Trying to tune my system to be as efficient as possible from a performance perspective and especially when flying in busy airspace or when visiting popular airports during Vatsim events, I came to think of the settings for number of aircraft and draw distance found in vPilot.
What are you guys using, the default values of 40 nm and 999 for number of aircraft or have you changed these settings?
I do want to be able to see other aircraft at a fairly long distance when flying, especially during night time when you can spot the lights of the other aircraft far out. I also want to make sure to see all aircraft around me when on the ground at an airport.
At the same time, I don’t want to use settings which are very high for no good reason. Where the aircraft being drawn might be further out than I can visually spot. In the same way, I’m thinking of reducing the number of aircraft to maybe like 25. Since I would say it’s not very often you would have more than 25 other aircraft around you. Unless there’s some crazy busy event going on.
Based on this, would love to hear what values others are using. Would also be interesting to know what is the max distance in MSFS to see other aircraft.
On the same topic and since the default value in vPilot for draw distance is 40 nm, if the max range in MSFS to see other aircraft is let’s say 20 nm, would that mean vPilot would draw aircraft outside of that range (when set to 40) even when you won’t be able to see those aircraft visually in the sim? Meaning you will spend resources on something you can’t see.
Keep in mind that the aircraft that vPilot injects into your sim are also used for creating TCAS targets, they are not just for you to see them visually. That’s why 40 NM was used as a default, since I believe many TCAS systems can draw targets out to that distance. (And some even further probably.)
If you don’t care about TCAS, you could definitely cut it down to whatever distance you can see aircraft lights at night. You’d have to experiment, but that’s probably something like 20 NM.
As for the number, that’s going to be very system-dependent and also dependent on what models you are using and how complex they are, as well as your graphics settings, etc. That value is just one of many variables you will have to tune according to your system specs and personal preferences.
Thanks Ross for always being so responsive and helpful!
What you say about TCAS is something I didn’t consider. So based on that, I will dial the distance back to 40. Since I of course do like to see any other traffic around me. Especially when flying in uncontrolled airspace.
As for the number of aircraft, I now have it set to 25 but I suppose that won’t make much of a difference from the default value of 999 since you will rarely see more aircraft anyway.
If you fly in busy events like VATUSA’s Friday Night Ops, you can regularly see 50 or more aircraft on or near the main event airport(s). So it can be helpful to cut the number down to something like 25 if your system struggles with 50 aircraft in the vicinity.