active Frame rates :-(

[martinlest]

Couldn't make up my mind whether to add to one of the many threads already here or start my own... I have certainly read a lot of comments the past few days.

 

I bought and installed all three parts of TEGB a few days ago (mostly because I was fed up of the colour mismatches I had in many places with Ortho4XP, and because of the autogen that comes with the ORBX packages). It looks pretty nice on the whole and at height all is well. But at or near airports my fps, which I have maxed at 30fps via nVidia Inspector vert sync settings (much smoother result in XP), the frame rates are usually between 12 & 18 fps. Not a happy experience.

 

My GTX970 4GB GPU may be the bottleneck - GPU-Z is showing 3800MB of memory used at EGBB, and this card is known to throttle back after 3500MB usage. But until I replace it (would a new card, say with 8GB of VRAM, really help? I don't want to spend £££100s and find no change!) what can I best adjust? To my surprise reducing the AA makes little or no difference - and it's not as if I have all the sliders pushed up to the right. The CPU is an -7-4790K @ 4.5GHz BTW. Everything on internal SSDs. Disappointing to such poor fps - it was much better in the same areas with Ortho4XP, so I suppose the autogen must be to blame??

 

Maybe someone could suggest the best 'bang for bucks' here - most fps increase for least 'destruction' of visual delights? I need to achieve a minimum of 20fps I'd say?

 

Thank you very much for any help. (Sorry if the advice is already out there but after a while browsing other people's comments on one thread after another tends to start blurring the brain!).

 

 

[david broome]

You can find out if your GPU is the bottleneck by going into Xplane settings, DataOutput, and then checking the frame rate/.show in cockpit box (top left corner of checkbox options)

Then when you take a flight it will show not only your fps but also the time taken to render each frame by the CPU and GPU (obviously higher is worse). If the GPU number is significantly higher than the CPU number then it is the bottleneck and vice versa is also true,

You can report back with the numbers or just take a legible screenshot and post.

If the numbers aren't that different then it may be a VRAM limitation but I note you already have textures turned down somewhat.

How much RAM do you have BTW?

 

This isn't really an OrbX issue so much as a hardware/Xplane performance issue though additional eye candy and ortho OrbX offer could well have an impact on lower end GPU's

One way tot est if it is a VRAM issue would be to disable the OrbX ortho in custom scenery and see if that gives a performance boost - though you will likely get an error message the sim should still run. To do this just temporarily move (cut/paste) your OrbX ortho folder for the region you are flying though when you put it back you will have to rerun Xplane and then edit your  scenery_packs.ini file to ensure it has been placed back in the correct order.

 

There are some 3rd party apps that might help such as 3jFPS but they also require FlyWithLua and setting up - these generally change Xplane settings not available in the options menus via scripts such as traffic and LOD settings etc and you can specify a target fps. Personally I would say you need an absolute min of a stable 30 for proper flight.

 

Xplane is a bit of resource hog but it is getting the Vulkan treatment that should improve things somewhat.

If you buy a new graphics card then you may find your CPU becomes the bottleneck but getting those render frame times will help with any upgrade decision.

[martinlest]

Thanks David for the reply. I will try what you suggest and post back when I have some results. I have 16GB RAM - see my signature at bottom of my posts

 

I used to run XP11 with 3jFPS but didn't like the way objects faded in and out of view quite close to the a/c - clever little bit of scripting, but I'd rather a small fps drop.

 

Can I not disable the TEGB by the way by simply changing SCENERY_PACK to SCENERY_PACK_DISABLED in the scenery ini file?

 

Was wondering about this GPU - I don't think I want to spend too much more than this without any guarantees that a new graphics card would bring the desired benefits.

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Zotac-NVIDIA-GeForce-1070-Graphics/dp/B01LLAJ8PU/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=nvidia+gtx+1070+graphics+card&qid=1553794370&s=computers&sr=1-5

 

I have an Asus H97I-Plus M/B (an oversized GPU would not fit). Would 8GBs VRAM suffice ? (I know it's not quite as straight forward as that in practice. Still...)

 

Martin

[martinlest]

Hi again... Ok, a few tests later...

 

I removed all my ORBX TEGB and in fact only gained about 2-3 fps on average, so I don't know why I have been getting generally lower frame rates over the past week or so than I have been used to in the past. May be some other factor.. Very odd. I am currently sitting at EGBB Rwy 33 (TEGB loaded) and seeing about 14fps in side the cockpit and 17fps outside (JD a320). Not brilliant to say the least!

 

As for the frame rates window, the GPU figure is consistently slightly lower than the CPU. At the moment I am seeing around 0.066 for CPU and 0.064 for the GPU inside the cockpit and outside 0.056 and 0.046 respectively. Do those indicate anything to you, apart from the fact that the my graphics crad may not be the problem (even though it runs at 90%+ VRAM used)?

[david broome]

23 minutes ago, martinlest said:

Hi again... Ok, a few tests later...

 

I removed all my ORBX TEGB and in fact only gained about 2-3 fps on average, so I don't know why I have been getting generally lower frame rates over the past week or so than I have been used to in the past. May be some other factor.. Very odd. I am currently sitting at EGBB Rwy 33 (TEGB loaded) and seeing about 14fps in side the cockpit and 176 fps outside (JD a320). Not brilliant to say the least!

 

As for the frame rates window, the GPU figure is consistently slightly lower than the CPU. At the moment I am seeing around 0.066 for CPU and 0.064 for the GPU inside the cockpit and outside 0.056 and 0.046 respectively. Do those indicate anything to you, apart from the fact that the my graphics crad may not be the problem (even though it runs at 90%+ VRAM used)?

 

Sorry didn't see your sig info as I had been messing with my contrast and gamma settings and it was invisible lol

Anyhow...

Agree with you on 3jFPS, it can be over aggressive with the LOD's but there are alternatives you may like to try and adjust manually.

 

No those figures aren't really suggesting either your GPU or CPU is bottlenecking the other but they are quite high as one would expect with an older system I guess - at least you know OrbX isn't really responsible for your drop in FPS.

 

I would say it is just a case of your system being too long in the tooth but if you were getting much better fps previously then something must be causing it.

Have you tried deleting the contents of your shaders folder, people report this can sometimes help. ...\X-Plane 11\Resources\shaders

Have you recently updated your GPU drivers? Likely not as an old card but if so you could try rolling back.

If you haven't updated drivers in a long time you could check Nvidia drivers to see if there is a newer one and if that improves things

Other than that and using 3rd party scripts all I can think of is setting everything to minimum values in Xplane and experimenting with the settings one by one to see which is having the biggest impact on your fps.

 

EDIT

Forgot an obvious question, what resolution are you running Xplane in?

 

[martinlest]

I think the lower fps is in part at least by (bad) chance in the airports from which I have been testing. I often also use St Mary's EGHE as a small airport test, and from there I get my usual maxed out fps of 30. The CPU and GPU times are a lot lower there too, 0.015 and 0.011.

 

On the other hand, there was a time I got 25fps even at Heathrow..  Yes, I did update the GPU drivers a month or two back, but there was no drop in fps at that time.

 

I have XP11 at 'default monitor settings', that is 1920x1200.

 

Quote

Have you tried deleting the contents of your shaders folder, people report this can sometimes help. ...\X-Plane 11\Resources\shaders

 

Do you mean the shadercache folder in Output? I don't think XP11 will even load if you delete the contents of the shader folder...

 

Sad how quickly one's pride and joy high-end system becomes 'long in the tooth'! I originally bought this PC for FS2004 and of course it was stunning, performance-wise. I found XP11 later and fortunately had the specs to run it quite well too. I don't see me changing the PC again any time soon, I must say. I would upgrade the GPU if tests showed that were warranted, but I am not sure that they do...

 

Bottom line for this forum at least is that, no, although ORBX is reducing my frame rates, it's not by all that much.

 

Thanks again for the ideas...

[david broome]

Yes you will get much better performance where there is plenty of ocean as it is much easier to render and much worse performance where there are cities, especially detailed cities like OrbX TE London.

 

Yes sorry, I wasn't trying to be insulting, it is just in today's world a 5 year old GPU is considered long in the tooth and yes it is sad.

It can be expensive trying to keep up with the latest and greatest but given everything i do revolves around my PC it is well worth the investment and not such an expensive hobby when the cost is spread over a couple years each upgrade. It really depends how much use you get out of it and personal priorities.

 

I think a GPU upgrade would help your fps, you CPU has reasonable single thread performance and I don't think would be a bottleneck anywhere up to around a 1070

I couldn't tell you how much fps gain you would get but if the VRAM was holding you back it should be enough to get you back to a steady 30fps except in the most demanding areas (dependant on graphic settings of course) - that would probably set you back around £200 used or refurbished and £300 new.

 

Alternatively you could pop the money in your piggybank and build a new system next year when you will get more for less than now and Xplane should have Vulkan.

 

[martinlest]

Quote

Yes sorry, I wasn't trying to be insulting

 

It's OK - I didn't take it that way at all

 

I have gone ahead and ordered the GTX1070 8GB card - it is at a good price I think at the moment, £229 sterling. It's not the most up to date, but I went through this before on a number of forums and I really don't think that paying around £1000 or more for the latest technology (which won't stay latest very long of course) is necessarily the best investment of money, 'bang for bucks' and all that. Besides, I just paid £thousands for a four-week holiday - got to stop somewhere!

 

I will post back when I have the new GPU installed. I hope I shall be able to report some improvement!

[david broome]

2 hours ago, martinlest said:

 

It's OK - I didn't take it that way at all

 

I have gone ahead and ordered the GTX1070 8GB card - it is at a good price I think at the moment, £229 sterling. It's not the most up to date, but I went through this before on a number of forums and I really don't think that paying around £1000 or more for the latest technology (which won't stay latest very long of course) is necessarily the best investment of money, 'bang for bucks' and all that. Besides, I just paid £thousands for a four-week holiday - got to stop somewhere!

 

I will post back when I have the new GPU installed. I hope I shall be able to report some improvement!

 

Yes please do and make a note of those CPU/GPU timings again to see how they have changed.

[Tony Wroblewski]

Just my two cents here. One day I noticed I was getting significantly lower frame rates than I used to have, and for me it turned out a Windows 10 update had started throttling my CPU. My stats showed the GPU was bored and waiting for the CPU to catch up, and I was averaging 20fps if I was lucky, where previously I was getting anywhere between 40-60fps. This happened in both X-Plane and P3D as well as some other games I had, but really did effect sims harder.

 

The way I fixed it was to disable throttling on my CPU using a third-party tool such as CPUInfo, and instantly I got back that extra performance (which happened on any scenery). I'm not saying this is your issue, but the CPU can make a huge difference even if you have quite a decent GPU to start with, so it's worth investigating this.

 

I think the 4GB in your GPU is probably pushing it these days for X-Plane, with many developers going for high resolution textures now. Ortho scenery can easily exhaust up that quite quickly, and then when you factor in high definition cockpits, PBR etc, 4GB is probably the limit. Keeping your texture resolution to high will certainly help, but also try turning down reflections which don't work too well, and also drop down the AA which seems quite high for that GPU.

 

[Jon Clarke]

And just to add my 2.5 cents worth, you could also try deleting your -plane.prf and Shader cache. Path for the prf is Output/preferences/X-Plane.prf (leave everything else as is, so just the prf.)

Shader cache path is Output/Shadercache. Open that folder and delete the contents.

The above may help gain some fps and is worth doing quite regularly but especially after any XP update.

Others will advise deleting several more files and letting things rebuild, but honestly I find that only deleting the X-Plane prf and Shadercache is more than sufficient.

Be aware that by deleting the prf, you will need to reset your Graphics options. Everything else like controller settings and calibrations etc will remain as was.

 By the way I have a 1070 8GB installed and it runs my XP just dandy and in 4K. If you are in 4K then you really don't need the AA setting above 2x SSAA+FXAA.

 When you install your 1070 I suggest you leave your Visual Effects and Texture Quality as they are, try a notch lower on AA and see if you can live with it if you are not 4K, lower your Reflections to absolute minimum, and increase your World Objects to maximum.

 Then go fly.

After that go and enjoy your very expensive holiday

[martinlest]

Thanks for the posts.

 

I think the figures (CPU/GPU times in the fps dataref screen) show that the CPU and GPU are fairly balanced - if anything the CPU is waiting for the GPU rather than vice-versa. Be interesting to see how the figures change when I install the GTX1070 8GB. Glad to hear your 1070 is proving up to the task, JJC. (My holiday is not till the winter by the way so I have ages to look forward to it!).

 

I have already deleted the contents of the shadercache folder and let the files rebuild (a couple of days ago).. I am always wary of deleting preferences though, it has proved a pain sometimes to get things back to how I am used to them - but I always copy the folder first, so I will certainly try when the new GPU is up and running.

 

I have tried several times moving the AA slider down to 2xSSAA+FXAA but it makes absolutely no difference to the fps, very oddly (it has done in the past) so I have left it where it is for now.

 

Oh, and as has been noted on the XP.org forums, if you turn reflections off completely, you are likely to get the bug whereby the cockpit is suddenly plunged into darkness for no reason (even when stationary at the gate) - half the switches etc. plunge into obscurity. Minutes later ilighting returns to normal.. and that annoyance keeps on cycling round. Someone found the cure to be to have the reflections switch at least one notch up, and that works: so that is why I keep it there. If I turn it off, the lighting bug returns...

[david broome]

I've never encountered that bug with reflections off but reflections are a big resource hog in Xplane even at the lower settings.

I truly hope Laminar finally get around to fixing reflections when they push out Vulkan, both performance and the oscillating reflections bug and the bug you reference.

[martinlest]

Yes, I agree. I do not though get much of an fps boost if I turn reflections off completely, and as I say, that brings on the 'dreaded' blackened cockpit - quite a few threads on the XP org forums about that.

 

Going to start troubleshooting the fps issue now, deleting preferences etc.: it appeared to 'crash' at the time I installed TEGB, but it seems that that is just coincidental -  as I reported, testing the same scenario without TEGB only increases the fps by 2 or 3.

 

I never had any problem getting 25-30fps even at busy airports before, but so many now give me less than 15fps - really frustrating (as frustrating not to know why as to endure the juddery low frame rates themselves!)... I just flew from EGBB again and was getting 12fps on the ground. This gradually rose as I did, and by 10,000, above TEGB terrain as far as the eye can see, I was back to 30fps. OK, I need to try the default EGBB airport instead of my addon, but airports uploaded by the wonderful 'tdg' rarely impact frame rates at all, so I doubt that is the issue, especially as the low fps seems everywhere I have tried so far, at ground level.

 

Anyway, I will post back once I have any results. I'd like to get the frame rates back before I install the new GPU or I won't be on a 'level playing field', if you see what I mean.

[Tony Wroblewski]

I can't say I've ever seen the black cockpit bug and I've not ran with reflections on for some time

 

Please can you post your log.txt file (You can find this in your X-Plane directory after you start X-Plane). I've heard of others having similar problems with the 11.30 update to X-Plane so maybe we can see something in the logs. It's hard to say what it is, but you won't be the first who has reported X-Plane slowing down recently

[martinlest]

This is one of those things that starts to 'do your head in', as some of the kids at my school insist on saying! I have spent a couple of hours now trying to fix things...

 

I deleted most of the contents of the preferences folder (after copying it to the desktop first) and let XP rebuild the files....

 

At Rwy33 of EGBB, my standard testing place for the past day or two, I then got 30fps - but only because all the graphics settings had been set pretty much to the far left of the sliders. I put them back to how they are in the screenshot above, one by one. The killer, it turns out, is 'Number of World Objects' If I set it to Low, I get excellent frame rates. However, set as above, to High, things are odd.. I tried (1) ZBAR - where I have no 3rd. party scenery at all. With the settings as in the screenshot I got 30fps (my maximum as set by nVidia Inspector, as I think I mentioned). (2) VIDP, where I have Ortho4XP terrain and a complex airport: still got 30fps!. (3) Back to EGBB, where there is both TEGB and an addon airport: 18fps only. (4) As (3) but removed the addon airport: 19fps. (5) As (4) but removed all ORBX GB scenery as well: 23fps.

 

Not sure what to make of all that.. I attach the log file anyway. Thanks for any thoughts!

Log.zip

[Jon Clarke]

@martinlest What plane is being used in these tests, still the JD a320? Also confirm the XP version you are using and have you tried the default Cessna for test purposes?

[martinlest]

Yes, JD a320. Changing the a/c makes little difference really... At the 'usual' test position, EGBB Rwy33, it's 18 or so in the a320, 19fps with the c172 (I just double-checked).

 

X-Plane = XP11.32r2

[david broome]

You seems to have an awful lot of plug ins, have you tried disabling them to see if that makes a difference?

If it does you could then start them one by one to see which is the resource hog.

 The only other thing I can suggest that might give you a few frames is to turn off AI traffic in xplane. 

Otherwise just turn off reflections and see if that bug occurs, never happened to me.

 

 

[martinlest]

1. I do really need all those plugins... and I haven't added any since the frame rates went down. A few weeks back I got high frame rates almost everywhere, apart from at airports like Aerosoft's Heathrow (where they were still perfectly OK, even so) and the plugins were the same as I have now. I will try removing them though at some stage soon, just by way of troubleshooting, but I can't see any that I would want to lose permanently (except in the unlikely event that one did suddenly appear to be responsible).

2. AI traffic is already off. I do use World Traffic 3, but loading or not loading AI traffic via that programme makes little difference to my frame rates.

3. I have experimented several times over the past several months with turning Reflections off. I always get the bug back with reflections set to the far left. I can post a link to threads which discuss it if you like. I am by no means the only one who gets this.

 

The bottom line (if there is one) for me is that, as I write this,  my ToLiss a319 (a joy, but not the most fps-friendly of my planes) is currently sitting at Delhi airport - the new, highly complex and so supposedly 'frame rate killer' rendition (uploaded the other day to the X-Plane.org library)...

 

https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/51285-indira-gandhi-international-airport-vidp/&tab=comments

 

... with zl18 Ortho4XP all around, and my frame rates are between 22 and 30 (my max setting) depending where I place my aircraft around the aprons. That's better than any number of places I can choose in the UK now, with TEGB removed and at a default Laminar airport. It makes no sense to me at all. Something seems to have 'gone wrong' with the UK since I removed the Ortho4XP terrain and used TEGB instead.

 

When I can take a deep enough breath and troubleshoot some more, I'll see if I can see what is happening to the loading using process Monitor; that sometimes helps.

 

I am in any case going to replace my GTX970 with the 1070 tomorrow.. hopefully that will allow me to ignore this frame rate issue by increasing the fps enough so that I hardly notice it.

 

Thank you again for the comments David.

[BobT]

Hi Martin, have you tried this little baby? It includes great tools for adjusting and tuning the LOD of world objects, along with many other things.

Great directions and ideas by JV. 

I'm running a 1070/8GB and able to get smooth performance at 4K even around London 20 to 30 fps. If you put the FPS tool into user mode you can manually adjust LOD instantly to your liking.

[martinlest]

Sounds good... I'll have a look now. Thanks.

 

Quick try of the new GTX1070 - huge increase in score in GPU benchmarkers like Heaven and Valley, like 60% or more, and the VRAM usage of about 4.5GB (GPU-Z) is obviously a lot better with an 8GB card, rather than my 4GB GTX970 - but ... I am getting exactly the same fps at the 'usual' EGBB Rwy33 test spot as with the GTX970!! Ho-hum... (not to put it any stronger than that!).

[Fizzelle]

Because XPL is CPU bound to one thread (ish) until Vulkan (possibly).

 

But agree, tons better in games like Fallout, Battlefield, Metro etc etc

[david broome]

2 hours ago, martinlest said:

Sounds good... I'll have a look now. Thanks.

 

Quick try of the new GTX1070 - huge increase in score in GPU benchmarkers like Heaven and Valley, like 60% or more, and the VRAM usage of about 4.5GB (GPU-Z) is obviously a lot better with an 8GB card, rather than my 4GB GTX970 - but ... I am getting exactly the same fps at the 'usual' EGBB Rwy33 test spot as with the GTX970!! Ho-hum... (not to put it any stronger than that!).

 

That is interesting because your CPU wasn't bottlenecking the 970 so you should have seen some gains at least.

What are the timings now for CPU/GPU frame render time?

If you have objects set to max try dialling it back a notch as that should take some pressure off your CPU.

I would also recommend going through the process of deleting shader cache again since you have a new GPU and drivers. \X-Plane 11\Output\shadercache

 

 

[martinlest]

Quote

deleting shader cache again

 

Ok, did that again. No change.

 

Quote

If you have objects set to max try dialling it back a notch

 

I gain 1-2 fps max. Can't decide whether it is worth the gain, especially in TEGB where it seems quite a few objects disappear if the slider is not at max? (I have left it at 'max' for now).

 

I get about 3fps gain if I turn reflection detail to minimal instead of low - I'll try that for a while, but if this sets off the cockpit shadow bug again (which plagues me - and many others) I'll have to switch it back to 'Low'.

 

My CPU/GPU timers (at EGBB) now average 0.047/0.036 respectively.

 

Thanks.

 

 

[david broome]

58 minutes ago, martinlest said:

 

Ok, did that again. No change.

 

 

I gain 1-2 fps max. Can't decide whether it is worth the gain, especially in TEGB where it seems quite a few objects disappear if the slider is not at max? (I have left it at 'max' for now).

 

I get about 3fps gain if I turn reflection detail to minimal instead of low - I'll try that for a while, but if this sets off the cockpit shadow bug again (which plagues me - and many others) I'll have to switch it back to 'Low'.

 

My CPU/GPU timers (at EGBB) now average 0.047/0.036 respectively.

 

Thanks.

 

 

 

Well those timings (0.047/0.036) are a fair bit lower than they were 0.066 for CPU and 0.064 GPU

That should of taken you from 15fps you were reporting to around 21 all things being equal in that same situation which may not seem much but is actually a 40% increase in overall performance from where you were.

You take the higher of the two timings and divide into one which should give a close approx of your fps.

Your CPU has now pretty much reached the limits of its performance and is holding your GPU a few frames but not a massive bottleneck.

 

Xplane is a beast to run and requires a beast PC if you want the eye candy, even at 30 fps.

I have a 1080Ti and still struggle with reflections enabled and objects maxed out.

Personally I don't lose many objects when I move back one notch from max though the draw distance can be significantly impacted if I don't have the visual effects slider HDR or all the way to the right.

 

You said your 4790k was already overclocked to 4.5ghz right?

Those timings do seem high for a i7 running at 4.5Ghz though so I'm wondering if it is throttling under load.

Have you monitored your CPU temps or if it is throttling?

This video might help

 

And also this article.

https://smallbusiness.chron.com/prevent-drops-cpu-speed-70828.html

 

 

 

[martinlest]

Thanks for the continued input - much appreciated.

 

No, my CPU temps are good, I have 'Core Temp' on a desktop app. Even with XP11 running, temperatures rarely exceed ambient + 25 degs. (so high 50s at the moment). At my EGBB test, with the JDa320, core temps are barely rising about 50 degs at the moment.

 

Yes, I o/c'd the CPU slightly some months back to 4.5GHz...

 

I have tried a few adjustments in the nVidia CP since I last posted - although some people seem to have most 3D settings active there, most seem to say that only the performance mode option is really relevant to XP (I have mine at max performance). I have also tried setting TO to On - some people report fps drop, others a gain. For myself, I gained about 2fps with TO switched to On. Today at least...

 

I also use nVidia Inspector (did I say?) where a few of the many options definitely do work in XP11 (at least on my machine).

 

I tried the 'VMI-Twick' idea above too today, using John's settings - it cut my fps at EGBB from 21 or so down to 12??

 

Some are saying that there is an issue with 11.3x, but I have a copy of XP11.26 too, and I don't really see that much difference if I run exactly the same flight there - maybe 1 fps on average.

 

I think the time has come for me to ignore fps for a while and do some flying (I am off to India for a week or two)! I'll monitor how things go, performance wise, in the meantime.

[david broome]

3 hours ago, martinlest said:

Thanks for the continued input - much appreciated.

 

No, my CPU temps are good, I have 'Core Temp' on a desktop app. Even with XP11 running, temperatures rarely exceed ambient + 25 degs. (so high 50s at the moment). At my EGBB test, with the JDa320, core temps are barely rising about 50 degs at the moment.

 

Yes, I o/c'd the CPU slightly some months back to 4.5GHz...

 

I have tried a few adjustments in the nVidia CP since I last posted - although some people seem to have most 3D settings active there, most seem to say that only the performance mode option is really relevant to XP (I have mine at max performance). I have also tried setting TO to On - some people report fps drop, others a gain. For myself, I gained about 2fps with TO switched to On. Today at least...

 

I also use nVidia Inspector (did I say?) where a few of the many options definitely do work in XP11 (at least on my machine).

 

I tried the 'VMI-Twick' idea above too today, using John's settings - it cut my fps at EGBB from 21 or so down to 12??

 

Some are saying that there is an issue with 11.3x, but I have a copy of XP11.26 too, and I don't really see that much difference if I run exactly the same flight there - maybe 1 fps on average.

 

I think the time has come for me to ignore fps for a while and do some flying (I am off to India for a week or two)! I'll monitor how things go, performance wise, in the meantime.

 

Temp isn't the only reason for throttling though.

Did You ensure you had the VR option selected in VMI-Twick?

What happens if you deselect the VR option?

Sorry but I'm pretty much out of ideas from here other than spending lots of money

At least you can wait to see if Vulkan brings you benefits.

[martinlest]

Ok, I decided I had to carry on with ths, rather than fly - and I seem to have improved things a lot:

 

I have a copy of 11.32 'out-of the-box' on another PC and I copied that to my XP11 computer. I then added folders, slowly replacing the ones in the 'clean' version of XP11 with ones from my original, 'full' version (I did this by adding symbolic links - the quickest and cleanest way I think). At first, with the 'vanilla' version, I got a huge increase in fps (settings the same as in my original screenshot here) - up to 55fps. As I added stuff, that decreased of course, but not by much. Then I got to lua scripts!...

 

I thought I knew exactly what lua scripts I had installed (big mistake to rely on my memory like that these days!), but there were a few I had forgotten... I removed all apart from two, which are 'must haves' for me and which I would still use even if they had  been responsible for the fps decrease. Fortunately the ones I removed must have been at least partly responsible for the frame rate issues, because whereas my EGBB test was getting 18fps, if I was lucky, it now gets about 30. I am more than happy with that...

 

I think someone said I should check plugins here, and I did move a lot of the plugins out when I was testing - but I stupidly did not remove these lua scripts: I have not yet tried to find out which of the ones I removed is mostly to blame, because at the moment I have had enough of troubleshooting/testing - it takes SO long for XP11 to load up again each time; I've been on it most of the day now. Lucky I am semi-retired - not sure how people manage to fly X-Plane and have a full-time job!!

 

I also found that I can gain a few fps by de-activating all the scenery I am not flying (I have so much, it's a bit silly really) by changing SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/ to SCENERY_PACK_DISABLED Custom Scenery/ in the scenery ini file for those areas I will not be flying (quick and easy with an 'intelligent' text editor like EditPad). So now that I intend to fly just in India for a week or so, for example, I have disabled all the entries in the ini file this way, apart from the libraries, Indian airport & Ortho4XP sceneries, Global airports, HD mesh...

 

I seem to get a nice boost in fps too if I do a similar thing to all the aircraft I now have installed. I have moved all the aircraft out of the XP11 aircraft folder (apart from the ones that install with Laminar of course), say to a folder called 'Hangar' (outside of the XP11 folder), and just create a symbolic link to the XP Aircraft folder for those I want to fly at that time. I did that in FS9 in fact to maximise resources. Not sure if the tweaking like that will prove to be a bit too much of a hassle in the long run, but I'll give it a try.

 

Thanks to ORBX for 'hosting' all this, which is a bit off topic I guess, but hopefully may help others with similar issues.

 

Martin

[Fizzelle]

Brilliant Martin, and an intelligent resolution. As you say, you need to invest a little time into XPL.

 

Happy flying!

[martinlest]

Thanks 

 

- as a footnote, I just opened a flight at Delhi airport (the new one uploaded to XP11 library last week - nice but very, very 'heavy' resource wise) and am getting a maximum at the stand of 75fps (!) as opposed to a maximum of 30fps before (though 30fps was Ok for me). At the heaviest parts of the airport though, or when you can see the whole of it on arrival however, I got around 12fps before .. now I get about 25fps (very acceptable given the scenery). Nil desperandum...

 

I think moving all my addon a/c out of XP and adding them via a symlink has given me the biggest frame rate increase. I am just hoping that this isn't another of those five-minute wonders and when I start up XP tomorrow I am not back to square one. Stranger, and certainly less irritating things have happened! We'll see..

[david broome]

Scenery files that are not in use should not really impact fps though they will increase your loading a little. I don't think you need to go tot he trouble of disabling scenery not in use each time though obviously if you find it has a big impact you should do so. (not sure why it would as it only takes up a little loading time and memory and should be no drain on the cPU when flying)

Plug ins and scripts on the other hand run on CPU and as well as mount up they can also conflict, I think this is probably responsible for you having those high CPU timings than I would of expected previously.

I did suggest this in a previous post, 

"You seems to have an awful lot of plug ins, have you tried disabling them to see if that makes a difference?

If it does you could then start them one by one to see which is the resource hog."

Which I got from looking at your log.txt

I'm just happy you are now getting a good experience, happy flights.

[martinlest]

Quote

I did suggest this in a previous post, 

"You seems to have an awful lot of plug ins, have you tried disabling them to see if that makes a difference?

If it does you could then start them one by one to see which is the resource hog."

 

Yes, I said:

 

Quote

someone said I should check plugins here, and I did move a lot of the plugins out when I was testing - but I stupidly did not remove these lua scripts

 

the 'someone' being your good self, now I look back.

 

I will experiment with the scenery pack ini file - you doubtless right: it's not worth fiddling with it like this when I move from one area to another - may be a red herring anyway.

 

My quick tests showed that moving all my aircraft had a big impact however, though I'd need to move them back again to test further. I think though I'll leave it for the present; as I said, I feel I've done enough troubleshooting for the time being! My 'reward' was a beautiful flight just now from Delhi to Shimla, up in the Himalayan foothills.... the Ortho4XP scenery looked great. If ORBX were to issue 'TEI' (True Earth India), however!! ....

 

Happy flights to you too, and many thanks again for all the advice.