SMP v3 Live Weather Micro Pauses and Settings

[JoseCFII]

I thought I had solved my problem using a different driver for my gtx 970 with pauses using SMP v3 and live weather, but I have a feeling that I need a 12 gig card to get a smooth simulation when using SMP and live weather.

 

1st, I really love what SMP v3 does to the clouds, skies, etc. With a manual setting of weather the sim is silky smooth and I can control performance by reducing the visibility. The sim looks amazing.

 

In NYC (with DD's NYC & NYC Airports) with default SMP v3 settings I have very little ram left, about 100 with fps in the 20s. The sim is still very smooth.

 

When I try to run real weather, I get pauses when I fly to different areas or altitudes. This is occuring with both default weather engine and FSGRW (payware.)

 

I've tried lowering settings and different drivers and still no success.

[alexcolka]

You may try to disable threaded optimization in manage 3d settings in Nvidia control panel. It's well known that this mitigates micro stutters.

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

[JoseCFII]

Hi Alexander,

 

I added that tweak the first time I installed XP 10. I'm up to 3 now.

 

My problem is only when using real weather.

 

This old topic is an example of what I'm dealing with:

 

http://forums.x-pilot.com/topic/6284-sudden-changes-not-so-good/

 

Jose

[sundog]

Might help to see your log.txt. My usual advice is to lower your cloud draw distance and detail settings in the SMP configuration, but if you're running with defaults, you'd have to really be running on the edge of your machine's capabilities for that to be the issue. But that is a possibility.

[JoseCFII]

Might help to see your log.txt. My usual advice is to lower your cloud draw distance and detail settings in the SMP configuration, but if you're running with defaults, you'd have to really be running on the edge of your machine's capabilities for that to be the issue. But that is a possibility.

Yes sir. Tried default and lower settings and still get pauses.

 

I can't be the only one that is having these pauses with real weather (xp 10 or fsgrw.) That would be hard for me to believe.

[sundog]

When the cloud conditions change, SkyMaxx Pro needs to "grow" a new set of clouds, and that can take a fraction of a second. It shouldn't happen often though, and it should be barely noticeable with default settings.

 

If you can post your log.txt file here following a problematic flight, it will give us more specifics as to what you might be seeing.

[joeslick112]

I believe all of us are experiencing some sort of pauses while SMP3v is updating clouds/weather updates.  I personally disabled the plugin in NOAA while flying to keep  real weather from updating. Seems to help stops the pauses.

[JoseCFII]

I think that I finally cracked the code. It's working now. All I did was enable "always track real date and time" and I did not see the dramatic pauses. I then disabled "always track real date and time" and it seems to be working. I did a few flights with FSGRW and saw just a few minor pauses. I will now lower some settings to see if I can completely eradicate the minor pauses.

[MercuryMat]

This stutters happen to me also, and i identified the problem not in real weather itself, bit in the fact smp tries to draw all the clouds at the same time. This greatly overload the cpu (near 100%) for a while, and all other actions stop working...fps drops and so on... Sometimes, if the cpu is really busy in other work, like scenery loading, a fatal error can occur? I think smp should try to load clouds one by one, trying to optimize the cpu load

[Cameron]

Mat,

You're not the programmer of this product. Your answer has zero authoritative authenticity, and as far as I know you don't have the source code.

Leave the real answers like this to the people that know, and not sillly assumptions like you make.

[MercuryMat]

I only observed the behavior in comparison with standard clouds...of course i cannot see the code.

[ivota]

So? Is there a solution for this problem?

[JohnMAXX]

Yep, multiple options for various hardware configurations.....All of which have been discussed throughout the life cycle of SMP

[ckZA]

"In NYC (with DD's NYC & NYC Airports) with default SMP v3 settings I have very little ram left, about 100 with fps in the 20s. The sim is still very smooth."

 

If the OP is talking about the VRAM usage in XPX:

 

I run HD mesh, orthophoto's and some World2XP - even then, out of my 6GB Vram I don't like it touching 4GB and above. Headroom helps a lot with transitions. If you have nothing left then some ram has to be cleared for new ones to come in. You will wait this out. 

 

Also remember that the GTX970 only has 3.5GB VRAM - the remaining 500mb is not that fast and people got their pitchforks out earlier this year when a bunch of people were pushing their GPU's at 4K res and extreme graphics settings in other games and ran into stuttering - which is not entirely relevant here as stuttering vs pausing is two different things to the eye. But, both are due to VRAM running out.

 

DD's NY series is awesome, but you will run into pauses when the weather reloads and SMP reloads the clouds along with you moving in the scenery. If this scenery has hd mesh and relative high rendering settings you will run out of VRAM and you will pause as the engine redraws. 

 

If I fly in NY or EHAM (the most intensive airports imho) - then I reduce some settings to make that more FPS friendly. But most important of all, I keep an eye on my VRAM and even then I don't do it in game as that does not indicate actual VRAM usage. 

On the flipside, if you run out of system RAM that is in itself a easy fix, either reduce open programs or get more RAM which is quite cheap these days (unless it's DDR4).

[malombroso]

Hi... I have a problem with SMP v3 and I would like some more details.

I would like to know if there is a solution to the problem I have using SMP with FSGRW to generate weather cause it seems that having FSGRW with SMP is the same as having NOAA plugin as weather injector (The only difference is that NOAA is free  while FSGRW is a payware, and a quite expensive one!).

Both are good plugins, but I dont understand  if SMP works with global weather or it generates the weather on a METAR to METAR basis (like when using the NOAA plugin), instead of populating the weather globally.

FSGRW createss a metar file to generate the weather globally so to have areas of clear sky and areas with OVC conditions... but the flights I did using SMPv3 the clouds disappered in an instant when overflyuing an area with CAVOK in the metar, and the clouds I had just seconds before disappeared even behind me...

Did I set something wrong or is the way SMPv3 works (so, generating clouds according ONLY to the closest METAR)?

 

Cheers

 

S.

[Cameron]

Did I set something wrong or is the way SMPv3 works

 

That's the way it works. Plenty of topics about how and why throughout the forums!

[malombroso]

Ok thanks for answer!

And that is a pity... cause it is a great plugin but the fact that the clouds are suddenly appearing and disappearing is really really annoying.

I hope that this issue will be fixed in the future...

[Celis]

Same issue here too.. So far haven't found a way to eliminate pauses (with rendering and SMP settings) 

gtx980, 16gb, 1tb ssd (only for sim)

Edited December 14, 2015 by Celis

[sundog]

Same issue here too.. So far haven't found a way to eliminate pauses (with rendering and SMP settings) 

gtx980, 16gb, 1tb ssd (only for sim)

 

Usually lowering the cloud detail and/or cloud draw distance settings in SMP will reduce the time needed to create new clouds when the conditions change. If that's not working, something else might be going on. Posting your log.txt would be helpful.

 

One known issue is using the original release of FSGRW for X-Plane. I don't know all the details myself, but reportedly they issued a patch that reduces "pauses" that helps a lot.

[joeslick112]

SMP3 is a great improvement from the present versions..greatly appreciated... but the pauses are annoying when the weather info is being updated using NOAA plugin.

[MercuryMat]

Try to put all settings to minimum, then after a lot of flights in different conditions, may be, you will find a good balance between quality and performance. In my experience even with a powerful configuration i did not manage to reduce the micro pauses, even at lower settings; in fact the required CPU power to draw the clouds is almost the same (the GPU power and vram involve the "quality" of the clouds and if this gpu is state of the art you have, in theory, no reason to reduce quality settings...instead try to work on QUANTITY settings), and if you have to use the very low settings so smp, in my opinion, will be unuseful. In short words: try to live with micro pauses and do not complain because there is not an effective solution at the moment thar can greatly reduce them, even when using the standard clouds you will notice, time to time, the same stutters (but, sincerly, much less).

[joeslick112]

We all should not have to set our settings to minimum to run SMP because of the pauses, bascially we are not complaining but suggestion that in the future updates of SMP 3 that this should be addressed. Besides most of us and myself are running XP10 and SMP3 at average/moderate settings on decent PCs.  Mostly of us came from or still use FSX/P3d and with the various third party weather injectors , Opus, REX and FSGRW to name a few seem to work well within FSX/P3D.

[Cameron]

We all should not have to set our settings to minimum to run SMP because of the pauses

 

It's a starting point suggestion. A lot of people seem to fail to understand that SkyMaxx Pro 3 has less a memory footprint than version 2. Where they get stuck is when they don't realize v3 sliders produce MORE clouds/detail than said slider position in v2. In other words, with SMP 3, less is more when compared to v2.

 

bascially we are not complaining but suggestion that in the future updates of SMP 3 that this should be addressed.

 

But you are complaining. You started with "we all should not have to..."

 

Mostly of us came from or still use FSX/P3d and with the various third party weather injectors , Opus, REX and FSGRW to name a few seem to work well within FSX/P3D.

 

But this is not FSX/P3D. So what?

[joeslick112]

Its the customer's feedback  as well as others that seem to feel the same way and as the developer should know is all. But having attitude and as a customer I don't appreciate.

[Celis]

Still Micro Pauses... The problem is that I didn't have pauses with the same plugins and better settings. got SMP because it really looks great and imo one of the best plugins. tried different settings to get less pauses, reducing SMP sliders, changing textures, disabling some effects, reducing shadows, sunflares. no luck.

I'm just trying to inform to the Developer about this issue.

same result disabling NOAA plugin.

I still love SMP, excellent plugin, the best.. waiting for season   

 

Thanks

Alex