8 hours ago, joepoway said:

Thanks Gerard

Based on your last statement wouldn’t it be better to run locked 30 and force FFTF = 0.05 with a config mod instead of running unlimited and waisting those additional rendered frames that just get thrown away beyond the 30 Hz cycle?

I’ve always run unlimited because I get stutters at locked 30 but it may have always been because it forced my FFTF setting back to 0.33 which didn’t give me enough upside capacity whereas unlimited put me at 0.01?

BTW both scenarios have Vsync and TB turned on with my 30Hz monitor.

Does this make sense?

Thanks in advance

Joe

Hi Joe ,

You have to find what works best for you. My experience is that a Locked framerate is the most smooth If you system can keep that framerate. It is harder on the system because by default it uses a FFTF value of 0.33. But that is now being changed by the program .

Wheh using a Locked framerate you do not have to set Vsync or TB . Vsync and TB do nothing in Locked mode. However , in locked mode frames are more correctly spread apart in the same time then Unlimited . 

I used to fly with Unlimited + Vsync + TB + 23 hetz 

Nowadays I use Locked 20.

At this moment with my new system I haven’t tested yet . Still installing ...

Edited March 22, 20188 yr by GSalden

31 minutes ago, GSalden said:

Hi Joe ,

You have to find what works best for you. My experience is that a Locked framerate is the most smooth If you system can keep that framerate. It is harder on the system because by default it uses a FFTF value of 0.33. But that is now being changed by the program .

Wheh using a Locked framerate you do not have to set Vsync or TB . Vsync and TB do nothing in Locked mode. However , in locked mode frames are more correctly spread apart in the same time then Unlimited . 

I used to fly with Unlimited + Vsync + TB + 23 hetz 

Nowadays I use Locked 20.

At this moment with my new system I haven’t tested yet . Still installing ...

I’ve had a very stable setup with my 30 Hz monitor and unlimited, TB, and Vsync holding 30 FPS just fine. I do have some occasional blurries and was      looking into settting FFTF to 0.05 to add more texture loading time based on this forum thread.

If I just run locked at 30 which I’ve tried in the past I get stutters probably because of the default 0.33 setting. I assume FFTF 0.05 would actually give me 5x improvement of the unlimited default of 0.01 with very little frame impact if I have the overhead.

I’ve never used less than 30 and went with a native 30 Hz TV to sync the GPU output with the monitor. I always assumed it was better to be a multiple of the monitor frequency? If that’s true my next drop would be 15 which is way too low obviously.

So basically I’ll try out FFTF of 0.05 and see if it helps or if the locked 30 adds more overhead than the benefit of the FFTF change I’ll stay where I’m at.

Interestingly I never realized that Vsync and TB do nothing in locked mode. So if I lock at 30 and add the FFTF line to my config file toggling Vsync and/or TB on and off I would see absolutely no difference from those two factors?

Thanks

Joe

13 hours ago, SteveW said:

.... So be careful not to have too many LPs ...

What would be too many, 16 20 24 ...?

Edited March 22, 20188 yr by Nemo

You have to try that with your system.

Start with 6 cores or 12 lp’s for P3Dv4. Then you might try 8 cores / 16 lp’s. See what is better for your system . 

If 8/16 is better you might try 10/20  to see what is better for you.

17 hours ago, GSalden said:

If I were you I first would OC the cpu to 4.0. This will give you extra fps.

The idea of this tool is maximum framerate on the ground ( detailed major airports )

Wheh flying most of us have enough fps room , but because of the low FFTF value very little cpu time is used for terrain loading. By using a higher FFTF value when flying we use that breathing space for more cpu terrain loafing time. Very simple and no rocker sience...

But wouldn't over clocking my CPU be risky? Like I said, I'm on a laptop so it has a very basic cooling system. I would have done this ages ago if I knew it would be safe.

48 minutes ago, nealmac said:

But wouldn't over clocking my CPU be risky? Like I said, I'm on a laptop so it has a very basic cooling system. I would have done this ages ago if I knew it would be safe.

overclocking a laptop with stock cooling is never a good idea

On a laptop it is better not tot OC more than a couple of % ( once had a laptop and I OC it just 5% )

Changing the FFTF dynamically really is a great idea... but to be honest... I won´t spend 29€ for a little program that´s only able to adjust the fiber time fraction value.
Wonderful idea to a greedy price.

5 hours ago, Nemo said:

What would be too many, 16 20 24 ...?

When I say few cores or many cores I mean few is less than many. And exactly what few or many is, is what you need to find out on your system.

Everyone wants a black and white answer but the differences in every system are vast from the hardware to the way they are setup and used.

There's no 10/20 or 8/16 -seems this HT mode is confusing a lot of guys.

if you have 8 cores then HT on or off you only have 8 cores. The fact you have 16 LPs with HT enabled stiil means that you have 8 cores.

Some cores we might allocate '01' to a special sim process and some cores we can allocate '11' if the processes started there can intensify the work on that core by two.

Generally that's done on "few cores" to double up background threads per core - we don't do that with all the cores - especially with "many cores".

...if we think of how a video encoder might work, it might run a process on each core working on a frame each. So a 8 core CPU will process 8 frames in the same time roughly as a 16 core CPU will process 16 frames. Let's say that each frame takes 80% of the core. If we enable HT on the 8 core we get 16 video encoding processes each pair using the same core. However since a frame takes 80% then the two on one core will take longer 160%. The two being switched on an HT core outrun a pair on a non HT core but the encode would only launch one process per LP so by enabling HT we can use 100% of those HT cores with two encodes.

So we can do 16 frames on the 8 core at once but not so quickly as the 16 frames on the 16 core - right?

P3D has some processes like the video encoder where we can double them on an HT core (11) unless we have many cores and other 'more important' processes that we do not want to share on a core (01), unless we have few cores.

What do we do with a monster CPU with 14 cores? Do we want to force the thing to run cores at 100% when we enable HT? Or do we want to distribute work to keep the temp hotspots down and keep HT enabled?

With many cores we only need allocate AM='01' patterns to each P3D core so that every 'per LP' process started by P3D has an entire core throughput, shared perhaps only with occasional system threads rather than a special P3D process if we used AM='11' patterns.

With few cores say four or six we can use AM='11' patterns throughout or a mixture, especially allocating AM='01' pattern to the main process if we can spare it.

Quick report.  Installed FFTF Dynamic last night and on the first flight flew the PMDG 777 from FSDreamTeam LA (KLAX) to FSDreamTeam Vancouver (CYVR) with Orbx PNW below and full AS weather above (METAR 212100Z).  Applied AM=244 using Process Lasso on my 4 core i7-4790K, resolution 3840 x 2160 at 60 Hz with unlimited frames FXAA: On, AA: 8xSSAA, Texture Filtering Anisotropic: 16x.  I then greedily set all scenery sliders to the right.

I was pleasantly surprised to see FFTF Dynamic manage the sim in "ALT" setting at both airports and the terrain below (when visible) remained crisp while in cruise.  I'm looking forward to flying a lot more, I think we have something that introduces a new level in flight simming that is automatically managed.  

Thanks for letting us know about this Gerard.

1 hour ago, SteveW said:

With many cores we only need allocate AM='01' patterns to each P3D core so that every 'per LP' process started by P3D has an entire core throughput, shared perhaps only with occasional system threads rather than a special P3D process if we used AM='11' patterns.

Hi Steve,

Sooo, with HT=ON can you agree that assigning an AM of 21845 to P3D was a sensible decision?  

21845 =  0101010101010101

Certainly, while flying in a straight line this seems to deliver the goods in terms of consistent smoothness for hours on end with no visible stuttering using a frame lock of 30. However, if I deviate frequently from the set course by banking back and forth while changing altitude during an exploratory phase of the flight I may experience extended periods of heavy stuttering (juddering) with frame rates dropping into the low teens. This usually clears spontaneously and normal frame rate and smooth flight resume thereafter. Like the extended pauses experienced by others it’s not a huge issue, but it would be nice to know the cause and, hopefully, eliminate these occurrences. I do not run with all sliders maxed out; in fact my general profile settings are really pretty conservative. Experimenting with the FFTF Dynamic utility has not been helpful in this regard.

Any thoughts or suggestions as to how I could track down the culprit? We could continue this via PM if you prefer.

Regards,

Mike

 

 

No. Problem there Mike is your AM it uses all cores and by doing that it must share the load with everything.

SO Mike. I would first turn off HT and try 01111110=126, leaving everything else to find its way. Or to be more effective set your exe aps to 10100000 leaving the last P3D core alone.

Next i would try HT enabled and 00,01,01,01,01,01,01,00=AM5460

If you see a drop in performance then you have problems that need to be researched.

Edited March 22, 20188 yr by SteveW