Low framerate when viewing the Super Cub externally

[xen_steda]

Hello, for some reason when I fly the Super Cub that is available in the default hangar the performance in the cockpit view is much better (nice and smooth) than the external view. When viewing the plane using the Helicopter View Flightgear becomes super choppy and unplayable.

I would like to be able to watch my replay after a flight but right now the low frame rate makes this impossible.

When flying other planes this does not happen, just the Super Cub which is terrible because this is my preferred flyer.

Is this a known issue and is there anything I can do short of getting a more powerful computer?

I'm running a laptop with:

Dualcore i5 2.8 CPU with intel hd graphics 4000, 8GB RAM, 128SSD at 1366x768 resolution. I usually get 20fps when flying the Super Cub in the cockpit which is doable for me. And I have disabled AI traffic and am using the default renderer with ALS enabled. Flightgear v2019.1.1.

Thanks for any help!

[wlbragg]

Can you try a few things and report back?
Disable shadow
Set model shared at low setting
Shut off all selectable adhanced system in the Cub GUI
Does the J3Cub perform the same.
There may not be anything you can do, but I am curious if any of this helps.
If not, you could potentially split the Cub and SuperCub into stand alone aircraft. That may help performance.

[xen_steda]

Can you try a few things and report back?
Disable shadow
Set model shared at low setting
Shut off all selectable adhanced system in the Cub GUI
Does the J3Cub perform the same.
There may not be anything you can do, but I am curious if any of this helps.
If not, you could potentially split the Cub and SuperCub into stand alone aircraft. That may help performance.

Hi thanks for the tips, I will try them and let you know. By splitting the aircraft into separate ones do you mean like going into the aircraft directory and taking out the Super Cub stuff to put in a new folder?

[xen_steda]

Can you try a few things and report back?
Disable shadow
Set model shared at low setting
Shut off all selectable adhanced system in the Cub GUI
Does the J3Cub perform the same.
There may not be anything you can do, but I am curious if any of this helps.
If not, you could potentially split the Cub and SuperCub into stand alone aircraft. That may help performance.

Ok so I tried the J-3 Cub, same thing as the Super Cub. I turned of the shadows, no effect of choppiness. Model shader was already set to Lowest possible setting. Where can I shut all selectable advanced systems in the cub GUI? I'm also interested in the possibility of splitting the Super Cub from the J3 Cub, I'm just not sure how to do that. Any idea?

[wlbragg]

Where can I shut all selectable advanced systems in the cub GUI?

My mistake, I was confusing some of the options in the c172p.

Unfortunately there may not be many alternatives to your issue on that laptop. I think the majority of your problem is probably your laptop graphic card. i5 should be enough but I suspect the card being a bottle neck. I also am not sure about splitting out just the PA-18 portion. I don't think that is necessarily going to help you either. It would be nice if you could identify exactly what being in the exterior view is doing to cause such a slowdown. You could test by calling a different model and/or different textures than what comes with this aircraft.
For example, use the c172p model and texture and see if it fixes the issue (identify what exactly is the bottle neck).
If you don't have the skill set to do that I might be able to set up a test, but not immediately.

[xen_steda]

You could test by calling a different model and/or different textures than what comes with this aircraft.
For example, use the c172p model and texture and see if it fixes the issue (identify what exactly is the bottle neck).
If you don't have the skill set to do that I might be able to set up a test, but not immediately.

Hmm, I'm no tech guru by any stretch sadly. I picked up Flightgear mainly to familiarize myself with the controls of a shortlist of planes, including the Super Cub in particular. If you eventually do any testing I would be happy to know the results. Luckily the cockpit view is fine and all the other planes work in all views. I can't be too picky about it.

[wlbragg]

Do you know how to use GIT to pull an aircraft from a git repository?

[xen_steda]

Do you know how to use GIT to pull an aircraft from a git repository?

In my linux days I would do the git clone thing but I'm on Windows 10 due to work related software. If you mean download the .zip file, yeah I can do that.

[wlbragg]

OK, try this if you want to test the texture and see if it makes a huge difference.

https://github.com/wlbragg/J3Cub/tree/lite

You can get a zip from the repository above of the "lite" branch, link should take you right there.

All this is is a different texture applied to the aircraft and the livery for it as well. It'll look bad as it is a texture that isn't made for this aircraft, it is for the c172p. I'm really curious if it makes any difference at all for you. I doubt it, but it's worth a try.

[xen_steda]

https://imgur.com/a/cd6nInc
I don't think you want it to look like that right? I put the extracted folder in the directory that is linked to my other manually added aircraft. I wll say the frame rate is amazing like that xD

[wlbragg]

https://imgur.com/a/cd6nInc
I don't think you want it to look like that right?

Right, i was using a texture you say works OK on your machine. The Cub and the c172p are really similar in the guts, so if the c172p works well, why not the Cub. I am guessing it's the texture. I used the applied the c172p texture sheet to the Cub, yes, I expected it to look bad. It was a test.
So are you saying that fixed your frame rate?

[wlbragg]

If that actually worked and made it better then try to pull it again (same branch). I changed the original Cub texture sheet size to half of what it was. You may not have enough video ram to fit the entire original 4096X sheet.
Let me know if this works and you are happy with the resolution of the exterior model.

[xen_steda]

Let me know if this works

So it is very possible this does improve the framerate but in my lack of familiarity with Flightgear directories makes me think that I am installing the new "lite" aircraft wrong because it is just a very low poly wooden block looking model where the plane should be.

If I were to install the lite version from the branch you created, where do I put it? I have been extracting it into the Flightgear directory that is in the Documents folder. I got the Sopwith Camel-bombable version to install fine by placing the extracted folder into the same directory that I put the lite C3 in.

I also wanted to say however this turns out, you did an amazing job on this plane, it's really great looking.

[wkitty42]

So it is very possible this does improve the framerate but in my lack of familiarity with Flightgear directories makes me think that I am installing the new "lite" aircraft wrong because it is just a very low poly wooden block looking model where the plane should be.

if you grabbed a zip file from the repository, make sure you rename the extracted directory to remove "-master"...

[wlbragg]

In this case it is installing as J3Cub-Lite/all-files-and-folders.

It needs to be either

J3Cub-lite/J3Cub/all-files-and-folders and point the launcher list to J3Cub-lite

or rename J3Cub-lite to J3Cub/all-files-and-folders