P3Dv4 Pause (Not Responding) Then Back

[geolpilot 88]

I had one of these pauses yesterday for the first time ever. About a 5s pause on approach into FACT RW019 (NDM add-on), at around 5nm out. Thought I was about to have a BSOD, but it came back, and was a bit of a stutter fest for a few seconds, then was normal again.

After a rough landing I paused to reflect on what had happened. Another issue had arisen on contacting tower for landing clearance. The runway assigned and the winds in the sim were not in sync with ASP3D4. I requested a runway change (PF3), was given it, but landed with a fair tailwind. After landing I found that AS had disconnected at some stage, so default weather was now active. AS runs networked from my laptop, so a network error? But weather had "gone" some minutes before the pause, so I do not think it happened as ASP3D4 disconnected.

Flight all the way from FAOR had been perfectly smooth, up till that point. Should have maybe realized a problem with AS4 when I noticed how clear the weather was. Is there now some problem that has developed with Simconnect?

I also use GSX, so as an add-on airport comes to be loaded in more detail is there now something causing GSX to hiccup for a few seconds? 

All I changed from the trouble-free system I had before last week, was on Friday 24th November I updated to latest Nvidia graphics driver (388.31) and initially had a problem with textures going totally blurred. Fixed that. I also seem to be getting more stutters on the ground during turns that I recall having before, and trying to solve that.

Other things that may come into play was that I was recording the flight (GEFORCE EXPERIENCE in-game overlay). Maybe that had to do a large write, or had some other hiccup.

I run EVGA OC to monitor my GPU usage and system temps. As this is also all "graphics linked" piece of software, maybe a hiccup in that caused a graphics bottleneck.. At the time of the pause I had toggled OSD off so cannot say what the GPU usage was just then, but times I checked during the flight usage was never over 79%, mostly in the 60s.

I do not run FSPUIPC saves, so for me I can write that one off.

I am on W10, but aside from security updates, the "fall creators" edition has no been pushed to me, and I have blocked updates till Dec20th. So still on 1703 build 15063.674, Win 10 Pro.

As usual so many "parts" to troubleshoot to pin this down, but I do not think it is coincidental that all at about the same time, several people are noticing this. Guess we just have to re-fly problem flights with things turned off one-by-one, and also try to nail down what addons we may have in common use that may be a source. It does not seem it is one specific area or airport addon, but that does not rule out that something in common use by diverse sceneries is "stalling".

Rob

[Johnny19 344]

I should feel relieved that i am not alone in this. First i thought that i did something wrong oveclocking my cpu, or that i installed 1080ti wrong. Yesterday i had for the first time the same symptoms that you guys wrote about. Sim pauses/freezes for a few seconds. And it happened at FSDT KDFW. No pausing in cruise, and again one short freeze after landing in KIAH. (not saying that FSDT is the culprit here). System is i7 6700k @4,7 GHz (adaptive mode), GTX1080Ti OC, Win 10 (latest build), P3D 4.1, FSUIPC latest ver.

[WebMaximus 372]

Maybe it's as simple as an Nvidia driver issue. I'm also using the 388.31 driver and I'm also using a 1080Ti.

We've seen these kind of things so many times before caused by the Nvidia driver.

Is everyone in here with this issue using the latest Nvidia driver? 

[Johnny19 344]

16 minutes ago, WebMaximus said:

Maybe it's as simple as an Nvidia driver issue. I'm also using the 388.31 driver and I'm also using a 1080Ti.

We've seen these kind of things so many times before caused by the Nvidia driver.

Is everyone in here with this issue using the latest Nvidia driver? 

Latest Nvidia driver, yes.

[WebMaximus 372]

So an interesting test might be to revert to an old and confirmed well-working version and see if the freezing issue is still present.

Any ideas what would be a good and confirmed stable version for P3Dv4.1 for a 1080 Ti with no reported issues?

[Matthew James de Bohun 55]

I had this problem recently. Turned out it was caused by SODE. Once I turned it off at Gatwick UK2000 then it stopped happening.

[Johnny19 344]

One other question. Does anyone notice a breef short freeze when opening GSX menu with ctrl+f12 or opening default ATC menu? Speaking of SODE, haven't noticed issues with SODE whatsoever, since almost every airport in my addon list has it.

[simbol 5,819]

4 minutes ago, Matthew James de Bohun said:

I had this problem recently. Turned out it was caused by SODE. Once I turned it off at Gatwick UK2000 then it stopped happening.

Do you mean that you disabled SODE Jetways at EGKK? what version of SODE you have? this might give people more clues to find a posible solution..

Maybe a different version of SODE could alleviate the symptoms.

Best Regards,

Simbol

[Cruachan 705]

I don't believe this is driver related as I am still on 385.02.

My operating system is Windows 7 Pro 64 bit so an update seems unlikely to be behind this.

SODE is not active at KVPS/HRT nor is it active at ORBX's NZWR. Pauses occur at both these situations.

SODE (v.1.5.3) is active at LLH Creation's Mirabel LFKX and NO pauses are encountered.

Active Sky for P3D4 does not have to be active.

I do not use GSX nor am I recording when these pauses occur.

It might be helpful if we could confirm whether or not these pauses are reproduceable. Try slewing back in a straight line and then 'refly' the same course.

Mike

 

 

 

[WebMaximus 372]

33 minutes ago, Matthew James de Bohun said:

I had this problem recently. Turned out it was caused by SODE. Once I turned it off at Gatwick UK2000 then it stopped happening.

I read this too and unchecked using SODE Safe Docks in the UK2000 EGLL contol panel but still noticed some pauses although not as severe as the ones on my way into EGLL the day before.

28 minutes ago, Johnny19 said:

One other question. Does anyone notice a breef short freeze when opening GSX menu with ctrl+f12 or opening default ATC menu? Speaking of SODE, haven't noticed issues with SODE whatsoever, since almost every airport in my addon list has it.

I have that pause/freeze when opening the GSX menu as well and especially right after picking a gate and operator after I landed. Learned to live with it and asked about it over in FSDT's forums and got a reply this is normal. Would be very nice if there was a way to get rid of it though since it's quite annoying.

[Matthew James de Bohun 55]

1 hour ago, simbol said:

Do you mean that you disabled SODE Jetways at EGKK? what version of SODE you have? this might give people more clues to find a posible solution..

Maybe a different version of SODE could alleviate the symptoms.

Best Regards,

Simbol

Not sure off the top of my head. When I got the scenery for Gatwick a week or so ago it asked me if I wanted to install and use SODE for it and I did.

[Cruachan 705]

This is what's happening on my system:

Again, taking the flight from KVPS to HRT as an example.

(KVPS) Eglin to (HRT) Hurlburt

Idling on Rwy 19 at KVPS

Before Pause

During Pause

After Pause

Interesting observation: during testing I found the Slew trick didn't work - subsequent flights through the pause zone were uninterrupted. A RESET of the flight was required to reproduce the pause. However, when slew was ON and I reversed through the pause zone there was a brief hitch before the slew continued.

Mike

[Cruachan 705]

This time using the NVIDIA Inspector Sensor Monitor.

Same flight. VSync=ON, Triple Buffering checked and Frame rate locked (in-sim) at 31fps.

Sim allowed to idle for a while before the test run.

Initial UpwardSpikes (GPU Usage) seen just beyond midway on the graph occurred while accelerating down Rwy 19.

Large Dip reflects the extended 4-5 second pause.

Other Dips were brief hesitations which were barely noticeable in flight.

Second image captured during a similar flight:

VSync=OFF, Triple Buffering unchecked and Frame rate locked (in-sim) at 31fps.

The sim was paused for the initial period and the graph rises as the test run was started.

Again, the Large Dip reflects the extended 4-5 second pause.

Mike

[downscc 1,327]

2 hours ago, Cruachan said:

Again, the Large Dip reflects the extended 4-5 second pause.

That is consistent the definition of a long frame, i.e., it takes much longer to render a frame than normal.  In this case the rendering is waiting for the CPU to catch up, and I've always believed it was because there are still process in the old MS engine that LM has not yet optimized for multi threaded CPUs.  My hope is that it gets better with each minor update from them.

[Cruachan 705]

40 minutes ago, downscc said:

That is consistent the definition of a long frame, i.e., it takes much longer to render a frame than normal.  In this case the rendering is waiting for the CPU to catch up, and I've always believed it was because there are still process in the old MS engine that LM has not yet optimized for multi threaded CPUs.  My hope is that it gets better with each minor update from them.

Hi Dan,

If true then it's a heck of a long frame! However, I do note that Core 0 is running at 100% during the pause while the 1080Ti is taking a short break! Of course, this raises the question as to what on earth could be responsible for pushing the overclocked 5960X @ 4.78GHz in this relatively unchallenging situation?!

I run with HT=ON and an Affinity Mask value of 21845 in Prepar3D.cfg, so 'only' 8 cores active.

Why are others not confirming this at KVPS/HRT? To be fair, other than my friend with his virgin 4.1 installation and a far less potent rig, nobody here has chipped in. So, it's difficult to draw any conclusions.

Regards,

Mike