P3D V4 freezing in London

[OELGH 4]

Hi all, 

I've had v4 for a month now and its worked great until yesterday. While approaching London Heathrow airport  the sim started to freeze every 20 secs for a period of 20 secs. I see the loading circle and then it comes back. I'm using Aerosoft's MA Heathrow Professional, but also with the scenery deactivated in the scenery library I'm having that issue . I've tried this in other built up areas such as New York and Amsterdam but it's fine there. 

I've tried moving all sliders down and reinstalling all addon scenery and resetting config as well as updating drivers. Nothing worked so far. Any ideas anyone?

Thanks

[Nemo 1,305]

Please, give us some details about your system.

[OELGH 4]

14 minutes ago, Nemo said:

Please, give us some details about your system.

GTX 980TI

i5 6600K not overclocked

32GB memory

[Nemo 1,305]

London area (default or not) is on of the most demanding areas in FSX/P3D. Your system is not high-end but should be good enough to handle London. Which a/c did you fly and do you have ai traffic active? The latter is also very CPU bounded. Try to disable both ai a/c traffic and road traffic to see what happens then.

[Barnes 192]

Are you using any UK2000 sceneries near by, such as Gatwick? There have been some reports of SODE causing the delays you are describing in the London area. Even if you don’t have any UK2000 sceneries installed, try disabling SODE if it is used by any other sceneries in the area (not sure about Aerosoft) to see if that is your issue.

[WebMaximus 372]

Try disabling SODE is good advice.

I also read Orbx (not sure if it was Global, Vector or openLC) IIRC could be causing issues in the London area.

[OELGH 4]

7 hours ago, Nemo said:

London area (default or not) is on of the most demanding areas in FSX/P3D. Your system is not high-end but should be good enough to handle London. Which a/c did you fly and do you have ai traffic active? The latter is also very CPU bounded. Try to disable both ai a/c traffic and road traffic to see what happens then.

I flew the Pmdg 747, but in my opinion it can‘t be a hardware problem because I would have had that problem in other areas with addon scenery as well in that case.

 

7 hours ago, Barnes said:

Are you using any UK2000 sceneries near by, such as Gatwick? There have been some reports of SODE causing the delays you are describing in the London area. Even if you don’t have any UK2000 sceneries installed, try disabling SODE if it is used by any other sceneries in the area (not sure about Aerosoft) to see if that is your issue.

That sounds good. Currently no other UK scenery than MA London is installed, but I remember that I had the same problem with UK2000 Gatwick some weeks ago and that I uninstalled the scenery because of that. Do you mean I have to disable SODE completely?

[Nemo 1,305]

31 minutes ago, OELGH said:

I flew the Pmdg 747, but in my opinion it can‘t be a hardware problem because I would have had that problem in other areas with addon scenery as well in that case.

 

As I said, London area is special. Did you try to reduce/disable traffic?

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

27 minutes ago, OELGH said:

I flew the Pmdg 747, but in my opinion it can‘t be a hardware problem because I would have had that problem in other areas with addon scenery as well in that case.

There are some issues flying into Heatrow in the PMDG 777 and 747 with some STARs and ILS transitions. I’ve have issues with it as well and has even completely crashed the sim when connecting some of the ILS transitions to certain arrivals. The way around it is to select the STAR you want but not the transition, then select the ILS approach and then connect the two in the FMC. 

If you search the PMDG forum, namely the 777 forum, you’ll find some topics on it. To my knowledge it hasn’t been fixed by PMDG yet.

As a test to make sure that is not the problem, load up the 747 at another airport at least 30 miles or so from Heathrow and fly it manually to Heathrow without programming the FMC and see if it the sim behaves properly. If it does, then you’ll know it was an issue with PMDG and the STAR/Approach. If issues persist then you can rule out the PMDG issue.

[DaveCT2003 1,820]

1 hour ago, OELGH said:

I flew the Pmdg 747, but in my opinion it can‘t be a hardware problem because I would have had that problem in other areas with addon scenery as well in that case.

 

That sounds good. Currently no other UK scenery than MA London is installed, but I remember that I had the same problem with UK2000 Gatwick some weeks ago and that I uninstalled the scenery because of that. Do you mean I have to disable SODE completely?

 

Nemo is correct, Heathrow is different in all of flight sim and the reason is due to it being a large airport and the distance from a lot of default scenery/objects which get loaded into memory.  It hammers a system worse than any I know of (and I have about 80% of the payware airliners and airports on the market for P3D).  I didn't see where you mentioned which sim you were running but given that you're running Aerosoft's Professional I'll assume that you're running P3Dv4.

I too use Aerosoft Heathrow Professional and really love it.  My system specs are: i7-4770K locked at 4.5GHz pusing a 55 inch 4K and three 23 inch LCD Monitors. I also run a great deal of software while flight sim is up including stream related software, so I'm pushing my system pretty hard, but I'm able to get 24fps or better with no stutters are Heathrow.

Your system tops out at 3.5GHz, and while I believe the GTX980 can handle Dynamic Lighting in P3D it won't do it well, at least not at an airport like Heathrow, so my first recommendation is to ensure it's turned off.  While you're at it, dump all the shadows except for the aircraft - they aren't needed for flying an airliner anyway.  You'll have to work out your other settings, but suffice it to say that you may need to lower them. I'd start by lowering them all one notch and go through there.  Additionally you should find that SSAA instead of MSAA helps your system to run better without any loss in quality.  You might also try reducing your Texture Filtering and AA settings (at least until you know where you stand) and uncheck FXAA.  You might also try setting your frame rates to maximum and setting V-Sync and Triple Buffering to on.

Any tweaks you may have installed... get rid of them by deleting your Prepar3d.cfg file (do this even if you don't have any tweaks installed). It will be rebuilt when you boot P3D back up.

Finally, let's rebuild your shaders by navigating to:

                             C:\Users\[Your User Name]\AppData\Local\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v4

and deleting the "Shaders" folder. I too will be rebuilt on the next P3D boot.

 

This should get you to a nice baseline and pointed in the right direction.

 

Best wishes my friend!

 

 

[OELGH 4]

2 hours ago, Nemo said:

As I said, London area is special. Did you try to reduce/disable traffic?

All kind of traffic is turned off.

2 hours ago, cmpbellsjc said:

There are some issues flying into Heatrow in the PMDG 777 and 747 with some STARs and ILS transitions. I’ve have issues with it as well and has even completely crashed the sim when connecting some of the ILS transitions to certain arrivals. The way around it is to select the STAR you want but not the transition, then select the ILS approach and then connect the two in the FMC. 

If you search the PMDG forum, namely the 777 forum, you’ll find some topics on it. To my knowledge it hasn’t been fixed by PMDG yet.

As a test to make sure that is not the problem, load up the 747 at another airport at least 30 miles or so from Heathrow and fly it manually to Heathrow without programming the FMC and see if it the sim behaves properly. If it does, then you’ll know it was an issue with PMDG and the STAR/Approach. If issues persist then you can rule out the PMDG issue.

That might be a solution, but not for me, because also when starting the sim at Heathrow with one of the default aircraft I‘m having that issue. 

 

1 hour ago, DaveCT2003 said:

 

Nemo is correct, Heathrow is different in all of flight sim and the reason is due to it being a large airport and the distance from a lot of default scenery/objects which get loaded into memory.  It hammers a system worse than any I know of (and I have about 80% of the payware airliners and airports on the market for P3D).  I didn't see where you mentioned which sim you were running but given that you're running Aerosoft's Professional I'll assume that you're running P3Dv4.

I too use Aerosoft Heathrow Professional and really love it.  My system specs are: i7-4770K locked at 4.5GHz pusing a 55 inch 4K and three 23 inch LCD Monitors. I also run a great deal of software while flight sim is up including stream related software, so I'm pushing my system pretty hard, but I'm able to get 24fps or better with no stutters are Heathrow.

Your system tops out at 3.5GHz, and while I believe the GTX980 can handle Dynamic Lighting in P3D it won't do it well, at least not at an airport like Heathrow, so my first recommendation is to ensure it's turned off.  While you're at it, dump all the shadows except for the aircraft - they aren't needed for flying an airliner anyway.  You'll have to work out your other settings, but suffice it to say that you may need to lower them. I'd start by lowering them all one notch and go through there.  Additionally you should find that SSAA instead of MSAA helps your system to run better without any loss in quality.  You might also try reducing your Texture Filtering and AA settings (at least until you know where you stand) and uncheck FXAA.  You might also try setting your frame rates to maximum and setting V-Sync and Triple Buffering to on.

Any tweaks you may have installed... get rid of them by deleting your Prepar3d.cfg file (do this even if you don't have any tweaks installed). It will be rebuilt when you boot P3D back up.

Finally, let's rebuild your shaders by navigating to:

                             C:\Users\[Your User Name]\AppData\Local\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v4

and deleting the "Shaders" folder. I too will be rebuilt on the next P3D boot.

 

This should get you to a nice baseline and pointed in the right direction.

 

Best wishes my friend!

 

 

Thank you for that long comment. 

First of all, I‘ve turned things like dynamic lighting for Heathrow in the config tool on and off, still the same issue. My frames are constantly running at 33 FPS (locked at 33FPS) at Heathrow with the 747, so it‘s a great value for me. My AA settings are 4xSSAA and the Anisotropic Filtering is set to 16, but that value doesn‘t affect the performance very much. My other settings are also not too high, I’ve tested that many times. I still don‘t think my hardware or my settings is the problem, the frames are perfect, it‘s just that freezing which must be something software related in my opinion like an addon which is broken. If it were a hardware or settings problem, it would also affect the frame rate, which is not the case. I hope you understand what I mean.

[Boeing or not going 578]

This has been a discussion for a long time, and it is something ith the scenery, not airport scenery. And in the base of the sim, since I had this in fsx too. I had all London airport sceneries disabled and still get it, cruising east of London. I forgot the VOR that does it, but you get past it (CLN maybe?) and the constant freezes stop. I have heard it could be Vector, or Global, or being something about the international date line. I do not know a fix. I'd suggest creating a topic in the official P3D forums giving the exact location the freezing starts and stops and maybe LM can look into that.

[Nemo 1,305]

Just to repeat again. London area is very demanding and you need very good hardware. I remember that with my former system (i7 3820 @ 4.5 GHz), I still had performance issues. Finally, with my new system I am able to fly with PMDG in this area at moderate settings.

[andreh 125]

52 minutes ago, 777200lrf said:

This has been a discussion for a long time, and it is something ith the scenery, not airport scenery. And in the base of the sim, since I had this in fsx too. I had all London airport sceneries disabled and still get it, cruising east of London. I forgot the VOR that does it, but you get past it (CLN maybe?) and the constant freezes stop. I have heard it could be Vector, or Global, or being something about the international date line. I do not know a fix. I'd suggest creating a topic in the official P3D forums giving the exact location the freezing starts and stops and maybe LM can look into that.

I can confirm there is something strange around CLN. I always get freezes in its vicinity. Not as bad as what the OP describing, but nevertheless something that are definitely freezes, rather than just stutters 

[Boeing or not going 578]

3 minutes ago, Nemo said:

Just to repeat again. London area is very demanding and you need very good hardware. I remember that with my former system (i7 3820 @ 4.5 GHz), I still had performance issues. Finally, with my new system I am able to fly with PMDG in this area at moderate settings.

It is not a performance problem, it is a constant freeze every 10 seconds in a certain area around London.