Ultimate Terrain P3D V4 Stuttering

[sfgiants13 83]

So after a fresh reinstall of Windows and P3D V4 I was able to narrow down what was causing my stuttering.  I didn't get this in V3 with UTX but the moment I installed it in V4 the stutters returned on the fresh install.  I tested default, ORBX base and OpenLC and all was good.  I then added in UTX and the stutters came back.  I uninstalled and tested it at several addon airports of FSDT and Flightbeam and it was still smooth.  Has anyone else experienced this and do you have a possible solution?  I did pickup ORBX vector at the last sale since it has global coverage so I have been waiting for that to become compatible.  Hopefully that won't have the same issues when it's released.

 

My specs are a 6600K at 4.4ghz and a 1060 GTX card with a 4k 40" tv.  I've backed off the most demanding sliders and my settings are very similar to my smooth setup in V3.  The only difference right now is I'm running road traffic since it's been optimized, but my AI traffic is currently off since I haven't reinstalled MT6 while I've been testing.

[Anxu00 176]

24 minutes ago, sfgiants13 said:

 The only difference right now is I'm running road traffic since it's been optimized, but my AI traffic is currently off since I haven't reinstalled MT6 while I've been testing.

Try turning that off. UTX adds much more roads than the default.  Even if LM optimizes road traffics, they may still be too much to cause stutters.

[sfgiants13 83]

Yeah I tried that and it didn't help.  I also should've said that I'm currently using vsync at 25 FPS since that's what my monitor refresh rate is set at.  It usually stays right on the money.  Vsync off didn't help either.

[mwa05 108]

I did not really have any plans to migrate to P3D as I had (had been the operative word) an excellent FSX set up and the cost to replicate was north of   $2,500K AUD.

However, 5 days after v4 came out I had a complete PC failure that was not recoverable even by a technician thus I lost everything. With the system rebuilt (and the faulting component replaced) and retuned/oc'd by the builder I decided that I may as well now make the move.

Thus I now have P3D v4 and have paid for all my PMDG aircraft again (but have only the two released aircraft thus far installed of course) and like you I use FTX Global and Open LC and I tuned P3D at default and then after adding Orbx, found that I had the same performance everywhere in my testing regime - so far so good.

However, the PMDG 747 once added consistently had a bad stutter every few seconds when taxiing. In the air it was fine. It literally took me a whole day (about 11 hours all told) to find the cause (on literally a clean computer and set up) and it was the Autogen Draw Distance slider under the Graphics / World options.

In set up and testing, this slider made zero difference with any P3D vehicles and in Elaine Dizon's Prepar3D v4 Images and Install structure post, she wrote that this setting has little impact on performance (which was my experience until adding the 747).

Setting this slider far left to low is the only setting on my system that allows me to taxi the 747 stutter free. Nothing else including using the aircrafts in built performance settings made any difference.

Now the good news is I personally struggle to see any difference with this slider full left or full right with regards to Autogen or Scenery (and maybe I won't go looking any further) perhaps given how FTX Global works, but that is my story to throw into the stutter solving pot!

I have a i7-6700K 4.6 o/c GTX1080 16GB RAM Windows 10 Pro.

I also found my system ran cooler using AM=85 although there was no smoothness difference between leaving AM out of the .cfg or putting an AM in. 

Regards,

Mark

[sfgiants13 83]

Interesting I'll give that a try. Autogen distance has been on medium since I believe that was similar to the max on v3 and the other 2 on normal. 

[sfgiants13 83]

So it looks like I may just be overloading the GPU and UTX was what put it over the top.  Dropping down some of the terrain settings and getting rid of road traffic has helped a lot.  Oh well I guess my 1060 will need to be upgraded at some point but for now I'll have to drop the settings.  Hopefully adding in the PMDG and AI traffic wont be enough to reintroduce stutters and cause me to drop the settings too much again.

 

edit: It looks like going unlimited actually helped a ton.  I used to lock to help with blurries but that caused stuttering in V4 where it didn't in V3.  I was able to use the PMDG 777 at FB SFO with some traffic and higher terrain settings and it was smooth.  I did have to drop to 4x MSAA at SFO but that's to make sure I can maintain the FPS needed to match my refresh rate.  What was quite strange was I could hit the 25 FPS with it locked to 26 but once I hit unlimited it dropped to 18ish so obviously that stuttered too.  But once I changed the AA settings to where I could maintain 25 at unlimited it worked quite well.  Now all I need is AI not to mess it up and I'll be a happy camper.

[BobP 56]

Hi everyone, 

I too just moved to P3dV4 from FSX as the VAS limit in FSX greatly limited the number of legs I could fly without rebooting. I have all of the FTX global and North American scenery, none of which I plan to install in P3v4.  I have installed UTX USA, Canada, Tropical and Europe which to my eye looks better than FTX particularly in the US. Very smooth motion no stutters, however, initially I was getting random crashes then read a post in the PMDG forum concerning the 'AA' options. I took  a close look at my CPU and GPU temps and loads.  With an AA '8xSSAA' and Terrain settings one notch to left I was maxing out (100%) my I7-6700 and Nvidia GTX 1070 GPU and CPU cores. Temps on the CPU core were very warm and the GPU was mid 80s. I lowered  the AA to 8xMSAA and no crashes since the change with a substantial lowering of component temps. The sim looks great and the change in AA also removed a large FPS hit with  Dynamic lighting checked. 

As far as the FTX scenery, it is a mess to remove  and in my opinion  polygons gone wild, particularly Northern and Southern California. There doesn't seem to be a desire to balance performance with scenery detail. 

Bob

 

[theskyisthelimit 48]

 

On 6/18/2017 at 11:42 PM, sfgiants13 said:

So it looks like I may just be overloading the GPU and UTX was what put it over the top.  Dropping down some of the terrain settings and getting rid of road traffic has helped a lot.  Oh well I guess my 1060 will need to be upgraded at some point but for now I'll have to drop the settings.  Hopefully adding in the PMDG and AI traffic wont be enough to reintroduce stutters and cause me to drop the settings too much again.

 

edit: It looks like going unlimited actually helped a ton.  I used to lock to help with blurries but that caused stuttering in V4 where it didn't in V3.  I was able to use the PMDG 777 at FB SFO with some traffic and higher terrain settings and it was smooth.  I did have to drop to 4x MSAA at SFO but that's to make sure I can maintain the FPS needed to match my refresh rate.  What was quite strange was I could hit the 25 FPS with it locked to 26 but once I hit unlimited it dropped to 18ish so obviously that stuttered too.  But once I changed the AA settings to where I could maintain 25 at unlimited it worked quite well.  Now all I need is AI not to mess it up and I'll be a happy camper.

I spotted your thread, as its an exact match to my issue.. add in UTX (or BM Vector) either way, stutters begin.. particularly if you do hard turning in a faster aircraft.. and even over barren areas with no addons.. where the frame rate might be between 45 and 53 (vsync on).. my situation is a 1080 video card.. but i tested this same install on a different machine with a 980Ti and i swear i'm not seeing the stuttering.. need to verify..   i found, like you, that if i make sure its unlimited and turn off road traffic, its minimal.. and maybe tone down shadows though i havent yet (and i should check my gpu usage).. so i'm curious how this held up for you.. still thinking it could be some weird mix of hardware on my box more than the software, but clearly the software kicks into issue mode.

 

[sfgiants13 83]

Since this thread I've moved to ORBX vector.  It seems to do pretty well and my stuttering is manageable now.  My only issue is that I'll get spikes in my FPS causing stutters with vsync on when I run unlimited sometimes.  That goes away when I lock the frames, but at larger airports I get a big performance hit so I have to run unlimited.  I'm still working on fixing that permanently.

[theskyisthelimit 48]

23 minutes ago, sfgiants13 said:

Since this thread I've moved to ORBX vector.  It seems to do pretty well and my stuttering is manageable now.  My only issue is that I'll get spikes in my FPS causing stutters with vsync on when I run unlimited sometimes.  That goes away when I lock the frames, but at larger airports I get a big performance hit so I have to run unlimited.  I'm still working on fixing that permanently.

Interesting ok.. interesting that we both run 4k and have the issue, though i dont think thats the cause.. I checked my gpu and cpu usage when this occurs.. gpu never exceeds 49% and cpu the same.. did you find similar results?  I cant do locked frames it seems worse to me, whether locked in the sim or externally.

[sfgiants13 83]

My GPU is usually pretty close to maxed out at 4x SSAA.  At 8x MSAA it usually runs in the 60-80% range.  I only have a 1060 though.