Engine shutdown = FPS drop

[ilya1502]

I observed that right at the moment of the engine shutdown, when the prop stops, my FPS go as low as 4 fps. This is not actually C172 only, but every A2A airplane. My setup is P3D v3.3.5.17625 and usually I don't experience any FPS problems as I managed to tune the sim and it runs at smooth 30 fps. However, this minor glitch is always present: when I pull mixture to cut-off, the fps start to drop, and the prop stops in a jerky and stuttering movements, then the fps go back to normal. What could be a reason for this?

My rig conf is ASUS P8Z77-V Deluxe, i7-3770, 8Gb PC-1333, GeForce GTX970, Win7 and P3D v3.3.5.17625.

[Scott - A2A]

Ilya,

In OPTIONS, try turning your effects slider in options to the minimum and let us know if this has any effect on framerates on your system.

Scott.

[ilya1502]

Scott,

You nailed it: I turned my effects detail slider to the LOW setting and the problem became less apparent (FPS dropped only to 15, but this is possible to live with). As soon as I returned the slider to MED as it was (just to check that it was not a coincidence), the problem came back again. What can be the reason for it?

Ilya

[Nick - A2A]

Hello Ilya,

There was some discussion of this issue a while ago. For more info, have a read of this topic (relating to the Cherokee).

Thanks,
Nick

[ilya1502]

Hello, Nick!

Thanks for the link - I will study the thread. Just to share an observation, my FPS drop is not connected with the prop animation (and perhaps Rob’s aren’t, too). It is about the smoke effects, which Scott caught quite quickly. I even found a topic on this on the P3D forum, but related to the same problem in P3D2.5. Many complained, but nobody suggested a good solution, but to delete the FX files at all, which I consider not to be good.

The story is that when the engine is shut down, it emits some puffs of blue smoke, and as far as they are seen, they just ground the FPS. The same thing happens when I turn on the display smoke on Texan. To work around the problem with the C172, I just added the line VirtualCockpit=0 in the [Properties] section of the effect in question. However, I still would like to get a detailed explanation of the problem and a solution to it, of course.

Ilya

[Caldemeyn]

http://a2asimulations.com/forum/viewtop ... 08&t=53948

[ilya1502]

http://a2asimulations.com/forum/viewtop ... 08&t=53948

Thanks, Caldemeyn! From what you observed, it looks like a 3.3 version problem. Have you tried 3.4 yet? Did it help to cure the problem?

[Nick - A2A]

Just to share an observation, my FPS drop is not connected with the prop animation (and perhaps Rob’s aren’t, too). It is about the smoke effects, which Scott caught quite quickly.

Yeah, it's the impact of smoke .fx files which is discussed in the topic I linked Ilya - the thread title itself isn't relevant. That was P3D v.2.2/2.3 by the looks of it, so I guess it's not an issue new to P3D v3.3.

Here's what Rob Ainscough noticed after disabling the A2A smoke effects...

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?

Of course, that thread is a couple of years old, so things may have changed with respect to the P3D effects coding since.

Nick

[Caldemeyn]

Not yet, im usually waiting with these updates until after i get some positive feedback on them, still it happens only with A2A planes, no other, since 3.3, in 3.2 it didn't happen to me.

After i got a new card not too long ago, it stopped being so distinguishable. Still, it is just a raw power approach.

The Lockheed guys are just messing around with every new update, i imagine that its quite hard for the guys at A2A to keep up with their ever changing ways. In the long run though, it will be for the best for us all, i think i like my sims to get better and better overall, even if there will be some pains on the road.

If only they would fix the antialiasing (so that there would be no need for nvidia inspector, plus no drop in clouds) and some problems with buildings autogen, that would be great.