answered Orbx Sceneries causing long pauses with Prepar3d v4.4

[gpf3m]

I recently did a fresh install of Prepar3d v4.4 and installed my Orbx sceneries (Global, LC North America, Southern and Northern California, Monterey Airport, amongst others.  When performing a cross country flight from Monterey CA to Santa Barbara, CA I encountered frequent long pauses as I got close to Santa Barbara.  The pauses were so bad that it ruined the entire experience. I never experienced this in v 4.3.

 

I than performed the recommended Prepar3d troubleshooting steps.  Without the Orbx sceneries Southern California and LC North America, the simulator performed flawless over Southern California.  No pauses, high frame rates and very fluid.  I added LC North America, flew the same route, and pauses appeared.  I than added Southern California, flew same route, and the pauses became very frequent and long, making for a terrible experience.  Based on this, The Orbx sceneries Southern California and LC North America should NOT be used while simulating over southern California in V 4.4.

 

My system:

i7 6800K OC'd 4.3GHz

32 GB RAM

SSD HD

GeForce GTX 1080Ti

Win 10

 

 

 

[John Dow]

I think I read that P3D$.4 allows user specified scenery drawing distance?  Pauses are caused by scenery needing to be loaded, often still over the horizon, and where there are lots of airports and other scenery details to be loaded the computer just cannot keep up.  I have found that Vector and a couple of airports with photoreal areas can really put a lot of demands on the system so if you're flying into an area that has airports close together and big city infrastructure that is what you will see.  The only cure is to dial back what the sim needs to display at any point on a flight.

[Larry_R]

 

Hello,

I’d like to add a little to what John said. P3D v4.4 is significantly different than v4.3.  Before offering a blanket statement about the use of v4.4 in Southern California, understanding and controlling these new options might help.  In V4.4 scenery can now be drawn to the horizon or beyond (remembering area and thus data  goes as the square of distance) and it can now draw PR as well as LC tiles at up to 4 times the resolution of prior versions.  Just twice the resolution is 4 times as much data that must be processed.

I’m sure a lot more will come out on the following but here is a little info I believe is accurate:

In the Prepar3D.cfg the scenery draw distance is controlled by the line SCENERY_DRAW_DISTANCE=  where the default value is 64000.000000 which I believe is in meters or  ~40 miles) It can be set higher or lower.

The resolution of both LC and PR is controlled by the line HIGH_RESOLUTION_TERRAIN_TEXTURES=

A value of 0 results in 256 x 256 tiles. This is the old default.  In the prior version you could set the LC higher but it did not affect PR. Now it does.  A value of 1 (which is equivalent to checking the ‘Use high-resolution textures’ in the sim options) causes the sim to use 512 by 512 tiles both for PR and LC.   By adding the appropriate exponent entry in the Prepar3D.cfg you can force the use of 1024 x 1024 LC and PR textures but you will need a quite powerful system to do it.

As an aside, provided the system is powerful enough to handle it, using 512 textures to my eye seems to completely solve the blurry PR problem.  1024 is said to be even better by those with suitable systems. And in my testing, scenery to the horizon adds a huge amount to the realism of the scene.

Lighting can now incorporate the phase of the moon and that too will have a computational cost.  MOON_PHASE_LIGHTING=True

Because of the limitations of 32 bit memory,  in v3 memory optimizations were used but at a cost. Now with a 64 bit sim, performance gain may be possible by disabling them thus allowing more memory to be used. You can add this line to the [GRAPHICS] section: ENABLE_MEMORY_OPTIMIZATION=0.  There is another setting that can be disabled too but it is said to only benefit those with more than one graphics card.   If there has not been a public discussion of this topic I expect that it will happen.

 

 

 

 

 

[Lawrence Hickerson]

Great post.  Thanks!

 

[Airwolf]

Hi great post 

 

I am having the same issues.  If I install only FTX Regions with airports only, then I pretty much smooth sim.  Once I add Orbx Vector + openLC NA - the long pause sim keep on appearing.  I am just unable to FTX Regions now.  I have bought so many licenses for FTX airports in the US region, that to enjoy them, I have to endure long pauses or install the sim with only FTX regions and not use Vector and openLC.  

 

I am really hoping that you and LM can figure something out on this.  Please understand where I am coming from - 99% of the time, I speak on LM forums, I get told ask the addon developer and then the developer says go to LM.  Exhausted of the run around.  

 

Just hoping for some unique solution as addons get more complex especially with True Earth series being added to the sim, my guess is pauses are just gonna keep getting longer and annoying.  I am already facing these issues and this is with FTX Regions + FTX airports on top global+vector+openlc.

 

Thanks for understanding

 

 

[John Dow]

I'm getting the pauses as well.  However, I'm willing to put up with them for the other advantages I'm seeing in the updated version.

 

If the drawbacks of moving to 4.4 outweigh the advantages, you can always return to 4.3 and wait for 4.5 or whatever....

[Nick Cooper]

It might also be worth pointing out that as 4.4 is now particularly good at displaying

ground textures, whether landclass or photo scenery, it would not be beyond the bounds

of logic to guess that more work needs to be done by the PC to achieve this.

Accordingly, it may well be that settings that could be managed in 4.3 are now too high in 4.4.

 

I personally find that the improvement with the enhanced maximum settings that can now be

achieved by editing the prepar3d.cfg file vastly outweighs the longer loading time and the

occasional pause or stutter.

 

[Ben77]

The long pauses really annoy me, I dial down my scenery as much as possible to avoid them