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#2492 Performance degradation with shared models
Hello,
I've come across a rather significant performance degradation with shared models.
I have rather capable hardware, but unfortunately I am seeing 1 frame per second (not exaggerating in any way) at Boston, with minimum settings (no shaders, no ALS, no vegetation).
Once I edit the .stg files to remove many of the shared models, such as ramp objects, cars, and so on, I can have a steady 30fps at Boston, with maximum shaders + ALS! This shows that it is definitely shared models at fault -- static models are not causing much performance degradation.
The curious thing is that my GPU load is extremely low at around 20%; CPU about 30%; memory 78% and disk only about 5%! So it's hardly using my resources despite being very very slow.
I don't have any version older than 2020.3.2 installed, but I definitely don't remember this happening at Boston before on earlier version (2017.2 when it was default, for instance). This occurs on 2020.3.2, 2020.3.5, and 2020.4.0. This suggests that a change between 2017.X and 2020.3.2 has caused this problem.
I recognize that Boston is an extremely detailed airport -- but, it really shouldn't be causing capable hardware (that otherwise would see ~40 fps) to be crippled like this. In addition, the fact that it appears to have changed since 2017.X is concerning.
So my question is, can any one else reproduce this or is my hardware at fault? And either way, is there anything that can be done about it?
To reproduce it, its rather simple - just load up at KBOS with scenery objects enabled in the rendering settings menu, and see how your performance is.
I thought we had similar reports about KBOS from when it was the default? But that might have been on more medium-range hardware. I assume with 2020.3 this is without compositor or you would have mentioned it. So there should not have been really any change between 2017 and 2020.3 in this regard, it's strange. Can you check 2018.3.6 and see what it does?
Yep, 2020.3 without compositor. I can certainly install 2018.3.6 (and 2017.2) to see what its like there.
But regardless, I do know that it used to work fine on my hardware at some point so its definitely rather strange.
I made sure to use the same aircraft model every time: in this case the rather lightweight f-14b from 3.4.0
3.4.0: 25 frames per second, steady with all objects loaded.
2017.2.1: 30 frames per second. Objects seem to take a while to load, longer than before. Drops to about 7 fps but then recovers to about 15 fps after a few seconds.
2018.3.6: 25 frames per second before objects load after about the same time as 2017.2.1. Is about 15 fps in the end.
2020.3.5: Highly variable (between 25 and 45) frames per second before objects load about a minute later. Recovers to around 15 fps after a few seconds.
2020.4.0: Reasonably steady 35 frames per second before objects load about a minute later; right down to 1 fps when they do. Due to being a lightweight aircraft model, recovers to around 7 fps after a few seconds
I can't account for the difference between 2020.3.5 and 2020.4.0 unless its shadows. Also, its significantly worse in 2020.4.0.
So it does seem like performance has got worse between 3.4.0 --> 2017.2.1 versions. Loading time also seems to have increased slightly between 2018 and 2020. May just be circumstancial.
In any case, any significant performance drop goes away when you remove most of the shared models from the .stg files.
Is there any further information that I can provide?
Also in the A320-family, as its a rather more heavy aircrat, both 2020.3.5 and 2020.4.0 are totally stuck at 1 fps, down from ~25 fps before objects load. It's most definitely unflyable at that point. I can't run the A320 on older versions due to lack of backwards compatibility so wasn't able to check that.
I've noticed similar degradation on 2020.4 down to 1fps (on 747 and 172 for example) even with all rendering options on basic - but I realise 2020.4 is not released yet. WIndows 7 i7 1070Ti previously getting between 27-43 fps in 2020.3.2 and 2020.3.5.
Last edit: Volador 2020-12-28
Is this specifically in a region where there are a lot of shared models? And does it occur if you turn scenery models off in View > Rendering?
I've tested it with default graphics rather than ALS starting at LEPP in a 747 8i (not as heavy as some on the cpu), no auto scenery download and I got 4fps max. cpu was at around 38% which is probably max as I understand FG is limited for multi-threading. Interestingly at the point I clicked to uncheck photo-scenery it crashed, it also crashed when setting region textures to global and then clicking ok. Again, I appreciate 2020.4 is not released but hope this helps the developers.
Paris gets you to very low FPS as well (default settings), 2020.3