I am still trying to dig out my in-box this morning, but Chris tells me that there is a lot of concern over X-Plane 10’s framerate.  For now I can only offer one bit of advice:

Don’t panic.

I have no doubt that many users are seeing terrible fps with version 10.  But I think that we’re going to get this sorted out over the next few weeks and the end result will be really good.

How can I think that when so many users are seeing poor performance?  Here’s why…

  • With X-Plane 9, four years after its debut, you still can’t run X-Plane 9 at extreme objects on a modern computer.
  • With X-Plane 10, all of 1 day old, with very little performance ,i can run at extreme objects on my core i5 and get > 20 fps in the demo area.

In other words, the hardware usage of v9 was never properly “fit” to the capabilities of a modern desktop.  By comparison, version 10 is at least on the right curve, and we know how to tune for performance.

Please bear with me for a few days: the current state of chaos in our server download farm is a high priority right now, as are a few serious bugs.  So if you send me a list of your hardware specs, settings, and some numbers, I cannot help you.

When I do have time to look at performance (hopefully real soon) here’s how we will do it:

  • I will post some standard fps-test command lines that you and other users can try.
  • You can send me back the log.

One I have that data, controlled for all rendering settings, across a variety of hardware, then we’ll be able to understand performance and fix engine bugs and provide work-arounds.

X-Plane 10 is only fast if it hits the fast path through the driver every time it needs to; there are all sorts of little things that can go wrong that can kill fps that are not an indication that long-term the sim will suck.  We have worked through nasty performance issues before and we will again!  It took two months to kill off the very last driver problem in X-Plane 9.0 – I certainly hope it won’t take that long to get the vast majority of users running well in version 10.  But I do believe that fps problems we see now may be as much a case of driver vs. engine quirks than a fundamental performance gap.

About Ben Supnik

Ben is a software engineer who works on X-Plane; he spends most of his days drinking coffee and swearing at the computer -- sometimes at the same time.

34 comments on “Rendering Settings and FPS: Don’t Panic”

  1. Ben,

    I am taking the opposite approach at the moment; I am silly happy that you guys have found a way to bring my mac pro to its knees several different ways. It means 1. there is room to grow 2. you aren’t constrained by a single bottleneck.

    In v.9, I can’t make my Radeon 5870 hardly even notice that the sim is running, it is completely and utterly CPU bound as far as I can tell. I’ve only had a little time to stress test v.10, but I can wack at it from several different angles instead of just maxing out draw distance and watching a slideshow.

    So far, what seems to have the hugest effect on performance is turning on HDR, and turning on atmospheric scattering.

    That said, even when the graphics are running at slideshow speeds, the flight model doesn’t freak out like it used to – this suggest that the flight model is a bit more decoupled from the draw loop eh?

    I gotta say, considering the amount of stuff you’ve crammed it, I am floored it runs at all. To those not lucky enough (and I am lucky, should not gloat) to have a machine like mine; there is reason to be happy; the ability of laminar research to slap my machine silly (instead of just suffer from one specific bottleneck) means that we should be able to find a sweetspot for most computers in terms of settings, that the multicore stuff seems to take good advantage of what the hardware has to offer, and there is room to grow (imagine running x-plane 10 on a machine 5-10 years from now, and all you have to do is max out the settings and it runs a deeep simulation fast? Thats really cool.)

    As neat as x-plane 7 was, I don’t really have any need to run it on current hardware. On the contrary, it seems x-plane 10 is setting a really good foundation for future growth.

    (Mac Pro, 2x 4-core 2.4Ghz Westmere Xeons, 8GB RAM, OS X 10.7.2, Radeon 5870)

  2. Ben, I’m ecstatic, runs well for me! I have found low AA still gives a great look, 4 at the most is only needed. Im not missing hdr or atmo scattering. It’s hard to stop and be positive when you are firefighting, but please know that many of us are so happy that you’ve created a whole new, organic sim world. Congrats! It’ll be even better soon.

  3. Thanks for releasing X Plane 10. It looks amazing. I look forward to when optimisations are made to the frame rates. I am running a top of the line iMac with 16gb ram, quad-core 3.4ghz intel i7 and a ATI HD 2GB VRAM.

    I have noticed that graphic settings on this demo can be very touchy. If you go one notch too high the game completely quits back to the desktop. I am wondering way as when I look at the VRAM it is only 1200MB full. Could this be a ATI driver issue?

    Anyways great game and I look forward to cranking this thing a little higher when the FPS fixes are done.

    All the best,
    Eric

    1. Problably NOT ATI’s fault – the Mac ATI drivers are rock solid. X-Plane 10 will run itself out of memory pretty easily though – that is the most likely issue. For now you can’t max out everything at once.

      1. Ok thanks for that Ben. Just gotta find that ‘sweet spot’ for graphics vs FPS on my rig. Will be ordering the full game very soon 🙂

        1. another quick question. how much will xplane use system ram when it runs out of vram? i noticed that with 16gb ram, i still have about 6gb of ram free when running this game.

  4. sorry to double post, but yes please everyone post your optimised settings and what system you are running. I’ve been trying for hours and cannot get the perfect balance between great frame rates and great visuals.

  5. How about this one: XP won’t even start. Plane-Maker, Airfoil-Maker no problem. But XP itself immediately quits within the time it takes to double-click it.

    MacBookPro, Intel Core 2 Duo 2.5 GHz. OSX 10.5.8

    Ideas?

    1. If you have the torrent and it bounces and dies: probably the app isn’t execute-enabled and needs chmod. Try this from the dir that has the app:
      chmod u+x Contents/MacOS/X-Plane
      does ls -la Contents/MacOS/X-Plane show the perms being funky?

  8. Thanks…the chmod worked. How odd that the other executables (Plane-Maker, Airfoil-Maker) weren’t similarly afflicted.

    Back to trying to get above 8 FPS now… :>

  9. I tell you what – the progression from version to version I noted in performance of XP9 on my late 2009 Macbook Pro was so rewarding, and now runs so smoothly, that I have rock-solid comfidence in your ability to make XP10 work wonderfully as well.

    You guys are the high-bar in applications delivery and optimisation – full congratulations to you for releasing XP10 with such a high level of customer commitment, and many thanks for your integrity and honesty.

  10. I’m so enjoying this demo, it’s a big leap forward, thank you ! I’ve an i7-950, GTX 460 and Linux, and can almost put everything to max, but some options are very heavy to manage for my computer, so I let them aside for now. All in all, I got about 20 fps so not so bad for a first shot.

    To me, there are three points of bad performance :
    – HDR is one, but at night having the light really managed is cool. I was surprised that the HDR was handling the entire lighting model, and not Global Shadowing, it’s cucumbersome to me.
    – Clouds can be a source of hurt if you put it too high, and with bad weather it worsens the problem. I keep it low, 20% max.
    – Global Shadowing is a monster source of bad FPS for me, plus it flickers all the time, and is buggy when you have HDR enabled. I have to enable the Overlay setting to have correct shadows.

    Yes, you can’t put every little setting to it’s maximum, but if you put the special rendering options apart (clouds / hdr / global shadows), you can put everything to the max without any problem. This is a thing that I couldn’t do in xplane 9, so good job on the optimisation guys, you did well ! 🙂

    Speaking of bugs, so there is the thing I just told you about Global Shadows that is a mess, no matter the option preset I use, from low to best melting thing.
    There is one another bug that bothers me most, it’s the management of my joystick. It works well on XP9 amongst other things, but in XP10 it behaves strangely. The maximum and minimum of the axis (no matter the axis) are constantly changing, and e.g. my throttle can’t be minimum (or maximum) in the sim, even though physically it’s the case. I sent this to Randy Witt, but he have no clue (apart from telling me to calibrate, so I tried, with no effect).
    One more last thing I find strange, is the handling of the chase exterior view. When you have some wings, it makes me sick fast, I think you should smooth the move.

    Thank you for everything guys :).

    1. About the joystick calibration problem, other people I saw (at least two of them) who are using the demo on Linux, encounter the same problem I do. They have different sticks, so it’s not related to hardware.

      Thanks for getting in this :).

  11. Hi,

    First of all big kudos for the good work showing here – some rough edges but that’s life.

    Not sure where to send bug reports (maybe bugzilla would be a good idea?) so I’m posting here – feel free to remove if inappropriate.

    Hi,

    Couple of issues with multi computer setups:

    A) the external views don’t follow main one instantly, they try to smooth out the jumps. I.e I’m at pos A, move main computer to pos B and the external views will make the travel from A to B instead of instantly jumping to B, which is bad because you break the sync between views.
    B) where are the ‘use rendering options from main’ options? Can’t find them anymore…

    Thanks and keep up the good work! Btw some rant, for us early adopters the 10min limit is a pain – it would have great to have I.e some temporary unlock key sent when you buy the sim. Bought first day but can only test in 10min chunks 🙁

  12. Pingback: X-Plane 10 fertig... - Seite 6 - VATSIM Germany Forum

  13. I’m having some serious issues with the framerate… Even with everything (really everything) at minimum setting I’m getting about 45-50fps.
    If I enable any other option it drops to 19…

    My setup is :
    MacPro 2010 Dual 2.4GHz /20GB RAM ATI 5870.
    Has anyone else a similar setup so I can start figuring out what is going on?
    Thanks.

  15. thanks, do you forsee the updates to reeally help the framerate /performance issues to come out possibly this week as others have quoted? randy told me within a week or so to expect quite an improvement update

    where should i send you my log.txt so you have more into to gather

    1. I think Randy’s being a little bit optimistic – we’ll see. I am already looking at perf, but depending on what kind of perf problem a user has, there might be a fix soon or not for a while. A perf optimization is only useful to a user who has the hw that is affected by the optimization. so YMMV.

  16. ahh ok Ben, I also assumed so due to your comment regarding this being taken care of within a few weeks/ that you all know about the universal frame rate issue. Granted this is a new release, demo/ beta, faster improvements Id hope for updates in december / and or dvd to come with the fixes. .. even 10.1 not too far off in dec late or jan. Aka, we users know guys know about these issues and we hope to see improvements not too far off. 🙂 low fps/ sluggishness is very annoying, especially when we can do more on v9… hence your comment about v9 being 4 yrs old and v10 only a few days regarding fps.

    thanks Ben, im having fun testing my settings btw.

    p.s. i emailed info @xplane and posted screen on fb, there seems to be a major bug while in a storm, because there is graphical issues such has distorted rain or boxes on screen

    1. If you sent a bug report in via the bug report form or info@x-plane we probably have it, but it may be a bit before you hear back – we’re working through a big pile right now.

  17. hey ben, perhaps this will help. copy text of my email

    1- i sometimes have smooth flight but the fps is stuck at 19 -22 , and or my vram usage is way lower than 1024mb capability & sim lags a lot. seems odd .

    ( * testing still, i bounce back and forth between slow and decent- way better than first initial demo boot in thursday 🙂

    2- there is a bug during rain storm where graphics look terrible
    file:///Users/chrishallam/Desktop/37382w0_10150390908548093_524368092_8721338_901591710_n.jpg

  18. as you said you get 20fps in demo area with i5, I have quad i7 and get less fps . hmm , anything I or users can help input and help you guys fix performance I’m in

  19. Is it possible to have some sort of preference file that sets the rendering settings to the recommended values for the machine you are on? Maybe this could be a small app that runs when starting XP and adjusts settings on a lookup table. Maybe it could be a file others submit with their preferences or what they have found best works on their system. It could be a file available say on the XP org like other utilities are. There would obviously need to be a manual override and the ability to lock in the settings once happy.
    Just some thoughts…

  20. As a PPL who uses X-Plane to practice an expensive hobby, relatively inexpensively, may I congratulate you all, from the developers to the wider X-Plane community. The obvious excitement with V10 and the desire to help / improve / bug fix a fantastic product for the greater good can only be admired, in particular the honesty of the developers in acknowledging ‘flaws’, which is lacking in other similar commercial products, to deliver a sound product for the benefit and enjoyment of it’s users is a revelation and pleasant surprise in these times. I am not technically competent in this field to assist, but would like to thank you all for your efforts and look forward to reaping the benefits of all of YOUR hand work and endeavours. Thank you.

  21. Just ran the demo on my Fedora16 with 16GB of RAM, ASUS Radeon HD 6950 2GB GDDR5 and AMD Phenom II X6 1055T. How it flies! How smooth! How stunning graphics! Can’t wait for my order to be delivered 🙂

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