Dynamic Lighting - Daytime?

[Egbert Drenth 250]

It might be an obvious question, but still I'm curious:

• Does DL has any effect (and therefor a performance impact) during day light?
  If I turn it off during day time flying, will I notice any difference?

 

[simbol 5,767]

I leave mine enabled all the time as it has minimum impact on my current setup and my current settings.

You can test yourself how it would impact on your system.

Regards 

Simbol 

[Sartanius 399]

Egbert - I agree with Simbol... it has no impact one way or another for my current system.  Suggest you create a heavy DL scenario, then change from day to night and back to see if there is a performance impact.  Should be fairly easy to see.  Would love to hear your findings.

Edited January 13, 2019 by dmiannay

[Lorby_SI 2,036]

48 minutes ago, Egbert Drenth said:

Does DL has any effect (and therefor a performance impact) during day light?

That depends on the dynamic light itself. Dynamic lights are just .fx effect files. The developer can tune a dynamic light to show in daytime or not, but the effect itself will always be there. (the "Color Start=r,g,b,i" parameter of a [ParticleAttributes] section controls color and intensity of a DL during the day, "Color End" does the same at night).

Dynamic lights done wrong can have a dramatic impact on performance, especially when you get so close that they start to reflect off the inside of your virtual cockpit - or when they are overlapping each other in the wrong way. So if your performance seems to be suffering, turning off DL is an easy enough test to do on the fly.

Personally I keep DL off during the day. 

Best regards

Edited January 13, 2019 by Lorby_SI

[joepoway 241]

Correct me if I’m wrong but it also depends on how much “lighting” your doing. For instance if I run my taxi and landing lights at certain airports with my A320 and Dynamic lighting is on it can bring my system performance down dramatically verses when Dynamic lighting is turned off.

Joe

[Lorby_SI 2,036]

26 minutes ago, joepoway said:

Correct me if I’m wrong but it also depends on how much “lighting” your doing.

Of course. More effects active means more strain on the sim. No effects visible = no strain. 

AFAIK it is quite a problem for the makers of airports to get that right, to make sure that the dynamic lights don't interfere with each other in a bad way.

This is true for all effects, not only dynamic lights. If you have too many visible particle effects in the sim, like smoke or flames, performance goes downhill too.

Best regards

Edited January 13, 2019 by Lorby_SI

[Sartanius 399]

Egbert - I did a simple A-B comparison and had zero performance impact going from 12 midnight to 12 noon.  With the FSL A320 loaded at FB KMSP Gate F10 (engines running) at midnight with DL enabled and both taxi and landing lights on, I was averaging (after running for 5 minutes) 33.5 FPS.  Then I changed the time to 12 noon and let the sim run for 5 minutes and ended up with the same average FPS, 33.5.

This is just a simple A-B comparison where all that is changed is the time of day.  Just a single data point for the conversation, not a blanket statement.  For me, DL in P3Dv4.4 does not have any performance impact when going from night to day in my scenario.

Edited January 14, 2019 by dmiannay

[Egbert Drenth 250]

2 hours ago, dmiannay said:

Egbert - I did a simple A-B comparison and had zero performance impact going from 12 midnight to 12 noon.  With the FSL A320 loaded at FB KMSP Gate F10 (engines running) at midnight with DL enabled and both taxi and landing lights on, I was averaging (after running for 5 minutes) 33.5 FPS.  Then I changed the time to 12 noon and let the sim run for 5 minutes and ended up with the same average FPS, 33.5.

This is just a simple A-B comparison where all that is changed is the time of day.  Just a single data point for the conversation, not a blanket statement.  For me, DL in P3Dv4.4 does not have any performance impact when going from night to day in my scenario.

Hi Doug,

Thanks for your test.
The question is now: How much FPS do you get at 12:00 noon with DL disabled?
Is that still 33.5 or is it higher?

I did not have the change to do it myself yet, but will do this week.

Edited January 14, 2019 by Egbert Drenth

[Sartanius 399]

7 hours ago, Egbert Drenth said:

The question is now: How much FPS do you get at 12:00 noon with DL disabled?
Is that still 33.5 or is it higher?

Did some more testing and decided to post the results in an Excel spreadsheet.  Again, this is not intended to be a blanket statement on performance, but an A-B scenario with just changing a single item for each measurement.  Overall, DL performance impact is negligible for my specific system.

[simbol 5,767]

11 minutes ago, dmiannay said:

Overall, DL performance impact is negligible for my specific system.

Are you running 4K? or not? and are you using SSAA? or what anti-aliasing algorithm? 

I find the settings above will have the biggest impact in term of DL at night.

Regards,
S.

Edited January 14, 2019 by simbol

[Sartanius 399]

1 minute ago, simbol said:

Are you running 4K? or not? and are you using SSAA? or what anti-aliasing algorithm? 

I find the settings above will have the biggest impact in term of DL at night.

Appreciate the question, Simbol.  My testing is not about specific settings in the sim (other than DL), so the FPS values themselves aren't germane, just the differences between them for each test (impact to performance).  I included the impact to turning DL on/off in the scenery since the airport appearance is dramatically different (much more pleasing) with them enabled.  Turning DL off in the scenery didn't have an impact for me, but the airport looks much worse (very dim).

Since you asked, I am running a 27" 2K monitor with 4xSSAA and FXAA off.

[simbol 5,767]

24 minutes ago, dmiannay said:

Since you asked, I am running a 27" 2K monitor with 4xSSAA and FXAA off.

Thanks, somebody with your same hardware  and with 4k + SSAA might be struggling to operate with DL enabled at night.

The reason is because the amount of calculations required per pixels are incredibly high, sometimes beyond current hardware limitations.

I am just trying to illustrate why these tests are required to be done individually in order to take in consideration each individual settings and needs.

Regards 

Simbol 

[Sartanius 399]

11 minutes ago, simbol said:

Thanks, somebody with your same hardware  and with 4k + SSAA might be struggling to operate with DL enabled at night.

The reason is because the amount of calculations required per pixels are incredibly high, sometimes beyond current hardware limitations.

I am just trying to illustrate why these tests are required to be done individually in order to take in consideration each individual settings and needs.

I completely agree with you.  My point is, a person with my same hardware and settings, but with a 4K monitor would definitely have less performance, but I'm guessing the impact on performance with DL on/off may be similar in magnitude to what I'm experiencing.  At the end of the day, the OP wanted to understand what impact there would be to having DL on/off during the day.

And yes, each person should do their own tests since there are myriad hardware/software configurations.  I do appreciate the dialogue.

[Bob Scott 7,704]

I use a 4k monitor with DL off and 4xSSAA during day, and DL on and 4xMSAA at night/dawn/dusk.  At 4K resolution, SSAA+DL is a performance hit, even on a 2080Ti.

Since some dynamic lighting is active during the day (e.g. landing lights on some acft), unless I make a conscious decision to use daytime lighting (e.g. heavy fog), I turn DL off, because it doesn't make sense to me to leave *any* performance on the table when all I have to do is take 15 seconds out to untick a box in a P3D menu.  Truth be told, most of my flying is daytime anyway, so I don't have to mess with it very often.

Regards