What Have You Done ?!? Update is Not Cool !

[Gabe777]

Oh guys.

This dynamic lighting looks great but it is unusable.

I am on a GTX 1080 and the glareshield lighting is dropping me 70 percent into the low teens.

Not cool.

Biggest problem is this: you have also changed back to the old FSX style lighting ... instrument backlighting is only on when the sim decides it's night time! So if it's day but dark or stormy... no instrument lighting !

.... this means you HAVE to switch on the glareshield lights and.... see above !

Not cool.

Outside lights look good, as does the PBR. Why can't we choose which elements we want ?

There is mention of a lighting config panel... cannot find one... Not cool.

Luckily I have back ups of earlier versions, but as P3D evolves I am guessing the point will come where the older versions won't work any longer... Not cool.

Not happy.

I feel as things are, you have gone from hero to zero, and I won't be purchasing any more of your products.

At least with the PMDG stuff, as an example, we have the choice of using dynamic landing lights versus NO lamding lights... but at least the cockpit lights are all configurable 24 hours per day... and there is PBR.

I emplore you to rethink all this. At present... Not cool.

[Eric Bakker]

I feel as things are, you have gone from hero to zero, and I won't be purchasing any more of your products.

I agree that the lighting needs a fix somehow, or alternatively that we have a choice which version we install: this one or the previous C172.

But I really hate it when people immediately threaten with a boycot etc. Come on, grow up and give them a break and a chance to solve problems. These things can happen, and I am really happy and spoiled with so many beautiful aircraft that A2A has made over the years! With a quality that ranks them in the top.

[Nick - A2A]

Gabe,

Please see my reply to the FPS with SSAA issue in this thread.

Thanks,
Nick

P.S. Cheers Eric! It's nice to know that folks understand that we only release these updates to try and improve the experience for our customers. Unfortunately it's not always possible to keep all the people happy all the time.

[MarcE]

Gabe,

Please see my reply to the FPS with SSAA issue in this thread.

Thanks,
Nick

P.S. Cheers Eric! It's nice to know that folks understand that we only release these updates to try and improve the experience for our customers. Unfortunately it's not always possible to keep all the people happy all the time.

Hi Nick,

I run a 1080Ti and an i7 6700k and use a 4k TV screen, so my AA setting is at 2xMSAA. I can't use the 172 with PBR I'm afraid. everything is fine as long as I look straight ahead but as soon as I move my head with TrackIR or the mouse the performance goes down. It lags, loads (?), stutters. Even my mouse lags extremely. Performance has never been an issue with my PC using A2A aircraft but the current state is unusable. I haven't checked the nightlighting yet.

P.S. Cheers Eric! It's nice to know that folks understand that we only release these updates to try and improve the experience for our customers.

I thought it should have been a matter of course for developers to try something out, release it and the customers give their feedback which makes the devs possible to improve it.. I appreciate PBR and I'm sure A2A will improve it further.. Some people are way too passionate about flightsim, really..

[Gabe777]

I feel as things are, you have gone from hero to zero, and I won't be purchasing any more of your products.

I agree that the lighting needs a fix somehow, or alternatively that we have a choice which version we install: this one or the previous C172.

But I really hate it when people immediately threaten with a boycot etc. Come on, grow up and give them a break and a chance to solve problems. These things can happen, and I am really happy and spoiled with so many beautiful aircraft that A2A has made over the years! With a quality that ranks them in the top.

I agree to a degree. But, this goes slightly beyond just boycotting because we're not happy.

This is the first " full reworking" I have seen. But it begs the awful question: are they going to do this to EVERY other extant addon, and ones yet to come ?

We need the choice of dynamic lighting ON or OFF. It is NOT enough to blame it on LM... everyone knows how crippling it is. Give us the choice please or some will simply not buy more.

[Gabe777]

Gabe,

Please see my reply to the FPS with SSAA issue in this thread.

Thanks,
Nick

P.S. Cheers Eric! It's nice to know that folks understand that we only release these updates to try and improve the experience for our customers. Unfortunately it's not always possible to keep all the people happy all the time.

Hi Nick,

I run a 1080Ti and an i7 6700k and use a 4k TV screen, so my AA setting is at 2xMSAA. I can't use the 172 with PBR I'm afraid. everything is fine as long as I look straight ahead but as soon as I move my head with TrackIR or the mouse the performance goes down. It lags, loads (?), stutters. Even my mouse lags extremely. Performance has never been an issue with my PC using A2A aircraft but the current state is unusable. I haven't checked the nightlighting yet.

P.S. Cheers Eric! It's nice to know that folks understand that we only release these updates to try and improve the experience for our customers.

I thought it should have been a matter of course for developers to try something out, release it and the customers give their feedback which makes the devs possible to improve it.. I appreciate PBR and I'm sure A2A will improve it further.. Some people are way too passionate about flightsim, really..

I have seen the thread about SSAA and it is not relevant to me. I use 4xMSAA and just 1 notch of glareshield lighting drops FPS by 2 thirds. Turn off AA completely, and its fine. But noone runs this sim with no AA. That's absurd.

As for PBR, I think we can use non PBR model... it appears to be included. I don't know how though.

But dynamic lighting appears forced on us. Gauge backlighting now only works at night... not good. Very retrogradive as thst last happened in the early FSX days.

Without backlighting on a dark day, you need to use other lights. Luckily at the moment the dome light appears to be normal lighting, as it does not affect FPS. But I'm guessing this more by luck than judgement.

PMDG created this issue with their 747 400 release. Either dynamic landing lights... or nothing ! But at least the cockpit lighting had little effect on performance and was well thought out and plentiful.

Sonetimes compromise needs to be made, but if there are no choices to opt out, you will lose customers.

If A2A i sist on goung forward with dynamic lighting, maybe they should switch to X plane, as it is built into the core engine and doesn't affect framerates at all !

[MarcE]

Gabe,

Please see my reply to the FPS with SSAA issue in this thread.

Thanks,
Nick

P.S. Cheers Eric! It's nice to know that folks understand that we only release these updates to try and improve the experience for our customers. Unfortunately it's not always possible to keep all the people happy all the time.

Hi Nick,

I run a 1080Ti and an i7 6700k and use a 4k TV screen, so my AA setting is at 2xMSAA. I can't use the 172 with PBR I'm afraid. everything is fine as long as I look straight ahead but as soon as I move my head with TrackIR or the mouse the performance goes down. It lags, loads (?), stutters. Even my mouse lags extremely. Performance has never been an issue with my PC using A2A aircraft but the current state is unusable. I haven't checked the nightlighting yet.

P.S. Cheers Eric! It's nice to know that folks understand that we only release these updates to try and improve the experience for our customers.

I thought it should have been a matter of course for developers to try something out, release it and the customers give their feedback which makes the devs possible to improve it.. I appreciate PBR and I'm sure A2A will improve it further.. Some people are way too passionate about flightsim, really..

I think we can use non PBR model... it appears to be included. I don't know how though.

But dynamic lighting appears forced on us. Gauge backlighting now only works at night... not good. Very retrogradive as thst last happened in the early FSX days.

Without backlighting on a dark day, you need to use other lights. Luckily at the moment the dome light appears to be normal lighting, as it does not affect FPS. But I'm guessing this more by luck than judgement.

PMDG created this issue with their 747 400 release. Either dynamic landing lights... or nothing ! But at least the cockpit lighting had little effect on performance and was well thought out and plentiful.

Sonetimes compromise needs to be made, but if there are no choices to opt out, you will lose customers.

If A2A i sist on goung forward with dynamic lighting, maybe they should switch to X plane, as it is built into the core engine and doesn't affect framerates at all !

A2A is not PMDG and vice versa, there is no point in bringing up other developers. PMDG have released their PBR models, received overly passionate feedback and threats too and filtered facts out of accusions. The results were updates that made the fleet perfectly flyable.

What you call "forced" is called progress. No point in remaining dependent on old technology if newer and better is available. They wouldn't survive if they held it that way. The 172 is A2A's first PBR model, give them some space to breath, they will improve their products as they have always done. And A2A have always listened to their customers. Always! No need to attack them or threaten things you won't do anyway.

[Nick - A2A]

Hi Nick,

I run a 1080Ti and an i7 6700k and use a 4k TV screen, so my AA setting is at 2xMSAA. I can't use the 172 with PBR I'm afraid. everything is fine as long as I look straight ahead but as soon as I move my head with TrackIR or the mouse the performance goes down. It lags, loads (?), stutters. Even my mouse lags extremely. Performance has never been an issue with my PC using A2A aircraft but the current state is unusable. I haven't checked the nightlighting yet.

Hi Marc,

This is odd as there shouldn't be much of a performance impact from the PBR as far as I'm aware. The performance discussions so far have been related to the dynamic lighting when coupled with SSAA which is a separate issue.

I just did a quick comparison with my setup and the FPS in the PBR version (top) and non PBR version of the 172 is about the same. This is with a RTX2070 Super, so admittedly quite a new card but I'm using 8xSSAA, the most demanding in the sim, and this is at an Orbx airport (KMRY). Resolution is 1920x1200.


PBR model: average FPS = 96.8


Non-PBR model: average FPS = 98.3

I don't have a 4K display so can't run comparable tests, but something seems a bit odd with your setup if just the PBR is causing such a hit. Are you able to test with other PBR aircraft; you mention PMDG products?

Thanks,
Nick

[MarcE]

Hi Nick,

I run a 1080Ti and an i7 6700k and use a 4k TV screen, so my AA setting is at 2xMSAA. I can't use the 172 with PBR I'm afraid. everything is fine as long as I look straight ahead but as soon as I move my head with TrackIR or the mouse the performance goes down. It lags, loads (?), stutters. Even my mouse lags extremely. Performance has never been an issue with my PC using A2A aircraft but the current state is unusable. I haven't checked the nightlighting yet.

Hi Marc,

This is odd as there shouldn't be much of a performance impact from the PBR as far as I'm aware. The performance discussions so far have been related to the dynamic lighting when coupled with SSAA which is a separate issue.

I just did a quick comparison with my setup and the FPS in the PBR version (top) and non PBR version of the 172 is about the same. This is with a RTX2070 Super, so admittedly quite a new card but I'm using 8xSSAA, the most demanding in the sim, and this is at an Orbx airport (KMRY). Resolution is 1920x1200.


PBR model: average FPS = 96.8


Non-PBR model: average FPS = 98.3

I don't have a 4K display so can't run comparable tests, but something seems a bit odd with your setup if just the PBR is causing such a hit. Are you able to test with other PBR aircraft; you mention PMDG products?

Thanks,
Nick

Hi Nick, thanks for that effort on your side. I agree, that's strange. I can't do any further tests right now as I have to go to work but will do them tonight. I'll tell you what I find. Could absolutely be my system, on a second thought, I have changed some display related things as I had issues with my mouse in P3D..

[Dan M]

RE: dynamic lighting when coupled with SSAA - that's the heart of it, yes. The PMDG comparison was appropriate because all developers are going to run into this issue. I think there will have to be a bit more flexibility in offering solutions / patches. Personally I'd take an exceptional flight model over state-of-the-art lighting any time. I do love the look, but until it all plays nicely together, an option to fall back to something less cutting edge is a good idea.

I don't own the A2A 172 but I had this same problem with the PMDG NGXu on a high end system and despite two patches it's still not "perfectly flyable". You know, I actually cringe when I hear that - setups across users are so different that what is perfect for one person can be a disaster for another. Let's at least avoid trying to tell people what they should or shouldn't like.

With the PMDG 737 I was willing to make small tweaks across quite a few settings and no I haven't boycotted them (bought the 747-8 this week) but as another passionate flight simmer, I don't expect to have to adjust my whole setup because anyone insists this feature absolutely must be implemented. Speaking about any developer here, not specifically A2A. Microsoft thought "Flight" absolutely had to be implemented as-is, and look how that turned out.

Anyway good luck with sorting it out. I'm sure Scott will be pushing to look at alternatives or different approaches. One thing never changes: your planes put everything else out there to shame. They never fail to put a smile on my face. That's the A2A wow factor.

[Nick - A2A]

Hi Nick, thanks for that effort on your side. I agree, that's strange. I can't do any further tests right now as I have to go to work but will do them tonight. I'll tell you what I find. Could absolutely be my system, on a second thought, I have changed some display related things as I had issues with my mouse in P3D..

Okay, thanks Marc - interested to hear how you get on later. So far not able to reproduce any significant performance hit from using the PBR model. I think because each of us flight simmers tends to have a unique ecosystem of add-ons, issue like this can sometimes crop up and when they do they can take a bit of pinning down.

I have seen the thread about SSAA and it is not relevant to me. I use 4xMSAA and just 1 notch of glareshield lighting drops FPS by 2 thirds. Turn off AA completely, and its fine. But noone runs this sim with no AA. That's absurd.

Gabe - there should be a negligible FPS impact from using MSAA in conjunction with dynamic lighting. I can run 8xMSAA and the FPS is essentially unchanged, regardless of how many dynamic lights are switched on. Hard to tell what could be causing the performance drop on your system, but do you have shader mods or anything like that installed?

Also, what GPU and display resolution are you using, and what are the FPS number you're seeing? This is a FPS comparison with my installation as described above.


8xMSAA - All lights off: average FPS = 111.3


8xMSAA - All dynamic lights on: average FPS = 109.6

Thanks,
Nick

[MarcE]

Gabe,

Could you please take a screenshot of your NVIDIA control panel settings (3d settings for P3D)? I can‘t Give you a better description as I‘m on my mobile phone but a lot can be achieved there.

Also -generally - it‘s good practise to delete the shaders in the app data directory and update all drivers if not up to date.

[Eric Bakker]

Gabe - there should be a negligible FPS impact from using MSAA in conjunction with dynamic lighting. I can run 8xMSAA and the FPS is essentially unchanged, regardless of how many dynamic lights are switched on. Hard to tell what could be causing the performance drop on your system, but do you have shader mods or anything like that installed?

I confirm that on my system running MSAA does have a negligible impact when switching on the glareshield light.
It is only SSAA that kills the fps, like Gabe says to one third of what it was before switching the Glareshield lighting on.

[Lewis - A2A]

Eric, try one of the other AA setting if its unable to provide you with performance when using the new features of the platform. Remember that SSAA is a super high end AA process in which you are rendering things 4 times more than normal to get the result you see on screen. Its a known performance hog compared to other methods so tends to be used sparingly, and esp going to be hard on the newer things as Lockheed introduces more and more modern workflows onto the platform.

thanks,
Lewis

[avduarri]

Well, I'm running a fresh default installation of P3D and using only MSAA x4 and when turning the Glareshield light on (just one notch) my FPS falls from 60 (limited at 60) to 29.
This light is making the C172 performance worse than the FsLabs one.