Input please regarding FFTF & Affinity mask values using TileProxy

[markturner 0]

Hi Guys, as the last thread got somewhat bogged down in discussions as to wether it was actually possible, I have decided to open this new thread as I have had some very interesting information from Christian Buchner on the subject. It seems that the tweak does indeed have an effect still. It also seems that this effect could be tweaked by the useage of the affinity mask value, to spread the processing load on the most appropriate core thus ensuring the maximum performance. I would like some input from those who know about what they see as the best settings, IE which core to allocate for what, in the light of what Christian has to say on the subject, which I have quoted below: QUOTE]Hi Christian, my Name is Mark, i hope you dont mind me contacting you via this message. The first is "fiber frame time fraction". Are you able to confirm that this has an effect when using TileProxy if you SP2 of FSX installed ? I have been debating this with people, as I have noticed faster texture loading at the expense of frame rates using it. But many say that the tweak has no effect in SP2 due to coding changes.Do the variable values you suggested (0.33 -1.33) depend on anything? Is there an upper limit to the value and why? looking forward to hearing from you and all the best, ( and hoping that you pick up developement of TileProxy again! ) respectfully, Mark TurnerHi, yes right now my interests have shifted a bit to CUDA and physics simulation programming. I am barely ever starting FSX these days.The fiber_frame_time_fraction setting still controls how much time the flight simulator dedicates to background jobs, after rendering each video frame. It still has a notable effect on frame rates. A similar effect is achieved by locking frame rates - then all CPU time not needed for rendering is spent doing background jobs (AI, terrain, weather, etc..).I was able to establish by means of reverse engineering that around 13 such background jobs exist (executed as thread fibers on the first processor core), and one of these jobs is refreshing the scenery tiles. It seems to be that the fibers distribute the work load to the other processor cores via some job scheduling system. So a Increased fiber_frame_time_fraction values will lead to lower frame rates (less time spent rendering graphics), but it will also boost the Tiles per Second value of Tileproxy because more time is spent updating the scenery.I have also found that for each scenery tile to be loaded from disk, a call is made into the primary thread executing on the first CPU core to initiate a file I/O for these BMP files. This file I/O seems to be the main bottleneck for loading scenery tiles, as it limits the maximum speed at which tiles are processed Having a FAST CPU shelps a lot (besides increased fiber times), because then the first core can do its job quicker and load more tiles per given unit of time.My advice would be to lower the fiber_frame value until the frame rates are aggreably high. When things get too blurry, it may also help reducing the graphics resolution, because frames are then rendered more quickly - and with a locked frame rate more time remains to do the background jobs.I think anyone who is interested in this stuff will agree that what Christian says is very significant and with the help of some of you clever guys out there, we could probably find a good range of settings to maximise the performance of Tile proxy when using FSX with multiple core computers, by playing with the values for affinity mask. Cheers, Mark

[markturner 0]

just a little bump !

[McCrash 3]

In the FSX.cfg add the following if it is not already there[JOBSCHEDULER]AffinityMask=#use these settings for # as you test and you must EXIT the sim and relaunch between changes255 - all 8 in use254 - 7 in use with the first remaining free252 - 6 in use with the first entire CORE remaining free127 - 7 in use with the last remaining free 63 - 6 in use with the last entire CORE remaining free 1 = 1 core 0001 3 = 2 cores 0011 7 = 3 cores 011112 = 2 cores last 110014 = 3 cores last 111015 = 4 cores 1111

[markturner 0]

Hey mcCrash, thanks for that.I also have a handy little programme called process explorer that lets you choose which cores to run each process on. So you can in theory choose to run FSX on core 1, tile proxy on core 2 , etc.What I am unsure of is the best way to split up the workload in relation to what Christian has to say about how FSX and tileproxy handle the texture workload.Why are you referring to 8 cores ? Is that for i7 with "virtual cores" ? cheers, Mark

[markturner 0]

no one got anything to say about any of the issues raised here?

[BMG50 9]

Hi,Mark Thanks to your posts and several others,I have TP up and running.....I have tried alot of AM settings and seems as if AM=85 works well for me...Please try it and see what you think....My rig is an i7 920 @4Ghz,6G ram,GTX 285SC oc,ed,P6T Deluxe V2,W7 64B,Etc.......Thanks Lou

[cianpars 1,174]

I tried changing the affinity mask setting and didn't notice any difference. I've also tried various combinations of priority settings for FSX and Tileproxy and not obtained any improvement. I've also tried running fsx on core 0 and tileproxy on core 1 and running both on both cores. Again no improvements noted.IAN