Blurries and Poor FPS in 3.2

[falcon409]

I am really questioning the so-called improvements to P3D any more. Version 2.5 was the last version I had where FPS was almost unlimited, no blurries and everything worked so well I had rarely used FSX any more. Version 3 point blah, blah, blah has really been a disappointment, so much so that my frame rate rarely reaches higher than 16fps, the blurries are back for anything faster than a Cessna 150 and I fly FSX every day and rarely bother with P3D.

I am guessing that what's happening is that as the "improvements" pile up, the need for a "bigger/better" system becomes more a necessity to run the Sim than just "something you might look into for the future".

I can lower my settings of course (most set to Dense right now, where they had been maxed with 2.5), kill the clouds, kill the shadows, kill the water effects and so on, but then I end up with what FSX looked like when it was first released and everyone realized the Specs on the box were wrong and you actually needed a "NEW" computer to really run FSX and get it to look like their screens.

Bottom line here is that when I can get FSX to look almost as good as P3D and my FPS is double that of P3D and the blurries are something I rarely see, I have to question why it is I bother with P3D any more, lol. Just Sayin'.

[Scratch]

I've noticed more problem with blurry scenery also in this latest version.

[tankerguy72]

Yeah I am about 16-20fps with everything maxed in 2.5 where as in FSX I'm unlimited, but I can't ever go back to FSX after flying P3D.

[DagR]

P3D likes a high end PC for sure and when you put everything at ultra and load it with ORBX everything is absolutely stunning until after an hour or so of flying and you get an OOM due to VAS nearing 4 GB. That's the beauty of it but worth it. 50-60 FPS and crisp scenery in an Aerosoft F-14 is just nice :-)
I thought to myself, no need to get v3 until I got myself a new PC and that is exactly what I did. I have never seen such a beautiful sim that P3D v3 is, truly stunning.


Best regards Dag

[Daube]

You won't need to kill all of the new features to get your FPS back to normal behavior, but yes, most of the v3 new features come with a high cost. However, you can find a good balance without looking like FSX at all:

- The 3D water waves costs a lot, so you might want to switch these off, which means one crank below the maximum setting...

- The dynamic reflections have to go. Disable them, until you can afford a high-end computer. I won't be able to get that until a few years, personnaly...

- Concerning the clouds, they just have no impact at all, as long as you ensure the transparency AA is disabled in your video card settings. This is exactely the same in the previous P3D version, as well as in FSX, as well as in FS9, by the way. Transparency AntiAliasing looks great, and it will kill your FPS with a tea spoon and a smile as soon as you get any clouds or smoke on your screen.
(PS: remember, the default P3D/FSX clouds are ugly AND heavy on the FPS. Switch the freeware 512x512 cumulus textures like the HDEv2 ones, much more beautifull, much more FPS-friendly).

- The shadows will depend on what kind of scenery you use. Over OrbX very dense forests, you might want to disable the "cast" option of the vegetation. You can keep the "receive" one, because it prevents the shiny trees in the shadow side of a mountain, for example. The receive option as a cost, but it's lower than the "cast" option. For example, over OrbX Darrington, if I enable both "cast" and "shadow" for the trees, then I get less than 15 FPS :/

There might be other examples I don't have in mind right now. But the simple steps above should already make your situation much more comfortable.

[falcon409]

Actually Daube, the only item not set as you suggest in your list would be the shadow setting for Trees. . .I'll have to check on that one. Otherwise, my settings currently go along with what you've suggested with the Sim not able to produce much more than 16fps consistently. I flew FSX for several hours today and saw fps hold at around 25fps with most sliders maxed and unfortunately for P3D, as I move between the two Sims to gauge playability and appearance it begins to be rather difficult to tell them apart which doesn't bode well for P3D. When you have to turn off the things that make it look exceptional, then why bother?

[falcon409]

Shadows was the cause. I turned all related to shadows off and fps jumped to 70fps+. I then added some minor increases and have it at 35 to 40fps. . .this includes increasing all autogen and mesh and texture resolutions to much higher numbers.

[gman5250]

Ed, have a good look at your terrain shadows and performance numbers. Those buggers are real performance killers.
I turn off terrain shadows 99.999% of the time.

Volumetric fog is another heavy hitter. I run ASNext weather with the volumetric fog enhance option ticked. When I switch it off, FPS jumps by a big percentage. If I turn off vol fog completely...big jump.

Tessellation:
Turn your tessellation down to Medium for flights over land.
Over water, especially shooting traps, is the only time you really want to crank up the tessellation for the good 3D water. You can turn down your special effects over land too. That stuff all adds up in the long run. If you're flying at 10K over the ocean with tessellation turned up you're dragging down your resources.

I've seen P3D backslide since 2.5, but there is a big improvement for the better in 3.2. The DR option is great, but as stated above, needs a rock crusher system to run it efficiently.

I'm giving LM the benefit of the doubt and not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. From my chair, running the GTX 780 mildly overclocked, I get solid 50+ at altitude. I'd say that the 780 would be the base minimum to run P3D as it is designed to run. I know it's a financial stretch, it was for me, but keep an eye on the new releases. The 780 will become pretty affordable not too far down the road.

Returning to FSX:
I beta test my projects in FSX but really have to cowboy up when I do, having spent so much time in P3D and DX11. Getting spoiled I guess.

P3D:
I've gotten in the habit of strategizing my flights i.e. pre-setting my settings around a flight. For VFR low and slow short hops I turn everything up. For a long IFR flight, or anything above FL18 I turn off a bunch of stuff I won't see anyway. I set the sliders, re-boot the sim and usually get good performance. I also lock 30, because anything above that seems overkill. I shoot all of my vids @ locked 30.

Most flights I can run the ASN weather @ realtime with REX clouds and the eye candy switched up. Most are pretty smooth...but I get an occasional memory crash when I really push the envelope.

Hang in there Ed...

[Daube]

Actually Daube, the only item not set as you suggest in your list would be the shadow setting for Trees. . .I'll have to check on that one. Otherwise, my settings currently go along with what you've suggested with the Sim not able to produce much more than 16fps consistently. I flew FSX for several hours today and saw fps hold at around 25fps with most sliders maxed and unfortunately for P3D, as I move between the two Sims to gauge playability and appearance it begins to be rather difficult to tell them apart which doesn't bode well for P3D. When you have to turn off the things that make it look exceptional, then why bother?

Why bother ? Because instead of getting fully back to FSX-level graphics, you can actually get a better balance, including cloud shadows and HDR (especially with the new mod), and take profit from *some* of the P3D graphic features, but not all of them.
The shadows are expensive but not all of them have a huge impact. Some of them are actually very light on the FPS, so enabling them adds some quality without impacting the performance.
The remark from Gman regarding the terrain shadows are valid as well... although I could recommend trying to keep that one ON as much as possible.
The Tessellation never had any impact on the performance for me, neither with my old GTX480 nor with my new GTX970.

[falcon409]

I'm working with a 3 year old system, 8gig RAM, 3.9ghz CPU, NVidia 650T1 w/2gig. I run Orbx Basic and Vector Basic, as well as the European LC, I have the other Regional Orbx products and many of the individual airports, none of which are installed, also I use the textures from REX Essentials+. In FSX most sliders are maxed, clouds are set to "Medium" and framerates (set to unlimited) hover in the 35 to 40 range. With that setup, the blurries are virtually non-existent, no stutters. . .looks and flies great.

In P3D, I have Orbx setup exactly the same as FSX so ground textures are identical, although using the recent Shader Pack Config Tool adds some additional depth to the textures. As for the rest of the settings, water is off, Dynamic Reflections is off, 98% of the shadowing is off, The "DR Option", no idea what that is or what it does so that's not part of the problem. Again, using REX textures as well here. With these settings the current FPS is now 20 to 30 (up from 16 to 18). Blurries remain a problem if flying anything faster than a light GA aircraft at speeds less than 150kts.

Based on my current Sim setups and given the system I have to work with, there is little difference between the two Sims. This was not the case when I had Version 2.5. . .it blew FSX away as I was able to set shadowing, volumetric fog and water effects to much higher settings. All that changed with Version 3.0 and beyond.

Finally, an opinion. . .LM will continue to update and improve on what they have, as they should. The Military and major Flight Schools will benefit immensely from the improvements they make to this product as it progresses. "We" are not their true source of income obviously, so they could care less whether or not we keep up with their advancements. If you can afford to update, upgrade your system as the demands become greater and greater, that's terrific. . .my hats off to those who can, I am not one of those. When my system gives up the Ghost, that will be the end of flight sim for me. I can't afford to continue to go after the best any more. Therein lies the basic cause of why P3D doesn't look any better than FSX for me. I have everything I'm gonna have as far as a system goes and it has become obvious with 3.2.2 that it has met it's match.