Smoother and better fps with more detail

[robert young 2,900]

I've been tweaking the graphics settings and I've discovered something that is rather surprising. Please note this might have the opposite effect on your system. I have a factory over-clocked system (4.5 ghz) which is pretty mid range nowadays, and a 1080ti .I am not running 4k, but 1080. Nor am I running any rolling cache, bing map data or photogrammetry, so if you are running these your results might be completely different.

I've been flying for days now with render scaling down and a lot of detail wound down, thinking that this will produce better fps and smoother motion. But today I started from a very low base then began adding more detail on some of the sliders. I'm actually getting better performance with higher detail !

The odd thing is that that with render scaling down to 80-100 the developer mode fps counter reports a permanently red cpu load and around 32-38 fps. As soon as I upped the render scaling to 120-130 the frame rates slightly improved and the cpu monitor turned green. I noticed that the GPU was now working slightly harder but the CPU was working less hard. I then changed volumetric clouds from "low" to medium, then high, and the frame rates immediately improved.to 45fps.

I then fiddled with various combinations of vector detail, building detail and texture synthesis and up to a certain point, the more detail I added the smoother the sim and the higher the frame rate, until I got to 55 fps with an amazing amount of detail turned up. I could hardly believe this and went back to low settings, and sure enough the CPU monitor turned red again and frame rates dropped.

I am no expert on computer systems, so others may have views about why this is happening. My guess is that as I turn up the detail the GPU is taking over more tasks. Both my CPU and GPU report a surprisingly low amount of used memory: typically 6-8 gigs of CPU memory and rarely more than 4 gigs out of 10 available on the 1080ti.

The only spanner in the works is the AI aircraft, airport aircraft density and to some extent road traffic. I thought I'd pass this on in case anyone else finds this useful.

Edited August 27, 2020 by robert young

[canuk_22 24]

very interesting

[MrFuzzy 2,141]

I have a similar config (7700K @ 4.7 with AVX and 1080 Ti) and the sim runs smoothly at 50-55 fps (37-40 on dense cities) with some settings on Ultra and others on High (2K resolution. Occasional stutters (micropauses) are inevitable and I live with it. So your results are pretty normal. I tried to disable live weather and traffic but it has no impact apparently... my CPU usage is always between 40 and 60%.

This if I fly GA aircraft, with liners divide the values by 2! Hopefully they will optimize the 2D panels rendering and big planes will perform better in the future.

What you experience is strange anyway, because if I choose the Medium preset I get 10 fps more by avg. Maybe your system feels insulted with low details and refuses to work 🙂

The Geforce Experience suggestions are very low if you notice, maybe they aim to 100 fps.

[raymar 972]

Thanks. Yes, I am starting a new folder for my own tips and tricks.  I have a similar pc.  I thought I bought a hot rod a year ago and it turns out to be a mid level setup.  Alienware R7 i7-8700 3.7 32 GB ram 1080 Ti Alienware 32 in g-sync curved monitor 3440 x 1440. 3 SSDs.

[robert young 2,900]

16 minutes ago, MrFuzzy said:

What you experience is strange anyway, because if I choose the Medium preset I get 10 fps more by avg. Maybe your system feels insulted with low details and refuses to work 🙂

 

Thanks for that info. I haven't tried the presets. Maybe I should. I've been tweaking individual sliders. The AI traffic hit was in a particular area (South of London), so maybe Gatwick, Heathrow and City airports were all ganging up with multiple AI aircraft. BTW I have seen almost no flying AI aircraft at all. I have not kept up with the discussions on this.

[Gabster 7]

Ever thought about the point, that with your changes in settings you are shifting work load between CPU/GPU? Not an expert myself but I know from p3d that some settings would shift load from CPU to GPU and improve the overall performance that way.

[robert young 2,900]

19 minutes ago, Gabster said:

Ever thought about the point, that with your changes in settings you are shifting work load between CPU/GPU? Not an expert myself but I know from p3d that some settings would shift load from CPU to GPU and improve the overall performance that way.

Yes. I mentioned that in my thread opener:

"My guess is that as I turn up the detail the GPU is taking over more tasks."

[HiFlyer 9,484]

I've said a few times across various threads that people will have to experiment, and that expectations based on behaviors of previous sims are not always valid on this one.......

This concept is something everyone should keep firmly in mind going forward.

[SteveFx 258]

I don’t think that there is any actual shifting of work, that would take far too much work coding and lead to multiple code paths to support.  

I believe that the developer fps screen shows you a number of activities per frame that should ideally all progress in parallel.  So as the main  thread prepares a frame the gpu should be redendering the previous frame.    the frame rate should be determined by the slowest activity which most of the time will be the main render or the gpu.

Some of the sliders will effect the cpu and gpu workload and some will effect only the gpu.  I doubt that there is anything that only impacts cpu but some like ai shipping might be mainly cpu.

I would expect that changing the render scale up or down will change only the gpu load with no impact on the cpu load at all.  

I have a slight suspicion that the current version of the sim works smoother when the gpu is limiting. I have seen the frame time on occasion exceed either the cpu or gpu times which suggests some stalling/contention.

I have a weaker (4 core cpu) compared with a 1900x1200 monitor and a 1070 gpu.  I have increased my render scaling to 130 to make the gpu be the limit which is similar to what Robert describes.
 

 

[westman 259]

i run 4k , 8700k 2080ti , scale 80 and high , vsync 60 to balance both cpu and gpu , cpu 5.3ghz ht on  and gpu 2100 mem 7500 gpu 90-95%

[Alpine Scenery 1,609]

1 minute ago, westman said:

i run 4k , 8700k 2080ti , scale 80 and high , vsync 60 to balance both cpu and gpu , cpu 5.3ghz ht on  and gpu 2100 mem 7500 gpu 90-95%

I tried scale 80-90, seems to make my text look slightly blurrier. I am playing on a giant screen, so maybe I notice it more.

Wish I had your video card, just don't want to spend that kind of money when going from a 2060 to 2080ti might not be as good as I hope, who knows. Going to wait for the next 3000 series Nvidia and see where that goes I guess. Nvidia and AMD are becoming like Apple with iPhones, keep increasing those top video card pricing each itteration. Hope it stops, but doubt it will.

[Alpine Scenery 1,609]

1 minute ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

What I found is that "some" settings (not all) seem to require a "restart" of the sim and flush my 64GB Cache I have set.

Cheers, Rob.

Some have said leaving the cache at default 8GB is best, have no idea if true or not. I am at 32GB, guess I will set to 8GB just for the heck of it. Trying to optimize this game is more a guessing game at this point. Problem is someone good at testing these things needs to check each setting for like many minutes at a time in the same conditions, and I'm just too busy to try all that to figure out what really works or not. 

[westman 259]

15 minutes ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

Sounds like "tweaking" to me ... hehe ... how things change but really remain the same.

On my PC that has the opposite impact on performance.  I run 4K, and any value above 100 on Render Scaling (switches to SSAA) results in a significant drop in FPS (even more so at night).  If I set Frame Rate Limit = 30 my FPS drops even lower.  If I set the Frame Rate Limit = 60 my FPS increases ... my monitor is running at 30Hz.

In addition, changes other settings like density and detail quality didn't seem to have much of an impact and more puzzling no visual change in rendering.

What I found is that "some" settings (not all) seem to require a "restart" of the sim and flush my 64GB Cache I have set.

Cheers, Rob.

he he tweak agree, i have only playing around a couple of days , not sure if i shall shot for 60hz or 30hz

 

 

Edited August 27, 2020 by westman

[HiFlyer 9,484]

This is all a bit frustrating for me. My experience of the sim is at consistently good FPS with almost no discernible stuttering, yet all around me, people are pretty much screaming in pain, while I have no clue what is causing such wildly varying individual results.....

At the moment, I'm on the high end preset, with essentially seamlessly smooth flight, on a system not noticeably more powerful than that rocked by many people here.... So....... what the heck is happening?

[Todd2 2,201]

I definitely get better performance at 70 render scaling than 120 I just checked it.