P3D v4.4 and settings ... and video samples from Beta

[Guest]

I was going to post this in the video section but these aren't really "show case" videos, they are/were testing videos that I thought I'd share.  I plan to do another video later for this thread where I get into detail some of the graphics settings along with some SLI settings (I should say "aimed" at SLI configurations as they can still be used in non-SLI) in the prepar3d.cfg and how to make sure airports don't load/unload when they are relatively close to your position.

Keep in mind these are just tests of 1024 PR textures on a 8700K (no OC) with single 1080Ti and very high graphics settings with "as is" existing add-ons:

and 

There have been additional adjustments and fixes in the final released version of v4.4 since I made these videos so please keep that in mind.  More information to follow...

Cheers, Rob.

[joepoway]

Thanks Rob!

BTW what is the data overlay you use to display the usages and temps as well as FPS?

Joe

[Skywolf]

Wow!!!!

[simbol]

35 minutes ago, Skywolf said:

Wow!!!!

This build is the best in history of LM.. now an get PR Scenery lol

S.

[MatthewS]

From the change log:-

"Scenery draw distance, including airports, can now be configured. "

Does this mean that scenery no longer pops up around the 10nm mark? I want to see large buildings appear way off in the distance, even if they are only 1 pixel high...

Will PBR scenery textures mean the autogen buildings no longer look so dull, maybe windows will appear a little shiny?

[simbol]

2 minutes ago, MatthewS said:

From the change log:-

"Scenery draw distance, including airports, can now be configured. "

Does this mean that scenery no longer pops up around the 10nm mark?

I want to see large buildings appear way off in the distance, even if they are only 1 pixel high...

Go and try it 🙂

S.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, joepoway said:

BTW what is the data overlay you use to display the usages and temps as well as FPS?

MSI Afterburner ... the overlay doesn't always display (not sure why) ... I seem to get better reliability of the data overlay if I start MSI Afterburner AFTER I start P3D and in a flight.

28 minutes ago, MatthewS said:

Does this mean that scenery no longer pops up around the 10nm mark?

If you have the hardware to support it, yes ... SCENERY_DRAW_DISTANCE max value is 128000.0000.  64000.0000 will bet set via P3D UI "Max" settings so if you manually edit you MUST NOT go back into the graphics UI and hit Ok otherwise it'll get reset back to 64000.0000.  WARNING, this will be the most FPS demanding setting.

And MAX_TEXTURE_REQUEST_DISTANCE=32000.0000  (default is 1000.00000) ... both of these should already exist in your prepar3d.cfg.  

[Display]
MaintainSystemCopyOfDeviceTextures=0

This is for Multi-GPU/SLI configurations and should alleviate the case where the 2nd GPU needs to read a texture off disk.

[Graphics]
ENABLE_MEMORY_OPTIMIZATION=0

reduces malloc for AG but increases memory usage

There is another setting, but I'm at work now so don't recall from the top of my head.  But like I suggested, I'll do a full video on what these settings do, the VRAM impact and/or FPS impact.

Cheers, Rob.

[joepoway]

3 minutes ago, Rob Ainscough said:

MSI Afterburner ... the overlay doesn't always display (not sure why) ... I seem to get better reliability of the data overlay if I start MSI Afterburner AFTER I start P3D and in a flight.

If you have the hardware to support it, yes ... SCENERY_DRAW_DISTANCE max value is 128000.0000, 64000.0000 will bet set via P3D UI Max settings so if you manually edit you MUST NOT go back into the graphics UI and hit Ok otherwise it'll get reset back to 64000.0000.  WARNING, this will be the most FPS demanding setting.

And MAX_TEXTURE_REQUEST_DISTANCE=32000.0000  (default is 1000.00000) ... both of these should already exist in your prepar3d.cfg.  

[Display]
MaintainSystemCopyOfDeviceTextures=0

This is for Multi-GPU/SLI configurations and should alleviate the case where the 2nd GPU needs to read a texture off disk.

[Graphics]
ENABLE_MEMORY_OPTIMIZATION=0

reduces malloc for AG but increases memory usage

There is another setting, but I'm at work now so don't recall from the top of my head.  But like I suggested, I'll do a full video on what these settings do, the VRAM impact and/or FPS impact.

Cheers, Rob.

Thanks Rob!

Joe

[MatthewS]

39 minutes ago, Rob Ainscough said:

 

If you have the hardware to support it, yes ... SCENERY_DRAW_DISTANCE max value is 128000.0000.  64000.0000 will bet set via P3D UI "Max" settings so if you manually edit you MUST NOT go back into the graphics UI and hit Ok otherwise it'll get reset back to 64000.0000.  WARNING, this will be the most FPS demanding setting.

And MAX_TEXTURE_REQUEST_DISTANCE=32000.0000  (default is 1000.00000) ... both of these should already exist in your prepar3d.cfg. 

Are those units metres? So 128,000 is 128 km? That would be nice.

Shame they don't have multiple settings, like regular scenery versus auto-gen.

[CFIJose]

Rob,

That looks awesome!

[fakeflyer737]

Scenery still turns black (unloads) when I look away with it with TrackIR, I thought you (Rob) said they fixed this?

[Guest]

Ron, it is fixed, hence the video proof above ... are you using those settings?  One slight correction to my above MAX_TEXTURE_REQUEST_DISTANCE=320000 (there is no cap on this value, you can go as high as 1000000 if you have VRAM to spare.  There are some limits however per Beau (LM):

There's no cap on this value itself because it's intended as a limit. If you want textures requesting aggressively, you can set it something very high like 1000000. There are two other checks that must pass before textures are requested:
1) Object is within the far clip distance. This varies by altitude.
2) Object pixel size at a given distance passes min radius check. This we made configurable in 4.3 using RS_MIN_OBJECT_PIXEL_RADIUS. (default is 2.0px)

Pay close attention to "Object is within the far clip distance".

Are you SLI or single GPU?  What scenery/add-on are you testing with?  

Obviously it's impossible for me to test this with every add-on made for P3D, but I did test with a few and it worked flawlessly ... here is another such test using FSDT KSFO:

As you can see from this clip/test, KSFO (FSDT) stays loaded.

Cheers, Rob.

EDIT: with that said, if some 3rd party content manages object injection based on distance then not much LM can do about that, they will load and unload (which is most likely a left over from 32bit world)

 

[Mace]

3 hours ago, Rob Ainscough said:

[Graphics]
ENABLE_MEMORY_OPTIMIZATION=0

reduces malloc for AG but increases memory usage

Can you expand on this, or can you point me to some info on this?

You say it "reduces mem alloc for AG but increases mem usage", well, how could that be?  If you reduce mem allocation for AG, how are you going to increase memory usage?

I only ask because, I find 4.3's handling of autogen to be almost perfect.  I have no noticeable popping with 4.3 and my 8700K + 1080ti rig, and i don't want that to change with 4.4!

[Guest]

14 hours ago, Mace said:

Can you expand on this, or can you point me to some info on this?

Sorry, I wasn't clear ... I'll quote exactly what Beau (LM's lead graphics engineer) said:

This one does a few different things. Turning it off will cut down on memory allocations needed for autogen batches at the cost of extra memory. It should also improve loading when changing airports, because it won't unload your textures before changing locations. This will result in a spike of CPU/GPU memory usage during and shortly after changing locations.

Hopefully that's more clear.

Cheers, Rob.

[Mace]

36 minutes ago, Rob Ainscough said:

Sorry, I wasn't clear ... I'll quote exactly what Beau (LM's lead graphics engineer) said:

This one does a few different things. Turning it off will cut down on memory allocations needed for autogen batches at the cost of extra memory. It should also improve loading when changing airports, because it won't unload your textures before changing locations. This will result in a spike of CPU/GPU memory usage during and shortly after changing locations.

Hopefully that's more clear.

Cheers, Rob.

That's more clear, thanks.  I think I see what they've done -- they have allowed for a reserve of mem to keep some of that data in mem as an option.  Options are good I suppose!

I will not mess with that cfg setting at all, unless I start noticing problems with autogen.  I haven't had any issues with Autogen in P3D in a long time now, so I'm hopeful 4.4 will be the same.