Does NVidia have a problem with clouds?

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Does NVidia have a problem with clouds?

Postby OldAirmail » Sun Mar 27, 2016 8:57 pm

Rebuilding my system is taking forever. At the moment I'm downloading Prepar3D_v3_Academic_3.2.3.16769

It's only 9.8GB, but it's taking 3.5 hours this time! :o

Anyway, I'm reading through some of the posts in their Hardware Specific Questions forum. There are so many baby questions from people who probably shouldn't even use a computer, that I haven't done this for a long time. But there are some good ones mixed in there too.



Before the crash I had high detail clouds casting shadows on everything, with good FPS.

But In the Prepar3d forums I keep seeing the recommendation from people with high end NVidia cards telling everyone to use low detail clouds and no cloud shadows.

So here's my question - does NVidia really have problems producing good, heavy, cloud coverage/cloud shadows without the FPS dropping down badly?

For my Eyefinity cards it makes no FPS difference what the cloud or shadow settings are. In particular all cloud settings are maxed out.


For instance here's a guy with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 who's being told to;
Turn off cloud shadows
Lower cloud density
Fsaa off
Max texture lower to 2400(or whatever it is)


I see stuff like this often, and assume that it applies to FSX also.
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. . . . . .Any time, any plane, any weather.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . Prepar3d V4
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Re: Does NVidia have a problem with clouds?

Postby Roypcox » Mon Mar 28, 2016 6:53 am

Just out of curiosity are you using Windows 10??????? homeboy
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Re: Does NVidia have a problem with clouds?

Postby OldAirmail » Mon Mar 28, 2016 5:26 pm

Roypcox wrote:Just out of curiosity are you using Windows 10??????? homeboy

Dual boot - Windows 7 Pro & Windows 10 Pro.

I'm trying to give Win 10 a fair test without any mods. So far it's not winning over Windows 7, but there are some things that I like. I'll probably keep Win 10 as is for another week before I start making changes.



But seriously, almost everyone on the Prepar3d forum site ridicules anyone who doesn't have an NVidia card. But over and over I see posts like the one above telling people to reduce clouds, cloud shadows, and cloud reflections.

I've got those settings maxed out and the FPS doesn't change, whether I have no clouds or max cloud detail.

So while I can accept the fact that the NVidia cards have better specs, I have to assume that insofar as clouds go, they must have a problem.

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. . . . . .Any time, any plane, any weather.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . Prepar3d V4
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Re: Does NVidia have a problem with clouds?

Postby Flacke » Mon Mar 28, 2016 9:42 pm

Hello OAM!

For the record; I am running Windows 10 Pro, i5 CPU, Nvidia Asus GTX-950 Strix-Gaming GPU,

With add-on Clouds program and FSX-se Weather set to Ultra-High settings [max] I took off from the saturated Seattle airport area to do a stress test. While flying around Seattle over and near the airport and massive city scenery [Orbx]
etc. I was getting between 70fps to 88fps with perfect clouds and ultra smooth beautiful performance.

Just some added input for you.

Good luck tweaking your system to max perf.
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Re: Does NVidia have a problem with clouds?

Postby OldAirmail » Mon Mar 28, 2016 11:05 pm

Thanks, Flacke.

I have a hunch then that all this talk of lowering the cloud settings must be coming from people who've messed their system up.

I remember doing the same thing to my computer last year when I was trying one tip or another. I tried so many things to restore the speed that I don't recall what caused the problem.



As to catching up to you, it'll never happen.

Your video card card is definitely better than mine. I do hope to replace mine later though, but that may depend on the developments in VR.

Also, I'll probably never overclock as much as possible. What I've done at the moment is simple baby steps.

Heck, right now I don't even have Prepar3d running.
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Re: Does NVidia have a problem with clouds?

Postby Sprocket » Tue Mar 29, 2016 4:14 am

...
Not really about clouds as such, but if you now have an Nvidia card, you may want to look at utilising the Nvidia inspector.
Download Nvidia inspector, and open the settings page by clicking on the cross spanner symbol...
Image


Select the relevant program/game at the top:
Following then are the settings I find excellent on my FSX......
Take special note of the setting I arrowed in red.
This setting totally eliminates any shimmering you may have on your gauges, GPS, etc in the VC, whilst the AC is in movement.
I have found this one to make a marked difference.


Image

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Re: Does NVidia have a problem with clouds?

Postby OldAirmail » Tue Mar 29, 2016 8:25 pm

Thanks, Jan.


I used to use NVidia until I wanted to use multiple monitors in FSX.

At the time the "wisdom" was to get the fastest NVidia card available and TripleHead2Go. The combination was a little costly to say the least.

After learning that AMD had Eyefinity, which would give good, three monitor, results for less than one third of the NVidia/TripleHead2Go package I switched.

Now, I believe, NVidia can also run three monitors right out of the box, and that the TripleHead2Go's advantage lies in triple projection screen simulation.

No matter, I won't be buying TripleHead2Go.


Back to NVidia - whether it's due to bias or fact, most of the VR offerings are recommending NVidia. My computer will now exceed the requirements, except for the video card, which is on the low end of the minimums.

NVidia is now a possibility for me because of that VR angle, but with all the warnings on the Prepar3d forums about the need to reduce the cloud details or suffer significant FPS drops, I'm less likely to buy one.

For me, at least, real-time weather with clouds, cloud shadows, and reflections, help to bring the sim environment to life. And as I said before - cloud settings have absolutely no effect on my FPS with the AMD cards.
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. . . . . .Any time, any plane, any weather.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . Prepar3d V4
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Re: Does NVidia have a problem with clouds?

Postby Flacke » Tue Mar 29, 2016 11:59 pm

OldAirmail wrote:Thanks, Flacke.

I have a hunch then that all this talk of lowering the cloud settings must be coming from people who've messed their system up.


Agreed. I have often seen cases [with family and friends, and me included] whereby they have changed settings, .cfg settings, added 3rd Party programs,screwed-up FSX etc etc etc. and at some point they have a performance problem thats baffling.
People will also often have weak-spots in their hardware such as insufficient RAM, poor CPU, poor GPU , and bad hardware settings.
With all of these things going on its pretty easy to blame something that may not be the cause of the problems at all. I have seen people spend a lot of money on upgrading the wrong components or the wrong software and their problems remain.
They are pretty unhappy and for the average person it may be difficult for them to trouble-shoot because there is a plethora of potential causes.
In my own case I have learned to run a very balanced system and then I try not to fiddle around too much with exotic tweaks that may look OK at first and then cause problems later on after you have forgotten about the tweaks.
If I try something and its doesn't work well I get rid of it right away. I don't want it to haunt me later. So far , so good. My computers tend to be great performers and they last a very long time. Up until very recently I have been flying FSX and Warbirds 2016 superbly on my 8year old Windows XP computer. It is now my backup unit as it still runs great and does what I want it to do. Have fun with yours once you get it all set up.
I really envy your 3-Monitor system as I have not yet found the money for that. You are correct, my Asus GTX-950 will run 3 screens right out of the box. Like you, I was originally going to go with EyeFinity after researching Triple-Head 2 Go. When I get some extra left-over money I will go the 3 screen route and I can hardly wait.
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Re: Does NVidia have a problem with clouds?

Postby Daube » Thu Mar 31, 2016 6:16 am

OldAirMail, the problem is not really the NVidia cards, but more their settings and various recommendations that can be found here and there.
Here are a few explanations, I hope this will clarify the context once for all.

First of all, the NVidia cards get recommended simply because they are more frequently used amongst the simmers and gamers. NVidia simply is more popular than AMD/ATI. So, for a new comer, it is far easier to find advice about how to set up an NVidia card efficiently, than for an AMD card. You need some help with an NVidia card, 100 persons will be able to share their experience. You need some help with your AMD card, 10 persons might be able to tell something. It's nothing more than that.

Then, concerning the performance with clouds, again this is a context issue. In FSX DX10, or in P3D, the default AntiAliasing from the game is not so good. (it just got barely acceptable with the more recent P3D 3.2 patch...). The only way to get a good AntiAliasing is to enable a precise setting in NVidia Inspector: the transparency AntiAliasing. You can see it in the screenshot above, it's called "Sparse Grid Super Sampling" (SGSS). It gives very good results, really. Unfortunately, it just kills the FPS as soon as there are too much transparent stuff on the screen. This includes cloud textures, but also any kind of smoke/vapor effects. This is why many people, not willing to disable this SGSS (or not aware of what it does), recommend to lower the details for clouds, or their density, or the amount of layers created by ASN etc...

The real solution is to accept the default AntiAliasing and, as trade-off, continue enjoying the nice clouds textures with maximum density, nice draw distance, nice weather themes (heavy, overcast etc...) without any impact on the performance, just like I do with my NVidia 970.
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