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Howellerman

Finally, Stability!

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I have read it has been quite the roller coaster ride for a lot of people here in the Prepar3D forum, specifically V5 HF1. I would concur up until yesterday, but I think I have figured out MY system requirements. Specs in my signature.

First off, I am strictly a GA flyer so you PMDG pilots will likely gain nothing. But, same as you, I was suffering a lot of Nvidia crashes, and most recently, KERNELBASE.dll errors. Simulator death lurked at every corner...  🙂

So, here's what I did:

1 - I use RivaTuner for display only, and use Nvidia Control Panel for frame limiter.
2 - I limit P3D frames to 30, no GSYNC, and limit NCP to 29. That way (at least from what I have read) if I get a late frame it is "absorbed" by NCP. The reason I limit P3D to 30 frames is to reduce load - no sense running Unlimited to needlessly chew up CPU cycles.
3 - My only *.cfg modifications are FFTF=0.40 - I want that scenery RENDERED - and MAX_TEXTURE_REQUEST_DISTANCE=320000.000000. I loved Rob Aincough's TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=10 but I think that combined with request distance was the reason I was getting so many Nvidia crashes right out of the gate. 
4 - To compensate, I can now run max LOD slider and 8xSSA with 4096 textures! My GTX 1080 does not complain at all. All other sliders are one step removed from max, with the exception of vegetation - I love my vegetables.

Now I run butter smooth, crisply render textures, at altitudes ranging from 3,500 to 15,500, and I can see off into the distance forever. Well, at least for now - I have yet to install my bizjets for higher altitude flying.

And I have a new metric - if my CPU busy falls below 30-percent busy for any amount of time I know I am good. As it is, I average about 45% busy, with spikes to 75%, and my Nvidia load is about the same with a VRAM use of 4-5Gb. Remember, I am a GA flyer only, so your loads will vary. But before these mods, I could pause the sim and watch it expend lots of CPU cycles playing catch-up until it returned to idle state of around 13% system busy. Now, when I hit pause it pauses, period!

One other thing non-related to performance is that I have water optimization set to OFF. I find the water in V5 to be ghastly, with visual waves on rivers and lakes that would scuttle anything less than a 30-footer. And in all my years of flying and being on the ocean on boats I have never seen the ocean reflect anything. Refraction, yes - reflection no.

Now I get to reload the fleet (I did a complete mind-wipe of Prepar3D - all six directories,including all Orbx libraries) and recreate the world According to John Venema. Finally getting smart enough to load everything through addon.xml... 🙂

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John Howell

Prepar3D V5, Windows 10 Pro, I7-9700K @ 4.6Ghz, EVGA GTX1080, 32GB Corsair Dominator 3200GHz, SanDisk Ultimate Pro 480GB SSD (OS), 2x Samsung 1TB 970 EVO M.2 (P3D), Corsair H80i V2 AIO Cooler, Fulcrum One Yoke, Samsung 34" 3440x1440 curved monitor, Honeycomb Bravo throttle quadrant, Thrustmaster TPR rudder pedals, Thrustmaster T1600M stick 

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So you are running 4096 textures with MAX LOD and relatively high slider settings on an 8GB 1080? I don't see how that's possible without instant vroom, unless you are flying out in the Pacific Ocean. 

Edited by SolRayz
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Intel i7 10700K | Asus Maximus XII Hero | Asus TUF RTX 3090 | 32GB HyperX Fury 3200 DDR4 | 1TB Samsung M.2 (W11) | 2TB Samsung M.2 (MSFS2020) | Arctic Liquid Freezer II 280mm AIO | 43" Samsung Q90B | 27" Asus Monitor

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What resolution are you running at?


Gigabyte x670 Aorus Elite AX MB; AMD 7800X3D CPU; Deepcool LT520 AIO Cooler; 64 Gb G.Skill Trident Z5 NEO DDR5 6000; Win11 Pro; P3D V5.4; 1 Samsung 990 2Tb NVMe SSD: 1 Crucial 4Tb MX500 SATA SSD; 1 Samsung 860 1Tb SSD; Gigabyte Aorus Extreme 1080ti 11Gb VRAM; Toshiba 43" LED TV @ 4k; Honeycomb Bravo.

 

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10 hours ago, SolRayz said:

So you are running 4096 textures with MAX LOD and relatively high slider settings on an 8GB 1080? I don't see how that's possible without instant vroom, unless you are flying out in the Pacific Ocean. 

Yes, and flying PNW, NCA, and even a short hop from KPSP (SCA) to KSEZ. I will try to remember to take some screen shots and attach them.


John Howell

Prepar3D V5, Windows 10 Pro, I7-9700K @ 4.6Ghz, EVGA GTX1080, 32GB Corsair Dominator 3200GHz, SanDisk Ultimate Pro 480GB SSD (OS), 2x Samsung 1TB 970 EVO M.2 (P3D), Corsair H80i V2 AIO Cooler, Fulcrum One Yoke, Samsung 34" 3440x1440 curved monitor, Honeycomb Bravo throttle quadrant, Thrustmaster TPR rudder pedals, Thrustmaster T1600M stick 

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1 hour ago, pgde said:

What resolution are you running at?

I am running an Ultra Wide 34" monitor, so 3440 by 1440.


John Howell

Prepar3D V5, Windows 10 Pro, I7-9700K @ 4.6Ghz, EVGA GTX1080, 32GB Corsair Dominator 3200GHz, SanDisk Ultimate Pro 480GB SSD (OS), 2x Samsung 1TB 970 EVO M.2 (P3D), Corsair H80i V2 AIO Cooler, Fulcrum One Yoke, Samsung 34" 3440x1440 curved monitor, Honeycomb Bravo throttle quadrant, Thrustmaster TPR rudder pedals, Thrustmaster T1600M stick 

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Try limiting to 120 inside P3D instead of Unlimited.

It actually has the same effect as Unlimited when combining with NCP at 29, but makes better use of FFTF settings.

Core0 usage is still down substantially, compared to limiting to 29 or 30 inside P3D.


Bert

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6 minutes ago, Bert Pieke said:

Try limiting to 120 inside P3D instead of Unlimited.

It actually has the same effect as Unlimited when combining with NCP at 29, but makes better use of FFTF settings.

Core0 usage is still down substantially, compared to limiting to 29 or 30 inside P3D.

Heya Bert. I have been using Process Lasso monitoring to watch individual cores and do not have an issue with excessive Core 0 loading. They all freely hop up and down. What I will try is monitoring the difference between Unlimited, 120, and 30 fps to see what happens. 


John Howell

Prepar3D V5, Windows 10 Pro, I7-9700K @ 4.6Ghz, EVGA GTX1080, 32GB Corsair Dominator 3200GHz, SanDisk Ultimate Pro 480GB SSD (OS), 2x Samsung 1TB 970 EVO M.2 (P3D), Corsair H80i V2 AIO Cooler, Fulcrum One Yoke, Samsung 34" 3440x1440 curved monitor, Honeycomb Bravo throttle quadrant, Thrustmaster TPR rudder pedals, Thrustmaster T1600M stick 

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23 hours ago, Bert Pieke said:

Try limiting to 120 inside P3D instead of Unlimited.

It actually has the same effect as Unlimited when combining with NCP at 29, but makes better use of FFTF settings.

Core0 usage is still down substantially, compared to limiting to 29 or 30 inside P3D.

I don't know how you know these things, Bert - spooky!

I set the P3D fps to 120 and to my surprise, it did not "objectively" change my CPU usage as recorded by Process Lasso. However, "subjectively" the sim seemed smoother and my RivaTuner display seemed to show lower CPU busy. Part of the difference is that PL is set to 2 second interval, RT to 1 second. More experimentation is in order but so far 120 fps is a keeper - thanks!


John Howell

Prepar3D V5, Windows 10 Pro, I7-9700K @ 4.6Ghz, EVGA GTX1080, 32GB Corsair Dominator 3200GHz, SanDisk Ultimate Pro 480GB SSD (OS), 2x Samsung 1TB 970 EVO M.2 (P3D), Corsair H80i V2 AIO Cooler, Fulcrum One Yoke, Samsung 34" 3440x1440 curved monitor, Honeycomb Bravo throttle quadrant, Thrustmaster TPR rudder pedals, Thrustmaster T1600M stick 

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On 5/15/2020 at 9:10 AM, Bert Pieke said:

Try limiting to 120 inside P3D instead of Unlimited.

It actually has the same effect as Unlimited when combining with NCP at 29, but makes better use of FFTF settings.

Core0 usage is still down substantially, compared to limiting to 29 or 30 inside P3D.

Heya Bert, 

FYI, here is a snippet of my Process Lasso monitor. The leftmost part of to the first trough is 120 fps, refreshed every 2 seconds. The second span is also 120 fps, ,but with a 10 second refresh. After the brief dip I set the sim to 30 fps, again with 10 second refresh rate. You might say that 30 fps is more "uniform" frame to frame, but they are pretty well even.

Berts Capture.PNG


John Howell

Prepar3D V5, Windows 10 Pro, I7-9700K @ 4.6Ghz, EVGA GTX1080, 32GB Corsair Dominator 3200GHz, SanDisk Ultimate Pro 480GB SSD (OS), 2x Samsung 1TB 970 EVO M.2 (P3D), Corsair H80i V2 AIO Cooler, Fulcrum One Yoke, Samsung 34" 3440x1440 curved monitor, Honeycomb Bravo throttle quadrant, Thrustmaster TPR rudder pedals, Thrustmaster T1600M stick 

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8 minutes ago, Howellerman said:

Heya Bert, 

FYI, here is a snippet of my Process Lasso monitor. The leftmost part of to the first trough is 120 fps, refreshed every 2 seconds. The second span is also 120 fps, ,but with a 10 second refresh. After the brief dip I set the sim to 30 fps, again with 10 second refresh rate. You might say that 30 fps is more "uniform" frame to frame, but they are pretty well even.

Berts Capture.PNG

Not sure what I'm looking at here... but my reason for limiting outside P3D, is to reduce Core0 usage.

The second question is what to set inside P3D... If you use Unlimited fps as I have been, FFTF is not very effective, and word has it that 120 is a better choice.. I do not have enough experience to judge, but am using 120 for now..


Bert

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On 5/15/2020 at 12:17 AM, Howellerman said:

MAX_TEXTURE_REQUEST_DISTANCE=320000.00

I know Rob stated this, but isn't this setting in meters? That would set the distance to 320 Km or ~199 miles. Even with a value set this large doesn't

RS_MIN_OBJECT_PIXEL_RADIUS (default is 2.0px)

intercede anyway? And the far clip distance varies with altitude. My suggestion is rather than using 320,000, that one should just keep incrementing the value at bit at a time from the default until the desired result is achieved. There's no point wasting precious VRAM if the textures can't be seen.

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38 minutes ago, jabloomf1230 said:

I know Rob stated this, but isn't this setting in meters? That would set the distance to 320 Km or ~199 miles. Even with a value set this large doesn't

RS_MIN_OBJECT_PIXEL_RADIUS (default is 2.0px)

intercede anyway? And the far clip distance varies with altitude. My suggestion is rather than using 320,000, that one should just keep incrementing the value at bit at a time from the default until the desired result is achieved. There's no point wasting precious VRAM if the textures can't be seen.

I use MAX_TEXTURE_REQUEST_DISTANCE=180000.00 at least at the moment...and this seems to do the trick for me.

It might be in kilometers, but I do not know.  Here is a resource from LM on it (about halfway down page):

https://www.prepar3d.com/SDKv4/prepar3d/getting_help/advanced_configuration.html


Rhett

7800X3D ♣ 32 GB G.Skill TridentZ  Gigabyte 4090  Crucial P5 Plus 2TB 

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49 minutes ago, jabloomf1230 said:

I know Rob stated this, but isn't this setting in meters? That would set the distance to 320 Km or ~199 miles. Even with a value set this large doesn't

RS_MIN_OBJECT_PIXEL_RADIUS (default is 2.0px)

intercede anyway? And the far clip distance varies with altitude. My suggestion is rather than using 320,000, that one should just keep incrementing the value at bit at a time from the default until the desired result is achieved. There's no point wasting precious VRAM if the textures can't be seen.

I don’t think this is a unit of distance here’s LM :

There's no cap on this value itself because it's intended as a limit. If you want textures requesting aggressively, you can set it something very high like 1000000. There are two other checks that must pass before textures are requested:
1) Object is within the far clip distance. This varies by altitude.
2) Object pixel size at a given distance passes min radius check. This we made configurable in 4.3 usingRS_MIN_OBJECT_PIXEL_RADIUS. (default is 2.0px)

Joe

 


Joe (Southern California)

SystemI9-9900KS @5.1Ghz/ Corsair H115i / Gigabyte A-390 Master / EVGA RTX 2080 Ti FTW3 Hybrid w 11Gb / Trident 32Gb DDR4-3200 C14 / Evo 970 2Tb M.2 / Samsung 40inch TV 40ku6300 4K w/ Native 30 hz capability  / Corsair AX850 PS / VKB Gunfighter Pro / Virpil MongoosT-50 Throttle / MFG Crosswind Pedals /   LINDA, VoiceAttack, ChasePlane, AIG AI, MCE, FFTF, Pilot2ATC, HP Reverb G2

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1 hour ago, joepoway said:

I don’t think this is a unit of distance here’s LM :

I think it might have been initially (as many parameters in Prepar3d.cfg have units of meters), but the upper limit of MAX_TEXTURE_REQUEST_DISTANCE keeps getting larger and larger in various threads on the official P3d forums. Now the setting seems that it's related to VRAM usage in some unknown way. In any case, even though I was wrong on the units, I still stand behind the idea of not just randomly choosing a value of 320,000. Rob has high end video cards and he always says that in his disclaimers. Maybe someone will experiment and post how VRAM utilization changes vs. this setting, if at all.

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I don’t think this is a unit of distance here’s LM

That's correct. I saw a recent post by Rob and he explained that the value represents a video memory allocation limit in KB for textures (i.e. 100000 is 100MB).


Version: P3Dv5.4, P3Dv6  CPU: Core i7-13700K @ 5.5 GHz with HT on,  GPU: RTX 3080 12GB,  RAM: 32GB DDR-5MONITOR: 32" 4K with G-Sync enabled, OS: Win10 22H2, Target Frame Rate: P3D 120, NCP Max Frame Rate 35.

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