The website and forum will be intermittently unavailable while we're making some security updates.
File uploads to the download hangar are also disabled until further notice.

An idea for increasing performance in P3Dv4

Since Matrix support is now terminated, this forum is now locked and will soon be archived.
Locked
jetpilot1980
Captain
Captain
Posts: 308
Joined: 04 Oct 2015, 20:17
Version: P3D

An idea for increasing performance in P3Dv4

Post by jetpilot1980 »

So one of the issues I like many have run into with P3D is the frame rates are a dog especially in busy areas like JFK, IAD, NKX ect…
I don't believe I have a weak system granted not the newest but still good FX-8350 8 core processor 4.2GHZ; 32GB Ram; R9-390 8GB GPU; 1600W PSU; I noticed that FPS are really rough in these areas...

Based on research it is known that a large amount of AI Traffic does put a huge load on processors and create framerate issues. Additionally, I have noticed that the "AI draw bubble" for P3D is huge in that it seems to draw and maintain AI traffic rather and seemingly unnecessarily far away. While I see that has been mentioned on the LM forums; LM seems to not be taking any action to tone it down from what I can tell.

While I use MAIW for my military traffic I also use Alpha India and WOA for their spectacular airline traffic as well. While these cover military and commercial they don't necessarily provide any large amounts of GA traffic... I have also noticed that the default AI traffic for Mil, Com, GA are a single combined bgl file (trafficAircraft.bgl) so there is no way to remove just single category via BGL removal. Additionally, the various addon traffic is tied to the respective traffic sliders "Airline" (Comm) and "GA" (Mil &GA).

Noticing that at 60% the slider for GA seems to generate an enormous amount of small aircraft traffic when I go to the change view menu and scroll through the AI traffic list it seems like hundreds of GA aircraft (Maules, Mooneys ect.)are present at any given time. Also I have noticed that in many cases the activity level setting in many addon traffic .bgls set to higher settings 60% as high as 92% in some cases in order to see those aircraft it would also generate a huge amount of default traffic and processor strain...

So my idea is to use AIFP bulk traffic update activity levels function to set all addon AI traffic bgl files / flight plans to 1% activity level. This way I can tone down the default traffic both Airline and GA via the sliders; while still maintaining all my addon AI traffic thus reducing processor loads. Thoughts anyone?
User avatar
Firebird
MAIW Admin
MAIW Admin
Posts: 12112
Joined: 11 Aug 2006, 21:04
Version: FS9
Location: EGLL

Re: An idea for increasing performance in P3Dv4

Post by Firebird »

Well at lot of this depends on whether you want default GA or not. Personally I got rid of it by renaming/moving the default traffic file. This should help you. I say this because if you go to the trouble of adding relatively accurate CIV and MIL traffic why would you need the default file at all?

On the aspect of there being a lot of traffic that really is by choice. If you get rid of the default traffic file then the only CIV stuff you will have is what you have added from AIG/WoA. You could just remove some.

If you really wanted to mess around with the default traffic rather than delete it, i.e. you would like to keep the GA stuff, then load that traffic file into AIFP and save the file set.
Now you have the 3 raw txt files. I assume it has airliner and GA traffic so make a copy of each file. Suffix one set with '_Airline' and the other with '_GA'.
Now simply use you favourite text editor and remove all the GA traffic from the Airline set and all the Airline stuff from the GA set.

Now you can compile the txt files and you will have split the default traffic into two to make it easier to manipulate what you see.
Steve
_______________________________________________________
Image
Quid Si Coelum Ruat
_______________________________________________________
User avatar
TimC340
Lieutenant Colonel
Lieutenant Colonel
Posts: 1305
Joined: 07 Mar 2015, 13:18
Version: P3D
Location: Hadleigh, Suffolk
Contact:

Re: An idea for increasing performance in P3Dv4

Post by TimC340 »

I also remove the default traffic files; I don't want 'Global' and all the other fake airlines, and the mix of GA is, as you've discovered, a bit unbalanced and generally inappropriate.

Much better GA traffic is provided for the USA and Oz by Orbx' free traffic packages, and in UK by the UK2000 FSX payware VFR packages. For this last, you'll need the FSX GA aircraft as P3D doesn't include quite a few of them (hence the odd GA traffic mix!). AIG may also do GA traffic, but I haven't looked into that. I do use UTL, which adds quite a bit of larger GA traffic, but it's often not that realistic in terms of what goes where.
User avatar
Victory103
Colonel
Colonel
Posts: 3977
Joined: 13 Aug 2007, 03:35
Version: P3D
Location: KPHX

Re: An idea for increasing performance in P3Dv4

Post by Victory103 »

First thing I did was rename the default traffic file as I moved over to P3D. Currently running Matrix and now AIG AIM/OCI after I found a scenery.cfg entry that was preventing the program from starting. For GA, I'm using ORBX AU and NA files, as they released the payware HTAI Props models, which I had in FSX. Pulling my biz jets USGA files over now that the models are in P3D, but it's a long process.
DUSTOFF
ARMY PROPS
NAVY SAR

-Chris
Locked