Benchmark comparisons: BH&H II vs PE

[BuckeyeBob 34]

I'll look at VonS's and PR's texture mods in a bit to see if they changed the lower budgets (I think they did), or better yet, they will come along and tell you themselves!

[+VonS 1,424]

As far as I remember when I was coming up with the Tuner Patch (for WOFF PE) - every budget level in the composite and textures files was tweaked, some more, some less. Your mileage may vary also depending on your particular rig. setups.

EDIT: Here's a link to an older post from the "Casual Campaigns" over on SimHQ and that gives some more detail regarding the numbers in the various files in the Tuner Patch - for those who enjoy manual tweaking of entries, or enjoy reading the data:

https://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/4515422/re-vons-casual-campaigns-woff-thread#Post4515422

Cheers all,

Von S

 

Edited April 11, 2021 by VonS
Added link to relevant info.

[redwolf 19]

Thanks VonS. 

Just some numbers now (and yes, same identical testing procedure, yada, yada, yada... ) and these with the terrain workshop settings (TR, SC, TS lowered to 2-2-2) on my rig.

FPS Averages (all runs, all scenarios combined):

Stock:  74.7

VonS (Pe): 74.8

PR (Balanced) (PE): 73.5

So no real quantifiable difference in fps at those particular workshop settings (or at the very least, the results are certainly close enough and within the margin of error to suggest that they are the same). Indeed, when comparing the results to the prior testing with 3-3-3,  both mods seem to have lost any benefit they were generating for me whatsoever - now falling back to stock levels.

 

 

[+VonS 1,424]

That sounds about right Redwolf - the Tuner Patch was tested only on higher-quality settings in my PE install. Those running WOFF PE, or newer versions, with medium or lower settings in the WOFF in-sim Workshop menu - will probably not benefit in any way from the tuner patch - with one exception (the tuner patch eliminates blue triangle video tearing, as does PR's patch).

It's the "compositetexturebudgets" file, by the way, that controls presence/absence of blue triangles. The tearing starts somewhere in the ring dim values, between the entries below, indicated by a dotted line:

 

Ring PatchWorldDim="512"
Ring PatchWorldDim="256"

Ring PatchWorldDim="128"

----------
Ring PatchWorldDim="64"

Ring PatchWorldDim="32"

 

Removal of the 64 and 32 entries solves the blue triangles tearing problem when flying at alts. lower than about 300 m and looking at terrains, particularly to the left/right of aircraft, and to the back left/right, also sometimes visible in spot view (blue triangles were never a problem at higher alts. in WOFF by the way, only sometimes visible at lower alts. with stock compositetexturebudgets values - therefore the further tinkering that PR and I applied to our tuner patches).

I'm currently doing some experiments for my "FrankenWOFF 4.18" install (that backports many folders and textures from PE 5.03/5.04 into 4.18 - so that I can have SweetFX availability since ver. 4.18 was the last one, I think, before AnKor changed up a few things with shaders in WOFF that disables SweetFX usage - and I will tinker further with the compositetexturebudgets file for that install - to see if blue triangles may be eliminated entirely but without removal of the 64 and 32 ringdim levels/values).

Cheers all,

Von S

Edited April 16, 2021 by VonS
Added info.

[Abbay 3]

I can confirm that after running a few missions in a WOFF campaign on an i5-10600/RTX 3090 there appears to be no blue triangles when I look left and right. I don't use mods and BH&HII is on stock settings. 

[+VonS 1,424]

Frequency of blue triangles (a remnant from CFS3 rendering) has been greatly reduced in each version of WOFF, so they may indeed be absent or almost absent in BHAH.II. At any rate they are not seen when flying at higher alts. since at least the UE ver. of WOFF (see the 7:07, 7:11, and 7:16 mins. marks in this vid. made by RJW - where the Alb. is flying at low alt, for very brief instances of blue triangles):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4SlU47Yqd8&t=1s

Personally I don't mind the occasional blue triangle in favor of crisper low-alt. graphics. Others may of course make use of the Tuner Patch if they encounter the occasional blue triangle and are bothered by it, or the PR patch since that one is good too.

All of this may of course also be related to particular rig. setups, various computer components and whatnot, also whether or not one is on AMD vid. cards or nVidia. Redwolf and others are welcome to use/modify my Tuner Patch (for PE) as they see fit, or not to use it if they feel it is unnecessary in the latest ver. of WOFF.

My recommendation is to run BHAH.II in stock form at least for a few weeks, or perhaps for a month or two, before starting to include mods., if at all - since much is determined by particular rig. setups that everyone is running.

Cheers all and happy flying,

Von S

Edited April 16, 2021 by VonS
Added info./edited post.

[redwolf 19]

Regarding mods - for me a crucial situation with stock has been a real hit in the fluidity of virtual cockpit compared to PE (and I like to use virtual cockpit) - so that is a major impetus with me (plus having a lower system and trying to squeeze or get as close to previous performance I had).

 

Ironically, I am now investigating an interesting turn of events - based on test findings to date and also VonS's and BB's comments, I am looking at actually increasing workshop settings and running the mods, and I'll be damned, I am liking what I am seeing so far! Suddenly got near smooth virtual as well and an actual INCREASE in fps.  

Early, but my gosh is it trending well...

Edited April 12, 2021 by redwolf

[BuckeyeBob 34]

Good to hear, Redwolf! Now that you mention it, I vaguely recall hearing some similar comments from a long time ago about performance being better at higher graphics settings, perhaps because the game is optimized for those settings.

At any rate, I hardly see anyone who plays WOFF using lower settings, so it's interesting to hear your experiences.

Edited April 12, 2021 by BuckeyeBob

[Abbay 3]

I actually don't mind installing MODs. I had contributed to making some a long time ago. But when I did try the ones that adjust the contents of the compositescenerybudgets and compositetexturebudgets, I got a lot of inconsistences with texture popping. However, I did get slightly better frame rates. On the flip side, the stock settings had very little texture anomalies, but with slightly less frame rates. Of course, everyone's system and experiences differ, but that was my observation.

 

Also, the frame rates plunge when approaching airfields no matter what I use. I'm seeing maybe 10 to 15 less frame rates around airfields. I don't think this phenomenon has changed since OFF.

Edited April 12, 2021 by Abbay

[BuckeyeBob 34]

Objects, my man, objects!

Try turning down airfield complexity in Workshop.

[Abbay 3]

4 hours ago, BuckeyeBob said:

Objects, my man, objects!

Try turning down airfield complexity in Workshop.

Yes, I guess that would make sense... but it's not clear to me what that setting does. Do you know what difference is between the low, medium and high? (remove buildings, trees, aircraft, etc... or lower the quality of textures, ...)

Edited April 12, 2021 by Abbay

[BuckeyeBob 34]

I'm not 100% sure myself. I don't think it controls tree density, as that is a separate setting. I believe it affects the number of buildings, aircraft, people, etc. displayed. I don't think it has anything to do with textures.

Keep in mind that there may be a dozen or more airfields in your immediate vicinity that may be putting a drain on your system resources!

RJW or RAF_Louvert probably know more about this than I do, though.

Edited April 12, 2021 by BuckeyeBob

[Abbay 3]

I stand corrected. I think the tuner patch is great, but those numbers weren't for meant for my system. After a day of testing, I finally was able to dial in numbers which kept my frame rates over 100. And I didn't need to change any of my workshop settings to boot!

I googled and read several forum posts from VonS, majormagee, Ankor, yaan98, panama red, and others. This helped me understand a little bit of what I should and shouldn't do. 

As a side note, this will probably be the only adjustment I make to BH&HII for a while or until I come across something like it.

Edited April 13, 2021 by Abbay

[redwolf 19]

Alrighty, this is probably my final update in this thread unless of course there are new updates to game or mods that may impact things - and again, this is only my experiences in testing to date (system specs in first post) - results could vary substantially depending on hardware, drivers, and individual settings.

.........................

I mentioned earlier that fps actually seemed to be increasing by actually increasing workshop settings (particularly terrain related settings (Terrain Detail (TD),  Scenery Density (SD),  Terrain Shadow Detail (TS)) - and this through testing with stock has indeed proved to be the case (I have been altering them in unison pretty much - so which one in particular (or whether it is a combined effect), I do not know. However, I can tell you that in switching between 3-3-3, 2-2-2, and 4-4-2 all produced fps gains  by increasing the  settings (in the range of 5-10% (also held true with tuner mods as well) -- which at face value seems counter-intuitive, but nevertheless was what I experienced through the testing procedure. Surprisingly, 2-2-2 generating the lowest fps averages, 4-4-2 the best. Unknown regarding 5-5-2 as I don't have the breath of data there (though data suggests that upward trend may have reached peak at 4-4-2 (with a downward decline at 5-5-2 - but I can't conclusively confirm this in my case).

.........................

I don't have fully fledge testing numbers of all the tuner mods (default settings), as quite frankly, I was wearing down and it was easier for me to concentrate on what helped me the most (as mentioned (and can be seen in the tech support forum) - I have issue with the virtual cockpit fluidity since moving to BH&H II from PE - with BH&H II perhaps performing at about 65% -70% fluidity in virtual cockpit pan as I had previously) - I know I couldn't stay at stock with current situation (and although fps increase with increase in workshop settings as mentioned, it didn't help my issue and perhaps was making it slightly worse with each iteration). VonS GPU tuner (PE) indeed helped a bit (giving me perhaps 75-80% in this regard), but still quite noticeable to me. Panama Red's tuners seemed to have the best impact for me regarding virtual cockpit (getting me to perhaps 85% of what I had) while both increasing average fps over stock by a fair bit and looking good too. For now, barring individual tweaking of the settings in the tuners, I will be sticking with that and I can report some fully benchmarked with it.

.................................................

Results

This is with terrain workshop settings increased to 4-4-2 and switched over to Panama Red's SI (Quality) (formerly balanced). This, all things considered, is looking to be the sweat spot for me and my system.

Defend: 90.1 FPS average

Snipes: 75.7 FPS average

Large: 86.0 FPS average

Overall FPS Average: 83.9

(for comparison purposes and rather indicative of what I mentioned above, at 2-2-2 with PR (balanced), the Average FPS was 73.5!)

 

**a side note - purely anecdotal, in my experience I have seen far less micro-stutters with BH&H II vs PE - remarkably so. It hasn't entirely been eliminated however (not sure that will ever realistically be possible). What I have noticed (and I feel bad saying this as it is an amazing piece of work and has overall done a very good job both with image quality and fps improvement (hats off to you VonS!)) - is that if I have been seeing some stutter or noticing it more, it tends to happen more often the odd times it does occur with VonS Gpu tuner running (been using 1,2, + 4). Going back and forth between stock, PR, and VonS often enough now, I can say that at least that appears to be the case in my circumstance. Not sure why that is or whether that has just been an anomaly - or whether it is my Nvidia hardware or something unique to my system. Just I have seen it enough in comparison to suggest that this is happening a bit more for me with that tuner vs stock & PR.

Happy Flying everyone!

 

Edited April 15, 2021 by redwolf

[Adger 87]

Redwolf, fantastic job imo that you’ve done. You must have spent quite some time testing mate. Hopefully now you’ve found your sweet spot you can really start to enjoy the sim ..Again cheers for your findings 

[+VonS 1,424]

Appreciate those detailed reports Redwolf. And yes, my GPU Tuner Patch (for WOFF PE) was tested only on AMD-vid. cards. If you are on nVidia, it makes sense that the PR patch is the slightly better choice. If you ever gather energy for more testing and tuning  - send me a PM and I will forward to you my "FrankenMiniTuner" that I use in my FrankenWOFF 4.18 install.

The FrankenMiniTuner tweaks further the texture and scenery files of version 1.3 and 1.4 of my previous Tuner Patch (works great in FrankenWOFF but your mileage may vary with BHAH.II). For those wondering what FrankenWOFF is, it is a backport of WOFF PE files into WOFF UE ver. 4.18, to give slightly higher FPS and SweetFX compatibility, also PE terrains and textures in UE - but I will not bore you with details regarding the install.

Cheers all and happy flying,

Von S 

Edited April 16, 2021 by VonS
Edited post.

[Abbay 3]

in my case, the biggest gains were reducing the ringdim's to 5 across all patchworlddim values in the texturebudgets file. And in the scenerybudgets file, I kept it near stock with a slight increase in the first couple of majordensity values because those were a problem to contain. I also enabled NoMultisampling to take advantage of nvidia inspector.

I managed to get consistent frames without any major dips. RAM usage stayed at a constant 11GB, and video/cpu usage never went above 25%.