PMDG 738 SWA Livery: bad news performance

[Noel 4,581]

I'm posting this here on the off chance someone might benefit from knowing this can happen as it's a first for me--I posted on the PMDG forum already.

I'm flying for SWA in A Pilot's Life, so have done several flights w/ the livery which was updated recently as the original one was causing CTD from several airports and the update, which was a notif from the Operations Center, solved this which was great.  After installing the updated SWA livery I started seeing really poor performance at multiple airports and assumed something else was the source of this so went down a rabbit hole involving changing GPU drivers and a few other things all to no avail.  I don't normally run DevMode so all I noticed was unable to maintain frame rate.  Here's a screenshot of the horror which I had dialed back T-LOD to 100 and normally can run 120-130 at complex airports and even putting T-LOD to 0 didn't help:

Finally after contemplating perhaps it was time to do a complete reinstall of MSFS (I had no clue it was a freaking livery) I had the bright idea of trying a different livery since the SWA one needed updated I figured maybe the new update had issues.  After loading one of the UAL ones the highest I saw at KDEN from gate to TO was 19ms or so, whereas w/ the SWA livery I was seeing over 30ms.  The screenshot was from another setting, at arrival.   Anyway, just a heads up something like this can be an issue.  I will try again to load up the SWA livery to verify but at this point swapping liveries I think was the only action that made for the restoration of normal performance.

Edited October 4, 2022 by Noel

[gr8av8r 36]

Which SWA livery was causing the performance issue? I have several SWA liveries for the PMDG738 (and the PMDG737). I'll be on the lookout for issues if I know what livery to be aware of.

Thanks!

[MDFlier 2,031]

N8520Q - I have flown this one many times and don't recall any performance issues. Always felt fine to me.

In general, all my PMDG flights are smooth as glass. They're quite impressive performance wise. 

[SN737 146]

2 hours ago, MDFlier said:

N8520Q - I have flown this one many times and don't recall any performance issues. Always felt fine to me.

In general, all my PMDG flights are smooth as glass. They're quite impressive performance wise. 

I concur, no  perf issue for me either, even downloaded the recent updated ones from https://flightsim.to/file/39030/southwest-airlines-heart-mega-pack-w-cabin-pmdg-737-800

and performance is equal.

[Noel 4,581]

8 hours ago, gr8av8r said:

Which SWA livery was causing the performance issue? I have several SWA liveries for the PMDG738 (and the PMDG737). I'll be on the lookout for issues if I know what livery to be aware of.

Thanks!

It was the only one that came w/ the Op Center, and that it updated once.  One thing I haven't done is try reinstalling it and see if it returns which I will do maybe tomorrow.  Right now using the one linked above and it seems fine.

[Noel 4,581]

Geez I don't know what to make of it.  I took off from KDEN to KSEA, at KDEN w/ T-LOD at 100 which is lower than I've ever needed to put it, but since KSEA was the destination that can be pretty hard.  Main Thread at KDEN at push back was 19ms.  This is what it looked like at KSEA.  Never have seen this level of degradation, though I know others have reported this it just never happened for me this bad.  Usually it might be 2-4ms slower, but never like this, which was a stutter fest:

Not sure when this really started, but it was either after SU10, or after updating NV drivers for SU10 which first was the Studio then GRD.  I restored the old driver as well.  Did clean installs (thru the NV installer only, not DDU).  But this is a Main Thread issue, not a GPU issue, so I'm puzzled. CPU isn't throttling back it's rock solid at 4.9gHz@1.19v on all cores.   I loaded the B78X HD at the same gate at KDEN and it also started at 19ms or so.  I've deleted the Shader Cache using Disk Clean.  The weird part is I can put T-LOD down to zero, and it hardly changes the Main Thread ms value.  In the past my goal was always to land with not more than 25ms tops since beyond that 30FPS gets harder to maintain. 

I'm contemplating a complete reinstall of MSFS but haven't a clue if it would be worth the effort.  I suppose I better do more troubleshooting to rule out whatever--all ideas welcome.

Oh, this was one of the new liveries from FlightSim.to.  I'll try another United livery next time and see.

Edited October 5, 2022 by Noel

[cmpbellsjc 2,963]

@Noel It’s been a while and I don’t have MSFS but if I recall correctly from the PMDG OPS Center in FSX, when you download a livery from them, doesn’t it also come with a configuration file for the aircraft to match the livery? For example, you download livery X and the configuration file calls for a certain MCP, eyebrow windows, etc. Wonder if it’s possible the configuration for SWA rather than the livery is causing the performance hit?

[Noel 4,581]

I probably shouldn't have posted this as I'm just discovering poor performance and really don't understand the cause nor what all is affected.  I'm going to try DDU and then reinstall the old NV driver I had used for over a year w/ no issues and see if that helps get me back to the performance nirvana I've been blessed with.

[jarmstro 2,409]

1 hour ago, Noel said:

I probably shouldn't have posted this as I'm just discovering poor performance and really don't understand the cause nor what all is affected.  I'm going to try DDU and then reinstall the old NV driver I had used for over a year w/ no issues and see if that helps get me back to the performance nirvana I've been blessed with.

Sounds a bit like the bug some get with the Windows 2H22 update. Switching back to DX11 solved it for me although I believe they have now rolled out an update? After 2H22 stealth installed my fps tanked. I had to switch back to DX11 to get back to normal.

Edited October 5, 2022 by jarmstro

[Paul K 1,416]

As an aside, but related, I had a livery for the JPLogistics-modded C152 which caused a CTD every time I tried to use it. I examined it, but never got to the bottom of why it was causing a problem. It's strange how seemingly small things can affect the entire sim.

[bobcat999 8,551]

4 hours ago, Noel said:

I probably shouldn't have posted this as I'm just discovering poor performance and really don't understand the cause nor what all is affected.  I'm going to try DDU and then reinstall the old NV driver I had used for over a year w/ no issues and see if that helps get me back to the performance nirvana I've been blessed with.

Are you sure it isn't the Nvidia experience bug that a lot of people have had?  The beta version of Experience solves the issue. 

It is a known problem with Nvidia experience and W11 22H2.  I just turned on 'experimental features' and it downloaded the beta - all good!

[Noel 4,581]

4 hours ago, bobcat999 said:

Are you sure it isn't the Nvidia experience bug that a lot of people have had?  The beta version of Experience solves the issue. 

It is a known problem with Nvidia experience and W11 22H2.  I just turned on 'experimental features' and it downloaded the beta - all good!

I am using Win 10 is there an issue w/ Win 10 and Experience do you know?  Thanks!

[Noel 4,581]

Well, DDU cleaned install of the latest NV driver AND GE didn't improve the picture--T-LOD at KDEN in a remote parking spot left me with a Main Thread of 26ms which is ridiculously high for this setting on this hardware.  Ran DDU/NVCleaninstall again now this time original drivers I used since release, and without GE this time.  Wish me luck!

[jrw4 627]

I noticed over the weekend that the PMDG Op Center had updated two of the SWA liveries at some point, and so I downloaded those. Have to admit, though, that I haven't had any fps problems with the original ones. You might want to see if updating helps.

[Noel 4,581]

2 minutes ago, jrw4 said:

I noticed over the weekend that the PMDG Op Center had updated two of the SWA liveries at some point, and so I downloaded those. Have to admit, though, that I haven't had any fps problems with the original ones. You might want to see if updating helps.

Thanks, yes I did the same, ran the update for SWA, no joy on that.  I just finished setting up at the same parking spot now MT is at 18ms down from 26ms--on a 1.5y/o driver, and no GE.  I will try installing the latest GE (I really like the filters and Shadowplay and have used them for ages w/o issue) and see what happens.