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

[American 833 Heavy 132]

20 hours 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.

Rob,

Confirm these are only P3Dv4.4 specific?

Which section is the max scenery draw and max texture draw distance located in?

One thing that drives me nuts is the airport only popping up 8-10 NM out in 4.3 even on my SLI rig thats very high end.

I just got replacement 2080Tis today so will give this a go when you confirm.

Thanks.

Edited November 29, 2018 by American 833 Heavy

[fakeflyer737 991]

airports (payware) are turning black when I look away (not far from the airport) and then it loads again when I look at it, is there anyway to fix this?

[CFIJose 5,485]

13 minutes ago, fakeflyer737 said:

airports (payware) are turning black when I look away (not far from the airport) and then it loads again when I look at it, is there anyway to fix this?

Ron,

Open your Prepar3D.cfg with note pad and try this:

[DISPLAY]

TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=120
UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=31
TEXTUREMAXLOAD=12

Increase "TEXTUREMAXLOAD=12"  by 3 until you don't see the reloading.

Hope it works for you.

[fakeflyer737 991]

53 minutes ago, DJJose said:

Ron,

Open your Prepar3D.cfg with note pad and try this:

[DISPLAY]

TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=120
UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=31
TEXTUREMAXLOAD=12

Increase "TEXTUREMAXLOAD=12"  by 3 until you don't see the reloading.

Hope it works for you.

thanks I'll try right now. I put this into the cfg right because it isn't already ther?

[Guest]

3 hours ago, fakeflyer737 said:

airports (payware) are turning black when I look away (not far from the airport) and then it loads again when I look at it, is there anyway to fix this?

I responded above, did you try those settings?

[GRAPHICS]
ENABLE_MEMORY_OPTIMIZATION=0
MAX_TEXTURE_REQUEST_DISTANCE=320000.000000
[DISPLAY]
MaintainSystemCopyOfDeviceTextures=0
[SCENERY]
SCENERY_DRAW_DISTANCE=64000.000000

As I indicated above "Object is within the far clip distance. This varies by altitude" ... this is a restriction ... if you spin your head around a lot and exceed far clip distance then you may still suffer from textures loading/unloading.  But if you have the GPU/CPU processing power experiment with values above.

3 hours ago, American 833 Heavy said:

Confirm these are only P3Dv4.4 specific?

Yes and No.  PR (photoreal) uses the same settings as LC (landclass) now (check Hi Res terrain in P3D) so they are in sync.  With Hi Res unchecked = 256, checked = 512, for 1024 then manual edit of prepar3d.cfg

[TERRAIN]
TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=10

is 1024 (both LC and PR).

[DISPLAY]
MaintainSystemCopyOfDeviceTextures=0

[GRAPHICS]
ENABLE_MEMORY_OPTIMIZATION=0
MAX_TEXTURE_REQUEST_DISTANCE=320000.000000

[SCENERY]
SCENERY_DRAW_DISTANCE=64000.000000

These are new for P3D V4.4.  

SCENERY_DRAW_DISTANCE  -- (New) this value changes with AG distance slider (medium and low) will be 32000 (meters or 32km), at max the value will be 64000 (64km) ... this value can be manually increased to a max of 128000 (128km), be warned there can be significant FPS hit if you go to 128000. Also be aware that if you do manual edits of this value and then go into P3D graphic settings and make "other" unrelated changes and hit OK, it would reset this value to whatever you AG distance slider is currently at.

MAX_TEXTURE_REQUEST_DISTANCE -- (New) there is no cap on this value, default is 1000 ... experiment, 320000 worked well for my 1080Ti but try high if you have the VRAM to spare

ENABLE_MEMORY_OPTIMIZATION -- (New) I would set this to zero unless you are short on VRAM

MaintainSystemCopyOfDeviceTextures -- (Older) Present in earlier versions of P3D and defaults to 1, setting to 0 is primarily useful for multiple-GPUs so that copies of textures don't have to be pull from disk when needed

TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP -- (Older) Expanded to include PR (photoreal) ... the ONLY time you should be using this entry is if you want 1024 PR/LC textures, it is NOT required for 512 or 256, and in fact should no exist as an entry if you use 256 (Hi Res Tiles unchecked).

RS_MIN_OBJECT_PIXEL_RADIUS -- (Older) Available in V4.3 and v4.4 - default is 2.0, I've tried 1.0 and didn't notice much difference, experiment ... this setting should already exists in the Prepar3d.cfg.

Cheers, Rob.

[Guest]

 

1 hour ago, DJJose said:

Ron,

Open your Prepar3D.cfg with note pad and try this:

[DISPLAY]

TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=120
UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=31
TEXTUREMAXLOAD=12

Increase "TEXTUREMAXLOAD=12"  by 3 until you don't see the reloading.

These settings will make no difference, please see my response above to Ron.

Cheers, Rob.

[joepoway 241]

8 minutes ago, Rob Ainscough said:

I responded above, did you try those settings?

[GRAPHICS]
ENABLE_MEMORY_OPTIMIZATION=0
MAX_TEXTURE_REQUEST_DISTANCE=320000.000000
[DISPLAY]
MaintainSystemCopyOfDeviceTextures=0
[SCENERY]
SCENERY_DRAW_DISTANCE=64000.000000

As I indicated above "Object is within the far clip distance. This varies by altitude" ... this is a restriction ... if you spin your head around a lot and exceed far clip distance then you may still suffer from textures loading/unloading.  But if you have the GPU/CPU processing power experiment with values above.

Yes and No.  PR (photoreal) uses the same settings as LC (landclass) now (check Hi Res terrain in P3D) so they are in sync.  With Hi Res unchecked = 256, checked = 512, for 1024 then manual edit of prepar3d.cfg

[TERRAIN]
TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=10

is 1024 (both LC and PR).

[DISPLAY]
MaintainSystemCopyOfDeviceTextures=0

[GRAPHICS]
ENABLE_MEMORY_OPTIMIZATION=0
MAX_TEXTURE_REQUEST_DISTANCE=320000.000000

[SCENERY]
SCENERY_DRAW_DISTANCE=64000.000000

These are new for P3D V4.4.  

SCENERY_DRAW_DISTANCE  -- (New) this value changes with AG distance slider (medium and low) will be 32000 (meters or 32km), at max the value will be 64000 (64km) ... this value can be manually increased to a max of 128000 (128km), be warned there can be significant FPS hit if you go to 128000. Also be aware that if you do manual edits of this value and then go into P3D graphic settings and make "other" unrelated changes and hit OK, it would reset this value to whatever you AG distance slider is currently at.

MAX_TEXTURE_REQUEST_DISTANCE -- (New) there is no cap on this value, default is 1000 ... experiment, 320000 worked well for my 1080Ti but try high if you have the VRAM to spare

ENABLE_MEMORY_OPTIMIZATION -- (New) I would set this to zero unless you are short on VRAM

MaintainSystemCopyOfDeviceTextures -- (Older) Present in earlier versions of P3D and defaults to 1, setting to 0 is primarily useful for multiple-GPUs so that copies of textures don't have to be pull from disk when needed

TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP -- (Older) Expanded to include PR (photoreal) ... the ONLY time you should be using this entry is if you want 1024 PR/LC textures, it is NOT required for 512 or 256, and in fact should not existing as an entry if you use 256 (Hi Res Tiles unchecked).

RS_MIN_OBJECT_PIXEL_RADIUS -- (Older) Available in V4.3 and v4.4 - default is 2.0, I've tried 1.0 and didn't notice much difference, experiment ... this setting should already exists in the Prepar3d.cfg.

Cheers, Rob.

Hi Rob

First thanks again, a couple of questions

Can you tell me with a little more detail what "max texture request distance" actual does in terms of what I would notice?

Will it have a significant frames impact if set higher or is it just vram, my 1070 has 8Gb of ram? 

Also I assume if the max texture setting is increased with the addition of "enable memory optimization" set to zero this would be a compounding affect and then a vram situation could arise?

Thanks in advance

Joe

[fakeflyer737 991]

17 minutes ago, Rob Ainscough said:

 

These settings will make no difference, please see my response above to Ron.

Cheers, Rob.

Thanks Rob. 

 

Is there anything we can do about "z-fighting" or rapid texture flickering (ie FlightBeam KSFO)?

[Guest]

10 minutes ago, joepoway said:

Can you tell me with a little more detail what "max texture request distance" actual does in terms of what I would notice?

Will it have a significant frames impact if set higher or is it just vram, my 1070 has 8Gb of ram? 

Also I assume if the max texture setting is increased with the addition of "enable memory optimization" set to zero this would be a compounding affect and then a vram situation could arise?

It's more about what you would NOT notice ... textures will load and have a better chance of staying loaded from very far away provided the memory limit value has not been exceeded.

I haven't noticed any FPS hit from this setting, but if you exceed VRAM then you will see a performance drop.  Do NOT use TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP if you have 8GB VRAM or less. The other settings should be fine, experiment and see what works best for your hardware.

The ENABLE_MEMORY_OPTIMIZATION is different, but you can expect to see more VRAM usage with it set to ZERO.

The setting that will impact FPS the most is SCENERY_DRAW_DISTANCE 

Cheers, Rob.

16 minutes ago, fakeflyer737 said:

Is there anything we can do about "z-fighting" or rapid texture flickering

In the camera config file you can try changing:

NearClipOverride    float    Greater than zero.
Default: Variable    Overrides the near clip plane of the camera. Units are in meters. Setting a near clip value too low could potentially cause z-fighting in the distance due to lose of depth buffer precision.
    
FarClipOverride    float    Greater than zero.
Default: Variable    Overrides the far clip plane of the camera. Units are in meters. This value should be large enough to cover the distance desired to be visible to the camera. If NearClipOverride is used, the FarClipOverride value should be larger than the NearClipOverride value.

Per learning center docs: https://www.prepar3d.com/SDKv4/sdk/cameras/camera_configuration.html

NearClipOverride - increase the value to the highest value required to resolve the z-fighting ... be aware it can "clip" objects close to you if you increase the value.  Range is usually 1.0 to 5.0 ... you'll need it to be set per defined camera in camera.cfg.

Cheers, Rob.

[joepoway 241]

9 minutes ago, Rob Ainscough said:

It's more about what you would NOT notice ... textures will load and have a better chance of staying loaded from very far away provided the memory limit value has not been exceeded.

I haven't noticed any FPS hit from this setting, but if you exceed VRAM then you will see a performance drop.  Do NOT use TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP if you have 8GB VRAM or less. The other settings should be fine, experiment and see what works best for your hardware.

The ENABLE_MEMORY_OPTIMIZATION is different, but you can expect to see more VRAM usage with it set to ZERO.

The setting that will impact FPS the most is SCENERY_DRAW_DISTANCE 

Cheers, Rob.

Again thanks Rob!

I was aware not to use Texture_Size_Exp

I have another question: where is the Enable_Memory_Optimization entry in the config file?

I found and edited the Max_Texture... entry but cannot find the Enable_Memory.. in the [Graphics] section or anywhere else? 

Is it an entry that I must add to the [Graphics] section?

Joe

Edited November 29, 2018 by joepoway

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, joepoway said:

I have another question: where is the Enable_Memory_Optimization entry in the config file?

See my response above, it goes anywhere in the [GRAPHICS] section.

Cheers, Rob.

[joepoway 241]

1 minute ago, Rob Ainscough said:

See my response above, it goes anywhere in the [GRAPHICS] section.

Cheers, Rob.

I must have missed that, sorry to trouble you but thanks for the help I'm liking what I see in v4.4. so far!

Joe

[American 833 Heavy 132]

Thank you VERY much, Rob.

Great Insight on some of the newest stuff in 4.4 and SLI optimization.

I'm gonna upgrade to 4.4 real soon and apply these tweaks!

[ahsmatt7 1,199]

Life would be a lot easier if they just incorporated all these settings into UI. LOL

[Bob Scott 7,715]

6 hours ago, Rob Ainscough said:

MAX_TEXTURE_REQUEST_DISTANCE -- (New) there is no cap on this value, default is 1000 ... experiment, 320000 worked well for my 1080Ti but try high if you have the VRAM to spare

32000 or 320000?  You used both numbers several times in the context of this setting...just want to confirm this is distance in m, in which case 32000 (~20nm) might make more sense.

Regards