Updating to P3D 3.3.3 Issues thread

[ejoiner]

Hi guys, I am starting a thread to capture any issues people are running into with upgrading to P3D 3.3.3.

I myself did the full uninstall/reinstall. (likely wont do that again after literally reinstalling about 15 orbx scenery sets.)

Main issue I am seeing so far:

Black clouds. Normal puffy white clouds turn jet black as my aircraft approaches them. Once I pass away from the black cloud it turns white again. I am assuming the "black" is an untextured cloud shape? I use REX Essential + Overdrive AND REX Texture Direct. So my clouds are 3rd party. Does not seem to matter whether I set the installed clouds to be DXT5 or 32 bit. Same thing happens. Also this does not appear to me to be shader dependent. It happens with default P3D shaders as well as the "realism shader pack". It also does not appear to be settings driven in the sim as far as I can tell. Clouds in the distance or high above are unphased. its only those clouds within a certain radius of my aircraft that turn black.

I will be posting this on the LM P3D site as well. will report any feedback.

Eric

[gman5250]

The renewal charge has been sitting in the "prcessing" queue at BofA for four days now...don't have my password yet!!! Not looking good.

[DagR]

I had the black clouds after just installing the client.msi. I had used realism shader pack. I then read at avsim about a guy that reinstalled the contents.msi with the mandatory contents.cab and proceeded to delete shader cache. Still black clouds. Then, I did another reinstall of the client.msi and voila, clouds are back at their normals. I did delete shader cache after this as well.
A good performing sim got better. I think the ground textures look better.


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[DaveWG]

No issues for me (yet). Reverted the modified shaders back to the originals, then did a client and content update. Deleted the shader cache, installed latest versions of FSUIPC and ASN.
Everything seems fine but I've got a 3.2 backup just in case!

[ejoiner]

No issues for me (yet). Reverted the modified shaders back to the originals, then did a client and content update. Deleted the shader cache, installed latest versions of FSUIPC and ASN.
Everything seems fine but I've got a 3.2 backup just in case!

Yes, it appears the "cure" is to reinstall the client.msi and clear the shader cache. This restores the 3.3 default shaders. Black clouds gone. Guess we will need to avoid 3rd party shaders until they catch up to 3.3 version.

[DagR]

This one's kinda cool: http://1coder.ru/PTA/


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[roger-wilco-66]

This one's kinda cool: http://1coder.ru/PTA/


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Nice find, thanks for sharing! Do you mind if I copy this to the "Performance tweaks and tunes" thread?


Cheers,
Mark

[DagR]

No problem there :-)


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[ejoiner]

Nice find, thanks for sharing! Do you mind if I copy this to the "Performance tweaks and tunes" thread?


Cheers,
Mark

I discovered that PTA tool as well, now updated to P3D 3.3.3. Seems to work well. Still playing with it.

[Dimus]

Repeating here what I mentioned in the other thread about issues with sceneries created with FSX SDK and involving GPs and layering. There is annoyin flickering observed, probably due to the new zbias related update.

The issue is discussed here at Avsim:

http://www.avsim.com/topic/489577-serious-ground-layering-bug-in-33/

I finally updated to 3.3. I had no issues with clouds shaders cause I have reverted to default shaders before upgrading. Installed client and content and then applied again REX textures and soft clouds with no issues. PTA tool works well with shaders, thanks Dag!

I have observed the flickering issue on runways and taxiway markins in Aeorosoft Kastellorizo X and Flytampa Athens which use custom GP type layered marks. I hope that either LM may look into this and provide a fix or the devs maybe adapt their sceneries.

[roger-wilco-66]

I observe the flickering as well, also on static scenery objects that didn't flicker in 3.2. On my system, the flickering only occurs when one moves the viewpoint or the camera is in motion. I hope they fix that.


Cheers,
Mark

[stovall]

Flickering of runway textures in Orbx KRDD also noted. This occurs as Mark mentions when the viewpoint is moved. Haven't explored much lately but KRDD is my home airfield. Haven't noticed this in the previous P3D version as well.

[scotth6]

It has been reported that the Milviz F-4 Phantoms (E/J/S) are not currently working in P3D V3.3.

Cheers,

[stovall]

It has been reported that the Milviz F-4 Phantoms (E/J/S) are not currently working in P3D V3.3.

Cheers,

I can confirm the problem wth the Milviz F-4 all versions and P3D V-3.3. One selects the aircraft and after a few seconds P3D crashes.

[Dimus]

An update is already under testing for the M/V F-4.

The scenery flickering indeed has to do with viewpoint.

[gman5250]

The flickering has been around for quite a while, but has dramatically gotten worse in P3D. The original issue was limited to viewing ground polys, especially runway textures, from altitude.

Now, that bug seems to be more prevalent. In my work, I use four layers of textures on a typical asphalt or concrete surface.

1. Base texture
2. Wear
3. Traffic marks
4. Markings and lines.

Typically, those layers should behave normally when placed .01 meter separation, with the first layer at 0.01 M above the background texture. This has all changed, and I need to sometimes place the layers 0.1 M separation to fix the flicker from a distance. The problem then translates to the ground render with the textures now up to the rim of the wheel on an aircraft. Looks horrible.

I've seen the same with buildings. If I design a building with an inner and outer wall, the model will display normally when on the ground at the airport. From the air, as distance increases, the two walls will begin to flicker as if the two planes were superimposed on each other. To fix the flicker the walls need to be about 1 M thick, which looks ridiculous and stupid.

It's really a problem for developers at this point.

[Dimus]

Also lost Tacpack. Hope they update it soon for 3.3.

[roger-wilco-66]

I found that setting the Antialiasing Transparency to 8x (Supersampling) in the Nvidia Control Panel reduced the flickering, but not eliminated it completely.

[Edit: still flickers heavily from farer away]

What is worse is a serious performance hit, even with clouds turned off. I get fluctuations of fps that go from ca. 15fps to the locked 30fps that feel like someone's stepping on the brake every 2 seconds or so. Didn't have that in 3.2 with the same settings, and I haven't seen 15fps in a long time.


Grrr.

Mark

[Stickshaker]

Also lost Tacpack. Hope they update it soon for 3.3.

When I started TacPac today I got a message from which I understand VRS are working on it.

[Dimus]

I found that setting the Antialiasing Transparency to 8x (Supersampling) in the Nvidia Control Panel reduced the flickering, but not eliminated it completely.

[Edit: still flickers heavily from farer away]

What is worse is a serious performance hit, even with clouds turned off. I get fluctuations of fps that go from ca. 15fps to the locked 30fps that feel like someone's stepping on the brake every 2 seconds or so. Didn't have that in 3.2 with the same settings, and I haven't seen 15fps in a long time.


Grrr.

Mark

I experience heavy stuttering like a slideshow for a few seconds then it is smooth as butter. I get this at irregular intervals and it is indeed annoying.

[TuFun]

Re: Scenery Problem with bgl airport add-ons
Postby Adam Breed » Mon, 06 Jun 2016, 21:06

All,

We are working towards a hotfix to resolve this issue. It should be available in the next couple days. Again, we strongly encourage all third parties to continue to update their older scenery to work under Prepar3D's newer designs. While this change was not exactly intentional - it is a result of adding capabilities to support newer functionality. We publicly disclosed that BGL was not going to be supported moving forward (over two years ago - during v2). While BGL still works and we have no intention of disabling it, it is strongly discouraged and at some point shortly we will no longer be able to advance the system while continuing to support it.

Thanks for your understanding and support in solving this issue,
Adam

Looks like 2002 SDK and BGL scenery will be discontinued in future upgrades. Now scenery developers will have to create two different sets one for FSX and one for P3Dv.x

[TuFun]

Might add...

Beau Hollis wrote:Exact replication of the draw order generated by the legacy dx9 rendering system is not possible in the new system. We've done our best to fix specific issues as reported, but there will eventually be cases where fixing one add-on by modifying sort orders will break other add-ons. We posted a couple years back that we were dropping official support for the fs2002 routines for this vary reason, and encourage developers to stop using tools that rely on them.

We made some major performance improvements in 3.2 which relied in part on changes to optimize some draw order sorting routines. These changes caused issues with a few add-ons which had worked in 3.1 and we addressed those issues in 3.3. We also fixed a bug in the sorting routine which made draw order non-deterministic in certain cases. We believe the sort is stable now and would prefer not to modify it again. Please keep reporting these issues, as we do appreciate the feedback, but also understand that we may not be able to investigate and respond.

[TuFun]

Andras post this at P3D... Scenery Problem with bgl airport add-ons


I can give you a simple answer on the technical background:

- Those FS2002 methods are actually 2002, 2004, FSX, ESP and P3D 1.4 methods.
Those people who often angrily talk about a "14 years old method" are practically mistaken, as until the P3D 2.x series that - and only that - was the standard method and there were no other methods available to make airport ground sceneries.

For the designers adapting to the new layering method is easy, but there are some catches. Namely:

1. The new layering that was given by LM is not as versatile or reliable as the old method was and provides less possibilities.

2. The new method doesn't allow textures to be changed according to the season or other conditions.

3. LM gave the layering method to designers, but still there are no "conditional jumps" possible, meaning textures or objects changing by a defined condition. By the lack of this, with the new method, no safegate systems, opening doors or the like are possible to design, or anything that changes somehow depending on distance, altitude, seasons, etc.

4. This is also a question of QUALITY, as many designers are reluctant to lower the qualities of their large airport depictions, but alas, by the newer single and simple method, the older qualities are not truly achievable.

5. Those airport sceneries will be slightly faster if they comply the newer requirements, but the cycle will only be full, when LM also provides additional design possibilities, besides the single layering option, which is available right now.

Do not bring Orbx into the picture here, as they mainly do terrain depictions and smaller airports. The older method in question here are important mostly for large airports.

Andras

[n4gix]

Has anyone made Andras aware of SODE (Scenery Object Design Engine) that addresses these aforementioned shortcomings?

[roger-wilco-66]

That is bitter for scenery designers that work for FSX and P3D. That strategy reminds me somehow the way M$ turned when switching from FS9 to FSX. Make it faster by simplifying it. But it was inevitable, sooner or later.
I also thought of SODE when I read that. Time to use it now!

The stuttering I mentioned above completely went away. It's smooth as butter now, even with heavy cloud scenarios, which were hard on my system in Versions <= V.3.2. I changed a few parameters in NVIDIA tray and the sim graphic definitions, but I'm not sure which one caused it.

Now if they fix the flickering of co-planar surfaces I'm happy again!


Cheers,
Mark