Do you experience sudden frame rate drops in Vancouver City?

Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2007 8:30 pm (No subject)

Roger that, Wothan. Thanks!

Jon

Joined: 07 Jul 2007 Posts: 7

Jon,
I tried Wothan's idea, and removed all traffic using the configurator, and it did indeed have a big impact! You may recall I was the other guy with only 1 gig of RAM. I haven't done a scientific study, but this has been my experience:

With Van+ traffic: FPS about 20 at CYVR, then dipping into mid to low teens around the city, then gradually dropping into the single digits, even after I got back to CYVR (couldn't even land)
Without Van+ traffic: FPS stayed in mid teens around the city (which I think is just fine given my hardware). But no death spiral, and when I got back towards CYVR they went back up, and were around 20 after I landed!

So maybe there's a "bad apple" with some part of the traffic?

Another odd thing, I saw plenty of cruise ships in spite of this, about eight of them. Could they all be MS defaults? I also saw static boats and marinas, even though I had unselected those with the configurator (I double checked this afterwards).

--Chris

Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2007 11:49 pm (No subject)

Hi Chris,

Thanks for the comment. The AI has a significant impact, which will be exaggerated if you only have 1Gb of RAM. I think with the 2Gb people, we're still looking for something else, although they've gone strangely silent, but hopefully they will give this a shot. Wink

If you've got traffic at 80%, but Van+ traffic off in the configurator, you indeed will see lots of MS ships, particularly in Vancouver harbour. The static boats/marinas configurator option only affects marinas immediately near downtown. This is working properly for me. Default ones elsewhere will be unaffected. Where were the ones you saw?

Chris and Wothan, I appreciate you taking the time to provide input. I'm sure it'll benefit many users.

Jon

Gender: Age: 43 Joined: 03 Aug 2007 Posts: 5

Helping the community, is helping myself :=)

By the way... I reduced my water settings to Low1.x, it helped alot on FPS. I´m just missing the reflection of my floatplane while sitting on the water :=( Otherwise it´looks more real. I always found the FSX water effects at Low2.x to be a bit to "silvery".
I still get blurries here and then, but after a while texture loading catches up and get sharp again after a while.

I just made a flight in the Realair ACA scout amphibian from CAE7 (Harrison) to CAM9 (Vancouver Intl. Seaplane Base) with ASX generating weather. I flew via Vancouver Habour midtown. Framerate was 17-18 FPS with crisp and clear textures most of the time.
The scenery is very nice and perfect for bushflying in either my Realair Scout, Citabria, Decathlon for FSX, or my Aerosoft Beaver X.

I hope that it is possible to find some optimations within this scenery to further enhance this great product ;=)

Regards

Wothan

Posted: Sat Aug 04, 2007 12:39 am (No subject)

Indeed, Wothan, at 1.x low you lose reflections, but the water colour is much realistic than at other settings.

We'll continue to work with users indeed to help flyers get the best out of FSX and Vancouver+.

Jon

Joined: 07 Jul 2007 Posts: 7

Jon,
I noticed the boats/marinas near CYVR. I didn't notice any downtown, but I wasn't specifically looking for them.
I had traffic set per the van+ recommended config file, which is pretty low, far below the 80%

--Chris

Joined: 31 Dec 2007 Posts: 5

I have been seeing a significant drop in frame rates using this scenery.

Using the recommended settings and the default aircraft frame rates will suddenly drop from 25 to 3 then back to 25 then down to 7. This is taking off from Vancouver Intl and flying toward the city. Very very bad stuttering.

Tested same settings on Megascenery socal and got rock steady 25 or beyond.

Equipment:-

Intel 6700 2.66
8800 gtx
2gb ram ddr2

Disabled ASX, UTX

Cloud textures - FEX

No traffic

Rod

Posted: Tue Jan 01, 2008 11:46 pm (No subject)

Rod, what happens if you save the flight and reload it?

Jon

Joined: 31 Dec 2007 Posts: 5

Not sure will try that out over the next few days.

I did rerun an number of times and I am not getting a consistent picture.

Ran it with ASX and saw significant drops down to low 4 or 5's on the frame rate then back up to 25.

Completely closed down ASX with end it all and while there were jumps it was from 25 down to 17 or so. Then reloaded ASX and rates stayed reasonable.

So not sure what is going on. But if I load other scenery like socal immediately after vancouver I'm not seeing such significant fluctuations.

Rod

Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2008 11:03 pm (No subject)

Ok, Rod, let us know what you find out. The challenge with this issue is that few users report it, and we can't reproduce it. But we have ideas of how to isolate the issue, and if want to hang in there with us we'll see if we can narrow this down.

Let us know how it goes...

Jon

Joined: 31 Dec 2007 Posts: 5

[quote="JonPatch"]Ok, Rod, let us know what you find out. The challenge with this issue is that few users report it, and we can't reproduce it. But we have ideas of how to isolate the issue, and if want to hang in there with us we'll see if we can narrow this down.

Let us know how it goes...

Jon

I have tried a number of things:-

a) Saving and reloading - still jumping around in frame rates
b)using UTX to adjust fibre frame time fraction to 0.6 and texture bandwidth multiplier to 40 - this produces great results in socal but rates with vancouver tank to around 10 -12 and fluctuate down to 3
c)using enhance application settings with nvidia anti aliasing - makes no difference

In each scenario get pronounced cloud popping as well which is not evident anywhere else.

Hope this helps because the scenery is great but unusable at the moment.

Rod

Joined: 31 Dec 2007 Posts: 5

Jon

If I turn antialiasing mode and antialiasing mode to application controlled and turn off gamma correction in the nvidia control panel I suddenly get almost ok rates 18 - 30 with much rarer sudden drops - mostly only where i change view with the joystick hat suddenly.

Also water settings seem to have an impact with 2x low being best.

Its not perfect but much better - normally I run with 16x on aa and af no problem so not sure if this is a driver, fsx or scenery issue.

Hope this helps.

Rod

Joined: 31 Dec 2007 Posts: 5

I meant turned both aa and af to application controlled.

Rod

Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 6:36 pm (No subject)

Rod, that's very useful, thank you for taking the time to look at this.

You could try other dense scenery areas, like New York and see if you see the same changes there ...

Jon

Posted: Mon Jan 28, 2008 5:35 pm (No subject)

Hi all

I was experiencing the same drop in frame rates getting closer to downtown Vancouver, (and also when flying in the mountains), although I have a different videocard than the 8800 or whatever most people seem to use (see my signature for specs). I turned off all the AI traffic in the configurator, and that seems to have fixed the issue for downtown. I still have fps drop to 4-7 while flying in the mountains tho. And what's even weirder is that without me doing anything (other than flying my Aerosoft Beaver from Whistler past Garibaldi and Squamish to Van) the view changes from VC to outside view unexpectedly, repeatedly and totally at random as far as I can tell?

I have no clue if this is related, so if I should start another topic for this issue please let me know?

Other than this, thanks for this great add-on of my most favorite part of the world! Wink