I’m struggling these days…

[ahsmatt7 1,199]

Hello to the folks who choose to listen.

I have been flightsimming since was 8 years old. I’m 32 now. It met my love for aviation and my motivation to be an airline pilot alive all through the years and through me earning all my required ratings and certificates. I even continued to flight sim through my regional pilot career. 
 

I started with fs98 and have gone all the way through to the newest msfs only using p3d v2-4.5. I have had such great flights and memories of all these sims.

However, these days, I’m struggling. I put p3d to the side when msfs came along and I hadn’t picked it up since. Until SU5 came out for msfs. Yes, great performance was had….until one would pan around and then it became a stuttering mess. FPS would drop by more then half and the frame times were horrible.

Yesterday, I decided to install p3d v5 hf2 along with all the pmdg birds, fslabs and the maddog. I installed the flight beam and fsdt sceneries as well as active sky. I repurchased my navigraph subscription because I was so excited to see what v5 was all about.

I fired up the sim to do a quick hop from DFW to IAH in the newer NG3. I tell you what! The performance was awesome! So smooth, no stutters….while I was parked at the gate. The taxi out was so nice. I was truly happy. I could forgo the dates graphics compared to msfs. However, the sim still looked darn good!

things were going so well until I started my takeoff roll, at that point my fps would go from 40s and 50s to 20s every 2 seconds. Because of this, there was stuttering galore. 
 

At this point, I’m starting to lose faith in this hobby. Something so fun and so rewarding is now a word not allowed to deal with….on both titles!

long story short, my p3d v5 hf2 is stuttering like crazy every 2 seconds or so and the experience is abysmal as a result. I want to get back into p3d. Will someone please help?

stats:

8700k OCed to 5.0

rtx 3070 running 1440p g-sync 

32gb of ram at 3200mhz

its on a hdd with plenty of extra space.

running w10 fresh install with only msfs, p3d and a tiny handful of other steam games.

[fppilot 4,371]

Deleted. Responded based on incorrect sim!

Edited August 27, 2021 by Ray Proudfoot
Long quote removed

[40track 80]

44 minutes ago, ahsmatt7 said:

Hello to the folks who choose to listen.

I have been flightsimming since was 8 years old. I’m 32 now. It met my love for aviation and my motivation to be an airline pilot alive all through the years and through me earning all my required ratings and certificates. I even continued to flight sim through my regional pilot career. 
 

I started with fs98 and have gone all the way through to the newest msfs only using p3d v2-4.5. I have had such great flights and memories of all these sims.

However, these days, I’m struggling. I put p3d to the side when msfs came along and I hadn’t picked it up since. Until SU5 came out for msfs. Yes, great performance was had….until one would pan around and then it became a stuttering mess. FPS would drop by more then half and the frame times were horrible.

Yesterday, I decided to install p3d v5 hf2 along with all the pmdg birds, fslabs and the maddog. I installed the flight beam and fsdt sceneries as well as active sky. I repurchased my navigraph subscription because I was so excited to see what v5 was all about.

I fired up the sim to do a quick hop from DFW to IAH in the newer NG3. I tell you what! The performance was awesome! So smooth, no stutters….while I was parked at the gate. The taxi out was so nice. I was truly happy. I could forgo the dates graphics compared to msfs. However, the sim still looked darn good!

things were going so well until I started my takeoff roll, at that point my fps would go from 40s and 50s to 20s every 2 seconds. Because of this, there was stuttering galore. 
 

At this point, I’m starting to lose faith in this hobby. Something so fun and so rewarding is now a word not allowed to deal with….on both titles!

long story short, my p3d v5 hf2 is stuttering like crazy every 2 seconds or so and the experience is abysmal as a result. I want to get back into p3d. Will someone please help?

stats:

8700k OCed to 5.0

rtx 3070 running 1440p g-sync 

32gb of ram at 3200mhz

its on a hdd with plenty of extra space.

running w10 fresh install with only msfs, p3d and a tiny handful of other steam games.

You set HDR off and Affinitymask in Prepar3d.cfg? VSYNC on? PMDG aircraft turn panel mipmap off 

And if you have issues with terrain spikes use HxD editor removing them from the hazards.bgl file editing CC into the whole file and saving.

Edited August 27, 2021 by 40track
Added info

[dave2013 1,130]

2 hours ago, 40track said:

And if you have issues with terrain spikes use HxD editor removing them from the hazards.bgl file editing CC into the whole file and saving.

Can't you just change the extension of the hazards scenery file, e.g. hazards.off?

Dave

[Christopher Low 5,353]

Persistent stutters in certain locations in P3Dv4 was one of the reasons why I lost interest in flight simulation earlier this year. It was the last straw in a gradual flightsim "burn out" that I had been experiencing off and on over the past two years. I ultimately decided to uninstall P3D, and look elsewhere for my entertainment until the "passion" returns.

[Ray Proudfoot 8,954]

8 hours ago, ahsmatt7 said:

I fired up the sim to do a quick hop from DFW to IAH in the newer NG3. I tell you what! The performance was awesome! So smooth, no stutters….while I was parked at the gate. The taxi out was so nice. I was truly happy. I could forgo the dates graphics compared to msfs. However, the sim still looked darn good!

things were going so well until I started my takeoff roll, at that point my fps would go from 40s and 50s to 20s every 2 seconds. Because of this, there was stuttering galore. 

I’ve had experiences with FSDT Dallas Ft Worth when lining up for departure. It’s to do with dynamic lighting and something in the design of the runway.

Turn off dynamic lighting at these older airports. They were designed for FSX and haven’t really been updated for the new features in P3D. Hence one reason they can be bought so cheaply. Upgrades are seriously required but MSFS seems to have priority - understandably so.

Turning off landing lights will also help. Not realistic but it helps performance a lot on the take off run. Once the wheels leave the ground performance is restored.

[40track 80]

7 hours ago, dave2013 said:

Can't you just change the extension of the hazards scenery file, e.g. hazards.off?

Dave

You could but it may make the program unstable looking for a file that doesn't exist. So i just mod the file internally. Not to say any other points are valid.

Edited August 27, 2021 by 40track

[DChockey08 299]

I think these discussions often need to be brought down to earth. When people mention (not specifically in this thread but in general) that FSX has been out for 15 years and we are still having performance issues with the core sim, I think we need to remember how the sim we are using now is different. 

My guess is if most of us were using P3Dv5 and adjusting settings so that the visuals matched the original FSX, no one would have any problems running at 50-60 FPS in most settings. 

Now we have dynamic lighting, 4K monitors, ORBX global and regions, much higher level of detail radius (specifically autogen), resource-heavy study level aircraft, PBR, etc, etc.. 

And yet people sometimes say "I'm getting the same performance today vs 10 years ago!" Well, yes, but the sim you're using is much more evolved than it was 10 years ago. Use the sim you had 10 years ago and you will have no problem. 

The "problem" (if you can call it that) that does still remain is that that innovations to the P3D platform seem to be a few years ahead of what the consumer hardware market will allow (remember when dynamic lighting was first introduced, or what we are seeing now with EA 3d clouds).. And so we are always keen on trying these new features as soon as possible and then wondering why we are sacrificing so much in terms of performance because our hardware is not there yet. 

[psolk 3,040]

29 minutes ago, DChockey08 said:

I think these discussions often need to be brought down to earth. When people mention (not specifically in this thread but in general) that FSX has been out for 15 years and we are still having performance issues with the core sim, I think we need to remember how the sim we are using now is different. 

My guess is if most of us were using P3Dv5 and adjusting settings so that the visuals matched the original FSX, no one would have any problems running at 50-60 FPS in most settings. 

Now we have dynamic lighting, 4K monitors, ORBX global and regions, much higher level of detail radius (specifically autogen), resource-heavy study level aircraft, PBR, etc, etc.. 

And yet people sometimes say "I'm getting the same performance today vs 10 years ago!" Well, yes, but the sim you're using is much more evolved than it was 10 years ago. Use the sim you had 10 years ago and you will have no problem. 

The "problem" (if you can call it that) that does still remain is that that innovations to the P3D platform seem to be a few years ahead of what the consumer hardware market will allow (remember when dynamic lighting was first introduced, or what we are seeing now with EA 3d clouds).. And so we are always keen on trying these new features as soon as possible and then wondering why we are sacrificing so much in terms of performance because our hardware is not there yet. 

While you aren't wrong that the sim has evolved I would argue that hardware is not there yet.  Other games and simulators have no issues implementing things like dynamic lighting, PBR etc etc without the performance issues of Flight Simulators.  There are plenty of DX12 titles and we've seen what the Unreal engine is capable of.  We've also seen what Nvidia is capable of however bringing those things to fruition on 10 year old code is always going to be a challenge.  Retro-fitting new features into old cold is undoubtedly more complicated than a ground up coding.

We always make these excuses for flight simulators and yes, you are right, we could all set our systems back 10 years and I bet we would still have performance issues.  

Think about this for a second, the new Ford F150 has more lines of code than a 787, the Space Shuttle or a SR35...   THAT is how quick coding is progressing and how "new code" changes the game.  They couldn't retrofit the new F150 capabilities into a 10 year old platform though, it needs a ground up rebuild to become a new F150 Lightning...   At some point adding new features to old code breaks it and we have seen that with EA, Dynamic lighting, PBR etc. EA works, PBR works, Dynamic Lighting all work in DX12, it was P3D that had an issue implementing them into old code without causing issues.  

I just don't buy the flightsim is ahead of hardware argument " anymore," current HW should be able to crush these titles.   Every title I have for my PC's I just set to Ultra and go and don't worry about performance.  Flight Simulators should be no different.   

Edited August 27, 2021 by psolk

[kevinfirth 1,396]

22 minutes ago, DChockey08 said:

The "problem" (if you can call it that) that does still remain is that that innovations to the P3D platform seem to be a few years ahead of what the consumer hardware market will allow (remember when dynamic lighting was first introduced, or what we are seeing now with EA 3d clouds).. And so we are always keen on trying these new features as soon as possible and then wondering why we are sacrificing so much in terms of performance because our hardware is not there yet. 

+1  I dont see it as a problem, its just forward looking.  Flight sims in particular have always been demanding on current hardware, and its always been expensive to keep on the bleeding edge of hardware to get the best possible performance.  I'm running an i9 10850K at 5.1 all cores, paired with a 3090, and I can sustain 30fps at 4k in any aircraft with max settings, EA on and 2x SSAA.  Less demanding aircraft allow me to bump up the framerate to 50fps smoothly, OR to increase the AA to 4x.  Unfortunately the 3090 is not capable of running 50fps in 4k using 4xSSAA.  Maybe in a few years 😛

[simbol 5,819]

31 minutes ago, kevinfirth said:

4xSSAA.

SSAA is a very old anti-aliasing technology.. I hope P3D and other sims migrate to better way to do things.. more MODERN

S.

[Rogen 1,087]

 

38 minutes ago, psolk said:

Think about this for a second, the new Ford F150 has more lines of code than a 787, the Space Shuttle or a SR35

Now there's your problem...

It's a Ford... "Fix Or Replace Daily".

No wonder there's so many lines of code, probably as buggy as hell too.

I actually work for a software sale and R&D company, and more lines of code does not equal better.

And any rewrite is guaranteed to introduce more bugs and problems than the original, since you'd be actually starting form scratch.

But all in all P3D is really about procedual training where a single sale might be some 40 million odd dollars and using scenery the likes of which we won't be seeing.

Cheers

 

Edited August 27, 2021 by Rogen

[psolk 3,040]

2 minutes ago, Rogen said:

 

Now there's your problem...

It's a Ford... "Fix Or Replace Daily".

No wonder there's so many lines of code, probably as buggy as hell too.

I actually work for a software sale and R&D company, and more lines of code does not equal better.

And any rewrite is guaranteed to introduce more bugs and problems than the original, since you'd be actually starting form scratch.

But all in all P3D is really about procedual training where a single sale might be some 40 million odd dollars and using scenery the likes of which we won't be seeing.

Cheers

 

Haha, credit where credit is due all the newer cars from US manufacturers are getting better.  Granted I focus on a specific part of the markets but the new Ford and Chevy performance cars are no joke!  Cadillac has built one of the best race cars in the world.  The new Lightning is pretty impressive, especially when you saw Ford using them to power houses in Texas after the storms.  (Great PR BTW)   The new pickups today are ridiculous, a Dually is $120,000!!!!    OK, I digress LOL

Your last point is spot on though.  I do wonder how you use it as a procedural trainer at 15-30 FPS though.  Do their commercial customers A.  Dumb the scenery down completely to focus on procedural training only  B:  Get different code than their Acadamic versions with more capabilities C.  Have multiple CPU's daisy chained to give Watson like performance LOL.  

My personal guess after using Delta's simulators is actually A.  They forget the scenery and focus on the procedures.  

[kevinfirth 1,396]

33 minutes ago, simbol said:

SSAA is a very old anti-aliasing technology.. I hope P3D and other sims migrate to better way to do things.. more MODERN

S.

Well I quite agree, but I can only work with what the sim offers...  

[Christopher Low 5,353]

From what I can remember, I could run FSX back in 2014 with 8xS AA and 4x SGSS AA enabled.....and it was a better solution than anything that I have seen in P3D to date.

Edited August 27, 2021 by Christopher Low