Hi,I have a core i7 970 and GTX580 powering a relatively small 1366 x 768 monitor. I am having a terrible (as in show-stopping) stuttering issue with Flight and I believe this is due to some odd way in which Microsoft handle the rendering, but it is made all the more obvious due to me owing a powerful graphics card relative to the size of my monitor.I should add that I also had this exact same problem with FSX,except that with FSX I can completely resolve it by employing the internal frame rate limiter to match that of my monitor refresh rate.Specifically my problem is significant stuttering occuring all the time, with one clear exception that I will explain later. And the more "basic" the aircraft (i.e Stearman, Icon), the worse it is. It is so bad that the game is for practical purposes unplayable, as it looks like I am getting just a handful of frames per second, yet if I disable vsync (just for verification of performance purposes), my frame rate is often well above 120 and certainly never goes below 60 (I play all my games with vsync enabled, monitor refresh rate is 60 hz). And I think this is actually the root of the problem - despite enabling vsync, there is something unique about the way Flight (and previously FSX) handle the rendering, which causes problems for systems that are pushing out potential frames that can often exceed more than double the refresh rate. I say unique because in all my years of gaming and building / configuring gaming machines, I have only seen this sort of problem a few times, and two of those times were in FSX and Flight.Now as mentioned, with FSX, it has an internal frame rate slider. If I leave that set to unlimited, I get this terrible stutter in FSX as well, despite having vsync enabled. But if I set the frame rate limiter in FSX to 60, all is well and the game then runs perfectly, with zero stutter.With Flight,however, there is no longer this option and the config file ignores the old entry that was used for FSX.Now the other strange thing - i can completely - I mean 100% - eliminate this terrible stuttering by enabling the moving map on the instrument panel of the Icon. Doing this somehow must cause a change in the way the game handles the rendering, because it goes from being an unplayable stutter-fest to being as smooth as FSX used to be with the frame rate limiter engaged.I am certain there is no problem with my machine configuration, nor the configuration of flight itself, as changing the various settings makes no difference at all. Unfortunately trying to "load up" or "cripple" my graphics card by increasing AA, AF, etc, does not help, since at the extreme levels needed to avoid this stutter, the performance is then reduced and the game cannot sustain high frame rates any more. Halving the memory speed on my graphics card does help a lot in getting rid of the stutter, but at the expense of performance (so when outright power really is needed my machine will come up short).So I believe there is some issue with the game here. It could probably be resolved by re-introducing the frame rate limiter, but ideally I believe there is some odd bug at work here that has been around since FSX. As I say, I would have complained about this with FSX too, except that the frame rate limiter gets rid of the problem.Unfortunately, whilst the latest Nvidia drivers do have a frame rate limiting function, it does not work the same way the limiter used to in FSX, meaning that it does not really help in this case.Just to reinterate - I get perfect stutter-free performance in Flight, but only in the Icon with the moving map enabled. I am thus hoping this is enough information for Microsoft to hopefully figure out what issue is causing this.

I think it is probably safe to say that there are other people out there with a similar configuration (other than the monitor) that don't have stuttering issues, so it is probably a weird combination of your hardware, software and Flight causing the issues. I'm going to ask the standard questions to start with: What OS do you have, what version are your drivers, what settings were you using in Flight, do you have any custom settings in the nVidia control panel, have you tried on a different monitor with higher resolution, and have you tried rebooting the machine?

Hi,Re-booting would not be an issue as I have done this a couple of times since downloading and installing the game. I am running windows 7 64 bit Home Premium SP1 and it is up to date as of today. Drivers are latest Nvidia 285 series, though after noticing the problem, I installed the latest beta drivers (295), but this did not change the behaviour.The rest of my machine is the Core i7 970 at stock configuration, Nvidia GTX580 again at stock configuration, 12 GB RAM (at the memory's in-built XMS profile settings) and an ASUS Xonar D1 soundcard. I am playing the game using a Logitech Wireless Rumblepad, however I tried removing it and flying via the mouse and the stutter still occurs unless I turn the moving map on in the Icon, at which point the sim runs flawlessly.Since the stutter gives an identical visual appearance to a very low frame rate (it looks similar to around 15 frames per second in the Stearman and the RV), I changed my in-game settings all to "low", except for textures which I kept at high and sharpness which was set to maximum (I did try absolutely everything at low though and it made no difference).I have however, spent most of the day trying all sorts of graphics settings from lowest to highest and they don't really change the performance or stuttering much at all.Initially I ran the graphics settings totally stock, and the driver settings themselves were set to the Nvidia defaults with no intervention from me - overall and for this specific game. As the severe stutter was happening with those settings, I began to experiment with other settings, but to no avail - basically changing my in-game settings or driver settings makes no difference to this particular stutter behaviour. I was hoping using the frame rate limiter via Nvidia Inspector might help, but unfortunately it does not work in the same way the frame rate limiter worked in FSX.The only thing I have not done is try a larger monitor, but even the largest one I have is only 1600 x 900, so still likely a lot smaller than what most people are playing this game with should they own a GTX580 (incidentally, the reason for owning the GX580 is to faciliate higher quality AA and AF settings, etc, without compromising performance). I will, however, try the larger monitor just to see what happens, but that would not be a solution for me since I want to keep using the monitor I already have. Obviously I cannot increase the current 1366 x 768 resolution any more on the monitor I use with this machine given it is an LCD and that is it's native resolution.But for anyone who owns a GTX580 card and a recent Core i7 CPU, they can "simulate" my system and should be able to reproduce the stutter.1. Set all in-game settings to low, except for textures (high) and sharpness (maximum).2. Ensure the in-game full-screen and enable vsync checkboxes are checked.3. Create a custom resolution (via Nvidia Control Panel) of 1366 x 768 (if that resolution is not already available) at 60 hz.4. Set the in-game resolution to that same 1366 x 768 custom resolution.5. Set the Nvidia drivers to over-ride in-game anti-aliasing settings and to use 32xS AA. Set anistropic filtering to 4x with anisotropic filtering optimisation, sample optimisation and trilinear filtering optimisation on. Other settings don't really effect the performance noticeably. Ensure also that vsync is forced on in the drivers.6. Start a flight in flight using the Stearman. Perform some aggressive aerobatics at low altitude in such a way that the terrain is always visible (so very tight high G turns, and rapid directional changes, etc). Doing this will make the stutter much more obvious than flying along steadily. You should notice that the performance appears terrible.7. Start another flight - this time simply sitting on the runway with the RV aircraft. Try panning around and the stutter will be extremely obvious.8. Now start another flight on the runway, but this time in the Icon with the moving map turned on. Now pan around the cockpit. The game will be silky smooth with a perfectly synchronised 60 fps the entire time. Now take the Icon up and perform as aggressive aerobatics as possible. Again, the game will run perfectly smoothly.Now just to reiterate, I am simply giving these settings as a way to reproduce the problem, but they have occured at a whole raft of standard / non-standard settings. And as mentioned, this is a problem I notice specifically in Flight and FSX only (the latter only if I disengage the in-game frame rate limiter). All other games I have tried on this machine run in the expected manner (i.e enabling vsync results in perfectly smooth performance). Whilst I do have a small monitor, in the end, with a properly working game, the size should be irrelevant, since enabling vsync removes all tearing and stutter in the event the machine can always exceed 60 fps (and with Flight, it is way faster than 60 fps at all times in terms of performance capability).Incidentally, I have read one other report on this stutter, from a person with a current top of the line Core i7 and top of the line AMD card.

Edited February 29, 201214 yr by JonP01

I confirm what the poster says about turning on that moving map in the Icon.I have an i7-2600K and an AMD HD6800. (Edit: HD6850)I'm running FPS_Limiter.exe and it works well.

Edited March 1, 201214 yr by querido

I can confirm this too. With the Moving map on it run as smooth as silk with most button maxed.I an i7-2720QM 2.20GHz 8.00GB RAM RadeonHD6750

Hi guys,Just to make sure nothing is missed, I did reply to the other stuttering thread as well. Yes, whilst I too can confirm external frame rate limiters do work to a certain extent, this is only the case if you are willing to accept frames per second at half your monitor refresh rate. So if your monitor refresh rate is 60 hz, you will have to accept 30 frames per second by using either of the two available external limiters (the Nvidia one or the third party one).If you try to set the external limiters to the monitor refresh rate or higher, they don't do anything at all. This is a pity since there are people such as myself who can see an enormous difference between 30 and 60 frames per second, and power-wise, a cutting edge machine of today has the capability of running Flight over 60 frames per second all the time, meaning it is possible to enjoy a consistent 60 frames per second in vsync. But sadly, this only occurs with the Icon aircraft and it's moving map enabled.So the real fix still needs to be implmented within the Flight code base itself.

Edited March 2, 201214 yr by JonP01

I can recommend DXTORY to limit fps, you can set fps to whatever you want without recording anything, it works perfect for me, i can run flight now with most setting at max with no stuttering, and my graphicscards dont sound like my wifes hairdryer anymore.

I can recommend DXTORY to limit fps, you can set fps to whatever you want without recording anything, it works perfect for me, i can run flight now with most setting at max with no stuttering, and my graphicscards dont sound like my wifes hairdryer anymore.

I was actually hypothesising about using some sort of technology similar to that, because I was thinking it might do a similar thing to the moving map. i will give it a go and report back.

OHN,You are THE MAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Your suggestion to simply run DXTORY in the background works 100%. I can now confirm that Flight now runs silky smooth with absolutely zero and I mean ZERO stutters! I am now running all settings maxed out, 32xS AA on my graphics card and everything is just absolutely flawless.The external frame rate limiters I tried were all hopelessly ineffective, but this works absolutely flawlessly. Now I can buy the Maule too!Thank goodness for your suggestion. It really has turned this game from being absolutely hopelessly unplayable on a powerful computer to working absolutely perfectly.Now I just need to work out how to automatically have it run in the background for Flight only, as I do not need it for any other games.Incidentally, I first tried setting the fps limit to my monitor refresh rate, and although this got rid of the stuttering, I got this strange motion blur type of effect when panning and turning. So just for the heck of it, i set the limit to119, which of course is double my refresh rate less 1. And that solved it 100% (the video fps indicator in the top right still shows 60 fps). Anyway, thanks so much again. You may never know how really truthfully grateful I am! :)

How do you use this program? Please share. What is the program and how to run it?

OHN,You are THE MAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Your suggestion to simply run DXTORY in the background works 100%. I can now confirm that Flight now runs silky smooth with absolutely zero and I mean ZERO stutters! I am now running all settings maxed out, 32xS AA on my graphics card and everything is just absolutely flawless.The external frame rate limiters I tried were all hopelessly ineffective, but this works absolutely flawlessly. Now I can buy the Maule too!Thank goodness for your suggestion. It really has turned this game from being absolutely hopelessly unplayable on a powerful computer to working absolutely perfectly.Now I just need to work out how to automatically have it run in the background for Flight only, as I do not need it for any other games.Incidentally, I first tried setting the fps limit to my monitor refresh rate, and although this got rid of the stuttering, I got this strange motion blur type of effect when panning and turning. So just for the heck of it, i set the limit to119, which of course is double my refresh rate less 1. And that solved it 100% (the video fps indicator in the top right still shows 60 fps).Anyway, thanks so much again. You may never know how really truthfully grateful I am! :)

DXTORY

How do you use this program? Please share. What is the program and how to run it?

Hi,Firstly, unless your machine is capable of delivery well over your monitor refresh rate in Flight 100% of the time, it is unlikely you have this stuttering problem and there are other ways to solve it instead (such as using the native Nvidia frame rate limiter). But if your machine with vsync disabled is capable of pushing out more than 120 fps then it is likely you have this stutter issue even if you don't recognise it as such.DXTory is a video recording program (as in the FRAPS), but for the purposes of resolving this specific type of stutter, you are not using any of it's features at all. You do nothing but let the program run in the background minimised to the systray in order to remove the stuttering in Flight.You can get a demo of the program here:http://dxtory.com/v2-home-en.htmlSo you can try it yourself to see if it resolves your problem or not.You just install the demo and there is no need to configure it - simply start the program then select the minimise option to minimise it into the systray. Then start Flight. The easiest test to see if it solves the stutter is to pan around in the RV-6 cockpit - if it is solving the problem the panning motion will be perfectly smooth with DXTory running in the background , but if your stutter is not due to a high powered machine DXtory won't help at all.There are a few caveats though: Firstly, I found the only way to 100% remove Flight stuttering is to enable the frame rate display from DXTory in the upper left of the screen (it does this by default anyway I think). If I don't show this on the display then the stuttering is 90% removed but not 100% removed. But I am happy to have this display turned on to 100% eliminate the stutter (and it is no more intrusive than a watermark on a TV program).Secondly, DXTory is payware, not freeware. It cost me $42 AUD, but I thought it was worth it because Flight was completely and utterly unplayable without running DXTory in the background. The third thing is that MS may have been able to replicate this issue themselves and have resolved the bug (I sent them a very detailed email on how to replicate the issue, but I have doubts because it has existed since FSX and I somehow doubt MS staf have the ability to notice these sorts of stutters, otherwise they would already have been fixed). Then again, you may want to wait to see if they have resolved it before forking out for DXTory. As I say, I am sceptical though. The problem also existed in the Flight beta and no one seemed to notice it that I am aware of. And only a few people seemed to have noticed it in the release version. So we may have to wait a few years until people have a much better hardware to screen area ratio before the bug is noticed en mass. I did not feel like waiting this long, so the purchase of DXTory was a no-brainer for me.

I'm running DXTory as a demo, and seems to do the trick without having to pay the money. But it does work!! Thanks!

DXTory is a video recording program (as in the FRAPS), but for the purposes of resolving this specific type of stutter, you are not using any of it's features at all. You do nothing but let the program run in the background minimised to the systray in order to remove the stuttering in Flight.

 

You can get a demo of the program here:

 

http://dxtory.com/v2-home-en.html

 

So you can try it yourself to see if it resolves your problem or not.

 

You just install the demo and there is no need to configure it - simply start the program then select the minimise option to minimise it into the systray. Then start Flight. The easiest test to see if it solves the stutter is to pan around in the RV-6 cockpit - if it is solving the problem the panning motion will be perfectly smooth with DXTory running in the background , but if your stutter is not due to a high powered machine DXtory won't help at all.

 

There are a few caveats though: Firstly, I found the only way to 100% remove Flight stuttering is to enable the frame rate display from DXTory in the upper left of the screen (it does this by default anyway I think). If I don't show this on the display then the stuttering is 90% removed but not 100% removed. But I am happy to have this display turned on to 100% eliminate the stutter (and it is no more intrusive than a watermark on a TV program).

 

Secondly, DXTory is payware, not freeware. It cost me $42 AUD, but I thought it was worth it because Flight was completely and utterly unplayable without running DXTory in the background.

 

The third thing is that MS may have been able to replicate this issue themselves and have resolved the bug (I sent them a very detailed email on how to replicate the issue, but I have doubts because it has existed since FSX and I somehow doubt MS staf have the ability to notice these sorts of stutters, otherwise they would already have been fixed).

 

I had given up on Flight as my low end video card resulted in poor performance - general stuttering and curious texure fluttering around the pedals and joysticks in the RV-6. Also, the pilot figure is a mass of fluttering textures.

 

Then, while searching for something else, I came across this old thread. I took up the suggestion to run DXTory in the background and, lo and behold, it makes a huge difference. All the stuttering and fluttering dissapears and Flight is smooth. The only problem is Flight minimizes every few minutes (or even less) with DXTory running. And so, not really a solution yet but certainly promising.

 

I wonder if this issue could be better resolved by a built-in frame rate limiter.

More on this. I was googling for an alternative external frame rate limiter and came across the following on the FSX forum:

 

Quote

 

Just unzip, edit the antilag.cfg file to set your FPSLimit and place both files INSIDE your FSX root folder. No bat files or Java GUI needed.

This one has a 'frames ahead' feature which can be used as a frame buffer. You can experiment with 0 (to disable frames ahead) 1 (to flush the render queue when the frame is ready) or 2 to queue a frame.

 

http://www.kegetys.n..._antilag101.zip

 

Source: http://www.kegetys.net/

 

Credit goes to Keijo "Kegetys" Ruotsalainen

 

Unquote

 

I downloaded the antilag tool and installed it. (Just a case of installing two files into the main Flight folder and editing the .cfg file to limit the frame rate). In my case I set it for 30 fps.

 

Now, for the first time, I can run the game with no stutters or fluttering textures. It now runs very smoothly and does not minimize to the task bar, as it did with DXTory.

 

This with my ATI Radeon HD5450 GPU which is well below the minimum recommended.

 

And, to top it all, antilag is freeware.

 

I would definitely recommend this tool to anyone experiencing similar problems.

More on this. I was googling for an alternative external frame rate limiter and came across the following on the FSX forum:

 

Quote

 

Just unzip, edit the antilag.cfg file to set your FPSLimit and place both files INSIDE your FSX root folder. No bat files or Java GUI needed.

This one has a 'frames ahead' feature which can be used as a frame buffer. You can experiment with 0 (to disable frames ahead) 1 (to flush the render queue when the frame is ready) or 2 to queue a frame.

 

http://www.kegetys.n..._antilag101.zip

 

Source: http://www.kegetys.net/

 

Credit goes to Keijo "Kegetys" Ruotsalainen

 

Unquote

 

I downloaded the antilag tool and installed it. (Just a case of installing two files into the main Flight folder and editing the .cfg file to limit the frame rate). In my case I set it for 30 fps.

 

Now, for the first time, I can run the game with no stutters or fluttering textures. It now runs very smoothly and does not minimize to the task bar, as it did with DXTory.

 

This with my ATI Radeon HD5450 GPU which is well below the minimum recommended.

 

And, to top it all, antilag is freeware.

 

I would definitely recommend this tool to anyone experiencing similar problems.

 

Thank you for that!

 

I have a 3 ghz Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 machine with 4 gigs of memory and an ATI HD5770 video card. I had fairly smooth video until I turned up the settings a bit and then I was getting quite a bit of stuttering. I was also was seeing the fluttering textures, even at default settings. This little tool has made a world of difference. I see no texture problems now and I can set the 'sharpness' to maximum and see no video stuttering at all.

 

*** The following comment only applies to the Triple Header package (from kegetys.net) which I mistakenly tried first. The Anti Lag package already has a config file that is copied into the Flight directory with the dll. Either package fixed my video!

 

Be aware that you will need to start Flight as administrator the first time after putting d3d9.dll in the Flight directory so that it can write it's configuration file to that directory. At least I did in W7 64 bit. After that you do not need to use adminitrator mode.

 

Thanks again!

Gord