1 minute ago, jarmstro said:

X-Enviro

That one is a big missing :(, EC is a good stand in, but a shame they haven't worked out how to do what you just did.

Just now, jarmstro said:

I think I've installed the latest Nvidia drivers? The file was only 170mb? Is there a control panel?

the CP should be available , press the windows key and search for "Nvidia" 

3 hours ago, BiologicalNanobot said:

Other than system calls

^this,

not a small thing, basically all an application is doing is making syscalls, and its these that take the time and define the fundamental limit of an applications performance.

Using a car analogy, an operating system is like an ECU. Sure, if all you are doing is mucking around and taking the kids to the ballgame, an ECU designed by a few interns on spring break 30 years ago will still get the job done.

But if you want to win a race, even a half decent mechanic can add 50% to the BHP of most cars coming out of the factory, regardless of who is pressing the accelerator pedal.

Yes, there are things you can do to any application to make it faster, but you are always limited by how efficiently the hardware can be commanded by the OS, and a lot has changed in compute and simulation research in the last 30 years or so since Microsoft did anything substantial under the hood.

And that's after you get consider the more serious issues with such ancient code.

It would be funny that windows is still limited to 255 characters total file & folder name length - if it wasnt so very sad.... But there is only so much you can do with a 16bit operating system.

Edited February 20, 20215 yr by mSparks

4 hours ago, jarmstro said:

The whole point is to get a massive FPS increase in XP. That's what I was led to believe?

Hoooo boy, are you in for a disappointment...

 

2 hours ago, mSparks said:

TBH

Is the least of the benefits. 50fps, 100fps, you wont really notice the difference

 

This chart only applies to AMD GPUs in OpenGL mode. The performance difference between Linux and Windows in Vulkan mode or on Nvidia GPUs is marginal at best!

Sorry for old people mode y'all, but every time msparks posts this BS graph, I get really, REALLY angry because it can NOT be generalized!

 

Edited February 20, 20215 yr by Bjoern

1 hour ago, Bjoern said:

Hoooo boy, are you in for a disappointment...

Sorry for old people mode y'all, but every time msparks posts this BS graph, I get really, REALLY angry because it can NOT be generalized!

 

Well tomorrow I'm going to test it and then I will know. I'm also installing another XP onto my Windows OS and then I will compare vanilla XP in Windows vs vanilla XP in Linux. I will post the results here.

Edited February 20, 20215 yr by Ray Proudfoot
Enormous text removed from quote

31 minutes ago, mSparks said:

It would be funny that windows is still limited to 255 characters total file & folder name length - if it wasnt so very sad....

Unfortunately it is not funny at all, but hopefully it is limited to the 'A' APIs (it is in fact MAX_PATH = 260).

When using the 'W' API instead (wide chars - I know don't pick this one up either - UCS2 vs UTF16 etc...) the limit is 32767 provided you prefix the paths with a "\\?\"

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/fileio/maximum-file-path-limitation

Nevertheless, the file API is a mess and antiquated from the 16 bits area I agree with you, and look, even FS2020 code is messing around with path containing any "accented" character... as if they're using the 'A' API with a fixed US code page like 1252... this begs some other questions indeed but these are irrelevant to this topic!

57 minutes ago, Bjoern said:

This chart only applies to AMD GPUs in OpenGL mode. The performance difference between Linux and Windows in Vulkan mode or on Nvidia GPUs is marginal at best!

No, their version of "high settings" is AA and world objects cranked to the max, at which point you are limited by GPU and <30fps

GTX1060 and GTX1080Ti are Nvidia cards "medium settings" are what most windows users fly with (usually overloaded with plugins that take them from 50fps to 35-40fps).

What there is , is little to no difference in average FPS in linux nvidia Vulkan vs openGL, what there is, is much, much higher minimums, So whereas linux openGL will max out at 100fps (to windows 50fps) (lots of frames taking ~0.1 seconds), Vulkan will max out at 500fps (all frames <0.002 seconds).

Windows cannot (or at least I have yet to see) achieve less than 0.01 seconds per frame.

31 minutes ago, RXP said:

When using the 'W' API instead (wide chars - I know don't pick this one up either - UCS2 vs UTF16 etc...) the limit is 32767 provided you prefix the paths with a "\\?\"

Yeah, but then I'm pretty sure windows explorer will throw a "file not found" if you double click to open them.. drive the Mrs nuts with that in our shared folder.

Edited February 20, 20215 yr by mSparks

I had a fight to install OpenAl. All this terminal stuff is dark age imo. My initial impression is that Ubuntu is just not user friendly. X-Plane is installed and running however.

Edited February 20, 20215 yr by jarmstro

20 minutes ago, jarmstro said:

All this terminal stuff is dark age imo.

Tab key is your best friend, it will autocomplete most things (like file names) while you type, hit it twice for a list of options

for example, I start X-Plane with

cd n TAB X TAB ENTER ./X TAB - TAB enter

which does

cd nvme/X-Plane 11

./X-Plane-x86_64

other one is the up arrow, which will scroll through previous commands, so I only need to type that the first time the machine is reset (currently about once a month)

otherwise its just "up-arrow enter" for ./X-Plane-x86_64

I could use the icon or start menu, but that way is much faster.

Edited February 20, 20215 yr by mSparks

2 hours ago, jarmstro said:

Well tomorrow I'm going to test it and then I will know. I'm also installing another XP onto my Windows OS and then I will compare vanilla XP in Windows vs vanilla XP in Linux. I will post the results here.

Not sure which drivers for AMD are default on Ubuntu nowadays, but make sure that a proper package is installed. If it's AMDGPU Pro and you find it a bit on the slow side (it's a workstation GPU driver after all), you might want to use Mesa instead.

https://itsfoss.com/install-mesa-ubuntu/

 

2 hours ago, mSparks said:

No, their version of "high settings" is AA and world objects cranked to the max, at which point you are limited by GPU and <30fps

Phoronix has never defined which fps_test level corresponds to what "setting", but this is absolutely not my point. If the OpenGL driver for windows delivers 50% of the framerate compared to its Linux equivalent, it will not matter in the slightest which rendering load we're talking about. 50% is 50%.

 

1 hour ago, jarmstro said:

I had a fight to install OpenAl. All this terminal stuff is dark age imo. My initial impression is that Ubuntu is just not user friendly.

As Conficius said: "A good terminal is better than a buggy UI."

And you better get used to it. The terminal will be your lifesaver more than once.

1 hour ago, Bjoern said:

If the OpenGL driver for windows delivers

Its got nothing to do with the graphics driver, its the difference between running simulation on windows vs running a simulation on Linux - how efficiently the whole OS uses the CPU and other hardware to do the things it is asked to. multithreading/bus access/file access/network access - all the things the OS is responsible for when managing an application and the things that it asks for.

Edited February 20, 20215 yr by mSparks

Following this thread with interest since now, simulator wise, the only thing that still ties me to Windowze is DCS World ... 

I would gladly go Linux only should ED make a Linux port.

OTOH my preferred XP11 add-on, the Toliss A319  and it's 321 and NEO variants are all Linux compatible.

Hope XP12 continues to support it.

3 hours ago, mSparks said:

Its got nothing to do with the graphics driver, its the difference between running simulation on windows vs running a simulation on Linux - how efficiently the whole OS uses the CPU and other hardware to do the things it is asked to. multithreading/bus access/file access/network access - all the things the OS is responsible for when managing an application and the things that it asks for.

Stick to the topic. These workloads have nothing to do with X-Plane.

 

 

2 hours ago, jcomm said:

Following this thread with interest since now, simulator wise, the only thing that still ties me to Windowze is DCS World ... 

I would gladly go Linux only should ED make a Linux port.

Seems to run with Proton.

https://www.protondb.com/app/223750

Version 2.5.5 apparently also works with Lutris.

 

2 hours ago, jcomm said:

OTOH my preferred XP11 add-on, the Toliss A319  and it's 321 and NEO variants are all Linux compatible.

Yup, running beautifully under Linux.

27 minutes ago, Bjoern said:

Stick to the topic. These workloads have nothing to do with X-Plane.

i picked them from a huge bunch because they have everything to do with xplane

sqlite: a scenery loading type workload

blender compute: running the flight model

blake2: hash function - stressing the cpu and creating hotspots

java test: multithreading performance

renaissance twitter http requests: multiplayer and shared cockpit performance

luxcorerenderer: computing stuff like fluid dynamics/BET and scenery lod/visibility.

yes, when you max out gpu memory bandwidth with really high AA there is not much in it, but that, imho, really doesn't matter that much. the above, otoh, make a huge quality of life difference to using and flying a flight sim.

Edited February 21, 20215 yr by mSparks

Early days but here is what I have initially found:

For anyone who cares my specs are [email protected]. 24GB DDR3. RTX2070

Absolutely fresh and untouched XP install on both Linux and Widows. Latest Nvidia drivers.

Identical settings as follows. (High to tax the PC)
 

Visual Effects - 1 notch from max

Texture Quality - Max

AA - 1 notch from max

AF - 1 notch from max

Number of World Objects - Max

Reflections - 1 notch from max

Vulkan - On

Shadows - On 

Parked Aircraft - Off

Monitor at the same resolution and refresh rate.

 

 

Loaded default Cessna at EGLL RW 9L

Clear Sky at 12 noon.

 

1) On initial load and before touching anything:

Linux 30fps

Windows 27fps

2) After panning around and then looking forward again fps dropped to:

Linux 23-24fps

Windows 23fps

3) There was considerably more jerking and stuttering when looking around in Linux.

4) For both fps fluctuates wildly depending on what you are looking at.

 

After a while and flying about I could not really notice any real fps improvement in Linux.  But it's early days as I said.

 

EDIT. When lowering the settings both sims run smooth. Reflections being the absolute killer. Now for some clouds.....

I would say Linux is yielding an extra two or three fps. There is a difference but it is in no way substantial.

Edited February 21, 20215 yr by jarmstro