P3D poorly optimized on my system

[24CarotMagic 0]

For the past few weeks, i've been battling performance issues on my system within P3D. On payware sceneries, I would only get less than 30FPS in VC mode for my PMDG aircrafts. It's a problem because it affects my flight during approach where everything gets choppy and almost impossible to land smoothly. I've tried rebuilding my config file, and even that doesn't change my FPS count. I've used NVIDIA inspector before, but reset it back to default in order to cross off one potential element to all this. In the air, it's a different story, but on the ground on custom airports, it's bad enough where taxing properly is off the books.

Here are the settings that I've used to test my FPS 1 2 3 4

These problems has made me exhausted and unmotivated to continue Flight Simming with any hope of fixing my sim diminishes.

PC Specs it it'll help:

Ryzen 2700x @4.05GHz

EVGA 1080 Ti FTW3 (Not OC'ed)

16GB of RAM @ 3200mhz

1 TB SSD for OS, 500GB dedicated for Flight Sim (358GB free)

[Rogen 1,087]

What's your test airport and scenery brand? (to duplicate testing examples)

Also what is the screen Hz value?

 

[Labbi85 14]

When you have this issue only at a few high detailed payware airports, then I would suggest to have different grafik settings which you can load in different Scenarios.

One for good grafiks in light conditions and one for good performance in heavy conditions.

And for each setting you have to dial in the sliders until you found the sweet spot. 

I for example couldn't go with your settings on my system (RTX2070, I5_6600K@4.6GHz), but I am also using P3D in VR. In my humble opinion your seetings look really high, for your system, but I might be wrong. 

[Mace 1,902]

2 hours ago, 24CarotMagic said:

PC Specs it it'll help:

 

What is your refresh rate?

[Labbi85 14]

Just did a test with your settings on my system. I started with the PMDG737 in KJFK (Dzwerski NY Airport Pack) and flew to KLGA. I did not use VR and just on my 1080p Monitor.

I left KJFK with an average of 27fps and landed in KLGA with average 19fps, but with quite a few frame drops and reload freazes.

Now seeing that you are using more then double of my resolution, I really think you should reconsider your ingame seetings.

Here is my detailed system spec: https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/16435176

When you want you can make a benchmark of your system on this website as well (for free) and compare it.

 

Edit 2: Here are my in game seetings I would use in this case when flying in VR (almost same resolution)

Edited April 28, 2019 by Labbi85

[24CarotMagic 0]

5 hours ago, Rogen said:

What's your test airport and scenery brand? (to duplicate testing examples)

Also what is the screen Hz value?

 

I've been using FlyTampa CYYZ in my PMDG 737 for testing.

My monitor can go up to 120Hz and the lowest at 50Hz as showed in the NVIDIA control panel

[24CarotMagic 0]

4 hours ago, Labbi85 said:

In my humble opinion your seetings look really high, for your system, but I might be wrong. 

4 hours ago, Labbi85 said:

Just did a test with your settings on my system. I started with the PMDG737 in KJFK (Dzwerski NY Airport Pack) and flew to KLGA. I did not use VR and just on my 1080p Monitor.

I left KJFK with an average of 27fps and landed in KLGA with average 19fps, but with quite a few frame drops and reload freazes.

Now seeing that you are using more then double of my resolution, I really think you should reconsider your ingame seetings.

Here is my detailed system spec: https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/16435176

When you want you can make a benchmark of your system on this website as well (for free) and compare it.

 

Edit 2: Here are my in game seetings I would use in this case when flying in VR (almost same resolution)

What settings would you recommend to lower? Also, I know that dynamic reflections impact FPS a ton, but it's not an option for me as my aircraft does not look great with tomatoshade. I did a benchmark as well, and this is my results

[24CarotMagic 0]

4 hours ago, Mace said:

What is your refresh rate?

My refresh rate can go down to 50Hz, and up to 120Hz. I am using a 3440 x 1440 resolution monitor 

[Rogen 1,087]

1 hour ago, 24CarotMagic said:

My refresh rate can go down to 50Hz, and up to 120Hz. I am using a 3440 x 1440 resolution monitor  

OK, so looking at your settings it looks like you're locking frame rates to the monitor sync rate via the P3D VSync option.

However it means the machine would need to reach a frame rate equivilent to the monitor Hz value, e.g. 120 hz would need a frame rate of 120 fps for vsync to occur. Trying to reach such frame rates is likely never going to occur (especially with addins) and in trying to do so the GPU will probably overload and cause frame drops/stutter, hence why I take it you've downtoned the settings.

So I would suggest setting a monitor Hz rate of 60 Hz, then using RTSS to set  Scanline X/2 option which means P3D will VSync lock at half the monitor scan rate, alternatively if you can set a custom monitor Hz rate of 30 the P3D VSync option would be a viable option.

Either will lock the P3D framerate to 30 fps and will reduce the load on the CPU/GPU and should allow it to reach higher frame rates and also allow ramping up the setting to higher values.

This thread has further info and includes a video showing RTSS in action including example settings used for the video itself (watch the vid to view the settings used).

Don't expect too much though as P3D itself is not the best when it comes to showing lots of building and complex aircraft together.

I don't have the aircraft in question but I did trial the settings as used in the example video @ YMML Orbx with the iFly 737 and on the ground achived frame rates of the low to mid 20s.

I myself have a Ryzen (1700 OC to 4.1 Ghz) and a 1070Ti (also slightly OC) however you've a higher spec than my own and so should do a little better.

For the Ryzen OverClock I disabled SMT and installed a decent air cooler to achive the overclock.

Let us know how you get on.

Cheers

 

 

[24CarotMagic 0]

10 hours ago, Rogen said:

 

So I would suggest setting a monitor Hz rate of 60 Hz, then using RTSS to set  Scanline X/2 option which means P3D will VSync lock at half the monitor scan rate, alternatively if you can set a custom monitor Hz rate of 30 the P3D VSync option would be a viable option.

Either will lock the P3D framerate to 30 fps and will reduce the load on the CPU/GPU and should allow it to reach higher frame rates and also allow ramping up the setting to higher values.

 

 

So I've done what you suggested and it looks smoother, but now the problem is the smoothness which im guessing is screen tearing or something? This video is an example of what i mean. It looks horrible and unpleasant to look it 

[Rogen 1,087]

15 hours ago, 24CarotMagic said:

So I've done what you suggested and it looks smoother, but now the problem is the smoothness which im guessing is screen tearing or something? This video is an example of what i mean. It looks horrible and unpleasant to look it 

Looks more like the framerate (going by the rate counter where visible) is just not getting to where it needs to be for a VSync to occur.

Using a monitor Hz rate of 60 Hz, and RTSS to set  Scanline X/2 with a non zero numeric value means a VSync will occur when 30 FPS is reached, but if 30 fps is not possible then yeah, it's not going to look smooth at all. Note with the Scanline X/2 option the framerate will max @ half the sync rate, so you should not see a fps counter going over 30 fps - if it does then VSync is not working and time to troubleshoot.

 

The original topic post mentioned the issue has been occuring for the past few weeks, can it be assumed all was fine prior to a few weeks ago?

If so what has changed? i.e. an update to P3D v4.5 would mean a 30% to 50% reduction in average framerates (due to a post release discovered bug LM is working to resolve with a hotfix).

Or something else perhaps, a new airport/scenery or something outside of P3D like an antimalware change?

Also are the Prepar3D folders/files excluded from active scanning in antimalware?

And is there a backup program running in the background, like Acronis?

 

Otherwise look at changing a few settings to test.

Unfortunately the thing with P3D is that for somethings there just doesn't seem to be a way to get the framerate up and most of the sliders will relate to enhancing GPU usage, instead of directly enhancing the framerate.

That said there are two items that will definitly bump up the fps and that is reducing the "Autogen and scenery draw distance" and/or reducing traffic. On my machine if I was to disable all traffic (air.road and sea) I can add another 10~12 fps which easily brings the framerate up enough to VSync given the 60Hz/2 scanline sync scenario.

YMML with 60 Hz screen mode and RTSS Scanline sync x/2, jet is the iFly 737

Trying another monitor screen mode (smaller) or trial another monitor, a 1080p for example might also help.

Cheers

[Tomaz Drnovsek 440]

Just wondering... how much FPS do you expect in this scenario (PMDG, FlyTampa, your settings)?

[AnkH 2,233]

You could try to disable SMT and see if this helps. Then I would strongly suggest for a test: limit your FPS in P3D to 30 and untick the triple buffering checkbox but leave VSYNC on. If this does not provide you good results, activate SMT again and add this to your prepar3d.cfg:

[JOBSCHEDULER]

AffinityMask=21845

[24CarotMagic 0]

6 hours ago, Rogen said:

YMML with 60 Hz screen mode and RTSS Scanline sync x/2, jet is the iFly 737

I had Scanline Sync at -1 which is why the FPS was all over the place, but made my sim smoother with the result of having screen tearing. 30 FPS is just to laggy for me. However, watching your video that you linked, I changed it to Scanline Sync x/2 and it seems to be much more smoother which im happy and staying at a constant 30FPS in heavy airports. I also put Autogen and Scenery Draw Distance to low and it didn't do much in performance, but was able to put other settings higher, so i guess that worked as well?

I only have Malwarebytes as a antimalware program, but I've excluded my whole P3D folder from being scanned.

No major changes, and still on v4.4.

So I guess, it was a success! It's more manageable and I can finally land into an airport without worrying about stuttering. Thanks a lot!