Dusk and Dawn performance problems...

[AnkH 2,261]

LOL as much as you want. It should be obvious by reading what I adjusted for my graphics preset that I actually READ some stuff about what could be the culprit and that I am lost as most if not all possible solutions did not help in my case. I DID turn off cloud shadows and a lot of other shadows as mentioned in post 1, then I wonder why three possible answers simply provide links to the solution called "turn off cloud shadows" or even mentioning this directly. It is not my fault if people only read the title and then give an answer, sorry...

The shader story I did not mention, my bad. But as clarified in a later post, I wrote that I already disabled "cloud shadows depth" and it did not help.

Anyway, even if it sounded like, I am not mad and thankful for several hints here, I will certainly try them (again...).

[Mace 1,909]

13 minutes ago, AnkH said:

LOL as much as you want. It should be obvious by reading what I adjusted for my graphics preset that I actually READ some stuff about what could be the culprit and that I am lost as most if not all possible solutions did not help in my case.

What's with the 'tude man?  It's all about helping people and sharing info.

The only thing obvious here is that you haven't reverted to stock shader files yet.

Just disabling shadows in-sim won't do it all, depending on shader settings.  

[AnkH 2,261]

Ok, I downloaded the newest PTA preset from Adam and unselected "cloud shadows depth" and "cloud shadows extended" size, rebuilt the shaders, checked again that cloud shadows were off and tried again. Now FPS are back to acceptable levels, still lower than in day time or full night time, but acceptable.

Sorry for my rather harsh attitude, but not reading what I wrote is something that drives me nuts in todays forums. I apologize for being unfriendly in some answers and thanks anyway for the help. It for sure pointed me in the right direction, thanks for this.

[DaveCT2003 1,820]

So I didn't see where anyone explained why this is happening, so I thought I'd help with a little foundation.

P3D, like in FSX, uses a combination of day and night textures to visually create Dusk and Dawn textures.  So the performance drop you're seeing is because the sim is loading both day and night textures to present dawn and dusk to you.  Because this is what's causing that performance drop, there really isn't very little you can do about it.

 

Of course you can mitigate the performance impact by fine tuning your settings. I didn't see any system specs, but if you're running a slower computer or laptop then you may have to run during the day or night or at least set your time so that it's day or night when until you get above 18,000ft (below this flight level, a lot more graphics are loaded).

I hope this helps.

Oh, system specs?

 

 

[Mace 1,909]

 

4 hours ago, AnkH said:

Ok, I downloaded the newest PTA preset from Adam and unselected "cloud shadows depth" and "cloud shadows extended" size, rebuilt the shaders, checked again that cloud shadows were off and tried again. Now FPS are back to acceptable levels, still lower than in day time or full night time, but acceptable.

Thanks for pointing out these two settings in PTA -- I remembered having this problem but I couldn't remember what I unselected.

[AnkH 2,261]

12 hours ago, DaveCT2003 said:

Oh, system specs?

Thanks for pointing this out, Dave (the above part I did not cite, not the system specs ;-)). My system specs are in the signature part of my posts...

[kityatyi 78]

On 1/9/2019 at 1:54 PM, AnkH said:

As mentioned, I do not have ANY issues when flying in full night time, no matter how many lights on my plane are on or off. It is really ONLY during dusk and dawn, also independent of aircraft lights on or off.

One info that was missing in the initial post: the FPS drop is depending on the view direction. Means: looking away from the sun, my FPS are comparable to what I get in night time or day time. Looking in the direction of the sun +/- 45-60°, the FPS drop down to 10FPS or below.

Will test with the shaders this evening, hopefully it is just that. Then I have to think about solving this for me... Disabling PTA is no option, but if only some of the PTA presets can be disabled and the problem is solved, I could live with it...

I have the EXACT same issue, same observations, same everything. Performance is GREAT at all times except dusk (and dawn), when FPS drops to often single (!) digits. Tried with and without Tomato Shade, with and without PTA, not much differece, in fact, performance during these times of the day is awful for some reason.

However, it wasn't always like this. At least, not completely. When I switched to P3D from FSX, the current version of the sim was 3.2, it was in April 2016. My PC back then was the same as it is now, but the graphics card was different, that time I was using a GTX 970 card. It's an Intel 6700K at 4.5 GHz, with 16GB RAM, 2 SSDs and a HDD. One SSD is solely for P3D, one is for the OS (Windows 10) and the HDD is for everything else. I do remember I had the same issues back then during dusk and dawn, but not during other times of the day. On the contrary, performance was (and is) great during broad daylight and / or night time, no matter the scenery, the weather, the settings or the aircraft complexity. I have been using more or less the same settings since I switched to P3D.

Now, something must have happened perhaps as a result of the introduction of later versions of the 64 bit V4 because after 4.1 or so, all of a sudden I no longer observed the massive FPS drop. To celebrate the new sim I also upgraded my card to a GTX1070 which I am still using. Initially I still had the FPS drop during dusk and dawn even with the 107, I was very sad and disappointed but suddenly, bang, I did not experience FPS related issues all the way until I abandoned P3D last June and returned a month ago to V4.4 which was very inspiring so I decided to restart my P3D journey. Installed everything from scratch, everything is up-to-date, I mean, everything. But for some weird reason, I couldn't enjoy the grand return because the old evil, the dusk/dawn FPS loss seems to have returned too. Be it the FSLabs A319/320, the QW787, the Leonardo Maddog, the PMDG 737, 747 or 777, all the same, FPS drops like crazy, often below 10 during sunset and sunrise. It last for about 15-30 minutes and as soon as the sun rises or sets completely, FPS returns to normal. In the VC of the PDG 748 I usually get 50-60 FPS during day and night in the crusing altitude and around 30-50 on the ground, depending on the scenery. Worst hit for me is FlyTampa's KBOS that reduces my FPS to around 25 in complex aircraft when lookin towards the terminal. But even that is still fine. But the dusk/dawn hit is not fine at all.

It's obviously not the shaders, not the aircraft and not my settings since the exact same shaders, aircraft and settings were used earlier without issues. I am guessing LM reintroduced something that affects certain systems only since not everyone has this issues, but many of us still does.

I am now considering upgrading my card once again, only a year and a half after buying the 1070, since it's terrible not to be able to enjoy a proper sunrise/sunset. A dusk departure from let's say London to New York across the Atlantic is a nightmare since it means chasing the setting sun, basically I am then stuck in the nightfall, resulting in an elongated low performance period. I am hoping a GTX1080ti will solve this issue but when I bought my 1070 I thought the 1070 will be enough...

Edited February 14, 2019 by kityatyi

[Rogen 1,087]

I also noticed such issues and traced to vegetation shadows.

Where the low sun of dusk/dawn was producing long complex shadows and of course there were hundreds of trees and thusly maxing out my GPU (1070Ti) to the point where it couldn't handle it any further (not to say there are not other reasons, just in my case this is what I found during monitoriing of the CPU and GPU sessions in my close to the ground GA style of flying).

So now I don't bother so much with vegetation shadows for dusk/dawn and have separate tuned config profiles to change on the fly.

I discovered that with vsync on and a monitor Hz rate of 30 I would get a very smooth 30 FPS and would also greatly reduce the GPU load (as compared to a monitor Hz rate of 60 which with vsync on would be a max of 60 FPS), meaning the GPU would only have to work half as hard for the same output and I could successfully ramp up the P3D details settings without overloading the GPU and killing off the frames.

So now I have a selection of tuned profiles that mean I can chose a profile for the type of flying I'm intending to do.

Do need a monitor capable of 30 Hz though, or alterantively a CPU/GPU that is capable of exceeding 60 fps in even the harshest of CPU/GPU driving.

I chose the monitor route as it was the least expensive option and best bang for the buck when it came to smoothness and great detail levels.

Cheers

[Nemo 1,305]

8 hours ago, kityatyi said:

I am now considering upgrading my card once again, only a year and a half after buying the 1070, since it's terrible not to be able to enjoy a proper sunrise/sunset. A dusk departure from let's say London to New York across the Atlantic is a nightmare since it means chasing the setting sun, basically I am then stuck in the nightfall, resulting in an elongated low performance period. I am hoping a GTX1080ti will solve this issue but when I bought my 1070 I thought the 1070 will be enough... 

Don't expect too much from a new VC.Even my system with RTX 2080Ti still struggles in NYC and London area.

[kityatyi 78]

3 hours ago, Nemo said:

Don't expect too much from a new VC.Even my system with RTX 2080Ti still struggles in NYC and London area.

That is weird. I have no issues whatsoever i neither the London nor the NY area and my sliders are mostly set on the far right. True though, AA is set only at 8xMSAA, more would eat my frames like a hungry beast. But in general I do not experience any performance issues in any aircraft, any scenery, it's only the dusk and the dawn. Anyways, for the peace of mind the 1080ti will come soon but it seems there is something else I need to look into. I remember, when the fall 2017 Windows 10 update came, I started to experience screen tearing and I turned on Vsync and Triple Buffering. That was more or lesss when I started to forget about the dusk and dawn issues, maybe turning these options on did help somehow? I will give it a try and text during the next few days, turning Vsync and Triple Buffering back on once again. Let's see.

[kityatyi 78]

5 hours ago, Rogen said:

I also noticed such issues and traced to vegetation shadows.

Where the low sun of dusk/dawn was producing long complex shadows and of course there were hundreds of trees and thusly maxing out my GPU (1070Ti) to the point where it couldn't handle it any further (not to say there are not other reasons, just in my case this is what I found during monitoriing of the CPU and GPU sessions in my close to the ground GA style of flying).

So now I don't bother so much with vegetation shadows for dusk/dawn and have separate tuned config profiles to change on the fly.

I discovered that with vsync on and a monitor Hz rate of 30 I would get a very smooth 30 FPS and would also greatly reduce the GPU load (as compared to a monitor Hz rate of 60 which with vsync on would be a max of 60 FPS), meaning the GPU would only have to work half as hard for the same output and I could successfully ramp up the P3D details settings without overloading the GPU and killing off the frames.

So now I have a selection of tuned profiles that mean I can chose a profile for the type of flying I'm intending to do.

Do need a monitor capable of 30 Hz though, or alterantively a CPU/GPU that is capable of exceeding 60 fps in even the harshest of CPU/GPU driving.

I chose the monitor route as it was the least expensive option and best bang for the buck when it came to smoothness and great detail levels.

Cheers

Since dusk and dawn often caught me over the Atlantic where there isn't any vegetation, it's obvious that the issue isn't just related to scenery objects but lies in the core of the sim, perhaps it's the shaders themselves. However, interesting, as I explained in the post above, in fall 2017 when I started to notice screen tearing, I turned on Vsync and Triple Buffering and that was more or less when I started to notice I no longer have dusk/dawn FPS issues. Since I returned to P3D earlier this year after a longer absence, I have a fresh install and neither Vsync nor Triple Buffering are on. This could explain why my performance is worse than before. Everything else is the same. But I never though of this, I never thought Vsync and Triple Buffering might affect performance, What I will test in the next few days, is turn Vsync and Triple Buffering on and see what it brings about.

Thanks for your inputs guys!

[Rogen 1,087]

kityatyi

posted Friday at 09:51 PM

"Since dusk and dawn often caught me over the Atlantic where there isn't any vegetation"

===============================================================================

Well the case... another item that sucks out GPU power is dynamic lighting, which is handled fairly well, unless it's dusk/dawn where GPU will max out and start dropping off frames.

I use a tool to monitor GPU/CPU usage and temps etc. so I can see the affects of changes that I make on the GPU directly in an easy to understand way.

HWMONITOR https://www.cpuid.com/softwares.html

Cheers

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Winghigh 3]

I found this topic when I too found my fps's were very low at night and dusk.  When I originally read it I didn't notice the first sentence of the original post! I set off try to change shadow setting, clearing shader cache etc. Non of that helped. I realized dynamic lighting was the big problem.  Thinking I had solved all of the worlds problems I came back to this topic only to search on Dynamic Lighting since I didn't want point out something that had already been mentioned and realized that was the whole point of this post!  I.E. how to use DL and keep fps up.  So for what it's worth here's what I found...

System i9-9900k, 1080ti, 32gb ram, A/C ProSim flight Model at KDEN by flightbeam at dusk. UTL 70%, Vsynch, triple buffering on.  I do not use PTA.

Original settings: DL on, 8xSSAA, Anisotropic 16x, Ultra 4096x4096, UTL Traffic 70% - FPS 2 to 4! (During the day I get about 60 with these settings.)

Obviously turning off Dynamic Lighting FPS went back up to about 50 with same settings

DL back on: Shadows, Texture Filtering and Texture Resolution made essentially no difference regardless of settings.  With AI traffic at 40% in UTL and AA off I would get about 30 FPS, Increasing AI traffic or AA setting seemed to have pretty much straight line variation back down to my 2 to 4 fps.

Not sure if this will help anyone but hopefully it might save someone some time figuring this out.

[reecemj 146]

Thanks Windhigh. Very useful.

[itsjase 52]

On 1/9/2019 at 7:39 PM, AnkH said:

Hi all,

As with 4.4 the dynamic lighting was improved, I started to fly again into night time or night time only. However, I still need a special graphics profile for night time flying with reduced settings, but that's fine. To properly set up my sim for night time flying with DL, I used again "my" test scenario, which is LSZH from AS, as this scenery is still pretty hard on FPS. I managed to find a setup with reduced shadow options that provides me roughly the same performance as my pretty high daytime settings (30FPS lock). Means: I now get 25-30FPS in most scenarios while flying in the night, perfect. What did I adjust: 4xMSAA instead of 4xSSAA, no cloud shadows, no building shadows, no terrain shadows, almost all reflections reduced, shadow draw distance reduced.

HOWEVER: flying in dusk or dawn time still brings my FPS down to around 10. And I have no clue why. No matter what graphics profile I use, the FPS in dawn or dusk is just ridiculous. Last flight I did in dusk was from JustSim EBBR to AS EDDK, never got more than 15FPS. First, I thought that the DL in EBBR was bugged, but as it remained that low outside EBBR and while approaching EDDK, I knew something else is bad. To confirm, I simply put another time, fully night time, and bam, FPS were back to 25-30FPS in both EBBR and EDDK.

What can it be? Why is the performance so bad in dusk and dawn? Which setting could be the culprit? Thanks for any hint,

Not sure if you ever solved this properly. But I can give you my experience as I had this issue too. The reason behind it seems to be described in this post by Beau:

Unfortunately, the performance hit is coming from the act of casting. We use a technique called cascaded shadow mapping in which the scene from the perspective of the sun. All the objects that cast shadows must be rendered into each cascade view. The number and resolutions of these views depends on your shadow quality settings. At dawn/dusk, when you are looking toward the sun is the worst case scenario because there are so many clouds drawing into the shadow maps.

What ended up fixing it for me was reducing the resolution of my clouds. I use Skyforce and was just using the default highest resolutions. Lowering that down to 512x512 massively improved the frame drops at dusk/dawn, with very little loss of cloud quality.