3 hours ago, Pete Dowson said:

I've no idea how to find which aircraft is to blame, if indeed it was this change,

The app is pretty good and with a robust simconnect and other solid features, only really pressing buttons in the sim so in itself is unlikely the source.

35 minutes ago, SteveW said:

The thing about P3D is that it does not operate fullscreen in Exclusive Mode - it is a desktop window with no border and caption, it is a D3D11 viewport. That's the way they work.

Steve, what if I run it in Windowed mode? Does that change how P3D works? I almost never run in full screen mode.

Sorry, but D3D11 viewport means nothing to me. In reality the problem is fixed with the settings I made. I’m not going to change them.

1 hour ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Steve, what if I run it in Windowed mode? Does that change how P3D works? I almost never run in full screen mode.

Sorry, but D3D11 viewport means nothing to me. In reality the problem is fixed with the settings I made. I’m not going to change them.

I'm not telling you to make changes I'm telling you how it works and how to profile your sim properly. How to install P3D professionally and set it up properly can be found on those pages...

2 hours ago, SteveW said:

The thing about P3D is that it does not operate fullscreen in Exclusive Mode - it is a desktop window with no border and caption, it is a D3D11 viewport. That's the way they work.

WIndow or fullscreen - what I am saying is it is always a desktop window.

"The thing about P3D is that it does not operate fullscreen in Exclusive Mode - it is a desktop window"

Edited November 24, 20187 yr by SteveW

1 hour ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Sorry, but D3D11 viewport means nothing to me

There's plenty around on google, a viewport is the window the simulator uses to display the scene.

4 minutes ago, SteveW said:

I'm telling you how it works and how to profile your sim properly. How to install P3D professionally and set it up properly can be found on those pages...

2 hours ago, SteveW said:

Steve,

Would you be so kind and point me again to those pages, please.

Edited November 24, 20187 yr by killthespam

1 minute ago, killthespam said:

Steve,

Would you be so kind and point me again to those pages, please.

Sure:

http://www.codelegend.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=2

 

I'm not presenting ideas there i'm saying how stuff actually works and why we do stuff the way we do.

 

Since the simulator alters its demand on the CPU as the view changes, flying or panning, we need to set the sim up with overhead. Just like when you're in a climb, if you are at maximum throttle and you get a downdraught, your climb rate decreases and you can't increase the throttle. That's how the sim works when you set it up with overhead.

So Ray, by setting VSync the GPU output is steered to your refresh frequency so that there is maximum coincidence of frames to monitor rate. Setting VSync=On to 'fix the flicker problem' is not what we are doing. If you study the link I sent it is exceptionally useful to know how to profile the simulator in such a simple way rather than simply add stuff remaining in the dark as you go.

Thank you Steve, much appreciated.

1 minute ago, killthespam said:

Thank you Steve, much appreciated.

You are very welcome Alex.

...while we're talking about CPU use, we have the other thing, core usage. I read such stuff in lengthy discussions about careful setting of memory timing, multiplier steps, voltage increases and bus frequencies and then what do we find? What to do with AMs and HT switch off HT and leave out the AM. It's good to understand that side of the equation as well since as far as I'm concerned you can't have one without the other.

The major metric I've explained in the past: Use the AM to add cores until you see no more increase in scenario loading speed, no big decreases in loading time means you need not apply more cores.

With big CPU's those apps providing the AM setting like FSX and P3D do that because they can't determine the partition required by our setup - we all have unique systems.

With a stopwatch time how long the scenario takes to load to a certain point as the sim starts up. Do it a few times to remove the delay before caching.  Add cores and note the times. Do that with your regular setup starting at a major airport.

Every core or LP will queue up for the resources and disk drives and the like can't be spread ever more widely and keep the earlier cores fed - so enable only those needed. Extra work is done and lost by the excess cores utilised so scrapping any chance of a proper performance test.

 

Edited November 24, 20187 yr by SteveW

...then with HT (hyperthreading) it's definitely not cool to mis-understand this technology:

When a thread waits for those resources I just mentioned, that thread is said to go to sleep. In reality the CPU keeps clocking to an extent. those cycles are not fully used, shifting binary words and filling up data structures for matrixes you name it, the core temperature settles down (ignoring CPU throttling) since there's less work done.

Now there's always more than two threads on a core even though they mention two for HT. But using that analogy, the other thread on an HT core still shares those cycles with the other thread, there is after all only one core. However the HT core enables the other thread to start and stop with no fuss, halving the context switching time used as threads are set up on the core for continued execution.

Also, importantly, since the free cycles are now getting used fully, and the workload is being eaten up more quickly, more heat is produced. So instant heat increase with HT enabled is simply that more work is done and less gaps, less sleeping.

With an app like Pant 3D or a video frame renderer, the workload can be more or less continuously split down onto more and more cores. For example a 1000 frame movie can be rendered in an instant on a 1000 core PC, so takes twice as long to run on 500 cores.

P3D has parts only similar to that, and also has a major part that can be thought of as the game-loop that is critically timed. That is, everything happening inside that loop must be accountable for each CPU cycle or performance is lost pretty quickly within the application. Add in a dll or gauge and that critical time is interfered-with.

Remember also when testing and profiling that certain add-ins can take such a proportion from that time in the loop that tests of settings of CPU and GPU make little difference.

Recently desktop CPUs coming out more widely allow certain cores to run at a higher speed. With the AM we can dictate to P3D where to put the first task - that major game-loop task. Then we allow the required amount of Logical Processors to chew on the rest. Just avoid overeating.

 

 

 

Edited November 24, 20187 yr by SteveW

...Leaving HT off so to advantage overclocking is a mistake:

Since that maximum overclock setting is keeping cool because there's sleeping time on the cores, right?

it's only going to be waiting for you to run an app or an app to start a sub-process that utilises more fully that core without sleeping, so that it heats up like an HT core. That's right - crash.

An overclocked system needs to be set in its heat curve to accommodate HT.

@SteveW, I appreciate your posts and your efforts to educate me on the finer points of getting the best out of P3D. I will look at your forum in slower time when things here have calmed down a bit. I've spent a lot of time on P3D in the last couple of weeks and my ability to absorb new information is just not there at the moment.

My priority is trying to solve the problem of why P3D crashes on first load but not on subsequent ones.

11 hours ago, SteveW said:

The app is pretty good and with a robust simconnect and other solid features, only really pressing buttons in the sim so in itself is unlikely the source.

If you mean UTLive, yes, I know it isn't that. I can only think one of the aircraft liveries from FLAi is corrupted or bad in some way. To check this I'll restore the UTL repaints.xml and test again.

The other thing which may have contributed to the crash is that the number of AIaircraft at and around EGLL has increased to nearly 600. Far too much for my system. I'm whacking down the settings which must have somehow got too high.

11 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

I almost never run in full screen mode.

Why? With P3D in full screen mode you can still have other things displayed on a separate monitor, as I do. Just make sure the blackout option in the P3D options is off.

Really the only difference then between full screen and windowed is the border. It looks better without a border! 😉

Pete

 

 

6 minutes ago, Pete Dowson said:

Why? With P3D in full screen mode you can still have other things displayed on a separate monitor, as I do. Just make sure the blackout option in the P3D options is off.

Really the only difference then between full screen and windowed is the border. It looks better without a border! 😉

Pete

It goes back a long time when if you were in full-screen mode and a program crashed the popup wouldn't show because effectively you were in DOS mode. Old habits and all that.