Orbx causing long pauses in v4.4

[Nemo 1,305]

Long frames in ORBX Regions are so frustrating. IMO it is much worse as it was before with version 4.3. I sincerely hope that we can find settings to reduce/avoid them.

[cj-ibbotson 77]

Over the past couple of days after installing 4.4 I had hoped the long pauses had vanished on my system.  Apart from doing a few test flights around LA for Bert in areas he experiences pauses I wasn't experiencing any at a past known trigger point in the south of FTX England.  I knew exactly where it was as a flew over a golf course approaching Shoreham from the west.  This was even with ALL my scenery enabled.  In 4.3 I would get at least an 8 second pause here and as I was no longer I thought yay.  Found out last night this scenery load point has now moved about 5-10 miles to the west towards Portsmouth.  Got an 8 second pause there which was repeatable by slewing back and few miles and flying forward again towards the same point.  Configuring my scenery library using an editor to only have Europe regions enabled still resulted in a 1 second pause.  I then switched FTX Norway off and it was still 1s pauses.  Before with the same configuration it was a tiny stutter which was barely noticeable so it sure looks like the problem is worse.

There is probably no point reporting it to Lockheed Martin as they just refer you to the silly debug guide but we all know default sim does not cause these pauses but the more you add the worse it gets.  Its how the sim scans the active scenery library at certain locations is the root problem.  I am increasingly close to quitting simming, I have never in my life experienced a piece of software which causes so many problems over the past 15 years.  It simply is not stable for what demands we put on it with so many add ons.  If its not the sim directly its an add on, or hardware or Windows itself trips up and crashes with errors like Kernalbase.dll which I've started getting suddenly after P3D just suddenly vanishes off my screen.  Part of me wants to build a new 9900K system but refuse to spend another £1500 on parts for a sim which still has issues for so many of us. 

Chris

[Nemo 1,305]

It seems that the cause of long pauses is more complex. Some seem to triggered when approaching demanding sceneries like FTX_PNW/DD KSEA or FTX_SOCAL/KLAX ... Others appear apparently out of "nothing".

It is also that kind of problem where developers tend to finger point each other.

I have currently not so much scenery add-ons installed (mainly ORBX) and it is a fresh windows system. So I'm willing to do some more testing, but I could need some good advises where to go. It would be great if we could find some more facts about that issue.

[FreeBird(Josh) 314]

I really don't think there is a solution and ORBX doesn't want to comment on it or says it your system. The only cures I know of is loading less scenery using a Sim starter type program but that wont cure them all. I tell you using this approach makes it more bearable and the pauses will become blips and not these long ones that people complain about.  It all comes down to bad coding and I really believe its a ORBX issue and not a LM one. These pauses only started after Vector was released and even got worse with the Unified lookup where you don't have to switch regions.

Edited December 3, 2018 by FreeBird(Josh)

[Rocky_53 1,566]

2 hours ago, cj-ibbotson said:

Over the past couple of days after installing 4.4 I had hoped the long pauses had vanished on my system.  Apart from doing a few test flights around LA for Bert in areas he experiences pauses I wasn't experiencing any at a past known trigger point in the south of FTX England.  I knew exactly where it was as a flew over a golf course approaching Shoreham from the west.  This was even with ALL my scenery enabled.  In 4.3 I would get at least an 8 second pause here and as I was no longer I thought yay.  Found out last night this scenery load point has now moved about 5-10 miles to the west towards Portsmouth.  Got an 8 second pause there which was repeatable by slewing back and few miles and flying forward again towards the same point.  Configuring my scenery library using an editor to only have Europe regions enabled still resulted in a 1 second pause.  I then switched FTX Norway off and it was still 1s pauses.  Before with the same configuration it was a tiny stutter which was barely noticeable so it sure looks like the problem is worse.

There is probably no point reporting it to Lockheed Martin as they just refer you to the silly debug guide but we all know default sim does not cause these pauses but the more you add the worse it gets.  Its how the sim scans the active scenery library at certain locations is the root problem.  I am increasingly close to quitting simming, I have never in my life experienced a piece of software which causes so many problems over the past 15 years.  It simply is not stable for what demands we put on it with so many add ons.  If its not the sim directly its an add on, or hardware or Windows itself trips up and crashes with errors like Kernalbase.dll which I've started getting suddenly after P3D just suddenly vanishes off my screen.  Part of me wants to build a new 9900K system but refuse to spend another £1500 on parts for a sim which still has issues for so many of us. 

Chris

My heart bleeds for you Chris. I too have experienced exactly the same emotions. There was a period last year, when every single time I went simming, there wouldn't be a single flight where something didn't go wrong. I left simming for several months until my enthusiasm returned, which it did. I then resolved each issue one at a time. I have to say, the biggest issue for me over the years with P3d, has been the darn blurry photosceneries, now that has been addressed I'm hoping things will settle down and I won't be chasing cures for other things 😐

[Rocky_53 1,566]

57 minutes ago, FreeBird(Josh) said:

These pauses only started after Vector was released and even got worse with the Unified lookup where you don't have to switch regions.

Hmm, good point Josh, I hadn't thought about that. It would make sense...(I think)

[FreeBird(Josh) 314]

22 minutes ago, Rockliffe said:

Hmm, good point Josh, I hadn't thought about that. It would make sense...(I think)

Bert has come up with some interesting stuff on what is being called up when the pauses happen. It seems even if you have other regions inactive it still looks for BGL in those different regions which is a process I think of the Unified lookup. In the old days Each region had it own LC, now those files are shared across the board which makes longer calls which then cause these certain kind of pauses. This is all speculative on my part but that is where the evidence points to.  Josh

[cj-ibbotson 77]

3 hours ago, Nemo said:

It seems that the cause of long pauses is more complex. Some seem to triggered when approaching demanding sceneries like FTX_PNW/DD KSEA or FTX_SOCAL/KLAX ... Others appear apparently out of "nothing".

It is also that kind of problem where developers tend to finger point each other.

Yeah there very much is a blame game.  No one produces huge regions like ORBX so its difficult to compare how non Orbx installations perform and if they get these long pauses as obviously the directories will have less files to read.  We do need someone with loads of non Orbx addon scenery to comment if they experience 1 second or longer pauses because then we can determine if its the sim causing it or Orbx.  To be honest it has been proven via process monitoring utilities that at the point of these long pauses the sim is causing the pause as it reads the scenery indexes.  The problem has little to do with demand because during my tests I could trigger 8 second pauses with every option in P3D settings on their lowest setting, the only high setting was having all sceneries enabled.

 

1 hour ago, Rockliffe said:

My heart bleeds for you Chris. I too have experienced exactly the same emotions. There was a period last year, when every single time I went simming, there wouldn't be a single flight where something didn't go wrong. I left simming for several months until my enthusiasm returned, which it did. I then resolved each issue one at a time. I have to say, the biggest issue for me over the years with P3d, has been the darn blurry photosceneries, now that has been addressed I'm hoping things will settle down and I won't be chasing cures for other things 😐

I'm finding over the past few months I seem to be simply flying test flights.  DXGI_ERROR_DEVICE_HUNG is another major issue I've been battling too since about July.  Life is stressful enough and all this messing about trying to sort problems is diverting my attention away from a secondary photography business I have.  I dont need a new pc for general work use but would do for simming but scared to invest so much time and money into an upgraded build and the sim still give me problems.  Some folks are so lucky if they have a stable system.

 

1 hour ago, FreeBird(Josh) said:

Bert has come up with some interesting stuff on what is being called up when the pauses happen. It seems even if you have other regions inactive it still looks for BGL in those different regions which is a process I think of the Unified lookup. In the old days Each region had it own LC, now those files are shared across the board which makes longer calls which then cause these certain kind of pauses. This is all speculative on my part but that is where the evidence points to.  Josh

Whilst the new unified lookup has helped in one way not having to select regions prior to flying I think you are right its causing other issues.  I dont understand how they do not accept there is an issue.  Rob Ainscough is a major name in simming and made Orbx aware of the problem in 2015, he is an admin on here and works alongside Lockheed Martin (or a beta tester) so should have influence.  The simulator is no good if you have to disable scenery B, C and D to get from A to E. Local airports maybe fine but not regions you fly over.

Chris

Edited December 3, 2018 by cj-ibbotson

[Dazkent 113]

Been reading this subject with interest, I think maybe we are asking too much of the P3D engine to render "full fat" ORBX regions and complex aircraft such as the PMDG and expect smooth perfomance. I don't think we can lay the blame with LM as if you use their product out of the box am pretty sure these sort of pauses do not happen. For professional users like training i would expect they do not worry about add on scenery and so performance is fine.

The ball should really be in ORBX court to try and find a solution to these long pauses. I guess you could disable the regions and use Global but these full fat regions are being marketed compatible with P3D and really should not be causing immersion breaking things like massive long pauses. Sweeping the issue under the carpet is not very helpful.

As users all we want to do is load up and fly no matter what sim you use be that FSX ( myself), Xplane or P3D.

Just my two cents worth.

Daz

 

 

[Ezra 29]

How much analysis due we need?

I recently built a brand new system dedicated to P3Dv4.3 Then I added all the FTX Global Range with all Western Regions.

My System Specs: Asus (Z370) Hero X Mobo, Intel 8700K CPU, 32MB@32 MHz DDR4 Ram, Samsung SSD NVME M.2 Evo and Samsung Pro for OS (Win10) and P3D, MSI GTX 1080ti, etc. Basically the best I could afford dedicated to the latter alone. No goofy add-ons or endless third party software.

Guess what?  P3D vanilla ran perfectly. Once I added all the ORBX scenery (with default) aircraft--blurries, micro stutters and pauses have become the norm. Forget about posting your gripes on ORBX forums. They will deny it and say, "your system is suspect," Lol. . .Lol . . .Lol. No amount of "placebo-based" wishful thinking and tweaking will eliminate the evidence. I won`t be going to P3D 4.4 either. Unless I eliminate ORBX. I hate to sound pessimistic but I am only being realistic.

If I never loved the hobby and community so much I would have given up along time ago. Having said this, I have lost some interest in the hobby due to the above. Maybe I should revisit DCS. But then I only get Nevada and unfinished DLC. Now all my popular third party aircraft sit in the hangar. It never ends.

Cheers

Edited December 3, 2018 by Ezra

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

2 hours ago, FreeBird(Josh) said:

Bert has come up with some interesting stuff on what is being called up when the pauses happen. It seems even if you have other regions inactive it still looks for BGL in those different regions which is a process I think of the Unified lookup.

Almost right... I have not seen P3D looking in inactive regions... only in sceneries which are currently active.  

Something triggers this behavior in very specific places, like the piano keys on R16R at Van Nuys.

The sim starts looking through every scenery you currently have active, no matter where in the world, doing some kind of housekeeping..

I am still hoping that someone will pinpoint what actually triggers it.

In the meantime, you best defense is to have only essential sceneries loaded, and the pause becomes a small shudder..  (SSDs help also, I believe..)

 

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

44 minutes ago, Bert Pieke said:

I am still hoping that someone will pinpoint what actually triggers it.

It's pretty hard to isolate the cause. I've tried running Process Monitor to see what happens when these big stutters occur but nothing obvious seems to be happening. 

I've only seen big stutters specifically associated with either ASP4 injecting weather or apps that flood the SimConnect channel in short bursts.

[mpw8679 428]

After months of frustration with ORBX regions, Vector, and pauses I decided to keep it simple for my new PC build with version 4.4.  FTX Global, NA landclass, Free Mesh X, and UTX v2.  Much better performance and ALOT less headache.  I do miss flying GA in my ORBX regions but I’m done fighting the battle.  Just flew into FSDT KLAX in the Maddog X with pretty aggressive settings.  Smooth 30fps and not one pause.  

[Ezra 29]

I have been thinking this as well. Thanks for the input.

[Mace 1,902]

4 hours ago, FreeBird(Josh) said:

It seems even if you have other regions inactive it still looks for BGL in those different regions

This was discovered 10 years ago with FSX using FileMon and was a big topic of discussion (and consternation) here in the AVSIM forums.

The sim was found to be scanning bgl's thousands of miles away from the present position.  A lot was posited about that.  One theory was that the bgl in question contained data for the present position, even though most of its data was for areas far away.  As I recall we never got any real substantive reason why the sim did this, and of course at that point Microsoft and the sim parted ways, so I assume nothing has architecturally changed in the sim since then.