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Beener

Lights at night cause FPS drop of 10 or more

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I wonder if i can indulge a few people to check something out for me.  I have been running P3D4 since Jan (switched from FSX).  I run sli 980s and have 3 27 inch monitors on an overclocked 4790K.  Up until recently I haven't had any complaints about FPS.  I managed to finally find what was causing random ndtll.dll faults.  So now that I have sorted that out recently I've found that i have a lot of stutters and it seemed to be jerky when landing, especially at night that I didn't experience before (something has changed somewhere).  I've played with a lot of the settings including disabling HDR. I get the FPS quite high. Right now when I'm sitting with FSDT PHOG on the runway with PMDG 737 FPS fluctuates around 45 to 48 at night.  However if I turn the landing lights on it drops to about 28.  I never had that before I don't think because I'm sure I would have noticed.  That's a 20 fps hit that doesn't seem right and normal.  I've just deleted the shader folder but it's still the same.  I'm scratching my head on this one.  I've rebuilt the config file too with no success?  I've recently updated asp4 and have recently reinstall FSLABS A320 as well as spotlights.  Could this be spotlights even though i'm not using the A320?  Can somebody test this for me because I don't think my FPS dropped this much before when the lights on at night.  SOmething is at work here. I even disabled AA for this test.

Norm.

Edited by Beener

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First, welcome to P3D, you won't be disappointed.

Second, in v4, we have an amazing new feature, called dynamic lighting. It really is amazing, and at night I personally only fly to airports, that support this feature. PMDG, when they updated the NGX, added compatibility for this feature as well. Great, right? Well, as it turns out, P3D, and dynamic lighting in general, not just with the NGX, don't get along all that well yet. The "cure" if you will, is to lower your AA settings. I have a 1080ti, and struggle to get to 20FPS at night in the NGX, at any dynamic lighting compatible airport. Hope this helps.

-Tony@PVD


Tony Moore

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Same here, running a 1080Ti. Only thing I can do to get at least comparable FPS in night time is reducing my AA settings from 4xSSAA to 4xMSAA and adjusting other options such as the shadow cast settings. As I do not need trees and buildings to cast or receive shadows in night time, I turn them off. Same goes for autogen drawing density. All a notch down. As a matter of fact, you can save certain profiles in your config. Like that, I simply use a preset profile called "Day max" for flying in day time and a profile called "Night reduced" for night flying.

EDIT: to precise: my night Profile only has shadows reduced and 4xMSAA instead of 4xSSAA compared to the day max Profile, no autogen adjustments. Reason: if you only change antialiasing and shadow options, you can switch profile without the annoying reload by the sim. It simply switches AA and turns off/on shadows. If you include autogen drawing or density into your profiles, switching profile results in a full reload of the sim...

Edited by AnkH
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Greetings, Chris

Intel i5-13600K, 2x16GB 3200MHz CL14 RAM, MSI RTX 4080 Gaming X, Windows 11 Home, MSFS

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Check your AA setting - as mentioned above, you shouldn't be using SSAA, and should instead use MSAA. Dynamic lighting is new for P3Dv4 but still pretty heavy in terms of compute/graphics demand.

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Just use the taxi light, keep RWY Turn Offs, Wing Lights off. Landing Lights only use the centre nose light (777) not sure on the 737 how you do that. Should be fine and have good FPS if you stick with that. Hopefully this Dynamic Lighting will get sorted out with an update as I feel it really is spoiling P3D.

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10 hours ago, Beener said:

3 27 inch monitors

i belive this is the problem. It doesn't matter how many inch, but what is the resolution? I'm not seeing fps impact with 1920x1080 monitor and a 6gb 1060 GPU. My settings are pretty much maxed out, and i use 4xMSAA. I tried 8xMSAA and there's still no fps impact, maybe i''ll keep it, more testing required. From what i've read, multi monitor setup's are going to give you some fps drop, unless you are using more then one PC

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Not the monitors nor the resolution you use is the reason that you do not see such an FPS impact, but the fact that you use 4xMSAA instead of SSAA. As I have written above...

Edited by AnkH

Greetings, Chris

Intel i5-13600K, 2x16GB 3200MHz CL14 RAM, MSI RTX 4080 Gaming X, Windows 11 Home, MSFS

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I think I wasn't clear enough in my original post.  I understand that dynamic lighting is a hit to FPS.  But I think something has changed on my system (or else I never realized how big the hit was) which make it seem the hit is larger than a month ago. I lose over 10 FPS with my test with PMDG 737 sitting at FSDT PHOG at night on runway with no AA selected, no HDR and resolution at 1900x1200x32 originally and changed just today to 1920x1800x32 with the same result over a 10 FPS drop.  The reason that I suddenly noticed it was that I installed the FSLABS A320 on Wednesday last week and then this past weekend did a flight into LIML at night (Jetstream addon) and for the first time ever I saw my FPS go into single digits so I started investigating.  What I'm interested in hearing is if you sit at night on an addon airport say like FSDT PHOG with no landing lights on and then turn them on how many FPS on average do you lose when you have dynamic lighting on but no HDR and no AA?  If I move the P3D4 windows just to a sign monitor (I fly in windowed mode) when I turn off the lights on and off the FPS barely changes it hovers around 50 FPS with my current settings and when I turn the landing lights on it barely registers on the FPS, which is what I'm used to.  But when I span it across all three screens I'm around 47 FPS with landing lights off and then I turn them on and it drops like a rock to 27 FPS I don't believe my system reacted that bad to dynamic landing lights a month ago.  Other than installing scenery I've installed the FSLABS A320.  I guess for myself I should uninstall A320 and rebuild the config file but I'm curious what you guys and gals think?

Thanks,

Norm.

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maybee it's fslabs spotlights?


sfo_a320.png

 

C. W. ,Ryzen 9 5950X @H2O , 32 GB RAM DDR4 3600 Mhz CL15 , Corsair MP600 Pro Watercooled 2 TB for P3D, Samsung SSD980 1 TB for Addons and Crucial MMX500,  Red Devil Ultimate 6900 XT

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19 hours ago, Beener said:

I think I wasn't clear enough in my original post.  I understand that dynamic lighting is a hit to FPS.  But I think something has changed on my system (or else I never realized how big the hit was) which make it seem the hit is larger than a month ago. I lose over 10 FPS with my test with PMDG 737 sitting at FSDT PHOG at night on runway with no AA selected, no HDR and resolution at 1900x1200x32 originally and changed just today to 1920x1800x32 with the same result over a 10 FPS drop.  The reason that I suddenly noticed it was that I installed the FSLABS A320 on Wednesday last week and then this past weekend did a flight into LIML at night (Jetstream addon) and for the first time ever I saw my FPS go into single digits so I started investigating.  What I'm interested in hearing is if you sit at night on an addon airport say like FSDT PHOG with no landing lights on and then turn them on how many FPS on average do you lose when you have dynamic lighting on but no HDR and no AA?  If I move the P3D4 windows just to a sign monitor (I fly in windowed mode) when I turn off the lights on and off the FPS barely changes it hovers around 50 FPS with my current settings and when I turn the landing lights on it barely registers on the FPS, which is what I'm used to.  But when I span it across all three screens I'm around 47 FPS with landing lights off and then I turn them on and it drops like a rock to 27 FPS I don't believe my system reacted that bad to dynamic landing lights a month ago.  Other than installing scenery I've installed the FSLABS A320.  I guess for myself I should uninstall A320 and rebuild the config file but I'm curious what you guys and gals think?

Thanks,

Norm.

Have you increased tessellation?


Naif Almazroa

My Youtube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/user/Youmou0205

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LM needs to do something about improving performance with DL enabled.

I just upgraded my GTX 970 to a 1070 and I noticed just a small increase in fps. Not enough of an increase to justify the cost of a new video card.

Thankfully I can return it for a refund.

 


A pilot is always learning and I LOVE to learn.

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I was even thinking about selling my 2 titans sc. 6gb 

in sli, and getting a 1080ti thou I don’t see the point

people using a 1080ti still getting gpu spikes to almost 99%

when using DL and 8msaa or 4msaa

 

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On ‎4‎/‎16‎/‎2018 at 4:38 PM, Beener said:

I lose over 10 FPS with my test with PMDG 737 sitting at FSDT PHOG at night on runway...

First, using Dynamic Lighting will lower your FPS.  It's just a fact of life.  However......

There is a glitch of some sort in P3Dv4 right now.  When your scenario FIRST loads at night with Dynamic Lights enabled, it is quite possible your frame rates will have "tanked" to something like 10FPS or similar.  Just switch to the Locked Spot view and pan around the airplane a few times.  That will load a bunch of scenery stuff into memory.  Then switch back to VC and your frame rates should be much better (but still lower than if you weren't using Dynamic Lighting).  CAVEAT!!!!  Get OUT of the habit of CYCLING through all the different views available to get to the view you want.  This just compounds the display problems.  Use your mouse right-click on the screen to bring up the Views menu, then select the view you want and go there DIRECTLY without cycling through a bunch of OTHER views.

Note your frames can "tank" sometimes WHILE flying at night too, like when you get close to a high-density, high-demand scenery location.  If your frames "tank" then while in the cockpit, do the same as above.  Switch to Spot, pan around the airplane a couple times to get the "new" scenery loaded into memory better, then go back to the cockpit.  Your "tanked" frames of 10 FPS, etc, should be back to whatever is "normal" for your computer's capabilities. 

And do what AnkH said about using a different profile for Day and Night flying.  It works exactly the way he described it.  You don't need Shadows at night.  And SSAA with Dynamic Lights at night will kill you in P3D right now.

Edited by FalconAF

Rick Ryan

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First, using Dynamic Lighting will lower your FPS.  It's just a fact of life.  However......

There is a glitch of some sort in P3Dv4 right now.  When your scenario FIRST loads at night with Dynamic Lights enabled, it is quite possible your frame rates will have "tanked" to something like 10FPS or similar.  Just switch to the Locked Spot view and pan around the airplane a few times.  That will load a bunch of scenery stuff into memory.  Then switch back to VC and your frame rates should be much better (but still lower than if you weren't using Dynamic Lighting).

 

Thanks FalconAF That does the trick.

FPS just as high at night as during the day.

Leo de Haan

Scotland

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