Horrible performances & fps fluctuations

[mkonareff]

Hello there,

I've just got the King from orbx and sadly I must say my first try was really disappointing as the performance were absolutely horrible
Not that it was low in terms of fps, but the fps fluctuates to a point that it creates stutters, it does not feel smooth at all and it's pretty unflyable.

I could not solve the issue but I am so much eager to fly this bird that I would not want to ask a refund without trying everything first.


[*]First of all here are my PC specs:

AMD Ryzen 3800x @4.5Ghz
16Gb G.Skills Neo @3600mhz - CAS 16
MSI RTX 2070 Super Armor OC 8Gb
P3D and all add-ons are located on Samsung 860 EVO SSDs
Win10 1909

[*] I'm using the latest version of P3D v4.5 (HF3) and my install is quite recent as I reinstalled everything when HF3 was released.

[*] I know this is usually not very helpful to say that but this is honestly the first time I'm seeing such a bad performance with a 3rd party aircraft, even my FSlabs runs smoothly at 30 fps (locked at 31 internally and externally for better smoothness) most of the time on very large airports but here the fps fluctuate from 15 to 30.

[*] I'm running many orbx sceneries and quite many other sceneried but I manage that on the clean way, deactivating anything uneeded for my current flights but keeping in mind any dependencies. Being a dev I quite know what I'm doing on that side so it should not be the issue.

[*] My P3D settings are pretty much on the performance side and I rarely have long-frames. It's pretty optimized for pretty much any situations as I'm using a single config setting for any kind of flying from the C172 on a small grass airfield to the 747-400 flying from KLAX to EGLL.

[*]What I've tried so far:
* Reducing RealLight and Trueglass resolution in the dedicated xml files without much result
* Disabling Render to transparent surfaces does not help at all
* Removing my affinity mask in the cfg did not help either
* Removing any Nvidia Inspector "smoothness tweaks" did not help
* Unlimiting fps in P3D settings makes the fluctuations even worse (maximum fps goes up to 45 at Orbx KSAN but still fluctuates down to 15/20)
* Decreasing P3D scenery settings by 1 then 2 notch down did not help (I would not consider this as a final solution anyways considering my PC specs)
* Reducing P3D lighting settings (shadows to low, dynamic reflection off) did not help
* Reducing P3D display settings (Max texture resolution, Antialiasing off, FXAA off, no anisotropic filtering etc...) gave the same results
* Disabling dynamic lighting did not help
* Disabling trueglass did not help
* Turning UTlive OFF didn't help
* I'm using Envshade but restoring default shaders did not help
* Disabling most of my 3rd party addons that could possibly conflict (exe and dlls) did not help
* Renaming the folders "_low" in the aircraft folder in order to use these instead of the standard ones did not help
* Installing the low res version provided on this forum instead of the orbx version gave the same results
* Running the KA350 exclusively from default airports: yes the fluctuations are less obvious with fps locked at 30 but it's still less smooth than any other aircraft and not being able to fly this beauty on 3rd party sceneries definitely is a no go for me
* Changing the pixel size value from 2048 to 1024 to each Vcockpit entry in the panel.cfg did not help
* Using the provided legacy gauges did not help
* Checking the VRAM usage : between 70% to 75% , 3rd party scenery or default airport does not seem to change much the VRAM usage.
* Fluctuations are more obvious when panning, especially when looking at the gauges in the cockpit
* Fluctuations are much less visible in external views but still there
* As soon as cockpit displays are off, fluctuations are much less obvious but still there
* My cpu cores do not seem to be saturated and looks to be used as usual by the sim, core 0 is not even totally full
* My GPU usage remains at 40/50% as usual

*EDIT: I have also attempted a quick flight to see if it would be okay during cruise over water, but even this did not help either

Here is a video showing the fluctuations and the very laggy panning and movements:
https://youtu.be/xMtTQ51En-s

Here is the exact same test with the PMDG 737 NGXu which was the most heavy aircraft with the FSL A32X on my PC until now:
https://youtu.be/0kFovFgSccM

These videos probably won't help you but you'll see that there is definitely something wrong here with my install of the 350i as the same test in the same conditions provide a butter smooth experience with one of the heaviest 3rd party aircraft nowadays.
After reducing pretty much every single P3D setting to find the culprit and getting my P3Dv4 looking like a FS2002 without getting any kind of positive result I'm pretty much out of ideas now,
Even trying on a default airport with all the tests performed above does not bring much more smoothness as I even been able to see some fps jump from 60 to 10 with unlimited fps ! Panning feels like a power point with so much fluctuations.



I'm pretty sure this comes from the Aircraft, may be this only happen in some specific configurations but I've never experienced such bad performances before. I'd be glad to test anything else so any suggestion would be much appreciated

Thanks by advance,
Maxime

[mkonareff]

Could I get some help please?

[Taguilo]

Hi,

I'm sorry but I honestly don't see something critical in your videos. It is true that the KA is heavy in frames, but you are getting around 20+ in that particular condition. I have similar numbers in heavy sceneries and still it flies smooth. Besides, your panning example is not something that I will be doing during a flight .


Tomas

[mkonareff]

Hello Tomas,

Common, the panning example is only there to show how stuttery it is. Of course there's no point doing that during flight, but any movement, panning including, create a very stuttery feeling. Look at the difference with the 737, this can't be normal.
I hate to be the guy that tells "I know what I'm saying and you're wrong" but I'm an experienced simmer, a long time beta tester for diverse devs and I'm myself a dev so I'm pretty used to support requests, bugs, complaints and different expectations from a user to another. Believe me, there is something that is not normal in what I am seeing.

Don't get me wrong: I don't have 20 fps in those conditions: I have up to 45 at the same airport with unlocked fps, it's just that the king air makes the frames totally unstable. I have done some researches on your forum and I'm not the only one who reported stutters and unstable fps.
The fps are fluctuating a lot, and this is what is making the king air stuttery : from 15 to 30 when locked, but from 20 to 60 when unlimited.

If it was flyable I would not have posted and tested so many things, in this situation I can't even do a smooth turn in flight. You'd agree that the most important thing performance wise in simulators is the smoothness, this is exactly what I don't have here.
If you read my entire report, you'll see that I've decreased almost all settings that are heavy on frames in the sim and that it did not do a difference. There must be something, I can't believe this is that hard on performance.

[Taguilo]

Hi,

As I told you before, I also get rather low frames in dense sceneries, particulary ORBX, but my flights are quite smooth. Perhaps other aircraft behave better, sure. I also exerience some fps fluctuations, but again, not affecting the visual performance of the VC and/or externa view in a point that might start bothering me.

I'm sorry I cannot help you much here, visual display tuning is not within my strong skills.


Tomas

[mkonareff]

Hi again,

I'm fine with the fact that it's heavy on frames, but just it's particularly stuttery for me and it's pretty hard to do anything properly.
Visual display tuning does not have an impact, I could turn everything down it does not gives better results. I also don't get a smooth experience in default areas and with add-ons turned off.
Well I guess I'll have to live with it or request a refund.

This is the worst performance I ever saw by far in any 3rd party aircraft for now, including the heaviest airliners. Considering the other quality products you sell I'm quite surprised.
Thanks anyway.

[mkonareff]

Hi there,

Tomas, I've been looking again at this as I was so much disappointed not being able to fly the King; one thing I did not look at is Chaseplane (as I never had issues with it): I've discovered that the option "Inject movements direct into memory" of chaseplane made the movements extremely stuttery. When disabling this option, the movements and panning are much less stuttery, the fps are still highly fluctuating still causing a bit of stuttering but now this looks normal considering the fluctuations.

Any idea why such an option would interfer with the 350i? On all other aircraft this option actually smoothens everything but it's quite the opposite with the King Air. Chaseplane being a popular camera add-on, it would be worth looking closer at that.

I still think this masterpiece would deserve more performance optimization but this finding helps a bit, hopefully you'll be looking at some options to enhance fps stability.

[Taguilo]

Any idea why such an option would interfer with the 350i? On all other aircraft this option actually smoothens everything but it's quite the opposite with the King Air. Chaseplane being a popular camera add-on, it would be worth looking closer at that.

Hi,

Honestly no idea. Our KA is a multi threaded aircraft; perhaps Chaseplane conflicts with some of its complex procedures. I'm thinking of Wx radar or Terrain radar (TAWS). I'm just guessing, sorry to not be of any help with this.


Tomas

[Slayer]

There have been a few updates to chaseplane. One update directly was related to KA. Try updating your Chaseplane.

a suggestion:

Right click P3D icon, pick properties, disable full screen optimizations - a Windows update that causes problems for some people but not everyone.

[mkonareff]

Hi Steve,

Thanks for the suggestions, unfortunately all of this is already done on my sim for quite a long time but that does not help at all with the KA.
Chaseplane is also kept updated.

[jonahdesrochers]

The only thing that works for me is to reduce TrueGlass resolution to 1024. Otherwise, it's a stuttery slide show mess (I run the FSLABS A320 into dense addon scenery in poor weather at dusk with better results).

[mkonareff]

Hello guys,

I just want to let you know that after installing windows 2004, the King is now perfectly smooth
I knew that what I was seeing before was not normal at all, not sure why it was not performing well on 1909 but updating totally solved the issue. (I'm using Nvidia 446.14, the same driver as before in case it would be useful to anyone, the newest drivers create huge stutters in several game and simulators, including MSFS and P3D for me and many users)

Finally I'll be able to take it to the skies now

[Slayer]

Thanks for the feedback. The 2004 update freed up an additional 700mb of Vram on my system and seems to be smoother on all aircraft on my end.