Hello all, I know there have been a flurry of threads recently with the release of v3.0, and I had posted about this issue in the P3D v3.0 tweaking thread.

 

That said, I thought this topic deserved a thread of its own.

 

I have been experiencing micro stutters, where the sim will pause/freeze for roughly a quarter of a second every 3-5 minutes... closer to 1-2 minutes whilst on the ground. First and foremost: has anyone else experienced this since making the move to v3.0? I never noticed these prior to v3.0 -- I never noticed them at any point during v2.5.

 

I have tried implementing an affinity mask, using a FFTF tweak, adjusting TEXTURE_BAND_MULT, implementing an internal and external frame limiter, and adjusted my road vehicle traffic. None of the above seemed to have made any difference. The only thing I haven't touched is the optimize_parts=1 entry in the .cfg, that I used in the past without issue(s), and noticed was automatically added to my .cfg, presumably by LM.

 

At any rate, does anyone have ideas? I can post a link to my .cfg, NI settings, and in-sim settings. It's not horrible by any means but it's a slight bother. My frames are otherwise entirely fine. I livestream on Twitch and find that they rarely drop below 20 while on the ground, generally hovering in the 18-25 range while taxiing around, and almost always locked at around 30 while at 5000 feet or above. My sim feels incredibly smooth and "strong", for lack of a better term, it's just these darn stutters.

 

FWIW, my frames seemed best with an affinity mask setting of 84, with 244 being a close second, and 254 seeming alright, although not as strong as the aforementioned. Using an external frame-limited (NI), and setting in-sim frames to unlimited gives a noticeable boost in smoothness and framerate (in lieu of a 30 frame lock in the sim). FFTF of 0.01 caused my autogen to load in at a slower rate, to the point where, essentially whatever I was overflying was rendering as my nose crossed the imaginary plane of the autogen. This isn't terribly surprising. I ended up deleting this entry soon after entering it (FFTF). As far as texture_band_mult goes, I heard some folks saying that raising it reduced their stutters, while others claimed that it's moot if you're using an unlimited frame rate. Any thoughts on this?

 

Below are links to my pertinent sim inner-workings:

 

.cfg Link:

https://mega.nz/#!d9ZykKYJ!1JimqquCUI7B6PgJDtGpFAOucv47n_6YizsyUriMe2w

 

NvidiaInspector Settings: 

http://puu.sh/kDNCx/7e6e586647.png

http://puu.sh/kDNCY/617590d4dd.png

 

In-Sim Settings:

http://puu.sh/kDNxD/ff39c8466b.jpg

http://puu.sh/kDNxT/147f840d16.jpg

http://puu.sh/kDNy5/f287484bec.jpg

http://puu.sh/kDNyf/eb6223cbca.jpg

http://puu.sh/kDNyn/1a578f58f0.jpg

 

Many thanks!

-Ben

I had horrible stuttering with the out of the box config that got progressively worse as a flight carried on. But an affinity mask of 84 seems to have cured it.

 

My stuttering issue must be different from yours. I was stuttering every other seconds, not every few minutes.

I had horrible stuttering with the out of the box config that got progressively worse as a flight carried on. But an affinity mask of 84 seems to have cured it.

 

My stuttering issue must be different from yours. I was stuttering every other seconds, not every few minutes.

 

Interesting. Yeah, mine don't sound anywhere near as bad as yours were. Mine are quite subtle (both in terms of frequency and severity) but they're annoying nonetheless. 

Just something to try. Turn off vsync and triple buffering.

dear vertingho,

 

     

 

Do you experience these periodic stutters while using all aircrafts ? 

 

I had the same issue but only while using pmdg 777 , The reason for my stutters (which were exactly as described by you above) was SOUND !!

 

basically my pmdg 777 sound files were not installed properly and every few minutes the sim would stutter/hang ,however i managed to reinstall   sound files properly through the pmdg operations centre .

 

 

hope this helps !

 

 

regards,

 

jaff

Just something to try. Turn off vsync and triple buffering.

 

Walders, thanks for the heads-up. I suppose it's something to try. Will see if tweaking the built-in vsync makes any difference. 

 

dear vertingho,

 

     

 

Do you experience these periodic stutters while using all aircrafts ? 

 

I had the same issue but only while using pmdg 777 , The reason for my stutters (which were exactly as described by you above) was SOUND !!

 

basically my pmdg 777 sound files were not installed properly and every few minutes the sim would stutter/hang ,however i managed to reinstall   sound files properly through the pmdg operations centre .

 

 

hope this helps !

 

 

regards,

 

jaff

 

Unfortunately the issue doesn't discriminate. It occurs quite similarly in all the aircraft I have flown (PMDG T7, PMDG NGX, Aerosoft Airbus). 

Yeah sorry I meant turn them off in prepar3d and maybe inspector too if you have them set. I run unlimited fps with no Vsync or triple buffer. I also have hyper threading turned off and no affinity mask or any other tweaks and it seems to be fairly good.

Please read this article and follow the instructions, this may or should help you or anyone else that has issues.

 

Please report back after you tried this.

 

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/331796

usually when the stutter is repeatable, it indicates that another process is running that takes processing time every xx seconds/minutes. The trick is finding which. If this happens in a native P3D with no add-ons, they the clean boot link posted above might give you a clue. If you have various add-ons, you might try disabling them one at a time.

 

Check that your AV isn't polling something. Try opening the Task Manager and keeping an eye on the process usage - see if anything triggers activity during the stutter.

 

It's a hit or miss situation but, as I said, when it's regular it's usually another process interfering and not some loading error, etc of P3D.

 

Vic

What kind of graphics card are you using? If Tesselation is on and you are overtaxing the memory that will also cause stuttering. That was the catalyst for me to get rid of my old Saphire AMD 7850 (1GB VRAM)

Please read this article and follow the instructions, this may or should help you or anyone else that has issues.

 

Please report back after you tried this.

 

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/331796

 

Will have a look.

 

usually when the stutter is repeatable, it indicates that another process is running that takes processing time every xx seconds/minutes. The trick is finding which. If this happens in a native P3D with no add-ons, they the clean boot link posted above might give you a clue. If you have various add-ons, you might try disabling them one at a time.

 

Check that your AV isn't polling something. Try opening the Task Manager and keeping an eye on the process usage - see if anything triggers activity during the stutter.

 

It's a hit or miss situation but, as I said, when it's regular it's usually another process interfering and not some loading error, etc of P3D.

 

Vic

 

Thanks for the advice, will take a look and see if any of my other addons may be interfering. Starting to wonder about my AV, as it was recently updated. 

 

What kind of graphics card are you using? If Tesselation is on and you are overtaxing the memory that will also cause stuttering. That was the catalyst for me to get rid of my old Saphire AMD 7850 (1GB VRAM)

 

GTX 970 by MSI. Not top-notch, but up there. Doubt it's a GPU issue. 

A couple of other simple tricks aginst stutters (although more constant and frequent-) I have read and perhaps worth trying, is turning FSUIPC's auto logging off and enabling Windows Aero-theme.

 

The last one seemed intuitive a little strange to me, as I had disabled it with both FSX and v2.5 and actuelly noticed some better performance and smoother simulation. But having enabled Aero now with v3, I actuelly noticed a smoother flow (not increase in fps), particular looking out of the windows down towards the ground flowing by.

A couple of other simple tricks aginst stutters (although more constant and frequent-) I have read and perhaps worth trying, is turning FSUIPC's auto logging off and enabling Windows Aero-theme.

 

The last one seemed intuitive a little strange to me, as I had disabled it with both FSX and v2.5 and actuelly noticed some better performance and smoother simulation. But having enabled Aero now with v3, I actuelly noticed a smoother flow (not increase in fps), particular looking out of the windows down towards the ground flowing by.

Halv, funny you should mention this. Mid-flight I had a realization -- I had enabled FSUIPC's autosave after an OOM. This is likely the cause of my occasional 'hiccups'.

 

Will disable that and expect things will clear up. Thank you, all!

dear vertingho,

 

     

 

Do you experience these periodic stutters while using all aircrafts ? 

 

I had the same issue but only while using pmdg 777 , The reason for my stutters (which were exactly as described by you above) was SOUND !!

 

basically my pmdg 777 sound files were not installed properly and every few minutes the sim would stutter/hang ,however i managed to reinstall   sound files properly through the pmdg operations centre .

 

 

hope this helps !

 

 

regards,

 

jaff

I think this is part of my issue. There is a change in sound and then a stutter. How did you fix the audio files? 

Hi there.

 

Im also getting this issue too... every 5 seconds or so the mouse pointer changes to the spinning circle (as if its loading something) and it stutters causing a crackling in my head set