Misc: Rolled Back to P3D v2.2

After trying reinstalling and applying fixes to the new P3D v2.3 a couple of times, I just rolled back to v2.2.

I know there are users reporting an improvement from the new version.  Unfortunately I am not one of them.

Don’t know if the stutter issue was caused by my multi-monitors (probably not) or the clean install.   Will try again to upgrade the system from v2.3 patches and see what will happen next.

For now, glad to have my system back to normal and get rid of those horrible stutters.

 

Misc: P3D v2.3 Full of Issues on my System

Just had a clean install of the P3D v2.3 earlier today.  Full of expectations in the beginning but ended up in disappointments.

Horrible stutters are encountered as well as some addon utilities are not working.  I even haven’t started installing anything yet.  Not sure if it is my 3-monitor setup or what.  Very likely to roll back to v2.2 if issues couldn’t be solved in a couple of days.

255: A Lesson Learned – The SLI Myths

Started from dissembling the rudders for fixing a bad contact throughout the whole morning, then carried on to adding extra power to enhance the stability of the computer’s IO ports in the afternoon,  my day was full of grease and rust.  Since the chassis was opened, I unplugged the second graphics card on a whim.  Holy cow, my P3Dv2 ran even better.

MSI-SLI

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244: P3D v2.2 – System Settings Updated

Followings are updates to my earlier P3D system settings shown in Post 239.   Major changes are made to Scenery and Lighting, where the former improves Water Reflections and the latter enhances Shadows performance.

P3DSettings-Scenery  P3DSettings-Lighting

In addition, Continue reading

241: P3D v2.2 Part 5 – Hardware

My 4770K CPU was stably overclocked to 4.6 GHz before I moved on to the current 3-monitor setup with dual GTX 780 in SLI connection.   Since the system crashed a few times due to overheated CPU problem while running P3D (that’s right, P3D, not FSX), I have no choice but to lower the clock speed to 4.2 GHz.

Obviously, even though P3D is said to have shifted many processing works to the GPU, it is still a CPU-intensive program.   With lowered clock speed, my system’s CPU temperature lingers around 55°C, and adds another 5 to 10 degrees in general while flying over high density areas.   No more crash has encountered since.

P3Dv22-Hardware-00

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239: P3D v2.2 Part 4 – Settings

As known, the more complex and demanding the settings are, the more impacts will be on the simulator.  Followings are my current choices and preferences:

P3Dv22-Setting 01

♦  Disable FXAA improves image sharpness
♦  Found very slight difference among 2, 4 and 8 Samples in MSAA
♦  Texture Filtering=8 gives the best balance
♦  Similarly, found no obvious difference in higer texture resolution

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238: P3D v2.2 Part 3 – Prepar3D.cfg

The current performance of my P3D platform as shown in post 237 can’t be said flawless.   There are still occasional stutters especially while the plane is in steep turns.  And the range of crystal clear texture rendering is limited to a not so big area surrounding the aircraft.

Nevertheless, I am quite happy with what it so far achieved.  And in many ways, I think P3D v2.2 now has excelled FSX in my setup.   Followings talk about changes I made to the configuration file.

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237: P3D v2.2 Part 2 – Video Preview

Regarding the autogen and texture problems reported in last post, the issues actually had been solved.   I was just splitting the story into 2 or 3 episodes to arouse sharings and suggestions, from which I might possible push the result further for the sweet spot.

Unexpectedly, I have some priorities to deal with in the next few weeks.   So I made the following movie clip as a Preview to Part 2 (or to be Part 2 itself).

It is also my first attempt to include video in FSX Times.  The clip was taken by iPhone over Vancouver with most autogens Continue reading

236: P3D v2.2 Part 1 – Still No Good ?!

With the launch of the P3D v2.2 on Monday, I did a clean install with the hope that it would bring better performance to the LM platform while solving many of its earlier reported issues, especially the three ghosts that had been haunting my system since the beginning — namely, stutters, Saitek Flight Instrument Panel (FIP) sluggishness and texture blurriness.
P3Dv22-Blurry00

Actually, over the last few weeks, the first ghost, stutters, was in general removed through the increase of the BufferPool to 900 millions as described in Post 234.

The FIP smoothness was also enhanced by assigning the first 2 CPU cores via Set Affinity option under Windows Task Manager.  Similarly, the texture blurriness was improved with the AffinityMask set to 252, which dedicated the last 6 CPU cores for the simulator.

Although it still couldn’t be said ideal, P3D v2.1 at that moment was pretty close to what FSX was performing on my rig.  Continue reading