Stutter Experiment - Can I ask you to join in?

[brucets 94]

Mike -I was getting between 55 - 85 FPS throughout the video.Bruce Scott

[Cruachan 705]

"This is the proper way to turn off Resident shield, while you are running FS! (Or any other App, you need Auto virus Scan disabled.) Look at Question 205" http://www.grisoft.com/doc/51/us/crp/0/num/205#faq_205 Well, what do you know! All this time and I never realised! Must say something for the user friendliness of AVG as any system interference was just not apparent and I have never encountered any problematic installations (at least none that I can recall) that could be attributed to concurrent background antivirus scanning activity.You can be certain that as from today I will be doing it right from now on. It will be interesting to see if there are any positive effects on the running performance of FSX, or anything else for that matter.Many thanks, Tom. I greatly appreciate your help.Regards,Mike

[PhilTaylor 45]

If you locked frame rate to 45 or 50, do the micro-stutters smooth out?

[PhilTaylor 45]

I am not sure that what I see what in that video should be categorized as a "frustrating" issue. Could you actually make that same flight, with that same level of detail, in RTM without the same stutters or worse?

[Cruachan 705]

Hi Bruce,"I was getting between 55 - 85 FPS throughout the video."Blimey, that's impressive! I checked with my slider at unlimited and frame rates were fluctating anywhere between 30 and 60 with occasional brief drops into single digits. Stuttering and surging was very evident. Peg the frame rate at 20 and I was left with periodic (we now recognize, thanks to you) micro stutters.Not sure how my system stacks up against yours.Your drives are certainly faster and according to Tom's Hardware VGA Charts our GPU's show a similar level of performance in FSX: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/graphics/cha...2=725&chart=291My CPU should be faster.... in theory. Mike

[Cruachan 705]

"Could you actually make that same flight, with that same level of detail, in RTM without the same stutters or worse?"I'm afraid I can't comment on that one. To be honest, Phil, I didn't run FSX very often before SP1, preferring instead to fly my old faithful FS9. As I recall, I don't remember stuttering as being a show stopper in RTM, just the poor frame rates over cities and large airports. In common with everyone else I spent most of my time in FSX tweaking like mad to up the performance.Please don't ask me to begin again from scratch as I'm approaching the point when I'm starting to feel reasonably happy with FSX. The 'blurries' is not really an issue for me and now I know what is 'normal' as far as the stutters are concerned I find, at last, I am beginning to relax into the sim.What I will say is that my reasonably acceptable performance has now been achieved without having to use any additional tweaks. I removed all the previously applied tweaks and replaced all backed up default files prior to installing SP1. As you have recommended I allowed the sim to rebuild fsx.CFG, pulled back the sliders and built up gradually from there. However, knowing my predilection (weakness?) for tweaking and fine tuning it is more than likely that at some point I will continue to experiment with settings and alternative files. Such is the reality (challenge?) of simming.Regards,MikeASRock 939Dual-SATA2, AMD Athlon 64X2 4800+ (2400MHz)(Toledo), 2GB Crucial PC3200 DDR400 Ram 3-3-3-8 (2T)(Dual Channel), (PCI-E)Sapphire ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 512MB (Catalyst 7.1 WHQL), SB Audigy2 ZS Platinum (Drivers version 5.12.0001.1196 WHQL), Windows XP Home Edition (SP2), DirectX 9.0c (with 04/2007 update)

[ppo 67]

Here are my results:1. no (slight surging 10%)2. no (smooth)3. no (smooth)Smooth all the wayPC is: Athlon64 3800 singlecore, stock speed 2,400 mhz, 2gig ram (optimized), ATI X850XT256meg AGP set at 256meg stock speed also.Resolution 1280x1024x32. AA4X driver, AF app. controlled: AnisoFSX CFG specifics:fiber at .45, trees/cell at 2500, buildings/cell at 800. Upper frame limit:26LOD_RADIUS=4.500000MESH_COMPLEXITY=100MESH_RESOLUTION=21TEXTURE_RESOLUTION=24AUTOGEN_DENSITY=3DETAIL_TEXTURE=1WATER_EFFECTS=4Other adjustments:Water texture is reduced (file avlbl from Avsim)TreeX is used also.Autogendescriptions.spb has been changed from the Min one.The beast is finally tamed here. Never thought I would get there. I can also fly to urban areas and sustain 20+ fps.Here are the items I consider to have a big impact on performance (fps, stutter) :1. Screen Resolution;2. Aniso at 16X;3. Lock fps;the 3 above are my solution to smooth flying: 1280x1024 Aniso set by application and fps locked at 26 (will give good results between 24 and 32)4. number of trees & buildings per cell;5. AI (cut to minimum but usable up to 30% commercial and 50% private);Hopefully this will be useful to someone with the same config or similar. Evening, Pierre

[Cruachan 705]

Hi Pierre,Thanks for joining the party! You have obviously put in a lot of hard work and I'm grateful to you for sharing your findings with us."1. no (slight surging 10%)2. no (smooth)3. no (smooth)Smooth all the way"This does sound very promising.How does it compare with what we are seeing in Bruce's video which we can now use as a very helpful 'benchmark'?http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5090861007904197793Mike

[ppo 67]

Morning Mike, it does look very similar to my situation although with a big less 'jerkiness' or 'microstutter' depending if that's the video that creates it or not.Two things I didn't mention yesterday night (it was late...):1. my pc is dual-boot with regular xp pro sp2 for office work and a gamer reduced xp pro sp2 with just the bare minimums to run my games: fs9, fsx, ship sim etc.. The point being that XP runs with 15 services, 0% cpu activity, ram use 130meg so the CPU/GPU are dedicated to the task at hand nothing else. No e-mail clients, office appl. or antivirus.2. Prior to SP1, it was not possible to find a proper 'sweet spot'. With SP1, I had more stability and FPS. I tackled problems one at a time: first stutters (solved with 3 items mentioned) and lastly blurriness with was solved with fiber at .45 which finetunes the whole thing.Pierre

[oktorn777 0]

I get image tearing effects otherwise.cheers,C.G.

[tf51d 284]

Mike! Has your situation with stutters improved since disabling the Resident Shield functions in AVG?

[brucets 94]

Phil -I reran the test with FPS loced at 55 and could see no appreciable difference. Wasn't any better or any worse. However my rig just seems to like unlimited FPS the best.Here's a short video leaving a high detail airport (LGA):http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6801389494243352457Here's one more landing at Grand Junction, Colorado:http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3306495625268901925The LGA one isn't perfectly smooth, but not too bad. The GJT one is just about perfect. For me, the blurred textures are more of a concern at this point.Bruce Scott

[LAdamson 240]

>Mike! Has your situation with stutters improved since>disabling the Resident Shield functions in AVG?With virtually no stutters, except for an occasional micro stutter here and there. Still no tweaks and flight that's close to 30 fps; as well as a no blurrie landscape until it fades into the distance.....Is it worth it to download and install SP-1? At the present time I don't use auto-gen, and might not even if the frame rates were higher. I use low water settings sometimes, and FS9 for those massive and complex airport/aircraft situations.My "non SP-1" test flight using the motorized glider was much smoother than the test represented in the video. And, I'm just not too interested these days in massive tweaks, new CFG files, etc. My FSX preference is usually morning and afternoon flights around the KSLC mountain area with real weather and the frame rate friendly SF260. The high resolution scenery looks great as is!Perhaps I should just let the update go uninstalled? Just seriously wondering.L.Adamsonedit: Athlon 3800+/2Gig/Geforce 7600GS 256MB/ 1600*1200*32 res.

[Carabou 0]

Hi Again, I installed treesX 2.1 (the one for SP1), and reran your test. I used the medium level (not the highest) I clearly noticed improvement with less stuttering....

[Cruachan 705]

Hi Tom,"Has your situation with stutters improved since disabling the Resident Shield functions in AVG?"'Fraid not :( Performance is much about the same as far as I can tell.I've attempted a short video which ain't very good - first attempt and all that - I was so impressed by Bruce's that I thought I would have a go - if anyone has any tips I would appreciate it! I had turned off AA prior to capturing (as recommended by the FRAPS author), but I don't think that's the main reason for the poor quality.However, it does show the stuttering although the captured/compressed video does seem to make it look worse than it really is. Anyway, for what it's worth, here it is:http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=...623645&hl=en-GBMike