Severe FPS loss with GSX

[virtuali 4,421]

37 minutes ago, Farlis said:

It's also specifically easy, since this issue did come up immidiately after the recent update. I fly big iron most of the time and therefore was very familiar with GSX and how it performs on a daily basis on my setup. That has changed with the update. Considerably.

That doesn't automatically means it's an "issue", it's just the free PBR update has increased considerably the QUALITY of the GSX objects, replacing some of them which were made in 2012 and never changed since then.

This means:

- Most of the GSX objects now have the full complement of textures ( Albedo+Normal+Metallic), while before many of them only had Diffuse+Specular and some just the Diffuse, meaning they require more VRAM now.

- Lots of them have also higher resolution textures compared to before. PBR simply doesn't work if the texture resolution is not high enough.

- Most of the new GSX objects have been also REMODELED with an higher polygon count, and this will also require more VRAM, since even the polygon vertexes are stored in VRAM.

- Lots of new human characters have been remade from scratch using the P3D4 native SDK, which allows more fluid human animations, since it uses skeletons with 64 bones instead of the old one from FSX with 22 bones. This is not "free": more bones for each character will require more VRAM AND more Shader power to process.

Obviously, we couldn't let GSX to still use objects made according to 2012 PC specifications, and PBR has changed everything, because to obtain a realistic effect, the object must be MADE for it (just converting old textures won't cut it), and it won't really work without the full complement of Albedo+Metallic+Normal so, it's 2019 now, and we had to do something to not make GSX look old in the coming years.

So, this is hardly a GSX "problem", it's just the requirements went a bit higher, because all this talk about wanting to use the latest features and get rid of the legacy stuff, comes with a price in hardware requirement, nothing is "free" in this world, except the GSX update, and all the hard work it took to make the objects looks so much better.

Edited August 2, 2019 by virtuali

[joepoway 241]

22 hours ago, Wiss said:

Hello everybody

I have a problem with P3D v4.5 + Hotfix. It happens to me that I suffer a severe loss of FPS when activating GSX for doing a pushback. My version of GSX is 2.6.0.0.

It happens to me with different planes, such as the QW787, the Aerosoft and FSLabs Airbuses, or any PMDG aircraft. Also, it tends to happen more when using more complex sceneries, such as FlyTampa, Aerosoft or FSDreamTeam ones. It almost doesn't happen when flying from default sceneries.

For example, I can be setting up a flight with the QW787 in the ImagineSim KATL (the latest version). Before calling GSX, I can easily have 60 FPS (which are locked internally by P3D), but after calling it, it can drop to 10. Even after finishing the pushback, with all the GSX objects disappearing, the FPS stay at roughly 10.

The weird thing is, that some time after, when I'm airborne, the FPS fix themselves at any random moment and go all the way up to 60 again. This can happen in any part of the world, so this fix is not caused due to, for example, flying in less complex scenery. Also, I verified that this fix is not caused by flying from a clouded area to a cloudless one. I can be in an area with very dense cloud coverage when this fix occurs.

My P3D settings are medium/high. I have an i9-9900K CPU, 32 GB of RAM and a GTX 1660 Ti with 6 GB of VRAM. The GPU drivers are up to date. I don't use Nvidia Inspector. I use add-ons such as ActiveSky for P3D v4, REX SkyForce and Environment Force.

Any ideas? Thanks

After seeing all the discussion above I tend to agree the GPU you run will have it limits. Having said that I would recommend installing and running something like GPU-Z and monitor your overall GPU load and VRAM loading. If these values are approaching 100% load or maxing your 6GB VRAM you will start having problems. It’s a good idea to monitor GPU loading as a function of dialing up the “eye candy” and immersion improvements to be sure you aren’t exceeding your GPU cards capability. You can also monitor your CPU as well with other methods but this suggestion is to check your GPU.

For what it’s worth I don’t see the issues with the latest GSX. My specs are in my signature below and I run a 1070 overclocked. 

Just my two cents, good luck.

Joe

[Farlis 2,296]

4 hours ago, virtuali said:

and all the hard work it took to make the objects looks so much better.

I was not contesting that. I am very pleased with what you did with the update.

I'll just have to find out under what conditions I can run it without getting basically half a frame per second in VR as soon as I try to push-back at the gate in Frankurt.

[virtuali 4,421]

2 hours ago, Farlis said:

I'll just have to find out under what conditions I can run it without getting basically half a frame per second in VR as soon as I try to push-back at the gate in Frankurt.

With VR, you *really* want to have the most powerful graphic card you can, unless you REALLY tone down the settings. That's why the FlyInside utility used to have special VR settings which were *much* lower than the regular setting, and it kept a separate .CFG file for itself.

One thing that might help in VR is rendering in Single pass mode in the P3D settings. 

[Farlis 2,296]

28 minutes ago, virtuali said:

With VR, you *really* want to have the most powerful graphic card you can, unless you REALLY tone down the settings. That's why the FlyInside utility used to have special VR settings which were *much* lower than the regular setting, and it kept a separate .CFG file for itself.

One thing that might help in VR is rendering in Single pass mode in the P3D settings. 

I already use single pass rendering.

[virtuali 4,421]

2 hours ago, Farlis said:

I already use single pass rendering.

Then lower your settings, or just get a better card.

[AnkH 2,273]

Umberto, could you provide your settings used in the video above (either here or on YT). I would really like to compare them to what I use...

[Farlis 2,296]

I checked my GPU load with GPU-Z and what I am seeing that when the frames tank is that I use around 5600MB of the available 6144MB VRAM and the GPU load goes up to 100%.

This happens for example if I start the boarding process of GSX and the passenger busses arrive. And it remains that way even after boarding is finished even though less vehicles and no passengers are being rendered. Even if I climb out of the airport and the VRAM slowly decreases the GPU load stays at 100%. 

Something is not right. My normal GPU load in the air above 10.000ft is around 45%. I even disabled GSX through the menu with no effect. But as soon as I reenabled it the GPU load dropped back down to 36% and the frames recouperated to acceptable levels.

Edited August 5, 2019 by Farlis

[virtuali 4,421]

11 hours ago, Farlis said:

I checked my GPU load with GPU-Z and what I am seeing that when the frames tank is that I use around 5600MB of the available 6144MB VRAM and the GPU load goes up to 100%.

That confirms precisely what I said: you are very close to VRAM exhaustion but, of course, the video driver won't let the software to *really* exhaust all the available VRAM (you would get serious errors if this happened) so, *before* it's completely fill up, it will start swapping VRAM with system RAM. When something moves back and forth from VRAM to RAM, the fps drop is dramatic, because everything will have to pass again through the CPU, the RAM bottleneck and the PCI bus bottleneck. 

Here's another video I just made, this time at KORD V2 ( ehehehe....), showing how the GPU utilization stays exactly the same, even after calling GSX Deboarding:
 

 

And with UT Live at 100%, showing almost double the AI of the previous video at KIAH ( KORD it's an AI "magnet" )

And note that, because I record videos with the nVidia GeForce Experience "Shadowplay" feature, there's an ADDITIONAL load on the GPU *just* because that, since Shadowplay use the GPU to encode the video in realtime.

Edited August 5, 2019 by virtuali

[Farlis 2,296]

I did some further tests and has nothing to do with VRAM exhaustion.

Something within GSX drives my GPU useage to 100%.

Even as my VRAM drops well below 5GB the GPU useage stays at 100% until I pass FL100.

I tested this also while sitting on the ground and resetting GSX. Sometimes this will recover the GPU usage as long as GSX remains inactive while the VRAM useag still remains high.

But as soon as I start one of the services in GSX the GPU usage goes up to 100% again.

It does not seem to happen everytime, so it is probably tied to a specific model being loaded.

[virtuali 4,421]

2 minutes ago, Farlis said:

I did some further tests and has nothing to do with VRAM exhaustion.

Something within GSX drives my GPU useage to 100%.

Even as my VRAM drops well below 5GB the GPU useage stays at 100% until I pass FL100.

When you fly past FL100, GSX will stop checking for nearby airports, but that's nothing related to the GPU, the service vehicles would have been destroyed lots of time before then. By default, GSX will remove every object it might have created for an airport when you are 3NM away from it.

So, if anything, I would expect a possible lower CPU utilization (difficult to measure, since GSX GPU utilization rarely goes higher than 2-3% on its own process) after passing FL100, not GPU. Nothing happens related to anything visual when passing FL100, GSX will just stop asking the sim every 4 seconds which airports are in the area, and that's it.

[Farlis 2,296]

9 minutes ago, virtuali said:

When you fly past FL100, GSX will stop checking for nearby airports, but that's nothing related to the GPU, the service vehicles would have been destroyed lots of time before then. By default, GSX will remove every object it might have created for an airport when you are 3NM away from it.

So, if anything, I would expect a possible lower CPU utilization (difficult to measure, since GSX GPU utilization rarely goes higher than 2-3% on its own process) after passing FL100, not GPU. Nothing happens related to anything visual when passing FL100, GSX will just stop asking the sim every 4 seconds which airports are in the area, and that's it.

I would have assumed so as well Umberto, but I checked it with both system monitor and GPU-Z running.

It is the GPU that is maxed out by GSX and it seems to be at least partially unrelated to VRAM. I maxed out at 5.8GB (of 6) even after unloading GSX and the GPU useage dropped back to 37% and the frames recovered. I did this three times to check and only after the third time of unloading GSX the GPU usage did not recover. Then as I flew out of the airport the memory slowly decreased (naturally) first to 5.5 then 5.1 then 4.8 and then something around 4.2 but the GPU itself stayed maxed out and the frames low until reaching 10.600ft. 

I knew that GSX is stopping something after passing FL100 but I wasn't sure if it could be related or wheter it was just coincidence.

But since I witnessed this at least twice now at this altitude, I suspect a connection. 

Maybe it is related to the Aircraft I'm using, I'll keep an eye on that later today. I have  flight planned from Fankfurt with the PMDG 747-8i. That should be a sufficient stress test for memory and GPU to see where things go wrong.

Edited August 24, 2019 by Farlis

[Farlis 2,296]

So I'm underway and I have suspicion that it might be related to the Aircraft that is used. I haven't done any conclusive testing but with the PMDG 747-8i I had no problems with GPU usage.

Not even from a high density scenery like Frankfurt with loads of AI. Granted frames were not good, but even in VR it was at least flyable and the GPU utiliasation never passed 80%.

The flights were I had problems were all done with the Aerosoft Airbus. 

I'll keep an eye on this.

[highflyer420 1]

On 8/2/2019 at 9:42 AM, virtuali said:

That doesn't automatically means it's an "issue", it's just the free PBR update has increased considerably the QUALITY of the GSX objects, replacing some of them which were made in 2012 and never changed since then.

This means:

- Most of the GSX objects now have the full complement of textures ( Albedo+Normal+Metallic), while before many of them only had Diffuse+Specular and some just the Diffuse, meaning they require more VRAM now.

- Lots of them have also higher resolution textures compared to before. PBR simply doesn't work if the texture resolution is not high enough.

- Most of the new GSX objects have been also REMODELED with an higher polygon count, and this will also require more VRAM, since even the polygon vertexes are stored in VRAM.

- Lots of new human characters have been remade from scratch using the P3D4 native SDK, which allows more fluid human animations, since it uses skeletons with 64 bones instead of the old one from FSX with 22 bones. This is not "free": more bones for each character will require more VRAM AND more Shader power to process.

Obviously, we couldn't let GSX to still use objects made according to 2012 PC specifications, and PBR has changed everything, because to obtain a realistic effect, the object must be MADE for it (just converting old textures won't cut it), and it won't really work without the full complement of Albedo+Metallic+Normal so, it's 2019 now, and we had to do something to not make GSX look old in the coming years.

So, this is hardly a GSX "problem", it's just the requirements went a bit higher, because all this talk about wanting to use the latest features and get rid of the legacy stuff, comes with a price in hardware requirement, nothing is "free" in this world, except the GSX update, and all the hard work it took to make the objects looks so much better.

In all honesty the team at GSX should make it an option to be able to use the older models until they get all the new models sorted out better with the frame rates because I too am having some major FPS drops and when I turn off GSX my FPS goes right back up. 

[Kilo60 660]

13 hours ago, highflyer420 said:

In all honesty the team at GSX should make it an option to be able to use the older models until they get all the new models sorted out better with the frame rates because I too am having some major FPS drops and when I turn off GSX my FPS goes right back up. 

Or at least give us a choice when running fps hungry AC!