answered Really chugging coming out if EGPH on P3Dv5 despite relatively powerful set up.

[NeilG]

Guys, please tell me it is not normal to be running an i9 7900K and GTX 1080Ti and coming out of Orbx EDGH with Orbx Scotland in P3Dv5, flying the PMDG 737  and chugging along with not more than 16 FPS? Much of the time going down 12 and less than 10. Is it any better in True Earth? I've got True Earth for XPlane with EDGH and I come out of there with a FlightFactor 757, one or two stutters but otherwise smooth as the proverbial. Is there anything I might have forgotten? Grateful for any advice. Thanks everyone.

Neil G

[davidzill]

Not going to get much support on this topic other than other users sounding off with the same issues. True Earth itself has caused my high-end system to CRAWL @ 100% CPU/GPU usage @ 5.3GHz with a 2080Ti. I think it is a simple issue of coding optimizations. I wish Orbx was more involved and/or showed interest with supporting this issue. 

[NeilG]

Thanks for getting back David, that a bit depressing though. I’ve already been loosing faith in P3Dv5 for a while now but I was expecting a bit more from Orbx though.

[davidzill]

2 hours ago, NeilG said:

Thanks for getting back David, that a bit depressing though. I’ve already been loosing faith in P3Dv5 for a while now but I was expecting a bit more from Orbx though.

Me too, not sure if it's covid-19 factors resulting in little to no customer support. I would love for the developers who created Trueearth to install it, fly around, and ask themselves, "Gee, is this performance normal?"

[davidzill]

I love Orbx sceneries....just something off with Trueearth. I uninstalled both tonight (S and N California) until a major update addressing performance is released. 

[John Dow]

9 hours ago, davidzill said:

Me too, not sure if it's covid-19 factors resulting in little to no customer support. I would love for the developers who created Trueearth to install it, fly around, and ask themselves, "Gee, is this performance normal?"

 

We do fly around and test the performance.  We also make adjustments in the settings for the known scenery complexity.  An area like the Los Angeles Basin is going to need a bit of adjustment in the settings to compensate for the sheer number and scope of the scenery objects to be displayed.  We also test in the default aircraft or similar as a rule.

 

PMDG planes and the like are well known as being resource hungry.  When using add ons that are resource hungry, it's to be expected that some adjustments to the scenery settings may be required.

 

To suggest that it is a simple matter of coding optimisation when arguably the finest minds in scenery design have worked diligently to squeeze every last ounce of performance out of the products, is simplistic and in my opinion removed from reality.

[NeilG]

3 hours ago, John Dow said:

 

We do fly around and test the performance.  We also make adjustments in the settings for the known scenery complexity.  An area like the Los Angeles Basin is going to need a bit of adjustment in the settings to compensate for the sheer number and scope of the scenery objects to be displayed.  We also test in the default aircraft or similar as a rule.

 

PMDG planes and the like are well known as being resource hungry.  When using add ons that are resource hungry, it's to be expected that some adjustments to the scenery settings may be required.

 

To suggest that it is a simple matter of coding optimisation when arguably the finest minds in scenery design have worked diligently to squeeze every last ounce of performance out of the products, is simplistic and in my opinion removed from reality.

Thanks John, I accept that PMDG is resource hungry, I’ve known that since I bought the first PMDG Queen of the Skies when FSX was young. But the reason why I asked about EDIN’H was because I’d generally had a good experience with Orbx, I have quite a powerful machine, the same scenery flying out from in xPlane with complex airliner is fine, but in the circumstance I was referring to I was, for the most part, down to between 9-11 FPS and that is just not on. So, have a got a problem? Is there some way in which something could be happening with P3Dv5? - I mean God knows that bloody program is smooth one minute, choppy the next - sometimes it crashes, sometimes it takes three weeks to load etc, etc. I’ve spent a fortune on it over the years and tried every sensible tweak in Christendom and beyond and it is never as smooth as I would want it to be,  so I guess I’m asking, ‘what might  I have done wrong, or ‘it’ done wrong, this time’?’ Any suggestion short of ‘stick it up your bum’, would be most welcome.

Stay safe and COVID free everyone

Neil.

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

it has always been a stretch running P3D v5 with the amount of addons that you list.

I would expect FSX to run out of performance and memory in a similar scenario and

LM appear to have chosen a different but equally trying limit to impose on its users.

The difference this time is that the solution costs a very large amount of money,

whereas P3D v4, the solution to the VAS problem that beset FSX, was relatively cheap.

 

[Doug Sawatzky]

22 hours ago, NeilG said:

Orbx EDGH with Orbx Scotland

Just wondering, what does EDGH have to do with Scotland? Isn't that a small grass strip airport in Germany?

 

3 hours ago, NeilG said:

But the reason why I asked about EDIN’H

And please, what is EDIN'H?

 

Sorry, I am just trying to go to these locations and replicate your issue.

[davidzill]

9 hours ago, John Dow said:

 

We do fly around and test the performance.  We also make adjustments in the settings for the known scenery complexity.  An area like the Los Angeles Basin is going to need a bit of adjustment in the settings to compensate for the sheer number and scope of the scenery objects to be displayed.  We also test in the default aircraft or similar as a rule.

 

PMDG planes and the like are well known as being resource hungry.  When using add ons that are resource hungry, it's to be expected that some adjustments to the scenery settings may be required.

 

To suggest that it is a simple matter of coding optimisation when arguably the finest minds in scenery design have worked diligently to squeeze every last ounce of performance out of the products, is simplistic and in my opinion removed from reality.

I understand PMDG aircraft are very resource hungry. I’m a longtime Orbx customer. I own almost every Orbx product. However, the problems with TrueEarth occurred with the same results a lower-fidelity default aircraft as well.
 

I have a 5.3GHz cpu, a top of the line videocard. I run most of my sliders in the high settings all over the world in some very dense sceneries. Sometimes I’ll see an understandable dip in performance, especially with multiple cloud layers, etc. I loved True Earth in P3D V4.5, ran very smooth, I was even able to find my own house, identify known trails, etc. I was in aww of how real it looked! 

 

My first flight in 5.1 taking off from Flightbeam’s KSFO, the aircraft was stuttering at the moment of rotation. Stuttering that would result in 2-3 second pauses at a time. I checked my cpu...both CPU and GPU were at 100%. GPU temps nearing peak. This occurred in many locations in the scenery, random instances of sustained long pausing stutters with 100% CPU/GPU usage. Dialed back sliders and got the same results. I suspect due to my peak cpu/gpu usage in 5.1, True Earth is having DirectX 12 issues, and is not yet fully ready for P3D 5.1 without further optimizations to ensure DX12 is processing textures properly. Luckily, even though I had peak temps, I had a water cooling system. The GPU usage I saw could easily damage a video card. 

 

I have moved slider settings, and even uninstalled P3D and spent over 8 hours painstakingly installing add-ons to correct this. There are several post in the forums of people reporting the same behaviors specifically in 5.1. Like I said it performed flawlessly in 4.5, didn’t even notice a performance hit. Might be worth taking a close look at!

[NeilG]

2 hours ago, Doug Sawatzky said:

Just wondering, what does EDGH have to do with Scotland? Isn't that a small grass strip airport in Germany?

 

And please, what is EDIN'H?

 

Sorry, I am just trying to go to these locations and replicate your issue.

  In Scotland EGPH is Edinburgh airport. It’s a lovely piece of scenery and although I have TE, I only use the airports and the old regional software (for space purposes-I have TE on XP instead), and it is still lovely. It is almost as nice as the MSFS scenery. Personally I often think the TE stuff looks better, but it must address this performance problem if it is to compete as a choice instead of MSFS - Much easier to say than to do of course and I have no idea about the technicalities of these things but here is hoping. 

[Doug Sawatzky]

So sorry, it is not very helpful, but I have been flying in and out of EGPH for a few hours now with my PMDG 747 and everything is smooth as silk and the visuals are spectacular.

 

[John Dow]

This thread tells me that there may not be much that Orbx can do to resolve your issues. 

 

I say this because every computer is different, every set up is different, every software process has the potential to choke a CPU or GPU. 

 

P3D has always had problems dealing with scenery where multiple complex files exist within an area. There doesn't seem to be rhyme or reason to it, it affects some while others get off scot-free. 

 

Unexplained pauses can be caused by something as simple as ticking the auto save option in FSUIPC.  The CPU might be running at essentially the 100%, the auto save comes in as a priority instruction and the CPU ia overwhelmed. 

 

Different add-ons outside the Orbx sphere can have a similar effect. 

 

We can never even know whether our hardware is able to handle the software optimally. So many parts of the motherboard have to handle a range of instructions from a range of different manufacturers. A veritable minefield. 

 

All I can say now is that the software performs well for all Orbx staff and testers in the P3D/Orbx environment using a range of computers from i5 laptops to i9 beasts, and with settings adjusted to suit the testing computer, all sceneries work within the expectations of P3D. I get 10-16 fps at Canberra at certain angles. There's nothing that can be done about it, so I accept it, soon enough the fps returns closer to 20, snd i continue to enjoy my flight. 

[davidzill]

I think there is indeed something DX12 related. Like a said, there are so many posts regarding True Earth with people of many variations of PC having similar issues. Terrain maps can be very complex as far as how they use RAM, VRAM, CPU, etc. For example, I am a avid DCS user. When they released their Nellis AFB NTTR map, many people reported high VAS and VRAM usage, CTDs, etc. Developers found several lines in the coding which were optimized now worked perfectly for everyone after a quick update. I asked if anyone had True Earth running smoothly in a post and no one reported back. 

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

the main difference is that True Earth has photo scenery.

I have been using photo scenery for years and in my experience,

it does not add to the workload over landclass scenery.

Once again, in my experience, the hard work is created by large

amounts of autogen and to a lesser degree, scenery objects.

Traffic of all kinds is known to add to the workload and of course

complex aircraft.

At the moment, P3D v5 is over EGPH at a locked 30 fps

and a V number always less than 3%.

Here are a couple of 2K shots, showing the best and the worst performance.

Click on the image to enlarge it

 

Click on the image to enlarge it

 

and finally one with the EA active

Click on the image to enlarge it

 

and the settings

 

 

I realise this does not help your problem but seems to show that the software is working as it should on a lesser PC.

 

 

[Liffy55]

Hello all,

 

Sorry I'm coming in late here.

 

I've installed P3D5 version 5.1.12 on a new high-end PC (i9 10,900 CPU@3.70 GHz/ 32Gb RAM/nVidia GeForce RTX3080 etc.)

With scenery, I installed all my Orbx addons first, followed by non-Orbx sceneries.

The last Orbx addons I installed before moving on to the non-Orbx airports/sceneries were the various TrueEarth packages. With the latter, load times were already worryingly long at airports in those regions( 10+ minutes), but now that I have added all my other 3rd-party scenery in place its become an untenable situation with 60+ mins loading time in TrueEarth areas. 

It seems that I will have little alternative but to uninstall all my TrueEarth addons in order to get a realistic performance that is practical. This is a terrible pity because when a TrueEarth area does eventually load on this platform, it looks absolutely magnificent and performance is excellent whilst flying within the loaded TrueEarth area. However, if I try to fly from one TrueEarth area to another e.g. London Gatwick to Amsterdam Schiphol then once I reach the True Earth Netherlands zone the terrain below is totally afflicted with the blurries; same problem trying to fly from Southern to Northern California. 

 

Seems this is down to a P3D5-TrueEarth issue? There didnt seem to be same headache with P3D4 and TrueEarth addons. 

 

Unless there are any suggestions (please!), I'm about to give up on TrueEarth in P3D5 for the moment in the hope that something can be done to improve its usability (specifically - loading times) on the platform.

 

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

with only True Earth GB and all the Orbx payware airports active, P3D v5 appears to take 4 minutes and 30 seconds

to load, many of the files off an HDD and from a "cold" start.

I would suggest that if it is taking an hour, you should disable all of the scenery that you are not using for the

flight and try again.

As a matter of interest, how long does it take to load the second time?

[Liffy55]

Thanks Nick,

 

Disabling other sceneries looks the wise way to go.

 

In the interim, and following your advice in addressing a concurrent sea/land texture display problem issue in another thread, I've seen a dramatic improvement in loading times following changing the Orbx Airports and Regions Insertion point to below the lowest 3rd party scenery entry - the loading time has reduced to just under 10 minutes from 60+, which is a huge improvement. And this performance improvement shift is repeatable.

 

I'll experiment to see if this can be reduced further through the disabling of other 3rd party sceneries.

[Liffy55]

I have now used the Scenery Configuration manager that comes with Simstarter to disable large numbers of 3rd party sceneries not relevant to specific flights I want to undertake inside TrueEarth regions; the results are very favorable with load times now down to just 3-5 minutes. Couldn't want much better than that. 

[David Woodford]

Long load times in P3D 5 are often related to Vectors. For some reason, the software tries to index the entire world every day. I dont really miss Vectors having removed it.

[John Roberts]

I'm a user of Truearth UK (all three regions), and also of Truearth Northern California. I can state with 100% certainty that the slow loading and 'chugging' performance is not caused by Truearth. My old machine was an i5 2500K (really) and I'm still using a 1060 6GB graphics card with my new i7 10700 setup until the supply of 3060s improves.

 

I fly mainly in my local area of the West Midlands, and even over Birmingham I get 40+FPS with zero stuttering even on the old rig. I've locked P3Dv5 at 30FPS because chasing framerates is pointless if the image is shuddering. I'm using a Samsung CJG 50 32" 2K monitor set to 120Hz, and I have V-Sync OFF and Variable Refresh Rate on.

 

Even with a very modest (ok, terrible) rig, I got perfectly flyable performance with the sliders turned up pretty far to the right, even the autogen. I fly IRL, and use my simulator for VFR practice. I've got all sorts of stuff running - SPAD.neXt and four FIP gauges, radio, switch panel etc. Smooth as silk.

 

P3Dv5 is very processor-intensive. My graphics card would be sitting at 50% usage with the old 2500K CPU at 100% most of the time. I could turn most of the 'World' sliders to the right and see no change in the GPU load, because the CPU was totally maxed out. Switching to the i5-10700 solved that, BUT, even that processor is working very hard. I would actually suggest that even an i5-10700 is on the limit if you are also running other apps like REX or Active Sky and FIPs with complex airliners.

 

Conversely, a 1060 6GB is (barely) adequate for almost all flying (at 2K resolution) until I go into a big city, and then I run out of VRAM. Orbx San Francisco causes a VRAM crash, but so does Drzewiecki Design New York. Turning on Enhanced Atmospherics instantly causes a VRAM crash, wherever I am and whatever scenery I use. I can actually have all the graphics settings right up, and it's the VRAM that becomes the limiting factor. Not having enough VRAM isn't anything to do with Orbx. It's because my graphics card is two generations out of date, and possibly P3Dv5 doesn't handle DX12 very well yet.

 

It's the Autogen setting which can destroy framerates. If I go to some really densely forested areas of Alaska and fly around the Tongass Fjords, I can quickly end up with a framerate like a PowerPoint show - and that's not Orbx scenery (although it should be). However, for my VFR flying, I discovered that dropping the view distance to about halfway up the slider makes a massive improvement, and I can't see any worthwhile difference on the screen. Maybe if I was at FL360 it might, but who is looking at trees from up there?!

 

TrueEarth does use a lot more autogen objects than default or landclass. It has to, or it would look wrong and not be 'True'. The clue is in the name. Other scenery providers have the same 'issue' - except it's not an issue. It's what happens when you try and run a military-specification, professional flight simulation system on an obsolete home computer, with a selection of addons and hardware which has not been tested together.

 

Sadly, a i9 7900K (I think you might mean X) and GTX 1080Ti setup is nothing special these days. That's a four-year old processor and graphics card. While I was able to get acceptable results from a far more modest setup, it's still below what I'd suggest is ideal for good results, especially if you also dial in a complex airliner model.

 

And before the X-Plane crew turn up, yes I also have TrueEarth for X-Plane 11. The main reason it seems to run far better on X-plane is because X-plane is nowhere near as detailed. I can post screenshots if you like, but X-plane just isn't anywhere as realistic. I suspect that X-plane have (wisely) limited the available level of detail so you CAN fly about with the sliders all the way up and not get shudders.

 

I have no connection to Orbx. But please stop blaming them for the poor performance of your computers. If you must, at least post the full specifications of your hardware and software so people can make a sensible assessment. TrueEarth WILL run smoothly on a potato. If it's not, something else is wrong.

 

[John Roberts]

Regarding loading times, I had a very boring couple of days of testing last year to try and find what was causing P3Dv4 to load slowly. The short answer was AI aircraft. Specifically MAIW, with all the regions installed through Matrix. I have all the Orbx 'Global' packs, most of the regions, VECTOR, TrueEarth GB S,C and N and TrueEarth NC. I have loads of other scenery, including the DD Chicago and NY packs - city and airports - and the old UK2000 Scenery VFR airfields. I use Traffic Global for my AI as I work and fly from an RAF facility close to Birmingham airspace. I have over a hundred assorted aircraft, many converted from FSX, mostly freeware. EVERYTHING is installed outside the simulator file structure and referenced as .XML files. Even the freeware scenery. The AI ship package too.

 

From 'desktop' to 'Scenario Selector' menu (D2SS), a clean installation took 59 seconds.

With Orbx TrueEarth GB and a few addon aircraft, it took 1:39.

With everything I used at the time it took 6:52. That felt like forever.

Disabling (not uninstalling) the AI aircraft - Traffic Global, Orbx AI Traffic Au and USA and MAIW Matrix - within the 'Add-ons' menu but leaving everything else active dropped that back down to 1:27.

After a lot of faffing about I was able to conclusively confirm that on my (old) setup, MAIW was causing incredibly slow loads - not surprising, as there are zillions of flights.

 

Adding all three TrueEarth UK regions to a clean installation added about 40 seconds to the load time. Adding Orbx Au v2 to a clean installation actually added 50 seconds. Australia is bigger than the UK, so no shocks there!

 

I have not repeated the exercise for P3D v5, because my load times are acceptable, but I can assure you it's not TrueEarth causing the hangup.

 

AFAIK, the main culprits for slow D2SS are broken or dodgy paths in addons. The sim looks for a folder, can't find it and then looks some more. The Lorby addon tool is invaluable for spotting broken links. There are none in TrueEarth GB. There IS one in Vector, which I have highlighted and hasn't been fixed yet, but it doesn't seem to be causing an issue.

 

Some addons which are 'supposed' to be v5 compatible aren't. Some addons which are NOT v5 compatible will 'work'. Both cause strange behavior. I have one aircraft, known by the developer to be incompatible, which will load and fly perfectly but causes a CTD when one specific part of the VC is viewed. Addons which install themselves into the simulator's folder structure can overwrite files with older ones, and cause chaos. Even if you uninstall the addon, the problem is still there, because the dodgy file doesn't get put back. Anyone found they can install a v4 aircraft into v5 but the gauges don't work or there are holes in the cockpit panel? Yup. You just corrupted your simulator.

 

You'd think that antivirus would also cause slow loading, but I completely forgot to add exceptions to my AV software, and still got acceptable loading times. I have now added exceptions, and it made no difference!

 

For reference, using P3D v5.1 HF1 with every single one of my many addons active, my D2SS time just now was 2 minutes 9 seconds. That's with all my desktop crap running too - Razer Central, Steam client, antivirus etc. My hardware is all unplugged and SPAD.neXt isn't running.

 

Scenery Selector to Cockpit (SS2C) loading is totally variable. My default flight includes the payware Just Flight Piper Warrior aircraft, UK2000 VFR Airfields and Orbx TrueEarth UK. I'm lazy and don't bother disabling anything, so I've still got 100+ aircraft in the addons library, plus all the Orbx, VECTOR for v5 and other scenery, and Flight 1 GNS, which I'd actually forgotten about! I even copied over the MAIW UK traffic from v4 because I wanted the Tutors to fly at my home airfield - which they do. I've also extensively re-worked my home airfield in ADE to add in more trees so it blends in better with TrueEarth. That humungously bloated scenario took 3 minutes 42 seconds to load from the Scenario Selector. So from desktop to cockpit in six minutes, with everything but the kitchen sink enabled. And about a quadrillion AI flights, courtesy of Traffic Global.

 

Switching scenario to an airfield in France - basic Orbx EU scenery - and a rather lovely Spitfire Mk.IX just gave me a SS2C time of 1 minute 14 seconds.

 

Just for giggles, I'll do the exact same thing now with X-Plane 11, as I have more or less the same scenario set up in that, the same scenery and the same Just Flight Warrior.

 

D2SS was 16 seconds! OK, winner there. SS2C was a different story. To my default airfield, with Orbx TrueEarth, took, rather bizarrely, the exact same 3 mins 42 seconds. Then I realised I'd loaded the default Cessna instead of the Warrior, so it took a further 1:21 to reload the scenario. P3Dv5 reloads instantly if you change aircraft.

 

As far as I'm concerned, the loading time isn't any better - at least not enough to really matter. On the other hand, this is the BEST I can get X-plane to look, even with the TrueEarth scenery:

 

 

To me that looks pathetic. Yes, it's smooth and free from stutters, but it's not realistic at all.

 

Here is the exact same scenery in P3D v5:

 

 

I need to reset my shaders as the colours are a bit lairy, and the camera is higher, but it's the same location. And, yes, those are MAIW Tutors taxiing down there. In a minute they will take off. One does circuits and the other disappears somewhere to the North at treetop level and comes back an hour later. I think he's running drugs.

 

So. In summary. There is nothing 'wrong' with TrueEarth GB in P3Dv5. If you are getting stuttering, long loading times or poor framerates look elsewhere.

 

 

 

[John Roberts]

Nick, completely off topic, but could you please share your shader / HDR / Lighting settings? Your colours are so much nicer than mine in the screenshots.

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

something like this, but of course so much depends on the monitor settings and the ambience in the simulator.

 

[John Roberts]

Yeah, that's better! My settings were way off - far too much saturation and bloom. Not sure how that happened, because it didn't always look like that. I haven't changed anything since I upgraded to v5.1 HF, so it was probably still on the defaults. I might tweak the saturation up just a bit from these settings, but it's already a vast improvement.

 

Just to further labour the original point, the top three screenshots were taken with the sim in real-time flight, not paused. Top one shows Birmingham in the distance. Plenty of autogen, no stuttering and it never once dropped below my locked setting of 30FPS. Next three should be self-explanatory. I couldn't get it to drop below 30FPS no matter how I tried. The last shot (of my home airfield) is a mixture of Orbx TrueEarth ortho with the old UK2000 VFR airfield over the top, heavily edited to include a lot more trees. The parked and taxiing aircraft are all AI, and still I get 30FPS and no stuttering.

 

I am slightly cheating, because I'm flying with a Playstation controller that was on my desk - my sim hardware is unplugged and SPAD.neXt isn't running. Point is, I can exactly recreate Nick's experience with an aging 1060 graphics card. I do have a pretty hefty CPU though - and that's really important.

 

[John Roberts]

Having established that there isn't anything 'wrong' with either the scenery or the simulator, I'll try and answer the OP's original request for assistance. There are other ways of making P3D work, so I'll ignore the flood of ranting and trolling that usually follows a guide like this.

 

The original question was, "Guys, please tell me it is not normal to be running an i9 7900K and GTX 1080Ti and coming out of Orbx EDGH with Orbx Scotland in P3Dv5, flying the PMDG 737  and chugging along with not more than 16 FPS?"

 

Weeeelll, depending on what settings you've got, with that rig and that aircraft, 16 FPS might actually be considered 'good'. But, no, given that nobody wants to fly with those framerates, it's not 'normal'. We can definitely improve on that, as shown multiple times above, but we need to make some compromises and understand a few things.

 

First, P3D v5 needs a beast of a processor to really show its full potential. An i7-10700K isn't really enough, but it gets the job done. This is a professional simulator system developed by a manufacturer of military aircraft, and its primary customers are the operators of those aircraft. It's the real thing. It's about as close to FSX as a poodle is to a Dire Wolf. That said, you can turn down most of the settings to halfway and it still looks better than X-Plane with everything fully up. Remember this simple rule about sliders: Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. Lockheed Martin and their professional customers are using huge, multi-processor systems, with additional machines just handling the inputs and outputs. The simulator at [undisclosed place where I used to work] had an entire room for the server racks. We're not talking about a couple of FIPs and a Saitek radio panel here. Home machines will not be able to run this simulator with all the bells and whistles on. Trust me on this.

 

Oddly, it doesn't seem to need much of a graphics card, unless you try to run three 4K monitors. If you DO try to run three 4K screens, a 1080 isn't anywhere near enough.

 

Assuming you do have a nice processor, don't overclock it. That might make it faster in a burst, but it also makes it unstable so you can get micro-stutters. Same with the memory. Don't just buy the 'fastest'. Buy memory with low latency, and don't overclock that, either. The motherboard's 'Turbo' mode is OK, but tinkering with the BIOS is a recipe for disappointment. There are several threads on this forum alone where people have un-overclocked their rig and found it got better.

 

Buy a massive SSD. I'd suggest at least 2TB, because simulators and scenery are addictive. I quickly went from FSX on a 500GB drive to a 2TB drive with barely enough room for P3dV4, v5, X-plane, IL-2 Sturmovick, Elite Dangerous, Assetto Corsa, American Truck Simulator and R-Factor. Putting the Operating System on an M.2 drive doesn't have much benefit over a normal SSD, but the addons and scenery do benefit hugely from being on an SSD. I do wonder if putting the sim on the M.2 and the OS on a normal SSD might be better.

 

Install all your addons using the .XML method. All of them. If it's an old addon that doesn't support that method, it's probably going to give you other problems anyway. It will quite probably replace files with older versions. Instruments seem to be particularly susceptible to this. Don't do it. Ever.

 

Installing each addon in its own folder structure completely outside the sim, and linking via XML files is the way to go - and it's the method LM recommend. If an old addon wants to use its old instrument, sound or texture, it can, without buggering up the LM default ones. There are a few guides on how to do it on the interweb. I've got the old Tongass Fjords scenery working in P3Dv5, installed as an XML, and also the full Global AI ships. All of the v5 compatible aircraft from Rikooo, too, and an awful lot of v4 and even FSX compatible aircraft. None of them are influencing the core files of the simulator, so if one does throw a wobbly, it doesn't mess anything else up.

 

If you have a load of old addons dumped in the sim directory, you have almost certainly overwritten key files and broken links. Completely uninstall P3Dv5, delete all the folders and start again, with NO addons.

 

Once your computer is built right and your sim is clean, you CAN get everything running smoothly with a really good level of realism, but you have to know what you can turn up, and what to leave low. The OP's graphics card is considerably better than mine, so should give better GPU-related results. Trouble is, most of the really heavy lifting is still being done by the CPU, even in P3Dv5 and DX12.

 

The GPU does get loaded up when you enable shadows. I like flying over Alaska and Scandinavia, so if I allow the many, many trees there to cast and receive shadows, I get a slideshow. It looks amazing in screenshots, but it's not flyable, so 'Vegetation' shadows have to stay off until Santa brings me an RTX 30XX. In the cockpit, you don't really notice the lack of shadows anyway, and you can always turn them on while the sim is paused for the screenshots. I do find that the 'Terrain' shadows add a significant amount of realism for not much of a hit, so that stays on. I rarely fly over cities (I don't have a twin-engine rating), so I tend to leave the building shadows on, as it looks better taxiing around the airfield. If I forget, and go sightseeing in New York with the shadows still on, I instantly run out of VRAM and the sim dies.

 

The Shadow quality and draw distance seem to have a pretty big hit for no apparent improvement in appearance as you turn them up, so I leave them at Medium. I might even experiment with lowering them further.

 

Here's my 'Lighting' settings, as used in the EGPH shots above:

 

 

Almost everything on the 'World' options panel affects the CPU more then the graphics card. My modest GTX 1060 6GB is driving a single 2560x1440 32" curved monitor set to 120Hz refresh rate and it's totally happy. Naturally, adding more monitors or going to 4K will hugely affect the performance. However, I've found that I can turn most of the 'World' settings right up to the top of the slider and the GPU still isn't hurting. That's mostly because the CPU maxes out first. Basically, the GPU can draw all the trees faster than the CPU can tell it where to put them. My old i5-2500K crapped out really early but was still flyable, just. The new i7-10700K still maxes out before the GPU most of the time.

 

Reducing the 'Autogen and scenery draw distance' to 'High'  made a huge improvement. Any higher than that and it struggles, but the scenery looks no different. Seriously, even on a 32" 2K monitor I couldn't spot any discernible difference between 'High' and the next setting up. Going below 'High' resulted in annoying 'pop-up' trees and buildings. Caveat here - I fly VFR, low and slow. 3000ft is high. If you fly high, you might want to turn the distance up but the detail down. I also fly floatplanes a lot, so I like the water detail on 'Ultra'. The hit seems to be minimal on my machine.

 

EA utterly batters my machine. I leave it off. It seems to be a major error on LM's part, and should not have been an integral part of v5. It's caused more trouble than it's worth and is the cause of most of the bad feeling about the sim in general. Besides, I like my clouds flat.

 

Here are my 'World' settings:

 

 

Traffic seems to have little or no effect on the graphics card, and not much of an effect on the GPU either unless I'm somewhere like JFK (DD) or Birmingham (UK2000). I have lots of AI ships and aircraft, and they don't seem to upset the sim much. Too much road traffic can be distracting so I leave that down. I don't know why my airfield vehicles are off. I'll change that, although I do still get fuel trucks, which is all I need usually.

 

 

The 'Display' settings are where the magic happened for me. I'd left FXAA on. Don't. It makes the whole screen fuzzy, and the aircraft instruments look blurred.  Changing to 4096x4096 texture resolution makes zero difference - because it's apparently really only aircraft that use those texture resolutions. I leave it on 2048 and it's all good.

 

Limiting the frame rate to 30 and turning ON the variable refresh rate made a MASSIVE difference. Unlocked, I usually get about 40ish FPS, but it shudders horribly. Locked at 30 wasn't actually much better. Switching to Variable Refresh Rate completely cured it. It's utterly smooth now, like flying X-Plane but without the Minecraft graphics.

 

I don't know if that works with all monitors. Mine is only a few months old, and supports 'Freesync', but my graphics card doesn't. There is a world of difference between a proper 32" monitor and a TV, even a 4K TV.

 

 

With all that sorted out, try adding your scenery ONE AT A TIME. Don't just blast everything in, otherwise you won't know what is causing the problem. I do Global first, then TrueEarth UK and the PA-28. That at least gets me flying. Because all my scenery and aircraft are saved outside the sim, I just use the Lorby tool to add the packages one by one. I can completely rebuild the sim from scratch in less than an hour - once it's installed! I know all my addons are clean, so I do just add the whole lot in one go. When I update the sim to a new build or Hotfix, I completely uninstall it and rebuild. If you set it up right the first time, it's a doddle.

 

Please try the settings above first and see what you get. If you are having problems with those settings, you need to look outside P3D, because smooth, flyable performance is definitely achievable, even with TE and a load of other stuff going on. I'd also suggest trying a different aircraft - the PMDG aircraft are also professional quality (although not licensed for professional use, oddly) and colossal overkill for a home setup.

[John Dow]

One final point, although Process monitors show all 4, 6, 8 12 cores etc working to run P3D, as far as I have been able to ascertain, it's still essentially a single core program.  That's why my i7 4790K CPU is still able to hold its head up against the 10 series CPUs etc.  Sure, it's 30% slower in most tests but that's about the difference in the single core tests I've seen.  At 1440P I get smooth as silk fps just about everywhere and that's with the standard GTX 1080 GPU. 

 

An additional point is that most complex add-ons such as PMDG also are coded around the single core tasking.  Load that, a weather program, Nav programs etc all on to that single core and you don't need to be a clairvoyant to predict the result.