Question External MFD & low frame rates?

[IL2windhawk]

I've been toying with external MFDs, but I have lost interest in them because they seem to drastically affect my frame rates. Anybody else have this problem?

Maybe it has something to do with the nature of my experimentation: I had a second monitor hooked up such that I could run the orbiter window full-screen on the primary monitor, and my external MFDs on a secondary window. It was a real shame that it didn't work better, because the two-screen approach was incredibly cool.

 

[Screamer]

I experience the same problem of low frame rates with a external mfd open on my single screen which resolution is a native 1920 x 1080. My graphics card is a nVidia 9600.
I can bare the slow frame rate, but only just.......

 

[IL2windhawk]

I really don't think this is purely a matter of horsepower. I have a very new pc with a powerful graphics card. I run the same resolution as you. Smooth as silk until the external MFDs come on.

 

[Ripley]

I don't even know if it supports External MFDs, but have you tried with the D3D9 graphics client by jarmonik?

 

[dbeachy1]

That's a good idea. I just ran a test and with the D3D9 client it's smooth as silk for me even with six external MFDs up. :thumbup: With the internal DX7 client, however, even one external MFD cut the framerate from 50 to 25 and two external MFDs took the framerate down to 9 fps. :blink: Same scenario had 225 fps with six external MFDs with the D3D9 client (down from 250 w/no external MFDs). This is with 0.1-second MFD refresh rate using the 5 - On Approach to ISS.scn XR2 scenario w/high-res Earth textures, BTW. :tiphat:

 

[Ripley]

Good to know! Always glad to help.
On what OS does this happen dbeachy1?

 

[dbeachy1]

I'm running Windows 7 64-bit with an ATI 5970 video card, two 1920x1200 monitors plus one 1600x1200 monitor (not in eyefinity mode) with the six external MFDs on monitor #2. Orbiter video mode was a 1286x1052 window (1280x1024 rendering surface) that I use during development.

The framerate impact for external MFDs is minimal with the D3D9 client, at least on Windows 7 x64. :thumbup:

 

[Moach]

always good to know!

btw, just fore reference, on Win7-64, with a monstrous GTX580 GPU, middle-aged core2 duo CPU and somewhat-neglected 4g's of ram DDR2 - i too get a 50% bashing on FPS when using extMFD with inline graphics :hmm:

guess its normal, then.... but always good to sort these things out :thumbup:

 

[jangofett287]

Is because Win7 doesn't use the graphics card to Accelerate DirectX7 graphics. Damn Microsoft...

 

[dbeachy1]

In all fairness DirectX 7 is over eleven years old now. More information about the reasons for the performance hit are in this excellent article from Hielor.

In any case, the DX7 performance issue will become moot as more and more Orbiter add-ons support external graphics clients.

 

[IL2windhawk]

OK - i had some time to test the D3D9 graphics module last night, and it definitely makes a difference in improving the frame rates with external MFDs open. The other D3D9 features are really nice too. So.. problem solved and thanks a ton for everyone's help.

I wanted to also comment that I tested externalMFDs with the standard orbitersim graphics using just one monitor. I found that the framerate hit was substantially less noticeable than when I was using the second monitor. I dunno if it matters: but I have the primary display on HDMI, and the second display on a DVI cable.

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So as the fruit of this effort: my big plan is to use a second monitor filled with ExternalMFDs for instrumentation. I love that the main window is free to view the beautiful graphics of the game. I'm sure lots of people are doing this, so can anyone make a few recommendations on which addons they find helpful in this setup? The WindowTack addon seems like it will be very valuable, although I haven't tried it yet. It sure would be nice if it worked with ExternalMFDs. Is there anything else I am missing that has proven useful for these dual-monitor setups?