Locking Frame Rate

[Cruachan 705]

5 hours ago, djbully said:

Hi All, thanks for all the help in this and other threads regarding AM's. 

So I have setup Rex Skyforce & Track IR now with batch files. They are set to last 4 cores (F000) in HEX. Took a bit of working out. It did not like me just copy pasting the text from Mike's post. Some weird invisible text was getting in the way! But got it going now. 

 

Next question, I'm using Ultimate Traffic Live. I quite like it and it works well for me filling the skies with aircraft. How can I start UTL in this manner? UTL obviously gets started by P3D during startup. 

 

At the moment I am going into task manager and assigning cores after P3D has started it up. Is there any way to start UTL with affinity mask? Something to edit somewhere?

 

Cheers,

             Bully.

Hi Bully,

When Prepar3D/UTLive start up I would look for the UTLive Process in Task Manager. Then right-click the Process and check it’s Affinity. If it seems to be spread over a small number of Cores/LPs then it is likely that the App is assigning its own Affinity Mask. However, if it is spread over all the available LPs then it should be a candidate for user assignment of an Affinity Mask using at least 2 LPs reserved for such a purpose and not assigned to Prepar3D.

This may be one of those occasions when this could be done easily by setting the CPU Affinity in Process Lasso. I have wondered about this myself, so might try it. Not at my PC right now, but I’m assuming that the UTLive executable is called from one of the EXE.xml files during Startup of Prepar3D. Maybe that could be disabled and a bat file created instead along the lines discussed earlier in this thread.**

Steve could have a better solution...leave well alone, perhaps? 🤓

**Edit: Might not work if paths to other UTLive dependent components are described in the exe.xml. Can’t verify that at the moment.

Regards,

Mike

Edited September 17, 2018 by Cruachan

[BBCM 42]

A question, sorry, a bit OT: I've read that when locking your frames, you should use a multiple of your monitor's refresh rate. So if you have a 60 hz monitor, then lock at 60, 30, or 20 frames; if 144 hz then lock at 72, 48, 36, 24 etc. frames.

Is there any truth behind this? I just lock at 30 frames (with vsync off) as a matter of course, it seems to work best for my 6 year old system and 60 hz monitor. But I've always wondered..

Thanks - Bob

 

 

[SteveW 1,792]

20 minutes ago, BBCM said:

A question, sorry, a bit OT: I've read that when locking your frames, you should use a multiple of your monitor's refresh rate. So if you have a 60 hz monitor, then lock at 60, 30, or 20 frames; if 144 hz then lock at 72, 48, 36, 24 etc. frames.

Is there any truth behind this? I just lock at 30 frames (with vsync off) as a matter of course, it seems to work best for my 6 year old system and 60 hz monitor. But I've always wondered..

Thanks - Bob

 

 

Yes, you are choosing frame timing with more co-incidence with the monitor refresh.

[AnkH 2,233]

For my 144Hz Monitor, 30FPS work pretty well. For me, that's the only reasonable limit, as 24 or 36, which would be better matching the 144Hz, are either to low (24) or to high (36).

[lidorx7 8]

i got little confused out of this,

if i never touched my AM, and im using my 8700 with no HT on, what it mean? im using only core 0?

it is better to turn HT on with the 8700, even when it is not K version?

set Vsync ON , TB ON and unlimited, will result for the target XXHz of the screen = FPS ?

Edited September 18, 2018 by lidorx7

[Cruachan 705]

1 hour ago, AnkH said:

For my 144Hz Monitor, 30FPS work pretty well. For me, that's the only reasonable limit, as 24 or 36, which would be better matching the 144Hz, are either to low (24) or to high (36).

Hi Chris,

Why not simply change your monitor refresh rate to 120Hz as I have done? I doubt whether you would notice any difference between that and the higher refresh rate anyway. 120Hz is plenty fast enough. I have several flight sims and many games installed, including a heavily modded Skyrim which prefers 60Hz. 120Hz monitor refresh seems to suit them all.

Regards,

Mike

[AnkH 2,233]

I thought about this, yes. But then I would "feel bad" that I "wasted" that much money for a 144Hz monitor, no? And as long as I do not see any disadvantage from using a 30FPS frame limit on my 144Hz screen, everything is fine :-)

[Cruachan 705]

2 hours ago, AnkH said:

as long as I do not see any disadvantage from using a 30FPS frame limit on my 144Hz screen, everything is fine :-)

Certainly can’t argue with that! One would think that working in a Binary digital environment should produce the same outcome for everyone. Often the reality is quite different as so many other variables clutter these equations. However, despite what you say, the 120Hz solution is the more logical approach.

Mike

[djbully 210]

Look at it as an investment in the future, your 144Hz monitor. One day P3D will be able to do 144 FPS with all Orbx, and complicated airliners! Just that one day maybe some distance in the future 🙂

[lidorx7 8]

can someone please explain this?

i guess the HT is on because i can see that right click on AS_P3DV4 and set AM, result showing CPU0 to 11 all of them ticked V.

that means AS using all cores? do i have to change it? what about the P3D itself? it should use all cores as well, or i need to change the AM to somthing else?

sorry but im not really have deep understanding with AM..

 

[djbully 210]

18 hours ago, Cruachan said:

Hi Bully,

When Prepar3D/UTLive start up I would look for the UTLive Process in Task Manager. Then right-click the Process and check it’s Affinity. If it seems to be spread over a small number of Cores/LPs then it is likely that the App is assigning its own Affinity Mask. However, if it is spread over all the available LPs then it should be a candidate for user assignment of an Affinity Mask using at least 2 LPs reserved for such a purpose and not assigned to Prepar3D.

This may be one of those occasions when this could be done easily by setting the CPU Affinity in Process Lasso. I have wondered about this myself, so might try it. Not at my PC right now, but I’m assuming that the UTLive executable is called from one of the EXE.xml files during Startup of Prepar3D. Maybe that could be disabled and a bat file created instead along the lines discussed earlier in this thread.**

Steve could have a better solution...leave well alone, perhaps? 🤓

**Edit: Might not work if paths to other UTLive dependent components are described in the exe.xml. Can’t verify that at the moment.

Regards,

Mike

Thanks Mike,

                        I dont have process lasso, but you are correct that UTLclient.exe is called upon to start via the exe.xml. 

 

UTLclient.exe when it shows up, is using the same affinity mask as P3D. So that would be (0000111101010101). I have been just changing affinity for UTLclient.exe after P3D starts it via the task manager. That does seem to work, I read there maybe some issues using this method, but it's working well as far as I can tell. 

 

Ahh, ok I think I see what you are saying. 

 

Remove the current call for UTLclient.exe from exe.xml files and replace that with a call for a BAT file. Then create a BAT file for UTLclient.exe like you would any other? 

 

Cheers,

           Bully.

 

[Cruachan 705]

23 minutes ago, djbully said:

Remove the current call for UTLclient.exe from exe.xml files and replace that with a call for a BAT file. Then create a BAT file for UTLclient.exe like you would any other?

Hi Bully,

(No need to remove, just change ‘=false’ to ‘=true’ in the ‘disable’  line.)

Wrong!

I'm back at my PC now and I see that in fact UTLive is started via its add-on.xml and is listed in add-ons.cfg.

So, I think the best way would be to change Active=TRUE to Active=FALSE in the utLive Package entry in add-ons.cfg.

Or, an easier way would be to use the very helpful free Lorby-SI Addon Organizer utility to accomplish the same.

Regards,

Mike

Edited September 18, 2018 by Cruachan

[AnkH 2,233]

Good point, I also use UT and I totally forgot about it. Might be that moving this to other processors would again lead to some improvements. The way you suggested with calling a .bat file should work, I will try it today.

Mike: changing this line would prevent utlive.exe from being executed and then you would need to start it manually. The trick via .bat file should work, no?

[Cruachan 705]

32 minutes ago, AnkH said:

Mike: changing this line would prevent utlive.exe from being executed and then you would need to start it manually. The trick via .bat file should work, no?

Hi Chris,

Note: I updated my previous post to correct a mistake.

As to your question, I see no reason why not. I suggest you try it and see.

Edit: I think I see a snag. Back to one of my earlier posts I suggested this might not work if other dependent component/s is/are involved. This appears to be the case with UTLive:

From the UTLive add-on.xml

<AddOn.Component>
    <Category>EXE</Category>
    <Path>C:\PROGRAM FILES\FLIGHT ONE SOFTWARE\ULTIMATE TRAFFIC LIVE\utl_client.exe</Path>
  </AddOn.Component>
  <AddOn.Component>
    <Category>SimObjects</Category>
    <Path>C:\PROGRAM FILES\FLIGHT ONE SOFTWARE\ULTIMATE TRAFFIC LIVE\utLive Aircraft</Path>
  </AddOn.Component>

So, disabling the UTLive Package in add-ons.cfg and trying to call the simconnect executable utl_client.exe using a bat file would ignore the SimObjects component of the Package.

Perhaps someone more well-versed in such matters could chip in at this point.

Regards,

Mike

[AnkH 2,233]

That's why I would only replace the .exe string inside the add-on.xml as suggested by bully. Basically something like this:

<AddOn.Component>
    <Category>EXE</Category>
    <Path>C:\PROGRAM FILES\FLIGHT ONE SOFTWARE\ULTIMATE TRAFFIC LIVE\UTstartup.bat</Path>
  </AddOn.Component>
  <AddOn.Component>
    <Category>SimObjects</Category>
    <Path>C:\PROGRAM FILES\FLIGHT ONE SOFTWARE\ULTIMATE TRAFFIC LIVE\utLive Aircraft</Path>
  </AddOn.Component>

That should work, no? Or does the add-on.xml need to have an .exe executable to work properly? I guess no...