Hey guys,

We all know that we go around and around trying to get the smoothest possible experience in the sim.  After months of tweaking and trying different things to get the sim optimized, I think I finally solved my problems,

After watching a video on process lasso, I had removed P3D from cores 0 and 1.  For the longest time I couldn't figure out why I was getting high rates but horrible stutters every second or so.

I decided to place P3D back on ALL cores.  This did the trick.  I would imagine you could do this through the task manager as well.  I think from there is where you can start tweaking your settings and bringing on more detail as you see fit.

I guess the bottom line is that before you start tweaking and what not, make sure you're starting on a level playing field otherwise you'll end up like I did and spending months of tweaking for nothing!

Disclaimer:  This does not mean that airports will load instantly when you're approaching them.  The same old sim-isms still apply, but the overall experience is 10X better.  This may not apply to your system, this is just for my system, but I think the general premise applies as a lesson learned the hard way.  

On my experience, working with no AM setting in the P3D.CFG (v4.3) produced the best results regarding stuttering, and now the sim is quite smooth.

Cheers, Ed

2 hours ago, Jeff Nielsen said:

This may not apply to your system, this is just for my system

Which is what?  Hard to glean any useful information from a post about something that's admittedly dependent on your hardware with no mention at all of what that hardware is.

Regards

51 minutes ago, w6kd said:

Which is what?  Hard to glean any useful information from a post about something that's admittedly dependent on your hardware with no mention at all of what that hardware is.

Regards

Not sure what you mean.  Don't remove P3D from core 0 and 1.  Sorry if that wasn't clear.  I say 'your mileage may vary or system dependent', because there's always someone that's going to have the opposite experience.

2 hours ago, edpatino said:

On my experience, working with no AM setting in the P3D.CFG (v4.3) produced the best results regarding stuttering, and now the sim is quite smooth.

Cheers, Ed

I have to agree with that.

Also... after investing a LOT of time, I've settled on P3D settings with VSync On, Triple Buffering On, Max Frame Rate, and then using NVIDIA inspector to limit frames at 29.5.  This produced a constant 30fps on my system with the variance being between 1 and 2fps.  This allows my graphics card to cycle far less (in fact, only 1 to 2fps is as close to steady as I think we can get with P3D) and with it not spiking up to 70fps and the like and this helps with graphics card temps as well (not that I have a problem, but less heat is always better).

When performing tech support for a number of developers, I often recommend the above settings AND removal of Affinity Mask settings for forth generation I7s and later - UNLESS the person is running other demanding software (one program or a cumulative affect) in concert with P3D.

IMO, whether or not someone should run with HyperThreading enabled or not boils down to what other sofware is being run in concert with P3D.  On my system I run P3D along with 4 monitors (single GTX1080), Aivilasoft EFB V1, Navigraph Charts, LittleNavMap, VATSPY, Web Browser, OBS (stream software), Stream Chat software, Vpilot, ChasePlane, and payware weather textures, payware airports and high end payware airliners and with all that software vying for preocessor time it simply works out better for me to run with HyperThreading enabled.

Best wishes.

 

1 hour ago, Jeff Nielsen said:

Not sure what you mean.  Don't remove P3D from core 0 and 1.  Sorry if that wasn't clear.  I say 'your mileage may vary or system dependent', because there's always someone that's going to have the opposite experience.

4 core?  6 core?  8 core?  Physical or logical cores?  HT on or off?  Overclocked?  P3D v3 or v4?

All of these considerations (and perhaps others) are material and could make a difference w/r/t the advice you offer.  Knowing the type of hardware and its operating conditions is something of an essential element in understanding a recommendation for how to configure a system.

Regards

 

20 minutes ago, DaveCT2003 said:

Also... after investing a LOT of time, I've settled on P3D settings with VSync On, Triple Buffering On, Max Frame Rate, and then using NVIDIA inspector to limit frames at 29.5.  This produced a constant 30fps on my system with the variance being between 1 and 2fps.  This allows my graphics card to cycle far less (in fact, only 1 to 2fps is as close to steady as I think we can get with P3D) and with it not spiking up to 70fps and the like and this helps with graphics card temps as well (not that I have a problem, but less heat is always better).

Yes, I also agree and have the same setup here with HT ON. The only difference is that I use the P3D internal FPS limiter instead of NI.

Would you please share your experience on why to prefer an external FPS limiter instead of the P3D internal limiter with P3Dv4?.

Cheers, Ed

33 minutes ago, w6kd said:

4 core?  6 core?  8 core?  Physical or logical cores?  HT on or off?  Overclocked?  P3D v3 or v4?

All of these considerations (and perhaps others) are material and could make a difference w/r/t the advice you offer.  Knowing the type of hardware and its operating conditions is something of an essential element in understanding a recommendation for how to configure a system.

Regards

 

Ok, All cores.  My HT is turned on as far as I'm aware, and I don't need to overclock.  My point was to get yourself back to more a default situation.  Overclocking and all that stuff doesn't really matter if you've already bottle-necked the sim through your PC. 

I'm not nearly as knowledgeable as most of you guys when it comes to this kind of stuff, but I have been tweaking since the first version of FS...LOL.

What I do know is that removing P3D off core 0 and 1 was a big bad mistake.

As far as what I'm also running at the same time as the sim; is about 11 different programs in order to keep a live stream going on the same PC in addition to the add-ons already in the sim.  The initial findings from those streaming was to run their streaming software (OBS or Xsplit) on core 0 and 1 and run P3D on all the other cores in order to spread everything out evenly.  That made sense and seemed to work for some, but I think in the end it was more of a placebo affect.  I run Active Sky, Rex, ProjectFly, XSplit, PFPX, Navigraph (desktop charts), 2 stream consoles, vpilot, chase plane, and VatSpy.

My PC specs are:  

DELL ALIENWARE AURORA R7 Intel(R) Core(TM) i7K 8700K (6-Core/12-Thread, 12MB Cache, up to 4.7GHz with Intel(R) Turbo Boost Technology) 850W EPA Bronze PSU Liquid Cooled Chassis NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) GTX 1080 Ti with 11GB GDDR5X 32GB Dual Channel DDR4 at 2667MHz (2X16GB) 2TB M.2 PCIe x4 SSD Alienware 34 Curved Gaming Monitor :WFHD 2560 x 1080 @ 160Hz (with overclocked)

As you can see I do have a bit of overhead, but in a lot of cases my CPU utilization goes easily in to the 90's, with the GPU never getting over 50%.

 

 

 

 

Edited August 28, 20187 yr by Jeff Nielsen

6 minutes ago, edpatino said:

Yes, I also agree and have the same setup here with HT ON. The only difference is that I use the P3D internal FPS limiter instead of NI.

Would you please share your experience on why to prefer an external FPS limiter instead of the P3D internal limiter with P3Dv4?.

Cheers, Ed

I've tried both and not sure there is much of a difference...right now I'm running all out unlimited FPS, no VSync or triple buffering in the sim or on the card.  I might change it back to VSync ON and limit the frames to 50 or 60 in the sim.  I suppose it will depend on each persons set up as to how they want to do that.

Edited August 28, 20187 yr by Jeff Nielsen

14 minutes ago, edpatino said:

Yes, I also agree and have the same setup here with HT ON. The only difference is that I use the P3D internal FPS limiter instead of NI.

Would you please share your experience on why to prefer an external FPS limiter instead of the P3D internal limiter with P3Dv4?.

Cheers, Ed

Yes sir,

The frame rate setting in FSX/P3D is not actually a limiter, and it's much less of a limiter than it was in FSX due to the differences in how P3D generates frames.  As such, if one wishes to limit their frames then really the only way is to use an external limiter.  There are several of these available (at least there used to be) however I'm very happy with the results in NVIDIA Inspector.

Hope this helps!

Best wishes!

2 minutes ago, DaveCT2003 said:

Yes sir,

The frame rate setting in FSX/P3D is not actually a limiter, and it's much less of a limiter than it was in FSX due to the differences in how P3D generates frames.  As such, if one wishes to limit their frames then really the only way is to use an external limiter.  There are several of these available (at least there used to be) however I'm very happy with the results in NVIDIA Inspector.

Hope this helps!

Best wishes!

Many thanks. Will try it!.

Cheers, Ed

14 minutes ago, Jeff Nielsen said:

right now I'm running all out unlimited FPS

On my setup, unlimited frames produce a lot of stuttering, with long frames going as high as 70-80 with an average FPS around 40 on my preferred scenarios, that's way I went back to limit the frames.

Thanks for your posts.

Cheers, Ed

 

1 hour ago, DaveCT2003 said:

Also... after investing a LOT of time, I've settled on P3D settings with VSync On, Triple Buffering On, Max Frame Rate, and then using NVIDIA inspector to limit frames at 29.5.  This produced a constant 30fps on my system with the variance being between 1 and 2fps.  This allows my graphics card to cycle far less (in fact, only 1 to 2fps is as close to steady as I think we can get with P3D) and with it not spiking up to 70fps and the like and this helps with graphics card temps as well (not that I have a problem, but less heat is always better).

I agree, I was also getting good results with this same setup.  Which Nvidia driver are you using as I started getting DXGI Device Hung errors a few months ago? Disabling Nvidia Inspector solved the problem but I never bothered to roll back drivers.  I am running Unlimited frames with Vsync on for now but do get the long frame/stutters occasionally.  I will not use the in-game FPS limiter as it causes too much of a performance hit and panning suffers.  This is even flying the A2A Comanche where I average 60fps+.  If I lock at at 30 in P3S it is a much less satisfying experience but using NI FPS limit worked great..

2 minutes ago, Flic1 said:

I agree, I was also getting good results with this same setup.  Which Nvidia driver are you using as I started getting DXGI Device Hung errors a few months ago? Disabling Nvidia Inspector solved the problem but I never bothered to roll back drivers.  I am running Unlimited frames with Vsync on for now but do get the long frame/stutters occasionally.  I will not use the in-game FPS limiter as it causes too much of a performance hit and panning suffers.  This is even flying the A2A Comanche where I average 60fps+.  If I lock at at 30 in P3S it is a much less satisfying experience but using NI FPS limit worked great..

I only got the device hung error when I tried using inspector.  It went away after I got rid of it.  I thought is was a device driver for so long.

I get more and more confused.

It's my impression all those threads go in circles. One ends up with the definite conclusion you MUST apply an AM, at least if running with HT on. The next one ends up with the agreement to NOT apply an AM, but use the internal limiter (or whatever it's called). The third one suggests to run the internal limiter at unlimited, but VSync/TP on and set the monitor rate to 30 Hz, if possible. The next one concludes using an external limiter and VSync/TP off and not use an AM. And so on.

I think it's a continuous optimization within the magic triangle

                                                 Stutters

                                              |                |       

                                  Blurries                Low fps

You always shift the center of gravity more to one of the three but at the cost of the two others. The only way to escape is better hardware anway.

And to provide a more positive feedback. After quite some experiments, I found the best overall experience on my system (see signature) monitor set to 30 Hz, internal limiter unlimited, VSync/TP on, no external limiter. No AM either. (I have quite a number of programs like Active Sky/ASCA/Skyforce/FSFlightControl/SPAD.neXt shifted to a networked machine). This works well, as long  as I can maintain the 30 fps, which I can under most "normal" conditions, but not in heavy environments/with AI/bad weather, where I just have to live with a few stutters (call it long frames, if you like) now and then.I

Kind regards, Michael

PS: I just recalled, I completely forgot that nice FFTF factoring in.

Edited August 28, 20187 yr by pmb