Prepar3Dv4 Optimization & Performance Discussion Forum
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Thread: Prepar3Dv4 Optimization & Performance Discussion Forum

  1. #1
    SOH-CM-2020 gman5250's Avatar
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    Prepar3Dv4 Optimization & Performance Discussion Forum

    Prepar3Dv4 64-bit is here and has changed how we approach flight simulation as a hobby or a vocation. Upon it's arrival, developers and simulation pilots around the globe began to explore the platform with enthusiasm and anticipation.

    In the spirit of moving the flight simulation experience forward into a truly expansive expression of it's potential, a few members suggested that we launch a dedicated thread where we can share our combined experience and accumulated knowledge, to the benefit of all.

    It is my hope, and I'm sure the hope of administration and the members, that this thread will help everyone take full advantage and gain full enjoyment from their simulator and support hardware.

    To begin the discussion, I have put together a video that outlines how I set up and maintain P3Dv4, peripherals and equipment. This video begins by covering the topic of the AffinityMask, then moves into setup with the simulator running live throughout the entire video. The viewer can see, in real time, exactly how each tweak affects the sim.


    Filming Notes:


    This is the first video I have published that was actually filmed in 4K. The video capture was done through Nvidia Shadowplay while simultaneously running ActiveSky Next forP3Dv4 live weather, TrackIR head tracking and ChasePlane Camera System.

    For the Rivet Counters...
    There are a few negligible micro stutters that will appear when the floating camera is panning across scenery and around the airplane. These artifacts are not related to the CPU, GPU or the setup, but rather to the motion of the ChasePlane camera itself. I'm confident that the ChasePlane developers are working on this, and that future updates will eliminate this tiny anomaly.




    I hope everyone enjoys the thread and improves their simulator while saving their equipment in the process.


    Last edited by roger-wilco-66; November 8th, 2017 at 20:43.
    He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.
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  2. #2

    Thanks

    Thanks for taking the time to do this .. it was very helpful to me

  3. #3
    Thanks Gman! I'm just now dipping my toe in the Prepar3D waters with version 4 and any info will help. Appreciate the
    info that discussions will yield in advance.

    Odie

    "Hornets by mandate, Tomcats by choice!"

  4. #4
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    Hello,
    I receive "This video is unavailable" when I select it.
    Recommendations?
    Thanks in advance
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails video.jpg  
    Last edited by Emile; November 8th, 2017 at 19:28. Reason: try to add screnn copy
    Emile EBBR Z590 Aorus Elite, i9-11900K 3.5Ghz Nvidia RTX 3060, 16 GB Mem, SSD 1Tera + other HDDs, Dual Boot . Win10/Win11 Pro X64

  5. #5
    Thanks for taking your time, Gordon, to condense all that information into this epic video!
    Your findings on textures and mesh complexities confirm what I've been observing in my scenery design on the past years. The sim engine, particularly P3D V4.1, can process enormous loads of texture maps and mesh complexities. The days of austerity in these areas are definitely gone. I hope the next step LM takes is to move toward DX12 and pbr style texture mapping.

    As for performance / affinity mask settings, my first throw at it was unsuccessful. I have a lowly I7, 4 cores, running at 3.6 GHz (stock, no overclocking). To use all cores with HT I need to set the affinity mask at 255. Without the setting (default), the first core got used by 100% during the runtime of the sim, and the remaining cores had a distributed load at around 40%. After the setting, all cores were maxed out, but framerates were erratic and the addons I run parrallel to the sim (spad.next, chaseplane, fswx weather, fsuipc) acted up, most notably spad.next. It seems like they do not get enough cpu time anymore.
    Maybe I can find another setting, or leave one core to processing the addons.

    I'll continue testing!


    Cheers,
    Mark
    Last edited by roger-wilco-66; November 9th, 2017 at 00:57.
    My scenery development galleries:
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    Solomon 1943 V2 Open beta download: http://www.sim-outhouse.com/download...on-1943-V2.zip
    Solomon 1943 V2 update 2013-02-05 download: http://www.sim-outhouse.com/download...2013-02-05.zip


    Current Project: DHC-4 / C-7a Caribou by Tailored Radials
    Dev-Gallery at https://www.dropbox.com/sh/qjdtcoxeg...bAG-2V4Ja?dl=0

  6. #6
    SOH-CM-2020 gman5250's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Emile View Post
    Hello,
    I receive "This video is unavailable" when I select it.
    Recommendations?
    Thanks in advance
    We resolved the problem Emile, and thank you for the heads up.
    He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.
    Thomas Jefferson

    Intel Core i9-9900K Coffee Lake | Cooler MasterAir Maker 8 CPU Thermal Cooler | ASUS ROG Strix Z390-E LGA 1151 | CORSAIR Vengeance RGB Pro 32GB 288-Pin DDR4/3200 | EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11GB | SAMSUNG 860 EVO Series M.2 1TB SSD | Mushkin Chronos 240GB 2.5 SSD | WD Black 2TB 7200 RPM |WD Black 5TB 7200 RPM | CORSAIR HX Series HX1200 PSU | Windows 10 HP 64-bit

  7. #7

    Great Instructional Video Gman!

    Over the past week or two I've been looking into performance enhancement of my P3Dv4 installation. Unlike you Gman I am a chronic supporter of the underdog...AMD. It's mildly difficult to find the volume of tweaks for AMD that are out there for Intel. So, I'll attempt to outline my experience finding some AMD tweaks.

    I'm running an AMD Ryzen 7 1700, 16G of average speed memory, an inexpensive B350 M/B and an AMD RX580 8G graphics card. The 1700 is an 8 core processor and AMD does something called "SMT" - simultaneous multithreading, not "hyperthreading", but similar. The affinity mask number for the 1700 (or the one that I liked best) is 65535. It would likely be the same for all Ryzen 7 processors. (The Ryzen 5 processor number would likely be 4095.)

    Several SOH members have commented on the AM in the past and have referred to "SteveW" who seems to post much about AM on Avsim.

    Once you get the AM established, tweaking the P3D display (graphics), lighting, etc., pages will get more or less FPS depending on personal preferences. I'm getting spectacular graphics out of P3D v4 without pushing all sliders to the right. (Smooth graphics between 20 and 40 FPS.)

    With my Ryzen 7 1700 there is one thing that has given me more "juice" than anything else...overclock. There are many videos and other instructions available on the internet for overclocking the 1700. Now the 1700 is a 3000MHz, 3700MHz turbo mode, chip. Moving it above 3000MHz is relatively easy and most commentators don't recommend going over 4000MHz. The ease of overclocking and the overclock depends on your M/B and the specific chip you have (some chips have a greater range of overclock than others).

    My chip easily overclocked to 3650MHz by simple increase in BIOS and a very small bump in voltage (also in the BIOS). I did not even try 3700MHz, but I may try that in the future. Here is a sample tutorial - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyvqkPzqxQc . It is important to monitor temperatures and NOT to increase the voltage in any significant way. Too much voltage or heat is a BAD thing for your processor. (Also note that some lower overclocks may not work well, for example, my M/B and chip did not perform well with an overclock of 3450MHz. Seems to be almost counter intuitive, but that is my observation.)

    The Chase Plane addon seems like a good one and I'm going to investigate that further.

    Thanks again Gman for getting this thread going.

    P.S. From Greg in another thread on SOH - "Steve Waite (http://codelegend.com/) has some interesting discussions and points about Affinity Mask and Logical Processor (LP) configuration over at Avsim."
    Jay
    USNR-Ret; Former Airline Migratory Worker; Builder, Owner, Operator RV-8 N817J
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  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by roger-wilco-66 View Post
    As for performance / affinity mask settings, my first throw at it was unsuccessful. I have a lowly I7, 4 cores, running at 3.6 GHz (stock, no overclocking). To use all cores with HT I need to set the affinity mask at 255. Without the setting (default), the first core got used by 100% during the runtime of the sim, and the remaining cores had a distributed load at around 40%. After the setting, all cores were maxed out, but framerates were erratic and the addons I run parrallel to the sim (spad.next, chaseplane, fswx weather, fsuipc) acted up, most notably spad.next. It seems like they do not get enough cpu time anymore.
    Maybe I can find another setting, or leave one core to processing the addons.
    My testing with AM=255 went pretty much as yours did, and was short-lived.

    SteveW has made some great posts and recommendations over at Avsim regarding core utilization and AM for P3Dv4. Hours of reading are offered, but this one is particularly useful: https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/5...omment-3729869

    Using my core i7 with HT enabled (because I know it best) as an example, I've settled on AM=244 given the add-ons I use. I only have two to consider... Active Sky/ASCA and the Garmin GTN. The OS always runs on the first core, and I assign AS/ASCA and the GTN to run on the first and second cores. The third core is the first to be used by P3dv4, and is very critical for determining just how quickly and cleanly the P3Dv4 can do its first core processing. The fourth core I abandon because I don't want anything interfering with the sim's first core (thread crashing will cause stuttering). Cores 5-8 are left to the sim to use as it decides best. I've also had good luck with AM=252 but 244 seems a bit smoother and cooler.

    Of course, there is no magical AM that will work for all of us. We each use the sim differently, and so we must define our priorities and consider our external add-ons, then configure our hardware to work best. It takes a bit of time and testing but once dialed in the sim performs very well.

    Cheers,

    Greg

    Edit: I was typing while Jay was posting!
    i7-8086K @ 5.3GHz, ASUS Maximus XI Hero, MSI GTX 1080 Gaming X driving a 27" 2K LCD, G.Skill 16GB 3600, Samsung 512GB 970 Pro NVMe (OS and P3Dv4) and WD 2TB Black, Win 10 Pro.

  9. #9
    Thanks, Greg, for the explanations! Interesting link, by the way. Unfortunatly, there was quite some unneccesary mud slinging in that AVSIM thread, but it was very informative anyhow.

    Just wanted to report back, I tried 252 for my i7 4Core HT processor and it worked for me. The cpu loads are distributed better. If one tries that I think it should be under demanding simulation conditions. This not only involves the settings in the P3D config, but also flying in certain weather conditions (clouds!). On my system this has a considerable impact. I also think that Gordons suggestions for configuring the sim are a great baseline. I adopted mine and it works quite well.


    Cheers,
    Mark
    My scenery development galleries:
    https://www.dropbox.com/sh/x0skkam7xu8zz8r/DFwnonB1nH

    Solomon 1943 V2 Open beta download: http://www.sim-outhouse.com/download...on-1943-V2.zip
    Solomon 1943 V2 update 2013-02-05 download: http://www.sim-outhouse.com/download...2013-02-05.zip


    Current Project: DHC-4 / C-7a Caribou by Tailored Radials
    Dev-Gallery at https://www.dropbox.com/sh/qjdtcoxeg...bAG-2V4Ja?dl=0

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by ******** View Post
    Prepar3Dv4 64-bit is here and has changed how we approach flight simulation as a hobby or a vocation. Upon it's arrival, developers and simulation pilots around the globe began to explore the platform with enthusiasm and anticipation.
    Gman,

    Thanks for all the info and effort that you put into this vid. Some really helpful stuff for those of us moving from P3Dv3 especially.

    Whenever you are ready, your KMMH scenery will be right at home in my fly zone.

  11. #11
    Wow, thanks for all that work, Gordon. Your scenery is gorgeous, by the way. I might have to buy a new GPU for it someday!

    Pat

  12. #12
    Thanks for the video. Here is another video that goes into Orbx and other add-ons in addition to the P3Dv4 settings.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epD8EHwBT5k


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