active SCA - San Diego Area performance

[dominique]

I've just flown in the San Diego area, for the first time, to land in North Island. Never had stutters like I had in any OrbX scenery before, including the OrbX SCA LA area. I can fly the special VFR route from SMO to AVX over LAX without much problem. In SD, the approach and worse the final approach were so bad it botched my landing.  I'm afraid that SCA will stop at Camp Pendleton for me, on the coastal side anyway (Yuma, you don't have much problem  !).  I hope that the SP will look into it

 

[shermank]

In re the lengthy post above by Falcon AF. About running a process lean computer, I have been using AlacrityPC for years. You can pick and choose what processes you want to,stop and then have restarted when you end your FS session. Here's the link 

 

http://sourceforge.net/projects/alacritypc/

 

 

sherm

[Adam Banks]

I went round and around in circles for 1/2 an hour and couldn't persuade Sourceforge to cough up either x32 or x64 versions of Alacrity. Gave up!

 

Adam.

[fltsimguy]

1 hour ago, Adam_NZ said:

I went round and around in circles for 1/2 an hour and couldn't persuade Sourceforge to cough up either x32 or x64 versions of Alacrity. Gave up!

 

Adam.

 

Go get it from CNET

[Adam Banks]

Thanks for the help ... but ... no deal, I'm afraid ... I want the x64 version:

 

404. That's an error.

The requested URL /download/alacritypc/current/x64/alacritypc.zip/site/kensaltercom was not found on this server. That's all we know.

 

Tried the 32-bit version and got an installer - which tries to run some "downloader" - writing all sorts of crud into my registry. No way, thank you. A friend of mine got badly virused from a CNET download "protected" with these stealthy downloaders. 

 

Adam.

[shermank]

30 minutes ago, Adam_NZ said:

Thanks for the help ... but ... no deal, I'm afraid ... I want the x64 version:

 

404. That's an error.

The requested URL /download/alacritypc/current/x64/alacritypc.zip/site/kensaltercom was not found on this server. That's all we know.

 

Tried the 32-bit version and got an installer - which tries to run some "downloader" - writing all sorts of crud into my registry. No way, thank you. A friend of mine got badly virused from a CNET download "protected" with these stealthy downloaders. 

 

Adam.

I do not know if protocol will allow it, but I will try to send you my copy of the Pam tomorrow. If that does not work, you can send me a pm and I will email it to you. I realize there is an assumed trust. I trust we are all honorable men...

 

sherm

[Adam Banks]

1 hour ago, shermank said:

I do not know if protocol will allow it, but I will try to send you my copy of the Pam tomorrow. If that does not work, you can send me a pm and I will email it to you. I realize there is an assumed trust. I trust we are all honorable men...

 

Sherm ... thanks for that! Taken to PM :-)

 

Adam.

[Viking01]

Thanks for the info Sherm, but I think the main problem ist to find out, which processes could be shut down or be stopped altogether and which are to stay running. I use my PC only for flightsimming but anytime I altered functions from Windows, it changed to the worse which makes me uneasy when shutting down processes. Is there are guideline somewhere, which processes could be stopped without harming the sytem? I googled quite a bit but most articles about that topic are written for experts and not normal users.

[MichaelMoe]

Holy Moly 

 

All the way down to 11 FPS with the Real AirDuke at KLAX. Back up to 35FPS with Global even in SLI

 

But nice rendition it is

 

Michael Moe

[shermank]

HI guys, here is a link to download AlacrityPC. I did the download, and ran the file through malawarebytes before unzipping. it can out clean...

 

http://alacritypc.software.informer.com/download/

 

 

and, here is a link on how to use the program to best effectiveness

 

http://snomhf.exofire.net/alacrityPC.html

 

:

the setup gives you the option of using Vista or XP modes. Vista is the choice and works fine for W7. I have not tested on W8 or W10, since I do not use either of those OSs

 

The program

[Adam Banks]

Sherm - thanks for both of those links Full marks for tracking down a link that actually works! I tried really hard and never got near that one!!!

 

I see the same exe works for both x32 and x64, so that's great.

 

I've done all the usual stuff in cleaning up redundant background or auto-start processes, so for me it's just the ability to quickly switch from a P3D session to another game. I've used Gamebooster in the past, but somehow never really got on with it (not sure why).

 

I'll give Alacrity a go - and report back!!

 

Many thanks,

 

Adam.

[shermank]

Adam, one hand washes the other. Your DX10 guide is priceless....thanks.

 

sherm

 

[Viking01]

Thanks sherm, greatly appreciated!

[fltsimguy]

11 hours ago, shermank said:

HI guys, here is a link to download AlacrityPC. I did the download, and ran the file through malawarebytes before unzipping. it can out clean...

 

http://alacritypc.software.informer.com/download/

 

 

and, here is a link on how to use the program to best effectiveness

 

http://snomhf.exofire.net/alacrityPC.html

 

:

the setup gives you the option of using Vista or XP modes. Vista is the choice and works fine for W7. I have not tested on W8 or W10, since I do not use either of those OSs

 

The program

 

Tried this last night as a means to speed up shutting down processes.  Used the Vista and I have Win7.  My system completely crashed.  Don't know if I did something totally wrong.  Rebooted my computer and the index for my HDs was totally screwed up.  I have several HDs for data, mostly digital photos and movies, MP3s, backup of everything including my FSX.  After much head scratching I see that the data was fine its just that the drive letters had been changed somehow...so I spend an hour checking and reassigning the "correct" drive letter to the drives so my programs would work properly and the excel spreadsheet with macros would find the data properly.

 

never again.

[Jon Clarke]

You could also look at this site for EasyService tool which I use without a problem to date. www.sordum.org

[shermank]

13 hours ago, fltsimguy said:

 

Tried this last night as a means to speed up shutting down processes.  Used the Vista and I have Win7.  My system completely crashed.  Don't know if I did something totally wrong.  Rebooted my computer and the index for my HDs was totally screwed up.  I have several HDs for data, mostly digital photos and movies, MP3s, backup of everything including my FSX.  After much head scratching I see that the data was fine its just that the drive letters had been changed somehow...so I spend an hour checking and reassigning the "correct" drive letter to the drives so my programs would work properly and the excel spreadsheet with macros would find the data properly.

 

never again.

I cannot explain why you had such a problem. As we all know with computers, one size does not fit all. Each installation is different. I hope you have system restore enabled so that you can go back to the point before your problem occurred.  I recommended Alacrity in all good faith. I have used it for years without any problems. There are many forums with advice and recommendations on its use.

 

Sherm

[fltsimguy]

5 hours ago, shermank said:

I cannot explain why you had such a problem. As we all know with computers, one size does not fit all. Each installation is different. I hope you have system restore enabled so that you can go back to the point before your problem occurred.  I recommended Alacrity in all good faith. I have used it for years without any problems. There are many forums with advice and recommendations on its use.

 

Sherm

 

 

Don't understand it either.  All I know is that I had to go through system admin, storage renaming exercise to get the drives back to their original drive letter, all's fine now.  But I'm not touching this thing after this experience.

[fltsimguy]

10 hours ago, jjaycee1 said:

You could also look at this site for EasyService tool which I use without a problem to date. www.sordum.org

 

Thanks, I will take a look at this.

[BoyScout]

Pretty descent frame rates in the LA Basin from mid Mid 20s to Mid 30s, running P3D V3.1 using A2A aircraft.  I read the pdf, disabled the said sceneries in the scenery.cfg, and set my sliders to include my texture resolution to the said settings and no issues.  I have multiple configurations for different regions, i.e. rural, urban, Norway, Europe, Alaska and don't have OOMs or issues.  I tried flying in the LA Basin with my setting higher than I should and it definitely wasn't doable.  Please note that I am running on three monitors 5760x1080, 780gtx and I7 5820 at 4.4Ghz and using REX 4 Direct.  Thanks

[Thomas_LOLW]

I gave Socal a 2nd try...used the above mentioned program (alicirityPC) to shut down unnecessary services...set LOD to 4.5 instead of 6.5., textures to 1024  - and it really improved! I can now fly almost everywhere in Socal with frame rates of 30, only in KSNA I noticed a drop to 26-28. Interestingly, the LatinVFR version of John Wayne Airport gives better frame rates for me than the ORBX standard .

 

 

[John Venema]

4 hours ago, Thomas_LOLW said:

I gave Socal a 2nd try...used the above mentioned program (alicirityPC) to shut down unnecessary services...set LOD to 4.5 instead of 6.5., textures to 1024  - and it really improved! I can now fly almost everywhere in Socal with frame rates of 30, only in KSNA I noticed a drop to 26-28. Interestingly, the LatinVFR version of John Wayne Airport gives better frame rates for me than the ORBX standard .

 

 

 

So in other words, by reverting to the *default* settings of 4.5 and 1024, things improved? What a revelation!!! 

 

I wish people would would just stop tweaking and fiddling with settings like LOD and default texture sizes, they would save a lot of headaches.

[dominique]

7 minutes ago, John Venema said:

 

So in other words, by reverting to the *default* settings of 4.5 and 1024, things improved? What a revelation!!! 

 

I wish people would would just stop tweaking and fiddling with settings like LOD and default texture sizes, they would save a lot of headaches.

 

6.5 is the default LOD in P3D and I didn't buy P3D to tweak it down to 4.5 and revert to good old autogen popping FSX  . That being said, Ive been crisscrossing the deserts and the northern part of SCA and enjoying it very much. With very little traffic (which is a shame in SoCal) I can do the VFR special route from SMO to Catalina over LAX  but, at reasonable settings, San Diego is a no go for me.

 

[elmucki]

why is everyone so focused on FPS? If i wanted, i could set my machine on unlimited and still see my FPS in the hundreds. I actually lock them at 16. Why? becuase i use a 4k monitor with vsync. With those settings i get a superb picture with no stuttering and no lag. Should be focused on smoothness not FPS. the two dont always equal the same results.

[FireRx]

totally agree Elmucki 

[fltsimguy]

I think its really simple.  Stop obsessing with FPS.

Turn your sliders back a bit in the urban areas and crank them up in the rural and desert areas.

Shut some traffic off or turn it back until you get smooth performance.

 

I can even have a fluid flight at 16-20 frames.

 

Did you know that the old movie projectors used to play at 16 frames per second because the human eye can only sort out that many before it becomes a moving picture.  Faster than that the flicker disappears.

 

[GlennH]

Did you also know that movies and rendered images cannot be compared?

 

movies naturally contain motion blur which fools the eyes into seeing fluidity

 

24 fps in movies is not th same in computer animation.

 

It has been shown many times that 60 fps in a video game is needed to replicate a movie filmed at 24 fps but this fact keeps being ignored.

 

Anything below 27-28 fps or so in flightsims instantly becomes noticeable to me. I don't need an fps counter to tell me, I can feel it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[GlennH]

6 hours ago, fltsimguy said:

I think its really simple.  Stop obsessing with FPS.

Turn your sliders back a bit in the urban areas and crank them up in the rural and desert areas.

Shut some traffic off or turn it back until you get smooth performance.

 

I can even have a fluid flight at 16-20 frames.

 

Did you know that the old movie projectors used to play at 16 frames per second because the human eye can only sort out that many before it becomes a moving picture.  Faster than that the flicker disappears.

 

 

[Adam Banks]

6 minutes ago, GlennH said:

Did you also know that movies and rendered images cannot be compared?

 

It gets more complicated/worse! The so-called "persistence of vision" is also affected by the luminosity of the phosphors of the viewing hardware. Old TV tubes had a really long persistence, so the transition between scans was hardly noticeable. However - LCD/LED screens have a very short persistence (and can be refreshed much faster), so flickering is often far more apparent.

 

Adam.

[fltsimguy]

32 minutes ago, Adam_NZ said:

 

It gets more complicated/worse! The so-called "persistence of vision" is also affected by the luminosity of the phosphors of the viewing hardware. Old TV tubes had a really long persistence, so the transition between scans was hardly noticeable. However - LCD/LED screens have a very short persistence (and can be refreshed much faster), so flickering is often far more apparent.

 

Adam.

 

Yes so true.

 

I was just making a point.  A FLUID point.  I can have a pleasant sim experience at lower frames.  Stutters, now that is another issue.

 

Je répète

I think its really simple.  Stop obsessing with FPS.

Turn your sliders back a bit in the urban areas and crank them up in the rural and desert areas.

Shut some traffic off or turn it back until you get smooth performance.

 

I am using an ancient i7-920 2.7Ghz, 1.7 Mb GTX260  - 16 Gigs RAM - I am enjoying flying all over SCA.  Granted I can't fly the heavies.  But I never could anyway.

 

[Thomas_LOLW]

12 hours ago, John Venema said:

So in other words, by reverting to the *default* settings of 4.5 and 1024, things improved? What a revelation!!! 

 

I wish people would would just stop tweaking and fiddling with settings like LOD and default texture sizes, they would save a lot of headaches. 

 

John: I don´t know if I find it funny if you taunt long year customers like me...

By the way: ORBX sells products where you even recommend to tweak the settings, for example Sonoma airport (which I bought): "In order to use the high quality textures, you need to set the texture resolution manually to 4096 instead of the default 1024..."  - I would call this tweaking 

[Thomas_LOLW]

5 hours ago, GlennH said:

Anything below 27-28 fps or so in flightsims instantly becomes noticeable to me. I don't need an fps counter to tell me, I can feel it.

 

...same for me: Tried to lock down FPS to 20 (1/3 of monitor refresh rate) - horrible ...

I think it also depends if you use TrackIR or not

[Thomas_LOLW]

4 hours ago, fltsimguy said:

I am using an ancient i7-920 2.7Ghz, 1.7 Mb GTX260  - 16 Gigs RAM - I am enjoying flying all over SCA.

 

I think it depends a lot on the screen resolution: If you still fly with good old HD (1980 x 1024) then it might me fine...however nowadays many use UHD screens like me (3440 x 1440) or even full 4K monitors - this makes it more demanding..

[Thomas_LOLW]

5 hours ago, GlennH said:

I can even have a fluid flight at 16-20 frames.

 

...as long as you don not use TrackIR and move around...and stay in level flight - I agree 

[Thomas_LOLW]

12 hours ago, dominique said:

at reasonable settings, San Diego is a no go for me.

...did you try the AlacrityPC program? At least with FSX SE it gave me +5 frames and less stuttering.

[dominique]

8 hours ago, GlennH said:

Did you also know that movies and rendered images cannot be compared?

 

movies naturally contain motion blur which fools the eyes into seeing fluidity

 

24 fps in movies is not th same in computer animation.

 

It has been shown many times that 60 fps in a video game is needed to replicate a movie filmed at 24 fps but this fact keeps being ignored.

 

Anything below 27-28 fps or so in flightsims instantly becomes noticeable to me. I don't need an fps counter to tell me, I can feel it.

 

 

Good to see that some knowledgeable people are around to remind the basics ! Same for me.

 

That smoothness against frame rate reminds me of an old tale. There was a fox in a garden and the fox was staring at grapes hanging at the top of a wall. It wanted very much to eat the grapes but the grapes were too high for him to reach. So he said : they are not ripe enough anyway, only people with a poor taste for grapes would eat them. You can't get a good frame rate but it does not matter, what counts is smoooooothnesssssss   .

 

Smoothness comes from a constant frame rate and a high frame rate. If it is not high enough, you get stutter when looking sideways or in turns. The feeling of smoothness in the simulation with low fps is true only in cruise and looking forward. And also keep in mind that good aircraft designers say that they design their FDE for at least 30 fps. Below the accuracy is degraded.

 

Designing scenery is an art and a tough job at the same time. Optimizing a scenery is tedious and difficult. The OrbX devs do miracle IMO and have really improved their techniques from some of the PNW or AU early airports. We don't help them to push further the limits of their art when we say that the solution to a stutter inducing scenery is for us to dumb the sim itself. 16 fps is good enough ? Why not 12 or 7 ? maybe 512 textures would help ? Or a 640*480 res ? I do not adress here the special case of people running 4k at 30 Hz with Vsynch ON. I never had that experience.

 

I've logged maybe 30 hours in lovely SCA and would advise anybody to get it but I wish I could go further down than Camp Pendleton.

 

 

[dominique]

2 hours ago, Thomas_LOLW said:

...did you try the AlacrityPC program? At least with FSX SE it gave me +5 frames and less stuttering.

 

Thank you for the feedback, Thomas, I didn't.

 

That is an old piece of software designed in the early FSX for Vista and/or XP. The guy who did it knew his stuff (and was a  nice mod at Avsim then, I think ) but I am reluctant to use it in my 2016 W7.  Paint me pusillanimous but I do not want to mess it by shutting down a module which might garanty the integrity of some saves ( including system saves). Does it record what it shuts down and asking if you agree ?

 

 

[Thomas_LOLW]

1 hour ago, dominique said:

Does it record what it shuts down and asking if you agree ?

 

Yes, everything is logged, and you can choose which services and programs are shut down. I did not have any problems with this program on Win7 so far.

[Thomas_LOLW]

2 hours ago, dominique said:

Smoothness comes from a constant frame rate and a high frame rate. If it is not high enough, you get stutter when looking sideways or in turns. The feeling of smoothness in the simulation with low fps is true only in cruise and looking forward

 

 

Agree 101%!!

[John Venema]

7 hours ago, Thomas_LOLW said:

 

John: I don´t know if I find it funny if you taunt long year customers like me...

By the way: ORBX sells products where you even recommend to tweak the settings, for example Sonoma airport (which I bought): "In order to use the high quality textures, you need to set the texture resolution manually to 4096 instead of the default 1024..."  - I would call this tweaking 

 

I'm not taunting you, don't take it personally. In the western world sarcasm is commonly used to emphasise a point.

 

My point is that by setting P3D to the same settings as FSX default you're getting a more satisfactory experience. That's to be expected of course.

 

The LAX basin is one of the biggest urban sprawls in the entire world, and as such has probably the highest number of autogen objects in a radius in the whole sim world. This again is probably why Microsoft settled on 4.5 and 1024 as the best options.

 

You can't have your cake and eat it too. It just does not work that way, there's only so much the current sim engines can process per frame so don't expect miracles in the largest urban area on the planet.

 

With regards to slider recommendations at certain airports, I instruct every Orbx developer to include texture support for 1024, so in fact you'll find that Jarrad's and Misha's airports will function quite well at 1024.

 

I've said it before and I'll say it again; when you start moving sliders to the right and increasing .cfg settings, then adding HD textures and clouds, weather engines and complex aircraft, you just cannot expect the sim to keep giving consistently high FPS, it's just not possible.

 

Be sensible with your expectations.

[FalconAF]

On 1/17/2016 at 9:52 AM, John Venema said:

 

So in other words, by reverting to the *default* settings of 4.5 and 1024, things improved? What a revelation!!! 

 

I wish people would would just stop tweaking and fiddling with settings like LOD and default texture sizes, they would save a lot of headaches.

 

Wise, wise words from a wise flight simulator user.