P3Dv5 Excessive vRam usage

[ttbq1 347]

7 hours ago, Dave_YVR said:

But it is! Some users can't complete a flight at all without running out of vram and many others have no problems at all. Some with high end 11gb graphics cards and low-medium settings have crazy high vram use while others with the same cards on higher settings don't.  

It doesn´t have anything to do with the GPU, it is all related with the size and quantity of objects render.

I have a 11Gb GPU and have been testing V5 since release date, and trust me I have different graphic settings depending on the aircraft and the airport I am flying. Sometimes I need to change the graphic settings during cruise level.

From Flytampa KLAS to FSDT KLAX on the MaddogX I will start with texture resolution at 2048 and LOD Radius Ultra (EA ON with cloud resolution at MED). At cruise I changed to 4096 LOD Radius to Max and cloud resolution to HIGH on EA because FSDT KLAX doesn´t have PBR and fancy 4k textures (STill looks great). And in both cases I am able to stay 1-2GB below my 10Gb threshold. 

[Shomron 251]

23 minutes ago, ttbq1 said:

It doesn´t have anything to do with the GPU, it is all related with the size and quantity of objects render.

I have a 11Gb GPU and have been testing V5 since release date, and trust me I have different graphic settings depending on the aircraft and the airport I am flying. Sometimes I need to change the graphic settings during cruise level.

From Flytampa KLAS to FSDT KLAX on the MaddogX I will start with texture resolution at 2048 and LOD Radius Ultra (EA ON with cloud resolution at MED). At cruise I changed to 4096 LOD Radius to Max and cloud resolution to HIGH on EA because FSDT KLAX doesn´t have PBR and fancy 4k textures (STill looks great). And in both cases I am able to stay 1-2GB below my 10Gb threshold. 

The last thing I want is to fool endlessly with settings, I hope they fix this

[ttbq1 347]

9 minutes ago, Shomron said:

The last thing I want is to fool endlessly with settings, I hope they fix this

who needs to fix what? You don´t have to change your settings if you don´t want to, and you won´t have a CTD. But you need to know how much VRAM your addons are consuming at that particular settings. You can´t blame LM for that.

[Shomron 251]

1 hour ago, ttbq1 said:

who needs to fix what? You don´t have to change your settings if you don´t want to, and you won´t have a CTD. But you need to know how much VRAM your addons are consuming at that particular settings. You can´t blame LM for that.

I'm not blaming LM it's just frustrating since it brings me back memories of the 32bit era...

[JoeFackel 760]

4 hours ago, Shomron said:

I'm not blaming LM it's just frustrating since it brings me back memories of the 32bit era...

Apples and Oranges. Get your settings straight for the capabilities of your hardware and you're good to go. You have to do this also for 4.5, so practically no difference here. Just for one thing you have to look out more yet you get higher overall performance. A small price you have to pay for a high gain.

[Shomron 251]

39 minutes ago, JoeFackel said:

Apples and Oranges. Get your settings straight for the capabilities of your hardware and you're good to go. You have to do this also for 4.5, so practically no difference here. Just for one thing you have to look out more yet you get higher overall performance. A small price you have to pay for a high gain.

I fear there are too many variables and if one is not taken into consideration may result in a CTD. Taking LatinVFR sceneries as an example in this thread

[JoeFackel 760]

36 minutes ago, Shomron said:

I fear there are too many variables and if one is not taken into consideration may result in a CTD. Taking LatinVFR sceneries as an example in this thread

What i think is that some scenery developers sometimes go to crazy with their textures. Sure, 4096x4096 textures are important but its not helpful to have them on an remote shed standing somewhere on the airport. I know, thats easy talking here.

[SteveW 1,792]

The hardware is abstracted. If there's no room for a texture it doesn't load. If a CTD occurs loading scenery, then that is a fault in a scenery, missing or corrupt file maybe.

[Shomron 251]

1 minute ago, SteveW said:

The hardware is abstracted. If there's no room for a texture it doesn't load. If a CTD occurs loading scenery, then that is a fault in a scenery, missing or corrupt file maybe.

Sorry, by CTD I meant VRAM exhaustion situation 

[SteveW 1,792]

Some notes: In Task Manager, on  the Performance Tab, click on the GPU Activity icon, it shows utilisation and also shows Dedicated and Shared GPU memory. If there's any left showing the problem is with the scenery. With a 2080Ti and 64 GB RAM there will be 43GB available. With NVLinked cards the memory bandwidth is doubled so loading is faster although the memory is the same..

[JRBarrett 3,070]

20 hours ago, captain420 said:

I really hope that HF2 can fix and or further optimize VRAM usage. Even after updating to Windows 10 2004 and gaining ~1GB of VRAM. In certain situations I am very close to the limit.

Why can't they make it use system RAM as well if you have it. I have 32GB of system memory which is plenty. Would be nice if P3D can also take advantage of that if it runs out of VRAM.

That is a limitation of DX12 itself. DX11 would automatically offload to system RAM if all available VRAM was used. That would cause a noticeable drop in performance, but the game would not crash. With DX12, the responsibility is now totally on the game developer to manage VRAM use. If the limit is reached, the game will crash.

[G-RFRY 1,712]

2 hours ago, JoeFackel said:

What i think is that some scenery developers sometimes go to crazy with their textures. Sure, 4096x4096 textures are important but its not helpful to have them on an remote shed standing somewhere on the airport. I know, thats easy talking here.

Going by the Flight Beam readme best viewed 2048 textures, I have just been working on the V5 AFCAD files for my Flight beam airports my 4.5 CAD files do not work correctly. that's why you cannot open them with ADE 75.

Now using ADE 177

Edited June 1, 2020 by G-RFRY

[SteveW 1,792]

Video memory in DX12 is allocated with a budget. That budget can consist of local and non-local (shared) memory. Programmers must be aware of the available space or the texture doesn't load.

[SteveW 1,792]

Another problem to recognise with VRAM use is due to other programs using the memory such as browsers, that can affect the outcome. Crashing or seizing is most likely a fault of the scenery or addon.

[cwburnett 1,809]

11 hours ago, ttbq1 said:

I have a 11Gb GPU and have been testing V5 since release date, and trust me I have different graphic settings depending on the aircraft and the airport I am flying. Sometimes I need to change the graphic settings during cruise level.

I generally agree with everything you've said and I, too, have settings profiles saved based on six weeks of 'learning' what budget I need where and with what aircraft. I also learned that when approaching an airport, there's a 'temporary' need (I can't trace it, but it is consistent). I'll be approaching an airport using 5GB VRAM, it will jump to 6.6/7.1 and then about 60 seconds later, drop back to about 6GB and stay in that range through the gate.  I think this temporary jump is what causes most of the CTDs people experience on arrival, so enough budget has to be left when approaching a complex airport. Basically if I don't have 2GB free 50 miles from my destination, I need to lower settings to get 2GB free or I am guaranteed a CTD.  I've learned this process and don't get CTDs, but it isn't intuitive or seamless. In DX11, that temporary need would just be shuttled to shared GPU memory, would cause a couple stutters and then all would return to normal...flight continues without CTD.

Where I disagree is that LM is 'accountable' insofar as their implementation of DX12 leaves a lot to be desired from a user experience standpoint.  There are basically two standard practices for modern DX12 titles missing from LM's implementation.

The first is the VRAM budget calculator in the settings menu. I haven't used a DX12 title that doesn't have this except P3D. They all have a clear indication of how much VRAM the chosen settings will need, like this:

 It has taken me six weeks to learn how much VRAM a certain number of AI will take at 1024 vs 2048 textures, how much VRAM Trueglass needs when it rains, versus when it doesn't rain. How much VRAM EA needs at medium vs high, how much VRAM is saved between LOD Medium and LOD High. The VRAM delta between 2xSSAA vs 4xSSAA, how much VRAM dynamic lighting takes, or simobject shadows need... It is asking too much of users, even enterprise and professional users, to keep track of this stuff manually.

The second DX12 standard feature missing from P3D is the over-budget handling. P3D simply crashes when over-budget. When combined with no clear data provided to the user about which options require what VRAM budget, the user is left completely in the dark. DX12 titles, as a rule, do not CTD when over VRAM budget. They simply have the logic built-in to not go over budget and to reduce texture resolutions or LOD to fit the available VRAM, and they have a cascading order of priority they do this in.  I'm sure it's hard, but literally every other DX12 title does this.  Approaching an airport...need to load 1.2GB if new textures, only 0.8GB remaining, reduce EA to Medium, free up 0.5GB, now there's 1.3GB free, boom. All done behind the scenes without causing a CTD. This has been discussed amongst the developer/beta group apparently according to simbol and is hopefully being considered/in the works.

This DX12 stuff is hard, and I'm happy LM bit the bullet, but they need to finish the job by deploying industry standard DX12 features to their DX12 app. In the meantime, I've got settings that let me enjoy the sim, but it is irritating to have to remember to change settings on the fly (or to forget to...and CTD) and I'm not willing to accept the low settings required in London or Miami for all my flying.

1 hour ago, SteveW said:

The hardware is abstracted. If there's no room for a texture it doesn't load. If a CTD occurs loading scenery, then that is a fault in a scenery, missing or corrupt file maybe.

That really doesn't seem to be the case. I can make a vanilla out-of-the-box P3D v5 crash all day long by simply increasing settings; that shouldn't be possible. In DX11 it was abstracted and I could put all sliders to the right and not CTD. In DX12 it is not and I can not. Not an ideal user experience.  (To be clear, I operate far from sliders to the right, mostly in the middle or on lower settings)

Edited June 1, 2020 by cwburnett