How recover when FSX chokes?

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

I've asked this before and not found an answer. Not sure if it is video or FSX itself... but I hope someone here recognizes what is going on and has a suggestion..If I stress FSX, typically by flying from one high density scenery area into another, FSX can choke... framerates dropping from 20+ into the teens, accompanied by lots of microstutters. One reliable way of clearing the clog, is to Save the Flight, Reload the Flight and bingo, all is smooth again. I have not found any other way of "re-setting" whatever is choking FSX. If I check memory usage (RAM and Video) it is not hitting any limits.. no signs I can find that would lead FSX to lose it... no blurry textures, just performance loss which cannot be recovered other than with what I mention above.I've tried lowering the scenery complexity and/or Autogen, but that does not seem to matter. Performance otherwise is very good, nice and steady..If anyone can suggest some action to take, I would appreciate it!Q6600@3.2 WinXP32 4GB RAM 9600GT 512 MB7200RPM drive for the OS 10000RPM drive for FSX

[Guest TomOOO]

HiIt could be many things, but here a couple of suggestions - 1) Have you change the fsx.cfg file, there are a lot of incorrect changes people can make that overlaod data transfer - you have just 512m graphics card whichmight be running out of memory if you set high bufferpool etc. 2) I found micro-sutters occured for me if I used max water effects (high x2)even though my i7 had no problem with frame rates. This does a double framerender and clearly overloaded textures - especially when flying close to REX2.0clouds.Without a detailed description of your computer - and what you run it is impossibleto give an exact answer. You must make a systematic approach to finding your problem. In general (though this is a simplification)1) bad fps is just not enough cpu power generally - and you need to set yoursliders down a bit. It also depends on which FSX you have (acceleration or vanilla or sp1/2)and how it uses multi-core.2) stutters result when texture loading exceeds graphics memory or bandwidthof memory/bus and can be very difficult to localise - ie what you did to make it worse3) Slowing down after time - difficult one, maybe your machine is overheating and backing off the cpu/gpu to protect itself. Laptops are a problem and I keep a verycareful watch on the temperature as cooling is generally not as good. Desktops usually just shutdown when you exceed TmaxYou should look at good reviews on how to set up your computer well, but itreally comes down to systematically finding the weak point and don't expecteverything to be completely maxed out.PS : I used to frequent this site some years ago - so now my interest is back asI have an i7 and works well with FSX.

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

HiIt could be many things, but here a couple of suggestions - 1) Have you change the fsx.cfg file, there are a lot of incorrect changes people can make that overlaod data transfer - you have just 512m graphics card whichmight be running out of memory if you set high bufferpool etc. 2) I found micro-sutters occured for me if I used max water effects (high x2)even though my i7 had no problem with frame rates. This does a double framerender and clearly overloaded textures - especially when flying close to REX2.0clouds.Without a detailed description of your computer - and what you run it is impossibleto give an exact answer. You must make a systematic approach to finding your problem. In general (though this is a simplification)1) bad fps is just not enough cpu power generally - and you need to set yoursliders down a bit. It also depends on which FSX you have (acceleration or vanilla or sp1/2)and how it uses multi-core.2) stutters result when texture loading exceeds graphics memory or bandwidthof memory/bus and can be very difficult to localise - ie what you did to make it worse3) Slowing down after time - difficult one, maybe your machine is overheating and backing off the cpu/gpu to protect itself. Laptops are a problem and I keep a verycareful watch on the temperature as cooling is generally not as good. Desktops usually just shutdown when you exceed Tmax

Appreciate the feedback... I'll double check on the overheating question, that certainlywould seem to explain it... however..The thing that continues to baffle me, is that I can fix the problem reliably bydoing the save flight / load flight combo. After that simple intervention, FSXruns freely again without stutters and steady fps. I'm convinced that it is indeeda situation of FSX getting overloaded with scenery complexity, or rather, switching fromone high density scenery area to another near by...This does not happen in FSX standard scenery, but mostly (only?) in Vancouver+ andVictoria+. Maybe there is something unique to these scenery packages... Hmmm..I'll also experiment with reducing other things... last time this was really noticeable,I had a 256MB video card and I ended up shutting down road traffic. Maybe water trafficis next on my hitlist... I'm flying FSX Acceleration, Water on 1X High, no tweaks in FSX.cfg other than Affinitymask=14.This happens with fps locked or unlimited.

[Guest TomOOO]

HiThe affinitymask is set sensibly (though not guarenteed to correct) .My only suggestion is that your textures in these addon. I had a problemwith a free-ware product of my local airport for FS9 - the same principle appliesin FSX. If the textures are not well written then they can overload the datatransfers and stuff things up with graphics (too many textures). The complexityof these are contolled by the scenery complexity slider - set this to the far left (so you see nothing for the addon), does this fix the problem. Then incrementto the right one step until you get problems, and step down one. In this case it comes down to your bus speed and IO data transfers etc usually

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

HiThe affinitymask is set sensibly (though not guarenteed to correct) .My only suggestion is that your textures in these addon. I had a problemwith a free-ware product of my local airport for FS9 - the same principle appliesin FSX. If the textures are not well written then they can overload the datatransfers and stuff things up with graphics (too many textures). The complexityof these are contolled by the scenery complexity slider - set this to the far left (so you see nothing for the addon), does this fix the problem. Then incrementto the right one step until you get problems, and step down one. In this case it comes down to your bus speed and IO data transfers etc usually

You are correct! I do not know why I have to learn the same lesson againand again... The Victoria+ scenery has it's own little speedboats in the harborthat throw up a big wake. Amazingly, they are the killer!Now I've disabled them in the scenery, my performance is rock solid.The standard AI boat traffic is fine, as are the cruise ships.Thanks for guiding me in the right direction!!

[vgbaron 3,590]

I've also found that toggling ALT ENTER can reset the 'choke'.

[jonpatch 1]

Note that small boat traffic can be turned off in the Victoria+ configurator. Jon