Extended Pauses revisited - inviting user input.

[Cruachan 705]

I'm on a roll here..he,he!

If you don't ask......

Wondering if anyone understands and has an explanation for the underlying mechanisms behind the following observation?

While monitoring GPU and CPU activity during reproducible extended (3-4secs) pauses I have noted the following:

1. GPU usage plummets to zero and this is maintained during the length of the pause.

2. CPU activity (Of the 8 LPs made available by the Affinity Mask (1 on each core)) often, but not invariably, 6 (2-7) max out and this state persists throughout the pause before resumption of normal activity.

The sim frame updates may then judder for a few secs before resumption of previous fluidity. Depending on the situation this may not recur during the rest of the flight.

These extended pauses are infrequent and, in my experience, seem to be related to certain sceneries. To date, while others have reported similar pauses, those specific instances experienced by me have not been verified or denied by others. Again, LM are not commenting and, understandably, neither have those 3rd Party Developers of Scenery where the pauses occur.

It would be interesting to hear any educated theories as to what may be happening during these pauses, as I have described above.

I can't recall every instance, but the three that immediately spring to mind are:

1. KVPS Elgin while approaching HRT Hurlburt Field. Also elsewhere while flying in a northerly direction away from KVPS.

2. ORBX FTX NZMF Milford Sound Airport during take-off.

3. FTX EU Scotland with 'Scotflight for ORBX EGPH Edinburgh' while flying east of the city.

Regards,

Mike

[molleh 451]

In my experience it seems to be tied directly to loading scenery objects. A good example of this is taking of from KSEA in OrbX's PNW region. A few seconds after takeoff, the sim will load in all of the many custom scenery objects in the downtown Seattle area. I always see a fairly long pause there. Other ultra-dense scenery areas have the same behavior. OrbX SoCal is the worst I've experienced yet - when I am approaching Los Angeles, and the sim loads the many custom buildings/objects in the city, I get pauses for up to 3 or 4 full seconds.

[downscc 1,327]

Agree with molleh.  Watching the CPU/GPU activity will lead no relevant information.  My hypothesis is that there is code that needs revised to take advantage of multithreading in the old ESP engine still used by LM.

[Jim Young 2,356]

Agree with molleh.  In Orbx SoCal and in the LAX area, I get massive pauses that almost feel like the sim is about to crash, especially between LAX and the city of Los Angeles.  Remove Orbx SoCal and the pauses are gone so there most be an object(s) somewhere in the area that are not compatible.  At one time it got so bad I just deactivated SoCal and moved all of the SCA files and folders to a temp direct and the files that also exist in Scenery/World/Scenery pertaining to SoCal.  But it seems to be just in the LAX area and also heading toward John Wayne International.  In that case, I got a G3D.dll or ntdll.cll crash 100% of the time when looking toward Manhattan Beach so disabled Manhattan Beach and Huntington Beach and the crashes went away.  Still get the long pauses though and in other places (no CTD's though).  When you have your LOD_Radius set to the max, there are many more objects and textures that are loading increasing the possibility of stutters.

[edpatino 1,964]

6 hours ago, Cruachan said:

KVPS Elgin while approaching HRT Hurlburt Field. Also elsewhere while flying in a northerly direction away from KVPS

Exactly the same here. No way to avoid this pause on my setup, during more than 8 seconds.

(That's why I'm flying more and more with AFS2).

Cheers, Ed

 

[Cruachan 705]

Thanks Ed, nice to know I'm not alone. I confess I was starting to wonder.

I have speculated about the causes underlying this issue in other recent threads and I tend to agree that the sim could be attempting to load Scenery object/s that may not be fully compatible. However, this doesn't fully explain their occurrence in the area around KVPS. Surely LM would be aware of this? After all it is their current default flight situation and would have been tested exhaustively.

There is another possibility and it may be the finger of blame should instead be pointing at ORBX, in this instance their FTX Global BASE Pack installation which, of course, will cover the area that includes KVPS and HRT. Also, certain included problematic generic texture elements, should they exist, doubtless are used elsewhere in their Global coverage. Unfortunately this doesn't really help as the same could be said of the default Scenery much of which must stem from FSX days.

Dan, that doesn't explain why for several seconds CPU activity on those LPs maxes out for the duration of the pause effectively paralysing the processor and without crashing the sim. The lack of GPU usage is understandable as the P3D screen is frozen during the event which means, presumably, that there is nothing to render until resumption of communication with the CPU.

Regards,

Mike

[mike stryczek 23]

dear friends

I am extremely annoyed by those giant pauses.

t turned out they are caused by ground texture loading for airports.

by deactivating files  that include in the name "_GP" you will eliminate, or dramatically reduce those poses.

Side effect - you will not have custom very detail ground textures for runways and taxiways in  high detail airports.

I think there is some corruption in those files or they are not very well organized.

I have deactivated all the files with "_GP"

here is the name example so you know what I'm talking about; Westsim_Redding_GP_Redding.bgl

good luck and happy landings

mike

 

 

[Cruachan 705]

Hi Mike,

Thanks, that's useful info. Sadly it does make you wonder about the thoroughness of the testing procedures prior to release to market. Something as basic as this should have been spotted during the Beta phase.

Regards,

Mike

[mike stryczek 23]

5 minutes ago, Cruachan said:

Hi Mike,

Thanks, that's useful info. Sadly it does make you wonder about the thoroughness of the testing procedures prior to release to market. Something as basic as this should have been spotted during the Beta phase.

Regards,

Mike

don't get me started

look at a large number of windsocks that show wrong direction, even though it has been noted and acknowledged in a  forum discussions as long as year ago.

Why it is called aviation simulator, I think it should be called "Bambi" and women with large breasts simulator, and some aircraft flying around.....

H L

mike

[FreeBird(Josh) 314]

I solved all my pause issues like the ones you are experiencing by loading only the scenery im going to use and never have ORBX Vector or LC products turned on when in ORBX Regions. I use SimStarterNG to manage all my scenery.   I hated those pauses  too and spent a month figuring it out. Josh

[CajunRon 8]

Yes, these long pauses definitely cause loss of immersion for me so much so that I tried the X-Plane 11 demo.   Maybe because of unfamiliarity but I just can't get into X-Plane. 

I recently upgraded my system to include an M.2 SSD connected via the PCIe bus to speed up data transfer.   This had no affect at all that I can see on the number or length of the pauses.  So I'm thinking it is not a data transfer rate problem.    And I upgraded my CPU to a i-5 8600k (Coffee Lake) overclocked to 4.9 GHz.   Again, no affect here either so I don't think it is a CPU or GPU limitation problem either.  I too removed the Orbx SoCal scenery and the pauses where reduced significantly in this area.   But I still get them at most third party detailed airports.  More so on arrivals than on departures.   I might try the airport ground textures theory mentioned above.

I am becoming really leery about the commitment to quality (i.e. performance) being shown by many third party product providers.   None of them including Lockheed Martin seem to be concerned with what, to me is the most detrimental issued now that the 64-bit issue has been solved.   It sure would be good to see "We're working on it" from them.   

[normandean 0]

Just seen this thread. I also have the pauses and have tried various ways to overcome them. Gary Summons has started a thread on the subject on the UK2000 scenery forum and you may like to view my post there. To sum up, I have found that removing ORBX scenery completely stops the pauses, even though I have not got ORBX scenery for the UK.

[Cruachan 705]

18 hours ago, normandean said:

Just seen this thread. I also have the pauses and have tried various ways to overcome them. Gary Summons has started a thread on the subject on the UK2000 scenery forum and you may like to view my post there. To sum up, I have found that removing ORBX scenery completely stops the pauses, even though I have not got ORBX scenery for the UK.

Hi Norman,

It’s possible you are aware that I have tried, armed with such evidence as was then available, reporting this issue to LM. Sadly I did not receive a response:

https://prepar3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6312&t=127796&p=172731#p172731

Read into that what you will, but it may be that they do not consider it to be their problem. However, a brief reply would have been courteous and, indeed, helpful in eliminating the base sim content as being the source.

Reporting such issues to ORBX might also receive a similar frosty reaction. Still, no harm in trying, I suppose. Perhaps an approach from a developer will carry more weight.

Regards,

Mike

[CFIJose 5,485]

I have come to the realization that if a want less pauses, I must have less sceneries installed. I created using the scenery config, regions such as AU, EU, America, and even FTXUSARegions, etc. It's the only way to reduce the micro stutters when arriving at airports. I still get them but they are a quick pause and not a long one or several pauses in a specific area.

As for FTX Southern Cal, the only way to reduce the micro pauses is to disable all the additional airports and AI provided by FTX Southern Cal.

I hope ORBX addresses this and adds a check mark to the config, but I doubt it. It's the reason why it's not even installed on my system.

[FreeBird(Josh) 314]

12 minutes ago, DJJose said:

I have come to the realization that if a want less pauses, I must have less sceneries installed. I created using the scenery config, regions such as AU, EU, America, and even FTXUSARegions, etc. It's the only way to reduce the micro stutters when arriving at airports. I still get them but they are a quick pause and not a long one or several pauses in a specific area.

As for FTX Southern Cal, the only way to reduce the micro pauses is to disable all the additional airports and AI provided by FTX Southern Cal.

I hope ORBX addresses this and adds a check mark to the config, but I doubt it. It's the reason why it's not even installed on my system.

I too have taken this approach with great results and no pauses. There is something in the workings of the sim that when you have to much scenery installed especially ORBX it slows down the reading of the indexes at each point in the grid. A scenery manager is the way to go. This isn't ORBX's fault it is the way the sim works so you cant blame any one developer you just have to manage your sim content.  Josh