P3D V5 - Core 0

[TravelRunner404 596]

What?!  Now a bunch of you all are the “no critic” police of L&Ms PR department?

The core 0 getting hammered kind of sucks in 2020.  It requires doing things like reducing your whole computer to half it’s visual output even in 1080p so you don’t have stuttering. Really? All you guys using bad sarcasm can’t see that as a valid complaint? Or an area to express reasonable dissatisfaction? 

I am using P3D, spending cash on those add-ons, and enjoy learning and flying as much as the next guy, but some of the stuff in this simulator is amateur or 2007 at best.

It’s not a big deal people complain about that.   

 

 

[mauri2007 9]

1 hour ago, JoeFackel said:

I can answer for you: the "bug" sits in front of his monitor, loading tons of addons, pushing sliders to the right beyond the capabilitys of his hardware and ist then wondering why the hell Core0 of his CPU gets hammered.

I´ve  just realized that you've been sitting next to me all these years, in front of my monitor. What I don't know is where you have seen that I have hundreds of add-ons, pushing sliders to the right and not vanilla P3D. Because the core0 problem can occur even in a vanilla P3D.

On the other hand, it is good that there are thousands of clients, like yourself, who are still willing to pay LM for a graphics engine from 15 years ago. I hope that with what they earn, they can develop their own graphics engine. In this century.

 

Best regards.

[ErichB 3,638]

4 hours ago, mauri2007 said:

Why do you think this time, with V5, will be different?.

But, of course, you are free to purchase it again. Again and again.

But at the end of the day, apart from satisfying some degree of OCD, why does it matter if performance is significantly different?

Edited April 10, 2020 by ErichB

[VBHB 298]

Agree that this core zero rubbish is still going on. FIX IT!

[mauri2007 9]

3 hours ago, jabloomf1230 said:

Ah, another thread with people pontificating about graphics engines. It's good to see that we have some coding experts here who fully understand how many lines of code that P3d5 shares with FS9.

It's not about how many lines of code P3d5 shares with FS9. It´s about that the P3Dv3 graphics engine is the same as the FSX graphics engine. Exactly the same. I know what I am talking about, although I am not a "guru".

On the other hand, I really wouldn't know how to build a new (and better) graphics engine. Even though I had 1000 years to do it. But the truth is that the graphics engines are the same. I'm so glad you enjoy P3D. I have done a lot for years with P3Dv4, DCS or X-plane. But that does not stop me from complaining about the problems inherited from other times.

Edited April 10, 2020 by mauri2007

[mauri2007 9]

23 minutes ago, ErichB said:

But at the end of the day, apart from satisfying some degree of OCD, why does it matter if performance is significantly different?

Of course I hope you are right and the performance improvement makes me forget the core0 problem. I really hope you are right. But after 10 years ...

[Mace 1,902]

2 hours ago, TravelRunner404 said:

What?!  Now a bunch of you all are the “no critic” police of L&Ms PR department?

No, but Joe is right.  If any of us with smooth experiences respond similarly to Joe we'll get criticized for it, at least in this thread.  And I don't think LM has much of a PR department.  If you want me to criticize LM, there it is.

[Biggles2010 342]

None of the current sims are above criticism, but why do you think that is?  Firstly it's because the solutions are nowhere near as straightforward as some of you seem to believe. If it was possible to come up with a great solution, don't you think comapnies with the vast resources of Lockheed Martin and Microsoft would have done it.

Secondly, any completely new graphics technology would not be backwards compatible with the mass of software in current use. There was an outcry when P3D went to 64 bit, because some developers charged a small supplement for updated software. A new graphics engine would mean buying everything again, so how much are you prepared to spend?

Finally, there are apparently technical reasons why it's not so easy to utilise multiple cores to their full extent in a flight sim environment.

[TravelRunner404 596]

28 minutes ago, Biggles2010 said:

Finally, there are apparently technical reasons why it's not so easy to utilise multiple cores to their full extent in a flight sim environment.

I'll bet you a pint that Asobo can figure it out 🙃

30 minutes ago, Biggles2010 said:

A new graphics engine would mean buying everything again, so how much are you prepared to spend?

Let's be honest the day people stop complaining about performance (or something) is probably well past our lifetimes, but we all wish we had the modern flight sim and P3D simply isn't that.  It's frustrating that sports, first person shooters, open world games, etc all get their modern AAA games but we don't really get that with flight sim right now.  Hence the huge response to MSFS2020.  

I am actually all for developers charging for updating and improving their products.  I am not entirely against charging to simply port a product, but not sure I like it.  I'd be okay paying for an annual flight simulator installment at $79.99 like I do for Fifa every year on the console.  And man is there plenty of rage in the world at those annual products! But having to buy base textures, regions, weather, shaders, and installing airports in elaborate file structures is kind of insane.   Modernizing the ecosystem I believe is the single biggest thing missing.  

I think in a perfect world we all just wish we only had to pay for planes, or at the very least there was some cohesive environment where this all fit together.  I play Civilization VI and they change the product and break the mods all the time.  They are free, sometimes they come back, sometimes new ones show up but at worst I click the install button on Steam and I have it.  If it doesn't work I click the uninstall button.  I have never had to reinstall the whole game because I tried to improve it with add-ons.

Even with the MSFS2020 updates are going to break add-ons.  There will be V2 and V3 in the store where you have to pay $29.99 to upgrade.  Think Apple App store.  People will complain or ask if it's worth it, such is consumerism, but there is no denying, in my mind, that something modern would vastly enrich our experience.

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

2 hours ago, mauri2007 said:

It's not about how many lines of code P3d5 shares with FS9. It´s about that the P3Dv3 graphics engine is the same as the FSX graphics engine. Exactly the same. I know what I am talking about, although I am not a "guru".

On the other hand, I really wouldn't know how to build a new (and better) graphics engine. Even though I had 1000 years to do it. But the truth is that the graphics engines are the same. I'm so glad you enjoy P3D. I have done a lot for years with P3Dv4, DCS or X-plane. But that does not stop me from complaining about the problems inherited from other times.

So, tell me what you know about the P3d5 graphics engine and what it shares in common with FS9 and FSX?

[mauri2007 9]

16 minutes ago, jabloomf1230 said:

So, tell me what you know about the P3d5 graphics engine and what it shares in common with FS9 and FSX?

I really know nothing about P3Dv5 graphics engine, nor graphics engine P3Dv4. I believe none of us here know. But I really know about FSX graphics engine. 

I don't want to pretend what I am not anymore. I have enjoyed flight simulation since 1985. And I have been a software development professional since 1987. The only thing I wanted to say is that I´m convinced that FSX graphic engine and P3Dv4 are exactly the same: I haven´t seen the P3Dv4 source code. For this reason I´m convinced , but I don´t really know it. Only thing I can do is "To be convinced" 

But I know that FSX was designed as multi-threaded software on a single physical core. Is it feasible to have tens, or hundreds, of threads in a single physical core? Yes, it is feasible. Any first year computer engineering student knows how to do it. Even in an architecture as simple as Arduino. You only need an interrupt clock and a task dispatcher.

In the 2004, the state of the art on home computing was: "A single core, as fast as possible. Even 7.5 or 8.0 Ghz". But Intel decided to change the scenery to add some physical cores, reducing speed. But the FSX graphic engine had already been completely designed. 

But, as parallel programming experts know very well, it is difficult to develop true programs from scratch on multi-core architectures. And what's even more difficult, if not impossible, is adapting a single-core multi-threaded architecture (Like FSX was) into a multi-core architecture.

You could see that P3D graphics engine seems to run into 2, 4, 8 or more physical cores. But it is only the appearance. What you actually have is a single-core multi-threaded architecture running on multiple cores with the intervention of the operating system (Windows, MAC or Linux), not the simulation software (P3D in this case). Yes, yes, yes, some developers from LM can tell: "We have been working very hard to separate threads into differents cores...bla bla bla". Why, then, do we have the same FPS´s with a slight improvement in the aspect of the graphics with a hardware (CPU and GPU) that is, at least 10 times, more powerful than in 2006?. As I said in my first post,  take a look at teaser trailer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=Jz6KE8dflBc&feature=emb_logo) between 00:34 and 00:38 seconds.

 

You can compare the 2006 shooter games with the 2020 ones.

Believe me, although I can't tell you where I was working from 1998 to 2006: It´s the same engine graphic. Although I have no proof (I haven't seen a single line of P3D source code), I think so.

[Biggles2010 342]

25 minutes ago, TravelRunner404 said:

Let's be honest the day people stop complaining about performance (or something) is probably well past our lifetimes, but we all wish we had the modern flight sim and P3D simply isn't that.  It's frustrating that sports, first person shooters, open world games, etc all get their modern AAA games but we don't really get that with flight sim right now.  Hence the huge response to MSFS2020.  

I agree with that, and perhaps like you, I've been waiting since FS95 for something that looks and feels realistic. My current setup is getting close enough to be fairly believable, but that is largely because the cockpit itself adds to the effect. The flight dynamics and graphics could certainly be better. And I would pay again for all my scenery and airports if the result was worth it.

It looks like MSFS has some promising characteristics, but I also think there are a lot of very high expectations that might be disappointed. I hope that any degree of backwards compatibility is not allowed to restrict innovation.

[Slayer 190]

9 hours ago, mauri2007 said:

It's not about how many lines of code P3d5 shares with FS9. It´s about that the P3Dv3 graphics engine is the same as the FSX graphics engine. Exactly the same. I know what I am talking about, although I am not a "guru".

On the other hand, I really wouldn't know how to build a new (and better) graphics engine. Even though I had 1000 years to do it. But the truth is that the graphics engines are the same. I'm so glad you enjoy P3D. I have done a lot for years with P3Dv4, DCS or X-plane. But that does not stop me from complaining about the problems inherited from other times.

Wrong: Not same GFX engine, DX9, DX10,DX11 now DX12

[somiller 694]

14 hours ago, Rogen said:

Heh, have to agree there, all cooks, no chefs 🙂

My P3D config seems to manage expanding across cores pretty well.

This pic is @ 30 FPs vsync'd and core use is pretty spreed. I guess it's all in the configuration.

Cheers

 

Pretty much what I see when I'm running v4.5HF2. With 30 fps lock and vsync my cores are almost perfectly balanced much of the time, and sometimes I see the scenery loading (non-core 0) threads spike to 100% and core 0 stays below 100%. You're right, it is in the config...but then most of us have known that for some time. Quite honestly, I don't care if the entire sim runs on core 0 and keeps it maxed at 100%, 100% of the time...if the sim is smooth with around 30 fps.

[mauri2007 9]

7 hours ago, Slayer said:

Wrong: Not same GFX engine, DX9, DX10,DX11 now DX12

Wrong? 

What does the DX have to do with the graphics engine? Do you know what you are talking about?

DX is a set of APIs (Application Programming Interface) that facilitate communication between your source code (graphic engine, sound engine ... etc) and the various functionalities of the operating system.

When you develop a graphics engine you take into account if you are going to have APIs and what they are. You could develop a primitive graphic engine with no DX. But once the engine is developed, you could evolve the API calls for a later DX with not too much effort. But the graphics engine will remain the same.

You can have a Chevrolet Corsica or a Porsche Panamera (Graphics Engines). But if you give both cars better wheels, what you have is a better grip on the asphalt ... but you have the same cars. In my case, a Corsica 😞

Remember Microprose Falcon4 back in 1998? Originally it used DX5 and when the source codes were leaked, one guy (eRazor) modified the calls from DX5 to DX6. 30% FPS earned. And, I can assure you, eRazor did not modify a single line of the F4 graphics engine.