vivoune

I love how every year the PC is said to die. I know that's a bit a thread digging but it's a relevent subject every year it seems. Such a statement doesn't make sense, it would be like saying microchip is dying or claiming cars are soon to be obsolete. It will always be there and leading, it isn't proprietary, it will evolve and everything else down the line will take adventage of its evolution. Everything is based and developped on computers, it is the genesis and most common denominator of everything that reaches both consumers and professionals. The only thing that would render a computer obsolete and a thing of the past is a more recent computer. About the console/PC debate, any consoles are basically locked specialized computers with a custom operating system and are of course intimately tied to the computer tech evolution. The more advanced and the more efficient computer components gets, the better consoles can be once they the manufacturers feel they can market a new one. The whole world's research, industry, military and general consumer tech market is based on computers. Unless we come across a massive technological breakthrough that would allow us to think and build computers differently the only thing that can really be "a thing of the past" are peripherals and the way we interact with computers (virtual reality, holograms etc). Should we manage to go through with such breakthrough like quantum computing for exemple, it will still be very much "computers".

If you simply check the home official page of P3D, it clearly states it is a project that is also catterred for private pilots, enthusiast and anyone willing to train itself in aviation as long as students, in other words passionate people. If you check most of the featured devs on their main page you have general public studios and resellers like JustFlight, A2A, Razbam, Milviz, Hi-Fi, Alabeo etc. PMDG is even the currently main featured addon. Although they're all incredible devs I don't think any of these products would be used by real pilots in their training course, of it all I think PMDG probably developps the most in-depth products yet I highly doubt any real 777, 747 or 737 licensed pilot would rely on PMDG's product to train for their license. In any industry, simulators of any kind, military or civilian, in any department, engineering, transportation or systems don't care for nice graphics, shadows or optimisations, these are general public concern. And it certainly doesn't only cost $200... I think we simmers, enthusiasts and wannabe or licensed pilots are very much the bulk of their customers. Their licensing policy just means that they're serious about it, that's it's not a game and shouldn't be treated as such unlike FSX SE for exemple.

Yes, though pixel density is supposedly being handled by the GPU mostly, I'd like to try to at least drop the extra wide resolution and get back to a standard 1440p resolution but the in-game screen resolution option is innoperative for a reason that eludes me.

Yes jimh I thought P3D took full advantage of multiple cores, I was wrong. Thank you for your help guys. I can't find any setting that support both even minimal traffic & minimum autogen scenery at the same time and yet staying above the 20 fps at 3440x1440 screen resolution. Note that this is while flying around one the most demanding places like in Los Angeles Int KLAX & New York Int KJFK. I oscillate around the 30-40 fps in less demanding places, so I guess I'll just limit myself to lesser demanding part of the world until Prepar3d finds a way to let go of its FSX core legacy in order to takes advantage of nowedays hardware.

Yes I found out Autogen and Traffic are the two fps killers. I'm using My traffic 5 along with DukeSan27's Traffic Optimizer tool to get back 5 fps.Shipdriver I'm not running these settings while flying, like I said in the first post, it's for testing purposes. It saddens me that P3D is still as inefficient as FSX to some extent. At such resolution 3440x1440, I guess it comes down to either remove traffic or autogen as I can't seem to get both to work together even at their low settings while staying over the 20 fps. Does any of you know how to change the screen resolution? The in-game resolution setting isn't changing anything.

Sorry for the double post, no editing allowed. I'm also trying to reduce the screen resolution, as usually the pixel density is the biggest fps drainer in any graphical software but the screen resolution option in-game doesn't change anything at all. How does one change its screen resolution in P3D? Ideally I'd try to get from an extra wide 3440x1440 to a regular 2560x1440 and just fly with black bars on the sides, maybe that could give me back enough fps to near the 30 fps .

Thanks your for your help I will try your suggestion and will report back asap that's appreciated. Yes P3d is still very much a CPU oriented software, my CPU would absolutely be the bottleneck but neither CPU nor GPU even get past 50% usage at any time in session, only at startup does the CPU reach 70% at times while loading and then get back to about 35% no matter the fps in game. I'm not using any Nvidia specific settings though and to be honest I never really expected my GPU to be fully used nor have as big as an impact on fps as the CPU, I'm already happy P3D has dedicated many features to the GPU. I just would like my CPU to be used at its full potential instead of sitting at 40% usage while the sim struggle to get past 20 fps. EDIT: Removed prepar3D.cfg, dll.xml & exe.xml but no change insued, CPU & GPU still stuck at around 30-40% utilization while waiting at KJFK with a bit less than 20 fps. I found out that really only one core was being used, the first one is overloaded at 98% while the second core is at around 20%, the last two nearing 5% utilization, thus creating an average total CPU utilization of 30-40%. Is this normal and P3D that inefficient at multithreading?

Thank you for your answers and angle on the problem. Although I've never had a problem with the monitoring softs I use I also have used different monitoring softwares to be sure, which includes Core Temp, aida64, MSIAfterburner, RealTemp & GPU-Z. All readings were consistent across all softs. I also tested all my hardware through stress tests and everything looks good. Like you, having a solid 28-30fps would indeed be nice and I think my hardware can handle it if I can find what's holding it back. But I don't even know where to start to be honest, all other softwares, games and simulations I use call for a full load on at least the CPU or GPU if not both when the fps are starting to get a bit low. I did a fresh install of P3D just a few days ago to be sure although I havent tested it fresh out of the egg addon free. The cooling is a custom water cooling setup I'm using for 2 years now, 6 Noctuas on a push-pull configuration allows for a steady 38-42°C on full load so Temps can't be the issue at least. P3d is installed on a 10 000rpm HDD, the OS (win7 64b) and most addons on an SSD.

Hi there, I'm trying to configure my P3D but I'm having a real hard time getting decent fps, my issue is that as I contently monitor my hardware (custom water cooling rig) I noticed my CPU and GPU utilization barely ever got higher than 35% for the GPU, 45% for the CPU and about 40% of my Ram was ever used. The CPU is an i5 3570k overclocked at 4.6Ghz The GPU is a GTX 970 4Gb Gamer edition from MSI. P3d doesn't even get its fan started no matter the fps. 16 GB of DDR3 ram (4x4) at 1600 MHz Note that the resolution is for an extra wide 34" Screen 3440x1440 Changing to lower resolutions such as regular 1440p & 1080p resolutions didn't have any impact on FPS. In terms of 3rd party I am using -Active Sky Next, -EZDok, -Fftx Global, Vector and EuropeLC -REX 4 textures with the low level clouds replaced by their latest soft cloud software. -### AI Traffic 5.0 I have been benchmarking the sim these past few days trying to find good settings but the only thing that seem to impact fps are the traffic options. I have placed a Carenado B1900D in New york KJFK mega airport in a very cloudy day at noon, thinking that if I can get decent fps here I should be fine pretty much everywhere. fps were observed on various views (cockpit, spot, top down) on all bench & always at the same spot (G Ramp Medium 8). I fiddled with all the options one sub section at a time and most didn't have any significant impact of the fps one way or the other, at this time with all traffic options at about 30% and the whole rest of the sim options almost cranked up at the max (for testing purposes) I get about 15-20 fps with a CPU & GPU utilization around 30-40% and about 60% ram free. FXAA ON MSAA 8 SAMPLES Texture Filtering 4x Texture Resolution 4096x4096 Changing the above OFF or to their lowest setting didn't impact fps at all. level of detail radius Ultra Tesselation factor Ultra Mesh Ratio 5m Texture Ratio 30cm Land detail Texture ON Changing the above settings OFF or to their lowest possible setting only gained a couple fps. Scenery Complexity Extremely Dense Autogen Vegetation Extremely Dense Autogen Building Extremely Dense Changing the above settings OFF or to their lowest possible setting gained about 4 fps. Ticking all options ON or OFF in the Reflection section didn't impact the fps in any way. Ticking all options ON or OFF in the Special effect section didn't impact the fps in any way. Landing lights "illumate grounds", lense flare and HDR also had no impact. Shadow quality Ultra Enable terrain to receive shadows ON Terrain Shadow Cast distance 80 km Cloud Shadow Cast distance 80 km Object Shadow Cast distance 12 km Changing the above settings OFF or to their lowest possible setting didn't impact the fps. Same goes for the weather section, no impact at their minimum or at their absolute maximum Removing all traffic gains about 16 fps up to 32 while setting all traffic (Company, General Aviation, Airport vehicle, Road vehicles, Boats) to 100% bring it to 8 fps. I didn't try to mess up with 3rd party addons options yet. But the under usage of the hardware concerns me, it's frustrating to hardly reach 20 fps with CPU, GPU only at 1/3 or their capacity and still 10gb of ram free. Anyone else in the similar situation ?