I was wondering if someone might have some ideas, currently I am experiencing AI induced stutters at certain airports. Specifically my "home" airport, KBDR (Sikorsky Memorial Airport) which is located in Stratford CT and KOXC.

 

At KBDR, taking off on runway 6, all is smooth until I reach the intersecting runway 11/29 when I will experience two brief stutters. After I clear the intersection, usually beginning my climb all will smooth out. This only happens when I have my AI Traffic enabled. Currently I have default GA with WOAI packages installed. Traffic is set at 100% 50% improves the stuttering a little bit. I was previously using Ultimate Traffic for GA along with WOAI and experienced the same conditions. If I just use the default airline and GA traffic there are no stutters at all even at 100% traffic

 

At KOXC, during takeoff on runway 36 I experience stutters at the end of the runway after I have already begun my climb.

 

All other airports in the area, to include KBDL do not experience this problem at all. The sim runs really smooth, unfortunately for me these are my two local strips I like to fly out of

 

My system is an I5-2500K no overclock on a Asus Matx z68 Board, 560gtx ti, 8gb ddr3-1600 C7, FS9 Installed on a crucial SSD. The operating system is Windows 7 64 Bit.

 

I have the following addons installed: Ultimate Terrain, Ground Environment Pro, REX, Zinnertek Ultimate weather and Airport Environment, Samoshin Trees 2.0 and various payware and freeware sceneries.

 

Any ideas would be appreciated, thanks for your time,

Matt

FS does most of its rendering on the main CPU. Win 7, however, can pass complex math used in rendering to your graphic separate processor.

 

The i5-2500K has a base clock speed of 3.3 which can be turbo boosted to 3.7 (This is not manual OC but is a setting in the Intel utilities and will monitor temperature). This should be fast enough. Make sure any power saving utility in your PC is turned off and disable the Intel graphics so the gtx is used.

 

http://ark.intel.com/products/52210?wapkw=i5+2500k

 

FS is a native 32 bit application and is limited to 2 GB ram without modification. Since you have a 64 bit system there is a modification to FS floating around to increase its ability to use 3 GB ram which might help. It requires modifying fs9.exe. Search the hardware forum for 3 GB switch and make a backup copy of fs9.exe. That will allow it to use more ram for rendering scenery and ai.

 

As you know, the NE corridor is full of ai. Scenery objects are dense around KBDR and KOXC particularly buildings near Sikorsky and trees around Oxford. Maybe your tree library requires a lot of resources. If you are using any add-on scenery try it with the default. Maybe try turning off the GA touch and goes.

 

If you fly at night there might be a more rendering load at BDR if their beacon is supported on a beam tower. I've had that in my home default GA airport in the Minneapolis area and get stuttering at night only or IFR when the rotating beacon comes on.

 

I grew up in Bridgeport than Stratford very near KBDR. I git my PPL and CPL licenses in the Minneapolis area and have flown two VFR round trips from here to KBDR in the 70s. I passed over the Carmel (NY) navaid (near West Point Academy) and saw jets stacked above me holding for the NY airports. I made use of the FSS at BDR for weather planning.

 

Jets fly in high density over the Bridgeport area (at around 10,000 feet or less) in and out of New York on their routes to Boston and also up the coast for Trans-Atlantic crossings using the norther NAT tracks. This was emulated very well in UT2007 which I use. Ai are rendered to just beyond 40 nm out from your position. Many users get stuttering at 100% ai add-ons within 50 nm of the New York airports triangle (KLGA, KJFK, and Newark) plus the GA going to KTEB in New Jersey. Coastal commuter routes also visit New Haven. So there is a lot of activity in your 40 mile radius of your aircraft position in those Connecticut airports you mention.

 

http://flightaware.com/resources/airport/KBDR/map

http://flightaware.com/resources/airport/KBDL/map

http://flightaware.com/resources/airport/KOXC/map

 

As an aside for FS9 there is a freeware KLGA by ShezA and freeware KBOS by the developer of Fly-Tampa in the scenery libraries. I emulate flights between LGA and BOS frequently in turbo-prop twins or rjs. I've done small turbo-props to BDR as well including Tweed in New Haven.

 

Too bad I wasn't piloting when living in the Stratford area in my early youth.

Ron,

Thank you for the response, that must have been a really cool trip from Minneapolis to Bridgeport. I live about 20 minutes from KBDR and usually get some traffic flying overhead on approach.

 

I did apply a 4gb patch, can't remember where I downloaded it from I had saved it from my previous build. It patches the FS9 executable to utilize more than 2 GB of ram. I do have power management turned off and I did disable the on board graphics chip. One thing I did notice is that if I run core temp along with fs, it will cause the occasional micro-stutter. (I do run it from time to time to see what my temps will max out at usually in the low to mid 40C range) I usually shutdown unneeded programs and services before I use FS. You are definitely right though the stock I2500K is plenty fast for fs9. I've tried this with and without the add on trees and it is the same for both.

 

You did make a good point about all of the other larger local airports. I was not aware of the AI traffic being rendered out to 40nm that now makes sense, the airspace is pretty busy. I am using FRF JFK v7, Imaginesim KLGA and KEWR. I did download and install AFCADs for White Plains and Oxford. I'm wondering if I should do that for the other larger airports in the area. The freeware KBOS you mentioned is excellent. If you ever want to fly into Bradley there is a good freeware KBDL in the library from Mach-1 design.

 

I will try turning of the GA traffic and see if that makes a difference, if not I will experiment with traffic settings and find a point where the stutter starts and stops and use that when flying to and from these airports.

 

Thanks again for your response,

Matt

It would be advisable to insure there is only a default afcad type file and only one other (showing runways, etc.) for any add-on airport. You mentioned Ultimate Traffic which is one traffic app that installs afcads. If you install an add-on airport, be sure other afcads unless made for this specific scenery do not conflict. There are some mods for some airports that employ the "crosswind pseudo runway" technique that creates very short runways designated for an airport but away from its center. Placing these runways a few degrees apart between non-parallel runways makes FS think they are within parallel boundaries and then non-parallel runways can be made simultaneously active. A good example is the perpendicular runways at KLGA and unless the winds are very high are both usually active separating take-offs and landings. Unless someone created one for KLGA, then I don't think the original had this facility. If there is one change the file extension of the original and put it in the same scenery folder as the add-on.

 

The UT afcads are put in the FS9\add-on scenery\scenery folder and start with F1UT_icao.bgl and these should be renamed .bgh to nullify them if you have another afcad type. FRF's KJFK has and AF2_ or AFX_ file in them so the F1UT_ KJFK.bgl should be renamed to F1UT_KJFK.bgh.

 

AFX files can contain more scenery elements than AF2_ types. Using AFCAD on an AFX file can strip some of these. It appears that the freeware ADE9X can mostly work with AFX files with the exception that you may have to reenter the comm frequencies or patch the intermediate XML code it produces.

 

Anyway the point is to insure there are no scenery conflicts.

 

If downloading an afcad file for an add-on be sure it is for the add-on version you have, not the default as the various paths will not overlay and you might get stutters and bumps if you are off the path surface. You did state though that in one case you were airborne and at a specific scenery point so hopefully there is not a transparent object you were passing through.

 

If you don't have it get FSUIPC3 and install it from this link:

http://forum.simflight.com/topic/66139-updated-modules/

and you will not need to get a paid registration to use it with the free Traffic Look from this link:

http://forum.simflight.com/topic/66136-useful-additional-programs/

 

Traffic Look runs in its own window and shows a table (grid) of ground and air ai and their state, where they are going, location, and what facilities. It includes "sleeping" parked ai as well. That should give you an idea of the ai density and resources used. Just park at an airport and fire it up and alt-tab to it. You can seee the "FS ai startup swarm" as ai madly start taxiing to catch up (within a window) with there schedules and also start arriving in clusters for the same reason. Those clusters can place addition loads of FS resources.

 

On a personal note, they don't have grinders out here . I used to regularly get them in Stratford just past Main street heading north on old US1 near the Shakespeare Theater at the Shakespeare Pizza if it still exists. A little bit further north on US1 into Milford there was a small seafood stand on a local turnoff that had good lobster rolls. I miss both of those!

 

I lived in my last high school year near the junction of Main Street and Birdseye Street in Stratford and many aircraft passed over my house on approach to KBDR. I also used to hear them test Lycoming jet engines at the factory across from the airport (now moved I believe toward Shelton). Interesting time.

Ron,

Thanks again for all of the information you've provided. I now have some things I can look at over the weekend, I do have a registered version of FSUIPC and will definitely try the traffic look program.

 

You mentioned that when I was airborne at a specific point that it hopefully wasn't a transparent scenery object, is there a way I can check?

 

I'm going to uninstall all of my AI, remove any of my installed AFCAD files, though the ones I did install were for default airports. I will try installing UT to see if the same condition exists as a starting point. I'll report my results over the weekend.

 

I can't believe that you don't have grinders out there :Shocked: that's horrible!! There's plenty of good shops around, though I've never seen the Shakespeare Pizza, I will look to see if it's still around. The small seafood stand you mentioned is still there, the food is still good. I always get their fish and chips. My dad used to work down the street from Main Street and Birdseye at US Baird, near the the Town Fair which is now gone.

 

I know Lycoming merged with Avco in the 80's and I believe they moved out west. I do see a Textron Lycoming sign over by the Sikorsky aircraft plant in Stratford, near the shelton border though.

 

thanks again for all of your help,

Matt