22 minutes ago, simba_nl said:

I can only give a first hand experience of a "Vulkan Environment" compared to traditional OpenGL within Aerofly 2. I also have a dedicated Vulkan written Sim (Flyinside 6.x) and getting the same performance as in Aerofly.

I keep my fingers crossed...

I haven't been following much about Flyinside, so i can't talk about it.
But in general usually those simulators lack a lot of features. No ground traffic, no AI traffic, simple weather (especially in regard of AFS2), autogen coverage only in certain areas, no dynamic lights etc etc

 Sadly such comparison can only work if we are to pick the same exact conditions or at least features, which is not possible right now.

I also hope Vulkan really kicks in performance simba, i am just warning people however, based on the numbers we saw so far, how that is unlikely to happen. We'll see, i'll be pleasantly surprised if things go differently from how i am saying but i don't really believe it at this time.

27 minutes ago, soaring_penguin said:

Vulkan will release load from the CPU (less driver overhead) but will not reduce the load on the GPU (it still needs to draw the same things).

Conclusion: the FPS improvements will stop the moment you were already overtaxing the complete system, especially if you have an older system.

 

There is only so much juice you can get out of a lemon.

Well, I'm not a expert but a experienced user of Flightsim's and using a handy tool who is showing in real time the Frametime in VR  of CPU AND GPU and is painting the complete picture I can also experience with my own eyes.

As we know now, Frametime is much more important for a fluid Sim experience than fps.

Vulkan is giving MUCH better (lower) Frametime on the GPU also. The system is more balanced and where the CPU is hitting 70% and the GPU 90-100% in OpenGL and DirectX scenario (XP11 vs P3D) and Aerofly and Flyinside 20% CPU and 20-40% GPU, It's telling something complete different because it's sharp in 4K VR and complete stutter free and needs only minor AA.

Ofcourse, Aerofly and Flyinside are build up from scratch as modern platforms so we have to wait and see if Laminar is able to rebuild/port to a next level with there old based OpenGL platform. 

32 minutes ago, simba_nl said:

Well, I'm not a expert but a experienced user of Flightsim's and using a handy tool who is showing in real time the Frametime in VR  of CPU AND GPU and is painting the complete picture I can also experience with my own eyes.

As we know now, Frametime is much more important for a fluid Sim experience than fps.

Vulkan is giving MUCH better (lower) Frametime on the GPU also. The system is more balanced and where the CPU is hitting 70% and the GPU 90-100% in OpenGL and DirectX scenario (XP11 vs P3D) and Aerofly and Flyinside 20% CPU and 20-40% GPU, It's telling something complete different because it's sharp in 4K VR and complete stutter free and needs only minor AA.

Ofcourse, Aerofly and Flyinside are build up from scratch as modern platforms so we have to wait and see if Laminar is able to rebuild/port to a next level with there old based OpenGL platform. 

Frametime and FPS is the same, just expressed different. 
  Frametime: the time it takes to draw one frame 
  FPS: frames per second
  =>  Frametime = 1 / FPS

With the current driver, the GPU is mostly waiting for the CPU (single thread, so on a single core). With Vulkan the driver overhead on the CPU side will be less, this is were the most win is expected (by me).

And so you can not compare currently X-Plane with Aerofly or Flyinside, we will have to wait for Laminar to make the main bulk of workload to go multi threading also.

Edited January 4, 20206 yr by soaring_penguin

37 minutes ago, soaring_penguin said:

Frametime and FPS is the same, just expressed different. 
  Frametime: the time it takes to draw one frame 
  FPS: frames per second
  =>  Frametime = 1 / FPS

With the current driver, the GPU is mostly waiting for the CPU (single thread, so on a single core). With Vulkan the driver overhead on the CPU side will be less, this is were the most win is expected (by me).

And so you can not compare currently X-Plane with Aerofly or Flyinside, we will have to wait for Laminar to make the main bulk of workload to go multi threading also.

As I said, I'm NOT a expert but tell me, why can I get 100fps in P3D with a very bad stuttering and blurried experience doing average a Frametime of 45 m/sec  on the CPU and GPU in Big Red and affinity managed by the sim (P3d)  and handling 6 physical cores or doing 35 fps in the same Sim and environment with a frametime of 15 to 25 m/sec and working very nice (not perfect) in P3D with 4K VR with little different settings. 

Question, How can I achieve 90 fps steady with 90hz with a Frametime of 0,8 m/sec and a CPU/GPU load under 40% and 4K resolution in the other sims? So I don't understand your explanation/calculation that a frame per second is the same as a Frame Time.

 

Edited January 4, 20206 yr by simba_nl

Frametime: the time needed to calculate one frame. Now you have 2 of those, one is the calculations on the CPU side, one is on the GPU. The slowest will determine the FPS. 
A fluent system will have the CPU providing enough pre work to the GPU, so the GPU does not have to wait => no stutters. 
The opposite: the GPU has to wait for the CPU, you will have stutters (OpenGL) or blurries, or both.

To get this straight....

When your X-Plane runs at 30 FPS, your frametime is 33,333 milliseconds, meaning your rig can produce one frame in 33,333 ms, and does that 30 times in one second. So yes, FPS and frametime is essentially the same.

BUT

The problem is, once there is a hickup (X-Plane fails to produce a frame in 33,333ms), you will have one frame taking longer, say 50ms - that's the one singular stutter right there. It's a "frametime spike" or "microstutter". So you may have a sim that runs at 30FPS 99,999% of the time, and still are bothered by stutters here and there, especially when panning, during approach, ect. Everyone is affected by this as of now, and Vulkan will possibly fix this, because Laminar can effectively eliminate frametime spikes.

This is the classic X-Plane stutter, even on high end systems. People often get this wrong. Once you are running below 33,333ms frametime (people who sim at say, 20FPS, heck back in FSX days my motto would be: as long as FPS has 2 digits, it's good!), the sim is basically stuttering ALL THE TIME. That is the classic stuttering, and has nothing to do with microstutters. You still get those, too, probably, but since your sim is stuttering the entire time, you probably won't notice.

So when tuning X-Plane performance, frametime is essential. Start the X-Plane FPS display and it will give you 2 frametime numbers: CPU and GPU. The lower will determine your actual frametime (also here you can see if you're CPU or GPU bottlenecked in any given situation). A good test here is to load up the 737 and go to LAX. I tend to optimize for a frametime around 25ms in that situation - to have some headroom. A system that is configured like this will most likely be fine in all situations - but you will still get microstutters here and there - as of now.

Everything in the rendering engine is rewritten to Vulkan.

Hence, all those features that we all want, have to wait otherwise it'll need to be redone.

So LR are on the right path.

Vulkan by default will improve performance, but not less important, it provides much better tools to boost performance, to add modern features etc.

Its not a band aid, it's the foundation NEEDED so we can have all those features we want.

 

On 1/3/2020 at 6:20 PM, philmurfin said:

Are you always this cheerful or is this a special treat for us during what remains of the festive season?

Just wanted to stick to the 737 metaphor.