Slow Loading Textures Are Back - Or, My Nemesis 74S

[Steve Colbert]

I was loving P3Dv4 and its enhanced performance - until I was finally able to install my full collection of Orbx San Juan area sceneries, that is.

 

My old nemesis 74S Anacortes is still a problem, it seems, even with a new 8GB GTX 1070 graphics card and P3Dv4.

 

When I do my classic benchmark test, flying from KBVS towards Anacortes in a twin at about 150 knots, all is good until I approach Anacortes then all heck breaks loose - first any AI boats turn black, then the ground tiles begin losing virtually all texture altogether (completely blurry), runways go black, etc.   I thought I had all that licked in P3Dv4 but guess not.

 

I imagine I'm not the only one who has experienced this?   I've deleted shaders, my library order is correct, and all is well after about 60 seconds of continued flying or paused elapsed time.  My card is "healthy" as it runs XP11 and other programs at full graphics resolution and fast frames.

 

What "tweaks" can be used (or have you used successfully) in the P3Dv4 .cfg file to trade FPS for loading up those silly textures faster?  It's not just an Anacortes issue, it can happen elsewhere, it's just that it usually is a ship or three turning black around Portland, OR or LAX.

 

Thanks,

 

Steve

[Jarrad Marshall]

G'day Steve, 

 

Very interesting findings - I've been running Anacortes in P3Dv4 for a couple of months on my new 1080 and performance has been on par with many of my airports of similar vintage, however with one caveat; I don't currently have FTX PNW installed (blasphemy, I know!). I'd be interested to narrow down potential causes of this issue, if you have the time and inclination to run a few tests. Could you try running your benchmark flight (Skagit > Anacortes @ 150kts) in the following scenarios and see which make a difference?

 

1. Disable ship, boat, vehicle and aircraft AI traffic. Does this stop the issue? If so, does gradually increasing the sliders (particularly ship/boat AI) gradually degrade performance, or is there a particular setting that causes a specific FPS hit? 

2. (with AI still disabled) Try temporarily disabling your PNW entries - you can do this by temporarily unchecking the four FTX_PNW scenery entries in your P3D scenery library. Run the same flight again, does this cause a big change? If you have Vector installed, run the same test by temporarily disabling the Vector entries in your scenery library. 

3. (Re-enable PNW + AI) Run a file diagnostic test with the Anacortes BGL/XML files: 

    a) Go to your ORBX/FTX_NA/FTX_AA_74S/scenery folder. You will find three types of files - bgl, xml and .OFF. 

    b ) Within this folder, create a new temporary hold folder. Place half your files in this folder. 
    c) Run the benchmark flight again: is performance back to normal? If yes, then place half of the files from temp folder (ie 25% of the total files) back into your scenery folder. If no, remove half of the remaining files in the scenery folder (ie 25% total) to the temp hold folder. Run the test flight again. 

   d) Run this half-n-half method to narrow down which single/couple of XML/bgl files are causing the hit. This is the quickest method of narrowing down the files - it should take you maybe 5-10 restarts to lock it down.

 

Cheers,

Jarrad

 

[Steve Colbert]

4 hours ago, Jarrad Marshall said:

G'day Steve, 

 

Very interesting findings - I've been running Anacortes in P3Dv4 for a couple of months on my new 1080 and performance has been on par with many of my airports of similar vintage, however with one caveat; I don't currently have FTX PNW installed (blasphemy, I know!). I'd be interested to narrow down potential causes of this issue, if you have the time and inclination to run a few tests. Could you try running your benchmark flight (Skagit > Anacortes @ 150kts) in the following scenarios and see which make a difference?

 

1. Disable ship, boat, vehicle and aircraft AI traffic. Does this stop the issue? If so, does gradually increasing the sliders (particularly ship/boat AI) gradually degrade performance, or is there a particular setting that causes a specific FPS hit? 

2. (with AI still disabled) Try temporarily disabling your PNW entries - you can do this by temporarily unchecking the four FTX_PNW scenery entries in your P3D scenery library. Run the same flight again, does this cause a big change? If you have Vector installed, run the same test by temporarily disabling the Vector entries in your scenery library. 

3. (Re-enable PNW + AI) Run a file diagnostic test with the Anacortes BGL/XML files: 

    a) Go to your ORBX/FTX_NA/FTX_AA_74S/scenery folder. You will find three types of files - bgl, xml and .OFF. 

    b ) Within this folder, create a new temporary hold folder. Place half your files in this folder. 
    c) Run the benchmark flight again: is performance back to normal? If yes, then place half of the files from temp folder (ie 25% of the total files) back into your scenery folder. If no, remove half of the remaining files in the scenery folder (ie 25% total) to the temp hold folder. Run the test flight again. 

   d) Run this half-n-half method to narrow down which single/couple of XML/bgl files are causing the hit. This is the quickest method of narrowing down the files - it should take you maybe 5-10 restarts to lock it down.

 

Cheers,

Jarrad

 

 

G'day Jarrad -

 

Thank you for the detailed suggestions - I shall attempt these this AM.

 

I leave for Brazil for a few days so if I don't have time to complete this today, I will do so just as soon as I can in case others are watching with interest.

 

Love your sceneries by the way!

 

Steve

[Jarrad Marshall]

Great, thanks Steve - let me know how you go

 

Cheers,

Jarrad

[Steve Colbert]

7 hours ago, Jarrad Marshall said:

Great, thanks Steve - let me know how you go

 

Cheers,

Jarrad

 

Thanks Jarrad - tried all of the above and determined that even with NONE of your official 74S files active (only PNW's version of 74S) I STILL get the problem.

 

Very puzzled - that area is like the Bermuda Triangle of texture loading issues.

 

Out of ideas and no idea as to cause as the issue occurs even with sliders at very modest levels....but interested to see if anyone has any ideas for "tweaks" to fix this.

 

Thanks,

 

Steve

[Jarrad Marshall]

No worries Steve, so just confirming that you are still getting terrible performance with 74S totally disabled but PNW still enabled? If you try disabling PNW altogether (just un-tick the four PNW scenery entries in your P3D library), does this fix the performance issue? 

 

Cheers

[Steve Colbert]

On 8/13/2017 at 11:28 PM, Jarrad Marshall said:

No worries Steve, so just confirming that you are still getting terrible performance with 74S totally disabled but PNW still enabled? If you try disabling PNW altogether (just un-tick the four PNW scenery entries in your P3D library), does this fix the performance issue? 

 

Cheers

 

Hi Jarrad and All -

 

My apologies for the long delay (was in Brazil for work) - I've tried EVERYTHING I can think of and even with PNW disabled I still get the slow loading textures - boack runways at 74S, blurries galore.  I don't get it - my settings aren't cranked, my 8GB card is far faster than my 960 was, FPS are fine.   And it's not just this area or your scenery, Jarrad - it's a P3D thing somewhere that is bottlenecking texture loading.  Yet for some reason in XP11 in the same area or heck even Los Angeles with tons of Orthoscenery and tons of autogen no issues, the card hardly breaks a sweat, smooth and high FPS.  Bummer....but that it is a P3D issue as it interacts with my PC issue and not my PC itself (probably), guess who will be buying the PNW region and every airport again including Anacortes if Orbx releases PNW for Aerofly FS2?   (fingers crossed!)

 

Thanks again for your help..if anyone has more ideas I'm willing to try them.

 

Thanks,

 

Steve

[normandean]

I have a problem that is not identical to this in P3D v4, but is probably related to it. Whenever I fly in an FTX region I get constant pausing of the sim at intervals of between 45 seconds and three minutes of about 3 to 10 seconds. I had thought that it was due to the Object Flow v 2 dll, but subsequent testing has shown that this is not the case. By removing different elements and visually checking what occurs, I find that the pauses are definitely due to the loading of models within the scenery. It is not a factor of autogen loading, I can run with autogen set to extremely dense and apart from a dramatic fall in frame rates the sim is very smooth. it is not to do with the individual FTX airports as they are also running very smoothly, nor to either Vector or OC Global. If I remove the area scenery folders from the sim then the pauses go away, and when they are loaded I can see pauses occurring when models pop up in the scenery. This is particularly obvious in paces like Los Angeles where the city centre pops up with all models.

 

It may be a factor that affects P3D v4 universally as I see there are similar reports on the P3D forum, but it could also be that the models used in the scenery are not of a format that is compatible with sim. I do not have this problem in areas of the world where there are not FTX areas, except for Switzerland Pro, but in the other areas I use photo scenery with no add-on models. In particular I fly a lot in the UK with Generation X scenery and no legacy models and there the sim is extremely smooth at very high settings.

 

My system is fairly high spec, Core i7 7800x 4.4ghz, Asus ROG STRIX z299E, Corsair Vengeance quad 3000C15 DDR 16GB RAM, Window 10 Pro, Saitek X52 Pro, EVGA FTW Geforce 1070.

 

Norman

[Steve Colbert]

On 8/13/2017 at 11:28 PM, Jarrad Marshall said:

No worries Steve, so just confirming that you are still getting terrible performance with 74S totally disabled but PNW still enabled? If you try disabling PNW altogether (just un-tick the four PNW scenery entries in your P3D library), does this fix the performance issue? 

 

Cheers

 

Hi Jarrad....to finally close this one out and for those who search for such threads like I have...I think I might have my particular problem licked!!

 

Basically I had to turn off dynamic lighting and INCREASE my screen resolution, and move to "unlimited" FPS - and then both FPS AND texture loading/blurries dramatically improved?

 

I don't quite get it....I'd used the smaller 1050 resolution on our 1080P TV I use for a monitor because the FPS and Knots data in the upper left hand corner were more visible, and one would think that limiting resolution and FPS would help texture loading...but this is MUCH better performing and I'm happy!

 

Of course, I still can't wait for the AFS2 version of 74S in the new photoreal PNW region (hopefully).

 

Thanks for your help!

 

Steve

[rockliffe]

I've battled with slow loading photoreal textures since day one with P3D V4,  about five months. I am now at a turning point and, very sadly, looking at moving to XP11. I've tried all settings turned low, with no HDR, no dynamic lighting, etc etc. but still have slow loading photoreal textures. There is definitely no issue with my hardware, that's for sure. I feel quite sad really, because I have grown up with Orbx and love the sceneries, but this issue is driving me round the bend.

[Steve Colbert]

On 1/1/2018 at 2:44 PM, rockliffe said:

I've battled with slow loading photoreal textures since day one with P3D V4,  about five months. I am now at a turning point and, very sadly, looking at moving to XP11. I've tried all settings turned low, with no HDR, no dynamic lighting, etc etc. but still have slow loading photoreal textures. There is definitely no issue with my hardware, that's for sure. I feel quite sad really, because I have grown up with Orbx and love the sceneries, but this issue is driving me round the bend.

 

Sorry to hear that as I've followed your posts from years' past as I sought answers - and believe me I've struggled with this issue (not just Orbx related) since day 1 - my GTX 730 or whatever the rig from Dell came with wouldn't even allow me to load A2A Cherokee textures, so I got a GTX 960, better but no dice, current GTX 1070 8GB still no dice until this latest try at P3Dv4.  And even tonight it was no good again until I turned my antivirus off completely and ran P3Dv4's .exe as administrator then wonderful again.  I'll admit I don't understand.  Have you tried running at 1920x1080x32 resolution, max tesselation, unlimited FPS and try a flight from Skagit across Anacortes?

 

XP11 isn't perfect either though I've never had slow loading textures, not once, even with my Z17 Ortho4XP textures and autogen, and you can see that the GPU usually isn't even being worked hard vs. the CPU.

 

AFS2 on the other hand is crisp, clear, smooth no matter what...and Orbx looks awesome at 100+ FPS!  No idea why...the code must be really efficient using all cores or the GPU or something.

 

In any case I'm very glad that Orbx is developing for the two newer platforms as well as P3Dv4 and thankful for their discount when crossing between platforms as well.

 

Steve

[Jethro VH-JET]

Hi Steve,

 

53 minutes ago, Republic DC-9 said:

And even tonight it was no good again until I turned my antivirus off completely and ran P3Dv4's .exe as administrator then wonderful again.

 

Well you did the right thing there, but you can also in your AV program settings, exclude the SimFolders from scans then keep your AV enabled, this includes the Firewall. 
Running the sims .exe As Admin is also a very good idea, along with allowing full Admin permission to your sim folders subfolders and files.
Excluding your Sim files from Antivirus Scans. ie; if your Antivirus program is allowed to step in the middle while FlightSim is trying to quickly access large volumes of data on-the-fly, it will be Antivirus slowing down the smooth and speedy delivery of the simulator files it is checking. AV programs are dumb like that, great for protecting you from the internet / email, and even checking Downloads that may or may not be secure. They are great for the general use PC used in a common user environment, but we FlightSimmers need uninterrupted file delivery, not a bully program unnecessarily pre-checking and drip feeding the files each and every time we fly.
Personally, as my rig has common users who may not consider the dangers of web browsing or email scams/attachments, I use NortonIS 2017 all security features are enabled / Max protection for the average occasional user, but set to Silent when I am simming, (Norton/Symantec is not a popular AV program for Flight simmers, but it has "Silent mode" which is where I can nominate my FlightSim folders for scan exclusion when in full screen view).
We all suffer from these scenery glitches when flying in heavy areas. Even the slightest slowdown in file delivery will be apparent when in heavy scenery and FPS is on the low side. That is why we simmers demand the higher spec hardware in order to bulldoze our way through the tough spots.

 

 

[rockliffe]

4 hours ago, Republic DC-9 said:

Have you tried running at 1920x1080x32 resolution, max tesselation, unlimited FPS and try a flight from Skagit across Anacortes?

 

AFS2 on the other hand is crisp, clear, smooth no matter what...and Orbx looks awesome at 100+ FPS!  No idea why...the code must be really efficient using all cores or the GPU or something.

 

Hi Steve, sure. I have tried every possible scenario, including HT on/off, numerous affinity mask settings, cfg tweaks, no cfg tweaks, low settings throughout the sliders, max settings on sliders, HDR on/off, all shadows on/off, nvidia insp with and without, Vsync on/ off, unlimited frames, locked frames, monitor set at 60Hz monitor set at 30Hz,  with overclock, without overclock, etc etc etc etc! As for running at 1920x1080 Steve, that is not an option. I have a 4k monitor. Besides, the 1080ti eats anything thrown at it! I think the issue lies soemwhere within the move to Win10... my worst decision to date. I can only think that somewhere in Win10, something is amiss. I am running with no AV and Defender turned off, and no updates running in services. I am now just wondering, as Jeff has mentioned, if for some reason my settings are somehow being overridden and there is some kind of action running in the background. However, normal scenery loading is fine. I have no problem with the way the sim runs under normal circumstances. In fact, I could run with all sliders virtually at 100%, the only issue is darn photoscenery. I was hoping by now that one of the devs would be in a position to lend a hand but to date that has not been the case.