Issue Performance reports/discussion ASP4+ASCA SP2 Open Beta

[Mephic]

Hi

When there is a sunrise or sunset scenario and I am above cloud level and there is plenty of clouds I face severe FPS drop (from 60-70 to 15-20 FPS). Disabling cloud shadows results in huge improvement (back to 60-70 FPS). In P3Dv3 it could be resolved by reducing cloud texture size shadow from 512 to 256. Unfortunately LM removed this functionality in v4 and they replaced it with some other functions (tried to manipulate with all related to shadow texture size but no results).

It happens mainly when looking at sun but also some other angles.

Is it possible to resolve this on AS16 level? TBH it's quite a PITA.

 

[Mephic]

As a side note

adding this CLOUD_SHADOW_TEXTURE_SIZE tweak manually to cfg does improve performance slightly but it's nowhere near v3 results. It's still 30-35 FPS loss.

 

[damian]

Are you sure this is caused by ASP4? What happens if you don't load it and instead load a similar wx theme? There may be something else affecting things/clouds/wx depiction in general.

Can you also try with max upper visibility set to 200 miles to see if the single visibility layer used in that mode improves things? Feel free to open a ticket for more troubleshooting: http://support.hifitechinc.com

Thanks!

 

[FireRx]

yeah , I not getting any FPS hits. I did rebuild my Prep3d V4.cfg file again after installation because I was getting high CPU and memory usage. Once I reset the cfg file. it's been perfect. grant you I do not make all the sliders go to the right. Maybe backing some of them off from max would help.

 

[Mephic]

This happens only with AS16 and it was reported on this forum multiple times in v3and solved by changing res to 256.
I didn't hit the conditions which would cause it for first week of using v4 but when there is dense overcast in front of you and you fly in direction of sun around evening (so it''s just above horizon) there is suddenly huge fps dip.

I'll attach comparison screenshot's in my ticket

Thank you

 

[mikey]

I am having same issue
Fps drop i really dense heavy dark clouds
4k tv
Asca sp2 512 dxt textures
Asp4 default settings also tried upper visiblity 200

Pta urp 1.1
Reshade
4xmsaa only
Dynamic lighting off
P3d v4 sliders moderate settings
No clouds shadows

This was happening in p3d v3.4 also
Running on 2x titans sc sli

Soon as i drop as16 and asca
Fps and performance is up again

I dont know whats is going on

Thus needs to be addressed
Been too many threads on this issue
.

 

[Mephic]

I think you have some other issue. The one frequently reported was always related to cloud shadows if I'm not wrong. Default p3d clouds are not that dense and therefore there is no hit. Mix as16 and asca and in overcast conditions the shadowing kills performance. I do agree it has to be addressed though as it's a major performance problem.

 

[mikey]

I thought maybe its hardware related but its not.
Because performance would drop even in clear skies.

I dont know, going nuts trying to figure it out

 

[ACA235]

I am not experiencing this issue at all and have around 200+ hours now loggen in P3Dv4 with AS for P3Dv4

 

[damian]

Does anyone reporting from drop have add-on scenery installed? There are known reported issues with some of them not being properly updated to P3Dv4 yet.

 

[mikey]

Just ftx global
As i said only darker denser grey clouds
While panning in view.
Whist panning away in denser lighter grey clouds fps jump up again.
Hope that helps
Thanks
Mike

 

[Mephic]

Here you go, same scene, same weather all I did was changing time, sim is paused to avoid any other objects causing fps drops. It only happens when sun starts to disappear behind horizon and ends when it's completely gone. FPS drop is quite significant, as you can see, up to 30 FPS is lost.

 

[creed]

Significant frame rate drop when ASP4 loads cloud

Hello there

I've recently purchased Prepar3d v4, and knowing I couldn't enjoy an ESP based sim without your wonderful weather engine and ASCA, the upgrade licence for AS16 for P3D to go along with it.

I have what I believe to be the latest versions of both ASP4 and ASCA installed (1.0.6362.21859 and 1.0.6239.27110). Besides this, the only other add-ons I have installed to the base sim are PMDG's 747 QOTS II, which is also up to date and a number of AI models for use with vPilot, carefully checked for compatibility with v4. My base sim is also up to date (v4.0.23.21468).

I am experiencing a couple of issues with Active Sky which I never had in FSX though. The first and most problematic are the enormous FPS drops I'm experiencing when ASP4 loads in significant cloud (particularly cumuliform I believe, although I have little time in the sim, so this isn't necessarily the case). Whilst in FSX the FPS drops when significant weather was loaded seemed to be in the region of 15% on my system, in P3D they range from 35-50+%. Attached are two screen grabs from on the ground at Changi before and after opening ASP4. FPS drops from 39 down to 26 which strikes me as quite a lot. More concerning though, on my flight from Gimpo to Haneda yesterday, as some interesting cloud formed on descent into Tokyo, my FPS plummeted from mid-thirties down to under 17 as illustrated again with a screen grab.

I'm running the sim on what I would consider to be medium settings, which strikes me as reasonable for my mid-range system. Here's a link (your own file uploader said it was invalid) to my Prepar3d.cfg for you to take a look for yourselves.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6q_mTuKU8uVdkp0VG9sbWVHaWc/view?usp=sharing

My specs are as follows:
i5 4670K @4.3GHz | 8 GB 2133MHz RAM | GTX 770 @ 1150MHz | 480GB RAID 0 SSD array to which the sim is installed.

I was just wondering if these frames are the best I can hope for. I'm rather hoping though that by disabling a setting (I have had a good fiddle, but it hasn't really helped) or re-installing something or even with the full release of ASP4, things will improve.

Kind regards

Charlie Reed

 

[kdfw]

this is for p3dv4

i've seen topics about fps hit with overcast at dusk/dawn but this is plain daytime fps hit over the flat ocean.

allow me to explain:

this is with real time wx over olympic peninsula today, solid cloud coverage below, fps jumps around but avg=21, quite a large hit over area without land features.

stopping asp4 shows the flat ocean, fps=30 (locked at 30).

tried p3d's canned similar wx theme, fps solid 30

for fun, same area using fsx+asn (enhanced overcast=1), solid 30fps.

for asca, texture size=1k, asn used 2k textures from rex. same cloud draw distance, etc. so should be fair comparison.

tried to reduce the # of cloud layers but didn't make that much of a difference (5 to 1). setting of zero was somewhat better but not solid 30fps.

 

[creed]

Update:

Hello again, I've just noticed that an update to both ASP4 and ASCA was released yesterday, which I've now installed. Performance has perhaps improved fractionally, but it's still quite poor. I'm now running ASP4 B6377 and ASCA B6355.

I also discovered a similar topic and to try and help I thought I'd answer similar questions to those which you asked OP to hopefully speed things up a little.

GPU drivers: nVidia 382.53

Cloud textures: I've only ever used the sim with ASCA textures, and I usually leave ASCA on Global Automatic. I have however tried both the hard and soft high performance textures and these do not appreciably improve things.

Texture size: I've mostly had this on 2048x2048, but I've tried 1024x1024 and didn't notice any performance difference.

AA settings: 4 x MSAA only

Filtering: Anisotropic 4x

I have tried limiting the upper visibility limit to 200 miles in ASP4 and once more this did not improve things.

Per your recommendation, I've also tried setting up similar weather using the P3D engine. To make things comparable to what I'd had as I arrived in Tokyo last night I asked ASP4 to use historical weather for 17th June, 1600z. This yielded FPS in the low 20s (20-23). I then closed ASP4 and ASCA and set up a 3/8 cumulus layer from 300m-900m, a 6/8 cumulus layer from 1100m-2000m and a 3/8 cirrus layer from 10000m-10100m. This produced 27-31 FPS.

 

[damian]

This appears overcast specific, and there are overcast specific settings to help in ASCA (try slider full left, does it improve as intended?). Please note that ASCA content has not changed from P3Dv3, and as such, performance differences are likely related to the simulator itself and new features/options it offers. There are obvious confirmed differences here and thus you may need to change your options and re-balance things to the best combo possible for your specific situation.

To help isolate what makes the biggest difference, I'd suggest disabling ASCA fully first (do a Restore from ASCA sim settings) and see how much the wx depiction from ASP4 and/or general wx condition complexity has an effect, and what options can be changed to improve things there. Then re-enable ASCA and observe the effect on perf including settings such as Overcast quality/perf slider.

Those experiencing excessive perf drops, if you haven't yet, please do try Max Upper Visibility set to 200 and indicate if this had any measurable improvement for you (it uses a single visibility layer for depiction and this can improve perf significantly in some cases).

 

[damian]

I've merged a couple other threads here on the same topic. Continued feedback appreciated!