One step to stop flying X-Plane

[STALKER]

Hi all!

 

I am a X-Plane user since v6 and Microsoft Flight Simulator since FS2004. Since then I have been flying each time more X-plane and less FS (lately X-Plane v10 and FSX) but since I have upgraded to 10.30 (now 10.31) it is impossible fly X-Plane with some type of clouds. I was flying X-Plane 10.25 with a high level of graphics requirement without problem, so I look for a fix in Internet (a lot of flyers with this problem) but I could not find it (I have deleted my Preferences folder, I have lowered my Rendering Options...), so I write two times to Mr Randy Witt to ask for a downgrade to 10.25 and he said there were "some" users with this same problema and they are checking it, but they will not release a "big Update" in months and that I CANNOT downgrade to 10.25. His advice is lower the rendering options... more?

Well, I think that Laminar Research is not interested in solve this problema by now (otherwise they would send us a link to download X-Plane 10.25), so I ask you... I have a friend with X-Plane 10.25 in his Windows hard drive, can I copy and paste that folder in my OS X hard drive??? this is my last attemp to fly X-Plane 10.30, so if not although I dont want becouse I love it I will stop flying X-Plane.

Today, in my last Flight in X-Plane from LFBZ to LEMD, after take off and before reaching cruise flight level in clouds, my frames rate drop to 5, and minutes after that I got again more than 30 (still in clouds, but different) till the approach to LEMD, where the frames again drop to 3 - 5...

[FloB]

You should disable all plugins/addons and use a default Plane just to check if it's X-Plane code or 3rd party code that causes the trouble.

Also updating (or downdating) the NVIDIA driver might be worth a shot.

 

Don't follow your conclusions about Laminars intentions.

 

Flo

Edited November 24, 2014 by FloB

[STALKER]

Thank you very much for your help FloB.

I have tried to disable all plugins and third party addons without any result, in fact it is one of the first things I made, and NVIDIA drivers (all iMac) is updated.

Of course everyone is free to share or not my opnion and I respect it, but just doing a search on Google is enough to understand that this is a real problem and therefore I think Laminar Research should provide us the possibility to downgrade to version 10.25.

Thanks again

[MercuryMat]

To me this does not sounds simply as a cloud problem....

What is your resolution? It seems quite high (retina or 4k display perhaps), and i seriously doubt you can obtain a great "steady" fps with resolutions like the iMac retina, even with a 780M (that it is NOT a full 780, but is a low powered model of the 780), probably with not enough vram to support such a high 3D resolution in xplane. Comparing your settings to yours for example, yours are lower than mine, and i play with a two years old pc with a i7 3770k and a gtx 680 with 4gb of vram, but with nice results and maaaany photoreals sceneries.

Finally... at that res I seriously doubt that 10.25 could be really faster than the 10.31 version. So the best solution is to lower the resolution to Full HD or slightly more.

Sorry but there is no (affordable) hardware at the moment that is is able to run 4k (or near resolution) 3D applications at decent speed at high detail settings.

May be we have to wait at least a couple of years more...4k means almost 4 time computational power required to the hardware.

Sent from Mad iPad's Tapatalk

[STALKER]

Hi Mad Mat, thank you very much for your answer. My iMac specs, it is not a retina or 4k:

Display

◾27-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit display with IPS technology; 2560-by-1440 resolution with support for millions of colors

Processor

◾3.5GHz quad-core Intel quad-core Intel Core i7 processor (Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz) with 6MB L3 cache.

Memory

◾8GB (two 4GB) of 1600MHz DDR3 memory.

Storage

◾3TB Fusion Drive (7200-rpm).

Graphics

◾NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M with 4GB of GDDR5 memory.

 

You can believe in me, with the 10.25 and more high Rendering Options I had not problem to fly X-Plane in any conditions. I know the 780M is not a full 780, but as you can see the memory used are 1.4 Mb. of VRAM and I repeat it... in the 10.25 i could fly with any problem (clouds for exemple at 20% and Extreme Res!), and with 10.30 I have this problem in photoreal or in default textures.

 

Finally if I set the clouds to 0% I can fly without any problem, therefore I have come to the conclusion that the clouds are the problem...

Thank you again

Edited November 25, 2014 by STALKER

[chris k]

X-Plane's texture set is 1.4 Gb, but that doesnt include mesh or other items.

 

Install the OSX OpenGL Driver Monitor here: http://cdn.isdg.com.au/~chrisk/OPENGLMONITOR/

 

Enable the "VRAM in use" graph, and it'll tell you how much VRAM youre *actually* using. I suspect that OSX is seriously hitting the VRAM hard, and the extra clouds are "pushing it over the edge".

 

I did the same test on my GTX670 and found that I was indeed exceeding 2Gb of VRAM, even though XP10 reported only 1.5 Gb.

 

- CK.

 

EDIT: Let me know if that .DMG doesnt work, as thats the XC6.1 Yos Build. I have access to the previous versions (mavs/ML/etc.)

Edited November 25, 2014 by chris k

[JGregory]

Stalker,

 

Are you running Yosemite on your Mac?  If so, this could be your problem… see here.

 

Jim

[STALKER]

X-Plane's texture set is 1.4 Gb, but that doesnt include mesh or other items.

 

Install the OSX OpenGL Driver Monitor here: http://cdn.isdg.com.au/~chrisk/OPENGLMONITOR/

 

Enable the "VRAM in use" graph, and it'll tell you how much VRAM youre *actually* using. I suspect that OSX is seriously hitting the VRAM hard, and the extra clouds are "pushing it over the edge".

 

I did the same test on my GTX670 and found that I was indeed exceeding 2Gb of VRAM, even though XP10 reported only 1.5 Gb.

 

- CK.

 

EDIT: Let me know if that .DMG doesnt work, as thats the XC6.1 Yos Build. I have access to the previous versions (mavs/ML/etc.)

I will check it and I will report it, thank you very much chris k.

 

 

Stalker,

 

Are you running Yosemite on your Mac?  If so, this could be your problem… see here.

 

Jim

No, I am running X-Plane under OS X Mountain Lion...

Thank you both for your answers

[MercuryMat]

I'm still sure that resolution (if it is not retina it is still really high) is too high for running xplane decently on a mac...

Sent from Mad iPad's Tapatalk

[FloB]

4 GB of VRAM seems plenty for running "very high" resolution with "compress textures" checked. But you will know for sure with the said tool.

Your screen resolution is quite high and you might see a fps hit here and there with 2xSSAA+FXAA...but given your specs and what you say I tend to believe that there is really a bug. You should file a proper bug report and spend your time elsewhere until there is a bugfix update.

 

Sidenote: I doubt that setting up old versions for download instead of fixing the bug within the current version would be a good approach.

And I doubt that Laminar acting as it does allows a conclusion about what they care about or not. There is just so much we don't know about what's going on on their end. Understand your frustration, though.

 

Kind regards

Flo

 

PS: My actual VRAM usage is about 1.5 to 2 times higher than what X-Plane monitors (GTX 760 4 GB NVIDIA WIN 7).

Edited November 25, 2014 by FloB

[Jose Almeida]

X-Plane's texture set is 1.4 Gb, but that doesnt include mesh or other items.

 

Install the OSX OpenGL Driver Monitor here: http://cdn.isdg.com.au/~chrisk/OPENGLMONITOR/

 

Enable the "VRAM in use" graph, and it'll tell you how much VRAM youre *actually* using. I suspect that OSX is seriously hitting the VRAM hard, and the extra clouds are "pushing it over the edge".

 

I did the same test on my GTX670 and found that I was indeed exceeding 2Gb of VRAM, even though XP10 reported only 1.5 Gb.

 

- CK.

 

EDIT: Let me know if that .DMG doesnt work, as thats the XC6.1 Yos Build. I have access to the previous versions (mavs/ML/etc.)

 

 

Thank you very much for your OpenGL tools; they are an enormous help and I've found that VRAM is really stressed.

 

José

[STALKER]

I'm still sure that resolution (if it is not retina it is still really high) is too high for running xplane decently on a mac...

Sent from Mad iPad's Tapatalk

Maybe you are right Mad Mat, but then why I could fly 10.25 without any problem even at Extreme Res?

 

 

4 GB of VRAM seems plenty for running "very high" resolution with "compress textures" checked. But you will know for sure with the said tool.

Your screen resolution is quite high and you might see a fps hit here and there with 2xSSAA+FXAA...but given your specs and what you say I tend to believe that there is really a bug. You should file a proper bug report and spend your time elsewhere until there is a bugfix update.

 

Sidenote: I doubt that setting up old versions for download instead of fixing the bug within the current version would be a good approach.

And I doubt that Laminar acting as it does allows a conclusion about what they care about or not. There is just so much we don't know about what's going on on their end. Understand your frustration, though.

 

Kind regards

Flo

 

PS: My actual VRAM usage is about 1.5 to 2 times higher than what X-Plane monitors (GTX 760 4 GB NVIDIA WIN 7).

I sent mails thinking I was reporting the bug, but with mails from Laminar Research I felt (of course may be I am wrong) that they were not interested in solve it becouse all Randy Witt said me was "low your Rendering Options" and "we will check it".

I also think that the right way is fix the bug, but I also think that meanwhile they should give us a way to fly X-Plane althoug maybe they dont give us a link to downgrade to 10.25 becouse it is not possible, I don't know...

I am going to check chris k Driver Monitor and I am looking for a plugin to deactivate the clouds found in the ORG but I cannot find it now. The last chance is back to the DVD version (10.03)...

Thank all you for your help

 

[alpilotx]

Just for reference (and so people don't need to guess), here is a factual (and some benachmarks) comparison of a plain 780 and a 780M (as you will see, the difference is not so small):

• http://gpuboss.com/gpus/GeForce-GTX-780M-vs-GeForce-GTX-780

And in a different thrad at x-plane.org I wrote about the many things which need to be considered when it comes to FPS:

• http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?showtopic=81150&p=864489

Nevertheless ... if you are "sure", that under the exact (and this exact might be more complicated to achieve, than one might think!!!) same conditions you get extremely different results, then there might indeed be an X-Plane problem 8but one very "subtle" one, which many many others can't easily reproduce ... which make diagnosing it hard)

Edited November 26, 2014 by alpilotx

[STALKER]

Hi Andras, thank you for your help.

 

Indeed the 780M has not the performance of the 780, but the fact is that with the 10.25 I could fly without any problem and with the 10.30 I cannot. I can taxi, takeoff and fly, even with a lot of clouds, but suddenly with a change of clouds frames drops to 14 - 15 and when that clouds (I don't know what type are) leave then frames back to 30 or more...

 

I know that make a diagnosing is hard, very hard, but there are a lot of X-Planers with the same problem and therefore I think that the most easy way is provide us a link to downgrade to 10.25.

 

Regards

[alpilotx]

One, quite simple reason for this problem might be (and I think, something similar happened in earlier version updates), that Laminar has changed something (might call it "tuned") in the way the cloud density reacts to the settings in rendering option. So, the same "cloud detail" setting might have a different result in 10.25 than in 10.30. AND, especially the usual cumulus clouds (when plenty of the are drawn), can be extremely "fill rate" intensive, which stresses a special part of the graphics hardware ... no, when this "pipeline" fills up, it can bring down the FPS quite drastically. And from my earlier experiences (with my old, previous hardware) this effect can be quite sudden ... depending on how much of those clouds is in your field of view in a given moment (thats why the FPS might drop suddenly even with simple camera movements) .... You might try to just lower the "CLOUD DETAIL" ... and you might find a sweet spot, where the adverse effect will stop to be so bad (where the FPS drop will/might be gone).

[STALKER]

Hi Andras. As you can see in the second image I have reduced the number of cloud puffs to 10% without any result. In addition I have save the default clouds from 1024x1024 to 512x512 without result either.

As you said when frames drops I set the 3D cockpit view for example to the floor of the aircraft and frames raises again. When I have this problem I have also deactivated (via dataref editor) the clouds and the frames raises again, therefore I am almost sure that a type of clouds (I don´t know why) is the problem.

Thank you very much for your help

[poppet]

 

Here are my settings,  they work for me,  but then again im a little bit special. 

 

Water reflection detail,  well you wont need that at 30 thousand feet up,  its not that good anyway.  I keep mine at 0

 

Shadow detail,  I keep mine at 0,  never really seen the difference. 

 

I presume you have Real Terra Haze?  Fantastic plug in,    If not get rid of HDR,  its a killer. 

 

Stuff to draw,  keep it at default setting,   unless your flying low or have the eyes of a hawk 

 

Uncheck "Run fullscreen at his resolution"

 

Pump up the gamma to 2.8 or what ever suits you,  I find it better. 

 

I only turn up the eye candy when im flying small and low

 

When im flying high i turn off everything and leave Texture resolution at Extreme 

 

i7-3930K   16gig   GTX690 4gigVram

[FloB]

To test if fillrate is your problem (which I doubt), you can run XP in windowed mode and reduce the window size by steps.

If this brings back your FPS - fill rate is indeed your problem. But I think a GTX 780M should be able to do the job.

 

Would you mind posting a SS of your NVIDIA driver settings? Just curious.

 

Regards

Flo

[STALKER]

Here are my settings,  they work for me,  but then again im a little bit special. 

 

Water reflection detail,  well you wont need that at 30 thousand feet up,  its not that good anyway.  I keep mine at 0

 

Shadow detail,  I keep mine at 0,  never really seen the difference. 

 

I presume you have Real Terra Haze?  Fantastic plug in,    If not get rid of HDR,  its a killer. 

 

Stuff to draw,  keep it at default setting,   unless your flying low or have the eyes of a hawk 

 

Uncheck "Run fullscreen at his resolution"

 

Pump up the gamma to 2.8 or what ever suits you,  I find it better. 

 

I only turn up the eye candy when im flying small and low

 

When im flying high i turn off everything and leave Texture resolution at Extreme 

 

i7-3930K   16gig   GTX690 4gigVram

Thank you very much poppet4. The problem (for me) is with that configuration of Stuff to draw I have not lights so the appearance of the Simulator is really poor (same without HDR). Anyway I will try with other options.

By the way, I use “Releigh Tweak” from Tom Knudsen, not Real Terra Haze.

 

 

To test if fillrate is your problem (which I doubt), you can run XP in windowed mode and reduce the window size by steps.

If this brings back your FPS - fill rate is indeed your problem. But I think a GTX 780M should be able to do the job.

 

Would you mind posting a SS of your NVIDIA driver settings? Just curious.

 

Regards

Flo

Hi FloB, I don't know how show you my NVIDIA driver Settings (remember I am running X-Plane under OS X), if you can explain me I will be glad to show them to you.

Edited November 28, 2014 by STALKER

[FloB]

I just assumed that there must be a windows-like interface for driver settings...but I never touched a Mac so maybe there is not.

 

Flo