ASP3D + ASCA Perf vs EA

[Michael Moe 494]

Hi , i.missed the weather radar in my FSL/PMDG flights so i whent back to ASCA combined with ASP3D  . Textures set to 512. I noticed a very bad performance costing me alot of FPS in the FSLA321.

I switch EA to medium inflight and the performance is back. EA looks 10 times better also in my opinion.

Is it normal with this ASCA perf. Penalty?

Thanks Michael Moe 

 

[G-YMML1 582]

What is "EA medium?" There is either EA or no EA at all?

[mikeymike 357]

1 hour ago, Michael Moe said:

Hi , i.missed the weather radar in my FSL/PMDG flights so i whent back to ASCA combined with ASP3D  . Textures set to 512. I noticed a very bad performance costing me alot of FPS in the FSLA321.

I switch EA to medium inflight and the performance is back. EA looks 10 times better also in my opinion.

Is it normal with this ASCA perf. Penalty?

Thanks Michael Moe 

 

Can’t comment on ASCA with fslabs

as I do not own the aircraft.

thou with ASCA  set to global automatic and 2048 32bit textures and 1024 for cloud structures and set to both quality and performance mode .asp3d set to realism mode.

EA on.

HDR off in cfg 

Vol fog off in cfg don’t know if this is fixed with latest asp3d update ?

and mind your a lot of tweaking with monitor and ncp colour.

looking very good so far.

no performance drop.

 

mike

[Michael Moe 494]

37 minutes ago, G-YMML1 said:

What is "EA medium?" There is either EA or no EA at all?

EA with medium resolution. You can have EA on but with clouds to off combined with ASCA.

Thanks Michael Moe 

[Ray Proudfoot 8,930]

1 hour ago, Michael Moe said:

EA with medium resolution. You can have EA on but with clouds to off combined with ASCA.

Thanks Michael Moe 

Can you be more specific please about the required settings to make EA (without HDR) look half decent?

Every time I’ve tried it it looks bloomin’ awful.

[SN737 133]

3 hours ago, Michael Moe said:

Hi , i.missed the weather radar in my FSL/PMDG flights so i whent back to ASCA combined with ASP3D  . Textures set to 512. I noticed a very bad performance costing me alot of FPS in the FSLA321.

I switch EA to medium inflight and the performance is back. EA looks 10 times better also in my opinion.

Is it normal with this ASCA perf. Penalty?

Thanks Michael Moe 

 

I noticed the same thing the other day trying what you mention. I ended up going with volumetric clouds medium and when scenery is too heavy on frames I tune it back to low and gain almost 10 fps.

Edited August 4, 2021 by SergioN

[mwa05 108]

4 hours ago, Michael Moe said:

Hi , i.missed the weather radar in my FSL/PMDG flights so i whent back to ASCA combined with ASP3D  . Textures set to 512. I noticed a very bad performance costing me alot of FPS in the FSLA321.

I switch EA to medium inflight and the performance is back. EA looks 10 times better also in my opinion.

Is it normal with this ASCA perf. Penalty?

Thanks Michael Moe 

 

This is my experience also and not only with the FSL Airbus, I never used EA, but ASP3D, ASCA and Envtex/Envshade, no HDR and EA off. However with P3Dv5.2 HF1 my FPS tanked when airborne (it would sit about 15 FPS in cruise) and only after a lot of faffing about, including a reinstall did I discover that EA on with the cloud slider set at medium (which is the default if you delete the .cfg and let a new one be built) would 30 FPS be held for an entire flight.

So now I don’t have Envshade installed into the sim and use ASP3D only; the offset being it is a fairly global weather setting. I also noticed that the only way I can get the flight decks (especially the PMDG 777) to not look washed out and to display their proper colours was to have HDR on. Which meant further faffing about with the monitor colour settings and Nvidia colour to get the display right.

So in summary I have had to completely abandon what was my normal setup and use features (EA and HDR) that I avoided in the past. It took a flight using out of the box settings, no ASCA and no Envshade installed and then adjusting one slider / feature at a time to discover what was causing the problem. I did reinstall Envshade once I had done all of this and it effects FPS as well! So it came out again even though it is supposed to be 5.2 HF1 compatible.

To answer Rays question, you edit the P3D.cfg to have EA enabled (=1) and disable HDR (=0). You can’t do it in the sim as EA automatically enables HDR as you know.

Edited August 4, 2021 by mwa05

[Ray Proudfoot 8,930]

8 minutes ago, mwa05 said:

To answer Rays question, you edit the P3D.cfg to have EA enabled (=1) and disable HDR (=0). You can’t do it in the sim as EA automatically enables HDR as you know.

I know about that, thanks. I was more interested in the other settings like volumetric clouds, ASCA cloud settings or even whether ASCA can be used with EA active.

It would have to transform what I see with EA off and ASCA running now to convince me to switch.

But reading your post it doesn’t fill me with confidence EA is a positive move.

[Dirk98 354]

3 hours ago, Michael Moe said:

EA with medium resolution. You can have EA on but with clouds to off combined with ASCA.

Thanks Michael Moe 

So you have EA on but with clouds to off, right?

Thanks.

[mwa05 108]

38 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

I know about that, thanks. I was more interested in the other settings like volumetric clouds, ASCA cloud settings or even whether ASCA can be used with EA active.

It would have to transform what I see with EA off and ASCA running now to convince me to switch.

But reading your post it doesn’t fill me with confidence EA is a positive move.

Hi Ray,

You can use ASCA with EA but only if you move the cloud resolution slider in the P3D Weather settings all the way to the left (off). That setting allows the injection of third party (ASCA) clouds using the ASCA settings. If you have the cloud resolution setting at any position other than off (i.e low) ASCA is completely ignored.

BUT, a range of ASP3D settings do not have effect with EA on (they are listed in the manual) which means you have cloud building in front of you all the time and it feels as if you just have a cloud layer flying in formation with you… it does not stretch out to the horizon.

So in my case, I can have EA off with my traditional settings giving me the weather and sky I am used to but at a smoothness / FPS cost, or I can have EA on, and use its clouds with the EA global weather theme using ASP3D which does not do as much with EA at no cost to FPS.

I spend more time with weather in 5.2 HF1 than I do looking at the weather briefing when I go to work 😊

Edited August 4, 2021 by mwa05
Spelling

[Michael Moe 494]

10 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Can you be more specific please about the required settings to make EA (without HDR) look half decent?

Every time I’ve tried it it looks bloomin’ awful.

Maybe its blooming but it looks better , more dramatic and real

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/hwr22qk24703w54/AADU2bz10JwNryWzkB0v5nkea?dl=0

Michael Moe 

[brucewtb 247]

8 minutes ago, Michael Moe said:

Maybe its blooming but it looks better , more dramatic and real

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/hwr22qk24703w54/AADU2bz10JwNryWzkB0v5nkea?dl=0

Michael Moe 

Real.  Really?  But perhaps the photos don't do it justice.  Regardless I remain very unconvinced by P3D's attempt at volumetric clouds.  The other sim has its problems but is closer to the mark when it comes to 3d clouds even with the shambles of SU5.

Bruce

[Michael Moe 494]

4 minutes ago, brucewtb said:

Real.  Really?  But perhaps the photos don't do it justice.  Regardless I remain very unconvinced by P3D's attempt at volumetric clouds.  The other sim has its problems but is closer to the mark when it comes to 3d clouds even with the shambles of SU5.

Bruce

The depth and colours look better than ASCA in my opinion but thats just me. Guess ASCA comes with a FPS hit. It looks flat to me.

Michael Moe 

[kand 205]

I could live with the clunky look of truesky clouds if AS could control local wx areas under EA. It is such a retrograde step for the platform to move back to global wx depictions, I find it staggering that LM did not integrate this when developing the new wx scene, one can only hope this is on the 5.3 roadmap.

[Ray Proudfoot 8,930]

10 hours ago, mwa05 said:

You can use ASCA with EA but only if you move the cloud resolution slider in the P3D Weather settings all the way to the left (off). That setting allows the injection of third party (ASCA) clouds using the ASCA settings. If you have the cloud resolution setting at any position other than off (i.e low) ASCA is completely ignored.

Thanks. I've reduced Volumetric Clouds setting to Off. Volumetric Fog is shown as selected but is greyed out so I'm not sure if they're on or off. HDR is off.

The result isn't an instant turn-off although there are some issues. There's a bright white area on the horizon which seems to disappear once I'm high enough. Is that normal?

The outside view is brighter but the cockpit one is duller. I've only tried one flight with the Carenado PC12 so need to try other aircraft to see the impact with those.

No fps hit for me. My monitor runs at 30Hz and with VSync on I'm guessing there's plenty in the GPU tank to cope.

Has anyone experimented with different ASCA cloud settings? Mine are all around the middle mark but I'll increase them to the 2048 (32-bit) setting with Overcast at High Quality and see how that fares.

So in short, you can't have volumetric clouds with EA enabled? Correct?