Mac, Windows or Linux

[scubajuan_new]

So, I've got the upgraded macbook pro with retina display (2.6 Ghz quad i7, 8GB Ram, 512 GB SSD, NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M with 1gb VRAM) and so far am very disappointed with the performance of X-plane 10 running on Mac OSX 10.8.2, with very basic rendering options the frame rate crawls below 10fps.

With CRJ200 at a location without any custom scenery with the rendering settings as shown the sim is so slow that is impossible to fly.

I guess my question is for any of the fine developers that frequent this site that test their products on multiple platforms.

I would like to know which platform delivers the best performance. My current instalation of X-Plane takes about 75 GB of disk space and I don't mind creating a partition with Boot Camp exclusively for X-Plane. I am willing to try anything.

Thanks

Juan

Rendering.tiff

[chris k]

Hrm,

I run XP10 on a 2010 MacBook pro ( which is 2 generations behind your system ) and it's reasonably acceptable.

Having a look at your rendering settings...

Wow.... no wonder you're getting poor performance..... You'd need a MUCH more capable Video chip to do what you're asking it to do.

> with very basic rendering options

Those are *NOT very Basic rendering options. =) Those are quite Advanced things you're asking your GPU it to do.

1 - Turn OFF the Global Shadows (overlay or 3d on aircraft is about the max you want - you can 'push' it by going to 'Global (Low)' only... if you dare.

2 - Turn OFF HDR. There's *NO* way you can run that on a Laptop Video Chipset at the moment decently.... HDR is a FPS killer.

3 - Turn OFF Water reflection for now; that's also a huge FPS killer in watery areas... turn it back on if you want to experiment later.

4 - Dial back World detail distance to "high" - less 3D Objects to render. Experiment with this one.

5 - One good thing though - You can probably increase your texture resolution to "very high" as you have the VRAM for it.

Nothing to do with Windows, Linux, or MacOSX. You're simply trying to push the 650M beyond it's capabilities.

Oh, and DISABLE the "Lock referesh rate to the same as your monitor". You're forcing X-Plane to run at a multiple (or an even numbered divisor) of 30. i.e. If the GPU cant do exactly 30 FPS, the GPU immediately drops to 15 FPS... Not 29, Not 25, Not 23.. Just 30 FPS and 15 FPS are your only options because of that.

Hope that helps.

- CK.

[scubajuan_new]

Thanks a lot Chris I will try this settings. What is 3-D bump-maps, gritty detail textures, volumetric fog and per pixel lighting?

And still the question remains about under which operating system x-plane has the best performance

Edited September 28, 2012 by scubajuan_new

[scubajuan_new]

I tied the settings as described above and still get really poor performance. Something must be wrong, maybe is a driver issue. but since in mac osx there is no way to update the GPU drivers or tweak it maybe in an other platform...?

In the default MMAA (acapulco) with no scenery in the area I only got 11FPS which is not acceptable.

Rendering 2.tiff

[andydckent]

Clouds at 75% is very high. I run them between 30-40%. That might help?

[Kaphias]

What screen resolution is XP running at?

[Ntr09]

^{Specs described in my signature run the CRJ-200 at a fairly constant 40fps with these rendering options:}

[scubajuan_new]

What screen resolution is XP running at?

1440x900, 32 bit at full screen

[scubajuan_new]

^{Specs described in my signature run the CRJ-200 at a fairly constant 40fps with these rendering options:}

I will try this settings when i get home, what is your default screen resolution?

[Ntr09]

1920x1080.

[chris k]

Thanks a lot Chris I will try this settings. What is 3-D bump-maps, gritty detail textures, volumetric fog and per pixel lighting?

3D BumpMaps: Renders Mountainous Terrain beyond 25nmi visibility

Gritty Texture Details: Puts a "Decal" on the ground, making it look... well.. gritty when closeup. Grass, Gravel, etc. look better.

Have a look at: http://206.80.253.13...732_43.jpg and look at the bottom of the image. The Grass looks.. well.... gritty!

Volumetric Fog: XPlane puts in "fog" at > 25nmi to prevent Jaggy Mountains "popping up".

Per-Pixel Lighting: Gradually fades in/fades out objects as the come into view at distance... rather than just "appearing" and "not appearing" as you get close/move away. This is what causes the "transparent buildings" effect in X-Plane

And still the question remains about under which operating system x-plane has the best performance

Win7_x64 or Linux. Note they generally bench at the same speed. See Below:

Ben Supnik says:

September 26, 2012 at 6:45 pm

Hi,

I compared 10.10r3 on my HD7970 on Win7/64 and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS 64-bit and that, both with and without pinned memory, their performance is within 1 fps (and the fps test isn’t good enough to measure more precisely). So Linux is not faster or slower. (However, pinned memory is borked on the Linux driver so the real user experience is much worse since this driver extension isn’t available.)

I have no intention to support the open-source drivers. It’s just a question of resources; a major driver of development time is debugging shader/OpenGL code on multiple GPUs and platforms; adding new combinations (Linux open source + back-end hw) is a loss – it doesn’t make sense for us to defer other work to spend time debugging an alternate driver stack.

If the drivers just worked, then we’d say “well go for it”, but since they don’t we tell users “just go use the proprietary drivers”. The proprietary drivers share GL code with the desktop which minimizes debugging.

If the open source drivers were fps competitive we’d pay more attention but I just don’t see them ever getting there; ATI and NV redo their GPUs so rapidly that it takes a huge concentration of firepower to develop a fully optimized back-end. I fear that by the time the open source driver catches up, the card is several generations old.

http://developer.x-p...ot-do/#comments

Edited September 28, 2012 by chris k

[chris k]

I tied the settings as described above and still get really poor performance. Something must be wrong

In the default MMAA (acapulco) with no scenery in the area I only got 11FPS which is not acceptable.

Something is indeed wrong. Nothing else loaded in the background I assume either.

Edited September 28, 2012 by chris k