surprising in the end. But another thing I realized: I only get blurries if during the startup of the sim, the image appears around 80% of the loading. I honestly do not have any clue what could possibly influence this, but usually my screen remains black until 100% is loaded and only then it starts "drawing" the scenery etc. However, in certain situations, the "drawing" starts already at 80% in the background, then, as soon as 100% is reached, the screen turns black for one or two seconds before the final "drawing" takes place. Exactly when this happens, I see blurries in the scenery. If the loading screen remains black until 100%, I do not see any blurries. As said, no clue what could possibly influence my P3D to load with one or the other logic...

[theskyisthelimit 48]

3 hours ago, AnkH said:

Ok, my guess that blurries might be related to addons added via the add-on.xml method was nothing but a guess. Not surprising in the end. But another thing I realized: I only get blurries if during the startup of the sim, the image appears around 80% of the loading. I honestly do not have any clue what could possibly influence this, but usually my screen remains black until 100% is loaded and only then it starts "drawing" the scenery etc. However, in certain situations, the "drawing" starts already at 80% in the background, then, as soon as 100% is reached, the screen turns black for one or two seconds before the final "drawing" takes place. Exactly when this happens, I see blurries in the scenery. If the loading screen remains black until 100%, I do not see any blurries. As said, no clue what could possibly influence my P3D to load with one or the other logic...

In my test i did, i had all add-on.xml's turned off.. so this didnt prove to be a culprit for me.

Here i thought though, i had conquered most of the bad stuff...

Today i loaded up the f16 (for a fast moving test) at a default airport near pittsburgh, in a non hard hitting area... (airport 9g1)..

Took off.. initially looked good.. 60 fps .. suddenly as headed towards downtown frames stuttered every 10 seconds..frame rate now averaging 35-45 then i noticed blurries on the ground.. hit pause.. took about 35 seconds for the ground to catch up and blurries to go away.. unpause.. still 40ish frame rate and concessional stutter (not turning stutter but moving straight ahead kind.. slight jerking motion).

EDIT: did a retest of this area (pittsburgh).. this time with Texture_bandwidth_mult=160 and TextureMaxLoad=32, while it did help with increase the frames a little, less stutter.. the blurries were still there..

**the default f16 in florida scenario.. if i takeoff and fly its pretty close to 60 and i dont encounter blurries (in my first try at least).. so its strange that this other non default area is having the issue

I guess back to the drawing board

EDIT/UPDATE:

ok stupidity again.. i realized i had night enviro pa checked off in scenery.. unchecking this (along with everything else in my PA region) cured the slow loading/stutter/frame rate (naturally).. should have checked that first.. either way, shows you how (at least one) entry can screw everything up

[vortex681 806]

On 11 September 2017 at 11:48 AM, theskyisthelimit said:

i realized i had night enviro pa checked off in scenery.. unchecking this (along with everything else in my PA region) cured the slow loading/stutter/frame rate (naturally)

Did you really mean that you originally had night environment checked off? If so, and you're flying in the daytime, having night environment on should make things worse, not better.

[theskyisthelimit 48]

2 minutes ago, vortex681 said:

Did you really mean that you originally had night environment checked off? If so, and you're flying in the daytime, having night environment on should make things worse, not better.

enabled yes.. it was a brain fart in general.. turning that off helped a bit on the stutters (at least the ones that happened every few seconds vs just the ones that happen when you get a bit below the vsync refresh rate)

[simbol 5,821]

Glad you got it sorted, I was going to suggest to monitor your GPU and CPU temps as sometimes when you are overclocking and things get too hot you would hit thermal throttling which can cause suddenly slow downs as you are describing.

I had to delid my intel CPU to reduce the temps, this allowed me to run at 4.6 ghz with very low temps (40 c) with prepar3d under load. However before deliding I was hitting the 70-80c sometimes.

This is just a suggestion, not saying it is the source of your troubles, but if you were hitting your video very hard, and it got very hot, it will stop performing suddenly giving you similar results.

Best wishes,

Simbol

[theskyisthelimit 48]

18 hours ago, simbol said:

Glad you got it sorted, I was going to suggest to monitor your GPU and CPU temps as sometimes when you are overclocking and things get too hot you would hit thermal throttling which can cause suddenly slow downs as you are describing.

I had to delid my intel CPU to reduce the temps, this allowed me to run at 4.6 ghz with very low temps (40 c) with prepar3d under load. However before deliding I was hitting the 70-80c sometimes.

This is just a suggestion, not saying it is the source of your troubles, but if you were hitting your video very hard, and it got very hot, it will stop performing suddenly giving you similar results.

Best wishes,

Simbol

Yeah my cpu was a pre-delidded one from this one company that sells them.. terrific chip comparatively speaking.. i hit around 60c with this chip at 4.6, before i was at 78 with a different chip that wasnt delidded (same proc)... quite happy.. my gpu sits a cool 55 usually.. its water cooled, the hybrid 1080 (with the non hybrid i'd go above the throttle limit, 75 i think, quite a bit)

[Wanthuyr Filho 83]

Well, my EVGA 1080 FTW usually gets very hot under the load of P3D v4, but it will increase the RPM of the fans. I never saw it get to 100% RPM though. If I had the option I'd better make it run at 100% fan speed the whole time.

 

[Dreamflight767 312]

I need help too crew.  I'm sorry but I just don't know where else turn.  I'm experiencing stutters and except a fresh install, I have tried everything listed here and everything I could find on other posts and google.

i7700K, 16GB RAM, 1080ti, Windows 10 pro 64, P3D is stored/oaded on 1 of 2 1TB Samsung SSD w/ the Acer predator 32" 4k g-sync monitor @ 60 HZ.

http://fsfiles.org/flightsimshotsv2/image/G2h3

And honestly, some of the problem is my ignorance with computers.

Thanks.

[GSalden 4,665]

On 10-9-2017 at 5:47 AM, Cactus521 said:

For me the biggest impact in P3d performance was trying to use 8X AA.  It produced a noticeable stutter and did not improve the rendering all that much.  Went back to 4X and everything smoothed out, photoreal scenery renders crisp and blurry free way into the distance, although I am sure the anisofiltering, which I have set at 16, helps.  

Photoreal scenery is not optimised in V4. It is shown in worse quality than V3.

Quote :

"The LOD radius limitations are the same as in 3.4, however the high resolution texture setting effectively doubles your LOD range. Using the TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=10 in combination with enabling high resolution terrain textures will effectively quadruple your LOD radius. There is a known issue with this which is that photo-real textures don't currently improve in quality as a result. This is because the resolution of the texture is baked into the content. For non photo-real textures, much of the detail comes from vector data such as rivers and roads, and the base resolution of the global textures are about 1 meter per pixel. So, with TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=10, you'll see 1mpp texture quality at 4x the distance.

Beau Hollis
Prepar3D Rendering System Lead"