P3Dv5.3...WOW!

[birdguy 3,804]

Yesterday I installed P3Dv5.3.  What a performance improvement over v5.2.

I have a saved flightplan I use for measuring performance.  It starts a Gnoss Field in Novato California (KDVO) and ends at San Francico IAP (KSFO). About a 20 minute flight that covers rural areas, urban areas and a large city.

In P3Dv5.2 I started out at 30 FPS and by the time I overflying San Francisco I was down to 13-16 FPS.

With v5.3 I am a steady 35-45 FPS all the way.

In P3Dv5.2 I has several skips along the way at various places.  I had 3-4 second pause over the Richmond Bridge.  4-5 second pauses at Angel Island and Alcatraz.

With v5.3 I got a single pause over San Francisco that lasted about 1-2 seconds.

I have the same settings in both v5.2 and v5.3

I flew both flights in the Lionheart Quest Kodiak.

Noel

[jimh 21]

Same experience here.  I had a solid, stable 5.2, reluctant to move.  Now in 5.3, I can move sliders to the right far further than I would ever have dared, and the sim is smoother than ever.

Seems like magic!  😃

Jim

[F737MAX 4,729]

Yes, Noel. Totally agree.
I can happily say that v5.3HF1.1 performance is significantly better than all preceding versions.

Previously, running a high airliner flight over an Orbx TrueEarth scenery would start to cause blurry terrain and significant pop-in of autogen and FPS would start to drop to 25-26 FPS, even with P3D settings with a mixed set of low and medium.

Now, I can put settings sliders to high/dense and extremely dense on a lot of options and I rarely ever drop below my externally fixed rate of 30 FPS.
And that's in a very demanding situation where I have about a hundred AI aircraft, am approaching a large payware airport, in a TE region, with a complex payware airliner, during inclement weather/in a gloomy dusk scene like below. That would have caused a stutter fest before. It's now multiple times better than what I used to experience with lower settings.



https://i.imgur.com/Vf76xRr.png
https://i.imgur.com/LR5TLtz.png

Settings:
https://i.imgur.com/q0PhClW.png
https://i.imgur.com/tgZaJ4O.png
https://i.imgur.com/fjKsEQD.png

Well done P3D developer team!
 

[jcorstjens 57]

v5.3 is nearly perfect! We still only need real sloped runways! Says a PPL pilot!

[The Flight Level 2,070]

2 hours ago, F737NG said:

Yes, Noel. Totally agree.
I can happily say that v5.3HF1.1 performance is significantly better than all preceding versions.

Previously, running a high airliner flight over an Orbx TrueEarth scenery would start to cause blurry terrain and significant pop-in of autogen and FPS would start to drop to 25-26 FPS, even with P3D settings with a mixed set of low and medium.

Now, I can put settings sliders to high/dense and extremely dense on a lot of options and I rarely ever drop below my externally fixed rate of 30 FPS.
And that's in a very demanding situation where I have about a hundred AI aircraft, am approaching a large payware airport, in a TE region, with a complex payware airliner, during inclement weather/in a gloomy dusk scene like below. That would have caused a stutter fest before. It's now multiple times better than what I used to experience with lower settings.



https://i.imgur.com/Vf76xRr.png
https://i.imgur.com/LR5TLtz.png

Settings:
https://i.imgur.com/q0PhClW.png
https://i.imgur.com/tgZaJ4O.png
https://i.imgur.com/fjKsEQD.png

Well done P3D developer team!
 

Absolutely beautiful!

[Skywolf 971]

3 hours ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

LM believe they have a fix for these pauses, we should be Beta testing them very soon.  Also some addition items.

You can gain even better frametime delta consistency (what I call smoothness since I'm not an FPS chaser) by optimizing your AffinityMask and core assignments using various tools like Process Lasso, FSUIPC, cmd, etc.

If we follow LM's release history there will be at least a 5.4 and maybe a 5.5 before year end and V6 towards end of 2022 or early 2023.

If V6 contains the following:

• Native Ambient Occlusion support (squash all claims of "cartoon look")
• Volumetric Sun/Moon lighting sources 
• Orbx Global + HD Buildings, HD Trees + all TE products (converted to PBR with AO support) and included in the base package
• SDK tools that don't require roundtrips (i.e. exit P3D, make changes, start P3D, exit P3D, make changes, start P3D)

I think there would be enough user market to keep DLC providers interested.

Cheers, Rob.

I hope LM can finally give the middle finger to devs who install files into the sim root (when time comes to upgrade, no one can defend sim root addons work the best - new method came in 3.4 we are at 5.3 now....no excuses PMDG!!!).  Can we get updatable Navigraph data into the sim.  To be honest, in this area Xplane does wonders. 

Legacy has to go now.

Sim should not slow down with road traffic etc, I need FPS boost like I get with Xplane11.55-Vulkan.  I am getting close to 70fps over TE Cali Earth HD edition (heck with 30 fps).  It is insanely smooth in VR too (unreal experience).

 

Regardless of these issues, 5.3HF1-HF1 (is a very good release nonetheless)

 

Edited January 13, 2022 by Skywolf

[B777ER 2,348]

5 hours ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

LM believe they have a fix for these pauses, we should be Beta testing them very soon.  Also some addition items. 

Fingers and toes crossed. I hope it's a short beta and a fast rollout of HF2. 

[G-YMML1 552]

Personally I have never had the performance issues with the 5.2HF1 (though I'm running i9-9900k@5.0 and 2080Ti at 2k resolution), so after 4 weeks of release it's worth to ask what are the true improvements of 5.3 over 5.2? I see (even on screenshots) that EA dusk/dawn has more realistic colors now, but what else? I guess that the volumetric clouds is still "no-go" at ultra and people still prefer to use legacy clouds even on powerful PCs.

I have had such a good run with 5.2HF1 since last July (ZERO CTD!!!) with more than 70 flights that I'm pretty much reluctant to move forward unless there are major improvements/game changers. Full reinstall and massive back-ups scary me 🙂  

[F737MAX 4,729]

12 hours ago, Skywolf said:

I hope LM can finally give the middle finger to devs who install files into the sim root

Yup and the ones whose entire programs install in the C:/(username)/documents folder.

 

I think there's life left in v5 before a v6. We saw PBR introduced with 4.4 and improved night lighting with 4.5 (not to forget the addition of the donkey and cart! 😄)

Anyway, notwithstanding the issues to be dealt with in HF2, this really is the best version yet.

[CW46 101]

1 hour ago, G-YMML1 said:

 

I have had such a good run with 5.2HF1 since last July (ZERO CTD!!!) with more than 70 flights that I'm pretty much reluctant to move forward unless there are major improvements/game changers. Full reinstall and massive back-ups scary me 🙂  

I did a full install of 5.3 when released, then reverted back to 5.2 after two days of stuttering. Very frustrated to the point where I purchased XP11 for a breath of fresh air and was impressed with the performance increase using Vulkan and program interface over the current P3D installation. Frankly unless there are significant improvements down the road for P3D (I have been a user since V3) I am more interested in what XP12 may have to offer at the moment. Not giving up on P3D but based on the progress of development in the eight years of my use it has me looking at the alternatives.

[Luke 747]

16 hours ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

LM believe they have a fix for these pauses, we should be Beta testing them very soon.  Also some addition items.

Are there any plans to implement some sort of error/warning log for long pauses, like they do with content errors? I'm not sure how much help it will provide, but it's a start to tracking down some of the issues and causes.

Cheers!

[BerndB 342]

I love the new feature which was introduced with 5.3 that the percipitation like snow and rain is reflecting or interacting with dynamic light. I had a very immersive approach into Oslo ENGM arround christmas while it was snowing. It was very hard to concentrate on the runway and while the landing light beam produced a white flickering wall in front, just like in reallife. It really looks as the same if you turn on the high beam front light at your car in a snowfall, where you would have the same effect, that you can´t see the road anymore. 

Those small steps forward, can make a huge difference in case of immersion.

On the downside LM has brought back the legacy starfield into EA which is really a step back i can´t understand.

[jon b 1,710]

I’ve been using 5.3 in VR and while it would be stretching things to say it fully replicates the feeling of flight , what I can say in all honesty and without exaggeration is that it fully replicates the feeling of a fixed base simulator ,that’s a level D sim with the motion off basically.

Ive stared out of the window of the full flight sims over the years and thought that although the graphics may be visually less impressive than what I have at home it still replicates the feeling of flight better. I’ve concluded that was down to the complete smoothness of the graphics’s motion.

Now at home in VR with  the smoothness of 5.3 it genuinely feels like I’m in a full sized simulator as I come in to land, it’s incredible really.

I always had to concede XP11 was the smoother sim for VR flying , but I don’t think that is the case any longer.

[edpatino 1,881]

Very happy to see LM's P3D is still very much alive!. Enjoy!

[B777ER 2,348]

46 minutes ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

Not that I'm aware off, but agree it would be nice.  A sim object GUID pointer would be nice also ... like crosshairs one can move over any part of a rendered scene to get the GUID and it's source file ... this would slow things down so perhaps a special "explore mode" or "dev mode" state one could initiate via command line on the Prepar3d.exe (along with the many other command line options it currently supports).

Cheers, Rob.

No offense, but was hoping not to see you in the forum's today. As in beta testing the LM HF. 🙂