and FS, especially in hard weather or around big airports, has often little pauses :-erksHow can this happen???Maybe this pic taken during an EGLL approach will explain...886 MB of paging?!?! BTW my swap files resides on a separate partition and has a fixed size of 2 GB!http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/110692.jpgGive also a look at my system specs ( i have tried different ATI drivers and at the moment i'm running v5.3 classic).Thanks in advance for helpingLuigi ;-)

Hi Luigi,Here's a nice utility you can use to see what's happening. "FileMon monitors and displays file system activity on a system in real-time" http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/source/filemon.shtmlSteve

I replied to the thread in the main MSFS forum. Somewhat surprised that the moderator moved this thread, as it has as much to do with the way MSFS works than it does with hardware. Anyway, again here's my reply:Even with 1 Gig of Ram, FS still has to fetch data from the Hard Drive at some point--and this may cause a slight pause or microstutter depending on your hard drive, your motherboard, cpu, etc... This is very obvious in the way we fly. If you fly point to point--say from Milan to Bologna, FS will load the scenery from the HD as you go along. But if you fly from Malpensa to Linate, chances are you'll get less Hard Drive activity because most of the scenery's already there.Also, there's some activity that will cause momentary pauses (again dependent on your hardware) without accessing the hard drive at all. One example is centered around 3-d clouds. Clouds are drawn in a radius around your aircraft based on the draw distance you've defined in your settings. You can fly within that radius all day and notice very little negative performance--in fact, even on a lowly P3/800 my fps hit with a deck of clouds is very small given the excellent cloud sets available for download. But, there is a momentary hesitation when you travel through the 3-d clouds, and FS destroys the clouds behind you and builds new ones ahead. Depending on the system, you may notice it or you won't. But the more cloud layers and the greater the cloud draw distance, more likely you will. Since it's related to rendering and not related to retention of clouds, there's little RAM can do to help. I suspect Microsoft may be able to improve this in the next release by buffering already drawn clouds in memory somehow vs. rendering them from scratch. For me, the problem is so minor that I don't mind--I'm usually too wrapped up in the flight to notice any minor hesitation in the sim.-John

Thank you my friends.John, can you please share your DISPLAYWEATHER settings?And another small question: do you notice that small stutters/pausing also when parked at a big airport and in external view you keep rotating around your plane? It happens every day on my pc :-(Thx againLuigi ;-)

My weather settings are pretty minimal, since I run with a P3/800.Until FS2006 is released, I won't upgrade--my priorities are related to my wife and daughter, and I spend most of our spare income on travel and things my daughter will remember. The rest is being saved towards purchase of a Microlight--probably something like a Titan or Challenger--once I have my Sport Pilot license. But this has helped me get the most out of what I have. My weather display settings are pretty simple--100 pct. 3-d, 30 mile draw distance, Cloud Coverage density maxed. I don't use Real Weather or dynamic weather--with a slow system, it's not one cloud layer that will hurt performance--it's several cloud layers. I prefer to create my own weather environment.I also run at 800x600x32 vs. a higher res--although I don't feel that has an impact on the type of issues I discuss in my first response. But it allows me to have visual detail almost the same as everyone else, albeit at a lower quality res. wise. -John

Thank you John.Have a good luck with your sport licenseLuigi ;-)

LuigiI have also been plagued with micro stutters and this evening found the source of the problem on my machine. It was a USB1.0 7 Port HUB that was the cause. Once I disconnected that HUB the stutters went away.If you also have a USB hub it could be worthwhile disconnecting it and observing the impact. I am not sure if my stutters were caused by the hub itself, or because its a USB1.0 hub attached to a USB2.0 port on my notebook. However as soon as I disconnected it, the stutters stopped.

do you mean an hardware? no i have no such kind of appliance.If you talking about something different, please explain the procedure and i'll carefully follow it.............thanksLuigi ;-)

Hi,Also see my comments (nutmeat)on the software design on Page 5 of the texture lag thread in the hardware section. They parallel John CIs' thoughts very closely.Larry S.

I was just going to point you to Larry's extremely level-headed reply myself, but I see he got here first!Martin