33 minutes ago, John_Cillis said:

A Basic question, what do you delete in the shaders folder?  Why is that needed?  I must be a sim moron because Xplane11 does not put me thru all this, not knocking P3D mind you, it has its attributes.  But something was changed at the end of the 4.4 cycle which crushed formerly fluid movements.  I see it especially around buildings or water.  I tried to reinstall the 4.3 client which worked perfectly well, but it aborts, so we are stuck with 4.4 and thereafter.  I gained a bit of my old performance back by going back to 4.4, but it is not what it was, and the scenery hasn't changed in my benchmark area, which is SF Bay.

Because P3D is using DirectX while XP uses OpenGL and they are two different technologies (source: https://developer.x-plane.com/2009/11/directx-opengl-and-x-plane/).

DirectX uses HLSL code to instruct your GPU what to do with the textures, geometry and pixels, the basic DirectX Graphics Processing Pipeline is as follow:

 

 

So you have basically 3 components, Vector Shaders, Geometry Shaders and Pixel Shaders. All these shaders can be compiled at runtime which is very powerful as it allows developers to implement amazing looks and changes at runtime (IE: PTA, EvenShade, TomatoShade and now REX Environment force), these add-on's can implement runtime edition of DirectX shaders to change the looks of the simulator at runtime.

Basically all well known video games use this technology, IE: Unreal Engine, Unity base games, etc. it is important to note all P3D shaders are delivered via the Client update, sometimes Lockheed Martin delivers changes to the shaders source code (HLSL code) and these need to be recompiled, P3D 4.5 improved the night lighting via source code but also via new shaders, however since these shaders are only recompiled on demand (meaning your GPU will not implement the updated HLSL code if the shader was already compiled by your VIDEO Card before) it is highly recommended to delete your local shaders in order to force the changes, allowing you to receive all the required updates.

I hope this helps to understand, so once again, let's stop the comparison between XP and P3D since as you can see they are totally different animals.

Regards,
Simbol

 

25 minutes ago, SledDriver said:

FFTF is apparently updated and compatible now. Not tested by me yet.

Just tested.. and it works

1 hour ago, John_Cillis said:

A Basic question, what do you delete in the shaders folder?

I empty out the Shaders folder, delete all the contents.

Others delete the folder itself..

P3D will rebuild it all at next startup (takes a while, though..)

Expect to look at a black screen first time, and some pauses at first..

6 minutes ago, Bert Pieke said:

Just tested.. and it works

Hi Bert. Do I have to reinstall FFTF from their web site for it to work?

14 minutes ago, PATCO LCH said:

Hi Bert. Do I have to reinstall FFTF from their web site for it to work?

That is what I did.

I'm still curious why people clean out the compiled shaders folder on a version upgrade.

Cheers!

 

9 minutes ago, Luke said:

I'm still curious why people clean out the compiled shaders folder on a version upgrade?

Because remnant data is leftover and can cause glitches and issues.

Think of shaders like a glass of wine. It has unique flavors and properties. An update (be it new drivers/version/graphics add-ons) is akin to a new bottle.

You want to rinse out the glass so the old stuff doesn't influence or corrupt the taste of the new stuff.

Just now, ZLA Steve said:

Because remnant data is leftover and can cause glitches and issues.

Think of shaders like a glass of wine. It has unique flavors and properties. An update (be it new drivers/version/graphics add-ons) is akin to a new bottle.

You want to rinse out the glass so the old stuff doesn't influence or corrupt the taste of the new stuff.

How? The compiled shaders are prefixed with the version number.

Cheers!
 

Everyone its own.
I for one drink a glass of wine and then, install the new build.

I think its just that most of us have developed a standard routine when it comes to updating, troubleshooting or general P3D housekeeping. 

I wasted too many precious evenings with troubleshooting, so i'm not taking any chances in this regard. And it doesnt take more than a few seconds to delete the shader cache, so why not?

Maybe a silly Q? What is FFTF and is it an entry that LM add to the Prepar3D.cfg...and is 0.15 the standard setting?

 

Regards

FFTF stands for "Fiber Frame Time Fraction", its an optional entry in the CFG and it defaults to 0.33. Its basically defines how much computing power should be allocated to scene rendering and object loading. The lowest setting 0.01 will prioritize scene rendering while 0.33 will speed up autogen loading. FFTF Dynamic is a payware tool that changes the value in realtime, based on two different scenarios: FPS or altitude. In FPS mode it will allocate more CPU power to scene rendering when your frames hit a certain minimum value, and the altitude based scenario gives you full priority on scene rendering while on the ground, and full priority on object loading while flying. Unlike all those snake-oil-tuning tools, this actually works as advertised and makes quite a difference

28 minutes ago, David Roch said:

Everyone its own.
I for one drink a glass of wine and then, install the new build.

Hehe.... and quite a few more, afterwards !

12 minutes ago, Woozie said:

FFTF stands for "Fiber Frame Time Fraction", its an optional entry in the CFG and it defaults to 0.33. Its basically defines how much computing power should be allocated to scene rendering and object loading. The lowest setting 0.01 will prioritize scene rendering while 0.33 will speed up autogen loading. FFTF Dynamic is a payware tool that changes the value in realtime, based on two different scenarios: FPS or altitude. In FPS mode it will allocate more CPU power to scene rendering when your frames hit a certain minimum value, and the altitude based scenario gives you full priority on scene rendering while on the ground, and full priority on object loading while flying. Unlike all those snake-oil-tuning tools, this actually works as advertised and makes quite a difference

Thanks W! Sorry I meant to ask is it a stand alone entry?

Edited May 14, 20197 yr by TomCYYZ

3 minutes ago, TomCYYZ said:

Thanks W! Sorry I meant to ask is it a stand alone entry?

Stand alone entry? Its not part of a default prepar3d.cfg and needs to be added manually under the [MAIN] section, if thats what you meant. If there's no entry it will default to 0.33