Viewgroup in P3dv5.3

[adaniel 18]

I have got three 55’’ 4K tves to use as monitors in my simulator. I have read the instructions for setting up a viewgroup, watched  Youtube videos, and tried a lot, but with no success. I dint know what I am doing wrong, but I think it has to do with the values I put in for the views. I have tried to make a viewgroup with three views, left, center and right, and I think I have connected the views to the right display, but when I test, all the views are pressed together. Can anyone give me some advice what to do?

Tor Arild Danielsen

[willy647 193]

Have a look at this

 

[Sabre57 46]

If you can post your viewgroup.xml I can take a look at it.  Maybe I can spot something. 

[Biggles2010 343]

3 hours ago, willy647 said:

Have a look at this

The OP was asking about View Groups in P3D v5.3. 

 

4 hours ago, adaniel said:

Can anyone give me some advice what to do?

The process is not too difficult in practice, but it is difficult to describe here. For advice, I would suggest using the 'View Frustrum' method described in the P3D instructions. Note that screen numbering is from left to right. Check each of your screens is shown with a correct ID number. From memory, each screen shows the default ID as 1 and the centre and right screens need to be changed to 2 and 3 when setting them up.  It sounds like you may have left all your screens as number 1.

I suggest labelling the 3 view frustrums within the View Group as left, centre and right. Each screen should have a horizontal view angle of something like 50 degrees, (this will vary a bit with viewing distances etc). The centre screen horizontal view frustrum would then be set as -25 (on the left)and +25 on the right). The left screen view frustrum would the be set as -75 to -25 and the right view screen would be set as +25 and +75. These values can be varied later to correct for screen edges etc. Obviously there are other settings required, but have a look at these first.

Edited April 10, 2023 by Biggles2010

[adaniel 18]

Thank you for advice. I have now managed to get three views, but  the views are static. My x- box controller which I use to change and move views does not work, and my fps are redused from 60 to 11. I have not had time to try to solve this yet, but if someone know what can be wrong, I will be happy to get advice.

Tor Arild

[jlohrenz 133]

Adding views will always reduce your FPS as you are causing your system to generate 2 or 3 times as many pixels.  The processing involved with viewgroups will also take a hit on FPS.  Without knowing your system specs it is hard to tell you if there is something else factoring into your FPS loss, but it is not unexpected.

[adaniel 18]

My system is I7 13700, MSI GeForce RTX 4080 16 Gb and 32Gb Ram. The simulator is on a M2SSD harddisk.

[Sabre57 46]

5 hours ago, adaniel said:

My system is I7 13700, MSI GeForce RTX 4080 16 Gb and 32Gb Ram. The simulator is on a M2SSD harddisk.

Please post your viewgroup.xml file.  You should be getting a lot more performance from your setup.  I'm running 3 4k screens on a 3090 and getting around 25-30 frames.  

[adaniel 18]

Here is my ViewGroups.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<SimBase.Document Type="ConfigurationFile" version="5,3">
    <Descr>AceXML Document</Descr>
    <ViewGroups.ViewGroupSet>
        <ViewGroup>
            <Name>Auto-Fill Desktop</Name>
            <GridSetup>
                <AutoDetect>True</AutoDetect>
                <EdgeOverlap>-2.500000,-2.500000,-5.000000,-5.000000</EdgeOverlap>
            </GridSetup>
        </ViewGroup>
        <ViewGroup>
            <Name>Test</Name>
            <GridSetup>
            </GridSetup>
            <View>
                <Name>test left</Name>
                <ViewFrustum>
                    <SideAngles>-35.000000,35.000000,18.000000,-18.000000</SideAngles>
                    <OffsetPBH>0.000000,0.000000,-70.000000</OffsetPBH>
                </ViewFrustum>
            </View>
            <View>
                <Name>test center</Name>
                <DisplayID>2</DisplayID>
                <ViewFrustum>
                    <SideAngles>-35.000000,35.000000,18.000000,-18.000000</SideAngles>
                </ViewFrustum>
            </View>
            <View>
                <Name>test right</Name>
                <DisplayID>3</DisplayID>
                <ViewFrustum>
                    <SideAngles>-35.000000,35.000000,18.000000,-18.000000</SideAngles>
                    <OffsetPBH>0.000000,0.000000,70.000000</OffsetPBH>
                </ViewFrustum>
            </View>
        </ViewGroup>
    </ViewGroups.ViewGroupSet>
</SimBase.Document>

[Sabre57 46]

So I don't see anything wrong with your viewgroup so something else is causing that big of a performance drop.  While Jason is absolutely correct about an FPS hit between 1 and 3 monitors it shouldn't be that big. What made the biggest difference for me was the following 2 items:

- The resolution of the monitors in your sim should match the resolution in windows

- My 55" TVs are set at 30hz refresh rate.  P3d is set with Vsync on, triple buffering on and FPS set to unlimited.  

Beyond that the biggest frame reducers for me are weather and the scenery environment complexity based on my location

I've also found that any anti-aliasing settings above 2ssaa, especially when running at 4k resolutions, doesn't add anything visually and creates a higher load on the GPU. 

After that you need to play with all of the other settings that impact the sims performance.  Good luck and let us know how it goes.

 

Edited April 11, 2023 by Sabre57

[adaniel 18]

Thank you for advice. The resulution of the displays are 2560x 1440 both in Windows and in the sim. I will do som testing to night and tomorrow, and let you know what I find.

[adaniel 18]

After hours of testing, I still dont have a functional Viewgroup. When I removed Chaseplane, I managed to get a coherent picture on all three monitors, but the fps are still 10-12. I have also tried to use my xbox controller to handle the views as in Chaseplane, but 
with no sucsess. For the moment I have started to think of reluctantly leave P3d, which I have been very fond of for many years.

[jlohrenz 133]

My suggestion would be to go back to the basics.  Start with 1 screen and verify everything is working properly.  All it takes is one setting to really throw things off.  Add your second view, and again do some adjustments, monitor FPS.  Then add the third.

As an alternative you can look into Fly Elise to help properly configure and calibrate your displays.  It generates the viewgroup file for you.

[adaniel 18]

Today I have done some more testing. I have started with one monitor, then added the second and the third.No change in fps using the Viewgroup. I have also redused my settings in the sim. In normal one monitor view, the fps increased a little, but in the viewgroup it was the same low 10-12 fps. I also tested with vert.sync on and off, and with tripple buffering on and off. No change in fps in viewgroup. When I increased fps to unlimited, I got a small increase in fps in the viewgroup to 14-16 fps. Now I dont know what more to do. I am quite sure this has to do with software, because in FS2020 I have 30-35 fps all the time at airports and 40-45 at cruise. Had it been a hardware problem, I think it would have showed up in FS2020 also.

Tor Arild

[Sabre57 46]

At any point during your changes have you let the sim rebuild your prepar3d.cfg file?  Sometimes, doing that can help.  Save any manual changes that you've made, delete the file, and then start the sim.  No guarantees but it's a simple thing to try.