Performance France VFR Paris Paris-Ile de France

[pmb 5,137]

I bought VFR France Paris-Ile de France (plus the accompanying aiport packs) a few days ago. I've been a long-time ORBX user but Paris in ORBX OpenLC EU just doesn't cut it for me, sorry.

I was able to marry France VFR Autogen with ORBX using AutogenConfigurationMerger and this works (as I checked back and forth). However, I am underwhelmed by the performance of VFR France Paris under Prepar3d4.2. The scenery as such looks great and is extremely dense and has many nice objects, however (i) Autogen often loads pretty late, (ii) ground textures are blurry.

Now this could be the result of my high settings, I have most of the sliders maxed, except autogen draw distance at "medium" to avoid autogen loading in patches (and some shadows off, water one below max, mesh at 5 m). I would agree to this statement, however, using the very same settings I get continuous 30fps in FT Amsterdam and over ORBX TrueLandscape Amsterdam (i.e. the City). Yes, continuous 30 fps, no autogen missing and ground textures at least much more clear than in Paris (let's say within what is possible with photo textures in Prepar3d4.2...) I also have great performance elsewhere (ORBX NCA..) but this is LC-based and doesn't compare directly.

Even during takeoff from T2G Paris Charles De Gaulle performance is good and textures are clear yet. Issues start when I enter the city center later.

I tried the France VFR forum, but that's essentially in French and doesn't have much user info on the recently released Paris-Ile de France for Prepar3d4 anyway.

Does anyone - notably users of this scenery - have any tips or experience what to do? Most of the time I run unlimited with my monitor set to 30 Hz, VSync/TB on. I already tried limiting fps internally to 20 which should help fighting blurries, however does help marginally only. And 20 fps (sometimes even dropping lower) is not what I would call great, although it's still "relatively" smooth. (As a sidenote, I did not yet acivate the additional performance killers in the "Extras" directory.)

Thanks and kind regards, Michael

[GSalden 4,655]

Michael, 

Paris Ile de France is the complete city of Paris with hundreds of thousends of buildings and trees.  TE Netherlands , Amsterdam region , is very light on the system compared to that..

Plus you have all Paris’ airports installed.. Very nice for helicopter flying.....

France VFR gives you 2 ways to control the amount of objects : 

- Scenery Complexity ( mostly the inner city ) 

- Autogen sliders

Start with SC set to sparse ( yes sparse ) and AG trees at sparse and AG buildings at normal. Try this . If your system can handle this try with 1 slider after the other.

You can also try with LOD 1 notch lower, no cloud shadows, water off and DL off.

Also Vsync + TB off and FPS locked at 20 ( monitors at 60 hrtz ) will help. Smooth 20 FPS looks better than 30 FPS with stutters/blurries..

Use Dynamic FFTF .

regards, Gerard

 

Edited June 18, 2018 by GSalden

[tonywob 4,768]

Do have it on an SSD drive? This makes quite a difference for me with FranceVFR's products

[pmb 5,137]

Thanks guys.

1. Tony, all Prepar3d and addons are sitting on an Intel SSD. For mechanical drives, France VFR suggests defragging which, of course, is not an option for SSDs.

2. Gerard, I'll try to lower settings. I realize that the inner city (where issues stack up) are mostly specific objects instead of autogen. This may be the difference to ORBX TrueEarth Amsterdam which, while being quite dense, too, I am under the impression is mostly autogen.

Autogen in the suburbs seems to work better. I already tried FFTF Dynamic (with the AGL height setting and 0.01-0.33 between 0 and 2000 ft) which did not help either. I more or less expected this, as above 2000 ft (which usually applies when I am above the inner city) FFTF is set by FFTF Dynamic to 0.33 and that's what the sim adjusts automatically from the beginning when I set fps to 20, too.

Despite, I will try some of your suggestioins re sliders. Honestly, I am always a bit reluctant to do so, as if cutting the fun out of the scenery I could have stayed with OpenLC EU as well. Plus, France FVR in their manual suggest high settings themselves to enjoy the scenery (of course with the compulsory caveat as long as the system can bear it...)

I'll start with lowering LOD which I didn't try yet. One notch back shouldn't ruin the scenery.

I should add this is in a wee little Alabeo C172 Cutlass with no cockpit on display and running most of the addons including SPAD.neXt driving a hardware panel on a networked laptop. I use PSXSeecontraffic (running on the laptop was well) but I doubt this has much impact over the inner city far from LFPG (where performance is good and no blurries at all). As I said, the setup works pretty well in all ORBX land including beasts like the San Francisco Bay area.  

Kind regards, Michael

[Chock 17,769]

Amazing though it is, and one of my favourite sceneries for sure, VFR's Ile de France scenery is always going to make even the best PCs struggle a bit given that it is photorealistic scenery over such a large region with custom buildings scenery on top of it and all of that in an area where there are 20 airports including the world's tenth busiest international airport in close proximity to France's largest domestic flight airport too.

Personally, I don't take any fancy jetliners into it, or even GA aeroplanes known to be high on FPS (i.e. the JF Trinidad/,Tobago) preferring to use things like Virtualcol airliners when going there, which might not be pretty, but they do help with frame rates. That's why I have the Virtualcol CRJ as well as the Aerosoft one and the iFly 737 as well as the PMDG one. Some sceneries will force you to compromise a bit, and that Ile de France scenery is definitely one of those, it's just the way it is.

[pmb 5,137]

22 minutes ago, Chock said:

Amazing though it is, and one of my favourite sceneries for sure, VFR's Ile de France scenery is always going to make even the best PCs struggle a bit given that it is photorealistic scenery over such a large region with custom buildings scenery on top of it and all of that in an area where there are 20 airports including the world's tenth busiest international airport in close proximity to France's largest domestic flight airport too.

It really looks amazing and moreover it gives me the impression of flying above the real thing, as far as I can jduge, not just a collection of randomly scattered houses. It's a paradise for VFR flying, moreover in view of the numerous little airfields, most of them grass, which I just start to discover.

Optimization is another question. Referring to airports, there are hogs like AS Sacramento (probably never to enter P3D4). And there are the FB airports which are fun to fly not only visually but also because of their stellar performance.

Kind regards, Michael

[ms2 184]

Michael

I visit often Paris in real life, the VFRscenery is amazing near the reality, (I recognise some private buildings),

ohhhh sure, yes this is very heavy and CPU computers are working at 100%...

It is a VFRscenery then I fly only with a light and slow AG aircraft (basic Maule), 

for the airports packs, I only open one per flight. (Like Toussus Le noble, have a friend working there)

When flying liners or commuters on Orly or Charles de Gaulle, I prefer to use TRUElandscape France (based on real land classes).

fps are between 20-24fps, just enough.

Kind regards

[pmb 5,137]

7 minutes ago, ms2 said:

fps are between 20-24fps, just enough.

Kind regards

I can live with even 20 fps in sceneries like these, even more as they still feel quite smooth in P3D4 (at least on my system). My real concern are the ground blurries which I hate and could get rid of pretty much anywhere else. 

As you mention it, is there an Orly addon available for P3d4?

Thanks and kind regards, Michael

[ms2 184]

46 minutes ago, pmb said:

As you mention it, is there an Orly addon available for P3d4?

Not yet a true v4 addon, there is one in preparation...

But I keep mine previous version of V3 for all addons not yet V4, progressively, I rebuild a complete v4

In V4 for Orly, I linked Orly in the v4 scenery.cfg with the scenery addon of the V3 scenery folder and so it work without effects... a intermediate and waiting solution.

This method was applied to several V3 airports, so I was sure not disturb the V4 with incompatible 32bits coded effects, whiteout lost of many airports... When a airport don't work in v4, I cleared this in mine v4 scenery.cfg...

[pmb 5,137]

So here are some preliminary findings. Thanks to all who replied.

1. Lowering settings did help, mostly with Autogen loading. Setting 20 fps, too, which still is quite smooth indeed. I made a special SimStarter profile for France VFR. Setting Objects to Sparse isn't an option, though, as all buildings disappear below normal. However, I made an interesting observation this way. With this setting I get the pure aerial image and (nearly) no buildings in the way. This was quite disillusiong though, as it's still far from what "another" sim shows with ZL17 or even ZL18 ortho scenery. So, I doubt this is the fault of France VFR but rather the well-known issue Prepar3d4.2 has with photoscenery in general.

As a sidenote, letting fps run free as a test, I get > 40 fps, so there seems to be some headroom in general.

2. Tony's question on HD vs. SSD brought me to the idea that perhaps disk I/O might be the limiting parameter. As a proof, I copies the Paris scenery from the (slightly dated) SSD to my up-to-date M.2 OS SSD and redirected the library paths. The improvement was nil.

3. With autogen loading fine, there remains the photo image. Given most of it being hidden under buildings, I found the Seine river banks a good testbeds, notably between Louve and Eiffel tower, i.e. in the heart of Paris. I found a few parameters to improve texture loading (notably switching off all (Skyforce) clouds using clear heaven makes a difference), but I am still not quite satisfied with the results. If anyone gets crystal-clear Louvre gardens in action (i.e. not paused) from 3000 ft. that would be a surprise to me.

BTW, flying over the same area a second time, ground textures load much better. Obviously, there is some caching involved.

4. Observing processor cores, the result is quite unexpected, I refer to the 20 fps setting. Core 0 is constantly at 100 or marginally lower. However, the other cores being responsible for texture loading are mostly at 20% or even lower. Except for a few phases during flight from CDG to the city center where they jump instantly to 100 % as well. One of these episodes is close to the Seine river indeed. This is different from other sceneries where cores >1 are much more smoothly working, in heavy sceneries usually around 80 % or so.

This scenery is still a puzzle to me. While I can get away with some of the lower settings as mentioned, I am not really lucky with the photo textures yet. And I wouldn't exclude the root cause being the way Prepar3d4 handles photoscenery.

Given blurry scenery is usually a CPU issue, I suppose overclocking might help which isn't an option for me, though. Another thing to try might be an Affinity Mask, but from previous experience I doubt this will help either.

Kind regards, Michael

[NeilG 0]

On ‎6‎/‎18‎/‎2018 at 1:09 AM, pmb said:

I bought VFR France Paris-Ile de France (plus the accompanying aiport packs) a few days ago. I've been a long-time ORBX user but Paris in ORBX OpenLC EU just doesn't cut it for me, sorry.

I was able to marry France VFR Autogen with ORBX using AutogenConfigurationMerger and this works (as I checked back and forth). However, I am underwhelmed by the performance of VFR France Paris under Prepar3d4.2. The scenery as such looks great and is extremely dense and has many nice objects, however (i) Autogen often loads pretty late, (ii) ground textures are blurry.

Now this could be the result of my high settings, I have most of the sliders maxed, except autogen draw distance at "medium" to avoid autogen loading in patches (and some shadows off, water one below max, mesh at 5 m). I would agree to this statement, however, using the very same settings I get continuous 30fps in FT Amsterdam and over ORBX TrueLandscape Amsterdam (i.e. the City). Yes, continuous 30 fps, no autogen missing and ground textures at least much more clear than in Paris (let's say within what is possible with photo textures in Prepar3d4.2...) I also have great performance elsewhere (ORBX NCA..) but this is LC-based and doesn't compare directly.

Even during takeoff from T2G Paris Charles De Gaulle performance is good and textures are clear yet. Issues start when I enter the city center later.

I tried the France VFR forum, but that's essentially in French and doesn't have much user info on the recently released Paris-Ile de France for Prepar3d4 anyway.

Does anyone - notably users of this scenery - have any tips or experience what to do? Most of the time I run unlimited with my monitor set to 30 Hz, VSync/TB on. I already tried limiting fps internally to 20 which should help fighting blurries, however does help marginally only. And 20 fps (sometimes even dropping lower) is not what I would call great, although it's still "relatively" smooth. (As a sidenote, I did not yet acivate the additional performance killers in the "Extras" directory.)

Thanks and kind regards, Michael

Michael,

Just installed France VFR Paris and had exactly the same issue. Did you manage to fix your problem? could you please let me know what you did?

thanks

Neil.

[GSalden 4,655]

Paris has  3X as much AG than Amsterdam.

France VFR is like the Orbx True Earth series.

Imagine Amsterdam x3 plus multiple FT Schiphol airports , all together.

What do you think that it will do to your framerate ?

[NeilG 0]

Hmm, not good. Makes me wonder what the point is if nothing but the pentagon defence computer is capable of running it.

[pmb 5,137]

4 hours ago, NeilG said:

Michael,

Just installed France VFR Paris and had exactly the same issue. Did you manage to fix your problem? could you please let me know what you did?

thanks

Neil.

No, I didn't. Low settings only minimally improve the situation. This is quite disappointing as the autogen, custom-made buildings and stuff look really great. Framerate as such isn't the main issue, and I can improve it to an extent by lowering settings (which I confirmed). It's the ground textures remaining blurry whichever settings I select, bothering me at most.

Kind regards, Michael

[GSalden 4,655]

Did you try without AI Traffic ?And set the AG radius at medium.

Also lower the Scenery Complexity . With PACA 1 at Nice I have the SC set to sparse to lower the  many AG around  Nice. Nice itself is connected the AG sliders.