Prop animation issue -- FPS drop drastically then recover.

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robains
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Prop animation issue -- FPS drop drastically then recover.

Post by robains »

I'm having a strange prop animation issue which temporarily impact FPS ... but VERY drastically. For example on engine shut down I'll be sitting in my parking spot at 42 fps, then when I shut the engine down the prop animation becomes very choppy and the FPS drops down to 6 FPS ... once the prop animation stops it'll recover back to 42 FPS.

I've noticed the same issue with the C172R. Problem is present in v2.2 and v2.3 beta 2.

So far I have not been able to solve this one, graphics settings make no difference to the issue.

I've also noticed I experience a similar problem during flight if I cut the throttle way back ... prop animation seems to impact my FPS significant. The change in prop speed seems to causes FPS issues.

Part of my diagnostics was to use other aircraft (Alabeo, Carenado - even a twin) to see if I could duplicate the issue in those aircraft, but I was not able to. So far it's restricted to just the A2A C172R and the Cherokee. So I'm a little hesitant reporting this issue to LM given it appears to be A2A specific.

Any thoughts? Anyone else have this issue in P3D V2.x?

Cheers, Rob.
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Nick - A2A
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Re: Prop animation issue -- FPS drop drastically then recove

Post by Nick - A2A »

Hi Rob,

Afraid I can't speak for P3D. (Only tried v2.2 for a month with the 'developer' licence and not with A2A aircraft, though may revisit if v2.3 seems to offer much better performance.)

However, I wonder if it's worth trying to eliminate the custom smoke effects as the source of the problem? Assuming they're the same in the P3D installation, maybe you could temporarily 'deactivate' all the "fx_a2a_cherokee180_????.fx" files in the 'effects' folders by moving them to a new folder elsewhere for a bit. I know the smoke particle effects make my FSX computer struggle a bit sometimes...

Cheers,
Nick
A2A Simulations Inc.

Molly - A2A
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Re: Prop animation issue -- FPS drop drastically then recove

Post by Molly - A2A »

Sounds more like the smoke particle FX that come out of the exhaust at specific times (cutting the throttle, or shutting down) might be choking your GPU if you have heavy antialiasing settings like SGSS. Deferred rendering engines + heavy super sampling techniques + multiple transparency layers (from the particle FX) = a VERY heavy load on GPU. Try eliminating your AA settings, just for testing purposes.

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robains
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Re: Prop animation issue -- FPS drop drastically then recove

Post by robains »

Thanks for the suggestions all ... I did try different AA settings, including removing AA completely and the results were the same.

However, per Nick's suggestion I moved the C172R and Cherokee smoke fx files to a backup dir and that solved it.

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Now, here is the odd part ... I'm still getting smoke effects, but they aren't the A2A ones ... I don't know if P3D V2.3 beta is finding "alternate" default smoke effects and using those instead or is it possible the default ones AND the A2A ones are being triggered at the same time which might be the cause of my issue -- trying to animate multiple similar effects for the same action/trigger?

Cheers, Rob.
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mokeiko
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Re: Prop animation issue -- FPS drop drastically then recove

Post by mokeiko »

Hi Rob,

I was getting the same symptoms as well and for the life of me I thought it was some cloud settings, ASN settings, TrackIR, etc. I then noticed that while turning and approaching 11S, I cut my throttle way back and noticed massive stutters. But when I began to add more throttle the stutters where going away. It does happen on both the 172 and Cherokee. I will temporarily move my smoke files as you posted here, thanks for this thread. This is on P3D as we'll.
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robains
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Re: Prop animation issue -- FPS drop drastically then recove

Post by robains »

Most welcome, I'm going to report this to LM also just in case they have some insight, but my "hunch" (and maybe the A2A folks can correct me) is that we should not be getting two animations - the default LM one and the A2A ones.

I'm not an aircraft designer so I don't know if the SDK allows for specification of just one set of smoke effects (rather than two). But I have seen similar issues with multiple effects being processed when there should only be one (specifically water spray, and upper atmosphere engine con trails being duplicated). Anyway, I'll bring this up to LM just in case.

Cheers, Rob.
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ilya1502
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Re: Prop animation issue -- FPS drop drastically then recove

Post by ilya1502 »

Sorry for bumping up an old thread.

Rob, did you succeed in reporting this to LM? Did they reply anything encouraging? I observe the same problem in P3D v4.1, not as bad though.

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