active EGPH missing options and major FPS hit

[Dr_Watson]

Hi

 

Just tried my local airport Edinburgh, looks stunning but it's unusable for me due to the FPS hit!   I own many airports from many developers and this is the first time I will not be able to use it as the FPS are too low with the lowest settings I am prepared to run.  Leeds is a big hit, but the FPS there are acceptable with my lowest settings.

 

I can't fly with my lowest settings I use in XP11, when frames go below 20fps, with these lowest settings, I do not drop below 40 FPS at Leeds,  25 to 30 with MAX AA, but with EGPH, I can get down to 8 FPS with MAX AA.

PC Spec, 1080ti, 8700K at 5Ghz, 2560x1440. 

 

So I did some testing, I used the same settings above but put antialiasing at MAX as I often do at other Orbx airports, and started moving around the area, to see if I can find what drops the FPS. I found some really interesting results.  I can get 30FPS at many area's as long as I do not look at the car park area's.  Even if I pan 1 deg too much, the FPS drops from 30 to 20 instantly, and if I look a bit more, it drops to 15.  If I then move over the carpark and look at it, I get 8FPS.   FOr some crazy reason, if I go to ground level over a car park, and look up at the sky, I get 8 FPS.  If I go to the terminal, and look up at the sky, I get 60 FPS.  Something really strange is going on with the carparks, either the cars, the ground texture or something.  

 

See screenshots below of my FPS test. These are the same as the settings above apart from AA is now max, 8x.  I can't get the FPS counter to show in the shot so the number is above each screenshot.

 

Lowest settings I use, FPS below are with AA setting, at MAX 8x

 

30 FPS

 

30 FPS

 

30 FPS

 

30 FPS

 

30 FPS

 

30 FPS

 

20 FPS Compare this closely to the shot above, 10FPS lower because the this view is looking a little bit more to the right.

 

20 FPS

 

60 FPS At gate 11 area looking straight up.

 

12 FPS At ground level of carpark near tower looking straight up.

 

8 FPS

 

 

One other thing, there are no options in the options but ie. no remove static airports.  I guess this can be done in OE or WED, but this option would be good as many people have probably bought Traffic Global and would use such an option more.

 

Cheers

Iain

 

 

 

 

[Gabe777]

I have same problem with Leeds Bradford.... see my post below.

 

I believe it is the amount of PBR used.

 

Reducing settings in sim has no effect, unless by completely disable AA and using just FXAA.... and I won't get out of bed for that I'm afraid.

 

My GTX is using just 7GB of VRAM but it is hitting 100 percent usage.

 

Once you get away from the terminal buildings and aprons it goes back to 50 percent.

 

Southampton is 50 percent and and London City is 70 percent.

 

At night it is 50 percent .... less PBR used !

 

As a result of this, and a lack of Control Panel with a way of using smaller textures and thus less PBR (?), I therefore decided NOT to purchase Edinburgh or Newcastle, as the former is far bigger than Leeds, and I predicted this would therefore be an even worse issue.

 

It may look pretty.... and it surerly does, but I'm not in the business of making screenshots.

 

I'm wondering how PBR hits P3D ?.... If it's better I may abandon OrbX in X plane and go back to P3D. I shall investigate on Youtube and Reddit.

 

You don't expect a GTX 1080 to be maxed out in a flightsim.

[Dr_Watson]

Hi

 

Good info, with my low settings in the screenshoot, Leeds and London City have no problems, I can even run with highest AA settings at those locations.

With payware addons, there is always a hit, my lowest settings are the comprimise as FPS are always great with the visuals being sacraficed, however EGPH is different, it's complete no go with these low settings, 8-12 fps max AA, 15-20fps with lower AA, if I jump in the cockpit of the 737, these drop further. 

However, I get 30fps if I have no car parks in view. So for me it’s not PBR, it looks like something unique to EGPH and only in certain area's. Terminal, runway, rampviews etc are 30FPS max settings and smooth panning, look towards the car parks, and major slow down.  

[gordonhutchison]

If memory serves there was an issue with severe FPS drop at EGNX when looking at the car park too.

 

https://orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/175637-egnx-horrible-fps/?tab=comments#comment-1536474

[Dr_Watson]

Ah ok, I actually have that airport, but I haven't tried it yet, I was going to take the night freight down there from EGPH to test it the proper way!

 

One a side note, I personally would consider a "lite" version of Orbx airports as a purchase option  not that many cars, certainly no cars parked in the ground floor of the multistory car parks as at EGPH (that is just something to reduce FPS that isn't needed), some other features removed too, just max FPS with good visuals as you would see from flying and taxiing around, not from exploring the airport with free cam.  Just my opinion, not bashing the product.  

 

PS, it's the configure button that's missing to remove static traffic.

[Dr_Watson]

Tested EGNX, shows the same problem, although you don't notice it so much during a flight as car parts are a bit further away, but I get 35FPS in most area's 6-10 FPS when near a car park.

[gordonhutchison]

@Dr_Watson are you running XVision?

[Dr_Watson]

Well, I am, but only since about 2 weeks ago when I wanted those strong colours.  

 

I got to about page 8 of this sub forum looking for similar threads and I found this one.

 

 

So give me a few hours to read it, disable some stuff and then I will get some feedback to the community...hopefully positive!

[gordonhutchison]

Scroll down to post #29 - FPS drops was something to do with xVision altering the lights

[Dr_Watson]

Will do thanks!

[Nick Cooper]

This is the only post of real value:

 

See if it applies to you.

For what it's worth, I see no frame rate penalty that could be ascribed to cars in the

car parks or the lighting of them. 

[Dr_Watson]

I don't know the XVision program very well at all. I got it to use the Renault solution for better colours.  I don't have any boxes ticked in XVision settings, but I think it works for the colours. The reason I don't tick boxes as I think it interferes with UWXP.

 

I just changed the lights file to the default that I could download in that thread.  Tested it at EGPH but it's still the same.  Maybe I am doing something wrong?  Sitting 100ft above the terminal in free view, 40FPS and panning smooth, look slowly  and as soon as a carpark comes into view, 15FPS, look more at the carpark, 10FPS max and down to 6 FPS when looking at the tower.

 

This is my xvision settings, I might uninstall it or if someone could give me some tips on what I might be doing wrong.

 

[Dr_Watson]

Sorry, can't make progress, done Xvision backup and uninstalled it, put on the originial lites.txt file.  Still the same, 30FPS everywhere, 20FPS looking towards a car park, 6-8FPS if I go near the car park.

[Dazzleruk]

Try disabling UWXP if you havent already and see if that makes an improvement at EGPH at all. I'm curious as I'm going to DL later today and I own both UWXP and Xvision.

UWXP has become unusable in VR since the 11.36 XP update. Might be causing issues elsewhere also. Worth a try

[Dr_Watson]

It’s a good program but it messes with a lot of things, I will try and remove it and see what it does 

[Dr_Watson]

GOOD NEWS!   

 

Set UWXP settings to default XP, then removed from plugins.

 

FPS with 4x or 8x AA are now similar, not a big difference as before, min 30 when over car parks, 45-60 when in more remote area's.

 

My XP has been giving me some headaches with performance recently, but not enough to be able to nail down what it was, certainly nothing like at EGPH.  But I suspect UWXP has been doing me no favours.  Glad it's fixed, thanks all for taking the time to help.

Will try XVision again, but leave UWXP off for now, default clouds look ok anyway, and UWXP latest version of clouds doesn't allow you to blur the clouds (cloud smoothness) like it used to, and I wasn't so impressed with the ultra sharp repetitive 2d clouds.  Lets see what xenviro 1.12 brings, looks promising.

Cheers

Iain

[Dr_Watson]

Please also check for the configure option to remove static plans, I guess I can remove in Overlay Editor but prefer an official option. Many thanks

[Dazzleruk]

1 hour ago, Dr_Watson said:

GOOD NEWS!   

 

Set UWXP settings to default XP, then removed from plugins.

 

FPS with 4x or 8x AA are now similar, not a big difference as before, min 30 when over car parks, 45-60 when in more remote area's.

 

My XP has been giving me some headaches with performance recently, but not enough to be able to nail down what it was, certainly nothing like at EGPH.  But I suspect UWXP has been doing me no favours.  Glad it's fixed, thanks all for taking the time to help.

Will try XVision again, but leave UWXP off for now, default clouds look ok anyway, and UWXP latest version of clouds doesn't allow you to blur the clouds (cloud smoothness) like it used to, and I wasn't so impressed with the ultra sharp repetitive 2d clouds.  Lets see what xenviro 1.12 brings, looks promising.

Cheers

Iain

 

Good to hear. I knew UWXP had been giving me headaches with my config on the last couple of XP updates so was worth a try.

Happy flying

[hm2118]

I have also issues with low FPS in the new ORBX EGPH.  Previously I had a freeware scenery of EGPH, was getting FPS in the high 30's flying over the airport in a helicopter. I removed the old scenery and installed the Orbx EGPH yesterday. The FPS dropped to the low 20's using the same helicopter and x-plane setting as before. Nothing has changed except the new EGPH scenery. 

I wish it can be optimized  for better FPS.

[Jon Clarke]

4 minutes ago, hm2118 said:

I have also issues with low FPS in the new ORBX EGPH.  Previously I had a freeware scenery of EGPH, was getting FPS in the high 30's flying over the airport in a helicopter. I removed the old scenery and installed the Orbx EGPH yesterday. The FPS dropped to the low 20's using the same helicopter and x-plane setting as before. Nothing has changed except the new EGPH scenery. 

I wish it can be optimized  for better FPS.

Sometimes the removal of the XP.prf file and a subsequent rebuild of that file will help. There are many people who advocate the deletion and rebuild, by XP, of certain folders  and I endorse that.

My experience shows that the deletion of the following can restore fps:

1. XP directory/Output/Preferences/X-Plane.prf. This is normally at the bottom of the files list.

2. Delete the contents of XP Directory/ Output/Shadercache.

 On start up of XP you will only really need to reset your Settings options. Remember that if you adjust the Texture Quality setting, which for this scenery should be set to High  only, then an exit and restart of XP is required for the change to take effect.

Also please advise what if any. plugins you  are using and what your XP settings are.

[Gabe777]

Are the cars PBR'd ?

 

I have no plugins. This is diwn to these new Full PBR airports. Period.

[John Dow]

There is the option of deleting the Preferences from the Output folder that has been shown to improve performance.  It made a dramatic difference for EGLC for me.

 

Do a Google search for deleting preferences in XPlane 11, most of the threads etc recommend keeping the Controls intact.

 

Whoops I see Jon has already suggested this above...

[hm2118]

Thanks John for the advice.

I have tried deleting X-Plane.prf file. It did make some FPS improvement. I did not remove plugins , as many of them I really like and can't do without.

Other thing I tried is to install ( by using simbolic links) Obbx EGPH into a fresh ( virgin) copy of x-plane on another dive in my PC ( No plugins, addons, or anything) I use this copy for trouble shouting.

On this fresh copy of x-Plane, Orbx EGPH runs fantastic, even with high graphic settings. Of course there is no Trueearth, no addons and no plugins. To enjoy the scenery to the full, it has to be run on the fully loaded version of x-pane and pay the price in FPS.  There is always a compromise in x-plane, reduce the antialliasing to low and the FPS jumps up ! and suffer bad shimmering and flickering.

I feel there still no computer hardware that can run complex scenery at max settings and get high FPS ( considering I use a 9900K oc to 4.9Ghz and GTX2080ti)

[Jon Clarke]

23 minutes ago, hm2118 said:

Thanks John for the advice.

I have tried deleting X-Plane.prf file. It did make some FPS improvement. I did not remove plugins , as many of them I really like and can't do without.

Other thing I tried is to install ( by using simbolic links) Obbx EGPH into a fresh ( virgin) copy of x-plane on another dive in my PC ( No plugins, addons, or anything) I use this copy for trouble shouting.

On this fresh copy of x-Plane, Orbx EGPH runs fantastic, even with high graphic settings. Of course there is no Trueearth, no addons and no plugins. To enjoy the scenery to the full, it has to be run on the fully loaded version of x-pane and pay the price in FPS.  There is always a compromise in x-plane, reduce the antialliasing to low and the FPS jumps up ! and suffer bad shimmering and flickering.

I feel there still no computer hardware that can run complex scenery at max settings and get high FPS ( considering I use a 9900K oc to 4.9Ghz and GTX2080ti)

Try symbolic linking TEGB in the fresh install and then test that. Please note we are not wanting to advise not running your plugins but trying to see which aditional piece of scenery or addon is causing the fps loss.

Contrary to some users input, you are stating that EGPH "runs fantastic". I need to see if the fps change has something to do with EGPH plus TEGB North running together.

To find the true cause would require a process of elimination regarding additionally adding scenery addons and plugins until you reach a point where your fps is dramatically reduced.

Your remark about current hardware's capability in running all addons at very high/max XP settings is most valid and so definitely a compromise in settings is required. it's a matter of to what extent you are willing t compromise.

 

[hm2118]

Dear john

Here is what I have tested so far, All the test are using these setting which I did not change, as any change in settings has significant impact on fps (specially   Antialiasing and reflections)

All testing done on a “virgin copy of X-plane 11.36 , no addons , no plugins.

My settings are : World Obj=Max, Reflections= Min,  Visual effects=  High, Texture=Max, Antialiasing=4xSSA+FXAA.   No shadow draw on scenery and Parked aircraft=yes. I Use full screen, ultrawide monitor at 3440x1440  60hz.  Weather default cirrus. Vsync not selected.

- Orbx EGPH alone,  flying helicopter Bell 407 at altitude 300-400 ft over EGPH =  35-42 FPS ( for me I consider this “fantastic”  performance for my resolution and high settings )

- ORBX RGPH with TEGB north =  32-  40  FPS ( little impact adding TEGB)

I noted something very important in both cases above. I can confirm it 100% as I tested it many times. It is a very severe and sudden drop in FPS ( FPS drops to 17-20 FPS)  when flying over the open car park with all the cars visible. FPS immediately recover as soon as I fly away from the car park and no parked cards are visible.

I tested the car park issue on my fully loaded main X-plane install (same graphic settings) and the FPS drops from 24-27 FPS to 14-17 FPS over the car park.

I think maybe the high number of cars parked, their texture or whatever, is causing this FPS drop.

Still did not have the chance to add and remove plugins, on at a time. Will update you when I do more testing.

[Kostas Chatzi]

I have the same issue when looking at the car park. FPS go to 19/20. Maybe there should be an option for cars in EGPH.

[Jon Clarke]

 

2 hours ago, hm2118 said:

Dear john

Here is what I have tested so far, All the test are using these setting which I did not change, as any change in settings has significant impact on fps (specially   Antialiasing and reflections)

All testing done on a “virgin copy of X-plane 11.36 , no addons , no plugins.

My settings are : World Obj=Max, Reflections= Min,  Visual effects=  High, Texture=Max, Antialiasing=4xSSA+FXAA.   No shadow draw on scenery and Parked aircraft=yes. I Use full screen, ultrawide monitor at 3440x1440  60hz.  Weather default cirrus. Vsync not selected.

- Orbx EGPH alone,  flying helicopter Bell 407 at altitude 300-400 ft over EGPH =  35-42 FPS ( for me I consider this “fantastic”  performance for my resolution and high settings )

- ORBX RGPH with TEGB north =  32-  40  FPS ( little impact adding TEGB)

I noted something very important in both cases above. I can confirm it 100% as I tested it many times. It is a very severe and sudden drop in FPS ( FPS drops to 17-20 FPS)  when flying over the open car park with all the cars visible. FPS immediately recover as soon as I fly away from the car park and no parked cards are visible.

I tested the car park issue on my fully loaded main X-plane install (same graphic settings) and the FPS drops from 24-27 FPS to 14-17 FPS over the car park.

I think maybe the high number of cars parked, their texture or whatever, is causing this FPS drop.

Still did not have the chance to add and remove plugins, on at a time. Will update you when I do more testing.

 

@hm2118 Many thanks for your comprehensive feedback on your testing. I will forward this to the devs. @Greg Jones For your info

[Gabe777]

And please also, can we have the option to disable the Animated vehicles.

 

If this together with disabling parked cars, stops a 1080 hitting 100% usage, it should put my minimum back to 30 fps.

 

This should also be considered in all other Full PBR airports like Newcastle and Edinburgh..... and especially Leeds which I bought, then you may sell more.

 

Thank you.

[Jon Clarke]

2 hours ago, Gabe777 said:

And please also, can we have the option to disable the Animated vehicles.

 

If this together with disabling parked cars, stops a 1080 hitting 100% usage, it should put my minimum back to 30 fps.

 

This should also be considered in all other Full PBR airports like Newcastle and Edinburgh..... and especially Leeds which I bought, then you may sell more.

 

Thank you.

Devs have been informed already. 

[Kostas Chatzi]

I have to say, that this drop in FPS is not only ORBX related. I just completed a flight from LGTS to (flytampa) LGAV, and noticed that when parking at GATE A05, or B05-not sure (which is in front of a car park),I have the same drop in FPS (from 30 to 20), exactly as in EGPH. If parking at gate A11 of LGAV (which is only a few meters away to the left-and there is no car park) I do not have any drop in FPS. It remains at 30 FPS. So I think developers should get rid of parked cars. Not necessary anyway.

Another thing to mention is that the drop in fps happens mostly, if there is a building between the airplane and the park car!

[Andydigital]

If you compare the P3D and X-Plane version of the multi story car park you can see the X-Plane version is a lot more detailed. I don't think it's the cars that are the problem, it's the actual structure itself I think. I don't get a huge drop in frame rate but it's certainly noticeable.

[Dr_Watson]

I did notice that inside the multistory there are what seems like 100's of pillars, it's a lot to draw, and there are cars that can't be seen on the ground floor unless you are in free cam and go looking for them.  

 

My suggestion is for Orbx to have a lite version of the airport for sale, slightly cheaper, PBR runways, taxi ramp, nice tower , but more basic outside the terminal area.  Just an idea,  

[John Dow]

17 hours ago, Dr_Watson said:

I did notice that inside the multistory there are what seems like 100's of pillars, it's a lot to draw, and there are cars that can't be seen on the ground floor unless you are in free cam and go looking for them.  

 

My suggestion is for Orbx to have a lite version of the airport for sale, slightly cheaper, PBR runways, taxi ramp, nice tower , but more basic outside the terminal area.  Just an idea,  

 

Unlikely however the idea of a CP option or two to remove some 'features' might have merit.

 

Mostly, Orbx products try to be future proofed, and are developed with the next generation of computers in mind, with a performance hit today but pleasing results into the future.