Life begins at LOD 6?

[TheFamilyMan 286]

Seeing that SU5 works so well for how I fly in MSFS 2020, just for kicks I set both terrain and object LOD settings to 6 (600 in-game, though only possible using the UserCfg.opt file) and did my KBUR to KSNA flight to see how it goes, in a Waco YMF-5 at 6k'.  Holy Mother of Pearl...ground detail for as far that it's practical to see (truly puts 2/2 to shame)!  But it's anything but smooth, using the sim's 30 fps vsync.  Other than having terrain vector data, texture resolution, text synthesis, ambient occlusion set to Ultra, all my setting are set to High.  See my computer specs in my signature.  Moving my virtual cockpit view with TIR causes big FPS hits for 2 or so seconds, plus the autogen pop is painfully obvious, mainly in the distance.  But once it settles out smoothness returns.  The most interesting thing with 6/6, at least for me, is seeing its execution impact on my overclocked i7 10700.  With the standard 2/2 LOD in SU5, no core even comes close to ever hitting 100% use, but with 6/6 every view change spikes about half the cores to nearly 100%, and in general the core utilization is about 30% elevated.  Also noticed that some of my cores are hitting max temps of 84 c, though only for very short periods; the average in the upper 60s c.  I see these temp spikes as a good thing, for it shows that MSFS utilizes AVX instructions (I imagine particularly FMA3 since it's tailored for linear algebra computations, plus that instruction cooks the cpu like no other).  Of course, it's easy to blame my 6/6 performance on my (ancient) gtx 1070, but it was rarely pegging 100% and looked to be performing as well as when it's running 2/2.  Clearly IMO it's the CPU that matters most for 6/6...oh well, so now back to the mundaness of 2/2 (or perhaps maybe a bit higher).  Thanks for reading!

Edited August 12, 2021 by TheFamilyMan
Adding UserCfg.opt file use

[Bert Pieke 7,604]

Looks like you found the setting that broke the camel's back, for your system.

200/200 looks pretty good on my rig, and no out of bound temperatures either 🙂

Edited August 13, 2021 by Bert Pieke

[BIGSKY 317]

I use a setting of 4, with CPU temps in high 50's.

[Todd2 2,201]

Looks good enough at 2 to my eyes.

[clayton4115 56]

does this change make things sharper in VR?

[Todd2 2,201]

2 minutes ago, clayton4115 said:

does this change make things sharper in VR?

Pretty sure it will just draw the trees and buildings at a greater distance

 

[clayton4115 56]

6 hours ago, Todd2 said:

Pretty sure it will just draw the trees and buildings at a greater distance

 

ok thanks

[pmb 5,139]

7 hours ago, Todd2 said:

Pretty sure it will just draw the trees and buildings at a greater distance

While I use 4 (at present) on the 2D screen and it draws trees and buildings further away indeed (while fps are still good and no stuttering), I can't raise LODs under VR. I tried it, but I'm slightly below 20 fps with LODs set to 2, and any fps less makes the sim stutter.

A possible compromise would be set TAA below 100 (again), but this incurs more visual loss than the gain I win with LOD 4.

Kind regards, Michael

[Odepane 20]

I appreciate you bringing up the LOD values with this thread.  I went into the config file to increase mine from 2 to see if my system would handle anything higher, only to find that both values were at 1 !!!  Have no idea how or when that took place, but even back at 2 the visuals are dramatically better!  So, thanks for the new sim!  🙂

 

[Nyxx 6,994]

12 hours ago, TheFamilyMan said:

Seeing that SU5 works so well for how I fly in MSFS 2020, just for kicks I set both terrain and object LOD settings to 6 (600 in-game, though only possible using the UserCfg.opt file) and did my KBUR to KSNA flight to see how it goes, in a Waco YMF-5 at 6k'.  Holy Mother of Pearl...ground detail for as far that it's practical to see (truly puts 2/2 to shame)!  But it's anything but smooth, using the sim's 30 fps vsync.  Other than having terrain vector data, texture resolution, text synthesis, ambient occlusion set to Ultra, all my setting are set to High.  See my computer specs in my signature.  Moving my virtual cockpit view with TIR causes big FPS hits for 2 or so seconds, plus the autogen pop is painfully obvious, mainly in the distance.  But once it settles out smoothness returns.  The most interesting thing with 6/6, at least for me, is seeing its execution impact on my overclocked i7 10700.  With the standard 2/2 LOD in SU5, no core even comes close to ever hitting 100% use, but with 6/6 every view change spikes about half the cores to nearly 100%, and in general the core utilization is about 30% elevated.  Also noticed that some of my cores are hitting max temps of 84 c, though only for very short periods; the average in the upper 60s c.  I see these temp spikes as a good thing, for it shows that MSFS utilizes AVX instructions (I imagine particularly FMA3 since it's tailored for linear algebra computations, plus that instruction cooks the cpu like no other).  Of course, it's easy to blame my 6/6 performance on my (ancient) gtx 1070, but it was rarely pegging 100% and looked to be performing as well as when it's running 2/2.  Clearly IMO it's the CPU that matters most for 6/6...oh well, so now back to the mundaness of 2/2 (or perhaps maybe a bit higher).  Thanks for reading!

When my first 3080 needed to be replaced, i put in my old 1070 and its no suprize you cannot run 6/6. Pre SU5 I think 2/2 would be hard. I had to turn down setting and LOD even with just the GPU change.

With your CPU your systerm is begging for a 30XX

[Glenn Fitzpatrick 3,799]

LOD 3 and Render Scaling at 135% for me.

[Moria15 950]

1 hour ago, pmb said:

While I use 4 (at present) on the 2D screen and it draws trees and buildings further away indeed (while fps are still good and no stuttering), I can't raise LODs under VR. I tried it, but I'm slightly below 20 fps with LODs set to 2, and any fps less makes the sim stutter.

A possible compromise would be set TAA below 100 (again), but this incurs more visual loss than the gain I win with LOD 4.

Kind regards, Michael

LOL.. I fly mainly around the UK and since SU5 the weather in the UK has been truly awful in the SW round Bristol and Exeter..  and I always fly live weather, which I have to say has been pretty accurate so far this last 2 weeks...     I don't think I have had a day yet, flying where even 2/2 would make a difference based on the low cloud and rain 🙂   I actually have mine set to 3/3 but have yet to see it in action.  Thank heaven for IFR or I woould be completely grounded this week in OnAir in my little BN-2 Islander bouncing all over the place 🙂

Graham

Edited August 13, 2021 by Moria15

[TheFamilyMan 286]

5 hours ago, Nyxx said:

When my first 3080 needed to be replaced, i put in my old 1070 and its no suprize you cannot run 6/6. Pre SU5 I think 2/2 would be hard. I had to turn down setting and LOD even with just the GPU change.

With your CPU your systerm is begging for a 30XX

Complete agreement, been hoping to do that since the 3080 ti released (the 3080's 10GB just doesn't cut it for me).  Knew when I built my system about a year and a half ago that I wanted to retire my gtx 1070 soon and almost bought a gtx 2080 S at that time, but its 8GB was a deal breaker plus the 30 series was just about to be released.  I now kick myself for not getting that 2080 S for about $660...if only I had known what the gcard market soon would become

I've been surprised, and mildly pleased, that my gtx 1070 handles my base settings well enough to drive a 2560x1440 panel at 30 fps, but yeah it's really holding back my MSFS performance but I'm not willing to spend $2000 or more to upgrade it.

Seeing how LOD 6/6 really stresses my i7 10700 at 30 fps, I can't see how a 3080/3090 could get around that computation limitation, but dang, how I'd love to give it a try.  Besides, 6/6 was simply a test I ran to humor myself.

 

Edited August 13, 2021 by TheFamilyMan

[iFlySimX 772]

My 3080 has HUGE stutters when panning with anything above 3ish. 

[Nyxx 6,994]

3 minutes ago, iFlySimX said:

My 3080 has HUGE stutters when panning with anything above 3ish. 

I only get stutters when looking around with big left to right movments on the ground, but once air born all that stops. SU6 hopefully will fix that.