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Prepar3d: settings and news

Posted: 13 Sep 2012, 11:14
by speedbird591
Since loading P3D, I've been browsing some of the specific forums just to pick up any tips or suggestions and to see what people are doing with it.

As a few of us are using it now, I thought it might be a good idea to start a thread where, if any of us pick up any tips we can post it here so others can check it out.

Just to kick it off, here are a few of the things I've picked up recently, although I realise many of you know these already, there are probably a few who don't. Me! :lol:

prepar3d.cfg tweaks and additions. The Prepar3d program contains a learning center which is started via an exe file in the main folder. As this is the Academic version we've all studied this already, right? :lol: Anyway, inside the learning center is a section called Tuning which contains some suggested tweaks to the config file. They're pretty similar to the standard FSX ones but they're obviously approved by LM or they wouldn't have included them in their sim. But remember - if you read the installation instructions for P3D you should have opened the learning center for the first time by right clicking and selecting run as administrator.

One of the suggested entries is to set the Affinity Mask setting to 14. However this is really left over from FSX. Apparently (and I'm out of my depth here!) Prepar3d will better utilise multi-core and hyperthreading and if you're lucky enough to have a quad-core with HT you should set AffinityMask=84 to get the best use of your processor in P3D. This has been discovered by a LM software engineer and you can read his thread on the P3D forum here: http://www.prepar3d.com/forum-5/?mingle ... pic&t=1336

There is a problem with AI traffic in Prepar3d. Due to a software bug the setting in the config file which should read IFROnly=0 is reset every time the config changes to a random number, effectively cancelling VFR flightplans and most GA aircraft. It's been mentioned on the forum but no comment from LM.

The water reflections problem, highlighted by Peter, where the reflections disappear if you raise the viewpoint a few feet above the water, has been raised and accepted by LM. They intend to fix it in v2.0. Thread here: http://www.prepar3d.com/forum-5/?mingle ... pic&t=1636

In other news ... LM have granted an interview about the future of Prepar3d to Avsim. It includes a formal explanation of requirements to use the academic edition:
Lockheed Martin wrote:Students – We launched an academic license recently at a reduced price for educational purposes at the undergraduate college level and below (students in elementary, middle, high school or pursuing a bachelor’s degree). This is an extension of our philanthropic support for STEM education to engage the next generation of technologists and engineers.
You can read the full interview here: http://forum.avsim.net/page/AVSIM%20Pag ... kheed.html

Ian :)

Re: Ppepar3d: settings and news

Posted: 13 Sep 2012, 11:27
by petermcleland
Thank you for all that info Ian...I had read some of it and intend to set my affinity mask to 84...It is just a Byte somewhere that you can set from DOS but I have not really got fully into that yet. I have been a bit busy in an old familiar place and it is just as demanding on frame rates as it was in FS9 so I will really appreciate a multi-threading increase to use all eight threads :)

Re: Ppepar3d: settings and news

Posted: 13 Sep 2012, 11:47
by speedbird591
Hi Peter,

Apparently it can simply be entered into the prepar3d.cfg file like this:

[JOBSCHEDULER]
AffinityMask=84

Apparently this setting uses 7 threads as the other one is best left clear for the OS. Or something :dunno:

Ian :)

Re: Ppepar3d: settings and news

Posted: 13 Sep 2012, 16:01
by petermcleland
Great Ian,

I'll try that today!

Re: Prepar3d: settings and news

Posted: 13 Sep 2012, 17:27
by TSR2
Hi Ian,

I've tried that affinity mask thing in the cfg.

I thought a good test would be DG's Hunter at 300 - 500 ft and at 450kts.

I'm using the GenX V2 and I find with the affinity line in the cfg the GenX stuff is blurry and takes ages to redraw the detail, but with it removed (i.e. default) it loads on the fly as I wizz over it in full detail *-)

Re: Prepar3d: settings and news

Posted: 13 Sep 2012, 17:52
by speedbird591
Hi, Ben, did you read that thread through? It shows how they worked out the value of 84 for a processor with 8 cores available and leaving core 1 free. But there was a conversation about different values for different types of processors.

There's a further thread here by the same engineer which takes it a bit further. So yours might benefit from a different value. You'd understand it better than me but using those tweaks I've definitely got even better resolution and speed than my initial installation. So I'm just passing on the message and I wouldn't even pretend to understand how it works :lol:

http://www.prepar3d.com/forum-5/?mingle ... c&t=1324.0

Ian :)

Re: Prepar3d: settings and news

Posted: 13 Sep 2012, 17:59
by petermcleland
Here is binary 84:-

01110010

Image
And here a shot of Performance...Bit 0 is obviously busy with other things and it looks like P3D is using bits 123 and 6 with bits 4,5 and 7 pretty idle :)

Re: Prepar3d: settings and news

Posted: 13 Sep 2012, 18:31
by speedbird591
In that thread they say that using value 84 should give 01 01 01 00 which reverses the core numbers. It leaves core one free and the other three cores have one thread each assigned to P3D. There's a picture of the core usage in the thread.

Perhaps that value is only suitable for 3rd gen quad cores so perhaps 14 is the optimum value for 2nd gen? If you read the two threads it might make more sense than I do - which isn't difficult.

Ian :)

Re: Prepar3d: settings and news

Posted: 13 Sep 2012, 19:41
by petermcleland
Yes well I was never very good at binary and I can see that 01010100 read from right to left as bits 0 to 7, does add up to 84 decimal. However, that bit pattern does not seen to relate to my picture of P3D operating with my affinity mask set to 84. I'll just leave it set at 84 and see how it performs in various places...my present McLeland Field is not really suitable for test as it has too much FS9 stuff in it and that makes it labour. I have got the AFCAD moved to ADE and it is working and the approaches are working. But, the buildings and trees etc are crap. I will clear the rubbish out and then eventually put in some modern and efficient FSX buildings. I will be happy to just get a flattening and autogen excluding background polygon working.

Re: Prepar3d: settings and news

Posted: 13 Sep 2012, 20:34
by speedbird591
Well, you know what they say. There are 10 types of people in the world. Those that understand binary and those that don't.

Ian :lol: