P3DV4.4 - Tweaks to CFG, Why?

[1st fltsimguy 466]

I have done the client update. Excepting a few things not working, the sim is just fine.

I see a slew of posts about tweaking this, that and the other thing in the cfg file. May I ask why?

I have what might be seen as now an old system however only two years old, GTX970 and I can run P3DV4.4 with lots of the key setting maxed.

What is there to be gained by more tweaking? I just don't want to start doing the endless loop of tweak this and that. But I'm thinking that I might be missing out on something or other because so many folks seem to be posting stuff about tweaks.

My specs

I7-6700K  4.2GHZ overclocked, GTX 970 4GB 7GHZ GDDR5, RAM 32G DDR4 2133MHZ, Win7 Professional, FSX, P3DV4+, XP-11
G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series F4-2133C15D-16GVR DDR4 2133MHZ 32GB(8GBX4 Memory Kit

 

Bryan

[pracines 823]

I have not touched the cfg file and 4.4 is running and looking great for me.

[mpw8679 428]

I believe there is a tweak that will help photo scenery if u have the gpu to support it.  Anyone?

Edited December 3, 2018 by mpw8679

[Sartanius 399]

1 hour ago, 1st fltsimguy said:

I have done the client update. Excepting a few things not working, the sim is just fine.

I see a slew of posts about tweaking this, that and the other thing in the cfg file. May I ask why?

I have what might be seen as now an old system however only two years old, GTX970 and I can run P3DV4.4 with lots of the key setting maxed.

What is there to be gained by more tweaking? I just don't want to start doing the endless loop of tweak this and that. But I'm thinking that I might be missing out on something or other because so many folks seem to be posting stuff about tweaks.

My specs

I7-6700K  4.2GHZ overclocked, GTX 970 4GB 7GHZ GDDR5, RAM 32G DDR4 2133MHZ, Win7 Professional, FSX, P3DV4+, XP-11
G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series F4-2133C15D-16GVR DDR4 2133MHZ 32GB(8GBX4 Memory Kit

Bryan

Bryan - For normal, default conditions, a pristine CFG is all you need.  However, there are settings you can modify to enhance capability beyond default.  For example, the SCENERY_DRAW_DISTANCE setting in the "SCENERY" section will be set to a max value of 64000.0000 when you move the "AutoGen and Scenery Draw Distance" slider to Max in P3D Settings.  You can change this setting in the CFG to a max of 128000.0000.  Folks who have powerful GPU capability can change values like this for enhanced visuals.

With regards to Matt's question, PR textures will be displayed at 512 if you have "Use High-Resolution Terrain Textures" checked in P3D Settings.  You can add the value "TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=10" to the "TERRAIN" section of the CFG to enable 1024 PR textures (provided you still have the "Use High-Resolution Terrain Textures" checked.  Be aware, though, you need a GPU with more than 8GB VRAM for this to work.

So, again, the default CFG is all anyone needs, but you can tweak it to add capability provided you have the hardware to handle it.

Edit: Corrected and clarified the first paragraph.

Update:  Check Rob Ainscough's post here for further information.  Scroll about 2/3 down on first page.

Edited December 3, 2018 by dmiannay

[FreeBird(Josh) 314]

18 minutes ago, dmiannay said:

For normal, default conditions, a pristine CFG is all you need.  However, there are settings you can modify to enhance capability beyond default.  For example, the SCENERY_DRAW_DISTANCE setting defaults to a max value of 64000.0000 (which is the max value of the "AutoGen and Scenery Draw Distance" slider in P3D Graphics Settings).  You can update this setting in the CFG to a max of 128000.0000.  Folks who have powerful GPU capability can change values like this for enhanced visuals.

I changed mine to like 95000.0000 and now I don't have as much black texture loading when looking around which is one of the best features of the current build besides the photoreal improvement.  Josh

Edited December 3, 2018 by FreeBird(Josh)

[Bnash00 85]

I have a Titan X (Maxwell) with 12GB of VRAM. I also use the TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=10 and MAX_TEXTURE_REQUEST_DISTANCE=320000.0000 tweak and holy cow does the sim look good. The textures are so crisp they can cut you if you're not careful. I did not notice any performance decrease when using these tweaks. I think as long as your graphics card has enough VRAM your good.

Edited December 3, 2018 by Bnash00

[FreeBird(Josh) 314]

6 minutes ago, Bnash00 said:

I have a Titan X (Maxwell) with 12GB of VRAM. I also use the TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=10 and MAX_TEXTURE_REQUEST_DISTANCE=320000.0000 tweak and holy cow does the sim look good. The textures are so crisp they can cut you if you're not careful. I did not notice any performance decrease when using these tweaks. I think as long as your graphics card has enough VRAM your good.

I use those settings too and wow. I also haven't noticed any performance issues! If anything its working better. Its like they gave us a early Christmas present everything is pretty and nice.

[Bnash00 85]

Just now, FreeBird(Josh) said:

I use those settings too and wow. I also haven't noticed any performance issues! If anything its working better. Its like they gave us a early Christmas present everything is pretty and nice.

I'll tell you one more thing that made a HUGE difference in my setup. I disabled hyper-threading in my system BIOS. I find the frame rate is MUCH smoother with hyper-threading turned off. With hyper-threading on I constantly experienced stutters as the frame rate fluctuates. I use the unlimited setting for the frame rate limiter. With hyper-threading off the frame rate is much smoother for me.

I'm running a 4960X @ 4.7GHz with 6 cores 12 threads. With hyper-threading off I'm reduced to 6 cores 6 threads but I find the performance is much better. Honestly I really can't tell the difference with hyper-threading turned off when it comes to regular computing. I'm going to leave it off for now. Would be interesting to see if other people notice a benefit by turning hyper-threading off.   

[1st fltsimguy 466]

All right gentlemen, this is what I needed. Now I see, these tweaks basically help get even better looking scenery if one has the hardware to support them, which I don't. Mine still looks pretty darn good, I'm envious.

[spilok 1,132]

NO TWEAKS necessary in P3d.  This is NOT FSX.

 

Stan

[mtrainer 136]

Yes when Prepar3D V4 first came out I made a vow not to delve into the endless "fiddling" cycle anymore, and to minimize add-ons to those which really contributed.  So I made a conscious decision to spend more time flying and exploring.  Once you make peace with not having all the sliders maxed out, your mind can be at ease with all that is right in the world.  The hardware will catch up, in time...although I do hold out hope that the main FS loop can be deconstructed to run smartly across multiple cores before then.

But if it were an easy task, it would have been done already.  The Sony PlayStation PS3 Cell Architecture was brilliant in its day, but ultimately hard to program to keep all cores equally busy.  Multithreaded programming is hard.  While I'm no expert, I've dabbled in it professionally via straight C, and it gives you many ways to hang yourself (and the application).

Mark

 

[American 833 Heavy 132]

33 minutes ago, spilok said:

NO TWEAKS necessary in P3d.  This is NOT FSX.

 

Stan

Not necessary to technically use the sim AS IS. BUT if you want to get the most out of your sim, personalized to your rig, tweaks are still required. That's the cold hard truth.

It's still the same core platform after all. It's just been SIGNIFICANTLY improved over time and is now 64bit. As a result somewhat to your point a handful of legacy FSX cfg tweaks are all but obsolete now, however there are now an equal amount of new tweaks and existing tweaks now more relevant than ever.

For example if you want 1024 LC textures as others have said, which if you have the rig, why not? Modification needed = TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=10.

If you run any type of Orbx scenery or other photoreal or enhanced vector mesh/lc scenery and have plenty of CPU and RAM available, the stock TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT setting of "30" is poorly optimized and bottlenecks any potential of tapping into resources of your PC to keep textures crisp and loaded at a decent distance. You need at least 90 to 120 setting to get the most out of the texture buffering system. There are other new 4.4 related settings that further optimize this as well.

P3D even has an official P3D.cfg tuning guide for even more settings, some that are very important for users that prefer locking their FPS like "FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION="

Or Affinity Mask for some that prefer manually managing P3Ds use of LPs with HT on or off.

At the end of the day it's up to the user, but to me and I'd say the vast majority of us, tweaks are still required to get the most out of your sim. Especially as long as the foundation of this sim is still ESP engine. Come v5 or v6 that may be a different story. Trust me, nothing would make me happier than never having to open the P3D cfg again. That is still a little ways off...

 

Edited December 4, 2018 by American 833 Heavy

[SolRayz 392]

I thought these types of threads were a thing of the past. 

[mpw8679 428]

1 hour ago, spilok said:

NO TWEAKS necessary in P3d.  This is NOT FSX.

 

Stan

If u want to take advantage of strong hardware then yes they are necessary.

[joepoway 241]

2 hours ago, spilok said:

NO TWEAKS necessary in P3d.  This is NOT FSX.

 

Stan

The tweaks discussed here and the ones in Rob’s thread are not like the tweaks of the past they are to used by folks with powerful GPUs and more importantly lots of VRAM on their GPUs at least 8Gb but more likely greater than 8Gb. I believe LM doesn’t want to put these in the user interface yet because most people don’t have these GPUs and it would cause more issues than it’s worth. I for one am glad they have embedded the handles in the config file for those with the top of the line hardware to experiment with!

Joe