My head is being 'done in' by P3Dv4

[NeilG]

Over the years I've invested a ridiculous amount of money in P3Dv4. In particular I've bought virtually everything that ORBX brought out from the time they stopped being Voz. Now, there is the new Micr't Flight Sim that doesn't seem far away and all that investment seems for nothing. That is galling but if I make the leap that is just something Ill have to accept - don't even get me on the gazillions of aircraft models I've bought that could be redundant in one foul swoop. I am looking forward to the new sim but at the same time it make me cry a little bit. 

 

But even while we continue to used P3Dv4 I find myself becoming increasingly fed up with its behaviour and I wondered if anyone else felt the same. These days the three sims I use are Prepar, X Plane 11 and DCS and the latter two just about always start up properly, when you load the scenario you find that - despite the apparently low FPS on X Plane - they are both 90% as smooth as silk. DCS has beautiful military aircraft models with amazing detail, pretty good scenery and very smooth - I fantasise about ORBX doing some scenery for them. Of course there are problems from time to time - that is just the nature of flight sim: 30% flying, 70% fiddling, tinkering, and generally buggering it up. But P3Dv4 takes an eternity to load, when it loads there is a good 30-40% chance that the bloody thing will hang or crash and if yet everything else goes right it still stutters, God it stutters. It stutters on high settings, it stutters here and there on low settings. You get rid of the stutters for a while - praise the Lord! - only to find them coming back after a time. Heaven help you if you find the tweak of all tweaks since once you use it and it seems to make everything great for a bit, in the long run it invariably causes all kinds of problems that lead eventually to a complete break-down and necessity of re-install. Then there are areas of scenery that don't load or the whole thing grinds down to a slow crawl so that there is just no point in carrying on. Don't get me wrong, with ORBX, it can often appear really spectacularly beautiful, but I only ever use TE in X Plane now because in that it is really still very smooth on high settings whereas with P3D - well, fly over an urban area and find out. So, wondered what everyone else feels. All comments and advice are welcome. Thanks

Neil. 

[BradB]

Hey Neil , sorry you are having issue's with P3D . Do you have the latest Hot Fix installed ? . We have similar systems and my P3D loads in about 90 second's or less and I can't remember the last time I had a stutter or CTD with it . I hope you get some advice from some other gents to get it sorted out .

 

John

[Nick Cooper]

Hello Neil,

leaving aside the much published belief that the new flight simulator will be perfect from its release date,

default P3D v4 and for that matter, default FSX will run completely smoothly, perform magnificently and

look like they do.

Default Fs9 is even smoother than both of them.

 

Most of us have added vast amounts of scenery and aircraft, each one adding to the workload and of course,

making the scenery and the aircraft look much better.

It should not be a surprise that in adding all these new features, a few gremlins have crept in with them and that 

the simulator is sometimes brought to its knees by the amount of extra work that it is having to do.

[fltsimguy]

Yea @NeilG

 I moved to XP11 over two years ago. Rarely use P3DV4. But I do for its float planes, historic stuff my dad flew and a few other reasons.

 

I think Nick is quite right but I have over 900 scenery layers in XP and tons of ortho by Orbx, by others and my own.  XP11 runs smoothly =s you state I hate those stutters.

 

Cheers.

[R Smith]

I find that using CC cleaner to scan and fix registry issues has been a god send for me and p3dv4, i rarely get crashes.

Also using the job scheduler Config tweak makes p3d use all of my processor power, which give me great frames.

[tuisong]

3 hours ago, NeilG said:

30% flying, 70% fiddling, tinkering, and generally buggering it up.

 

Me too Neil. In fact at the moment I have completely buggered up P3D and can't find the enthusiasm to sort it out.  My thinking at the moment is to just wait and see what MS2020 is like when it comes out. I just hope that orbx will be involved.

[Sniper31]

Not sure what to say Neil, as P3D v4.5 has been running stutter free for me for over a year or more. Really don't have CTD's either. Once in a Blue Moon I might have a freeze when switching from a default aircraft to a more complex aircraft, but even that is a rarity for me. My biggest difference in my system over yours is I have an i9-9900k cpu overclocked and steady for over 6 months at 5.0 Ghz and also an RTX 2080 Ti graphics card. In fact, P3D runs so well for me, and has even gotten better with the latest nVidia drivers, that I have never even given X-Plane a thought, and do not desire to. I am more than happy with P3D v 4.5....no complaints with it. I hope you can figure the stutter issue out or find a sim that makes you happy so you can fly and have some fun.   

 

NICK, please delete one of these as it was a double post even though I hit POST only once.

Done 

[Ken Terry]

My P3Dv4.5 is excellent, bug free, freeze free, loads reasonably quickly, and no stutters.  Frame rate average around 40 to 50.

Might be that I have a high end PC setup.

Cheers

Ken

[flying_fish]

I get what you are saying Neil, and it's kind of borne out by the comments above from others; by which I mean if you have a ....

5 hours ago, Nick Cooper said:

default P3D v4 and for that matter, default FSX will run completely smoothly

Or if you have a ton of add-ons and are savvy enough to be:

1 hour ago, R Smith said:

using CC cleaner to scan and fix registry issues

 

1 hour ago, R Smith said:

Also using the job scheduler Config tweak

or you have...

1 hour ago, Sniper31 said:

an i9-9900k cpu overclocked and steady for over 6 months at 5.0 Ghz and also an RTX 2080 Ti graphics card

- then P3D runs pretty well.

But many of us have less confidence to tweak, and maybe like me have a system that is, well, 'middle age', then we spend too much time 

5 hours ago, NeilG said:

fiddling, tinkering, and generally buggering it up

So, maybe many of us are thinking if MS2020 does (big if at this stage) give us high end simming without the add-ons and tweaks, it 'way to go'. Only saying.

 

[Ken Terry]

Neil, here is your next PC

 

 

[Dadtom65]

Yes just watched that myself and thought if only I could afford something like that for myself but no way I can afford anything like that. Derek.

[fltsimguy]

32 minutes ago, flying_fish said:

I get what you are saying Neil, and it's kind of borne out by the comments above from others; by which I mean if you have a ....

Or if you have a ton of add-ons and are savvy enough to be:

 

or you have...

- then P3D runs pretty well.

But many of us have less confidence to tweak, and maybe like me have a system that is, well, 'middle age', then we spend too much time 

So, maybe many of us are thinking if MS2020 does (big if at this stage) give us high end simming without the add-ons and tweaks, it 'way to go'. Only saying.

 

I was thinking exactly this same.

I never have a CTD, I use Process Lasso. I paid $2300 for my PC a couple years back...but cripes the new stuff out there you can pay that for a video card...I'm not thinking that this is a "reasonable" hobby for that kind of money.  Shortly after I had the PC made up I added another 16 gigs RAM to 32 total.

 

- I7-6700K Processor 8M Cache 4GHZ Base 4.2GHZ Turbo, I overclock

- GeForce GTX 970 TwinFrozr V 1140/1279MHZ 4GB 7GHZ GDDR5

- 32 gig G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series F4-2133C15D-16GVR DDR4 2133MHZ

 

As I'm saying for the investment I made, XP11 runs smooth with sliders very high, P3DV4, not so much and I don't want to spend any more time nor money messing around  - I want to add something and fly. Although I do enjoy making new ortho tiles with overlays. Best freeware anywhere.

[fltsimguy]

34 minutes ago, Ken Terry said:

Neil, here is your next PC

 

 

 

Wow! Very nice stuff.  In my dreams I could sure see this next to my desk. In reality, not for another 2-3 years.

 

[flying_fish]

If like me you are a bit short of $3,599 for a new PC, try this, which for £1.99 seems to be an absolute bargain. Better set the sliders to the left though...

 

[NeilG]

Thanks for all the replies everyone. It’s clear that some people have a very good experience of aPrepar and that makes me think that I may need to sort out my setup. I have an enormous number of add ons. But my computer, just over a year old, was my retirement present to myself at £3500  - I could only do that because I got a bit of a payoff - and it’s still pretty powerful. But it does seem to me that things are sometimes a bit hit and miss and you can’t always plot the reasons why something isn’t running as you think it ought to. However, your replies have enthused me to keep fiddling to find the smooth sweet spot we all look for and I’m going to take up some of your suggestions.

thanks 

Neil.

[chumley]

2 hours ago, Ken Terry said:

Neil, here is your next PC

 

 

 

[Sniper31]

16 minutes ago, NeilG said:

Thanks for all the replies everyone. It’s clear that some people have a very good experience of aPrepar and that makes me think that I may need to sort out my setup. I have an enormous number of add ons. But my computer, just over a year old, was my retirement present to myself at £3500  - I could only do that because I got a bit of a payoff - and it’s still pretty powerful. But it does seem to me that things are sometimes a bit hit and miss and you can’t always plot the reasons why something isn’t running as you think it ought to. However, your replies have enthused me to keep fiddling to find the smooth sweet spot we all look for and I’m going to take up some of your suggestions.

thanks 

Neil.

One thing I use that I forgot to mention, that I feel makes a big difference, is SimStarterNG. If you are aware of this program already, then maybe you like it or maybe you don't. If you are not aware, you might give it a look see.

[Bullfox]

NIck,

If your system worked really well at first ( your specs indicate basically a really good system) but degraded over time its reasonable to assume all the addons have created problems for you in which case a registry cleaner might help.  That's probably the simplest thing to try that might help.  After that some hard choices about what to remove. 

[Bullfox]

I want to add one additional thought.  Scott Gentile, the owner of A2A, says that when they are creating a new flight sim airplane, its like there is a bucket of features you can add to the airplane, and you can pick and choose what features you want it to have, but eventually if you keep adding features, the bucket gets overfilled and performance suffers.  Flight sim home systems I think are like that.  Obviously the more powerful the system the bigger bucket but even really powerful systems can get over filled with addons, and performance suffers.

 

The other thing is that the more you add the harder it is to figure out what might be causing a problem.  I have a ten year old system running FSX in Win 7, and I get remarkably good performance partly because I have kept it simple. A fair amount of Orbx scenery, some Rex weather software, some A2A airplanes, some freeware airplanes and thats about it.  I am putting together specs for a really high end Ryzen system, but I am still going to keep it simple regarding software addons.  Even with blinding speed, there is still no free lunch.

 

[Sholay]

And let me add one think, the one I am evangelizing for years already.

 

It's simple realization - I you have $2000 to spare on your FS PC, I strongly recommend to sign up to glider's school instead. 

 

In Poland for that amount you get full training from zero to glider's pilot license and then some flying in an air club of your choice - whatever landscape Poland has to offer. You can do the same for like $1500 but then you have to shop around and make choices. For $2500 you have license + some flying + even more flying next year

 

So reading of people who spend $3000 on their FS system makes me scratch my bald head.

Cheers,

Andrzej

[Benny]

My rig is not old but is not top end and it's running most of the stuff fine.

To your question, when I buy a scenery or a plane-heli I see it like that, it's way less then going to the restaurant. On top I mostly buy them on special.
My setting are mostly what ORBX suggest in general.

P3D V4.5 run nicely in general and load in about 90 sec.

I also I'm one of the few here that still use AF2, if  I want smooth, fast loading and some fun it's the one I use.

The new MSFS will probably not be possible for me as I live in a rural area and don't have a fast internet, unless I can download stuff from my shop.

Not everyone can afford I9 & 2080, not me I have other hobbies.

Cheers, Ben

[Sniper31]

1 hour ago, Sholay said:

And let me add one think, the one I am evangelizing for years already.

 

It's simple realization - I you have $2000 to spare on your FS PC, I strongly recommend to sign up to glider's school instead. 

 

In Poland for that amount you get full training from zero to glider's pilot license and then some flying in an air club of your choice - whatever landscape Poland has to offer. You can do the same for like $1500 but then you have to shop around and make choices. For $2500 you have license + some flying + even more flying next year

 

So reading of people who spend $3000 on their FS system makes me scratch my bald head.

Cheers,

Andrzej

 

 

1 hour ago, Benny said:

My rig is not old but is not top end and it's running most of the stuff fine.

To your question, when I buy a scenery or a plane-heli I see it like that, it's way less then going to the restaurant. On top I mostly buy them on special.
My setting are mostly what ORBX suggest in general.

P3D V4.5 run nicely in general and load in about 90 sec.

I also I'm one of the few here that still use AF2, if  I want smooth, fast loading and some fun it's the one I use.

The new MSFS will probably not be possible for me as I live in a rural area and don't have a fast internet, unless I can download stuff from my shop.

Not everyone can afford I9 & 2080, not me I have other hobbies.

Cheers, Ben

 

That's nice, but did either of you ever consider that some people might have health reasons why they can't get a pilots license, and therefore sim flying might be the option for them? Or, maybe, simming is simply a hobby they enjoy. I am also into back country hiking, alpine skiing and cycling. Each one of those hobbies has had me spend way more than $2000-$3000 dollars. Heck, my GS race skiis cost $1000 new, and my new ski boots were $800....and that does not even count clothing, other skiis, lift tickets..etc. 

 

For me, I scratch MY head when people like to question and judge how people want to invest in their hobbies. It's not your concern how I, or anyone else chooses to spend on their hobby   I pointed out what tech I had in my system so that the OP would know why I am possibly not having the same issues in P3D v4.5. That is all. I was not, nor am I suggesting that in order to enjoy P3D or any other sim or computer game, that you need to have XYZ tech in your PC. Simply sharing the information since the OP had requested others thoughts and ideas. 

 

At any rate, you both are entitled to your opinions, and if the OP gleans some useful info from your posts, mine or anyone else's, then I say Hoorah! In the meantime, Happy Holidays!

 

Cheers!

Landon

[Stratocruiser]

On 12/17/2019 at 2:59 PM, R Smith said:

I find that using CC cleaner to scan and fix registry issues has been a god send for me and p3dv4, i rarely get crashes.

Also using the job scheduler Config tweak makes p3d use all of my processor power, which give me great frames.

What is the config twek you speak of please?

[Ripcord]

Remember when all anybody could imagine was -- if only - we had a 64 bit version of this or that?  Doesn't seem all that long ago, does it?

 

We will see what this new MSFS2020 is all about when it hits the shelves.  Going to stick with what I have and that is a very acceptable P3D.

 

[John Heaton]

Some weeks ago - I was one of the biggest whingers about Pr3d - and as such - I moved 

across to XP with just TE Britain - 4 simple GA aircraft and the latest XP software

 

ITs taken some time - mainly getting it to keep my yoke and pedals memorised and I complain bitterly all over the place 

That it wont work to well on a 4K Screen but I can get in some reasonable flying time at last

 

Because of the huge disc space required  for the TE Britain Orbx software - I decided to install - in my mid range PC - 

a 2TB HDD 7500rpm - solely for this set up and I think it was one of the reasons why it works.

 

Thinking that this was so - I also bought another 2TB HDD 7500 - reinstalled the latest PR3D and reinstalled all my Orbx scenery

and Aircraft - no other addons or plugins. It worked - and after sorting the same Yoke and pedals problem as I had on XP

 

I can no longer whinge about PR3D as I did before - It comes on quick and so far despite a new A/c - different scenery - she loads in around 11/2 min

without minimal stutter at 6%. and appears to use 4K bettert

I am so pleased with it that I went out a bought 5 more A/C that I couldn't get for XP - the Orbx  package for New Zealand - LC for Europe - 

and now awaiting the new TE package for PR3D.

 

I am now spending more time on Pr3D than XP - and flying more over Europe - and the Med - in my Lancaster and B-17 - following my Father's flying  "footsteps"

 

 

[ozboater]

TL:DR  I had the same problem but solved it - here's how.

 

All sims run really well when freshly installed. You have a most fantastic system for simming - it is not the problem.

As you load more and more planes, and especially, scenery, the sim gets pretty loaded up. There is a lot for it to keep track of, and load and unload as you prepare to fly, and fly. eg, with P3Dv4 alone, I have 800 Gb of scenery - almost all of ORBX, incl True Earth HD, VFR France and much more. There is soooo much stuff for the sim to load on startup that it takes ages. Start up, go to work, and play when you get home, ages.

In frustration, I re installed P3D and added just a few scenery areas. Great performance, but I wanted to fly further afield and loaded more areas, and soon was back to where I started.

 

THE SOLUTION - and it works fantastically...

@Sniper31 mentioned a low cost program called Simstarter (from Aerosoft). This lets you install ALL of your scenery and planes, then set up several different starting scenarios that only loads what you need.

eg, If i wanted to fly in Australia, before the sim would load 800 Gb of scenery for Oceania, Europe and USA and take ages. Now I can have all 800Gb installed, but only the ORBX Australia scenery loads when I choose my Aussie setup. P3D is not bogged down and is fast, responsive and loads quickly. When I want to fly in France, I have a 'Europe Photoreal" scenario set in Simstarter, and only this scenery loads, not all of USA and Oceania. You can create many startups, and even specify planes and control weather setup (I use REX Sky Force and Environment Force).

 

The instructions are translated from German, and while they look complete, I found them frustrating, because you don't learn why to use certain settings, but there are Forums to help. That said, I did set up my situations without even reading the manual.

 

P3D bogs down the most because there is just so much more stuff available for it than any other sim, so people often have much bigger P3D setups than other sims.

 

I have bought P3D, XP11, DCS and Aerofly FS2. They are all good. Personally I dislike some aspects of XP11 and rarely use it, and just love the graphics performance of P3D, which at max detail gives much better framerates than XP11 at max detail. I don't want to turn down my settings. See here...   https://imgur.com/gallery/LuU1ruC  

Your system is way better than mine, and will perform even better.

Please don't get mislead by the 5 GHz overclocking bullshit - with P3D it is no longer relevant and you will not need to overclock your machine. You have plenty of cores, and massive performance on tap. (eg I only have a 1080 non Ti gx card and run at just 3.4GHz), but with 16 threads on a now 3yo cpu, and P3d using ALL of it, I set the sim to 30 fps limit and at 4K Ultra detail on everything it is super smooth.

 

Now, brief word about MSFS 2020. MS has said that the scenery DATA will be downloaded onto your computer, and your computer will RENDER it. Rendering needs lots of cores and threads. If you have 4 cores, you'll have to run low settings, because the rendering will be sloooowwwww. You have a massive 10 cores/20 threads, so you are peachy pink. Even with 16 threads, I plan to update to 16/32 (drop-in for my AM4) for MSFS2020.

 

So, don't panic. Many here know your frustration, but there are good solutions when you find them. Cheers, and enjoy the skies.

 

PS - just did some performance testing. With ALL of ORBX Australia and all my aircraft, and REX, P3Dv4 loading spent just 5 seconds at the dreaded 6% mark, and I was on the runway in YSCH Coffs Harbour in 1:35s from clicking on the P3D icon to load from scratch. All of Australia AU2 and all ORBX AU airports, HDTrees and HDBuidings and weather are loaded with 4K settings , and all at Ultra sliders (max detail). (But I still have all 800Gb installed, just not all loaded, with Simstarter)

[R Smith]

On 12/18/2019 at 11:11 PM, Stratocruiser said:

What is the config twek you speak of please?

 

https://www.prepar3d.com/SDKv4/prepar3d/getting_help/advanced_configuration.html

 

You will might need to experiment with your system though, open your task manager during flight and go to performance tab and you will see how much processor power it's using, you'll need to set the correct setting, mines actually set to zero.

 

You'll get people saying it won't make a difference, the reason is because p3dv4 is supposed to auto detect and do it for you, but i think it's not working on all systems which is why people are so divided by it.

 

Before you try it just open task manager during your next flight and see if it's using your processor properly first, then try the tweak.

[JoseCFII]

On 12/17/2019 at 11:03 AM, NeilG said:

Over the years I've invested a ridiculous amount of money in P3Dv4. In particular I've bought virtually everything that ORBX brought out from the time they stopped being Voz. Now, there is the new Micr't Flight Sim that doesn't seem far away and all that investment seems for nothing. That is galling but if I make the leap that is just something Ill have to accept - don't even get me on the gazillions of aircraft models I've bought that could be redundant in one foul swoop. I am looking forward to the new sim but at the same time it make me cry a little bit. 

 

But even while we continue to used P3Dv4 I find myself becoming increasingly fed up with its behaviour and I wondered if anyone else felt the same. These days the three sims I use are Prepar, X Plane 11 and DCS and the latter two just about always start up properly, when you load the scenario you find that - despite the apparently low FPS on X Plane - they are both 90% as smooth as silk. DCS has beautiful military aircraft models with amazing detail, pretty good scenery and very smooth - I fantasise about ORBX doing some scenery for them. Of course there are problems from time to time - that is just the nature of flight sim: 30% flying, 70% fiddling, tinkering, and generally buggering it up. But P3Dv4 takes an eternity to load, when it loads there is a good 30-40% chance that the bloody thing will hang or crash and if yet everything else goes right it still stutters, God it stutters. It stutters on high settings, it stutters here and there on low settings. You get rid of the stutters for a while - praise the Lord! - only to find them coming back after a time. Heaven help you if you find the tweak of all tweaks since once you use it and it seems to make everything great for a bit, in the long run it invariably causes all kinds of problems that lead eventually to a complete break-down and necessity of re-install. Then there are areas of scenery that don't load or the whole thing grinds down to a slow crawl so that there is just no point in carrying on. Don't get me wrong, with ORBX, it can often appear really spectacularly beautiful, but I only ever use TE in X Plane now because in that it is really still very smooth on high settings whereas with P3D - well, fly over an urban area and find out. So, wondered what everyone else feels. All comments and advice are welcome. Thanks

Neil. 

The more I sceneries & aircraft I added to p3d v4 the slower. less stable, and the more micro pauses I experienced. That's why now I use SimStarter NG to load only what I want to use reducing loading times significantly, increased stability, and less micro-pauses.

 

Jose

[JoseCFII]

On 12/17/2019 at 5:02 PM, Ken Terry said:

Neil, here is your next PC

 

 

I can build my own with similar parts for a small fraction of the cost. Interesting that all the specs are very similar to what I wanted to buy. But, I'm going to hold short just in case something new comes along.