Smooth flight with a sudden drop and stutter in specific areas...

[thetford569 101]

Hey guys,I've had this issue for awhile and with some of the recent discussions about new and old tweaks I have tried a few things to eliminate this problem including rebuilding a new fsx.cfg file. I've had my system tuned and FSX is running smoothly and with crisp textures in most areas. Outside of the heavy scenery areas I run with a locked frame rate of 24. Inside heavy scenery and with payware aircraft I am usually forced to run frames at unlimited. I have been able to get most flying smooth without using many tweaks. I am not using affinity mask or bufferpools as they have not eliminated the problem. The only cfg edits I have used are what NickN recommends. I've posted my current config file as a text attachment.Anyway here is what the problem is. Whether running locked frames or unlimited, at specific areas my frame rate will drop into the single digits and I have severe stuttering for approx. 30 seconds and then it will stop and go back to smooth flying and good FPS. This happens each time I fly through a certain area. For example, taking off from KNPA (Pensacola NAS) and flying Northeast when I get to the south end of Pensacola Regional (KPNS) and begin to head out over the bay the problem occurs. When I almost reach the next area of land it stops. This is repeatable on each flight over the same area if I depart and fly over that same path. After I fly through it though and turn around I have seen in the past it will do the same thing however today it wasn't doing that if I turned around and flew back over the area...it was only after I started a new flight and departed.There are other areas that do the same thing. Most of my flight is smooth and stutter free however there seem to be certain spots where I get this problem. I don't know what the issue is or how to fix it. Maybe someone has experienced this same issue?Thanks for any help...BrandonSystem Specs:Intel Q6600 2.4 GHz - O/C to 3.2 GHz8GB Corsair XMS2 RAM DDR2NVIDIA GTX260Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R MotherboardWindows XP 64bit

[chapstick 2,757]

I think I have this exact same issue. I've experienced it over KMCO and KORD. Can you try flying over those areas and seeing what happens?

[Gypsy Baron 10]

How much AI traffic do you have enabled?Could be that you are seeing the results 0f FSX initializing the traffic and gates at KATL.For a test, try turning off your traffic and see if the problem goes away. Paul

[AlexMD11 14]

I am not really familiar with the area you are flying in, so I was wondering whether there are many water bodies there as in lots of small lakes / rivers? I have noticed that flying over the Netherlands causes severe stuttering for me (either default or with UTX/GEX) and I read somewhere that this might be attributed to the fact that NL has so many tiny lakes and rivers that it's FPS intensive (or something like that). The minute I leave this airspace, my frames get very stable and high.

[thetford569 101]

I am not really familiar with the area you are flying in, so I was wondering whether there are many water bodies there as in lots of small lakes / rivers? I have noticed that flying over the Netherlands causes severe stuttering for me (either default or with UTX/GEX) and I read somewhere that this might be attributed to the fact that NL has so many tiny lakes and rivers that it's FPS intensive (or something like that). The minute I leave this airspace, my frames get very stable and high.

I will try flying over katl and kord to see what happens. The area I am speaking of (Pensacola), is really not that detailed and I get some of my best frames there. In fact that is where I will lock my framerate at 24 because I don't have to run unlimited there due to it not being a highly detailed area...yet I experience the severe stuttering in the same place each time. I also have the gates for AI disabled to save on FPS around big airports. I'm using Ultimate Traffic 2 as well as MAIW and WOAI for traffic. I'm also using UTX North America and GEX enhanced.Brandon

[Guest firehawk44]

Hey guys,I've had this issue for awhile and with some of the recent discussions about new and old tweaks I have tried a few things to eliminate this problem including rebuilding a new fsx.cfg file. I've had my system tuned and FSX is running smoothly and with crisp textures in most areas. Outside of the heavy scenery areas I run with a locked frame rate of 24. Inside heavy scenery and with payware aircraft I am usually forced to run frames at unlimited. I have been able to get most flying smooth without using many tweaks. I am not using affinity mask or bufferpools as they have not eliminated the problem. The only cfg edits I have used are what NickN recommends. I've posted my current config file as a text attachment.Anyway here is what the problem is. Whether running locked frames or unlimited, at specific areas my frame rate will drop into the single digits and I have severe stuttering for approx. 30 seconds and then it will stop and go back to smooth flying and good FPS. This happens each time I fly through a certain area. For example, taking off from KNPA (Pensacola NAS) and flying Northeast when I get to the south end of Pensacola Regional (KPNS) and begin to head out over the bay the problem occurs. When I almost reach the next area of land it stops. This is repeatable on each flight over the same area if I depart and fly over that same path. After I fly through it though and turn around I have seen in the past it will do the same thing however today it wasn't doing that if I turned around and flew back over the area...it was only after I started a new flight and departed.There are other areas that do the same thing. Most of my flight is smooth and stutter free however there seem to be certain spots where I get this problem. I don't know what the issue is or how to fix it. Maybe someone has experienced this same issue?Thanks for any help...BrandonSystem Specs:Intel Q6600 2.4 GHz - O/C to 3.2 GHz8GB Corsair XMS2 RAM DDR2NVIDIA GTX260Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R MotherboardWindows XP 64bit

I recently read over in the Nvidia NZONE forum that this type of stuttering is due to the fact that several layers of rendering has to be accomplished and to reduce and eliminate it, you should turn on Triple Buffering and force Vertical sync on in your display driver settings. I get the stuttering occasionally too but it's rare and so it doesn't bother me too much. Now this was a suggestion of SLI configurations but don't see why it wouldn't be applicable for single GPU's too. It could also be a glitch in FSX. If you followed the suggestions of NickN regarding the fsx config you should be okay but remember those are only recommended or suggested settings and every computer system is configured differently with different hardware and software. I like the suggestion above from Gypsy Baron regarding the turning off of the AI and seeing if that makes a difference. AI punishes almost every system in one way or another but it's needed as it's one of the best parts or eye-candy for FSX.Best regards,Jim

[Art_P 6]

You indicated that you are using UTX, so I thought I would mention that wave effect settings in UTX could cause very low frame rates when flying around certain bodies of water. Check your Terrain.cfg file under shoreline entries, and if "effect=" appears without anything following it, eliminate this line from the terrain.cfg file. This was in another forum post I read and results from the editing of wave effects in UTX.

[thetford569 101]

You indicated that you are using UTX, so I thought I would mention that wave effect settings in UTX could cause very low frame rates when flying around certain bodies of water. Check your Terrain.cfg file under shoreline entries, and if "effect=" appears without anything following it, eliminate this line from the terrain.cfg file. This was in another forum post I read and results from the editing of wave effects in UTX.

thanks for the tip. I'll try this also. I am already using NHancer and forcing Vsync however I don't know about Triple Buffering. I will try this tonight along with disabling the Ai traffic and see what happens. I'll report back.Brandon

[thetford569 101]

thanks for the tip. I'll try this also. I am already using NHancer and forcing Vsync however I don't know about Triple Buffering. I will try this tonight along with disabling the Ai traffic and see what happens. I'll report back.Brandon

After testing tonight I narrowed the problem down to the AI Traffic...specifically the Military AI Works and World of AI Packages I have installed. I have only a few World of AI Packages installed (namely the FedEx package and the GA ones) and I have lots of MAIW Packages. I figured this out by first running no traffic and having zero stuttering at the area that I always have it. I then ran Ultimate Traffic 2 and put traffic back in with no stutters. When I raised my sliders in FSX to include the MAIW and WOAI Packages the stuttering returned. The weird part was I turned around to fly through the same area in a reverse heading and there were not any stutters. When I reversed heading again and went in the original direction the stutters were there again. I played with the sliders and tried low traffic settings and high ones as I kept flying a figure eight pattern over the area. I seemed to have stutters at each setting except zero however I did finally get to 60 percent without any stuttering. I have a feeling though that this was just due to me flying over the same area and if I were to restart a flight with this setting I would probably get the stutters again.I wish I could heal this problem but it is important to me to have these traffic packages so I guess I am just stuck with the problem. I especially love the military traffic I have so this is a disappointing revelation. Oh well!Brandon