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First, 10.21 beta 2 is out – but if you had beta 1, you know that because the sim automatically tells beta testers about newer betas.  Release notes here.

The big fix is a fix to crashing on OS X that was affecting the CRJ, other plugins, and anyone who tried to resize the sim’s window.  The bug was introduced in an attempt to fix the not-working command key (which in turn broke when we rewrote the UI code for 64-bit).  Hopefully we now can have 64-bits, a command key, and a resizing window all at once.

Performance Issues, or Lack Thereof

I have seen several bug reports reporting framerate loss in 10.21, and AlpilotX says he saw the same thing on forums.  There is only one known cause of framerate change (and it could be an increase or a decrease): the autogen art mappings were changed in 10.21b1 to use smaller buildings for rural residential areas.  With different autogen, we can have different fps.

Fortunately, X-Plane 10.20 and 10.21 can have the application interchanged with the resources of the other version, which makes it possible to test whether a performance problem was introduced via the autogen change or the sim itself.

What I found first is that there is no change in the performance of the sim’s engine from 10.20r3 to 10.21b1 to 10.21b2.  Framerates between them were within the 2-3% random variance that you can get with the framerate test, and the pattern was random, not directional (e.g. sometimes 10.21 was faster, sometimes it was slower, indicating that the difference is random noise, not data).

The second thing I found was that there was no meaningful performance loss from the autogen – I saw perhaps a 1% fps loss, which is well within our error margins (or at least, nothing like the “sim is unusable now” reports I received).

Now that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a problem – just that my particular measurements don’t see it.  So…

Please do not report new bugs going “but I see a fps loss on my machine”.  That doesn’t do me any good.

Instead, let me give you some links: 10.20r3, 10.21b1, 10.21b2.  If you see a fps loss, use these links to get the old apps.  Use the updater to go down to 10.20 (for old autogen) or up to 10.21b2 (for new autogen), then try all three apps on the same X-Plane!

If you can find a framerate loss in this case, then investigate and report it with rendering settings and a reproducible case (e.g. sit on runway 36L at KSEA, etc.).  Try to remove third party add-ons if possible because they make it difficult or impossible for me to reproduce your conditions.

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.

31 comments on “10.21 Beta 2 Is Here – I Don’t See a Performance Problem”

  1. Don’t know if that helps, but I’ve noticed that some autogen buildings are set to “HARD”. Honestly, don’t know if that was already the case in 10.20. If that’s new, that might explain some fps loss for some people.

  2. Huge performance loss with 10.21b2.
    Here I found that decreasing object render setting from too many down to just many would double the FPS in game with the new 21.b2, so in other words this update halfen FPS at my end and I am running clocked @4.0

    And everytime I now start the sim, I get this message window for some reason

    http://www.tknudsen.com/xp/wrongip.PNG

      1. You are of course right Ben, did a quick investigation and found out that the window message belong to XUIPC which btw I don’t know why I am using, purhaps a bad habit from FSX where it was needed always..

    2. Re half fps, go grab two clean demos, one 10.20, one 10.21, and compare. I really don’t think we have a 50% fps hit in 10.21 due to AG changes.

    3. Got the same thing here Tom. I e-mailed the XPUIPC author. The NIC that came up was the same one I have been using (with Plan-G) successfully since XPUIPC went to 64 bit.

      Chuck

  4. Happy to report that I can now fly with Extreme number of objects and still get 30fps in 1080p when over a city. Happy that I got a 4GB video card!

    Hard to give anything but anecdotal evidence but the 64bit build runs great for me.

  5. Framerate while in 32bit seems to be identical to me between b1 and b2.

    If I switch to 64bit, though I get a decrease of about 20%.

    KLGA Rwy 22 in b2 32bit : 36fps
    KLGA Rwy 22 in b2 64bit: 29fps

    This is without any plugins running. Now I am not sure if the drop is due to the new beta (didn´t check 64bit performance in b1, unfortunately), but I think something may be going on nonetheless, because 64bit shouldn´t be slower than 32bit, right?

    1. Hey Jan, I’m not so sure that 64-bit should necessarily run faster than 32-bit. I’ve never gotten better performance with any version of 64-bit X-Plane. My 32-bit install has always had better frame rates. The only thing I haven’t experienced in the 64-bit version has been Out Of Memory Errors.

      Cheers

  6. Hi again..

    Tested now and the difference is 27fps to 42fps with 10.20 vs 10.21b2
    This was tested with a clean install over ENFB (which by the way is an airport listed in XP that has not existed in real life since 1998) and view over OSLO city..

    I have also tested with or without an OSM scenery (Scandinavia3D v1.7) and got the same result.

    Strangly though is that the difference between object setting too many and mega tons only have an effect with the OSM scenery installed. Changing this with default scenery seems to have no effect whats so ever in game. Same FPS even with or without HDR (x2 AA)

    So as far as I can see, there is a FPS los of 42-27 = 15 frames at my end.

    Here are my specs
    i7 930 OC @4.0Ghz
    Asus P6X58D-E
    12GB HyperX DDR-1600
    Nvidia GTX570 1GB

    Render settings
    http://www.tknudsen.com/xp/render.PNG

    1. Are you running with the same airport data? Try installing the latest (2013.04b) cycle on both sims…if the airport layout changed significantly, this will hurt fps – particularly if you have the airport detail turned up.

      1. Ok, so now I am running 2013.04b on both sims and here is my findings

        1. Airport ENFB still there (airport that never dies he he)
        2. Tested FPS at the same location, same altitude, same setting and it is the same results.
        3. Tested 32bit – Which btw produced higher FPS.. 39 vs 27 in 64bit mode
        4. For fun, made a stopwatch test on startup which gave 1.07 minut on the 64bit from startup to fully ready on runway and 1.19 in 32bit mode. So 64bit is faster on SATA disk anyway!

        Conclusion
        Still the same FPS drop with latest data, 32bit is faster in game with 10.21b2 and 64bit has a faster startup time..

  7. Ben, just wondering if the new flight model default setting may be related to those reports…

  8. Just wanted to add, that Stephen over at xsimreviews.com, who had massive FPS losses too, revised now his blog entry.

    He reports, that there are two things he has done, from which one (or both) must have resulted in normal FPS again:

    1) change your flight-model per frame to (2) you can do this by going to (Menu/Operations&Warnings)
    2) Delete your preferences (Output Folder) , I deleted everything but my Key assignments (That would take hours to redo)

    Read his words over there:

    http://xsimreviews.com/2013/04/13/xsimreviews-beta-1021b2-released/

  9. Yeah, pulling the preferences and resetting the system from the ground up did work, it went back to normal.
    I still feel a slight loss say 2-3frames over heavy default scenery but overwise fine.
    But it was quite bad, the computer just could not process the data.

    1. Same for me. Deleting the prefs in 10.21b2 resulted in increased frame rates, but like Stephen, I was still seeing a noticeable performance loss from 10.20r3. Went back to 10.20r3 and gained the missing performance.

      Happy with 10.20r3 for now.

      Cheers,
      Jim

  10. Ben,

    could you please repeat how to start the framerate test ? Used it on an early 9.x and then forgot about it.

    Besides that, I would really love to see some kind of X-Plane benchmark tool, maybe including CPU/GPU usage plus fps. There´s so many ways to tweak a PC/Mac and so many times it is this “feeling”, that fps changed but you cannot verify your feeling. Xplane is so variable when it comes to framerate that, in my opinion, a benchmark tool with fixed rendering settings and a fixed set of aircraft types and weather could enable us to optimize our hardware and driver settings even better.

    Maybe the command line tool already does all this, then please disregard my post 😉 But let me know the syntax !

      1. Thx, Ben. One last question: Replays are .rep on my windows machine, you are writing about .fdr ?

        1. The fps test can use fdrs or replays, but the replay format tends to not be inter-version-compatible, so…I use an FDR for the time demo to get a replay that will work across many versions. Both work. We do need to fix the .rep IO code to be inter-version compatible.

      1. Ah yes — fortunately my family was nowhere near the finish line or even viewing the Marathon. But the tragic events are very unnerving in that they are so close to home. 🙁

  13. Don’t know if there is know issue, but after installing 10.21b2 I get in no perticular sequence or order a black screen of death. This occure when I i.e start X-Plane 64bit or especially with trying to check the #use window in full screen mode box inside XP.

    Happend 3 times allready, so now I am reverting back to 10.20 final for my main X-Plane folder and waiting for a new update on my test folder.

    Any ideas Ben? Is it a graphical problem or purhaps a driver issue?

    1. Hi Tom,

      I have no idea what this is; no one else has seen this.

      At this point, I’m afraid you’ve drifted off topic. Please do not continue to post descriptions of strange things that have happened on your computer to this blog. This blog is not a forum for users to compare notes on the beta. Please do this on the org or x-aviation or another public forum.

      Thank you.
      Ben

  14. Wilco Ben..

    I do appologies, not my intent at all. Will limit my question to actual matters regarding developer topics only.

    Thank you for providing such a blog!

Comments are closed.