PMDG and Dynamic Lighting

[somiller 694]

3 hours ago, gboz said:

I guess he means in the Transparency Supersampling drop down list.

Don't hold your breath on this one. The only NI AA setting that has ever worked in P3D is sparse grid transparency supersampling.

I just tried NI 8x supersampling plus 8x MSAA in P3D and it does nothing that I can see. P3D just runs with typical 8x MSAA image quality, so no wonder the frame rate goes up compared to SGTSS.

Loved to be proved wrong though.

gb.

Yeah, I finally figured it out that he meant Transparency Supersampling...and I tried it and found no effect whatsoever as opposed to just using 8xMSAA in P3D. I can't confirm whether it affected performance, because I didn't compare fps with TSS 8x on vs. off.

[somiller 694]

On 10/24/2017 at 1:59 PM, Milton Waddams said:

It is on my system at least. 

Same here...as long as I don't use ANY SSAA. I ALWAYS use 8xMSAA in my setting config for night flying, as a result, DL does have a slight impact, but it's minimal. At the same time, I have not been successful using airport DL lighting...for example on FlightBeam's KDEN, KMSP, or KSFO. If I turn on airport DL, I'm guaranteed fps in the teens or single digits.

So it's not just PMDG DL that is a performance hog, ANY DL will be a greater resource hog than NO DL. Anxu00 probably thinks it's just PMDG, because he doesn't own any airports that use DL.

[30K 72]

and here my 2 cents;

Running in 4K with many sliders full right on my EVGA 1070 with 30-40 fps.

But here comes the thing i had this performance booost recently and i cant even tell how, when or why :)

One day i get horrible performance and over night (i assume a graphics driver update) its all good.

[Ioan92 63]

On 10/24/2017 at 3:29 PM, scandinavian13 said:

You're asking us to provide a pinned statement about something that is entirely dependent on your own hardware

http://www.prepar3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=125816

This isn't a hardware issue.

[scandinavian13 5,192]

4 hours ago, Ioan92 said:

http://www.prepar3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=125816

This isn't a hardware issue.

It absolutely is, though. If it weren't, everyone would see the same performance hits. This isn't the case with the newer cards out there. Internal graphics, you're going to get hammered. 980s will still get hit pretty hard. 1080s can handle it pretty well. I know, I've used 4.1 on all three.

Don't confuse the concepts here. The lack of DL optimization is not a hardware issue, I agree. What you're missing, however, is that this lack of optimization affects different setups, depending on the power of your hardware, so my statement still rings true: performance will depend entirely on your setup. Unless you have the EXACT same computer as me, providing a comprehensive thread about performance, or even just DL in general will gain you absolutely nothing.

[Ioan92 63]

1 hour ago, scandinavian13 said:

1080s can handle it pretty well.

Literally from that thread:

Quote

I have seen people with GTX 1080 getting around 20 fps with dynamic lights ON, even that card struggles. GTX 1060 as it can be seen on Youtube in a v4 test is also at 99%.
I think it will be better if LM can really optimize this, instead that all users will buy 600 euros new GPUs... which really does not bring a consistent benefit at the moment, as it is.

Quote

No GPU seems capable of handling Dynamic Lights and SSAA. I'm on a 1080 Ti, running 4xSSAA and the second I turn on those lights, my GPU usage rockets from maybe 40% to a constant 99-100% and P3D starts to feel real sluggish. It just seems to eat up every bit of power available, regardless of card, doesn't even seem to actually scale with the power of the card. Just feels like some form of extreme GPU stress test.

I wouldn't even use it if it wasn't for the fact that all the V4 birds seem to have lost their regular landing lights hitting the ground. I need dynamic lights to even see lights on the ground. It's so annoying.

No one is confusing anything, the feature is hammering your performance too much regardless of what high tier gpu you may have. The difference in drop between these cards is tiny so you really can't go and blame the hardware.

[scandinavian13 5,192]

32 minutes ago, Ioan92 said:

No one is confusing anything, the feature is hammering your performance too much regardless of what high tier gpu you may have. The difference in drop between these cards is tiny so you really can't go and blame the hardware.

Let me put it another way:

You telling everyone that it is not a hardware issue is essentially saying "you have no change in performance with DL whether you're using your CPU graphics, a low end card, or a high end card (or even a high end, current-gen card)." This is wholly untrue.

...and in that way, you're either - as I said - confusing concepts here, or are willfully misleading people.

 

I agree with you on the point that DL will hammer any hardware. This is true.

To claim it is not a hardware issue (i.e. not affected by hardware) is entirely a falsehood. To claim otherwise is in blatant disregard for these pesky things called facts. You get lower frames using DL on CPU graphics than you do with a 1080Ti. It may not be on a linear, or logical scale (pointing to the fact that LM needs to optimize it, sure), but hardware does affect it. As such, this is also a hardware issue. If someone wants a comprehensive guide for DL, what works for a 1080Ti on water WILL NOT work for a blown 980Ti. As such, a comprehensive guide isn't practical.

Sorry, but you're wrong here. No ifs ands or buts about it.

[bpcw001 22]

Wow. I was contemplating to finally jump from FSX to P3D, but reading about the dynamic lighting and other perfomance problems here and over at FSL is quite discouraging, especially considering what kind of impressive hardware some people throw at it.

For me, PMDG and FSL stuff not running properly on P3D v4 is definitely is a no-go. These are the only addons I fly, and most of my flying happens real-time during nights. Seems like I'll have to stay on good ol' FSX for some more time until this gets sorted out, no matter by which party.

 

[westman 257]

8 hours ago, Ioan92 said:

http://www.prepar3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=125816

This isn't a hardware issue.

That what  happen when you botteleneck the  Gpu. Weak  gpu, to high  settings it cant  handel it.

On 4k you botteleneck a 1080TI easy , I cured the DL issiue with one more 1080TI in SLI , no problem to get 100% on both  gpus 

Agree with Scandinavian 13

Hans Westman 

 

[Ioan92 63]

3 hours ago, scandinavian13 said:

Let me put it another way:

You telling everyone that it is not a hardware issue is essentially saying "you have no change in performance with DL whether you're using your CPU graphics, a low end card, or a high end card (or even a high end, current-gen card)." This is wholly untrue.

...and in that way, you're either - as I said - confusing concepts here, or are willfully misleading people.

 

I agree with you on the point that DL will hammer any hardware. This is true.

To claim it is not a hardware issue (i.e. not affected by hardware) is entirely a falsehood. To claim otherwise is in blatant disregard for these pesky things called facts. You get lower frames using DL on CPU graphics than you do with a 1080Ti. It may not be on a linear, or logical scale (pointing to the fact that LM needs to optimize it, sure), but hardware does affect it. As such, this is also a hardware issue. If someone wants a comprehensive guide for DL, what works for a 1080Ti on water WILL NOT work for a blown 980Ti. As such, a comprehensive guide isn't practical.

Sorry, but you're wrong here. No ifs ands or buts about it.

I said it doesn't matter what high tier GPU you have. Nobody is complaining about medium/ low end graphics cards not producing fps with intensive settings. That's an obvious problem with an obvious solution, although in this case it doesn't work: even with a 1080 Ti, with SSAA on, the moment you turn on landing lights your frames will plummet from the 50's to the mid 10s and this is not normal behavior. This is why I'm saying it isn't a hardware issue.

Considering that the default planes do come with legacy lights I do not see why you force us to use a feature that is obviously still experimental at best. I would pay for optional legacy lighting tbh.

[downscc 1,327]

17 minutes ago, Ioan92 said:

a feature that is obviously still experimental at best

Gone too far there.  Your frustration is obvious but you are not listening.  I have minimal impact with most developer's sceneries using a 980Ti.  The secret is getting the right display settings for your configuration. The use of SSAA will cripple most systems, stick to MSAA. Lock your frame rate, which gives the CPU a longer period to render frames.  A lower average frame rate will increase your lowest frame rate value.  Display frame rate in the low, avg, high format to get a better sense of what is going on.

This is by no means an experimental feature, and I would expect a top tier developer like PMDG to incorporate it.  The burden is on scenery developers to provide surfaces that can be rendered with minimal performance impact.  A good example is Flightbeam, and Mir has contributed significantly to the understand of how it is done.

[OzWhitey 3,353]

Confirm no frame rate drop at all with PMDG lights, using a 1080Ti, as per test reports I've posted in other threads. At Orbx ESSA, no frame drop with the airport dynamic lights + PMDG lights, until enough airport lights were in a wide, exterior shot to make the graphics card hit 100% usage - THEN the frame rates drop.

I think poor performance comes from:

• Using SSAA
• Older/non-optimised airport sceneries
• Graphics cards that aren't powerful enough (if I can sometimes max a 1080Ti at an airport like ESSA, a standard 1080 will be hitting 100% much more often).

The good news is that the tech works well when you've got enough graphics card headroom, as it doesn't seem to impact frames negatively at all. The next generation of video cards should allow the dynamic lights to be used at any properly-constructed airport, no matter how many airport DL's the dev has included - even if LM doesn't optimise their technology at all, which I suspect they will.  

 

[30K 72]

1 hour ago, Ioan92 said:

[...]Considering that the default planes do come with legacy lights I do not see why you force us to use a feature[...]

Is there any real reason for that? I never read a statement from PMDG where that issue has been addressed (i could oversee that but i usually check the announcements).

I mean for real where is the big deal with that?

[downscc 1,327]

55 minutes ago, 30K said:

Is there any real reason for that? I never read a statement from PMDG where that issue has been addressed (i could oversee that but i usually check the announcements).

I mean for real where is the big deal with that?

They did say at least once that the lighting is baked into the model and it is not a simple thing to switch between legacy and dynamic lighting.

[somiller 694]

2 hours ago, downscc said:

Gone too far there.  Your frustration is obvious but you are not listening.  I have minimal impact with most developer's sceneries using a 980Ti.  The secret is getting the right display settings for your configuration. The use of SSAA will cripple most systems, stick to MSAA. Lock your frame rate, which gives the CPU a longer period to render frames.  A lower average frame rate will increase your lowest frame rate value.  Display frame rate in the low, avg, high format to get a better sense of what is going on.

This is by no means an experimental feature, and I would expect a top tier developer like PMDG to incorporate it.  The burden is on scenery developers to provide surfaces that can be rendered with minimal performance impact.  A good example is Flightbeam, and Mir has contributed significantly to the understand of how it is done.

Well I beg to differ...I run 4xSSAA with PMDG and complex 3rd party scenery all day long using fairly high settings, and have good performance (mostly 30+fps). SSAA doesn't cripple most systems! The moment DL are turned on with those settings, 10-15 fps. IT IS NOT SSAA THAT IS THE PROBLEM...if it was, then high settings and SSAA without DL would give low performance. How many times do we have to say the same thing? For my system to run DL, not only do I have to disable SSAA, I also have to reduce other settings somewhat to get the same 30+ fps. DL is the hog!