P3D3.2 looks really good, but hesitations are really bad!

[Petraeus 147]

Hello Pete

 

This is a bit of a long thread, and I may have missed this suggestion, but have you set 'Terrain Shadow Cast Distance' to zero? I previously had micro stutters, but when I set this particular slider to zero, they went away.

 

It depends on your configuration, but it might work for you also.

[Pete Dowson 558]

I think, oh venerable sir, that the subject of your scenery.cfg clean performance vs, as I recall, the hugest collection of "scenery layers" I have ever heard of, is worth persuing. In that vein, the best solution I can offer is a review of HOW you fly...I suspect IFR mostly, but I also infer, with that number of scenery layers, VFR IS HUGELY IMPORTANT.

 

No, only airports I have add-on scenery for all European airports that will take a 738. I don't have any add-ons for anything outside the "Greater Europe" area -- inwhich I include Iceland, the Azores, Canaries and Madeira, the North African and Middle Eastern seaboards.

 

Of the 400 additional layers, many are, of course, ORBX FTX and other similar functions. And some individual airports use two or three layers by themselves.

 

That leads me to suggest Minimizing the impact by flying with a flight plan to allow the SELECTIVE USE use of RESOURCES. The minimalist scenery/performance utility, SimStarter, seems to afford just that.

http://aviation.pero-online.de/wordpress/?page_id=105 .

 

This utility, allows the rational, compartmentalization of need, vs resources, vs performance. It can maximize the highest flying/troubleshooting ratio...a flying analog of an audiophile's rabid concern with signal to Noise ratio, through resource management.

 

Yes, I know about this, but as reported earlier, I tried it with not only no add-on layers and with only subsections -- 100 or less at a time. And really, since I would like to be able to fly with several "hops" (I like to keep each flight to around 1 hour or less) from one side of Europe to the other, it would be rather annoying to have to close down between each. (Not that I don't anyway on occasion, to ensure no problems arise in ancillary software like ProSim).

I had also bad stutters after switching to 3.2 (also with 3.1 but not this bad). This forced me to adjust different settings and after I moved the slider for "terrain shadow cast distance" to 0 made a big improvement for me. 

 

Thanks, but one of the first things I did was turn all the shadowing options off.

I also had stutters but it was only with the ngx, and it only occurred after about 20mins of flight. What I did was use the program dxtfixerX and ran it against my p3d folder. Now my stutter is completely gone. So maybe you can try that

 

Hmm. I'll go find that and see what it's about. Thanks.

 

Pete

[Tomaz Drnovsek 440]

I know AI traffic is a must but do you get those stutters even if you turn it completely off?

[Bobsk8 12,735]

Wondering if  these stutters began occurring after switching to version 3.2, from 3.1? I have avoided loading 3.2 because I have read a few posts about 3.2 micro stutters on Facebook P3D group. My 3.1 runs very smooth with a 3 year old desktop, and frankly, I am afraid to move to 3.2, because one thing I hate about a flight sim is seeing stutters. To me, stutters  ruin any kind of immersion possible. 

[rcladin 4]

I've just added the ability in FSUIPC to set the Affinity Mask for programs started via its "RunPrograms" options -- ALL my external processes to FSX or P3D are started that way, so it suits me fine that way. No need for any other utility for me!

 

However, I seriously doubt this will help stop the jerks and hesitations with P3Dv3.2. I'm giving it another day of tests -- change to HT enabled, and maybe try P3D3.1 instead of 3.2, but then it's definitely back to FSX-SE for me!

 

Thanks,

Pete

Pete, thanks for your wonderful program, i wanted to follow up on this and ask one other question

 

Is this option in the release version yet, i.e. setting the affinity mask in the run programs bit in the ini file, i think i would find that very useful, as i manually run batch files at the moment to start EZCA & ASN etc etc after P3D has started.

 

My other query is just to ask and hope that you are putting some time/effort into a succession plan for fsuipc when you retire?

[charleslee201 19]

My stutters are reduce alot,  cant remember if it was  like this in  3.1 ,BUT  i hade to  find the right Refresh Rates hz,for my 60 lcd , with frame lock to 27 , never had to this prior to 3.2 this made a difference even from 30 to 29 to 25 hz was noticeable , i removed the airtraffic bgl fron scenery ,world , scenery , installed UT2 with 30 % traffic ( I find that its a lot with UT2) more and it starts to stutter but AND i have to reset the traffic onces loaded to have minimal stutter that is flyable , I use PRIO with system explorer to manage affinity on a 3770k, 4.6 (116)

[Pete Dowson 558]

I know AI traffic is a must but do you get those stutters even if you turn it completely off?

 

Not so many microstutters, but I still get the longer (1 sec or so) hesitations. They're the only annoying things.

 

But I found the problem See later ...

 

Wondering if  these stutters began occurring after switching to version 3.2, from 3.1?

 

No. 3.2 is the first version I felt I should try on my cockpit system. All previous versions of P3D have only been on my development system for FSUIPC work.

 

Is this option in the release version yet, i.e. setting the affinity mask in the run programs bit in the ini file,

My other query is just to ask and hope that you are putting some time/effort into a succession plan for fsuipc when you retire?

 

Answer to the first -- no, not yet. I'll see about making an new release this weekend. Some other stuff to do in it yet.

 

To the second. Hmm, I've thought about it. Nothing more yet.

 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Anyway, the ANSWER to my originally posted problem:

 

It was the video driver. I installed the latest from nVidia, 364.xx.  My friend Thomas told me that the 364.xx series were bad on his system -- lower frame rates and bad stutters -- and that he'd gone back to 361.43 and it solved all that.

 

So I tried that ... and it made all the difference!

 

More testing to do, but I’m no longer getting the hesitations where I was before, the microstutters are all but gone, the frame rates are much better, and I can even re-enable MyTraffic6 traffic alongside UT2, the way I've always had it in FSX-SE!

 

Still some things to solve, and I'm still not convinced I'll stay with P3D -- the performance with heavy traffic, heavy weather and dense airports is much better in FSX-SE. But I'll try a couple of test flights over the weekend.

 

Pete

[SteveW 1,792]

It seems they are playing whack-a-mole with those drivers, fix one thing and another pops up. But they have come on a lot and have done a lot of useful stuff. A recent annoyance is the frame rate halving when a panel is undocked.

 

Could be a difference in GPU's, Pete.

 

I'm using the GTX680 here right now, and recently with the latest drivers and v3.2, I'm experiencing a level of liquidity I've not experienced before with P3D.

 

Incidentally, when talking about NVidia drivers. Always start with a fresh profile. When was the last time you guys went into NCP and pressed Restore/Apply? To my knowledge that's cured a list of problems longer than my arm.

[Pete Dowson 558]

Incidentally, when talking about NVidia drivers. Always start with a fresh profile. When was the last time you guys went into NCP and pressed Restore/Apply? To my knowledge that's cured a list of problems longer than my arm.

 

I always install with the option to completely remove previous drivers. I'm pretty sure that removes the saved settings. At least they are always reset when I go backto them.

 

Pete

[skipph 82]

Hi Pete, I said way back when that I would be following this thread as I have had similar observations with long pauses and was reading all the suggestions and today decided to run the Glowing Heat B-58 at  around 1000 feet terrain following up the West coast doing abt 700 knots with Orbx S.C. and Orbx N.C.  which is the test I have been using and  it was not until I had unchecked  Orbx Vector that I finally saw my long pauses just stop happening.  OK on the driver issue find.  Skip 

[Pete Dowson 558]

Hi Pete, I said way back when that I would be following this thread as I have had similar observations with long pauses and was reading all the suggestions and today decided to run the Glowing Heat B-58 at  around 1000 feet terrain following up the West coast doing abt 700 knots with Orbx S.C. and Orbx N.C.  which is the test I have been using and  it was not until I had unchecked  Orbx Vector that I finally saw my long pauses just stop happening.  OK on the driver issue find.  Skip 

 

I unchecked the Vector layers early in my tests. I'm going to try UTX2.1. Not all layers, just some important ones.

 

My earlier installation with FSX had just FTX Global (the first release) and UTX installed (but not all layers enabled). That was fine. I'd not used FTX Vector at all -- it did badly affect FSX performance too.

 

Pete

[robert young 2,897]

For what it's worth, I have eliminated all stutters in 3.2 by doing the following, which might not work for others, and I have a very modest system with an ancient GTX 580 card and UNDER clocked i7 CPU running at 3.2 ghz.

 

For a like for like comparison initially, it is probably fair to run P3d 3.2 without HDR, cloud shadows and perhaps reduce sliders by one notch to align graphic output to the FSX equivalent, bearing in mind pop free autogen and the inherent higher detail which is bound to present a somewhat unequal comparison if you ignore these factors, all of which can be added gradually and later once a stable frame rate and stutter free performance is achieved:

 

I think the best tweak I've applied is affinity mask of 116. This seems to use the cpu to the best efficiency. I run UT2 and after starting the sim go to task manager and assign this and all other obvious processes to core 0, leaving P3d to run on the other cores. This alone eliminates nearly all the stutters. I run 0.2-0.25 fiber frame rate tweak, not 0.01 or 0.1 as very low settings are asking for blurred scenery and possibly stutters. It does result in a slightly lower frame rate but makes for smoother performance.

 

I find that aircraft complexity is a driver of potential stutters more than any other factor. For example, the otherwise excellent Aerosoft A318/319s are by far the worst provokers of stutters and I simply have to reduce detail for those to function acceptably and even then it is tough going.

 

If I run the default aircraft (eg: C172 or ported over default B737) I can run internal shadows, cloud shadows, HDR and high density everything and see barely a single stutter. 

 

ONE IMPORTANT indicator of performance lag in P3d is the delay or lag in internal VC PANNING. If there is a delay or lag in panning this is a clear predictor of stutters ahead, even if the frame rate appears to not degrade. As soon as I see panning less than completely smooth I know I should tone down the sliders or remove shadow detail or some other performance hit. It works every time. I can't stress this enough. If you see the slightest reluctance in panning side to side in the VC that is a very clear indicator that your graphics are struggling. 

 

With less demanding aircraft I can run with Vsync on and the motion is utterly smooth with no tears and not the slightest stutter except brief moments when new scenery is loading. I cannot run Vsync with the Aerosoft A319 or other graphically demanding aircraft. Nevetheless if I can get a stutter free performance on a now relatively old system I feel others could achieve the same. Another very important aspect is Texture Bandwith. I never run more than 50 or 60, and find the default 40 perfectly ok. Raising this to 80 or 120 does not return any advantage but higher-spec systems might manage better.

 

I always tweak in reverse. ie: I do not start with everything on full tilt then tone things down. I start with everything sparse and everything else switched off, then gradually introduce complexity step by step until I see a performance lag or stutters then adjust accordingly. One final thing. I find that matching MSAA with SGSS works very well. For example if I run the internal MSAA at 2x then I also run Sparse Grid SS at 2x. I find mismatching the two results in a greater likelyhood of stutters and degraded shimmering. In fact running MSAA 2x and SGSS at 2x results in less shimmering than MSAA at 4x and SGSS at 2x, or vice versa.

 

Hope that helps.

[SteveW 1,792]

Stunning post Rob!

[robert young 2,897]

Stunning post Rob!

 

Well a lot of it was learned from you Steve, for which many thanks.

[SteveW 1,792]

That's quite magnanimous of you to say that Rob, I'm very grateful. My first real memory of having a great time in FSX was flying one of your aircraft.