The studders on landing almost as if they are part of the code. At about 200-50 feet hard hard studders. I do not understand. Why not just lower the LOD on landing or at least give that option. It kills the simulation and does indeed seem like a Game. Runis it for sure....

I absolutely don't have that issue (frames get lowered a bit on approach but still very smooth)  so have you looked to see if it is down to your  setup/configuration/add-ons that could be the issue?  Because if not many people are coming into the forums complaining about hard frame time spikes just before landing then you cant just say its the sim.

Edited March 20, 20224 yr by Maxis

Are you using FSrealistic by chance?  I've noticed stutters on landing and at times on takeoff that I've isolated to FSrealistic.  They don't occur when it is disabled/not running.

 

45 minutes ago, cchiozza said:

The studders on landing almost as if they are part of the code. At about 200-50 feet hard hard studders. I do not understand. Why not just lower the LOD on landing or at least give that option. It kills the simulation and does indeed seem like a Game. Runis it for sure....

If you play with the Terrain LOD slider, there should be a sweet spot that stops the stutters while panning. I found 50, but I have a 12 year old CPU. 😀

Edited March 20, 20224 yr by DJJose

What's your Grass setting at in the Graphics Options? If you have that up High perhaps it's trying to load in all that, try a lower setting if it's High.

Edited March 20, 20224 yr by MarcG

1 hour ago, billkirk888 said:

Are you using FSrealistic by chance?  I've noticed stutters on landing and at times on takeoff that I've isolated to FSrealistic.  They don't occur when it is disabled/not running.

 

Interesting, I will try to disable it.

6 hours ago, cchiozza said:

The studders on landing almost as if they are part of the code. At about 200-50 feet hard hard studders. I do not understand. Why not just lower the LOD on landing or at least give that option. It kills the simulation and does indeed seem like a Game. Runis it for sure....

What is your Terrain and Object LOD set at, at the departure airport?

I do not use FsRealistic. My LOD 200 is and grass is high I am getting great frames all around except landing. I have 32G Ram, 1080 (hit the silicon lottery) the benchmark for the card is excellent. 10900kf chip as well.

2 hours ago, cchiozza said:

I do not use FsRealistic. My LOD 200 is and grass is high I am getting great frames all around except landing. I have 32G Ram, 1080 (hit the silicon lottery) the benchmark for the card is excellent. 10900kf chip as well.

Chris, this is a known issue, by many here.  It's not identical for all because people use different settings with different hardware.  Because you get great frames elsewhere the mistake is in assuming it's going to be the same during landings, as you're seeing.  It is common to have stellar performance at your preferred LOD 200 even at complex scenarios at departure, but over time and miles processing requirements change such that by the time you get nearly to touchdown (sometimes earlier) demand goes up.   Are you running the sim wide open, or frame-limited either VSYNC or GSYNC?   With my config (60Hz screen, VSYNC on using the '30' divisor in MSFS), here's the way to verify this issue:  determine whether the sim is getting predominantly CPU mainthread-limited when you discover poor performance at touch down:  open Dev Mode, enable its frame rate counter, and note the Mainthread (MT) in milliseconds, at your arrival airport while performance is still suffering--it helps to see the frame counter so you can note subtle drops in frame rate.   For my system which delivers 30FPS if I did not adjust Terrain LOD for the arrival airport correctly, Mainthread milliseconds will be over say 24ms.  Anything higher implies it's gotten MT-limited, and then I will note frame rate no longer stays at 30, and of course w/ VSYNC on if you don't keep frame rate >= 30 stuttering ensues.

As a hypothetical example:  I might depart from something complex like KFJF in the B78X HD, and with a T-LOD of 200 (O-LOD 200 also), I might see the MT at say 22ms.  I KNOW I'll have a flawless taxi and TO, climb, cruise, descent and approach into say FSDT's KORD, so another similarly complex airport and metro area.   I will absolutely see stuttering as I get closer to touchdown, despite the fact departure and arrival airports would seem to have similar overhead though I think KORD might be a little higher.   If I now look at Dev Mode's OSD I will see the MT now is well over the 22ms it was at KJFK, and in fact is probably close to 28-30ms, w/ a frame rate tanking to 24 and stuttering.

So the basic formula to get around this goes like this:

1. Note MT milliseconds at departure:  you want this to be really no higher than about 20-21 ideally, though you can get away with a little more at departure
2. Mentally compare departure to arrival environs.  
   1. If about the same (this is of course a guess which might be wrong) in terms of complexity, reduce T-LOD to say 170 or so.  This gives you a little more headroom to cope with landing.
   2. If more complex at arrival, you might reduce T-LOD to 150 or what have you, AND O-LOD to 160 or something along those lines.  LOD seems to be the most important factor affecting MT load.
3. Using the process of comparing environs you will find on less complex area in and out of, you can easily do LOD 400/200, or 300/200, etc.  You still plan ahead for more demand at arrival, even so.

You get the idea.

As a side point, recently I tried an experiment to 'pre-load' the arrival airports and results were perfect.  It may be a red herring because I did not get a chance to INCREASE the LODs at departure a little more than my ideal 20-21.   I assumed pre-loading might happen if you for example use the Drone camera when about 10 miles out from arrival and move forward to scan from a lower altitude the entire arrival airport and surrounding metro area, then hit '5' key to reposition the drone close to the plane.  Anyway, I did this twice and both landings were flawless in very complex settings.

Edited March 21, 20224 yr by Noel

Here is an example: https://share.icloud.com/photos/018vcROq2pcVNI2ROZiigcdqA

ONE MORE: https://share.icloud.com/photos/0f4t08L1QfDhx-u1VEQeJbrgg

I did turn off real time virus protection, and it did not seem to make a difference

Noel Thank you for the great explanation!!

43 minutes ago, Noel said:

Chris, this is a known issue, by many here.  It's not identical for all because people use different settings with different hardware.  Because you get great frames elsewhere the mistake is in assuming it's going to be the same during landings, as you're seeing.  It is common to have stellar performance at your preferred LOD 200 even at complex scenarios at departure, but over time and miles processing requirements change such that by the time you get nearly to touchdown (sometimes earlier) demand goes up.   Are you running the sim wide open, or frame-limited either VSYNC or GSYNC?   With my config (60Hz screen, VSYNC on using the '30' divisor in MSFS), here's the way to verify this issue:  determine whether the sim is getting predominantly CPU mainthread-limited when you discover poor performance at touch down:  open Dev Mode, enable its frame rate counter, and note the Mainthread (MT) in milliseconds, at your arrival airport while performance is still suffering--it helps to see the frame counter so you can note subtle drops in frame rate.   For my system which delivers 30FPS if I did not adjust Terrain LOD for the arrival airport correctly, Mainthread milliseconds will be over say 24ms.  Anything higher implies it's gotten MT-limited, and then I will note frame rate no longer stays at 30, and of course w/ VSYNC on if you don't keep frame rate >= 30 stuttering ensues.

As a hypothetical example:  I might depart from something complex like KFJF in the B78X HD, and with a T-LOD of 200 (O-LOD 200 also), I might see the MT at say 22ms.  I KNOW I'll have a flawless taxi and TO, climb, cruise, descent and approach into say FSDT's KORD, so another similarly complex airport and metro area.   I will absolutely see stuttering as I get closer to touchdown, despite the fact departure and arrival airports would seem to have similar overhead though I think KORD might be a little higher.   If I now look at Dev Mode's OSD I will see the MT now is well over the 22ms it was at KJFK, and in fact is probably close to 28-30ms, w/ a frame rate tanking to 24 and stuttering.

So the basic formula to get around this goes like this:

1. Note MT milliseconds at departure:  you want this to be really no higher than about 20-21 ideally, though you can get away with a little more at departure
2. Mentally compare departure to arrival environs.  
   1. If about the same (this is of course a guess which might be wrong) in terms of complexity, reduce T-LOD to say 170 or so.  This gives you a little more headroom to cope with landing.
   2. If more complex at arrival, you might reduce T-LOD to 150 or what have you, AND O-LOD to 160 or something along those lines.  LOD seems to be the most important factor affecting MT load.
3. Using the process of comparing environs you will find on less complex area in and out of, you can easily do LOD 400/200, or 300/200, etc.  You still plan ahead for more demand at arrival, even so.

You get the idea.

As a side point, recently I tried an experiment to 'pre-load' the arrival airports and results were perfect.  It may be a red herring because I did not get a chance to INCREASE the LODs at departure a little more than my ideal 20-21.   I assumed pre-loading might happen if you for example use the Drone camera when about 10 miles out from arrival and move forward to scan from a lower altitude the entire arrival airport and surrounding metro area, then hit '5' key to reposition the drone close to the plane.  Anyway, I did this twice and both landings were flawless in very complex settings.

Great explanation Noel,

Do you leave Developer mode on all the time and tweak your  LOD's at each departure airport then again towards the destination?

21 minutes ago, RJC68 said:

Great explanation Noel,

Do you leave Developer mode on all the time and tweak your  LOD's at each departure airport then again towards the destination?

I did when I was just getting on to this but I've become better at it and no longer turn it on. Prior to SU8 (and maybe still) turning on Dev Mode, even if only to look briefly at something then disabling, stopped logging of flights in the pilot log.  I used to toggle DM on/off to get rid of the spinning logging indicator which would show up in the lower right part of the screen and cause a microstutter.  Since SU8 I no longer get the spinner, so no need to toggle DM for that anymore either.

I have proposed a better solution to have the sim dynamically adjust T-LOD according to a formula based on proximity to the landing runway and feet AGL upon final.  I think this could work because the closer you get to the ground the less level of detail in the distance matters, you're focused on landing not sight-seeing, and I think it could be done in realtime.  FSX/P3D could never had done this because changes in anything owned by the main thread require a complete screen redraw of many seconds, whereas when you stop MSFS to reduce LOD the change is instant.  I proposed it to a couple of developers but no bites.  Perhaps Asobo will get there and I probably should submit it as a suggestion.

21 minutes ago, Noel said:

I did when I was just getting on to this but I've become better at it and no longer turn it on. Prior to SU8 (and maybe still) turning on Dev Mode, even if only to look briefly at something then disabling, stopped logging of flights in the pilot log.  I used to toggle DM on/off to get rid of the spinning logging indicator which would show up in the lower right part of the screen and cause a microstutter.  Since SU8 I no longer get the spinner, so no need to toggle DM for that anymore either.

I have proposed a better solution to have the sim dynamically adjust T-LOD according to a formula based on proximity to the landing runway and feet AGL upon final.  I think this could work because the closer you get to the ground the less level of detail in the distance matters, you're focused on landing not sight-seeing, and I think it could be done in realtime.  FSX/P3D could never had done this because changes in anything owned by the main thread require a complete screen redraw of many seconds, whereas when you stop MSFS to reduce LOD the change is instant.  I proposed it to a couple of developers but no bites.  Perhaps Asobo will get there and I probably should submit it as a suggestion.

I used a similar addon in X-Plane 11 (although the name escapes me lol) you set your target FPS and it would dynamically alter the LOD in the air and on the ground you could set it as close or as far away as you wanted. It makes total sense either on the ground or close too it to have a much lower scenery draw distance. It worked really well

Hopefully one of the wizards in the community will figure out how to write such an addon for MSFS

I have always wanted dynamic LOD in MSFS. Hope they can make it possible.

On 3/21/2022 at 11:27 PM, captain420 said:

I have always wanted dynamic LOD in MSFS. Hope they can make it possible.

Yes it is very desirable, lower LOD at ground level would probably help many who have stutter problems.