Nope, with tweaking you can still get more out of your P3D than without. Unless you spend thousands of dollars for your hardware, then you might be instantly happy without tweaking. Otherwise, limiting P3D and addons on specific cores, increasing certain parameters in the config for better looks, adjusting refresh rate and FPS (I call this also tweaking) for smoothness and such things are still possible and "necessary" for most of the rigs.

Not surprising, as the basic engine is still very much the same as FSX...

10 hours ago, fluffyflops said:

Thanks, it was just i saw it in Robs spreadsheet above, but you said not to put the terrain_exp setting in the cfg

I actually said not to use the =9 setting, but not using it at all is even better 

"Unless you spend thousands of dollars for your hardware,"

Not so.The "Achilles Heel" regarding the spending of thousands of dollars (which I have done) does very little beyond what Rob_Ainscough has demonstrated. You can only squeeze so much out of P3D until one ends up in the "tweakitis" quagmire seeking visual nirvana at the cost of performance every time. Often it becomes a perpetual "placebo" exercise prompting endless hardware upgrades with no real satisfactory results as one might expect. It`s the nature of the beast. Dial back the details and just fly and enjoy. But have fun finding the "sweet" spot that changes every-time you add another add-on.

P3D is a carnival platform waiting to serve another vendor. Performance will always trail behind. Most of the experienced simmers dial back the sim to 30 FPS and fly.

Edited July 30, 20196 yr by Ezra
Typo

Well, with a 9900K and two 2080Ti, 32GB very fast RAM and the full sim on a m.2 SSD you can almost max out everything with a 30 FPS cutoff. But this hardware IS thousands of dollars. On my rig, I have to dial back settings, as you said, and I have to tweak to get the optimum. End of the story.

I'm glad someone has mentioned diminishing returns. So many Avsim users reply to requests for hardware suggestions with top end products that offer only marginal benefits over stuff half the price. I must need to work harder because most Avsim users seem happy to drop $5000 for a 1 fps increase like it's just loose change.

1 hour ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

I think there is definitely a misconception that's been propagated about hardware requirements often linked to frustration with some users not being able to find fluidity in their simulator.  No one "needs" to spend large amounts of money to get hardware that can produce good results on the FPS and Visual front.  I think I spec'd out a $1500 system some time ago that could get within a few FPS oh my extreme setup in most situations.  Most extreme hardware setups aim at specific goals and they rarely show a massive performance benefit over a $1500 setup that is configured correctly and optimizing their simulator of choice.

Where you fly is perhaps the most important aspect, EGLL area is going to be very demanding (espeically if AI traffic is used) vs. say GCLP (Island).  At GCLP I can actually max out everything (and I do mean everything).  BUT, at EGLL not even close, plenty of adjustments/compromises required.

What add-ons are used and most importantly how those add-ons are configured ... YBBN for example, if I check every airport option in the Orbx control panel for that Airport I get 15 fps, uncheck a few options and I'm soon back up to my goal 30 FPS.

The "adjustment" process I use applies to all the flight simulators I've used (FSX, P3D, XP11, etc.) with perhaps the exception of AF2.  I don't expect this to change now or in the future (even with MSFS) as all games/sims that are released on the market today usually have a myriad of graphics options the user can adjust to "find the balance" (visual to performance ratio).  I've tried to help folks find the balance as much as possible, some do, some don't, can't solve issues for everyone.

I can bring my hardware to 2 FPS in P3D or XP11 ... use the right combination of Add-ons, graphics settings and viola, 2 FPS.  So what would happen if the next CPU and GPU were optimistically 2X faster than current hardware (9900K and 2080Ti).  4 FPS ... clearly it doesn't matter what hardware I'm using now, simulators and how they are configured with add-ons is the key.  There is no hardware nirvana, only expectations that might lead to disappointment.

Summary:

• There never will be "enough" hardware/processing power for flight simulators that have huge amount of depth and flexibility and visual options
• $1500 or $10000 is only a few FPS difference (point of diminishing returns)
• Find the balance with Add-Ons and where you like to fly (30Hz can make life much easier)

Cheers, Rob.

The most useful and constructive comment ever. Thank you so much Rob.

Regards.

46 minutes ago, Samany69 said:

The most useful and constructive comment ever. Thank you so much Rob.

Regards.

Robs post should be stickied, it answers every 'I have RTX2080 SUPER Ti MAXX and i9 OC'd to 10GHz but only 15FPS' posted everyday, everywhere ....

13 hours ago, daelight said:

Robs post should be stickied, it answers every 'I have RTX2080 SUPER Ti MAXX and i9 OC'd to 10GHz but only 15FPS' posted everyday, everywhere ....

Yes, Definitely! I follow him almost everywhere, AVSIM, LM Forum, YT .... His posts are valid in every aspect.

Rob's post is excellent

 

Yet at the same time - LM needs to overhaul the graphic engine.  We can't keep defending that engine is great, it is being pushed beyond its lifespan

Edited July 31, 20196 yr by Skywolf

23 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

People still tweak P3D?? I thought those days had long gone?

No chance of that Chris!

On ‎7‎/‎29‎/‎2019 at 3:06 PM, ols500 said:

[JOBSCHEDULER]

AffinityMask=63

If it's a 6 core remove the AM.

Ultimately fps is maintained by available throughput on the first process. So anything eating into that, is going to cause a loss.

The PMDG dll, can't be avoided. It's possible some other process is sharing the core of the first process. So you could try AM 62 = 111110

that's five cores, but your main process may have a better time on the second core, core 1, second from right, leaving zero free.

If you gain fps then that shows something is eating into core zero. You could isolate that onto a later core that is less important to critical time and reoccupy all 6 cores with no AM.

If the GPU is saturated then that's got to be sorted first with appropriate settings. Then the system should be set up to run around 90-95% on the first core.

http://www.codelegend.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=698

 

 

Edited July 31, 20196 yr by SteveW

I use process lasso to set the affinity of every service/program that is running on win10, P3d gets cores 0-7 but everything else gets 4-7. Once the PC is up and running I shut down PL and the affinity settings are left intact

this way I dont need any AM in P3d and I keep core 0 exclusively for P3d

I have an i79700k and have found on my rig if P3d starts on anything other than core 0 I am guaranteed disappearing autogen!

do you have any other addons nearby (UK2000 stansted or gatwick)? Those shoot my fps on my sim when egll is active. I can loose up to 5 fps which is a lot