3 minutes ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

1 GB less VRAm is a substantial saving if you card only has 4 or 6 GB .

 It might not be that large if you are already using smaller textures.   I thought about switching down to medium and trying it again, but had some real-world work to do.  😄

 

Edited January 6, 20215 yr by kaosfere

OK, in the name of ScienceTM, I went ahead and set myself to the "low" preset and tried my measurements again.

This time, I saw no meaningful difference in the VRAM usage between the two.   So I don't think this is going to "buy" you much if you're already running at low texture settings.  But everyone's system and settings will differ.

7 minutes ago, kaosfere said:

OK, in the name of ScienceTM, I went ahead and set myself to the "low" preset and tried my measurements again.

This time, I saw no meaningful difference in the VRAM usage between the two.   So I don't think this is going to "buy" you much if you're already running at low texture settings.  But everyone's system and settings will differ.

True but there are feasibly people out there with things like a 1060 6GB which could feasibly run high-ish settings where a GB of vram is going to matter.

For that matter, even on a 8GB 3080 a GB saved will make a difference.

Edited January 6, 20215 yr by Glenn Fitzpatrick

30 minutes ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

My only concern with this mod is the textures posted so far look fine for major centres but seem a little overdone for regional/local airports that see little use.

This installs as a community folder mod, so you can switch it on and off depending on which airports you're flying to, if you want.

3 hours ago, AirlinePilot83 said:

Hi Ed,

I managed to get the KMDW add-on before it went payware so I did some testing per your suggestion and in terms of FPS, the difference was negligible for me when comparing with the default textures.

Even panning around inside the cockpit and in external view was smooth for me with Enhanced Airport Graphics installed. 

 

DEFAULT FPS 

 

ENHANCED AIRPORT GRAPHICS FPS

There was no difference for me in terms of performance. 

Does the same problem occur at other airports? Perhaps another add-on is causing the stuttering?

Cheers,

John

 

Hi John:

Sorry for answering late, but tested with and without the enhanced textures. This is what I found (always in external views, panning around the DA62):

1. With the Enhanced Textures (Zinertek) installed:

VRAM: 6230 / 6808 MB (very close to the limit to answer @kaosfere previous questions)

FPS: avg MIN = 39; avg MAX = 45

2. With the Default textures installed:

VRAM: 5650 / 6808 MB

FPS: avg MIN = 43; avg MAX = 50

All these measurements were taken at the top of Runway 04R at KMDW, 1:00 pm local time, Coastal Winds preset (ORBX Partner).

So, definitively there's a hit on my system (desktop), but for some reason the stuttering diminished during these latest tests, compared to what I got when I did my first post on the subject earlier today. In the meantime, I did not changed anything in the sim except taking the add-on in and out, all the rest stayed the same (strange!). I'm running the sim with Rendering Scale set to 130 (3328x1404), Texture Resolution to HIGH and Texture Supersampling at 4x4.

Tested the add-on at several airports, including KMIA (my home airport) and the performance was about the same with or without the enhanced textures. It's probably because KMIA is using its own textures (LVFR). Tested also at LFKT (Corte airport in Corsica, a very low-crowded airport, freeware from Flightsim.to) that is using the enhanced textures, and again got about the same good performance with the default vs the enhanced textures.

I don't really know what was happening during my first tests earlier today, but the latest ones are giving much better results regarding performance and stuttering. Probably another variable was interfering?. I don't really know what to think or say.

Any comments, please? and thanks in advance. Also thanks to @kaosfere for his help.

Cheers, Ed

13 minutes ago, edpatino said:

I don't really know what was happening during my first tests earlier today, but the latest ones are giving much better results regarding performance and stuttering. Probably another variable was interfering?. I don't really know what to think or say.

It's interesting that you're seeing so much more VRAM usage with the new textures when there was either no difference or an actual decrease in usage for @AirlinePilot83 and me.

Regardless, I do think that you being so close to your VRAM max with the textures on could definitely cause some problems for you.  Like I alluded to earlier, VRAM exhaustion can seem like falling off a cliff when it comes to your FPS.   It's possible that happened previously and that's why your prior performance was so bad.   But it's had to say exactly.   That's something you should watch, though, if you do get degraded performance again.  You might want to tweak your settings a little bit in that case to give you a little more headroom there.

I bought it and like it, I have not notice any performance drop.

Bought it. Installed it. Noticed no performance degradation on my old PC with 8 gigs of system ram. 

The addon installs two folders into the community folder and doesn't touch any of the core sim files. 

Recommended. 

Edited January 20, 20215 yr by Ricardo41

On 1/20/2021 at 1:06 PM, Ricardo41 said:

Recommended. 

I've had it for years in other sims but it's not as much at the runways but the taxi that's impressive.

Does this add on  replace all the runway and taxiway textures or do they add an overlay over the default?

15 hours ago, Manny said:

Does this add on  replace all the runway and taxiway textures or do they add an overlay over the default?

Yeah, this add-on replaces all textures for runways, taxiways, and aprons for all default airports. It also enhances taxiway marks and parking spaces among other things.

 

Edited January 25, 20215 yr by AirlinePilot83

Does this add-on replace all runways that have yellow X on it?   I fly into several default airports that still have yellow x in default on some runways that are no longer closed though.

On 1/1/2021 at 6:09 PM, curt1 said:

I'm quite excited to see this new addon.  For years I would only fly into payware airports, but MSFS changed that.  Now it's the scenery within 5 miles of the airport that's appealing.  So, this should be a good enhancement as I'm mostly flying into defaults anyway.

And the default are drastically better than what I'm used to in P3D.

I've been using this addon pretty much since the day it came out. It really offers great value for money. Have been using Zinertek's products pretty much since FS9. 

I see no performance degradation. 

I agree very nice addon