13 hours ago, Colonel X said:

Well, I am trying to enjoy it but so far it's more or less been a series of rage quits.

First, I think that it’s arrogant and condescending to say that anyone who thinks the new sim is running smoothly just doesn’t notice the stutters. If they’re so difficult to spot, the chances are they’re not there. Yes, there are some people who seem to be getting stutters but most aren’t. If others are able to get smooth, stutter-free performance then that would tend to suggest that there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the sim. As much as you may not want to accept it, it’s quite possible that your issues are being caused by something on your system (or system/Windows setup), drivers or background apps (or some combination of all of these). The fact that you said “these stutters and overall slugishness isn't cured by lowering settings” makes me more convinced that it’s your system rather than the sim that’s causing your issues. That other sims or games may run smoothly is irrelevant - this isn’t other sims/games. I also play racing sims and there are a number of people in the forums that continuously claim that it’s impossible to run them without stutters (often those with the more powerful systems). I have a fairly modest system but seem to be able to do the impossible - run smoothly without stutters!

There are definitely things which need fixing and improving in this sim but it doesn’t appear that stuttering is one of them for most people.

42 minutes ago, vortex681 said:

As much as you may not want to accept it, it’s quite possible that your issues are being caused by something on your system (or system/Windows setup), drivers or background apps (or some combination of all of these).

If this were the case, why would we then have had a stutter free alpha/beta with no system changes between these and the release version?

19 hours ago, hangar said:

What does it hurt to test in offline mode just to note any perceived perf. differences?

I tried that. No difference.

 

1 hour ago, vortex681 said:

First, I think that it’s arrogant and condescending to say that anyone who thinks the new sim is running smoothly just doesn’t notice the stutters. If they’re so difficult to spot, the chances are they’re not there. Yes, there are some people who seem to be getting stutters but most aren’t. If others are able to get smooth, stutter-free performance then that would tend to suggest that there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the sim. As much as you may not want to accept it, it’s quite possible that your issues are being caused by something on your system (or system/Windows setup), drivers or background apps (or some combination of all of these). The fact that you said “these stutters and overall slugishness isn't cured by lowering settings” makes me more convinced that it’s your system rather than the sim that’s causing your issues. That other sims or games may run smoothly is irrelevant - this isn’t other sims/games. I also play racing sims and there are a number of people in the forums that continuously claim that it’s impossible to run them without stutters (often those with the more powerful systems). I have a fairly modest system but seem to be able to do the impossible - run smoothly without stutters!

There are definitely things which need fixing and improving in this sim but it doesn’t appear that stuttering is one of them for most people.

I agree with you, there is a chance my (and many other) systems have an issue, and it's not the sim. However, all I have is standard hardware, no other programs running, and a fresh Windows 10 installation. So even if it's my system, it's Asobo who failed to optimize their sim. But by now I think it's clear - it was released at least a couple of months early, with thousands of alpha / beta tickets unresolved.

Also, about my "arrogance" - I just watched a bunch of review videos on YouTube. ALL OF THEM had severe stutters, and NONE OF THEM mentioned them. "It's running great", and while they say that, theres microstutters every couple of seconds. Yes, maybe it's just the capturing software. That's highly unlikely though, as I never see them in other videos.

Edited August 19, 20205 yr by Colonel X

After further tests I can confirm for me that the stutters go away if I use a manual cache for the area I am flying in. This would support my assumption that the stuttering comes from loading scenery. Once it's on your machine it works as expected. Gives me some hope that this can be fixed server side at MS.

53 minutes ago, hjsmuc said:

After further tests I can confirm for me that the stutters go away if I use a manual cache for the area I am flying in. This would support my assumption that the stuttering comes from loading scenery. Once it's on your machine it works as expected. Gives me some hope that this can be fixed server side at MS.

How did you "manually cache" an area?

22 minutes ago, Colonel X said:

How did you "manually cache" an area?

In the general options under DATA you find the manual cache below the rolling cache. You can define any size and location for it and then cache areas in low, medium and high resolution. Medium and high resolution do only work with smaller sized areas. But you can create as many as you want. It takes a while but it works. As long as you fly the same areas often, it's a workaround.

9 hours ago, Colonel X said:

So even if it's my system, it's Asobo who failed to optimize their sim.

I think you're being a little unfair to Asobo. The possible number of different combinations of hardware, software and drivers in PCs must be almost infinite. It would be next to impossible to optimise for even a fraction of the systems out there other than in very general terms and it's usually the fine details which invariably cause the biggest problems. That said, I know how frustrating it can be to solve this sort of problem. Stuttering is often a frame timing issue rather than frame rates. Although it's notionally about FreeSync and G-Sync, this video has some useful tips about frame times: 

 

2 minutes ago, vortex681 said:

I think you're being a little unfair to Asobo. The possible number of different combinations of hardware, software and drivers in PCs must be almost infinite. It would be next to impossible to optimise for even a fraction of the systems out there other than in very general terms and it's usually the fine details which invariably cause the biggest problems. That said, I know how frustrating it can be to solve this sort of problem. Stuttering is often a frame timing issue rather than frame rates

Every game faces this and guess what, it's not such a big deal. We are all running of the mill standard hardware by Intel, Nvidia and AMD. It's been confirmed that FS has frametime issues, yes, severe ones. It's not even about hardware, it's just bad/unoptimized code.

11 hours ago, hjsmuc said:

If this were the case, why would we then have had a stutter free alpha/beta with no system changes between these and the release version?

You don't know what was changed in the release version of the sim compared to the alpha and beta versions. Features may have been turned of in earlier versions or different code may have been introduced in some parts. The fact remains that if most people don't appear to be getting stuttering, it's less likely to be the game code that's causing it.

1 minute ago, Colonel X said:

We are all running of the mill standard hardware by Intel, Nvidia and AMD.

But do you realise just how many different hardware variants these manufacturers produce? Take just a single model of GPU like the RTX 2070. There are so many versions with subtle changes to the firmware and clock speeds by each different manufacturer. Add to this the huge numbers of potential graphics drivers that are available to use with the cards (many people don't use the latest drivers). You're probably already into at least hundreds of possible configurations for just one GPU. Then look at all the possible choices of Intel and AMD CPUs that we have in our systems. We plug them into a vast array of different models of motherboard from many different manufacturers which all have a different BIOS, firmware and drivers which make the whole system operate differently to other similarly specced systems. You only need to look at the huge range of end-user benchmark figures for a single model of CPU. There's just no such thing as mil standard hardware. It would all be so much easier if there was.

Newsflash: New sim launches without PMDG or FSLABS addons! The agony! 

40 minutes ago, vortex681 said:

You don't know what was changed in the release version of the sim compared to the alpha and beta versions. Features may have been turned of in earlier versions or different code may have been introduced in some parts. The fact remains that if most people don't appear to be getting stuttering, it's less likely to be the game code that's causing it.

I don't know it but it sucks. I helped as an alpha tester and now I was supposed to buy something worse. No problem whatsoever, it's just one simulator out of three available. And currently it's certainly not number one. Enjoy it if you like it. 

1 minute ago, hjsmuc said:

And currently it's certainly not number one.

Looking at just the base sim, I think that's debatable even at this early stage.

It's certainly debatable. I compare a stock XP 11 with free Zibo 737 and X-Europe to stock MSFS. Hard to argue that this is won by the XP combo. If you want to fly a Cub with glass cockpit at Lukla, MSFS wins hands down. Everyone needs to decide where the priorities are.