FLIGHT BLOG #21 - Using Process Lasso

This one is for you Robert and anyone else that might be suffering from getting Prepar3D to run properly on your system. It's all in the balance of the Force aka CPU/GPU combo. To help us get this balance we turn to a wonderful program called Process Lasso which can be downloaded for free from here: https://bitsum.com/processlasso/

If you like it consider buying the full version.

Here is a explanation of how I setup my Prepar3D using this tool. Hope this helps out. It's not 100% fool proof but it has given me far more enjoyable flights than I've ever had in the fast. Process Lasso can be used with FSX as well.

ADD-ONS USED:
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AIRCRAFT
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Default

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SCENERY
=============
ORBX FTX Global

=============
AIRPORTS
=============
My Photoreal KAMA-Amarillo Project

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UTILITIES
=============
PROCESS LASSO

----------------------------------------­-------------------------------------
SYSTEM SPECS:
==============
i7 3930k 6 Core @ 4.4GHZ
ASUS Sabertooth X79 Mobo
ASUS GTX 770 OC II 2gig DDR5
32gigs G.Skill 1866mhz RipJaw RAM
3x24" ASUS Monitors
Saitek X65F with Combat Rudder Pedals
Win 7 64-Bit Pro

CFG TWEAKS
===========
TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=80
TextureMaxLoad=30
FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION=0.01 (Less time loading textures, more time processing avionics please! No blurries on P3D!)

---

Closed Caption:

hello you two the captain caveman here
coming at you with a quick video one of
my viewers Robert is having some trouble
getting his prepared 3d running as
smoothly as he would like it to on his
hardware so I'm going to help him out
here he is using a program or trying to
use a program that I swear by called
process lasso I've mentioned it another
flight videos of mine and I'm going to
show you
pilots out there how this works this is
prepared version 2.4 was pretty much all
the bells and whistles turned up max
except for origin auto Gentry's and
buildings are set to normal my scenery
complexity is maxed and we are currently
running active sky whether the
background here with Rex for direct soft
clouds on a pretty much almost
completely overcast day / amarillo today
we are rich husband international this
is a photo real airport that i'm working
on and I'm quite pleased with it so far
it's my first attempt at doing an
airport and I'm learned a lot here over
the last two weeks so open to release
this here in about a week I'm working on
the photo real textures right now but
anyway that's a whole other story
so we're sitting here in the general
aviation parking area in a relatively
moderately high in aircraft here this
money g Mooney something that whatever
i'm not going to look at the menus
it's a money using the g1000 gps system
here which is known to be quite taxing
on frame right here if you look at the
upper left hand corner you can see that
i'm currently pegged right around 30
with occasional spikes going up to
around 45 frames a second and the
simulator is well easy doc come back to
me
easy talk stop messing with me easy doc
all right
ok so anyway he's not gonna love you
just know that I love you but stop it
anyway as you can see relatively awesome
nice smooth operations going on here
today so beautiful so I how do we get
our simulation to go from 18 14 12
frames a second to over 20 and i say
over 20 that's my personal limit the
framerate drops below 20 frames second
my brain screens out this is the matrix
this isn't real
and I'm completely ruined the entire
experience and make you have a pouty
face because it's too jerky so what
we're looking for though more so than
frames per second is we're looking for a
smooth operating simulation we don't
want any stutters we don't want jerking
around while we're trying to land or
take off for a while attacking around on
the ground so that's what we're going to
attempt to do now in order to get your
simulation where it needs to be
you need to turn on a few pieces of
monitoring software because we need to
check the health of your simulator or
less so to do that we're going to use
two programs one process lasso which is
for your cpu and then whatever program
you like to you to monitor your GP or
whether that's msi afterburner or I'm
about to use aces GPU tweak just because
it's quick and simple will bring up that
monitor right now boom so there it is
right there now what you're seeing here
what you're looking for if you don't
already know its GPU usage mind right
now is sitting at eighty-one percent
which is great
that's where you want it to be you
wanted to be up in there in the high
range but not pegged out a hundred
percent because that means it's choking
and you don't want to be sitting down
there at twenty percent you know with
all the scene in front of you because
then that means your GPU isn't doing the
job that it's supposed to be doing
this is going to be a little different
for people trying to setup fsx if you're
using process lasso because fsx is
notoriously what's the word I'm looking
for
it doesn't give two rats you know what
that you have this fancy GPU because its
CPU locked the faster the cpu goes the
better the syndromes the GPU does help
out some in fsx but really it's not
optimized to do that it was made you
know ten years ago with the thought that
cpus weekend faster and faster and
faster well they haven't it pretty much
stopped it right around 4 gigahertz and
they just keeps growing more and more
and more cores into them which doesn't
help us at all in fsx because fsx is not
multi-core aware
yes you can tweak it and sort of forced
to do it but it's not the same prepared
3d here is only slightly more
multi-threaded where it still has its
problems but that's where process last
was going to come in and hopefully save
the day for us if we do everything right
so looking at this are GPU looks
fantastic that's where I wanted to be I
got heavy clouds moderate draw moderate
detail on clouds which is more than
enough I mean that looks real to me so
and i'm using a 73-mile draw distance
70-mile draw distance knowing 73-mile
draw distance with the 70-mile Hayes
barrier which gives me that realistic
look that you would normally see in real
life if you're in an airplane up around
18,000 feet so that's how I set up my
active sky next
if y'all want to go my settings and how
to do it all that I let me know in the
comments below i'll make a video about
that but onwards so let's bring up
process lasso here
well alright so if you look in the upper
corner here under cpu percentage up here
right around here you'll see that all my
bars are kind of evened out across the
way except for that one guy he's got
stuck there in the middle a little bit
little bit higher
obviously that core right there
what it's that zero 1234567 obviously my
core 7 is currently handling the
majority of the calculations inside the
simulation and that's because of things
that I have done with my prepare 3d txt
file which you can see here at the top
it's actually not running how I normally
run it actually reset it to how prepared
3d comes out-of-the-box which is using
all your cores which in actuality it's
going to hammer the crap out of this
first core nine times out of ten like
this bar will just go all the way to the
top 1% spike and then all these other
cores will be like really low
flatline we don't want to see that that
is what is affectionately known as CPU
thrashing or symptom of it
we basically don't want those bars to be
bouncing around like crazy
we kind of want them all to stay within
a certain range of each other and this
is easier said than done most of the
time now prepare 3d step one when you're
using process lasso with it
you need to come down under rules here
and we need to set up some rules for
prepared 3ds executable when you set
these rules they are permanently stored
in here
alright you just have to have process
lasso running which by default when you
first install it it's going to make it
so that it boots up when you turn on
your computer so process last should
always be running in the background
doing its own thing so when you go to
roles here you can right-click here
under the rules for whatever program it
is you want to lasso and we're going to
go down to cpu affinity and we're gonna
go to always select cpu affinity now as
you can see here all my courses are
currently banging away I've got 0
through 11 so I got 12 cores because i
have a 3930k processor which has six
physical cores and hyper things turned
on which gives me a total of twelve
logical course so cpu
now I found that on my set up this was a
lot of trial and error and a lot of
helpful hints and tips from the boys
over at absent but cpu 0 is windows
windows does everything it can on that
cpu anything having to do with the
operating system goes in there so every
call that has to do every little dll
file that needs to link to all the mumbo
jumbo the fancy programming stuff
however you want to call it goes onto
that Court so I don't use that core
automatically don't use that core I
don't want to use the core next to it
either because that's the hyper threaded
cord so we got rid of that
now me personally because prepare 3d
really only cares about two to three
cores for if you're lucky i only want to
really use for logical course total so
on my system i shut off number two and
number three also
and here's where it really is just trial
and error you need to find the combo
that works best for you
so try using just four cores whether the
physical or the hyper threaded ones
until this bar over here if you have a
spike and make sure you do this while
the simulations running by the way
excuse me a second i have to take a
drink
be sure you have this up and running
while you're while the simulation is
running um let me rephrase that
be sure the simulations running while
you're doing process last night because
you need to see what the CPUs doing in
real time
the goal is not to have any of these
bars at a hundred percent because that
means you are just pounding your cpu to
death they can't do no more
so either the video card is going to
have to sit there and wait for the cpu
to free up instructions or if the GPU is
at a hundred percent but the CPUs . then
the CPU has to wait for the GPU before
it will take any more data like i said
that right
I don't know
it's the drugs i've had the flu 45 days
so i apologize if my brain isn't working
a hundred percent but anyway on my
system
let's just show you what my system looks
like seven eighths off
but seven
c11 9750 that's normally how my system
runs and when you click OK you'll see
that the rules have changed so now it
says 57 911 and you'll see here i got
these cores right here kind of evened
out a little bit and these are really
the ones I care about these right here
other processes running in the
background because I got all kinds of
crap open right now I got photoshop open
and airport design editor is open all
kinds of crap so can I should probably
shut everything down before I started
this you can get a better representation
but anyway that's the way we want it to
look
so that's step one once you find that
sweet spot in process lasso the one that
makes all your cpu bars kind of even out
together
you're onto something that's that's
probably going to be your affinity mask
now the nice thing is you don't have to
go into your CFG file and actually put
in the affinity mask entry it's not
required when you have process lesson
take a look there for a second there if
you're if you're looking up here for a
second there all the course died out
except for the for better for the
simulation on the right side there goes
against it
see how just those four cores are active
right now plus one to the left but once
again that's the operating system doing
other stuff so we're only interested in
those those four on the right suit
we know which ones doing the main
simulation that one that's higher than
the rest
this little guy right here is the main
simulation load which is a think that's
number seven
so this is 57 this is nine and this is
11
spike
that was a processor thrash and you can
see that right there we want to avoid
that I don't know why I did that I
haven't rebooted my system about three
weeks either so once again I probably
shouldn't do that before i started
making the video but i'm trying to do
this as quickly as possible and we're
already at 12 minutes so if this red
graph is going up down up down up down
up down up down up down your cpu
thrashing you need to get rid of that it
needs to be smooth like this with just
little tiny hills and valleys in here
just little tiny guys you don't want the
big ones going up down up down up down
it's doing that you screwed your
simulation is not gonna run with the
crap that's going to be jerky got a
stutter it's going to do all kinds of
crazy stuff up .
pro tip number two when using process
lasso once you have figured out which
cores are the best for simulation you
need to go down this list every single
thing in this list and you need to set
rules for all of it and push it away
from those cores that prepare 3d is
using you'll notice here active sky next
only uses course 0 through 4 you'll
notice earlier i set up a rule use five
seven nine and eleven only so i have
isolated active sky next which is what
you're seeing here this is all active
sky next pounding away on those chords
right there if I hadn't done that active
sky next would be transferring its stuff
on top of this stuff so my cpu load be
more prepared 3d wouldn't have so much
overhead to work with it would be
throttled if you will so we did that
easy doc here I easy doc add-on it uses
course 0 through three virtual
protection 03
profiler my joystick joystick doesn't
require a lot of power so i told it only
use Korres 0 and 1 so on and so forth
and you just keep going down the list
until you've isolated prepare 3d on the
cores that are working the best for your
system and there's active sky next
active sky next is the only add-on I run
that makes process lazo do not let me
try that again in english that makes
process lasso do what's called a
processor straight if it sees that one
of your processes is starting to get out
of hand and requesting too much
resources process lasso as its name says
goes out and pulls it back in and keeps
it from getting out of hand and taking
away valuable resources from the other
two software running on here I don't
know why I acted sky next spikes like
that i think it spikes like that
whenever it starts downloading new
weather but i haven't actually set
monitor it so that's pretty much all
there is to it
find the cores that are the sweet spot
that evens out your cpu up here and
makes this red line kind of flat line a
little bit find out what does that and
then take all the rest of your processes
running here as you can see here i mean
i got a bunch running right now because
I have rebooted in like forever and I'm
you know working on airports and stuff
so I have a lot of tools open but once
you do that
push all the other tools away all the
other add-ons that you have running this
is why when you do this when you do this
the first time you need to turn on every
single a dog
loading your most bad-to-the-bone
payware aircraft that causes you the
most resource drain load every single ad
on that you're going to use load in a
pay where airport loaded all in you need
a worst-case scenario loaded in to the
simulation when you start doing this
process lasso setup and that's really
all there is to it once you do all that
everything should be good to go and you
should have what you're seeing on my
screen here
nice GPU it's nice and even here it's
got a little bit more Headroom so if the
graphics engine in prepared 3d needs to
throw some more at the at the GPU it's
got some more it's got another
twenty-two percent that it can work with
before it starts getting trashed
you know and the CPUs here they've got
you know at least fifty percent more
Headroom for calculating complex
avionics and stuff like that before
trash is out now as I said earlier this
is not a hundred percent foolproof I
still get into situations where my
framerate starts to get down into the
very low twenties but my simulation
remains smooth and that ladies and
gentlemen is what you are looking for i
don't care if your video card can play
battlefield 27 at 500 frames a second
this ain't battlefield the st. Skyrim
this is a hardcore simulation that
requires a ton of physics calculations
and a ton of read Rawls to the graphics
card constantly all the time so you got
to get this right or else you can just
have a digital experience you're gonna
get those twelve to eighteen frame spots
that just drive me insane when I was in
my FSS today's that's the best I could
get mpegs 737 ngx for a long time I beat
my head on the desk forever until
thankfully Steve came out with the
directx 10 fixture which unlocked our
beautiful world for me but I just got
tired of it still crashing all the time
and just quit flying for months and
finally prepared 3d got to version 2.2
and I decided to give it a try and put a
happy camper since 2.2 so there we are
so why don't we for the last couple
minutes here and seven minutes we'll try
to make this video cut off here 25
minutes lets taxi out onto the active
runway and take a look at what I've done
so far
yes sure sure captain caveman we want to
ride along with you
awesome i thought you might alright lets
taxi to the active here
I do to do to do it do
yes amarillo is this desolate in real
life
there's like nothing there's nothing
around this airport but tumbleweeds and
dirt
a red i believe the active runway is
number 22 which is to the right we got
to travel down taxiway Papa here
and at that Iran
once i get the photo real all cleaned up
and blend it in with the surrounding
terrain like I wanted then i'm going to
attempt my first ever 3d modeling I want
to make the actual new terminal that her
husband international here in amaral has
very modern very chic with glass jetways
and all that good stuff so i should be a
learning experience
red lets taxi out to the active runway
as you can see off to the right there is
a bunch of jetways but there's no
terminal so that's where the terminal
will go
we saved the best for last
the rest of these buildings are just
stock scenery that I had placed using
satellite imagery in airport design
editor
all my taxi signs are accurately placed
by real-world GPS coordinates that was a
lot of fun learning how to do all that
this Airport only has two runways number
22 / 4 is the main it's over 13,000 feet
long and then there's the smaller
general aviation runway that's like
7,500 feet long both are concrete you
can see the tower
is actually nowhere near the terminal
area it's off to the left over by those
old hangars that aren't used anymore
taxi taxi taxi
I'm a speed demon on the taxiway here
when we got there that's charlie
we are on papa alright we gotta go down
until we reach kilo
here's the main maintenance hangars
I actually find out i'm decent 3d
modeling i'll probably revisit this
airport and put custom hangers and stuff
everywhere like it's supposed to be
I chose to do this airport because I 5%
with Southwest Airlines about we go
English again and I was looking for all
the latest update and Afghans for every
Airport that southwest flies to and the
absolute library had nothing for
amarillo saw is like you know what I've
been wanting to try out making an
airport so let's start with amarillo
it's pretty simple this area off to my
right is my proudest products place i
spent a lot of time detailing that
that's the fire station
with parking lots of firetrucks all the
other good stuff
Rover alright almost here will take off
circle airport once and
bring her back to home
alright kilo is coming up on the left
all right here we go
right flaps to take off position
one more right
yeah
doo-doo-doo
and here's turn on two kilo
I don't add up that banana and at that
they're amarillo towered issues November
612 Oscar papa whiskey cocktail Lima
Charlie left up da we're ready for
takeoff
runway 22 coming up ahead of us
these planes to sit low to the ground
man when you start doing
20 knots along the ground it looks like
you're hauling but compared to like a
big jetliner alright
612 popper taking the active runway 22
and we're just going to do a rolling
departure hear aright prop pitched full
mixture is good all right let's open her
up take her to the sky blue
happy little crap
i think i got my trip will set if not
we're gonna find out hardly
alright
62 knots
the cross when they're and gum i'm
applying a lot of running here
alright let's
airborne taken off into the wind
positive rate Europe
center that runner who look at that wind
coming in hard from the right
last one
member trim for climbing
flaps up full
level off here and
2a
left turn over
over the stuff I've done here
so that's the Bell Helicopter production
plant down there
see all the heel pads there's actually
some teleconference down there
there's already people parking
had a little bit of star there
probably because once again my sister
resources are a little
little tax with all the
loading and unloading of the simulation
I've been doing let's get a closer look
at the
fire station here without running into
any like
our year
photoreal looking good
let's do some things we're not supposed
to do in this particular airplane
Oh watch out you're gonna start
looking good i did notice after i got
the photo real scenery in my runway 13
is slightly off
no I'm gonna have to make adjustments in
the Afghan file to get that runway
exactly where it needs to be
here's a the Amarillo fire departments
training facility that I painstakingly
recreated with as much custom well stock
footage is it could I think I did a
pretty good job on that
all right let's bring her home here
full
turned a little too much there
you're out
Landing flaps Floyd do not attempt this
kind of sloppy landing at home ladies
and gentlemen
where she is
whoa
she wants to climb
I say nay to your climbing once
Tower I'm landing and I don't really
care
yeah it yeah she tips trip
get on the ground your beast
ergo one will bounce
. on the runway
because I'm crazy like that
alright let you go Robert I hope you're
able to sort out your problems if not
let me know if you make any improvements
let me know just whatever the status let
me know and i hope this helps out
anybody else that needs it until next
time captain caveman signing off
i love i love you amaryllis i love you
yeah
yeah
yeah
yeah