3 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

@Mace, I appreciate your advice and eventually I may well switch to v5. But now is not the right time as it needs to mature and become as stable as v4.5. This EA application is also first generation and as we both know they tend to get better over time.

Yes, I’m still running P3Dv3 solely for Concorde. A 64-bit version is promised for this year and will be compatible with v4 and v5. Hence I have no compelling need to change to v5.

I really hope flai gets a Concorde soon. Would be great to see them more often when flying online 

21 minutes ago, micstatic said:

I really hope flai gets a Concorde soon. Would be great to see them more often when flying online 

FLAI? I’m waiting for the FS Labs Concorde.

1 hour ago, dave2013 said:

I'm sorry but I'm just not seeing how this looks so much better than v4. 

I've seen some other screenshots and videos of v5 and IMO it's just not that much better than v4, if at all.  I'm not doubting that with EA it looks better, but aren't there problems with EA?

The main reason I'd be interested in v5 is the improved performance and updated airports, although it seems the improved performance requires a very expensive video card to run at 2K resolution.

Dave

It really depends on whether you are married to texture resolution upwards of 1024x1024. I can run v5 perfectly well as long as I set the resolution to that value in scenarios where I'm using PBR airports or otherwise graphically complex locations (e.g. KLAX, KJFK or KSFO, packed photoscenery and multiple airport addons and city sceneries). As a matter of fact, my flights have never been smoother. I find performance to be quite miraculous in v5. The other day I flew into KLAX with the PMDG 747 (FSDT KLAX, OrbX KBUR, ORbX TE SoCal city POIs, MSE SoCal, AIG AI, LatinVFR KSNA) and still maintained 20-25FPS while sporting (what I think is) a vastly improved atmospherics rendering engine (EA), where in v4 all this would have given me 5-10FPS or so.

In my perception, and besides the performance, what makes v5 superior is the lighting of the world. There is no texture or shader enhancement available for v4 that will get it to look even close to v5. In my mind, v5 simply looks much more realistic. I posted a comparison shot here, though note that the weather is a little different: 

But in the end it's all in the eye of the beholder... what some think looks more realistic, others find to look fake and vice versa. So, it's up to you.

 

6 hours ago, Benjamin J said:

I think you are right on that. I have done some tests with Orbx's TE NorCal and SoCal regions and always found that if I eliminate the 3DM buildings (but retain the POIs) I save in the range of 1-1.4Gb of VRAM. This is despite the fct that all 3DM buildings share a limited set of textures, which suggests that textures alone do not account for the decrease in VRAM usage - it must also be the actual objects. Thus I would not be surprised if increases in autogen levels would hit VRAM, although due to their relative simplicity it might not be that much.

What are "3DM buildings"?

And as for textures alone not accounting for vram usage, that is correct.  The more objects in a given area, the more vram.  It also used to be a design truism that vertices matter.  It was more from a cpu aspect (that's why, at least in FSX, a masked off lattice work was less cpu intensive, than a polygon'ed lattice structure, and it's partly why Microsoft chose to have transparency masked default TV towers (you've seen them, I'm sure) rather than lattice TV towers of polygons) but I can possibly see more vertices = more polygons = more vram, too.  I never really thought about it because when I did my design work vram wasn't as big of an issue as cpu usage was.

Now today, cpu usage probably takes a back seat to vram usage.

1 hour ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

I don’t understand why some of you folks seem to be using so much more VRAM than others, are you maxing out setting and running high levels of SSAA?  Running apps in the background?  Or worse yet setting custom AA up in NCP or telling NCP to use max quality textures (no compression)?

I can hit 6.9/7.1 (aka DXGI territory) easy in the following scenario:

• 2048 with dynamic streaming
• 8x MSAA
• Enhanced atmo
• NGXu
• PBR airport
• GSX pax loading
• Everything else pretty much default

These aren't insane or unreasonable settings. That is to say, it's easy to see why users find themselves crashing by simply going with default settings (EA now being checked on by default) and upping just a couple options like texture res and AA that worked fine for them in V4. 

1 hour ago, Chapstick said:

I can hit 6.9/7.1 (aka DXGI territory) easy in the following scenario:

• 2048 with dynamic streaming
• 8x MSAA
• Enhanced atmo
• NGXu
• PBR airport
• GSX pax loading
• Everything else pretty much default

These aren't insane or unreasonable settings. That is to say, it's easy to see why users find themselves crashing by simply going with default settings (EA now being checked on by default) and upping just a couple options like texture res and AA that worked fine for them in V4. 

8xMSAA. That can also be a lot. Why not 4xMSAA or 2xSSAA. that's not as that demanding. 

And PBR can also have high influence on VRAM. It's a little bit depending on how much PBR Objects there are to render. KMIA has lots of them. Even all the airport clutter if you set it so int their scenery config tool. 

Marcus

Edited January 6, 20215 yr by mpo910

2 hours ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

Often wonder if a Offered up a Remote Desktop day for groups of users having issues and I’ll go thru there system to see what going on.  Do a group session and broadcast it so others can benefit.

 

Good morning Rob! At least it´s morning in Germany now....

Was this a kind of offer? Because I really would be interested in this! 😉

Your thoughts and knowledge sharing is always very welcome and I do really appreciate your input here! 

Your idea is great.....I think this would find lots of users who would like to join.

Marcus

1 hour ago, Chapstick said:

I can hit 6.9/7.1 (aka DXGI territory) easy in the following scenario:

• 2048 with dynamic streaming
• 8x MSAA
• Enhanced atmo
• NGXu
• PBR airport
• GSX pax loading
• Everything else pretty much default

These aren't insane or unreasonable settings. That is to say, it's easy to see why users find themselves crashing by simply going with default settings (EA now being checked on by default) and upping just a couple options like texture res and AA that worked fine for them in V4. 

I forgot to ask. What screen resolution are you running? F HD, 2k or 4k?

Here I posted some screenshots for those who are thinking P3D V5.1 is a VRAM killer....follow the link to another just opened thread.

It is NOT. 

5.1GB on 4k in PMDG 748 at KMIA LatinVFR. PBR on, HD Airport clutter off, Medium settings and EA on!

The result may surprise you!

Marcus

https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/593212-vram-usage-p3d-v51-example-thread-post-examples-here/

Edited January 6, 20215 yr by mpo910

8 hours ago, Benjamin J said:

In my perception, and besides the performance, what makes v5 superior is the lighting of the world.

Oh yes, both of these. I love the lighting, makes even the oldest add-on airport look so good. I also like the new clouds, even though they aren't perfect. Haven't touched 4.5 after installing (still am) 5.1 HF1.

10 hours ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

Agree, can you provide screenshots of your settings and list of "active" add-ons and provide airport location?  Are you using any weather add-on?  If so, on the same PC or networked?

Cheers, Rob.

These are the settings: https://imgur.com/a/JRucu9W

Orbx EGNT or KBUR are both my go-to test spots for VRAM and where I can cause it to crash or turn off EA with these settings. I'm also running AIG limited to 70 a/c and ActiveSky on the same PC.

10 hours ago, mpo910 said:

I forgot to ask. What screen resolution are you running? F HD, 2k or 4k?

2560x1440

9 hours ago, mpo910 said:

Here I posted some screenshots for those who are thinking P3D V5.1 is a VRAM killer....follow the link to another just opened thread.

It is NOT. 

5.1GB on 4k in PMDG 748 at KMIA LatinVFR. PBR on, HD Airport clutter off, Medium settings and EA on!

The result may surprise you!

Marcus

https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/593212-vram-usage-p3d-v51-example-thread-post-examples-here/

This isn't surprising because you're at 1024 textures in this example. That's just what 8GB users have to use to avoid crashing.

10 hours ago, mpo910 said:

8xMSAA. That can also be a lot. Why not 4xMSAA or 2xSSAA. that's not as that demanding. 

And PBR can also have high influence on VRAM. It's a little bit depending on how much PBR Objects there are to render. KMIA has lots of them. Even all the airport clutter if you set it so int their scenery config tool. 

Marcus

Yes, I play with different AA settings, but those are really just nibbling around the edges. The things that make a big enough difference to have a safe buffer is EA and texture resolution. 

10 hours ago, mpo910 said:

Here I posted some screenshots for those who are thinking P3D V5.1 is a VRAM killer....follow the link to another just opened thread.

It is NOT. 

5.1GB on 4k in PMDG 748 at KMIA LatinVFR. PBR on, HD Airport clutter off, Medium settings and EA on!

The result may surprise you!

Marcus

https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/593212-vram-usage-p3d-v51-example-thread-post-examples-here/

Well, first of all you're using the latest, most powerful, most expensive video card on the market, the 3090.  Sorry, but I can't afford an $1,800 video card.  You also have one of the latest, most powerful CPUs on the market and significantly overclocked to boot.

Your graphics settings are also quite low: medium scenery/autogen draw distance, Antialiasing pitifully low at 2xMSAA, and very low texture resolution of 1024x1024.

Again, performance is very subjective.  I would not be happy using your very low graphics settings, but if you're happy then that's what matters.

Dave

1 hour ago, dave2013 said:

Well, first of all you're using the latest, most powerful, most expensive video card on the market, the 3090.  Sorry, but I can't afford an $1,800 video card.  You also have one of the latest, most powerful CPUs on the market and significantly overclocked to boot.

Your graphics settings are also quite low: medium scenery/autogen draw distance, Antialiasing pitifully low at 2xMSAA, and very low texture resolution of 1024x1024.

Again, performance is very subjective.  I would not be happy using your very low graphics settings, but if you're happy then that's what matters.

Dave

I just wanted to share my experiences and hope others do so. This is for those guys/girls who consider buying v5 but are not sure about the vram usages.

And take some v5 settings with caution: Autogen medium and density sliders are NOT comparable anymore between v4.5 and v5.

Especially the autogen density settings are in v5 showing more autogen compared to v4.5 even with the same slider setting!

I have plenty of autogen visible. My feeling about this is: A notch lower in P3D V5 is comparable with a notch higher at 4.5.

Here at evening at EDDF with those settings

Look at the VRAM usage: 3.6GB. In background the FSLabs was loaded outside view of course.

LOWI with 2048x2048 but looks the same with 1024x1024

The autogen draw distance is set to medium because I want to avoud heavy loadings on my CPU (very CPU bound slider). So not that much VRAM expencive.

I don´t think anything is wrong with that. How more people share their usages and also their hardware they use, the more material do we gather for our newcomers.

That´s all.

And as you see, even with the most powerful cards and hardware I am always take the sliders with caution. 

1024 textures or 2048 textures is only noticable low flying and above TE products etc. I compared above ORBX LC and Europe and hardly saw any difference. But that´s all taste.

I fly PMDG and FSLabs with HP reverb G2 with this settings and get round about 45 fps at KLAX and 80,FPS at EDDF In VR with single pass rendering.

There are ALWAYS limitations 😉

It has always bin, it will always be and it will never change: Software is always possible to go beyond the hardware limits. 

That´s simply how it works. They beat up to each other every time they deliver new products.....

Marcus

Edited January 6, 20215 yr by mpo910

6 minutes ago, mpo910 said:

1024 textures or 2048 textures is only noticable low flying and above TE products etc

This simply isn't true, unless you go out of your way to avoid making comparisons. Open up the default F-22 and switch between 1024/2048 and look at the textures. Or open up the NGXu or FSL. Go to any number of add-on airports and compare the texture quality of signs, taxiway markings, etc. 

6 minutes ago, Chapstick said:

This simply isn't true, unless you go out of your way to avoid making comparisons. Open up the default F-22 and switch between 1024/2048 and look at the textures. Or open up the NGXu or FSL. Go to any number of add-on airports and compare the texture quality of signs, taxiway markings, etc. 

Yes, you are right.

The default planes use these texture settings too: But ONLY the default ones. PMDG, FSLabs, QW and so far and so on use "own" textures and are NOT affected by this slider.

And note also: The new v5 lighting engine delivers a much more sharp image! Look at the alps. 2048x2048 picture above. And also EDDF overview at daytime. 1024x1024

 

Edited January 6, 20215 yr by mpo910