Hello all, wondering if I could get some help here. When I try to fly, any airport with any plane. I get great FPS around 70 no matter the scenery. But recently, every 7 seconds or so the picture will "stutter" just for a very small amount of time but you can still notice it. When it does show up on the FPS meter it will drop from around 70 to 5 or even 1 but then it will jump back up to 70 right after. This isnt a problem when cruising but it makes taxi,takeoff and approach almost unbearable. I have defragged multiple times, tried to let FSX rebuild the CFG and Ive tried locking the FPS and going unlimited along with an external FPS limiter. It doesnt seem to change anything.

Hello all, wondering if I could get some help here. When I try to fly, any airport with any plane. I get great FPS around 70 no matter the scenery. But recently, every 7 seconds or so the picture will "stutter" just for a very small amount of time but you can still notice it. When it does show up on the FPS meter it will drop from around 70 to 5 or even 1 but then it will jump back up to 70 right after. This isnt a problem when cruising but it makes taxi,takeoff and approach almost unbearable. I have defragged multiple times, tried to let FSX rebuild the CFG and Ive tried locking the FPS and going unlimited along with an external FPS limiter. It doesnt seem to change anything.

Maybe some program in the background is briefly getting priority..Have you turned off everything that could interfere? Antivirus, etc..If it happens on a semi-regular basis, try running Procmon concurrently with FSXand look in the trace to see what activity there is on the system..Also try turning off traffic in FSX as a test.

I will try to close every background program. Up until about 4 days ago it was fine with vroute, fsinn, a justplanes movie running and google chrome open. But even with all of those closed and FSX in full screen it makes no difference. I will see if antivirus is eating resources though, and I might turn affinity mask down to 6 cores instead of 8.

Alright, i tried with everything closed and almost no processes running except FSX and windows things. I disconnected from the internet and had antivirus off and it still persists. If I count in between the stutters it is always a uniform 10 seconds. Ahh, this is frustrating

Not sure if it applies to you, but yesterday I noticed the FPS minimum spiking low was due to the VC tooltip being on. Everything running smoothly at 29FPS (locked at 29) and when the cursor is placed over the gauge/switch, the FPS would momentarily drop to 6 (registers on the minimum readout) while the average FPS is still around 29. Turning off tooltip got rid of this negative FPS spike. And not sure if this is only on one particular addon, I'll see if other airplanes are affected.

now that i think about it. i just recently turned tooltips on. I will disable it and try, thanks for pointing that out as i was wondering what could be wrong with it after i ran all of those checks

Thanks so much, i just flew around. every slider maxed with about 40FPS on the ground and no stutters.

i may have spoke too soon, it is still doing it but it isnt as 'intense'

Hi Jake, it certainly sounds like it could be a background program as the most likely cause for concern. A few other things you may like to consider... what processor are you using? I don't wish to teach my grandmother to suck eggs, but if it's an i7 (four core), then you should try setting your affinity mask setting in cfg. file at either 7 or 14. Have you hyperthreading switched off in BIOS? Also if not, try locking framerates to 30. But I would most certainly try and check out background programs. Cheers.

ive got an i7950 running at stock. i think my afffinity mask is wrong then. but its set at the 8core setting in bojotes cfg tweak. i still cant find a background program. in all my ram usage and cpu usage fsx is using about 40% cpu and there was literally nothing else running. I even turned off internet, went full screen and turned down the visuals and it still stuttered. I was using an external fps lock but i will try just 30 in fsx

ive got an i7950 running at stock. i think my afffinity mask is wrong then. but its set at the 8core setting in bojotes cfg tweak. i still cant find a background program. in all my ram usage and cpu usage fsx is using about 40% cpu and there was literally nothing else running. I even turned off internet, went full screen and turned down the visuals and it still stuttered. I was using an external fps lock but i will try just 30 in fsx

Hi Jake, Ok, well I too have the i7950, and have the affinity mask at 14. Not sure where 8 comes from? As for framerates, well, some people use unlimited settings in FSX with an external limiter, however many, many simmers find this simply does not work. I played around with first unlimited framerate settings and also the external framerate limiter but it simply would not work, stuttering all over the place. I suspect if you lock the framerate within FSX to 30, you will see a massive improvement. As for programs running in the background, this is not aimed at simply other programs you may have open on the desktop, such as IE , media player etc, but aimed at programs that are 'hidden,' these run in the background doing all sorts of silly little jobs, some are semi turned on ready to pounce into action whenever you click the icon! Most you can turn off and are unnecessary, which you should do anyway. I won't go into any detail here as it's probably easier for you simply to do a search and get the necessary info, theres' plenty out there. Firsty though, I suggest you change the affiniity mask and secondly lock your framerates. Oh, as a matter of interest, have you made any other changes in your cfg? EDIT: I've just seen you have the Bojote tweak... this can work but it can also be problematical. Let's cross that bridge later...

Ok I am doing that right now. also, i just got an unhandled exception error about FSInn when I started FSX. It could be related to this, I need to make sure to backup my ICAO plane settings though because ive spent hours assigning liveries for vatsim.

ok, i did all that. and it will stay locked perfectly at 30. but it will drop every few seconds to 0.6 and then shoot straight back up to 30

ok, i did all that. and it will stay locked perfectly at 30. but it will drop every few seconds to 0.6 and then shoot straight back up to 30

OK, fine. I really think there is something else running in the background. Stuttering is a matter of elimination as we all suffer with it to some degree or other. Your situation is different. There is something causing it to react the way it does and IMHO I don't think it's FSX related. Firstly though lets try and work methodically and get FSX out of the equation. Firstly though, copy your cfg file and save to a folder on the desktop, this is just for safe keeping. Then reboot the computer (good protocol) and start FSX, let it build a new cfg file. Then set your FSX panel as it was before, don't know what autogen you were using but set it at normal, with framerate locked at 30. Untick ground shadows and also aircraft casts shadow on ground. Ensure cloud sliders are all set to minimum and water set to Low 2x, set airport traffic both to 15%, no airport vehicles, no boats and road vehicles to 10%. Set filtering to anistropic and antialiasing ticked, unless otherwise set in GPU control panel. Also can you confirm what you have changed since noticing the problem. Any updates, or new drivers? Also, what anti virus are you running? Can you also reply with your computer specs thanks. EDIT: Can you confirm whether you have installed the Peter Lurkens' Cumulus X app.

Alright, i tried with everything closed and almost no processes running except FSX and windows things. I disconnected from the internet and had antivirus off and it still persists. If I count in between the stutters it is always a uniform 10 seconds. Ahh, this is frustrating

Run Procmon and see what happens every 10 sec.. in my case, it was Java trying to do a prefetch..It started happening after a Java update.In your case it may well be something else grabbing control every 10 sec.