MSI Z370-A PRO mobo

Intel i5-8600K @ 3.6GHz

Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 2666MHz

Samsung SSD 860 QVO 1TB

Nvidia GTX 1070 8GB GDDR5

Dell S2716DG monitor @2176 x 1224, 144Hz rr (WOFF looks gorgeous at this resolution. Videos don't do it justice).



Not exactly top of the line. There's more to all this than horsepower, although raw power doesn't hurt I suspect I think it's about balancing every aspect of the system in an optimal way. That includes WOFF workshop settings.

I'm happy to discuss more of this with you via PMs. Frankly, I'm tired of trying to help people publicly and constantly having my threads hijacked. Too bad really.

Since this is now the stickied Track-IR thread, I know I would find it useful if people could post some good profiles or links to them and maybe HarryH would be kind enough to edit them into a section in the first post. I am always looking for a better profile!

Sure, no problem. I'll put my current profile up there to kick things off...

Hi Harry,

Hope you are doing well in the New Year! I haven't had much time to chime in on the boards lately - RL is as busy as ever and it seems my flying time was scant over the last six months. I wanted to post, however, to thank you for all of your efforts in smoothing out WOFF. I tried applying your settings for TrackIR, as well as your workshop settings in WOFF:PE. Our system specs are pretty similar except for video cards and monitors, which you are leading on

Dropping the roll rates down to 0 in TrackIR seems to help, but for me, and I think this is the case since we are running nearly identical processors, is getting TrackIR off of Core 0. Once it's not fighting with CFS3, the head panning works much better. I'm not seeing a huge difference between Realtime processing or leaving it be, but moving it away from competing cores is huge - at least with this chip set. The other change that's had a massive impact are your workshop settings. I copied them verbatim and I notice a MASSIVE improvement in the sim's smoothness. I am no longer getting any hangups looking around in sim. Pausing the sim on startup and then panning around a few times with the exterior camera loads everything up nicely and from there, it's been smooth sailing, even in 1918 with medium air activity.

I think the biggest difference between your approach and what I've tried is that you are willing to drop the graphics back further than you think they need to go. That leaves a bit of a buffer so that when the sim gets busy there's enough slack left in the engine and the computer's hardware to keep things going smoothly.

Can't thank you enough. I'm also doubly impressed that you managed this with no mods, no editors, and no outside help. This is an extremely solid baseline, especially if you are running in the 3.6ghz range of processors.

Cheers Harry!

Excellent! You are most welcome, and it's great to get the feedback that this stuff has helped you. Props to RAF Louvert who originally tipped me off the the CPU 0 thing.

Yes the detail settings are a useful dial to help balance performance. The other one is air activity. I'm very glad you've taken the time to experiment and find some improvements for yourself.

Cheers!

HarryH,

Thanks for all your work here and for the awesome TrackIR Guide.

I have a 4 core i5-6600K and wanted to run TrackIR on cores 3 & 4 but couldn't make it work.
I was having some difficulty understanding the whole core and hexidecimal number thing for the Core affinity shortcut you describe above until I stumbled on this site. Perhaps it will be useful to others.

https://www.eightforums.com/threads/cpu-affinity-shortcut-for-a-program-create-in-windows.40339/

What helped me get the info through my thick skull was the visual below: (apologies for the absurdly large graphics)



Just below on the same web page is a link to a Binary/Decimal/Hexidecimal converter. I've put my config in the graphic, which spat back the Hex number 'C'




I also experimented with running TrackIR on Cores 4,3,2. Entering "1110" gave the Hex number "E"

Best Regards,

epower

Thanks, epower! I hope it's helping you run WOFF with TrackIR better. Thanks for the info.

In a moment of unimaginable genius I unpinned my modified TrackIR shortcut from the taskbar.

Following Robert Wiggins' excellent instructions on page 2 of this thread, I could get the Priority to stick but not CPU affinity.

Running as administrator solved the problem. Under advanced in the Shortcut properties.

Hi Robert, and everyone: I am trying to get my TrackIR shortcut to set "priority" and "affinity" as Robert Wiggins explained in his post at the bottom of the first page. I have changed the target string to ...

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /C START "TrackIR5" /high /affinity 4 "C:\Program Files (x86)\NaturalPoint\TrackIR5\TrackIR5.exe"

TrackIR starts fine ... so far so good. When I go into Task Manager and check the details on my TrackIR.exe, the priority is set to 'High" (as expected, great!). But when I enter the 'set affinity' menu it shows all 10 cores checked off. I tried it with affinity 4, affinity 04 (zero-four, hexidecimal for cpu core 2), and affinity 38 (hexidecimal for cores 4+5+6). Same result.

Any suggestions as to what I might be doing wrong?

Cheers!

Edit: Just saw epowers post above, so I set the shortcut to 'run as administrator" in the advanced settings. Still no luck.

Scout,

Check out my post from 6 April above and the binary to Hexadecimal converter linked there.
If you have a 10 cores and want to put TrackIR on cores 4,5 & 6 your binary number is 0001110000 which converts to a hexadecimal value of 70.

Hello,

First thing to consider is that, almost always, computer stuff starts counting things at zero, not one. Zero is a number, it has value. In computers, having 'nothing' and having 'zero' is not the same thing. This is why 77_Scout comes up with 38h instead of 70h - there's a place being dropped.

Also, Windows has a calculator built in (you probably know already), but it does hex, binary, and other numbering systems...the diagram below shows how it works:

Calc menu View > Programmer
Radio button group middle left > Bin
Input the number you want converted, starting at zero (R>L) for first core (in this case 1110000)
Radio button middle left > Hex (number displayed is changed to hex; in this case 70)

Hope this helps.

Thanks, KK. Didn't know that about the Windows calculator.

Glad if it helps. There are also other options, including a Data Conversion mode that I use a lot (standard>metric, Fahrenheit>Celsius, etc). Fairly handy. The Scientific view has trig functions, log, etc.

Hopefully the attached screenshot will show how I got hex 38 for the cpu affinity setting.

Regardless, I have tried several different numbers, including Roberts very simple example of '4', and it seems to have no effect.

Yes - in that example, it is Core 3,4,5 (as opposed to 4,5,6). 3,4,5 = hex 38, which is what you entered in that calculator (as shown in your screen shot).

However, in the post above, you actually wrote "hexidecimal for cores 4+5+6", and that's why epower (and I) read and converted it to 70h. That's why I made the point about starting at zero, not one. If you drop a place at the Least Significant Digit (specifying cores 3,4,5 instead of 4,5,6) then what should be 70 winds up being 38.

I think what you meant is the "fourth, fifth, and sixth" cores - which is actually cores 3,4,5 and isn't the same thing as saying "Core 4+5+6" (which, of course, would be the fifth, sixth, and seventh cores). Not trying to nitpick, but In this case, it matters, because...well, because getting this detail wrong means you get 38 not 70

I hope I'm explaining this OK.

As to why it's not working otherwise, I couldn't comment. I've never found it necessary to change the Windows priority for TrackIR (certainly not as a means to correct stutter in WOFF). Just saw this about the hex/bin conversion, and thought I'd pitch in.

Thanks! Yes, I was a bit off with my counting/labeling.

I have noticed that the affinity menu in my Task Manager shows 12 processors (0 thru 11). My cpu only has 6 cores, but 12 threads, so I guess these are actually threads shown. Perhaps that affects how the affinity value must be entered in the TrackIR target string?

The 12 represents the number of what are called logical cores (as opposed to the 6 physical cores you have). Yes, as you said, this is about threads (which, logically, is how your machine 'sees' the CPU) vs physical parts of the actual silicon die (chip) in your CPU.

They have to be considered separately because they can operate on 12 distinct operations simultaneously (or effectively near so, the the external user anyhow), which is the benefit of having more threads than cores.

TBH, I don't see a reason why 3/4/5 would work any differently than 4/5/6 (assuming you weren't explicitly trying to avoid a certain core, and assuming that specifying multiple cores for TrackIR isn't problematic - this I don't know. You did say you tried just 4, so not sure there).

Maybe try just using 0 or 1 - just as a test - I assume all you're checking is that the affinity is being reassigned as per Robert's instructions, and not whether there's a difference in the game. Is this correct? If you can get past this basic test/the command line issue, then you can re-assign as you wish as a next step.

I would also say that the command line can be very simple but it can also be very unforgiving. If there's a mistake anywhere, be it typo, a space where it shouldn't be, a number in the wrong format, a path specified wrong...all these 'syntax errors' will usually result in the command failing, but sometimes it will tell you and sometimes not (depends on the details of what part is wrong, I won't bore you with that now). I can say that every time I had trouble getting a command line to work is because I had something wrong in the way I was putting the command in.

OK, I tried using 01 as a simple test (good suggestion) and no luck.

Yep, I am looking at the 'processor affinity' check list in Task Manager to see if it changes, and all processors remain checked off no matter what I do. I am not doing any testing in-game (i.e. in WOFF) so far.

Epower says that my target string matches his exactly (except for hex C, which I also have tried now) so if I have a typo in there it is well hidden.

Thanks for all the ideas and feedback! I may have to just give up on it. TrackIR works fine 'as is' so no worries.

77_Scout;

I just noticed your post and I realize there are a multitude of threads on this topic here. I am wondering if you read my recommendations here and whether you tried it.
Here is a link to my post setting afinity permanent for an app

Hiya Robert...not at all to speak for others, but yes, that's the post he's saying he referred to, but hasn't had any luck getting it to work. TBH I haven't used it and therefore couldn't say what the problem is - maybe you can review his post earlier, and comment further. I did look over what you wrote, and what he says he's tried - they appear to be the same thing, so I'm at a loss for why it's not working for him if it works for you.

My input here is pretty much limited to how the cores are numbered, and thus how the hex-coded numbers should be specified in Windows. (Core1 is not the first core; that would be Core0 etc.) Well, that and the nifty features that few seem to know about with Windows' Calculator