Monitor for P3D

[Maxime Guy]

Hi guys, I'm currently using a 1080p monitor and looking of making the switch to a 2K or 4K 60hz monitor.

Is there a noticeable difference between 2K or 4K in P3D and in terms of performance ?

what would you recommend ?

Pc specs i7 10700k RTX3070

[R3N3 SCH1SCHKA]

4k with an RTX 3070 won't make much sense, "only" 8 GB VRAM is not enough for a 4K.

The processor is negligible because the CPU is unloaded at high resolutions. In the end, the GPU is usually the bottleneck.

In any case, the 8 GB VRAM in an RTX 3070.

4k is not an option , or good idea with this card.

[Maxime Guy]

7 minutes ago, Rene Schlischka said:

4k with an RTX 3070 won't make much sense, "only" 8 GB VRAM is not enough for a 4K.

The processor is negligible because the CPU is unloaded at high resolutions. In the end, the GPU is usually the bottleneck.

In any case, the 8 GB VRAM in an RTX 3070.

4k is not an option , or good idea with this card.

Thanks for that. Would you recommend 2K maybe then ?

[Markus Burkhard]

I wouldn't recommend investing money in anything less than 4K these days. Anything lower simply doesn't do justice to all the high res. textured content out there and is not at all future-proof.

You can go 4K with 8GB of VRAM if you do not need to crank up all settings to the maximum.
What would help is to choose a large (32"+) 21:9 screen with 4K horizontally, while the vertical specification is "only" 1600 pixels. Gives your GPU a bit more headroom but still offers a very high resolution.

So unless you don't consider your monitor a long-term investment, I suggest not going below 3840pixels horizontally. 
Personally I am using a 38" curved 21:9 screen at 3840x1600 pixels and absolutely love the format for flying. Wouldn't want to have it any other way.

[Maxime Guy]

Cheers for the help Markus !

[Filip Nowak]

4K and 8GB VRAM even in P3Dv5 is not enough considering relatively high graphic settings (high not ultra, so no all sliders to the right). On 11GB VRAM around Madrid and famous LatinVFR LEMD scenery I was managed to run out of VRAM (on 11GB 2080Ti).

But P3Dv5 is not a big deal, X-Plane 11 can even take > 20GB VRAM on 4K high detailed sceneries (what I see now on RTX3090).

[Ray Proudfoot]

Maxime, whatever monitor you decide on make sure it can run at 30Hz at the native resolution. That will make for the smoothest sim experience you can get. My BenQ PD3200U does and if you had a more powerful graphics card that’s the one I would have recommended.

[Sabine Meier]

 if you also do other games or productivity keep that in mind.

[Ray Proudfoot]

10 minutes ago, Koen Meier said:

 if you also do other games or productivity keep that in mind.

That’s the problem. Fast moving games need high refresh rates. Flight sim requires the opposite. Only the user can decide what is more important to them and buy accordingly.

[Maxime Guy]

I've currently got a 60hz monitor and locking my fps at 30 which works quite well for me.

[Sabine Meier]

41 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

That’s the problem. Fast moving games need high refresh rates. Flight sim requires the opposite. Only the user can decide what is more important to them and buy accordingly.

i have been doing flightsim on a dell with only 60hz and havent seen much issues. smooth experience for me.

[Ray Proudfoot]

1 hour ago, Maxime Guy said:

I've currently got a 60hz monitor and locking my fps at 30 which works quite well for me.

Where are you locking them? Not in P3D I hope.

[Ray Proudfoot]

1 hour ago, Koen Meier said:

i have been doing flightsim on a dell with only 60hz and havent seen much issues. smooth experience for me.

All dependent on your scenery settings and amount of Ai injected into the sim. AIG can inject hundreds of Ai at major airports.

[Maxime Guy]

20 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Where are you locking them? Not in P3D I hope.

No unlimited in P3D, locked externally. Just found that to be the smoothest experience for me. Got the idea after seeing a few streamers do it.

[Sabine Meier]

1 hour ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

All dependent on your scenery settings and amount of Ai injected into the sim. AIG can inject hundreds of Ai at major airports.

i fly without ai normally. only for vatsim i use ai. it gives me the freedom to decide what i plan for when it comes to runway usage.

[Ray Proudfoot]

3 hours ago, Koen Meier said:

i fly without ai normally. only for vatsim i use ai. it gives me the freedom to decide what i plan for when it comes to runway usage.

I use Radar Contact for ATC and have lots of different airlines at every airport around the world. The Ai does impact on the frame rates but I wouldn’t do it any other way.

[R3N3 SCH1SCHKA]

11 hours ago, Filip Nowak said:

4K and 8GB VRAM even in P3Dv5 is not enough considering relatively high graphic settings (high not ultra, so no all sliders to the right). On 11GB VRAM around Madrid and famous LatinVFR LEMD scenery I was managed to run out of VRAM (on 11GB 2080Ti).

But P3Dv5 is not a big deal, X-Plane 11 can even take > 20GB VRAM on 4K high detailed sceneries (what I see now on RTX3090).

That's exactly why I said 4k makes no sense with 8 GB VRam. I have a RTX 3090 and also 4k (P3D V5.1), here are some Airport Scenery quite 9 to 12 GB VRAM in use. 

How some can say 4k with 8 GB is enough I can not understand. May be that with quite down screwed settings the 8 GB are enough, but would you like to use 4 K resolution with low settings? 

From my own experience, I can't advise anyone to try a 4K setting with 8 GB VRAM. In the long run, the OOM is unavoidable.

There will be settings where 8 GB VRAM is enough, but sorrry then I don't need 4k resolution.

[Ray Proudfoot]

6 hours ago, Rene Schlischka said:

How some can say 4k with 8 GB is enough I can not understand

I’m not recommending that combo but there are some who would willingly sacrifice scenery complexity for the extra sharpness of cockpit instruments that 4K brings.

[Fraser Gale]

I think we also have to remember that economics come into play at times.  Some people make do with lower visuals and lower spec graphics cards/monitors because it’s about flying, not the eye-candy, plus the ever upgrading of hardware at times becomes ridiculous - in my opinion.  I sometimes wish software could be made to use less resources rather than requiring people to upgrade hardware in order to use it.

I too am looking at new monitors but I doubt I’ll have the money to buy two new monitors (I fly one as outside view/VC and the other as 2D panel) and upgrade the graphics card to run in 4K from the moment I buy them.

Sometimes compromises have to be made. 

[Filip Nowak]

10 hours ago, Rene Schlischka said:

That's exactly why I said 4k makes no sense with 8 GB VRam. I have a RTX 3090 and also 4k (P3D V5.1), here are some Airport Scenery quite 9 to 12 GB VRAM in use. 

How some can say 4k with 8 GB is enough I can not understand. May be that with quite down screwed settings the 8 GB are enough, but would you like to use 4 K resolution with low settings? 

From my own experience, I can't advise anyone to try a 4K setting with 8 GB VRAM. In the long run, the OOM is unavoidable.

There will be settings where 8 GB VRAM is enough, but sorrry then I don't need 4k resolution.

Agree, to summary ...

1/ Buying below 4K monitor is imo totally worthless if you'll be forced to change the native resolution these days

2/ But point #1 forcing you to get > 10GB of VRAM in FLIGHTSIMS (in other games not). If you don't have enough of VRAM,you'll have to cut a lot textures, sceneries which look very very bad imo in 4K. 

I came to conclusion that beautiful looking scenery is also as much important as the plane, giving you the true immersion of the flightsim.

The main reason why I sold my 2080Ti and replaced it by RTX3090 was not the fact I needed more powerful GPU, but because I needed more VRAM in flightsims!

 

 

[Markus Burkhard]

14 hours ago, Rene Schlischka said:

How some can say 4k with 8 GB is enough I can not understand. May be that with quite down screwed settings the 8 GB are enough, but would you like to use 4 K resolution with low settings? 

Nothing is screwed in my sim, I can fly to Sim-Wings highly detailed EDDH Hamburg scenery, embedded in ORBX Germany North scenery and decorated with AI aircraft and ORBX HD Trees. All that with not more than 6 GB of VRAM useage. If I fly to Sim-Wings EGLL instead, where there's only OpenLC EU and an airport with a bit less detail but a lot more AI aircraft, I get a maximum of 5.5 GB VRAM usage. 
So it's all perfectly doable within the constraints of an 8GB card without compromise on settings.

However, I'm aware that there are airport sceneries out there where the developers refuse to do proper texture optimisation, with 4K textures everywhere, including in places where you'll simply never see them. Combine that with other resource-heavy stuff like ORBX TrueEarth and yes I can see how 8GB VRAM can be an issue in such scenarios. So if one avoids using those few unoptimised airports out there, then 8GB cards can work just fine. Is it the preferred option? Of course not, when using P3D v5 in 4K, everyone should have 10GB or more. But there's no reason to buy a low resolution monitor just because one uses an 8GB card. After all, there are also other sims where 8GB works perfectly fine, such as MSFS or DCS.

[Sabine Meier]

yes. devs have to really optimize their addons for the sim now which isnt soemthing they all want todo.

[Maxime Guy]

So, made the jump today and went for a 4K monitor.

Been testing VRAM in different scenarios. Flew to MK Studios Dublin to DD Liverpool and back got a max VRAM of 5.8 and that’s without changing any settings to what I had before.

and second flight from MK LEPA to Gaya LOWW maximum of 6gb VRAM. 

All of that with Orbx Base + Open LC EU.

 

 

[Ray Proudfoot]

@Maxime Guy, if you have PILOT’S Alicante try that. My VRAM goes very high there.

[Maxime Guy]

7 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

@Maxime Guy, if you have PILOT’S Alicante try that. My VRAM goes very high there.

I don’t have it unfortunately. Considered buying it a few weeks back, seemed over priced from what I saw of it.

[Ray Proudfoot]

9 minutes ago, Maxime Guy said:

I don’t have it unfortunately. Considered buying it a few weeks back, seemed over priced from what I saw of it.

I don’t recall the price I paid which suggests it wasn’t too much. Very nicely done airport.

[Markus Burkhard]

16 hours ago, Maxime Guy said:

I don’t have it unfortunately. Considered buying it a few weeks back, seemed over priced from what I saw of it.

That's one of the airports where unfortunately VRAM usage is much higher compared to other add-on airports of similar size. I suggest you avoid this one until you can upgrade your GPU.

[phil highton]

16 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

@Maxime Guy, if you have PILOT’S Alicante try that. My VRAM goes very high there.

Indeed, very high

[Daniel Jaffe]

Good timing on this thread!  I've got an older Dell 34-inch monitor 3440x1440 locked at 60Hz.  Decided to get a bit more screen (for work too) and moving up to the Dell (Alienware) 38-inch 3840x1600 (similar to Markus). I've got an AMD 6900xt, and would be interested to hear about settings you might be using with P3D 5.1 and the AMD Radeon software.  I'm also considering moving to a 3090 and putting the 6900xt in a different work computer.

Oh, and I'm new to P3d.  Drawn by the FSLabs A320.

[Filip Nowak]

2 hours ago, Daniel Jaffe said:

Good timing on this thread!  I've got an older Dell 34-inch monitor 3440x1440 locked at 60Hz.  Decided to get a bit more screen (for work too) and moving up to the Dell (Alienware) 38-inch 3840x1600 (similar to Markus). I've got an AMD 6900xt, and would be interested to hear about settings you might be using with P3D 5.1 and the AMD Radeon software.  I'm also considering moving to a 3090 and putting the 6900xt in a different work computer.

Oh, and I'm new to P3d.  Drawn by the FSLabs A320.

I was also this guy who bought P3D only because of FSLabs A320 initially flying 800h on X-Plane 11 ...

Still using both, but Airbus flying in 80% is FSLabs and Prepar3D. No other Airbus can even "try" to match with FSLabs ...

[Filip Nowak]

On 4/19/2021 at 12:07 AM, Ray Proudfoot said:

@Maxime Guy, if you have PILOT’S Alicante try that. My VRAM goes very high there.

Try 4096x4096 textures on LatinVFR LEMD with PBR ...

[Daniel Jaffe]

2 hours ago, Filip Nowak said:

I was also this guy who bought P3D only because of FSLabs A320 initially flying 800h on X-Plane 11 ...

Still using both, but Airbus flying in 80% is FSLabs and Prepar3D. No other Airbus can even "try" to match with FSLabs ...

Sounds reasonable to me! 

[Ray Proudfoot]

7 hours ago, Filip Nowak said:

Try 4096x4096 textures on LatinVFR LEMD with PBR ...

Will do.

[Ray Proudfoot]

On 4/20/2021 at 12:29 AM, Filip Nowak said:

Try 4096x4096 textures on LatinVFR LEMD with PBR ...

Using the Vertx Diamond DA-62 at SimWings Madrid Professional with 4K textures I see 6.8Gb for VRAM and 13.9Gb for RAM. Not sure if it has PBR.

[Markus Burkhard]

10 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Using the Vertx Diamond DA-62 at SimWings Madrid Professional with 4K textures I see 6.8Gb for VRAM and 13.9Gb for RAM. Not sure if it has PBR.

Sim-Wings are usually exceptionally well optimised for VRAM usage so I'd say it's quite different to the one available from LatinVFR.

[Sabine Meier]

the latinvfr stuff is worse. you cannot enable KFLL and KMIA together or you will CTD.

[Filip Nowak]

On 4/22/2021 at 1:48 PM, Ray Proudfoot said:

Using the Vertx Diamond DA-62 at SimWings Madrid Professional with 4K textures I see 6.8Gb for VRAM and 13.9Gb for RAM. Not sure if it has PBR.

Not SimWings Madrid, but LatinVFR with PBR option and 4K resolution 3840x2160. You should exceed 11Gb of VRAM.

[Ray Proudfoot]

3 minutes ago, Filip Nowak said:

Not SimWings Madrid, but LatinVFR with PBR option and 4K resolution 3840x2160. You should exceed 11Gb of VRAM.

I don’t own the LatinVFR Madrid but I do have other LVFR airports. I’ll post my findings tomorrow.

[Filip Nowak]

1 minute ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

I don’t own the LatinVFR Madrid but I do have other LVFR airports. I’ll post my findings tomorrow.

So LatinVFR KMIA with PBR might be good as well + Orbx TrueEarth Florida in 4K ...