Searching the positives from Sim Update 3

[Bobsk8 12,745]

1 hour ago, jarmstro said:

Is there a sim that does it better? If so I would like to know. XP doesn't for sure.

In the last week or two I had two chances to fly XP, both on my rig with the demo, and my friends excellent gaming PC that cost him about 4 grand. I told him that I couldn't understand how people fly such a crummy looking simulator. Haze everywhere, ground textures that aren't sharp like in FS 2020, airports that look like default airports in FS9, etc....  After I tried it at home, I dumped the demo in my recycle bin and flushed it. 

[Jeeper 74]

36 minutes ago, Bobsk8 said:

In the last week or two I had two chances to fly XP, both on my rig with the demo, and my friends excellent gaming PC that cost him about 4 grand. I told him that I couldn't understand how people fly such a crummy looking simulator. Haze everywhere, ground textures that aren't sharp like in FS 2020, airports that look like default airports in FS9, etc....  After I tried it at home, I dumped the demo in my recycle bin and flushed it. 

Six month old sim looks better than ten year old sim. People are shocked! More at 11.

Edited March 13, 2021 by Jeeper

[badgenes 125]

7 hours ago, Car147 said:

Correct, not 1 CTD since Sim update 3. last one was on the morning before update, all tasks mentioned above had been carried out by then. Sorry i don't have the old reports as the system has been re-installed since.

What is happening now, and started since WU3 is periods of stuttering, fps droped at that time from the norm 40 50fps (1080p) to 15-20fps after.

We then get to Sim update3 , prior to the update i was still getting a good 30-50fps at above say 5k ove rpopulated area's, dropping to 22-30fps for the likes of approach to LFPG, EGLL, JFk.

But with this update suddenly even cruising in a tubeliner at 39k, the ps would suddenly drop to the mind boggling figure of 3 fps, yes that's right 3fps! GPU goes to idle, CPU goes to idle.... Then after a few mins it clears and resumes only to occur again at some other point. It gets that bad at times the PC virtually locks up.

 

I got you now, I had not really read much about circumstances surrounding the fps drop ppl are having.  I have been busy and only flown for a very limited time since U3 so for al I know I will experience the same thing.  I plan to check it out today or at worst tonight and see if I also have this issue.  If I see the same behavior or similar you can bet I'll be watching everything occurring before / during / after an event like that if I can reliably reproduce it.  However as I have not seen it yet I may not at all.  Anything else you can point to as common factors such as a/c, geography, time, weather, etc would be helpful.  Have you watched your network throughput during one of these events?  If you can I'd either run a perfmon with relevant counters (I could supply a template later tonight or tomorrow if need be) while flying and note the times it occurs. 

To alleviate observer performance concerns, the OS actually collects the performance counter data at 10 or 15 second intervals (i forget at the moment exact figure) the proof of which you can see in Resource Monitor so the only measurable impact is going to be disk i/o where you are storing the perfmon run.  It is for this reason I advise capturing to another unused volume on an unused physical disk if possible.  With the right set of counters you can eliminate MOST possible causes, of course the .exe is still a black box using this method so anything recursive or otherwise wonky in the software that may not manifest itself in the form of resource usage (or lack thereof) will be unobservable.  Even that can be a smoking gun though so its totally worth taking the time to do.  You could if nothing else upload a run with your tickets.  They don't ask for it and I'm not sure they want it but I can't see why not.  No doubt their Q/A engineers are familiar with the process of staring at performance counter data.  It isn't fun but it is a great way to troubleshoot if captured correctly.  I digress...frequently I might add...

Busy Saturday but I'll check into this later this evening for whatever its worth.  I'm not a magician but I will offer any assistance I can; I think perhaps in the alpha I did not do so after awhile and just enjoyed it so a little paying back can't hurt my karma.

[Car147 2,279]

To be fair, today has been a bit better, really bad at EGLL down to 12fps, but after take off and the flight  to LFMN including approach and landing it was fine...

[badgenes 125]

Well if that holds out then either you hit on the fix in your earlier modifications and weren't aware of it for some reason such as the sim not properly processing changes until restarted, etc.  OR it will again behave like slide show in which case lmk.  Again, I'll gladly help if I can.  It would be especially rewarding if it results in the developers eliminating an issue that affects many users but even one is good karma.  Lord knows I need every bit I can get, not interested in returning to the Universe as a roach or similarly vile creature. LOL

[Car147 2,279]

Another flight 2hrs Vancouver to Salt Lake City... never missed a beat.I

[Borgillios 8]

One thing I noticed is that the strange borders between rivers and ocean is gone. Positive. 

[badgenes 125]

Today didn't go as expected so I had an hour to fly and did so.  Took the Cirrus SR22 (never used this bird, its ok, flight dynamics seem a little 'vanilla' but it does have some quirks)  up out of ZBAA at dawn.  Surely Beijing isn't that drab and repetitive!  Must be autogen...  Anyway low ceilinged yellow tinted sky, drab landscape and all I had nary a hiccup.  Next a short jump out of RIAA (much happier looking scenery) performed the same so I would gather I am not one of those afflicted with periodic stuttering.

I did notice a big difference in LOD 120 vs 110 for terrain and object in regard to performance but not visually.  Perhaps I missed the details, I'll try that again but I recall the sliders adjustments resulting in much greater change in the past.  You?

[Biology 1,347]

On 3/13/2021 at 5:32 PM, bobcat999 said:

Someone on the official forums is saying it might actually be linked to rivers and water now.  I notice I pass over no rivers on the Sedona to Flagstaff run, but I do in Salzburg, right when I turn north-east...  Interesting!    Something else to investigate.  While this does need fixing by Asobo, at least we might be able to find them some lines of enquiry.

Well, it took 4 days of flying everywhere but I finally managed to reproduce it. For some reason flying in Salzburg didn't cause an issue for me, but somewhere else in Austria did. Here's the weirdest part: There are weird regions (like a "force field") which seems to trigger the issue - once you enter such regions FPS drops to 4-5 and once you leave them FPS recovers. I can finally use some debugging tools see what's going on.

I think Asobo should expand their beta testing team - it's so easy for such an issue to go unnoticed if their beta testing team is rather small, especially if they always fly in similar regions.

Edited March 17, 2021 by BiologicalNanobot

[bobcat999 8,484]

1 hour ago, BiologicalNanobot said:

...There are weird regions (like a "force field") which seems to trigger the issue - once you enter such regions FPS drops to 4-5 and once you leave them FPS recovers.

Yes.  This is exactly what I see.

1 hour ago, BiologicalNanobot said:

I think Asobo should expand their beta testing team..

I think we are already in it - welcome to the beta team BN! 

But in all seriousness, due to previous issues, beta testing of updates has been talked about a lot, and it seemed like it would happen, but the idea seems to have been shelved again recently.  I would prefer delayed updates so they could test them properly.

I would volunteer to beta test at the drop of a hat if it could be rolled back (I bet a lot of us would), but apparently there are server issues that prevent this.  I am not technical enough to understand why.