gpb500 Posted June 11, 2016 Report Posted June 11, 2016 35 minutes ago, Denco said: I wonder if this is somehow FSGRW related. I'm doing a flight from Miami to Atlanta without it with skymaxx cloud distance set to 40000 and have absolutely no stuttering. I don't have FSGRW, so I doubt it. I think it's an intermittent issue. For the SMP guys to fix it, they'll need a way to recreate it. I'm using the stock XP weather, no add-ons.
Denco Posted June 11, 2016 Report Posted June 11, 2016 44 minutes ago, gpb500 said: I don't have FSGRW, so I doubt it. I think it's an intermittent issue. For the SMP guys to fix it, they'll need a way to recreate it. I'm using the stock XP weather, no add-ons. Now that I've finished my flight I can agree. The stuttering was still present only not that sever as when running FSGRW.
MercuryMat Posted June 12, 2016 Report Posted June 12, 2016 The stutters are constant and can last for a long while. I know about the stutters being hard to see to an untrained eye but believe me that when I pan my view around its otherwise very fluid while on the video it's very sluggish. I'm actually waiting for ASUS to release GTX 1080 in my country so I'm hoping it will fix my problem. Right coiche...buy a 500€ piece of hardware to run a 30€ piece of software that promised to run even on low spec machines from the beginning. Nice idea! The fault is not your PC, but SMP that is still a "beta" from years now!!! And it promises results that are only achievable on non-existent machines! And now we have to wait for SMP 4... 1 1
Denco Posted June 12, 2016 Report Posted June 12, 2016 4 hours ago, Mad Mat said: Right coiche...buy a 500€ piece of hardware to run a 30€ piece of software that promised to run even on low spec machines from the beginning. Nice idea! I do use my computer for other games so I don't see the point in your statement.
JohnMAXX Posted June 12, 2016 Report Posted June 12, 2016 7 hours ago, Mad Mat said: Right coiche...buy a 500€ piece of hardware to run a 30€ piece of software that promised to run even on low spec machines from the beginning. Nice idea! The fault is not your PC, but SMP that is still a "beta" from years now!!! And it promises results that are only achievable on non-existent machines! And now we have to wait for SMP 4... That's absolutely insane, with all the variations in hardware out there all x-plane users need to strike a balance with or without SMP.... You sir are trying to inflame something, not cool.......SMP is a solid plugin and your comment is completely false... 1
Cameron Posted June 12, 2016 Author Report Posted June 12, 2016 but SMP that is still a "beta" from years now!!! To you, but not to thousands of others. It's not a beta. You're just making a life decision to be an ass in this given moment. Not one thing constructive in your post, so don't bother defending that angle. Remember this moment the next time you're called out and act clueless about your history of responses. In other news, I'm at a flight sim conference right now. I've been approached countless times by people this weekend with people raving about SkyMaxx Pro 3 and IXEG. 2 1
Ben Russell Posted June 12, 2016 Report Posted June 12, 2016 3 minutes ago, Cameron said: To you, but not to thousands of others. It's not a beta. You're just making a life decision to be an ass in this given moment. Not one thing constructive in your post, so don't bother defending that angle. Remember this moment the next time you're called out and act clueless about your history of responses. In other news, I'm at a flight sim conference right now. I've been approached countless times by people this weekend with people raving about SkyMaxx Pro 3 and IXEG. Face to face. In the flesh. No keyboard warrior courage. Though it's always easier to be nice in person than it is to be an ass.
MercuryMat Posted June 13, 2016 Report Posted June 13, 2016 (edited) Ok so you want something constructive? Try this solution: http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/33346-lua-default-cloud-enabler-with-sky-max-pro Then look at the frame-rate with the LUA script and without it, but adjust SMP cloud-viewing distance, of course not with a couple of clouds on the screen, but with a 30% (at least) cloud coverage, may be with more than one layer of clouds, switch to external view and look around. I managed to have decent (25/32 FPS) performances with 8000 visibility in SMP and with the script (in very complex sceneries), but there is no way to achieve same performances with a higher setting in SMP and without the script. I never said SMP is a bad looking plugin, it is the opposite, but for my hardware, and it is quite powerful, stable performances are achievable only with almost all options switched off (no shadow, no lensflare, no forced cirrus etc) and with visibility around 5000, that in overcast conditions is almost useless... And there is no way to enable the cloud shadows without cutting the frame-rate in a half, for example, and this sometimes strangely happens even with no clouds on the screen! My res is fullhd and not ridiculously high, my GPU is a 980Ti with 6GB of ram...what does it need SMP to work properly with no stutters and with no strong frame-rate hit? You are saying SMP is a solid plugin, and of course is stable, but I explained why i said SMP to me seems like a beta with some problems to be still solved. What i noticed is that nor CPU nor GPU are overloaded so i cannot explain why FPS drops dramatically with SMP enabled. The fact is the plugin works well till there are not many clouds on the screen, and the cloud visibility is strongly reduced, otherwise is a frame killer, and the sim starts to stutter. I think it is impossible to say the opposite. May be most of the people will not notice this, may be they are happy with a couple of good looking clouds around the plane (I saw tons of videos that demonstrates that the "expectations" of sim-pilots are different and many times quite low, considering the potential of X-Plane), but it's not my case. I always try to push the sim to it's limit, and I did when I built the (world-unique) glider-sim at my aeroclub, and looking at it maybe you'll understand what I mean for "performance friendly"...SMP for me it is not a solution to achieve good performances AND good appearance, even with powerful hardware. Edited June 13, 2016 by Mad Mat 1
sundog Posted June 13, 2016 Report Posted June 13, 2016 Mat, if you want a constructive conversation, let us know what SMP reports for free VRAM and system memory while you are experiencing poor performance. I can assure you that it's not normal for cloud shadows to give you a 50% framerate hit, nor is it normal for SMP to have a negative impact on framerates unless you've cranked up all of its settings on a video card that can't handle it. Even on your GTX980Ti, it's very easy to consume all of your available VRAM if you've installed too much custom scenery or other add-ons. If you temporarily remove all custom scenery and third-party addons except SMP, I think you'll find that SMP 3.2 is not the root cause of your performance issues. Going around calling SMP a "framerate killer" because you've loaded up more add-ons than your system can handle really isn't fair. 1
Cameron Posted June 13, 2016 Author Report Posted June 13, 2016 Ok so you want something constructive? Try this solution: http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/33346-lua-default-cloud-enabler-with-sky-max-pro Then look at the frame-rate with the LUA script and without it, but adjust SMP cloud-viewing distance, of course not with a couple of clouds on the screen, but with a 30% (at least) cloud coverage, may be with more than one layer of clouds, switch to external view and look around. I managed to have decent (25/32 FPS) performances with 8000 visibility in SMP and with the script (in very complex sceneries), but there is no way to achieve same performances with a higher setting in SMP and without the script. I never said SMP is a bad looking plugin, it is the opposite, but for my hardware, and it is quite powerful, stable performances are achievable only with almost all options switched off (no shadow, no lensflare, no forced cirrus etc) and with visibility around 5000, that in overcast conditions is almost useless... And there is no way to enable the cloud shadows without cutting the frame-rate in a half, for example, and this sometimes strangely happens even with no clouds on the screen! My res is fullhd and not ridiculously high, my GPU is a 980Ti with 6GB of ram...what does it need SMP to work properly with no stutters and with no strong frame-rate hit? You are saying SMP is a solid plugin, and of course is stable, but I explained why i said SMP to me seems like a beta with some problems to be still solved. What i noticed is that nor CPU nor GPU are overloaded so i cannot explain why FPS drops dramatically with SMP enabled. The fact is the plugin works well till there are not many clouds on the screen, and the cloud visibility is strongly reduced, otherwise is a frame killer, and the sim starts to stutter. I think it is impossible to say the opposite. May be most of the people will not notice this, may be they are happy with a couple of good looking clouds around the plane (I saw tons of videos that demonstrates that the "expectations" of sim-pilots are different and many times quite low, considering the potential of X-Plane), but it's not my case. I always try to push the sim to it's limit, and I did when I built the (world-unique) glider-sim at my aeroclub, and looking at it maybe you'll understand what I mean for "performance friendly"...SMP for me it is not a solution to achieve good performances AND good appearance, even with powerful hardware. You and I have the exact same GPU. I can load up SMP without much of any consequence. Sounds to me like you're overloading your GPU with other things. That's not OUR fault. There are consequences to every action, Mat.
StefanH75 Posted June 13, 2016 Report Posted June 13, 2016 4 hours ago, Mad Mat said: Ok so you want something constructive? Try this solution: http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/33346-lua-default-cloud-enabler-with-sky-max-pro Glad to see, that some one had an idea that goes to the same direction as mine: Unfortunately I can't test it until the weekend, as I am on a business trip :-(
gcharrie Posted June 13, 2016 Report Posted June 13, 2016 (edited) hi, I just saw this thread. I have a gtx980 and I had : 1) issue of low fps when enabling cloud shadow. Sorry no screenshots at that moment (by GPU free ram was ok) 2) low fps when entering clouds : taking off from cyvr (30fps with lots of clouds), and just before reaching the altitude of the lower cloud layer, the fps drops to 10 fps or less. Same when inside clouds (weather of course not changed). Attached are some pictures : - sky maxx pro settings and free memory (out of 4Gb) - shot whith low fps and 'always' selected in RWC (bad fps) - shot few seconds later, still in the clouds whith 'never' selected : very good FPS. What could explain this diffference of FPS ? Hope it helps. This is with latest version of SMP. Version before was working better for me. EDIT : added log.txt and I confirm that when I go out of the cloud layer (when climbing, the FS goes back to normal) Log.txt Edited June 13, 2016 by gcharrie 1
sundog Posted June 13, 2016 Report Posted June 13, 2016 What is your screen resolution set to? Sounds like you're fill-rate bound to me.
gcharrie Posted June 14, 2016 Report Posted June 14, 2016 My screen resolution is 1980*1024. I'm in windowed mode so with the task bar at the bottom it's slightly less. What do you mean by fill rate bound ? That the GPU bandwidth is full ? a) is there a windows tool to check this ? any tips to reduce this ?(nvidia settings for example ?, reduce which setting in x-plane) ? I did another flight after reducing the cloud draw distance and I had no fps drop. What I find "strange" is that when on ground or after take-off, everything is ok with same amount of cloud drawn. This is when I'm below the clound layer that the fps drops, the clouds filling only one part of the screen. Does this means that the closer (or the bigger on the screen) I am of the clounds the more fill-rate bound I am ?
sundog Posted June 14, 2016 Report Posted June 14, 2016 Fill rate is how fast your video card can draw individual pixels on the screen. Since the clouds have some "overdraw" associated with them due to their overlapping cloud puffs, and have complex pixel shaders, they can be particularly taxing if you're in a situation where fill rate is your bottleneck. 1980x1024 isn't a particularly demanding resolution, so I suspect you have some video driver options enabled for really high anti-aliasing settings. I bet if you restore your driver settings to default, things will improve. For example, if you have 4x MSAA anti-aliasing, you're asking your video card to draw four times as many pixels as it would normally need to.
gcharrie Posted June 14, 2016 Report Posted June 14, 2016 thanks for your reply sundog. I did lots of tests : checking GPU health and load with GPU-Z, resetting and testing lots of values for the nvidia settings including defaults, removing antialiasing (I use 2SAA +FXAA by default), ..... None of them solved the issue (My system and GPU are not overloaded).... Until I uninstall real Weather Connector (with the uninstall program in X-aviation subfolder), leaving skymaxpro installed... And the issue I described (... 2) low fps when entering clouds : ...) in my previous post... disepeared. So for me the culprit was RWC (I did not try to reinstall it). It seems in accordance with my previous remark : with RWC installed, the FPS was going back to normal when using 'Never' instead of 'Always'. For information, my test is : ixeg (or MD-80), taking off from 8R from CYVR, climbing straigh above the clouds, with weather from FSGRW with 5 layers of clouds (I get an error while uploading the image from FSGRW weather screen, will try later).
sundog Posted June 15, 2016 Report Posted June 15, 2016 Well, with RWC you can end up with a lot more clouds than with SMP alone. So I don't think it's really accurate to say that RWC is causing a performance problem; rather, RWC is causing more clouds to be drawn, which consumes more resources. Sounds like you might just have to back down on your cloud draw area setting until you reach a performance level that meets your expectations.
Sweet19blue Posted June 15, 2016 Report Posted June 15, 2016 (edited) Hello, I am following this thread progress since the 3.2 is out. I know you put a lot of work in those software, and it is great work. But it appears to me that clearly there is a problem on your side, either directly from your program or due to compatibility issue with others plugin or addons. I do not like to tell such thing without any proof or test but with my son just born a few days ago, I am grounded for some time and can not test out right now. If you just look at famous Osama Youtube video, he did the last one about 3.2 version. At the end, you can see him trying out the cloud visibility setting without any visual changes (from high altitude, above the clouds). The covered area does not increased. I also did notice that at first flight with 3.2 (And it is the same in all videos I watched on YT). I also noticed the bad stutters appearing after some time in the game, and managed to clear them by resseting Skymaxx. My guess is that it is the same for gcharrie and switching RWC to never maybe resseted skymaxx? Maybe there is a problem of vram handling with skymaxx and/or RWC? I have more than 1,5 go free vram when flying. I do not thing there are problems of using to much vram (gcharrie got 1,8 go free with top end GPU) nor should there be fill-rate issue. The product should work correctly with current hardware like Gtx 980 and at least MSAA x 4. Or at least you should be able to show customers how to make it work correctly (with IXEG for exemple because nearly everyone is using IXEG with Skymaxx) and point us out what we are doing wrong. Maybe you could do a vidéo showing us what we can expect and how we have to set our Xplane to achieve such rendering? Maybe you should also check with IXEG because there may be compatibility issues with the new 737. I can see that lots of people having issue are flying the 737... Sorry, I do not want to be the bad guy, I am just a little bit dissappointed. Nevertheless I have great hope for your software, and I am sure you will manage to reach perfection as you are always trying to improve Skymaxx! Best regards, Pierre Edited June 15, 2016 by Sweet19blue
gcharrie Posted June 15, 2016 Report Posted June 15, 2016 5 hours ago, sundog said: Well, with RWC you can end up with a lot more clouds than with SMP alone. So I don't think it's really accurate to say that RWC is causing a performance problem; rather, RWC is causing more clouds to be drawn, which consumes more resources. Sounds like you might just have to back down on your cloud draw area setting until you reach a performance level that meets your expectations. Indeed I noticed the number of clouds is lower without RWC. I attached a screenshot with the weather given by FSGRW : we have 5 layers of clouds. I will do more tests, but with less layers I don't have this performance issue. I need to change from a cloud area setting of 17000 to 5000 when installing RWC (with the conditions of 5 clouds layers reported). It is quite disapointing. With this setting RWC is less interesting. I bought RWC just to have different weathers on the horizon, not to have more clouds :-). With RWC the sky clearly looks nicer with all these clouds. But an option in RWC to reduce the 'number' of clouds or layers would be nice so that we can adapt to our system (for example draw only 3 layers of cloud at max)
gcharrie Posted June 15, 2016 Report Posted June 15, 2016 (edited) 1 hour ago, Sweet19blue said: I also noticed the bad stutters appearing after some time in the game, and managed to clear them by resseting Skymaxx. My guess is that it is the same for gcharrie and switching RWC to never maybe resseted skymaxx? Maybe there is a problem of vram handling with skymaxx and/or RWC? I have more than 1,5 go free vram when flying. I do not thing there are problems of using to much vram (gcharrie got 1,8 go free with top end GPU) nor should there be fill-rate issue. The product should work correctly with current hardware like Gtx 980 and at least MSAA x 4. I agree with that : My GPU does not seem 'full', see attached the GPU-Z graphs. The FPS issue starts at around 3/4 of the graphs below. We have no modification of the graph curves at all. Or maybe the FPS issue comes from an internal limitation of x-plane ? Edited June 15, 2016 by gcharrie
MercuryMat Posted June 15, 2016 Report Posted June 15, 2016 Same things happen to me, and i do not fly the ixeg. i tried removing almost all plugins and enhancement (also other sim-controlled aircrafts) in x-plane and i did not have improvements, apart for a couple of fps, but it is not really measurable, it is only a sensation. I say again the cpu and gpu are not overloaded both in power and in vram usage. I cannot do more apart reporting the issues...
Cameron Posted June 15, 2016 Author Report Posted June 15, 2016 2 hours ago, Sweet19blue said: I have more than 1,5 go free vram when flying. I do not thing there are problems of using to much vram (gcharrie got 1,8 go free with top end GPU) nor should there be fill-rate issue. Post a screenshot of your X-Plane rendering settings. Fill-rate can absolutely be a factor regardless of available VRAM!
gcharrie Posted June 15, 2016 Report Posted June 15, 2016 Cameron, Sundog, If I reach the limit of fill-rate of my GPU, should I see it in the GPU-Z in my GPU-Z screenshot (3 posts above) ? I'm not a specialist but I would say that if I reach a limit of my GPU, one of the graphs should be at 100%. GPU load is 11%, other loads are very low. So my GPU could do more work (draw more overlapping clouds ?) Is it correct ?
Defiance_co Posted June 15, 2016 Report Posted June 15, 2016 This is about the easiest describer of fillrate i can find, maybe help some reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fillrate gcharrie, I have 4gb vram on my R9 290x, i can run GpuZ whilst in the game (i mean it's in the game screen, so easy to check) My Gpu Usage very rarely goes over 1100 (max for my oc is 1264) I know like a lot you'd think it would max at 1264 but nope Now my Vram usage varies obviously Now you have to imagine not only is your gpu-core taking some strain, also the vram on it is too, couple this with varying x-plane fluctuations eg: varying cloud details varying airports/road details and varying terrain details etc etc, this is one hell of a mix of usage that can seem to point at one thing but actually it's a combination of several or many Since 1995 i've upgraded my cpu and gpu generally as each new tier came out, i stopped that mallarkey circa 2009, i thought, wth am i doing spending so much for so seemingly little gain, now i really pick n choose what i spend my money on, especially now not being in a position to just go off on a spending spree whenever i felt like it lol (ahh the good old days) To test from one end of the spectrum to another .......... X-Plane 10 settings, drop the whole lot down to minimum, try and have fun messing with SMP Do the opposite, max X-Plane as far as you can and drop SMP Now you have your two ends so to speak, decide what you can live with missing/losing from the X-Plane settings, then move on to SMP, have fun fiddling n tuning It's purely a case in my instance of finding what i can suffer via my eyes against what my rig can do at this moment in time, i am hoping another 3wks and i'll have a new gpu, then i'll crank my settings up some more, though i can't complain at all about my aging gpu, damn took everything i've threw at it I remember paying over 400 sterling, i think it was 425 sterling for a GTS2 32mb vram card back in the day !! Granted this was from my local pc shop and not an online retailer lol Best was, i was addicted to aces-high then, a friend online had the 64mnb version, yet mine clocked better and i got better fps !!! go figure lmao What i'm getting at is, i really have to count each penny at the moment, my love for eye-candy in games/sims, and now getting back mainly into flight simming has made me realise i needed to move on hardware-wise if i wanted to see what i wanted to see, and it was going to make me put my hand in my pocket (ok, pocket was empty hehe, but i save from here n there) With what we've got rig-wise, we can only do what the rigs can manage to do, it's no good expecting to get clouds n roads as far as the eye can see on the longest X-Plane settings, A : the engine just isn't setup for that yet and (i mean even on max draw the roads don't go on forever etc) B : still we have no GPU to max (check for x-plane 10 on say a gtx 1080) The hardware is getting there though, but still no cigar as of yet As a guy on YT says, settings are subjective, some look fine for one user, and yet another user will find them carp Have Fun Tony
Tchou Posted June 15, 2016 Report Posted June 15, 2016 (edited) 36 minutes ago, gcharrie said: Cameron, Sundog, If I reach the limit of fill-rate of my GPU, should I see it in the GPU-Z in my GPU-Z screenshot (3 posts above) ? I'm not a specialist but I would say that if I reach a limit of my GPU, one of the graphs should be at 100%. GPU load is 11%, other loads are very low. So my GPU could do more work (draw more overlapping clouds ?) Is it correct ? I'd say the memory controler load could be a good indicator for exchange between vram and gpu, and the bus interface load for exchange between cpu and gpu. But a 980ti is capable of more than 300GB/s transfert with vram And 176 GigaTexels/second... Pixel fill rate is at 85 Gpixels/s Edited June 15, 2016 by Tchou 1
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