v4.1: autogen still loading late and in patches

[zap737]

Quick guess: do you guys use a TextureMaxLoad or even a TextureBandwidthMult tweak inside your prepar3d.cfg? It might that my autogen drawing issue appeared when I tried to eliminate the black textures on airports by introducing TextureMaxLoad=48 as suggested in other forums. I have to go through some of those tweaks again...

As I have stated at least twice in this thread, I have tested with default scenery and a stock P3D V4.1 install with NO add-ons and NO tweaks and the problem is there.

Request LM makes this a priority to fix.

[pmb]

Request LM makes this a priority to fix.

I'm a bit hesitant to demand a fix. Usually such features/bugs are there for a reason. I am afraid we may get a fix, but at the cost of (i) reduced autogen density, (ii) limited autogen radius, (iii) add your favorite.

Kind regards, Michael

[AnkH]

I'm a bit hesitant to demand a fix. Usually such features/bugs are there for a reason. I am afraid we may get a fix, but at the cost of (i) reduced autogen density, (ii) limited autogen radius, (iii) add your favorite.

I do not think so. Why? First, because today's "fix" for this issue is simply pause the sim until autogen catched up or reload the scenery. Both ways do not result in a FPS drop. Means: there is something wrong currently. Second, take v4.0 as a benchmark, we had the same settings in this version but NO autogen loading in patches and not a worse performance than in 4.1. So no, I do not think that fixing it would be at the cost of something else...

[pmb]

I do not think so. Why?

Because we had fluently fading in autogen at a very limited boundary radius in 3.4. Now in 4+, we got a much extended autogen radius at the cost of autogen loading in patches and/or late.

I am afraid there is a limitation in the rendering engine, independent on how good our machines are. I'll gladly be proven wrong, though.

Kind regards, Michael

[AnkH]

Now in 4+, we got a much extended autogen radius at the cost of autogen loading in patches and/or late.

No, that is not correct. In version 4.0, this autogen loading in patches was not present, at least not on my end...

[pmb]

Now in 4+, we got a much extended autogen radius at the cost of autogen loading in patches and/or late.

No, that is not correct. In version 4.0, this autogen loading in patches was not present, at least not on my end...

Did you watch my video above? This was taken in 4.0 (in July).

Kind regards, Michael

[AnkH]

Yes, I know. Still on my end I did not observe this late autogen loading in v4.0 and this makes me wonder if it is really the fault of v4.x or something else. As I mentioned, I started to use FTX Global 2018 when I first noticed the late loading. What mesh product do you use? And others?

Fact is, I know this is selfish behaviour, that I am way to lazy to test all the potential causes on my end. I want to fly, not test stuff and potential causes for strange sim behaviour. But sadly, I guess without having a REAL root cause, this will never be fixed...

[pmb]

What mesh product do you use? And others?

This video was taken using FTX NCA + FB KSFO HD. No Mesh Addon acitve besides the FTX inherent Holger mesh.

Kind regards, Michael

[Mike Sierra]

Back to preport from my formerly announced test:
I repeated the flight from about 25 minutes east of Kansas City, following the IS70 westward until about Abilene.
What remained the same (in comparison to my last flight of that route)? - aircraft, scenery with addons, route.
Weather (from AS4) had changed to overcast at 7000ft in the beginning, opening to clear sky in the second half of flight.
What I changed:
I updated the video driver to the most recent version 388.43 (the former version caused driver failure messages during P3D flights, the version before that caused P3D to pause for further 4-5 seconds each time I ended a break in a flight).
Then I changed the following video setting parameters:
FSAA: Off (was on)
AA: 8xMSAA (was 2x)
Texture Filtering: Anisotropic 16x (was Anisotropic 4x)
VSync: On, Triple Buffering marked (was off, not marked)
--
Level of detail radius: Ultra (was Max)
Tesselation factor: High (was Ultra)
Mesh resolution: 2m (was 1m)
Texture resolution: 60cm (was 7cm)
Use high-resultion terrain textures marked (was marked)
Scenery complexity: Very Dense (was Extremely Dense)
Autogen draw distance: Medium (was Extremely High)
Autogen vegetation density: Very Dense (was Extremely Dense)
Autogen building density: Dense (was Extremely Dense)
Dynamic 3D Autogen Vegetation remained unmarked
Water Detail: High (was Ultra)
Bathymetry remained enabled
Reflections remained unchanged with marks on all except vegetation
Special effects detail and distance remained High.
--
Enable HDR Lightning remained marked
Brightness: 1.30 (was default)
Bloom 0.20 (was default)
Saturation: 1.15 (was default)
Dynamic Reflections: Off (was Ultra)
Dymamic Lightning, Langdinglights illuminate ground and Display lens flare remained marked.
Shadow quality: High (was Ultra)
Shadow draw distance remained Ultra.
Casting and receiving shadows remained unchanged (all boxes marked except Vegetation receive, Particles cast and No shadow flagged Content cast)
--
Cloud draw distance 60 mi (was 110mi)
Cloud coverage density remained at maximum.

Aviation traffic and Land and Sea traffic remained unchanged, all drawers about in the middle at 50-60%.

Changes in AS4:
Maximum cloud layers limited to 3 (was 5)
Maximum cloud draw distance remained at 100mi
Minimum cloud draw distance reduced to 65mi (was 90mi).

And what was the results?
1st: A silent sigh of P3D with which it faded to desktop (CTD) without any error message just at the beginning of the test (I had just set the scenario date back to mid november, as snow-covered autogen trees in a snow-covered country are harder to see than their green pendants).
2nd: Another 'silent CTD' after exactly 30 minutes of flight, just crossing above Kansas City - an issue of the video driver?
3rd: (a successful undisturbed flight of over 60 minutes):

And now for the most important: AUTOGEN DID _NOT_ POP UP IN PATCHES throughout the whole flight !!!

I needed a zoomfactor of 6+ to see the 'end' of the autogen-world, where trees and buildings slowly faded in!
A framerate in the mid-30s (instead of about 15) when outside a city, 15fps (instead of 8-10) in e.g.Kansas City.
No lag in loading autogen 'behind' Kansas City.
And the best is: I didn't have the feeling that I've missed any autogen tree, concerning the autogen building density I only noticed more blank spaces in densely covered city areas than in my last flight.

Fazit: it seems that - for me and my machine - I've solved the riddle about popping up autogen (maybe we always tried to turn the wrong knobs). Please don't go for me, when YOUR machine and P3D installation does not give the desired results.
And (for safety reasons): BACK UP all the ...\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3d v4\... folders (simply copy them to e.g. ...\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3d v4.bak\... - so you can step back in case of desaster.

Credits should go to Mathew Webb from FTX Forum; here's his explanatory video: https://ruclip.com/video/nN0rUxMiIME/pr ... e-sky.html

Michael.

[zap737]

Autogen draw distance: Medium (was Extremely High)

And now for the most important: AUTOGEN DID _NOT_ POP UP IN PATCHES throughout the whole flight !!!

Mike, we know this already. You had auto gen set to medium and your results are consistent with that.

It is well known that Autogen draw distance at settings at medium or lower, the autogen loads smoothly and in a line.

The loading in patches occurs at Autogen draw distances higher than medium and this is what we want LM to fix.

Another, separate issue, is the autogen loading late or not at all after a descent from cruise altitude.

[Mike Sierra]

Zap,
Sorry if my observation was only waste of time and space (in the forum). For ME it's the first time with v4.x that the patches are no more problem. Aside of that: late-loading of autogen is a problem, one may be confronted with even at low and slow (180 kn) speeds - so did I.
And my new settings didn't show any sign of the airplane 'overtaking' the autogen loading line, which it did with my primary settings (all drawers maxed out).
Maybe a bit of hope for you?
Michael.

[Decimated]

I've had this problem for ages, and I fly into/out of London Heathrow quite a lot - which I believe has to be one of the most demanding areas to fly in the world on P3D. The autogen would be loading in miles behind the aircraft as I was descending into London. I would almost zero autogen in the city, apart from about 8 sky scrapers.

I changed two settings to fix my issue completely:

1) Untick 'Use high-resolution terrain textures'
2) Put 'TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP 8' into my Prepar3D.cfg (under [TERRAIN])

My autogen now will continue to load even at very high altitudes and most importantly for me, it allows me to have all the autogen loaded once I descend through the clouds into London.

I've had high-resolution terrain textures ticked for as long as I've used V4 and it never used to happen for me. Whether it was something in V4.1 that changed, I don't know, but it definitely seems to have got worse for me.

I have an i7 4770K overclocked to 4.2GHz with HT disabled (turning HT OFF has completely changed my sim too btw. Way smoother and my FPS has gone through the roof!) 16GB DDR3 2400MHz RAM and a EVGA GTX 1080 TI Sc2 Overclocked.

I'm still tweaking with my system at the moment. My GPU is falling asleep, so I want to try and maximise it's potential, but that's going off topic!

https://imgur.com/a/Qu4AX - I use these settings, except I'm running at 2560x1440 with FPS set to UNLIMITED. I also use 4xSSAA, and my shadow draw/quality is at Ultra/High

[zap737]

I changed two settings to fix my issue completely:

1) Untick 'Use high-resolution terrain textures'
2) Put 'TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP 8' into my Prepar3D.cfg (under [TERRAIN])

Yes, but what is your autogen draw distance?

[Decimated]

It shows in the imgur link I posted in my previous post - Autogen Draw Distance = High

[jgoggi]

My autogen now will continue to load even at very high altitudes and most importantly for me, it allows me to have all the autogen loaded once I descend through the clouds into London.

Have you checked without clouds, so that you can see how autogen loads?