reball Posted November 10, 2012 Report Posted November 10, 2012 Am I the only one to have this problem. After installing the Sundowner update last week, I noticed abyssmal frame rates, between 0.9 and 2 fps after opening the plane. Oddly, when that happened, I then opened the default C171, and still crippled performance. I did get the C23 into the air and went to the settings menu and clicked the "set for maximum framerat" button, and upon resuming the program, beautiful performance of 59-62 fps, but of course, blurry, featureless surroundings. One by one, I restored settings, and found two killer changes---going from, under shadows, any setting above "3D on aircraft", including any of the global settings, set framerate right down to single digits. Similarlly, engaging HDR rendering again killed framerates. Critically, I was able to use those high settings with no trouble before updating the Sundowner. Is it possibole that there's a glitch in the update that, when initiated, even affects the default aircraft. By the way, I had on a previous day gone into the system config menu of Windows and disabled all services, but running the Sundowner was still crippled, so I'm pretty sure the computer was not busy doing other tasks. At one occasion when Sundowner is so misbehaving, I found the CPU usage was only 25%, so again, I think the problem is within XD-Plane and not Windows. Any thoughts?? Thanks!
Cameron Posted November 10, 2012 Report Posted November 10, 2012 Can't reproduce this here and have not a single report that states the same as you. There is no change to any objects or textures, just the basic acf file. Seems your theory would be highly improbable.
reball Posted November 11, 2012 Author Report Posted November 11, 2012 I will try to track this down--the timing of these performance problems and the Sundowner update may have been just coincidental. Tomorrow I will see how some of the default planes react to those rendering settings changes. My X-plane is pretty much free of addons, except for Urban Maxx. On the positive side, I did notice an improvement in the Sundowner's flight model. Previously, flaring at touchdown was tough, not easy to touch down on the main gear. Now, flaring seems more realistic. Thanks, Cameron for your fast reply.
reball Posted November 11, 2012 Author Report Posted November 11, 2012 Sundowner Exonerated!! The story gets more interesting. Yesterday I wondered if the Sundowner update somehow crippled XP performance--now I'm pretty sure it did not, but something else is. I booted XP today after disabling all of Symantec Security Suite and also canceling any Mcafee scans. The last plane that was opened yesterday was the default C172, so that's what came up at my local airport (KBAF) with a fps rate of 39 plus -- all fine. I had a short flight and observed fps of between 30-42 with my usual settings. Then, during flight, I added first more shadow detail (overlay to global low) and fps was about the same, then added HDR and maybe a slight drop of 2-3 fps, but nothing unusual---this is what I had been accustomed to. Then landed, did not shut down XP but opened the Sundowner, and lo and behold, fps remained high at 38-40 fps on the apron, with the enhanced shadow and HDR setting. So the Sundowner is not the problem. But here's the rest--I shut down XP, then restarted it, and the Sundowner came up with fps now of just 13-14 fps, same display rendering settings as previously had given more than double that value. Then , without shutting down XP, I changed to two default planes, the C172 and then the King Air, and fps remained "crippled." So, I'm sorry, Cameron, for hastily suspecting the Sundowner, when I now suspect there is some kind of either RAM leakage or maybe a video memory issue, and possibly in my hardware and not in XP. I would love to hear if someone has encountered this kind of behavior, and if so, what might be the solution.
reball Posted November 11, 2012 Author Report Posted November 11, 2012 I forgot to add the final bit above. After, ...and fps remained "crippled.", I should have also added that, with the King Air, I changed the shadows back to "overlay" and fps increased to 22, then when I checked the HDR box and closed the rendering menu, the XP program promptly crashed!! Shortly after that, within a second or two, I got a high CPU usage window open up, and under details, the indication that at least one of the cores was at 100%. Now, is that of any diagnostic help???
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