ORBX Global Vector and performance?

[Dane Watson 38]

I have been curious about Global Vector for some time, but now ORBX has a 50% off sale.

Two questions:

Does Vector cause a big hit on FPS or on general loading times?

Does Vector really improve the look - is it worth it?

 

I noticed when I first installed Pacific Northwest both my FPS and loading times took a hit. But I have gotten used to 25 - 35 FPS depending on the airport scenery and aircraft type. As you can see from below my system is not the speediest but that's what I have.

 

Appreciate your feedback

Regards, Dane

[AnkH 2,264]

Personally, I would not miss FTX Vector, especially for the improved coastlines and rivers/lakes. But you have to be careful regarding the settings, as with everything turned on and enabled, FPS will suffer greatly (at least the OOM issue is gone with v4.x). If you for example enable primary, secondary AND tertiary roads, you will not only have some places (especially in Europe) where there are so many roads that it does look rather silly, but also FPS will suffer. Same goes for traintracks and powerlines. I found that having only primary and secondary roads enabled and only the primary roads showing traffic, traintracks and NO powerlines results in a good compromise between visual enhancement and performance. And make sure that you have this nasty "frozen surfaces in winter" option unticked...

[Bob Scott 7,720]

Something you should investigate carefully before going the vector route is the host of elevation problems people report using it.  I considered it when I went with FTX Global some years ago, but ended up using Ultimate Terrain for my vector scenery instead, because Orbx FTX Vector is widely reported to really mess with elevations of airports the world over.  It has an airport elevation tool that allows some control, but it looks to still have issues, especially if you fly to less-travelled airports or use 3rd party terrain mesh.  I have (and really like) a large number of Orbx regional and airport sceneries, but still have my reservations about Vector.

Regards

 

[rafikihd 11]

I honestly love Vector, but it came with a price on my rig though.

So I had to open the Vector control panel and uncheck pretty much everything and gained a huge performance.

I`ll guess all of this depends on your system.

 

Best Regards!

[downscc 1,327]

I love Vector, and the 64b platform makes it possible to enable everything without any frame rate (not one I've ever noticed).  I'm not sure about loading times, but that seems to be driven mostly by other factors (high def textures for example).  Where Vector shines is along coasts and wetlands, the difference is remarkable.  The issues with elevation are mostly self imposed by not understanding how to use Vector.  There are a few airports that need to have exceptions to elevation corrections applied and it comes with a tool that does a good job of finding those. I have a lot of addon scenery and Vector is rarely a problem, and when it is the symptoms are immediately recognizable and easy to fix.  For me, the OpenLC and Vector are must haves.

[Dane Watson 38]

Thanks to all that responded with feedback, much appreciated.

[sfgiants13 83]

6 hours ago, AnkH said:

Personally, I would not miss FTX Vector, especially for the improved coastlines and rivers/lakes. But you have to be careful regarding the settings, as with everything turned on and enabled, FPS will suffer greatly (at least the OOM issue is gone with v4.x). If you for example enable primary, secondary AND tertiary roads, you will not only have some places (especially in Europe) where there are so many roads that it does look rather silly, but also FPS will suffer. Same goes for traintracks and powerlines. I found that having only primary and secondary roads enabled and only the primary roads showing traffic, traintracks and NO powerlines results in a good compromise between visual enhancement and performance. And make sure that you have this nasty "frozen surfaces in winter" option unticked...

Sorry to hijack this thread but which settings would you recommend I disable for FPS gain?  I only started using vector with V4 and haven't noticed too much of a hit but I haven't been looking much.  In certain heavy hitting areas such as London or Socal I'm a few FPS short of being able to lock to my monitor refresh rate so I'm trying to disable a bit in vector to get that smoothness back.  Everything is enabled for me currently except frozen surface.  It looks like tertiary roads are a start.

[softreset 33]

4 hours ago, downscc said:

There are a few airports that need to have exceptions to elevation corrections applied and it comes with a tool that does a good job of finding those.

Can you elaborate on the "few" part? Specifically what region or area of region you're referring to? I fly to a lot of smaller airports and I'd say there's 75% chance that they'll have elevation issues that the tool hasn't found.

For example, of the last 8 I've visited in the US, 6 of them had issues not detected by the tool and required work in ADE to rectify.

[Dane Watson 38]

31 minutes ago, sfgiants13 said:

Sorry to hijack this thread but which settings would you recommend I disable for FPS gain?  I only started using vector with V4 and haven't noticed too much of a hit but I haven't been looking much.  In certain heavy hitting areas such as London or Socal I'm a few FPS short of being able to lock to my monitor refresh rate so I'm trying to disable a bit in vector to get that smoothness back.  Everything is enabled for me currently except frozen surface.  It looks like tertiary roads are a start.

Don't be sorry, you're not hijacking.

Well I went ahead and made my purchase and so far I am happy.

To answer your question - I used the P3D suggested settings that is given in the Vector User Manual as a start although it made me increase what my original settings were which scared me a bit. Then I found a good YouTube video that I partly followed for the Vector settings, here's the link - https://youtu.be/nN0rUxMiIME

Bottom line is I dropped about 3-5 FPS, which is not too bad even though my system is not that swift. Many hours ahead of me to discover and tweak some more.

 

[downscc 1,327]

25 minutes ago, softreset said:

Can you elaborate on the "few" part? Specifically what region or area of region you're referring to? I fly to a lot of smaller airports and I'd say there's 75% chance that they'll have elevation issues that the tool hasn't found.

For example, of the last 8 I've visited in the US, 6 of them had issues not detected by the tool and required work in ADE to rectify.

You didn't provide the names or ident of any of the six locations so I'm rather blind when it comes to being able to respond.  There is only one location where I had to manually enter the ICAO code for that airport into Vector AEC:  KLAS.  No location that I have (at least 60 in the US) has a problem.  Don't know why you need ADE to correct elevation problems, odd... I've used ADE to correct elevations but only because the default or the addon was incorrect, and had nothing to do with Vector.

[softreset 33]

• KSYI
• F28 (KRQO)
• M33
• 0M4
• 5D3
• 3CM

I used ADE to flatten and then Vector was fine.

[Gridley 257]

Just my brief thoughts about this since it is becoming an elevation issue thread, not a performance thread.  When discussing airport elevation issues, it's important to note which mesh your using and what mesh resolution and tessellation settings in sim.  I'm running P3Dv4.2 with orbx vector, toposim mesh and a mesh resolution setting of 1m and tessellation at ultra.  It's entirely possible (likely) that these issues are not vector related, but a combination of things.

My understanding of this:

1. Vector contains no mesh or terrain elevation data per se.
2. Vector will adjust water bodies to their correct elevations.
3. In areas where water elevation has been changed, adjacent airports may be affected.
4. The vector airport elevation tool installs correction files for these adjacent airports and will only do so if it detects you don't have any other scenery for that airport installed.
5. Any other elevation issues are not due to vector...

Checking the vector control panel and my P3D install:

• KSYI - no airport elevation correction (AEC) file included with vector tool, and in my install of P3Dv4.2 no elevation issues
• F28/KRQO (is this El Reno?) - no AEC, no elevation issues
• M33 - no AEC, airport is elevated above terrain several meters.
• 0M4 - no AEC, no elevation issues
• 5D3 - no AEC, no elevation issues
• 3CM - no AEC, slight elevation above river bank at south end of airport.

 

Please correct me if I'm wrong!

Edited March 7, 2018 by Gridley

[AnkH 2,264]

Well, the most obvious FPS hog is the road traffic. That's why I deactivated road traffic for both secondary and tertiary roads. And tertiary roads are completely disabled in my case, as those little roads look silly in urban areas within Europe...

[Dane Watson 38]

4 minutes ago, AnkH said:

Well, the most obvious FPS hog is the road traffic. That's why I deactivated road traffic for both secondary and tertiary roads. And tertiary roads are completely disabled in my case, as those little roads look silly in urban areas within Europe...

I also followed the User Manual suggestion and turned all vehicle traffic down to 15%.

[AnkH 2,264]

I even have it on only 7%. Still traffic on primary roads but almost no performance impact.