Massive fps drop with 3.1

[kneighbour]

Installed 3.1 today and had to remove it. With my "normal" startup scenario (at my base airport with my usual aircraft) I went from 60 fps to 17 fps instantly. I used the Plugin Admin tool in XP to do this, so you can see the instant response. I repeated this several times - and yes, SkyMaxx just kills my X-Plane.

I have a new system, so I do not have any history to fall back on with this hard ware. But with the same setup (and my old hardware), with V3 there was usually very little difference in fps, perhaps even being better with SkyMaxx on than off.

My base is YBBN and the aircraft is the SAAB 340.

[Cameron]

Not much to go by here. What are your system specs? Do you have the latest and greatest video card drivers? Have you read Frank's message in the official update thread?

Did you hit the "default settings" button and try to start baseline fresh?

[kneighbour]

You are right - pretty useless on my part!

CPU - 6700K OC to 4.6GHz

GTX-980 TI (6 gig VRAM). Latest video driver 364.72

32 gigs RAM

40" 4K monitor running at 2560x1440

XP 10.45

 

And yes, did set SkyMaxx back to Default settings. Could not find any message by Frank.

[Cameron]

Pretty beefy machine you have there. Slightly nicer CPU than myself, but same video card to the T. I am producing VERY nice results from an FPS standpoint, so that's very confusing.

11 minutes ago, kneighbour said:

40" 4K monitor running at 2560x1440

So you're downsizing resolution when running XP (am I reading that right)?

12 minutes ago, kneighbour said:

And yes, did set SkyMaxx back to Default settings. Could not find any message by Frank.

This post:

 

[Defiance_co]

Hiya,

If still no joy with the fps loss .............

I could be wrong but the new defaults seem much larger/greater/wider than v3.0

I found now i have more clouds around me covering a further radius for the same fps i had with v3.0

I found it's a case of trial and error with the new numbered settings

What i did brick about was my very initial fps loss, or rather what i thought was a fps drop, damn trixx hadn't loaded so my gpu was at stock lol

Anyways, have a play around til your eye-candy is/as before, i think you may/should find a slight fps increase, i sure did and i'm still on a r9 290x ;-)

Have Fun

Tony

 

ps : Goto external chase view, scan out with the < key (shift too for speed) and you should see just how much more cloud to the buck you're getting

Edited April 9, 2016 by Defiance_co
spellingz

[kneighbour]

Found the main culprit. When I open the SkyMaxx settings screen, it is reporting that I have about 300 megs of Video RAM free. Bit weird as I am hoping it is more than that! XP reports that I am using around 4000 megs of textures, so that should leave a fair bit to get to 6000 megs. It might be under reporting though.

Anyway, I had the thing set to defaults, but slowly moved the Distance down from the default of around 4900 sq miles to around 2900 sq miles. That fixed the problem. In this particular situation, went from 15 fps to 45 fps as soon as I hit the sweet spot. Currently running at around 2900 sq miles and seems ok flying around. Still getting the odd pause as it loads in weather, but so far only done one flight, so hard to tell.

[kneighbour]

On 09/04/2016 at 8:46 AM, Cameron said:

So you're downsizing resolution when running XP (am I reading that right)?

 

I run the system at 2560x1440. Full 4K is a bit too small for my aged eyeballs! The other problem is that I run 5 monitors (XP is only on 1 monitor), and when I move from screen to screen, it does not run as smooth with one monitor being at 1920x1080 and the next monitor is at 4K. Running at 1440 gives a much smoother transition between monitors. And running X-Plane at 4K does not look as good as I thought it would. Can barely tell the difference to 2560x1440, so that is where I leave it.

The 40" screen is the BIG thing!! Can recommend that to everyone. The bigger the better...

Edited April 11, 2016 by kneighbour

[Defiance_co]

Glad to hear you're getting the fps back

I've only had smp 3 since march 25th, after wasting install slots etc then seeing how amazing the clouds are, i thought it couldn't get much better

Well v3.1 came along as i got up to greet the day, and wowsa, just took off from lowi headed to eddf, jaw dropped as i was plonked on the runway at lowi

Looked just like something on a pilots-eye etc, kind of misty and low ground hogging clouds, headed 77degrees from lowi to gain speed at 1k/min, banked left then on auto pilot to climb to 12k, inbetween the clouds the sun shining through, breathtakingly lifelike (not a pilot irl but i mean by seeing vids etc)

Astoundingly good hehe

Again, i am now swamped in a mass of clouds, i'd guesstimate double easy to previously, and now i'm back at fps rates i had with v3 !!

Double the eye candy for the same fps, dang it, that's what i call brilliance from the devs : EDIT, just alt-tabbed and gone into chase view mode, damn, i reckon i am x4 the amount of clouds at least !!

Have Fun

Tony

Edited April 10, 2016 by Defiance_co
added text

[kneighbour]

New XP reload. FPS 15 again. Check SkyMaxx again. Says 2750 video ram free, but Cloud Area covered is back to default again. Wound Cloud Area back to 2916 sq km and frame rates come back to 37+.

 

So, settings were not saved. Also why would running with the default settings be so bad?  Should the default settings be dropped drastically?  Bit weird that even though I have heaps of video ram free (2750 it seems), and a lot of CPU left over (running at 0.027), why are the framerates so low?

[Defiance_co]

Hiya,

The initial defaults aren't bad as such ........ far from it, they just need adjusting like mine if not running a titan x hehe

From my checking external view mode, the 'Default' seems way way more/dense/larger than 3.0

Imagine the 'Default' drawing a circle of clouds rendering in v 3.0, now 3.1 to my eyesight not only draws a larger circle but also the size/density/amount seems larger/greater, hence the fps drop

Now it cannot be a pure like-for-like increase, as now i can alter my options to get my previous v3.0 fps rates but still gain a mass and i mean a mass as i'm snowed in by clouds, and it's brilliant

So whatever optomization/s the devs have done it's paying dividends for me, more clouds around a larger rendering distance with v3.0 fps's

Hope that makes sense, had little sleep as cloud addiction got bad way into the wee hours lol

Ohh, make sure you save the settings as per normal option in the gui, then save your newly created settings, once saved, open the load or whatecer it;s called to check they've saved

Hope this waffling helps somewhat

Have Fun

Tony

ps @ Thankyou Sundog for the rep

[rokisk8]

same problem,.... fps drops too much.. 

[sundog]

14 minutes ago, rokisk8 said:

same problem,.... fps drops too much.. 

Lower your cloud draw area then. You're probably tight on VRAM, as explained above.

[kneighbour]

>>Lower your cloud draw area then. You're probably tight on VRAM, as explained above.

This is understood. I am a bit puzzled in my situation - I open SkyMaxx and see that I have 2750 video RAM free, and still cannot run at Default. How much video RAM does SkyMaxx need to run with the Default settings?

On my last flight had the distance set to around 2900 sq km, and while that sounds a lot, in actual flight it looked rather weird. I was flying in this small circle of clouds that followed me as I flew along. I could see the ring of clouds around me very clearly.

[sundog]

My response was to rokisk8. I think your issue has more to do with the effective monitor resolution you're using. You said you're running 5 monitors at 4K? I didn't even know that was possible! In your case, the bottleneck is probably fill rate as opposed to VRAM.

 

Edited April 11, 2016 by sundog

[gpb500]

I also had some weirdness where running mid-teens (GTX970/4790K combo) but when I entered a "no cloud" area I was only mid 20s whereas usually I'm mid 40s.  I have reflections off, but shadows on.  Not even sure SMP is an issue but wanted to know this:

How does cloud size affect performance?  Min/Max settings specifically.  And what min/max settings would be most realistic?

Gotta say, the clouds look amazing and still have a couple pauses for cloud repaint, but the realism is impressive.  I hope the connector will help alleviate some of this pause issues.  I'm definitely bumping up against my 4GB VRAM limits...waiting on the new nVidia Pascal cards.

Thanks!

-- Greg

 

[kneighbour]

2 hours ago, sundog said:

My response was to rokisk8. I think your issue has more to do with the effective monitor resolution you're using. You said you're running 5 monitors at 4K? I didn't even know that was possible! In your case, the bottleneck is probably fill rate as opposed to VRAM.

 

My problem seems similar to rokisk8 in that the Cloud Draw distance is my primary issue.

No - only the main monitor is 4K. The one I run XP on. And it is not even running at 4K resolution, only 2560x1440.

Edited April 11, 2016 by kneighbour

[Cameron]

24 minutes ago, kneighbour said:

No - only the main monitor is 4K. The one I run XP on. And it is not even running at 4K resolution, only 2560x1440.

To clarify: You are, or you are not driving 5 displays for X-Plane?

[kneighbour]

30 minutes ago, Cameron said:

To clarify: You are, or you are not driving 5 displays for X-Plane?

Nope - only 1 display (2560x1440) for X-Plane. And it is the ONLY monitor sitting on the GTX-980 TI. All the other monitors are on the integrated video or the additional GTX-460 I also use.

Edited April 11, 2016 by kneighbour

[Guy7]

>>...On my last flight had the distance set to around 2900 sq km, and while that sounds a lot, in actual flight it looked rather weird. I was flying in this small circle of clouds that followed me as I flew along. I could see the ring of clouds around me very clearly.

Upgraded from 3.0 to 3.1 and I've noticed this too. It's like flying over a dinner plate of clouds. I've tried adjusting the sq km covered but it doesn't seem to make a huge difference visually. Affects frame rate a lot more.

Is there something else I should be adjusting?

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[Defiance_co]

Guy7,

Drop your Min/Max Cloud Size down, slider to far left

Check/Tick Fast clouds option, as i see it, Fast is like a minimum for my checking, then Crisp is full on yummy HD (my opinion from fps and eye-candy visual checking

Uncheck/Untick Enable Cloud Reflections, these are only over water

Shadows in any game are fps droppers, if you want, drop those down to off or bare min

The Cirrus layer options i have down to Low and the force Layer ticked

Now, from there see what you've got fps-wise

Now if the fps is ok at this, start adding your eye-candy, cloud sizes/cloud area covered

Now with more distance and sizes to play with, alas it's up to you to dig in n get dirty and find your ideal fps

For me i love dshadows, but until i have a better gpu i forego these on high settings and have them on static (in game options)

Always when given eye-candy/fps i start at default or low and work up/down

For me the cloud rendering distance means i've had to give up some cloud size to balance the fps

Just take your time, number each save, after a selection are done, go into some dense fps-lowering airport, check and see and fine tune

Also a quick note on your rig cpu/gpu and ram amount might help

If you want to overclock a cpu or gpu i don't mind helping, these alone even moderate oc'ing can yield more fps

Have Fun

Tony

[Guy7]

Thanks for the pointers Tony but I'm on top of most of that stuff

Hopefully the following may help anyone still struggling...

I'm not sure what was going on but I decided to do some tests enabling and disabling SMP and various options.  I was more worried about the odd look of the "postage stamp" (dinner plate was the wrong expression as it's rectangular, not circular) effect of the overcast when viewed from above.  FPS wasn't too bad for me.

For anyone struggling this is what I did just now which seems to have sorted multiple issues / niggles...

• I rebooted gizmo which seemed to improve things a bit.  This made me wonder if a full uninstall and re-install of SMP (*not* X-Plane) would help.  When upgrading SMP I just used the installer to uninstall the old version so maybe this didn't fully clean everything.  It's also entirely possible I used the same method upgrading from v2 --> v3 so there may be who knows what leftovers.
• I uninstalled SMP and fired up X-Plane just to see what that did (baseline basically) and everything looked much better (wall to wall overcast which was what I was after with the weather I have set for testing) but withough the SMP finesse of course.
• I then re-installed SMP.  Haven't changed anything yet apart from disabling lens flare.  (Geek aside - Note that I normally install from a NAS - I noticed when unistalling the NAS paths were being accessed.  Before re-installing I copied the SMP installers to the same drive as X-Plane is installed.  I'm running X-Plane SE.)
• Results - fantastic.  I now have realistic looking cloud cover at FL410 (not a tiny postage stamp immediately below me).  FPS has shot up too.  VRAM usage reported by MSI Afterburner has dropped by about 800K.  Time to turn things up again

Conclusion:  If you're having problems, reboot Gizmo uninstall SMP completely.  Fire up XP and make sure things look how you expect.  Note FPS.  Install SMP.  Check visuals.  Note FPS.  Smile hopefully. (X-Plane load times have dramatically reduced too).

Only one question / point - I have to assume rebooting Gizmo is *not* something that happens every time X-Plane is restarted!  But that's for another day.

Guy

PS - just sat here in pause mode at FL410 over the Shetland Islands watching the sun come up and light the cloud tops.  Stunning   Time to go fly!

Edited April 11, 2016 by Guy7
add "geek aside"

[Defiance_co]

Heya,

Nice info you've posted :-)

I might just do a fresh install myself

Cheers

Have Fun

Tony

[sundog]

Weird; it sounds like somehow your settings file for SMP got corrupt or unwritable, and re-installing cleared it up.

kneighbor - reinstalling may be worth a shot for you too, but I still suspect fill rate if your bottleneck. The fragment shader for our clouds needs to run for every pixel a cloud draws over, and on high resolution displays that can add up. Turning down the cloud draw area means fewer clouds get drawn, which means fewer pixels get covered by clouds. But, you might find the cloud detail setting makes more of a difference for you - it should reduce the amount of "overdraw" the clouds do, which helps with fill rate.

[Defiance_co]

Another weird,

I did remove the initial 3.1 update via the 3.1 installer

After backing folders/files up just in case of course

Well after uninstalling 3.1, i went into the game, checked fps etc

Exited, then fully installed 3.1, hoping to the lord i wasn't going to waste another slot lol

Well, i can't say my fps went up as once i get my head around lots of settings i tweak tweak n tweak some more til i've got what my system can handle, so for me as stated i've gained more eye-candy for the same fps i had previously

But, and there's usually always a but, i did notice my bootup time is a fair bit faster as you stated on your testing Guy7

Windose pro x64

32gb ddr4 3200 @ 3000

R9 290x @ 1267/1354 watercooled loop

5820k @ 4.7ghz watercooled loop

Asus rampage v extreme (replaced instantly as 1st one died !)

So for me, no fps increase which really i wasn't expecting, but gained a speedier game booup time :-)

Have Fun

Tony

 

Edited April 11, 2016 by Defiance_co
added text

[kneighbour]

Well, I did try a reinstall (via the installer). No difference. If I turn OFF Cloud Reflections also get a big increase in fps.

 

>>but I still suspect fill rate if your bottleneck.

But the resolution is only 2560x1440. Will try at 1920x1080 tonight, but cannot see that making much difference. Even running at full 4K I only lose about 7fps with XP running pretty much everything at max.

I am not particularly focused on image quality here, so I tried the Soft quality setting. Did not seem to make any difference. I would rather have a wide circle of clouds around the plane of average quality than what I have now - a tiny circle of clouds that follow me around like a cloud over my head. It looks pretty weird.