Hello, everyone. I am having very big problems in P3Dv4.

My specs are really, really bad for flight simming: it is a laptop with i7 620M, 6GB RAM, GT435M, 500GB HDD. In PMDG aircraft I get solid 20-22 fps on relatively low settings, but whenever I want to fly during nights, FPS drops to less than 5. I know that shouldn't be the case because I did not have these problems in FSX never. FPS was the same during days and nights. I have to tell, FPS is not always low during nights. When I turn more and more lights in PMDG or MJC Q400 it starts lagging. If I turn on like NAV lights, it is ok, but if I turn 1-2 more lights it drops very high. With all the important outside lights it drops to less than 5 FPS. Also, FPS is ok when I am in air, far from airports. But when airport lights turn on and I am close to the airport, it just drops to 5 FPS. Dynamic lightning in settings is off, no shadows, nothing, literally almost lowest settings. I use 4xMMAA, not SSAA so it is also not a problem, I know SSAA shouldn't be used during nights. I tried everything, nothing helped instead of turning all the lights off, and even that way it is worse. In FSX I didn't have these problems.

 

Kenan Izetbegovic

Dynamic lighting in P3D presents a heavy load to the GPU.  In FSX, lighting is done by use of light texture overlays, which are basically fixed maps that define how night lighting will be applied to the object.  P3D uses dynamic lighting, where light sources are placed in 3D space and the surfaces of every object in the frame--ramps, buildings, airplanes, GSE etc--are processed to show the combined effects of all the light sources, including shadowing, intensity etc off the various types of materials used in rendering the objects.  It's tremendously more GPU-intensive than the old FSX lighting scheme.

Bottom line, your system is nowhere near up to the task of effectively handling dynamic lighting in P3D.  Probably best to stick to daytime flying until you get something better.

@w6kdThink he said he already has DL turned off ?

26 minutes ago, micstatic said:

@w6kdThink he said he already has DL turned off ?

Yes, I guess he did.

My theory without DL in play is that there are lots of autogen lights in the scenery around the airport--again, a big challenge to an aged, relatively slow laptop CPU. Turning on PMDG landing/taxi lights shouldn't have an effect without DL, though, as I understand it, the lights embedded in their 64-bit models are DL sources, and the lights don't work at all with DL turned off.

And, unfortunately, my conclusion remains the same...the OP's system just isn't strong enough.

yeah I'm with you.  I wouldn't want to try it either.  DL on or DL off