Chicago Airports XP

Latest version: v1.0 (2019)

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Piotricz
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Re: Chicago Airports XP

Post by Piotricz »

Hi,

First of all thanks for the Mesh fix - I was having issues there with the FF 767 which made it really quite unpleasant to use.

However I am still having an issue with the scenery, specifically with performance at night with HDR enabled.

During the day eveyrthing is great - 45-55 FPS even with demanding third party aircraft. At night, it is down to 20, regardless of anything else. This is reproducible in clean weather with the default C172.

I originally attributed this to AMD drivers (I had a 5700XT) and/or early days of Vulkan, but after 14 betas and switching to an RTX2070 it is still unuseable at night. Once I move the time to night, the GPU time goes up ~4x from 0.014 to 0.055 and FPS plummets as a result. Screenshot below (I wanted to attach 2 but the maximum is 3 files and I think microprofiler is more interesting):
a319 - 2020-07-11 10.49.11.jpg
In the microprofiler I can see that at night, about 50% of the frame time is taken up by "Swapchain acquire", which is not there during the day:
microprofiler_night.JPG
microprofiler_day.JPG
The only setting which affects performance is the "rendering quality" - once HDR is disabled the FPS go back to ~40.
I suspect this is something due to the lighting, as with the non-HDR rendering Xplane is heavily limiting the amount of lighting it allows (I think 3 light sources), so everything looks very dark and things like flood lights in the cockpit no longer work. However it is difficult to say, as I have not seen this behaviour in any other scenery so far.
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Martin_Starski
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Re: Chicago Airports XP

Post by Martin_Starski »

DD Stanislaw wrote:The product (Chicago Airports+City) has been tested by the Laminar Research team only to conclude optimal performance under various conditions. I believe nothing more can be done here rather than going down with the settings on your machine
.
Piotricz
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Re: Chicago Airports XP

Post by Piotricz »

I understand that it was tested - I have seen the posts.
I don't know how the testing was performed, but I think everyone can agree that a constant, reproducible 55% performance decrease at night is anything but "optimal". I asked several other people from my flightsim community and they can reproduce this as well, on various machines. Of course I understand night lighting is not free to render and is inherently going to have some impact, but I definitely don't expect such a drastic hit to be normal behaviour.

Dropping settings to disable HDR is unfortunately not an acceptable solution for flying at night. As I explained, this disables a lot of light sources, like dome/flood lights in cockpit due to Xplane limitations.
If this scenery does not work with HDR rendering, it is simply not useable at night. If we were talking about a heavily GPU limited system - maybe I'd be fine with this, but on an RTX2070 with reasonable settings (reflections off, 2x antialiasing, no SSAO, no ground shadows etc.) I just don't see how this can be "optimal performance".

The Xplane engine must simply be struggling with the ambient lighting on the apron - KORD is really well lit up, which makes it look great, but the cost is incredibly high.
If there is no way for me to reduce the level of lighting, and you insist that there is nothing that can be done, then, well, you have one very sad and disappointed customer.
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Martin_Starski
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Re: Chicago Airports XP

Post by Martin_Starski »

The point is that there is a native lighting, which means that we do not have much room to maneuver. Theoretically we can reduce the number or lighting points, but in such way it will be much less readable.
Piotricz
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Re: Chicago Airports XP

Post by Piotricz »

Would it be possible to have an experiment, where you reduce the number of active lighting sources by let's say 50% and see how this affects the framerates?

A lot of custom scenery is relatively dark at night, with only a few light sources, I suspect that's why I'm not seeing this anywhere else as KORD is very very bright.
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Martin_Starski
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Re: Chicago Airports XP

Post by Martin_Starski »

I'm afraid that we are not able to do this easily currently, but we will have it in mind and will look at such idea in the future.
MediumRareBaku
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Re: Chicago Airports XP

Post by MediumRareBaku »

Martin, if DD's opinion is, this has been investigated and no problem was found, how do you explain the steady stream of people coming in saying that this is a problem, including the post above with the excellent documentation of the problem? I have this problem, as I've said before, and I do not have a similar product at any other similarly sized payware airport from other developers, and I do not have it at your KMDW. Don't you think that suggests there is something unique going on with your KORD? I also don't have this issue with the Nimbus KORD.

I'm not trying to be antagonistic, it's just astounding to me every time I come check this forum to see if there's any movement on the fix, and DD's position continues to be that there isn't a problem, or if there is a problem, it's not DD's problem.
Bulva
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Re: Chicago Airports XP

Post by Bulva »

Well, the problem with KORD lighting is still there.
Currently XP11.50 + Vulkan (pure XP copy) and DD Chicago Airports only.
The scenery at night cannot be used.
Parking at the gate (e.g. B8) = 12 FPS !!!!
Please do something about this problem. The topic is dragging on for a very long time and is reported by many people.
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Martin_Starski
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Re: Chicago Airports XP

Post by Martin_Starski »

Bulva wrote: Saturday 12 Sep 2020, 19:14 Please do something about this problem
We really want to help - the point is that we do not know what else can be done by us.
Beaverbeliever
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Re: Chicago Airports XP

Post by Beaverbeliever »

Try reducing light draw radius, this is most likely why it is only happening at night and with HDR.
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sbucknerbcs
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Re: Chicago Airports and City XP

Post by sbucknerbcs »

I have both the Chicago City and Airport for X-plane11 installed plus Orbx KCGX Meigs but not showing any of the airport buildings. If I remove Meigs then all the building return. This the contents of my scenery_packs.ini file as follows...........................

Code: Select all

SCENERY_PACK C:\X-Plane 11\Resources\plugins\SAM\lib\SAM_Library/
SCENERY_PACK C:\X-Plane 11\Resources\plugins\SAM\lib\SAM_Library/
SCENERY_PACK C:\X-Plane 11\Resources\plugins\SAM\lib\SAM_Seasons/
SCENERY_PACK C:\X-Plane 11\Resources\plugins\SAM\lib\SAM_Library/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/SAM_Library/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/Orbx_KCGX_A_Merrill_C_Meigs_Field/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/ZZZ_Orbx_KCGX_Merrill_C_Meigs_Field/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/DD Chicago XP/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/DD Chicago Airports XP/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/Orbx_KCGX_C_Overlay/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/DD Chicago Airports XP Documents/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/DD Chicago XP Documents/
SCENERY_PACK C:\X-Plane 11\Resources\plugins\SAM\lib\SAM_GlobalTrees/
SCENERY_PACK C:\X-Plane 11\Resources\plugins\SAM\lib\SAM_StaticAircrafts/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/Aerosoft - EDDF Frankfurt/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/Aerosoft - EDLP Paderborn-Lippstadt/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/Aerosoft - EGLL Heathrow/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/Aerosoft - LFMN Nice Cote d Azur X/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/Aerosoft - LFPO Paris Orly/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/Aerosoft - LPFR Faro/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/Global Airports/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/KSEA Demo Area/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/LOWI Demo Area/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/X-Plane Landmarks - Chicago/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/X-Plane Landmarks - Dubai/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/X-Plane Landmarks - Las Vegas/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/X-Plane Landmarks - London/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/X-Plane Landmarks - New York/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/X-Plane Landmarks - Sydney/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/X-Plane Landmarks - Washington DC/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/Orbx_OrbxlibsXP/
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Martin_Starski
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Re: Chicago Airports XP

Post by Martin_Starski »

It's always tricky to merge two sceneries covering the same area in XP due to some sim limitations. But you may try the following order in scenery_packs.ini:

SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/Orbx_KCGX_A_Merrill_C_Meigs_Field/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/DD Chicago XP/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/DD Chicago Airports XP/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/Orbx_KCGX_C_Overlay/
SCENERY_PACK_DISABLED Custom Scenery/ZZZ_Orbx_KCGX_Merrill_C_Meigs_Field/

Besides you may not be able to use our City scenery with ORBX KCGX, because ORBX scenery includes not only airport but also the city. Default x-plane runway should appear if you modify APT.dat from X-Plane 11\Custom Scenery\DD Chicago XP\Earth nav data\
You must delete 17 0 0 0 KCGX Meigs Field (closed)
102 H1 41.86285013 -087.60837095 322.74 32.50 32.40 15 0 0 0.00 0
gbgray2
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Re: Chicago Airports XP apt file

Post by gbgray2 »

Just purchase Chicago Airports XP

During the installation option, I select Static OFF/Photo scenery ON for ORD. I went to WED to update the apt file and notice a lot of gates are not there to update.
Is there a apt file with all of the gates for ORD?

I wish developers would have two apt files 1) Static planes 2) No Static planes, so the customer can decide.

Thank you,
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Martin_Starski
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Re: Chicago Airports XP

Post by Martin_Starski »

Hello, we provide all stores with both exe and zip file, so you may try to download the zip file, which will allow you to choose and install the files manually. On the other hand - our exe installer provide such option to do the same (static off should make the respective gates free), but it's hard to determine why it's not working in your case.
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Martin_Starski
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Re: Chicago Airports XP

Post by Martin_Starski »

You may try to use the attached file - no static and with photoground.
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