Hi Gabe777,

“All these tweaks” is a bit OTT, don’t you think? Dedicated flight simmers aspire to much more than simply wasting our lives over tweaks that are little more than snake oil. Prepar3D v4.2 is a great simulation which offers huge potential to become even better for those who choose to spend the time researching and assessing what is practically possible. Indeed, it could be argued that this is an aspect of our hobby which continues to engage and intrigue and keeps the spirit alive!

Believe me, I have everything you have listed and a great deal more besides. Achieving a simulated environment that provides a close representation of our real world requires work, often a lot of work depending on how deep you wish to go. These days we are fortunate to have a multitude of 3rd Party products available to enhance our experience and these can introduce fresh challenges as we enable/disable features to optimise performance. Some products may not play well together out-of-the-box but can be made to do so by manipulating various files and settings. 

In fact, I use very few tweaks and only those of proven value. For example, I prefer high quality visuals and to this end I employ an external antialiasing tweak which hits my frame rate somewhat. Consequently the deselection of certain options and slider discipline becomes of paramount importance as I strive to maintain frame rates as near as possible to my preferred 30. These are my choices. The results give me the greatest pleasure as much of my time is spent flying VFR.

Please try not to deride those of us who enjoy reaching for the skies in a way others may find hard to accept, if only because they prefer everything to work perfectly with minimal effort. I have yet to try this new FFTF utility and, yes, it may not help much, but how am I to know without testing? Gerard has worked closely with the product during Beta testing over an extended period and appears convinced it has value. Also, I note he has updated his signature recently and is now using a multicored CPU: i9-7940x. His experience is good and seems to be helping to maintain performance in situations which, hitherto, proved to be too demanding. If I can replicate his results then I too will be happy. Until I give it a shot I will never discover the truth as it affects me.

Regards,

Mike

 

Edited March 18, 20188 yr by Cruachan

We'll see. In my opinion you can't beat 'more cores' when used correctly by administering an FFTF tweak to improve background tasks since it is only changing portions of throughput power one for another, it is not adding more power - and then it can't affect overall fps - only the state of the data on display is affected.

People having enough cores probably will not benefit that much. If you have 10 cores or more then you will have enough terrain cores .  

With 6 cores I have really benefitted from this program , so I guess that people using 4-6 cores cpu's can benefit too if they want to.  

25 minutes ago, GSalden said:

People having enough cores probably will not benefit that much. If you have 10 cores or more then you will have enough terrain cores .  

With 6 cores I have really benefitted from this program , so I guess that people using 4-6 cores cpu's can benefit too if they want to.  

Hi Gerard,

As I mentioned in my previous post, I noted you have recently updated your CPU to the i9-7940x which you have clocked to 4.7Ghz. I see this chip has 14 Cores (2 Logical per) so, what is your experience with this chip along with the use of the FFTF Utility? Is your overall judgement based on the experience while using your previous CPU? You do appear to be supporting Steve’s assessment of how things work so I suppose my question is not altogether unexpected. I’m not doubting either of you, just feeling a tad confused...lol

Using an Affinity Mask I am using 8 Logical processors out of the 16 available with HT=ON as the full complement delivers a less smooth experience in P3D.

Regards,

Mike

Edited March 18, 20188 yr by Cruachan

1 hour ago, SteveW said:

We'll see. In my opinion you can't beat 'more cores' when used correctly by administering an FFTF tweak to improve background tasks since it is only changing portions of throughput power one for another, it is not adding more power - and then it can't affect overall fps - only the state of the data on display is affected.

It by not be adding more power but It sure does affect FPS with 4 core and HT on. Watch the vid link I posted. Its a common know fact (unless you have crazy amount of core) locking fps = a FPS hit unless you add FFTF 0.01. Then FFTF for sure can affect FPS.

The use for FFTF is when you don't want to use unlimited and have your FPS bouncing all over the place and you want to lock at what FPS you can see your PC can give you. Then adding FFTF 0.01 stops you incurring the locked FPS hit you get.

You more than likely right that "more cores the better" but your average simmer have 4.

Edited March 18, 20188 yr by Nyxx

1 hour ago, Cruachan said:

Hi Gerard,

As I mentioned in my previous post, I noted you have recently updated your CPU to the i9-7940x which you have clocked to 4.7Ghz. I see this chip has 14 Cores (2 Logical per) so, what is your experience with this chip along with the use of the FFTF Utility? Is your overall judgement based on the experience while using your previous CPU? You do appear to be supporting Steve’s assessment of how things work so I suppose my question is not altogether unexpected. I’m not doubting either of you, just feeling a tad confused...lol

Using an Affinity Mask I am using 8 Logical processors out of the 16 available with HT=ON as the full complement delivers a less smooth experience in P3D.

Regards,

Mike

Hi Mike,

At this moment I am still building up my Fs back to where it was. P3Dv4 has been installed as several addons. I have to wait for Prosim to give me a new license key. Therefore my 737-800 is grounded.

I did try the beach baron and F-18 and I did some tests over London with all sliders to the right except air traffic ( 30 ) and car traffic ( 10 ) . Over London with clouds + snow I had 30-45 fps . The minute I have passed London I see 60-170 with Unlimited.  With the 5820 I had the framerate locked at 20 with Vsync + Tb on. I now will see if I can lock at 25 as the 7940x has around 25% more fps than the 5820 ( someone elses experience ).   

I have tried with HT off and 6 real cores out of 14. I also tried with HT off and 10 real cores out of 14. Both looked smooth. But I have just started configuring everything. HT on is coming later as I have just managed to have 4.7 Ghz stable and I probably will have to go down to 4.5 with HT on. So perhaps the gain with HT on will be compensated by the higher frequency of HT off.

Regards,

Gerard 

   

9 hours ago, Gabe777 said:

Why don't you all pull the sliders one notch to the left and turn off dynamic lighting.

 

All these tweaks are, fankly, ridiculous.

I fly FTX everything, with AS16 and REX Textures Direct, snd get 60 fps minimum in every plane I fly, outside over 100 and in VC 60 or more. And not a blurry, or pop up autogen, in sight (except in my Tornado at 800 mph at 1000ft above Anglessey !)

I fly the A2A stuff, the Dash 8 and Carenado do228..... and Realair Duke v2 - with the GTN 750.

I have hardware similar to people here: i7 7700k at 4.5, GTX 1080, on an m.2 860 ssd.

I run at a 1080p rez, with 4xssaa..... or 2K rez with 2xssaa (same thing). I also have Opaque Shadows set to 8192.... for sharp cockpit shadows

I tweak nothing else, other than using a 244 affinity mask.

Each aircraft is tweaked using Simstarter, for day and night, so each addon has slightly customised graphics settings, to ensure smooth sailing at 60 fps.

For me, P3D gives me 3 things I never had in FSX:

1. nice VC shadows,

2. cloud shadows on the terrain, and

3. 60 fps all of the time.

As for PMD at 120 bucks ? No chance, until they switch to an external engine like the GTN and Majestic's Dash 8 !

So why are people tweaking 'this, that and the other' and setting fps to '23' '45', '32' ? I have never heard anything so stupid.

But, I know why....... you all "have" to max out the graphics settings. Why ? Turn off Reflection this, dynsmic the other.... shadow distance and quality...... no noticebale difference anyway, between mefium and ultra...... rtc etc.

It already looks twice as good as FSX ever did, out of the box ! And it runs 5 times as well.

Parkinson' s law in action huh ?

Geeze.

 

The whole FFTF tweak is a very interesting one from my own experience. While it affects smoothness and FPS, it has zero impact on texture loading. Which is a real pain, as that is the very area I need to address. I can try settings from 0.5 through 0.33 down to 0.01 and none have the  slightest impact on texture loading, but I do see significant affects of framerates. Odd.

Hi Gerard,

Thanks, looks like you can look forward to better things with your higher specced setup. You must be pleased with your investment. Congratulations!

Can we assume that your testing has included the use of the FFTF Dynamic utility? If so, then have you been convinced that it is adding anything in terms of maintaining performance as you approach and enter high density areas?

I must say I’m impressed when you say you are running with most sliders maxed out. I would be asking for trouble if I tried that. Terrain: yes,except for Tessellation factor which is High. Scenery Objects: No, although can be achieved with good performance while flying a good distance away from complex airports, out in the sticks or through picturesque mountain areas.

Regards,

Mike

12 minutes ago, Rockliffe said:

The whole FFTF tweak is a very interesting one from my own experience. While it affects smoothness and FPS, it has zero impact on texture loading. Which is a real pain, as that is the very area I need to address. I can try settings from 0.5 through 0.33 down to 0.01 and none have the  slightest impact on texture loading, but I do see significant affects of framerates. Odd.

Just wondering, but as an experiment, have you tried setting the FFTF to .80 or .90, just to see if it impacts the texture loading? While it may not be a realistic setting for actually flying, it might clarify if it has an impact in your environment.

mike

4 hours ago, GSalden said:

People having enough cores probably will not benefit that much. If you have 10 cores or more then you will have enough terrain cores .  

With 6 cores I have really benefitted from this program , so I guess that people using 4-6 cores cpu's can benefit too if they want to.  

That's what I'm saying. With few cores it's possible with the right settings to improve matters with some scenery.

If things don't appear to respond in the way they are intended, it's because other settings are over used or the system is red-lined in some other aspect - don't blame the tech.

2 hours ago, orbmis said:

Just wondering, but as an experiment, have you tried setting the FFTF to .80 or .90, just to see if it impacts the texture loading? While it may not be a realistic setting for actually flying, it might clarify if it has an impact in your environment.

mike

Hi Mike, no I haven't. Maybe I'll check that out tomorrow. It will be an interesting test.

That is corrrect , now people can have it both says : max fps for detailed  airports with a low FFTF value and better terrainloading whille flying with a higher FFTF value and still use the same settings. And  configurable to their system and their needs.

I also wish there was dynamic AG and LOD radius density. Perhaps somewhere in  the future ....

regards, Gerard

 

2 minutes ago, Rockliffe said:

Hi Mike, no I haven't. Maybe I'll check that out tomorrow. It will be an interesting test.

I did try Booster 2018 Live which is the same but you have to set it manually. 

Wheh moving the FFTF slider from a higher to a lower value you can see the framerate climbing by up to 30+%.

With this new program that is being done automatically...

7 minutes ago, GSalden said:

I did try Booster 2018 Live which is the same but you have to set it manually. 

Wheh moving the FFTF slider from a higher to a lower value you can see the framerate climbing by up to 30+%.

30%. Something is unnecessarily impeding the performance of the renderer if you see a reduction of 30%fps - you need to rethink that setup and retest. Similar to those graphs showing an "80% increase in fps" turned out to be just an example of the vsync error causing  the half frame rate problem.

Remember guys that an app changing the FFTF or any other value is not the same as setting it in the cfg.

21 minutes ago, GSalden said:

I did try Booster 2018 Live which is the same but you have to set it manually. 

Wheh moving the FFTF slider from a higher to a lower value you can see the framerate climbing by up to 30+%.

With this new program that is being done automatically...

Sure, I hear what you're saying Gerard, but like many others with P3Dv4, the issue I have isn't with framerates, but with texture loading.