P3D v4.5 - Constant Pausing

[rowcoach 4]

Good evening,

There have been a number of post regarding stuttering and P3D, but I’m not sure if I’m having the same issue that is in the other posts. The flight starts out normally with no display issues. At some point during the flight (and it doesn’t happen every flight, but it is happening more frequently now), the sim starts to pause or stutter at regular intervals. The pause is very brief. Less than a second, but it happens constantly every few seconds. About every second, the sim pauses and then restarts. Audio seems fine as it runs continuously. It happens if I’m in the cockpit or outside. It happens if I’m panning around the cockpit. It also happens if I just ‘look’ straight ahead. The audio seems unaffected, but connecting with the default ATC can be problematic with the constant pausing. Adjusting the autopilot dials or tuning the radio is also affected by the pauses. During the pauses, my frame rates still stay constant between 30 and 40.

I’ve tried the changes suggested on both this forum and the P3D forum. Unfortunately it’s hard to tell when a change has fixed the issue because this happens randomly. Once it starts, there’s nothing I can do to return it to normal. Adjusting the frame rates does nothing. Nor does turning off Active Sky, my wifi connection, Ultimate Traffic Live, or Chase Plane.

Once the ‘stuttering’ starts, I’m pretty much stuck with it until I land. Unfortunately, landing comes with its own challenges. 

Has anyone else had this before? If so, is there a way to fix or, better yet, prevent it from happening in the first place. 

Edited December 10, 2020 by rowcoach

[shermank 166]

I have an occasional pause, not often enough to call it a stutter. But, it will freeze for a few seconds at most. I have scanned forums for answers, but so far nothing seems to have cured my particular issue. BTW, once size does not fit all, so if you find a solution, it may nor may not work for anyone else...but, I hope all who read this will chime in with some ideas. On a scale of 1-10 on the annoyance scale , with 10  being the most, I would call this about a 4 in my case.

 

Sherm

[simfan1983 185]

Try closing and restarting Navigraph simlink if you are using that. Also, if you have FSUIPC autosave check it is not saving every few seconds.

[blaunarwal 432]

I made the observation, that stutters can come from very old sceneries, made for FSX. So if you recently installed one like this, remove it again.

The other problem is, installing sceneries not were the developer wants it installed. I had 29Palms moved to an outside folder away from Prepar3D v5 and I could see with Process Monitor (Procmon.exe) that Prepar3D.exe was searching textures in the 29Palms KNTP texture directory. They were in the Prepar3D v5 texture directory. 

The other thing are missing files from AI planes or boats. Sometimes the night textures are missing. 

After searching for a while I have a very fluent sim at the moment. 

To find out what is causing stutters, loading the sim with different addons enabled could give you a hint. If you suspect a scenery, just a reinstall could fix it for you.

Dan

[downscc 1,327]

ditto simfan1983.  If you look at the running processes you'll probably note that simlink.exe is not running.  When this executable stops running, and it seems to do it 10% of my sessions, Navigraph still has a .dll module attached and that module will cause the application to hang in quick short duration periodic pauses.  I've complained to Navigraph but they don't think it is a problem.

My solution is to open the program files\navigraph\simlink\ folder and double click on NavigraphSimlink.exe.  This will stop the periodic hangs.

[rowcoach 4]

Thank you everyone for the replies. 

@downscc and @simfan1983 funny you should mention Simlink. The only time this seems to happen is when we have an issue with our internet. With both my wife and I on Zoom calls or Netflix or both, our wifi suffers a little bit. The loss of signal seems to precipitate the hangs. I wonder if that is tripping up simlink. I was able to fly the same flight yesterday with no issues. In the middle of another one now and all looks good. When the pauses happen again, I’ll try your suggestion. 

@blaunarwal I try to use ADE and MCX to convert the FSX and FS9 sceneries that I have, but I know I’ve missed a few. I’ll go through and see what else I can find. When you talk about installing the 3rd party sceneries, are you suggesting that all the add on sceneries should be placed in the documents/P3D Add Ons folder instead of P3D directly? I’ve started doing this for a few already. 

@shermank couldn’t agree more. I have the occasional pause - usually in dense areas. I’m usually pretty forgiving when it comes to brief hang up for a second or two. Most areas I have are pretty smooth. ORBX near LAX is a constant struggle. 

[blaunarwal 432]

16 hours ago, rowcoach said:

@blaunarwal I try to use ADE and MCX to convert the FSX and FS9 sceneries that I have, but I know I’ve missed a few. I’ll go through and see what else I can find. When you talk about installing the 3rd party sceneries, are you suggesting that all the add on sceneries should be placed in the documents/P3D Add Ons folder instead of P3D directly? I’ve started doing this for a few already.

I also convert libraries with MCX and recompile with ADE.

No, I don´t suggest to install sceneries in the documents/P3D Add Ons folder. Just install it, where the developer suggest to install. I have my sceneries mostly external, except for 29Palms and Flightbeam. 

I used to install planes outside the sim and now moved them back into the sim, cause I hat constant searches for wav files, which were in the main sound directorey. I think, if the plane is in the sim, the sound is found.

This was the main reason for my stutters. I checked with procmon and just went into outside view of the sim and circled around the plane with the view. I have procmon configured to color all missing file results blue. So rotating around my plane gave me at some point stutters and then I saw a phase of blue results in procmon. Just stopped recording then and investigated the findings. It usually one file searched by the sim for 1-2 seconds at all possible locations. 

Maybe defining a lot of outside sound, effects and textures with the xml method causes stutter too, since a file is searched on all these places defined, where it would do that, whithout these extensions of the regular sound etc. directory.

So even though I prefer a sorted system, I come back to putting everything into the sim directory, like it was thought with FSX.