Till the stuttering of ASN is fixed, I am back to As2012, and rex4. I strongly suspect as_svr folder bandwidth overshadowing FSX is part of, if not the only cause of the stutters.



Did you report it to HiFi Tech?

 

Don't think its a technical support issue, cause the product functions ok. But causing FSX to stutter in various degrees, to nearly unusable.

 

Since HIFI visit this forum as well, thought it might be best to start here, rather than going in circles with technical support about the fact that as_svr folder from ASN is starving FSX of disk bandwidth, and probably the cause of the stutters caused by ASN.

 

From google and previous posts on this forum, there is significantly more folks complaining about freezes and stutters with ASN more than during the release of AS2012 or Active SKY Evolution, plus its first time HIFI have added a heavily accessed folder to FSX root folder. Used to get same kind of stutters from previous REX weather engine, so stuck with AS2012.

 

One of the complexities of developing add-ons for FSX is that the add-on being the drummer would help by not drowning out the singer FSX. And from time to time add-ons compete too much with FSX for resources, which leads to unsmooth graphics.

 

for example

1. PMDG777 uses too much VAS, so I use very low FSx graphics for the 777.

2. ASN is ok on CPU usage, but BLOWS all records by needing more disk bandwidth on FSX drive than the sim itself.

 

Thought might be better for other users to check their disk usage using resource monitor and see that as_svr for ASN is choking up FSX access to load textures.

 

I figure the investigation by other users would help build a consensus HIFI could work with.

 

 

BobKK47, on 28 Jan 2014 - 02:37 AM, said:


If your computer contains Realtek High Definition drivers (codecs) for a sound chip on your MB, your drivers may be corrupted. This WILL cause the infamous FSX freeze.

Not sure why the OP is looking into sound codec, cause he use the same drivers with As2012 and no stutters or freeze with that.

Except when using ASN. bit confused why sound codec being investigated. Maybe I missed a post or 2 along the way :(

Don't think its a technical support issue, cause the product functions ok. But causing FSX to stutter in various degrees, to nearly unusable.

 

Ok,

 

First, if it is not an ASN tech support issue what are we doing in this forum with it .. just asking?

 

Now my thought is. If it is a code problem in ASN the all users of ASN should be seeing the same problem.

 

You mentioned:  "as_svr folder from ASN is starving FSX of disk bandwidth, and probably the cause of the stutters caused by ASN."

 

I keyed on the word "probable"?

 

And other programs causing the problem? "Used to get same kind of stutters from previous REX weather engine, so stuck with AS2012."

 

If I were you I would submit a tech support ticket to ASN.

Ok,

 

First, if it is not an ASN tech support issue what are we doing in this forum with it .. just asking?

 

Now my thought is. If it is a code problem in ASN the all users of ASN should be seeing the same problem.

 

You mentioned:  "as_svr folder from ASN is starving FSX of disk bandwidth, and probably the cause of the stutters caused by ASN."

 

I keyed on the word "probable"?

 

And other programs causing the problem? "Used to get same kind of stutters from previous REX weather engine, so stuck with AS2012."

 

If I were you I would submit a tech support ticket to ASN.

 

Its ok now, just reinstalled AS2012, and figured how to have ASN and As2012 Xgauges installed in sim at same time. So next time I make a flight with ASN and it starts freezing my flight, ill pause and switch to AS2012.

 

Again on matter of support, its 100% clear from win 7 resource monitor that as_svr is starving FSX\scenery loading of disk bandwidth , and I am a bit disappointed that HIFI testing did not pickup on the fact that their add-on is turning the perf of my SSD into a 10 year old hard drive, by adding a folder in FSX root taking up most of disk bandwidth. Its like one of those cars where the air conditioning uses more fuel than the car's own engine.

 

Would like to see ASN fixed, looks great with rex4, but too often you get your clouds 1 frame at a time, so back as2102 for now.

Its bad idea to release a product without properly testing its impact on FSX, as_svr folder should not be on same drive as FSX or even OS, cause its hugs disk too much. And both OS and FSX drives are busy already during flight without adding the new as_svr topping the charts.

 

Also going to HIFI tech support forum is another user name and password registration that I could very very strongly do without right now in order  to avoid those dreams where you still trying to memorise passwords and usernames, or wondering which you forgot.

 

 Back to AS2012, might also give Opus a try.  Won't mind a tip on how to relocate as_svr to drive/location of my choice.

Hello to all,

 

First of all read the forum rules here: http://forum.avsim.net/topic/384751-forum-rules/

 

I'd like to clarify that we're finalizing some changes in the way ASN handles radar data communication, minimizing disk access among other things. These changes have been included in the upcoming hotfix we're preparing and will be released in the following days. Just FYI, this had only partial success as to the freezes/stutters issues for certain users, since this problem is multifactorial and not only related to the way ASN works.

 

Any user experiencing such issues, is welcome to open up a support ticket and we'll provide to him early releases. This way helps us keep track of the feedback and provide personalized support in a better way 

 

Thanks for your support!

 

Kostas

 

PS: Selecting to go public posting here (multiple times) directly hurting the product's reputation, instead of using our own support ticket system (that will most probably solve the issue), not signing with a real name, hmmm... interesting...

Let's make a poll: When is the exact point where it's ethical for a moderator to start... moderating forum posts?

Hello to all,

 

First of all read the forum rules here: http://forum.avsim.net/topic/384751-forum-rules/

 

I'd like to clarify that we're finalizing some changes in the way ASN handles radar data communication, minimizing disk access among other things. These changes have been included in the upcoming hotfix we're preparing and will be released in the following days. Just FYI, this had only partial success as to the freezes/stutters issues for certain users, since this problem is multifactorial and not only related to the way ASN works.

 

Any user experiencing such issues, is welcome to open up a support ticket and we'll provide to him early releases. This way helps us keep track of the feedback and provide personalized support in a better way 

 

Thanks for your support!

 

Kostas

 

PS: Selecting to go public posting here (multiple times) directly hurting the product's reputation, instead of using our own support ticket system (that will most probably solve the issue), not signing with a real name, hmmm... interesting...

Let's make a poll: When is the exact point where it's ethical for a moderator to start... moderating forum posts?

 

[[[[[

I'd like to clarify that we're finalizing some changes in the way ASN handles radar data communication, minimizing disk access among other things. These changes have been included in the upcoming hotfix we're preparing and will be released in the following days. Just FYI, this had only partial success as to the freezes/stutters issues for certain users, since this problem is multifactorial and not only related to the way ASN works.

]]]]]]

 

Great news regards hotfix , thanks for quick reply, I only posted here to build consensus if the as_svr issue would be worth approaching HIFI tech support about.

 

I am optimistic that if issue of as_svr is fixed, ASN could be smoother than As2012, cause ASN seems to use only half CPU required by  AS2012.

 

It would be great if HFI could provide user option to config drive location for very busy ASN folders, such as those in OS/users and FSX root.

User like me with 4 drives could move all that traffic to an almost endless choice of other drives doing nothing. Then maybe I can turn up my ASN setting some.  

 

 

[[[[[[[

PS: Selecting to go public posting here (multiple times) directly hurting the product's reputation, instead of using our own support ticket system (that will most probably solve the issue), not signing with a real name, hmmm... interesting...

Let's make a poll: When is the exact point where it's ethical for a moderator to start... moderating forum posts?

]]]]]]]

 

Factual information should not hurt reputation of a product that has a reliable track record, such as AS weather series, and forum rules says not to mention names, so I won't name any less reliable weather programs I know. 

 

Its either hurting  product reputation or encouraging new users to a complex hubby by providing factual information that makes their life easier managing this old FSX on modern platforms. Currently most my fun comes from platform management.

 

There will be no FSX addon product left alive if the sim is dead, cause all users gave up as result of frustration from products that don't behave as advertised and that has made a lot leave already.  We talking a program like FSX that crashes even when not provoked. 

 

 

As for not using support ticket, again long live AVSIM servers, most people are here, and I was looking for a quick fix.

 

fortunately I don't have to make any effort to  give your product good PR cause  the HIFI weather series has a very reliable track record by FSX add-on standards. Even the install registration process of HIFI products is more professional  and painless than most other add-ons, people forget such factors till they have to reinstall FSX  too often.

 

The forums are only as useful as the information we are able to communicate. And most people are here not in HIFI tech forum, so I was looking for widest audience to give me quick  tip on relocating the HOT as_svr folder, maybe some registry setting etc.

 

 

I really hope you provide us option to locate HOT ASN folders in drive location of choice, so platforms with extra drive  

resource can take advantage of that feature to turn up ASN sliders a bit.

 

 

I am sorry you came up in full force against a long time HIFI fan in myself on this occasion.

 

James Woods

James,

 

"Again on matter of support, its 100% clear from win 7 resource monitor that as_svr is starving FSX\scenery loading of disk bandwidth"

 

I did a couple tests today ... Win 7 resource monitor looking at FSX and later looked at as_audio disk usage ... did not see a problem.

 

My setup is just basic FSX Acceleration and ASN (on a client pc).

No Xgauge in use ... ...  I seen it was mentioned earlier... no ASN flight plan loaded.

 

Maybe I need to do something to to get the problem to show up.

 

Maybe you have a screenshot of your Win 7 resource monitor high disk usage.

 

 

Edit:

Did you do a support ticket to ASN tech support?

Quoting myself from another thread, and hoping it might be of some help:

 

 

Well, i finally FINALLY got it. After another set of long LONG hauls i can say i eliminated the problem of the temporary random freezes for good. I already posted a partial solution in another thread also related to the freezes, but this is all i needed to do:

 

[JobScheduler]

AffinityMask=84

 

Somehow my system/FSX/Graphics Card/whatever needs to have Core1 free for whatever it needs it to. Once i remove the mask, the freezes are back. I didn't test anything further than this like disabling HT in the BIOS or setting another mask, i was SO fed up with the situation that i stopped tweaking once i found where the problem lied.

Nuno,

 

I am not getting freezes. Mine is: AffinityMask=224 in fsx.cfg file.

 

 

What was your's originally?

 

For each system should the value be different?

 

Edit:

 

I read this:

FSX will automatically use all available cores if you SP1 or later installed, there is no need to tweak anything. The reason some people use this setting is to restrict FSX to 3 out of 4 cores, leaving one clear for Windows and other tasks to use. Read through the guide below as it has some more details about how it works.


Here:http://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showthread.php?251736-FSX-Affinity-Mask

 

James,

 

"Again on matter of support, its 100% clear from win 7 resource monitor that as_svr is starving FSX\scenery loading of disk bandwidth"

 

I did a couple tests today ... Win 7 resource monitor looking at FSX and later looked at as_audio disk usage ... did not see a problem.

 

My setup is just basic FSX Acceleration and ASN (on a client pc).

No Xgauge in use ... ...  I seen it was mentioned earlier... no ASN flight plan loaded.

 

Maybe I need to do something to to get the problem to show up.

 

Maybe you have a screenshot of your Win 7 resource monitor high disk usage.

 

 

Edit:

Did you do a support ticket to ASN tech support?

Hi

 

The  name of the folder you looking for is as_svr, and easiest way to spot it in resource monitor is to go disk page , and click "total bytes" column. This shows the folder with most read/write access  when fsx and ASN are running.  

 

Tried to paste screen shot, but all I could find were buttons to share the post on twitter and facebook., so gave up.  As Long as fsx is running and ASN running, as_svr is 90% of time top Hard Disk User. Used to be FSX\Scenery folder that held that position, and it needs to reclaim that position for this issue to be fixed.  

 

However HIFi is also quite very busy on the OS drive as well in c\user\etc. So a great fix would be one that allows user to relocate all HIFI traffic on OS and FSX drive to another drive if user has that option, In my case 3 spare drives spoilt for choice. 

 

I purposely install HIFI products on spare third drive hoping it keeps most of its traffic to that drive, but it hardly ever used its drive, but kicks off major activity on OS and FSX drives. AS2012 kept its major activity to only OS drive atleast. Would be nice for option to move all the HIFI activity to a third drive.

 

 

HIFi have already posted here that there is ASN hotfix on the way for various improvements including this disk bottle neck issue. I believe best way to solve is allow user to specify location of heavily accessed folders.  FSX and OS drives are too busy already and that is with SSD.

 

So you may not need to bother about this, since ASN update is on the way.

 

 

 

Quoting myself from another thread, and hoping it might be of some help:

 

I am using same setting (HT84) but I set in laso 

 

Increasing cpu and IO resource to ASN helped decrease stutters, but I prefer not to play with that dial till obvious ASN issues on my system are out of the way, such as the current disk bottle neck.

 

AS2012 runs super smooth on my system at idle CPU and limited system resource, and little should be enough on 4.8 Gig OC. 

 

ON my I7990, HT is on and FSX affinity is set via process laso to use all 12 cores but first 2. So don't do affinity masks in config files anymore, and easy to change on the fly. A very powerfull tool laso and must have for any simmer.

 

Honestly Stutters from ASN did seem to stop for me when I used Process laso to set ASN IO priority to very low, but  was too lazy to check effects on resource monitor. And it was a short test cause fsx  crashed eventually. Was OC testing from 4.77 to 4.8 stable.

Do a screenshot (jpg) of what you want to show.

When your are typing a post .. look down towards the lower right of the posting box outline.

You will see More Reply Options Box.


After you finish your typing your post, click on the options box.

It will bring up the file xfer box.
find your file by browsing your PC ... select it to get it uploaded from your PC to your AVSIM.
Lastly, "select" ATTACH to get it into your post.
Now, post (save) your finished post like normal.
 

 

I would like to see your high usage screenshot so I can get the same screenshot from my system.

Nuno,

 

I am not getting freezes. Mine is: AffinityMask=224 in fsx.cfg file.

 

 

What was your's originally?

 

For each system should the value be different?

 

Edit:

 

I read this:

 

FSX will automatically use all available cores if you SP1 or later installed, there is no need to tweak anything. The reason some people use this setting is to restrict FSX to 3 out of 4 cores, leaving one clear for Windows and other tasks to use. Read through the guide below as it has some more details about how it works.

 

 

Here:http://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showthread.php?251736-FSX-Affinity-Mask

 

 

 

I didn't have a mask set. If i remember correctly, i only started getting these freezes way back when i purchased the GTX780 in favour of the GTX670. I then built an entirely new system but the symptoms were still there.

 

What you read is true, this mask will leave FSX away from the first core (0 or 1 depending how you want to call it) and somehow it works for me. This has been tested for many many hours and if i remove the mask, the freezes return at random and during the same ~5 minutes.

 

It's also true that other systems might differ. My father uses different hardware (i7 4770K + GTX670 and similar Z87 motherboard) and he has no freezings at all, so my fix might not be yours but i decided to publish just in case and for the record.

James,

"Tried to paste screen shot, but all I could find were buttons to share the post on twitter and facebook., so gave up."

Try this to post your disk activity screenshot here:

Do a screenshot (jpg) of what you want to show.

When your are typing a post .. look down towards the lower right of the posting box outline.

You will see More Reply Options Box.


After you finish your typing your post, click on the options box.

It will bring up the file xfer box.
find your file by browsing your PC ... select it to get it uploaded from your PC to your AVSIM.
Lastly, "select" ATTACH to get it into your post.
Now, post (save) your finished post like normal.

***

I looked at the disk activity ... I did a screenshot of it.
Is this basically what you see?
 

James,

 

"Tried to paste screen shot, but all I could find were buttons to share the post on twitter and facebook., so gave up."

 

Try this to post your disk activity screenshot here:

 

Do a screenshot (jpg) of what you want to show.

 

When your are typing a post .. look down towards the lower right of the posting box outline.

 

You will see More Reply Options Box.

 

 

After you finish your typing your post, click on the options box.

 

It will bring up the file xfer box.

find your file by browsing your PC ... select it to get it uploaded from your PC to your AVSIM.

Lastly, "select" ATTACH to get it into your post.

Now, post (save) your finished post like normal.

 

***

 

I looked at the disk activity ... I did a screenshot of it.

Is this basically what you see?

 

Hi

 

Thanks for the screenshot,  as_svr folder was mostly on top of that list when I tested in last 2 flights.

 

 

I launched only FSx and ASn, and not rest of my addons  such as FScommander, to try to get you a screen shot.  And as_svr if barely visible near the top of the disk usage list. That said, did not do a flight, which is where I spotted the issue during cruise. Also suspect it needs to be heavy cloud weather to reproduce.

 

Also noticed, and comes as no surprise that as_svr folder location on the list  depends on current FSX state, that is loading flight, on  ground, cruise etc. For example when loading flight FSX\scenery takes top position.

 

Once I get some time, will try to recreate the scenario with all my usual add-ons and full flight.

 

unless there has been a change in ASN server interaction code recently, I expect to find as_svr on top again when I try with full flight, cause nothing has changed on my system. I will send you screen shot of that.

 

cheers

James,

 

You already had a screenshot days ago... why can't you post it?

 

You know what I think .. ?

 

I think no matter which drive and folder the file the OS needs (like my AS2012/ ASN is on a networked PC ... which, timewise may take longer than any local drive) .... for any program, not just MSFS, AS2012 or ASN, it will go get it and use it .. in the scheduling order it needs it.

 

I seen no unusual activity on the Win7 Resource Monitor or when using Process Monitor when using ASN.

 

A lot of services are in the list during normal operations and each ... sooner or later takes their turn at the "top" of the list with high read write cycles.

 

Anyway, post the screenshot you already had ... that the one you wanted to show initially but did not know how to post it in this forum (you seen my instructions on how to do it.. ?).

Hi

 

Just gave ASN another chance , but as_svr issue persists

 

Pics below

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Would be better for HIFI and other addon devs  to make location of HOT folders configurable

Or better still keep all possible activity to the drive on which its installed. In my case ASN is installed on drive F, and its causing lock up on drive B for FSX.

 

 

Back to As2012 for now