ANSWERED Performance Problems Monterey Area

[AnkH]

Hi all,

 

I still have those strange performance problems in the Monterey Area and also in some other Areas in NCA. The screenshots illustrate my problem, position of the plane when screenshot taken: some 2 miles south of Monterey Airport, heading south. As you can see, looking straight forward, I only get about 12FPS.

 

 

Only a slight change in the direction I look, the FPS are back to normal, which is 25-30FPS:

 

 

I experience this problems in several regions of NCA with completely unpredictable view directions (nothing is in view which could explain it...), it is not related to the plane I use nor to something else. What could that be? I by the way already deactivated the windfarms .bgl file, as I thought it is related to this, but no. Around Redding I do not have such problems, it is just in this area north of Livingston, around Monterey and towards San Francisco. In the northern part of the scenery (Redding), in another scenery (Southern Alaska) and elswhere, I do not observe such a strange behaviour.

 

Thanks for any help.

 

Regards

Chris

[Jarrad Marshall]

G'day Chris,

 

In regards to your issues south of Monterey, there may be an alternative issue that is causing your problems. I say this, as the spot you mention (2 miles S of KMRY) takes you to the southern border of both the KMRY and NCA coverage areas - looking south means you are facing away from both sceneries. 

 

A useful approach I use when trying to find an anomaly is to switch off as many "extras" as I can - addon-on weather, AI traffic programs etc, and then disable any other scenery addons via the library menu. Gradually introduce new components, and this may give you a clue as to where the problem lies. 

 

Cheers,

Jarrad

[AnkH]

That's right, I did not think about that. However, I do not experience this problem anywhere else I have been flying around so far and south of the two sceneries is only FSX standard scenery in my build, no addon airport, no addon scenery, nothing. That's why I think it must be related to one of the two FTX products.

 

I did a flight southwards from Redding recently and there the problems are comparable but less prominent. However, generally it seems that within NCA scenery, the problem is reproducible: some view directins result in a loss of FPS compared to other view directions, and as on the screenshots above, only slight variations result in 10FPS or more. If we take the full 360 degree circle and split it up in 10 degree steps, it is that about 8-10 directions are characterized by heavy FPS loss while all other directions are perfectly ok.

 

To me it looks like something within the NCA scenery is a huge FPS killer. And this something is spreaded sparsely across the scenery, that could be the reason why only specific view directions suffer from it while others do not and why those directions vary all the time when flying around but are stable when being stationary (e.g. the above location: it is always the same direction that suffers from the FPS loss, while in Redding, the directions are different and with less FPS loss).

[Phil Manhart]

We have the same CPU, albeit you got the better batch since mine won't go over 4.4 without adding enough volts to fry it , but your RAM and GPU smoke mine and I don't experience the FPS loss triggers that you are describing.

 

I'd follow Jarrad's advice and see what is causing the slowdowns, which you can easily do with the display settings.

 

In your shot you're either in a cloud or the fog is thick! So to begin, turn off any real weather utility like ASN and use clear weather.

 

Remember, if you are using external AA tweaks such as NVidia Inspector and Sparse Grid Super Sampling it takes a VERY heavy toll with any clouds since it treats all the clouds as transparencies since Lockheed hasn't worked that out yet (hoping for v2.3, then I can turn SGSS back on!).

 

Anyways, the end the rambling, I'd start with these on the disabling list until I found the culprit (put the aircraft into slew mode and then start down the list starting up without a weather engine or external AA):

 

1. Clear Weather

2. Cloud Shadows and Terrain Shadows off

(I bet you gain 10+ FPS here)

3. Commercial and GA AI off

4. Scenery Texture Resolution down to 30cm (if set to 15 or 7)

5. AGN Density Sliders down to Dense (vegetation and buildings)

(If you've made it all the way here, your FPS should be 40+ or higher)

 

Something else to try is setting the frame limiter in P3D to unlimited then using an external utility such as RivaTuner to lock the framerate to 30 or 40, depending on what works best for you.

[AnkH]

In your shot you're either in a cloud or the fog is thick! So to begin, turn off any real weather utility like ASN and use clear weather.

 

Thanks for those tipps, but I think you did not completely understand my problem. My problem is NOT that I do not have sufficient FPS. As in above second screenshot, I get 27+ FPS with the same thick cloud layer as with the slightly different view direction in the first screenshot. So obviously the problem is not related to the clouds. And indeed, if I turn off weather completely, the FPS are generally of course much higher, but the drop remains.

 

Remember, if you are using external AA tweaks such as NVidia Inspector and Sparse Grid Super Sampling it takes a VERY heavy toll with any clouds since it treats all the clouds as transparencies since Lockheed hasn't worked that out yet.

[...]

2. Cloud Shadows and Terrain Shadows off

 

First, I use FSX. Sorry if this was not clear from the beginning. So no cloud shadows and no Lockheed implication. I use DX10 with the Fixer from Steve, which basically removes the FPS drop of clouds together with antialiasing. Terrain Shadows won't be turned off, as those are all on also in regions where I do not see FPS drops (e.g. Switzerland Professional X scenery).

 

In the end, your tipps are valuable when I would have a general performance problem. Which I do not. The performance is acutally very good, it is just that some view directions result in a drop which is that huge that it affects gameplay. Is this so difficult to understand? It does not help me turning off one thing by another to see if performance gets better, as performance is good in 90% of the view directions. And I also do not know which part of the scenery library I should deactivate as there is nothing active in this region besides NCA, Monterey and Redding.

[GlennH]

Wind farms are a huge fps hit in NCA

Are there any in your view at this area?

[Jarrad Marshall]

G'day Chris,

 

What Phil suggests will be very useful to help narrow down the problem. Whilst switching off anything that might be contributing may seem overkill, we are clutching at straws here since we don't have any definitive screenshots of the areas you are suffering from, and given your own experience seems to be unique, it makes it hard for us to replicate the issue at our end. 

 

Again, if you follow this systematic approach, it will help you to help us isolate what is causing the problem;

 

1. Switch off your AI, all weather and any other "extras" for the purposes of testing. 

2. Temporarily uncheck every scenery library entry aside from your ORBX airports and default/stock FSX scenery entries in the library. 

 

If you are still getting the same results with a "clean" FSX, then the next route we need to take is for you to take screenshots (in clear weather) of the locations you are experiencing problems with - as with your first screenshots make sure to keep the co-ordinates displayed at the top to help us. 

 

Cheers,

Jarrad

[fltsimguy]

Jarrad, I have been flying in and out of the area.  I totally love what you did with this scenery, and if you keep making them, I going to keep buying them.

 

I certainly notice a small change when I pan around (viewing) looking south at the "old" scenery and north looking at "Orbx land".  Most likely as the airport comes into view and the sim loads some of that detail.  But the fps stabilize quickly and I see nothing so far about the airport specifically that might be an issue.

 

I have smooth flying in this area just like every other area in Orbx land except Anacortes.

[Jarrad Marshall]

Thanks very much, appreciate the nice feedback. What you're experiencing is as to be expected - going from an "empty" default/Global landscape into the double-hit of a regional area (NCA) and dense HD airport/city local (KMRY) makes sense to have a small penalty. 

 

But as to not confuse Chris' issue, what he's saying in his OP is that he gets bad performance south of KMRY, looking south - which has me stumped. If our above tips don't yield a result, we can take it from there. 

 

Cheers,

Jarrad

[AnkH]

I did some additional testruns yesterday evening, sadly I was not able to test everything you suggested, I had to play some Watch Dogs

 

Anyway, what  I did: I turned off the weather and used the standard Cessna instead of the piper. And guess what, exactly the same issue, but of course with generally higher FPS. Still some 2 miles south of Monterey some view directions resulted in a solid FPS drop (still about 60-100% less FPS, now from 45 down to 25-30). Interestingly enough: after some flying around, I did a touch and go at Monterey to end up in the very same location as above in the screenshots and now, FPS were much better compared to the first run when taking off from Monterey. Strange. It seems like after the sim has loaded everything once, the drops are gone. I closed FSX and fired it up again and the drops were again there. Flying around some minutes obviously cures it more or less, but of course, when flying into another region afterwards, the drops reappear. Don't get it...

[Jarrad Marshall]

G'day Chris, 

 

Sounds like you have found a way to work around your issue. To be perfectly honest, if you are experiencing this as a general one-off at the start of a simming session (or the first time you visit an area in a session), there could be a myriad of causes - AI traffic buffering (bear in mind that AI traffic-caused stagnation is generally caused by aircraft far past your field of view), textures loading into view for the first time, etc etc. 

 

I'll mark this as answered - if you want to explore the issue further, keep working your way through the suggestions offered above and let us know how you go.

 

Cheers,

Jarrad

[AnkH]

I'll do, thanks for now.