answered Orbx airport elevation mismatch question

[joepoway]

I have been flying in VR mostly these days and cannot handle the frame rate hit of my Orbx regions particularly SoCa as we all know has a big impact so I turn them off but still use my Orbx airports as they can be tolerated in VR. Before I receive any suggestions on settings optimization to make things work better I will say I understand the impact hitters and have tried virtually all the permutations. 

 

My issue is that several Orbx airports elevations  like KMRY don’t line up, there are hugh drop offs surrounding the airport (not just runways), with P3D defaults without the corresponding Orbx regions installed. I have Orbx Base and Landclass installed but need the region installed to properly blend the elevation adjustments Orbx scenery has made. At the Vegas Simcon Expo last week I was instructed by the Orbx staff to enable only the mesh folder of the corresponding region for the airports I have and that would correct the mismatch with minimal to no frame impact. After doing this it made no difference so I experimented with each of the 4 scenery folders located in each region i.e. Scenery, Mesh, Custom and CVX and found the CVX folder to be the one that blended the elevations correctly. I haven’t had time to test the frame impact of the CVX folder and any other anomalies it may create by only running this folder in a region and not the other 3.

 

I would like to know if there is any detailed information out there that describes what each folder contains, there interactions and performance impacts? I assume the CVX folder contains vector information not mesh and I assume that would have a pretty large frame hit as the Orbx Vector package does which I do not have installed.

 

In summary I have the following packages installed in any particular region:

P3D

Orbx Base

Orbx Landclass 

Orbx Region (with Mesh, Scenery and Custom disabled)

Orbx airport

 

Thanks in advance

Joe

 

 

 

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

 

any changes you might make will not be supported.

 

The cvx folder does contain some bgls that exclude default

features, this is done to give the regions' developers a "clean sheet"

on which to start developing the scenery.

I believe that their file names, in the case of NCA, start with a zero and a one.

A quick glance at the other regions suggests that this convention has been used elsewhere.

 

To be honest, despite your assertion that you already know everything about the settings, you would nevertheless

probably lose less and have more to gain by leaving the Orbx products alone and adjusting the simulator to cope with

the limitations of the virtual reality googles.

[joepoway]

Thanks Nick

 

VR flying with the Orbx regions just doesn’t work well in VR. I just built a system with a friend that achieves 5.2 GHZ on all 6 cores with a 1080ti and still most regions cause unacceptable stutters. Now if I fly monitor mode NO issues. As a note I use very different profile settings for VR and 2D flying with VR being reduced and optimized. I just want to be able to use my Orbx airports without the scenery elevation discontinuities which require the regions to be installed for some airports. The Orbx guys I talked with at the convention said I should be able to achieve this by turning on just the folder to match the elevations and not all the eye candy that I’m not running with now anyway since the regions are completely disabled.

 

Not to sound rude or arrogant but my extensive testing and optimization experience for VR and 4K 30 and 60Hz monitors across P3D, DCS, Xplane, Aerofly and beta testing for 2 other sims in development has led me to not using the Orbx regions particularly Southern and Northern Ca to achieve optimal performance in VR. Please don’t take this the wrong way but I’m still hopeful the Orbx developers I spoke with can chime in so I can achieve one thing: fix the airport elevation issues without adding the full burden of the region overhead that I don’t desire anyway.

 

Sincerely

Joe

[Nick Cooper]

Hello again, I had thought I had told you how to do this?

 

Quote

 

The cvx folder does contain some bgls that exclude default

features, this is done to give the regions' developers a "clean sheet"

on which to start developing the scenery.

I believe that their file names, in the case of NCA, start with a zero and a one.

A quick glance at the other regions suggests that this convention has been used elsewhere.

 

 

In case it is not clear, you must exclude the default airport backgrounds, which the files I have referred to

apparently do for the whole region.

You can remove the rest of the files from the cvx folder so that the simulator doesn't load them.

You might still need to enable the mesh folder if you still see anomalies.

 

Also not to appear rude, please be reminded that whatever you do to the Orbx scenery cannot be supported.

 

[BrettT]

Quote

VR flying with the Orbx regions just doesn’t work well in VR. I just built a system with a friend that achieves 5.2 GHZ on all 6 cores with a 1080ti and still most regions cause unacceptable stutters. Now if I fly monitor mode NO issues. As a note I use very different profile settings for VR and 2D flying with VR being reduced and optimized. I just want to be able to use my Orbx airports without the scenery elevation discontinuities which require the regions to be installed for some airports. The Orbx guys I talked with at the convention said I should be able to achieve this by turning on just the folder to match the elevations and not all the eye candy that I’m not running with now anyway since the regions are completely disabled.

 

Hi Joe,

 

I can't say that has been my experience (6850K @ 4.1 GHz + 1080 GTX).  Of course everything is subjective.  I am using flying inside and I typically get 30+/90 in SOCAL, NOCAL, Netherlands.  It sometimes dips to 26/90 but that is still a smooth experience.  What I have found that seems to cause me the most stutters is certain types of shadows, especially when turning my head where P3D tends to shift off/on some shadows and Ai activity tends to lead to stutters so I turn that down.  With that said, I have most everything turned up with autogen just one click from the right on all three fields.  Only other adjustment I make is to have only one logical core active on each of the first two physical cores.  Seems to work for me...might be worth trying.

 

Best wishes

 

Brett

[joepoway]

8 hours ago, Nick Cooper said:

In case it is not clear, you must exclude the default airport backgrounds, which the files I have referred to

apparently do for the whole region.

You can remove the rest of the files from the cvx folder so that the simulator doesn't load them.

You might still need to enable the mesh folder if you still see anomalies.

 

Also not to appear rude, please be reminded that whatever you do to the Orbx scenery cannot be supported.

Hello Nick

 

Thanks for your response and I understand if I modify the files the support no longer applies.

 

Just so I understand perfectly before I continue to experiment with this.

 

I will need to enable the CVX folders and most likely the Mesh folders within each region.

 

However to minimize impact and still use Orbx airports without experiencing the elevation anomalies within the CVX folder I can remove all the files except I must leave all the blg files that start with 0, 1 and 2 (I have found all of these in the regions) because they exclude default airport backgrounds.

 

However if I do exclude all the default airport backgrounds wouldn't that mess up all the airports that aren't covered by Orbx add-ons airports since the rest of the regions scenery isn't being seen by P3D? 

 

If this approach seems not possible I will stay with what I have been doing until the US regions are replaced with the new photo scenery like the Netherlands which runs much better.

 

Sorry for all the confusion.

 

Joe

[joepoway]

8 hours ago, BrettT said:

 

Hi Joe,

 

I can't say that has been my experience (6850K @ 4.1 GHz + 1080 GTX).  Of course everything is subjective.  I am using flying inside and I typically get 30+/90 in SOCAL, NOCAL, Netherlands.  It sometimes dips to 26/90 but that is still a smooth experience.  What I have found that seems to cause me the most stutters is certain types of shadows, especially when turning my head where P3D tends to shift off/on some shadows and Ai activity tends to lead to stutters so I turn that down.  With that said, I have most everything turned up with autogen just one click from the right on all three fields.  Only other adjustment I make is to have only one logical core active on each of the first two physical cores.  Seems to work for me...might be worth trying.

 

Best wishes

 

Brett

 

Hi Brett

 

Thanks for the response. The system I mentioned above is one we built for a friend. I currently run a 1080 + all SSDs and an i5-2500k at 4.5 GHz so four cores all assigned to P3D and I keep everything else off core 0 the primary rendering core except Oculus also on all 4. I use Process Lasso and have balanced everything quite nicely and still have GPU headroom.

 

I also use Flyinside and worked directly with Dan Church on his application. I fly with very little AI and have my settings turned back. I do achieve 30/90 all the time basically with no regions installed but when I run the regions I do get annoying stutters around the airport areas. Could I live with this sure but I really only want the extra detail and fidelity around the airports which I get from all my Flightbeam,  Orbx and other add-on airports as long as they are not in conjunction with the Orbx regions. Non of my other add-on airports have any elevation anomalies only the Orbx airports that require the regions to be installed like KMRY for instance. So I was just looking for a way to fix the elevation issues without all the overhead of the regions. I do run Base and Landclass with no issue and like what it provides.

 

Flying into the LOWI airport is beautiful and I can maintain 30/90 just fine. Flying into my hometown of KSAN with regions installed and Orbx KSAN   <30/90 and noticable stutters no regions just fine.   Luckily Orbx KSAN has no elevation issues without SoCA region being installed. There are several PNW airports and CA airports like KMRY.

 

Thanks for the input

Joe

[Nick Cooper]

5 hours ago, joepoway said:

Just so I understand perfectly before I continue to experiment with this.

I will need to enable the CVX folders and most likely the Mesh folders within each region.

However to minimize impact and still use Orbx airports without experiencing the elevation anomalies within the CVX folder I can remove all the files except I must leave all the blg files that start with 0, 1 and 2 (I have found all of these in the regions) because they exclude default airport backgrounds.

However if I do exclude all the default airport backgrounds wouldn't that mess up all the airports that aren't covered by Orbx add-ons airports since the rest of the regions scenery isn't being seen by P3D? 

If this approach seems not possible I will stay with what I have been doing until the US regions are replaced with the new photo scenery like the Netherlands which runs much better.

 

 

Hello Joe,

 

Your complaint is that the regions add more detail to your simulator than your VR system can handle.

Your solution of completely disabling each region is not satisfactory because it leaves your payware airports with

elevation anomalies.

 

My suggestion is that you remove all of the region except the regional exclude files, as described.

My preferred method would be to identify each file, as found in each region's cvx\scenery folder and then remove all

the other files from that folder and activate just that folder for each region.

In this way, all the default backgrounds would be excluded.

 

This would indeed leave all the default airports without airport backgrounds but activating the region's own airports

would seem to be the obvious solution, although they are enhanced, they are unlikely to significantly increase the workload

for your VR goggles, as the enhancements are in quality and accuracy, rather than in quantity of files.

 

In a nutshell then, keep the 05 and 06 scenery library entries but remove all the files except the excludes from the 06 scenery library entry folder

and unless you see mesh anomalies, disable the 07 and 08 folders.

 

This should give you a reasonable compromise between achieving the performance you want and destroying the quality of the scenery.

 

[joepoway]

4 hours ago, Nick Cooper said:

 

 

Hello Joe,

 

Your complaint is that the regions add more detail to your simulator than your VR system can handle.

Your solution of completely disabling each region is not satisfactory because it leaves your payware airports with

elevation anomalies.

 

My suggestion is that you remove all of the region except the regional exclude files, as described.

My preferred method would be to identify each file, as found in each region's cvx\scenery folder and then remove all

the other files from that folder and activate just that folder for each region.

In this way, all the default backgrounds would be excluded.

 

This would indeed leave all the default airports without airport backgrounds but activating the region's own airports

would seem to be the obvious solution, although they are enhanced, they are unlikely to significantly increase the workload

for your VR goggles, as the enhancements are in quality and accuracy, rather than in quantity of files.

 

In a nutshell then, keep the 05 and 06 scenery library entries but remove all the files except the excludes from the 06 scenery library entry folder

and unless you see mesh anomalies, disable the 07 and 08 folders.

 

This should give you a reasonable compromise between achieving the performance you want and destroying the quality of the scenery.

 

 

Nick

 

Thank you for your detailed responses and your patience !

Your summary of my “complaint” or desire is exactly correct.

I will spend some time looking into the file folders and try my best to deploy your recommendations and let you know how it goes.

 

Thanks again and I can’t wait to see what Orbx has to offer in the future I love what I see in Aerofly LOWI and will be purchasing the Netherlands for P3D soon !

 

Sincerely

Joe

[joepoway]

Nick

 

I experimented with your recommendations but the resultant scenery anomalies were quite vast and covered large areas.

I tried enabling the mesh and basically all folders after making the edits to the CVX "06" folder but the anomalies never were corrected.

It made the scenery particularly around the boundaries of KMRY look very bad.

 

Thanks for all your help but for now I will just keep my Orbx regions disabled and particular airports like Orbx KMRY will also have to be disabled as well for my VR flying.

Maybe VR single pass rendering in P3Dv4.3 which they have now fixed will give me the headroom for my Orbx add-ons, we will see soon.

 

Sincerely

Joe

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

your results are no more than what is to be expected if one disables matched scenery.

I have virtually no knowledge and absolutely no experience of VR.

I am aware that at its present stage of development, it requires an extremely powerful computer to make it work properly.

I suspect that it also requires a different type of simulator and I understand that it works extremely well with Aerofly FS 2 for example.

[joepoway]

Yes I run Aerofly and DCS quite well in VR, I actually run P3D quite well using the FlyInside app that better enables the 90 FPS required but too much of any add on can tip the balance and for my balance the Orbx regions do it for me. It’s unfortunate I can’t use several of my Orbx airports either unlike the Flightbeam and other vendor airports that I can use.

 

I do however understand that they were designed to work with the Regions that we have all enjoyed for years. I believe VR will be an ever growing segment and I hope frame friendly considerations will always be considered and user knobs provided whenever possible to turn things on and off even more then the regions already do.

 

Thanks again

Joe