Is X-Plane multi-core software?

Pardon my incorrect terminology, is X-Plane taking advantage of multiple cores?

I am an FSX user, which is as we all know a single-core application. X-Plane on the other hand is at constant evolution, so logically I would think it is a multi-core software with fps performance issue is NOT being an issue, correct?

I have never heard however about X-Plane being a fps-issueless software. Please clarify.

Pardon my incorrect terminology, is X-Plane taking advantage of multiple cores?

I am an FSX user, which is as we all know a single-core application. X-Plane on the other hand is at constant evolution, so logically I would think it is a multi-core software with fps performance issue is NOT being an issue, correct?

I have never heard however about X-Plane being a fps-issueless software. Please clarify.

 

Hi Aexzar14,

 

To answer your question; yes it is.

 

It's also 64bit, which means it will use as much memory as you can throw at it;)

 

Happy flying!!

 

Dom

It is my understanding that X-Plane will use all the cores you have - mainly to handle AI aircraft. It is still largely (but not entirely) CPU-bound for framerate speed. Consequently, you are better off with a fast 4-core CPU than a slower octacore. The new Intel Haswell CPU's are hyperthreaded to 8 cores but most of these programs are not able to utilize hyperthreading efficiently. I hope someone will clarify that.

Thanks guys that's understood now.

Why not let Ben Supnik (the engine developer) answer this himself:

http://developer.x-plane.com/2010/08/multicore-and-version-10/

Good link, but not very definitive answers since it was written during, not after, development of XP10, and the hardware was 2010 vintage. He is also careful not to recommend specific CPUs, address the results of hyperthreading, or commit himself to the better of speed vs. number of cores. It does answer the question of more cores being utilized if they are there.

 

I have an extremely fast system that I just built. I do see a few pauses during flight in which it is obvious that textures are being loaded. My XP10 is loaded onto an extremely fast Seagate 4TB hybrid drive with 64GB of cache, running on an Asus Maximum VII Hero ROG motherboard with SATA3 6GB data transfer. Even combined with a 4GB nVidia GTX 970 superclocked VRAM card, the data is not always able to load the CPU smoothly on rare occasion. I'm using the HD mesh V2 which is much more dense than the default mesh, and I have SkyMaxx Pro and UrbanMaxx installed, both of which are spooled up toward the high end. In normal flight over London (for example), in heavy clouds, I'm getting somewhere around 45fps with about 22% CPU and 22% GPU usage shown, yet there is a loading pause on rare occasion. My CPU is an Intel 4790K with 4 cores, (8 cores hyperthreaded) and HTing is not turned off. This is a rig that generates over 450fps in FSX under light clouds and sparse scenery with default textures.

 

I suspect the occasional pauses over very dense scenery with heavy clouds is due to data transfer, not CPU/GPU limitations. I know that cloud settings, especially cloud draw distance in SkyMaxx settings and scenery draw distance in XP10 settings are killers.

 

Bottom line is that no matter what you have, you can, with the right settings, bring any computer down to 20's for fps or lower. My 4 cores do not seem to be helping load scenery from my fast HDs. I could put everything on my SSHD, but that's reserved for the OS, and the slight pauses over extremely dense scenery/clouds is not a problem. I've never had anything but smooth flying with prop planes at low levels and low speeds., and never had a glitch during final with slower plane speeds on approach.

Hello,

 

in x-plane there are standardized frame rate tests to assess the performance of a hardware setup.

I ran some of these tests and at the same time I ran process Explorer:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

which showed following figures for CPU, and GPU utilization.

The peaks at the beginning are from the initializing and mainly from loading the scenery, which is asynchously done by all cores.

From there you can see, that at flighttime almost all the work is done by core3.

May System is an i7-2600K @4,3 GHz, 8 GB od DDR3 Memory and the graphic Card is a AMD 6970 with 2 GB of DDR5 Memory.

I hope, this sheds some light on your discussion.

 

Dscho