An End To The Blurries (and autogen popping)

[EngineRoom 205]

One of the problems that plagued my FSX all the way through the last six years was the blurries - when the terrain texture loading couldn't keep up with the aircraft. Even though I could maintain a decent framerate all the time the blurries would always rear their ugly head sooner or later. This used to pretty much spoil any flights made in high speed aircraft like fighter aircraft. None of the tweaks worked for me in this regard. I even tried turning all the autogen and scenery complexity sliders all the way back, clearing the weather and turning off AI, and after a minute or two of flight anything over 350 knots at low altitudes would leave my terrain a blurry mess.

 

After my initial testing of P3D2 the blurries seem to pretty much cured for me.

 

My system is a 2010 vintage i7-950 overclocked to 4Ghz with a GTX480. No slouch but certainly not cutting edge any more. I settled on 4xMSAA, 16x AF, all graphics settings on or maxed out except for autogen (both building and vegetation) set to very dense, and scenery detail radius set to high (which is I believe the original FSX default high setting of 4.5). Tesselation on ultra, HDR lighting on and all that other new stuff. Locked at 30 fps. Windows 8.1 with the latest Nvidia WHQL drivers installed.

 

Took off from Manston EGMH in the F-22 and proceeded to carve a path at tree top height across southern England at 400 knots. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the terrain textures had no problem keeping up with my progress. On my FSX setup in a similarly fast aircraft this would result in the terrain becoming a blurry mess and crazy autogen popping after a minute or two. Feeling a little adventurous I pushed the speed up to 500 knots, still at treetop height. I was even more impressed to find the terrain textures were still keeping up and my system didn't appear to be even breaking a sweat. Finally I decided to go for broke and pushe the speed up to Mach 1, still at tree top height. The terrain was still whizzing by at 30fps with absolutely no signs of blurry textures or autogen popping.

 

Very, very impressive. This alone for me at least makes P3D2 worth the price of admission.

 

A couple of other observations for those interested:

 

 - The new water isn't as impressive as I had hoped. I'm getting some ugly shimmering effect in the middle distance.

 

 - Heavy clouds (and the new volumetric fog) are still frame rate killers on my system at least.

 

 - Flying across southern England I am reminded of how awful the default FSX terrain textures were. I'm off to download the updated FTXG!

[molleh 451]

That's really interesting, because the blurries persist for me in P3D v2.

[DylanM 1,069]

I had the same observations as you...until I installed FTXG, so beware.

 

Even after dropping settings, terrain is now blurring (this happens even at low speeds). Post back if you have different results.

[styckx 1,872]

Yup.. There is definitely blurries still. I get them on vanilla scenery with GA props  default to the game.  I even turned down autogen to dense and still got them. Seeing 100% single core usage tells all I need to know about the cause of them. 

[n4gix 4,949]

Seeing 100% single core usage tells all I need to know about the cause of them. 

Have you tried adding an affinity mask?

[styckx 1,872]

Have you tried adding an affinity mask?

 

That was the only thing I added  (AM 84 because I have HT on) to the cfg and then removed it as I saw zero difference. By default now v2 leaves Core 0 open for the OS, then dumps the majority on core 2 (this is always near 100% while the two remaining cores bounce around in the lower usage..

 

This is typical behavior.. 

 

 

[ntme9 3]

Yep people are seeing 37.5 % max usage with 4c/8t cpus and 75% with4c/4t cpus. 3 thread optimized.

[DylanM 1,069]

Also tried AM and didn't see a difference (also running HT on).

 

Then tried setting frames to "unlimited" and saw a marked improvement in the blurries (which is exactly the opposite effect I got in FSX...).

[CarlosF 1,243]

I thought v2 was going to be tweakless!!!

[Robin1 1]

styckx....

 

what program are you using that provides all that information?

[styckx 1,872]

styckx....

 

what program are you using that provides all that information?

 

MSI Afterburner + RivaTuner Statistics Server. 

[Marith 2]

Try disabling hyperthreading (in the bios) and see if that makes a difference.  I have hyperthreading disabled and I get up to 100% usage on the last 3 cores - the first core is reserved for the OS.  I haven't had to set the affinitymask setting as this is done automatically by P3D.

[Jimmy RFR 406]

For what it's worth, I decided to do a high speed low level test - used the F-22 - took off from KJFK, looped around Manhattan, then took off up state at about 200 agl @ 600 knts. Flew about 15 minutes, then I started to get a bit bored of the test, not a single blurry.

 

Stock P3D, unlimited fps.

 

[edit]

I should note, it took a bit to actually get bored - not used to flying like that in FSX. All that autogen at a low level, it's like there was no such thing as LODs.

[Guest]

 

 

HDR lighting on and all that other new stuff. Locked at 30 fps.

 

Do you mean that you also have ALL the shadows on…?

 

Concerning FTX Global: I also had the impression performance dropped after installing it. I can't really check it anymore (I don't want to uninstall it just for that) but if someone is planning on installing FTXG, PLEASE do some tests before you do so and repeat the tests after installing FTXG. I am really curious if FTXG really influences performance or not.

[davenicoll 104]

 

 

My system is a 2010 vintage i7-950 overclocked to 4Ghz with a GTX480

 

You got all that from a GTX480 card...Wow!!