P3DV2.2 Beta 2 info/video

[denali 74]

Opinion doesn't matter.  It is a technical distinction.   Be careful what you read.  Many of the pages that talk about micro-stuttering are not.  Even two of the links I have up there.   It is a hardware/driver issue because, with further searching/reading you will find pages that talk about the specific characteristics of different cards and drivers with regard to micro-stutter.   They are like fingerprints.  FSX/P3D is not the only franchise plagued with it, many other graphics-extremophiles from other "games" complain about the issue.  "FCAT" is the only search I can give as a lead to the info, other than maybe "triple monitor" "SLI" "Crysis Mod" and "Crysis 3".  Unfortunately my newborn son has eaten the time I would take to find those links on my archived bookmarks for us.  

 

In reality nobody actually has a perfect handle on the graphics capabilities of current hardware, including the manufacturers.

[Michael Cependa 17]

With this version, is it possible to push the Orbx night lights a decent distance out from the viewpoint?  Aside from the OOM errors, this is pretty much the last problem (except for perhaps the water) preventing me from enjoying P3D v2. 

[Robert McDonald 167]

 

 

Doesn't bother me, but I am curious.  I make a lot of FS videos (outside of the testing I'm doing for LM) and the more compatible I can make them with everyone's hardware the better -- I try to represent "as is", but clearly some people aren't seeing "as is".

 

Hi Rob-

 

You're right, the combo of FRAPS and YouTube is the 'double-whammy' in terms of stuttering.  What looks butter smooth when in flight can look herky-jerky by the time Fraps and YouTube have had their way.

I have switched over to filming with my cell phone instead of Fraps.  At least people can see in 1080p what I'm seeing.  

 

And I never ever let YouTube improve my video with their anti-shake thing.  That fuzzes up the picture and reduces clarity.

 

Any way, your video looks GREAT to me - and congratulations on making P3Dv2 beta looks so incredibly appealing to us X-plane pilots!  (drool!)

 

I have to say though, I'm happy in the Laminar camp.  

 

As they say in Latin "Suum cuique"  (To each his own!)

[Guest]

 

 

I have to say though, I'm happy in the Laminar camp.

 

Not trying to convert anyone, enjoy it Robert!  Competition is good.

 

Some have requested that I do a longer flight to test out VAS, so I did exactly that this evening, it was just a little over 3 hours from CYZT to KSFO using Quality Wings RJ100.  I made some small changes to my Display settings ... AutoGen Building and Vegetation = Very Dense.  Frame rate = Unlimited.  Tripple Buffering = On.  Vsync = On.  Added AffinityMask back = 1364.

 

Flight started in the day time, transitions thru dusk and then into Night ... figured this is the best way to really stress out VAS.  Used Orbx PNW, NCA, and Vector 1.1 with FS Global 2010 FTX Edition and REX 4 Textures, using the QW RJ100 (which is not technically P3DV2 compatible).

 

VAS started at 2.5GB and after touch down at KSFO ended at 3.7GB.  I changed views many times during the flight (again to stress out VAS) from VC to cabin to exterior.

 

I have VAS screenshots and video to follow, but that'll have to wait until tomorrow.  Need to get some rest.

 

Cheers, Rob.

[supersym 53]

Hello bob,

I ask again...

I did'nt saw anything wrote about in your post, but did you use any Overclocking with your i73960x ?

I saw in your profile that  you get 5 Ggz @ 2100Mgrz with ram, but in P3D ?

[rparson99 32]

Rob,

That sounds promising indeed. Though there was a moderate increase in VAS, surely you would have OOM'ed at least 3 times with 2.1! Do you have add on airports installed in this scenario?

 

..... And thanks for taking the time to test and respond to our questions!

[Robert McDonald 167]

 

 

Some have requested that I do a longer flight to test out VAS, so I did exactly that this evening

 

Rob!

 

Great job!  Your hard work and diligent testing is of great benefit to those of us who are engaged in constant battle with memory overhead and frames rate, though I understand right now you are working on the OOM issue (VAS) and the 32-bit glass ceiling of 4.x GB max ram.  It is somewhat scary that those issues persist, even in the "new" P3D (v 2.x), but clearly you are up to the challenge and I admire you and applaud your effort.  No, I'm not trying to convert anyone else to "the other" sim.  As I said in Latin, 'to each his own', and I wouldn't dream of trying to persuade another pilot to move away from FSX or P3D.

 

I freely admit that both FSX -and- P3D can produce some stunning visuals, and for those that don't mind getting under the hood from time to time, can be fine-tuned (largely through the efforts of people such as Word Not Allowed and yourself) to run quite nicely.  Still others purchase machines from vendors that are pre-tuned from the factory to run FSX, another great way to go.

 

The real rub is the wrench-turning.  Since getting XPX up and running, I spend virtually no time under the hood, although I do play with the anti-aliasing from time to time just to see what effect it has on frames.  In XPX, the high-definition rendering (HDR) combined with high anti-aliasing runs butter smooth, but can take a hit when heavy clouds are present.  I guess this is because apparently XPX (like its brethren) can't distinguish between a puffy cloud and a building with a lot of straight edges, and goes crazy trying to anti-alias an object (cloud) that does not NEED anti-aliasing at all.  So that might be something the SkyMaxx developer could address, I don't know.

 

Truth be told, my setup is extremely complex, in terms of hang-on glass cockpit software and associated CDU/MCP/Radio Stack hardware, and it all works and plays quite well, no crashes, the caveat is some of the high-ortho graphic FSX converted scenery (think San Diego Downtown Buildings) which can run 1.5 GB of VRAM -just for that scenery- can cause an issue.  I'm not shook up about that, because it is a conversion of FSX scenery over to X-Plane.

 

At any rate cheers and applause to you Rob, the community is fortunate to have you in the lab helping P3D v2 'be all it can be'.

[HighTowers 1,436]

Great analysis and feedback for LM Rob. Flying around the PNW is one of the most punishing with all the mountains and coastline, and is perfect test for performance, and how VAS is being managed. But if you land at 3.7gb, then we might be struggling if and when PMDG comes to town with an NGX and 777 and big payware airports like YVR and SFO.

 

I think that should be their primary focus, is the VAS. Irregardless of performance, which can always be tuned and even reduced settings to accommodate dynamically, if VAS is not in check, the sim is unusable. 

[Guest]

Flying around the PNW is one of the most punishing with all the mountains and coastline, and is perfect test for performance, and how VAS is being managed.

 

Agree and toss in Orbx NCA and Vector 1.1 into the mix (Vector 1.1 alone consumes 300MB VAS) and REX 4 Textures.  Orbx do provide airports in their region packages which are far better than "default" ones.  But again it'll depend on the airport, some seem to be optimized very well (Thessaloniki, Oslo 2.0) while others not so well optimized like FB KSFO, Aerosoft's Dublin.  But I believe this will change over time as 3rd party developers come to terms with DX11, the type of texture compression it supports, and more.

 

The QW RJ100 was about 150MB less VAS than the PMDG 777 (when I tested in FSX several months ago).  Also need to keep in context the display settings I used in this flight.  And further more, one hopes PMDG 777 is "designed for" P3DV2.x ... if it is, there should be considerably less VAS usage than what we typically saw under FSX.  There are texture compression formats available for DX11 that just aren't available for FSX, one hopes PMDG use these to help reduce their VAS footprint.  There are also many other features PMDG can leverage in P3DV2.x that should help them/us stay within 4GB 32bit limit.

 

During this flight the fps performance was very good until I reached SF/BayArea when it dropped to the 20's (this is where mutli-GPU support is going to help).

 

Video and data to follow later tonight ... gotta get some day job work done today.

 

Cheers, Rob.

[Noel 4,563]

 

 

You're right, the combo of FRAPS and YouTube is the 'double-whammy' in terms of stuttering.  What looks butter smooth when in flight can look herky-jerky by the time Fraps and YouTube have had their way.

 

OMG yes!  I can't believe the discussion here is this long about comments on stuttering in...videos!  Especially w/ the very demanding settings the sim was setup w/.   

[Guest]

 

 

n XPX, the high-definition rendering (HDR) combined with high anti-aliasing runs butter smooth, but can take a hit when heavy clouds are present.  I guess this is because apparently XPX (like its brethren) can't distinguish between a puffy cloud and a building with a lot of straight edges, and goes crazy trying to anti-alias an object (cloud) that does not NEED anti-aliasing at all.

 

Yes, I've brought up the Cloud AA issue to LM, they are aware, they think they have a solution but it isn't as easy as some shader tweaks as far as I understand (and that's about all I know).  However, I'm still not sure what will happen when using SGSS AA as an override in NI even if LM were able to turn OFF AA for cloud processing.  But I do know Clouds and AA are on the plate at LM.

 

Cheers, Rob.

[Noel 4,563]

During this flight the fps performance was very good until I reached SF/BayArea when it dropped to the 20's (this is where mutli-GPU support is going to help)

 

Boy I hope so, but I wonder how much SLI w/ help w/ in this setting.  If GPU utilization is uber high in that SF/Bay Area environment then I could see a 2nd GPU helping...

 

Rob, you report 4.8 - 5.0Ghz on your 3960X.  What kind of vCore for that?  I have to go to 1.315 to have total stability at 4.42Ghz and have nice low temps, but I haven't tried for anything over 4.42 once I read about the power:watts/temp ratio as you scale up that high.  Getting 4.8Ghz would be meaningful (9-10% is certainly meaningful) I'm sure, but I also believe the chip I have is a good one and I'm loathe to kill it before its time.  My plan has always been to move to IB-E once my CPU died, or before their availability dwindles.

[Guest]

Hello bob,

I ask again...

I did'nt saw anything wrote about in your post, but did you use any Overclocking with your i73960x ?

I saw in your profile that  you get 5 Ggz @ 2100Mgrz with ram, but in P3D ?

 

Name is Rob (Robin actually).  See "My PC" link under my avatar/picture, that has the information you seek.  I use 4.8Ghz with RAM at 2133Mhz when flying P3D.

[supersym 53]

So your profile is update ! It's not always this case

Sorry for your nickname but in France (I'm french) we use Bob for Robert, and I beleaved Rob was for robert not Robin... , I wrote Bob without think about this

Sorry one more time

[Guest]

So your profile is update !

 

Yeah, I try to keep my profile updated.  No worries Jean ... my French is rusty, has been many years since I lived in Montreal and as I understand it Quebec French isn't as good as French spoken in France ... or is it the other way around ... haha  

 

Cheers, Rob.