This has been several days of troubleshooting in trying to nail down the source in order to get rid of recurrent hard pauses about every 60 seconds.  Here is the main thread on this tale:   https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/625315-ideas-on-how-to-troubleshoot-recurrent-hard-pauses/?do=findComment&comment=4858145

It's probably slightly early to celebrate but some interesting findings I'll pass along in case it helps someone.  I've done so many things it's hard to keep track of it all and worse yet not sure always what was the major factor that really seemed to work.  I wasn't the most careful troubleshooter in that I didn't test after each change because doing a test is takes a lot of time, but I can tell you what I'm pretty sure didn't make a difference.

Unproven, but this was the first action that seemed to make a difference on this, and it was independent of DX11 or DX12, i.e. they were happening in both:  I changed the desktop slideshow from 1 minute to 1 day.  I'm guessing this is something I had done a long time ago but as I just reinstalled Win 10 a week ago or so I'm guessing I just had forgotten to do this.  I'm not certain this was it but it was shortly after this that I first noted flights without these hard pauses. 

Here's a video of the hard pause I'm referring to which frame rate drops below 30 (vsync to 30) when there is ample CPU/GPU/VRAM headroom--notice the very steady looking graphs on the upper right when suddenly turns red w/ the drop in frame rate and associated stutter:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XN58UY8w2Y

Here's a look at what files seemed to be associated w/ this I was able to capture:

I did stop running Steam automatically when Windows starts hoping to lose any polling it might be doing as a long shot, and this DID NOT change the 55-60 second hard pause issue.   All of the Defender and RT virus and threat protection settings had no impact.  

So not sure exactly why I'm no longer getting these hard pauses but at least there is hope for others experiencing!

After getting rid of those I was playing around with RTSS for frame rate limiting, which I'd done previously and concluded it was not better than in-sim vsync to 30.  I never could get rid of slight "shimmies" for lack of a better word--be taxiing along and suddenly a very slight vibration/shaking for a brief time then back to smooth.  Without a doubt, vsync to 30 (for me and my 60Hz screen), is the most fluid, most stutter-free.  

DX11 v DX12 for best total stutter-free?  DX12, in-sim Vsync, no other limiters needed. 

This may also be a red herring but I'll share it because the flight I'm in now, flying out of Lima PE to Cuzco, all aspects of taxi, turning, take off the on up to altitude were virtually 100% flawless.  I had a lot of this prior to SU10, a lot of very stable, smooth flights, but then things when to H E L L !  Not sure if this last maneuver really helped, but one of the files that seemed to be associated w/ stutters (running ProcMon) was audiodg.exe.  This is the most common file playing while running MSFS!  I had done this early on to no avail, but that was when looking at the hard pause issue.  So just prior to this flight I assigned audiodg.exe to Core0 and Core01, and took flightsimulator.exe and FSUIPC7 off of those two of my eight cores.   Voila, this flight has been perfection city!  And Lima is a huge area w/ gobs of buildings.  Nary a hiccough for the entire flight no matter how hard I turned during taxi, etc.

And this was way unexpected.  Note how relatively steady the DevMode OSD graph behaves during flight in the linked short video above.  Just a few vertical lines then of course the hard pause FPS drop, then very stable graph--that was DX11.  Now look at DX12 which has been near perfection for freedom from stutters--the OSD looks like it would be a stutter-fest!

Not sure if that top bar is frametime but that's what I called it.   This is a lower demand section of my taxi but as I say Lima is all of 10 million plus people and their infrastructure which looked real and fabulous and remained totally stutter free all the way to....I'm just coming into Cuzco and hopefully it will remain so!   Be sure to use 1080p in Youtube...

 

Edited October 18, 20223 yr by Noel

21 minutes ago, Noel said:

I changed the desktop slideshow from 1 minute to 1 day. 

That indeed sounds like the culprit, and why I have it turned off completely. 🙂

14 minutes ago, Bert Pieke said:

That indeed sounds like the culprit, and why I have it turned off completely. 🙂

What is desktop slideshow?

1 hour ago, cchiozza said:

What is desktop slideshow?

It's a Windows desktop setting that allows you to sequence through a set of jpegs as your desktop background at a regular intervals. Back in P3D days, I accidentally shot myself in the foot by enabling a slideshow. Who'd have though that even with the sim running full screen, changing the desktop image would cause a stutter?

Edited October 18, 20223 yr by odourboy

Well, it was too simple, and I've not turned it back on to validate, but I'm so stoked to be over it!  I'm sure I had it off last install 1.5y ago or so I just forgot about it.  

Just now, Noel said:

Well, it was too simple, and I've not turned it back on to validate, but I'm so stoked to be over it!  I'm sure I had it off last install 1.5y ago or so I just forgot about it.  

Instead of "Sideshow Bob", we will have to call you "Slideshow Noel".

48 minutes ago, odourboy said:

Who'd have though that even with the sim running full screen, changing the desktop image would cause a stutter?

That is the issue with the Windows architecture.... Whenever Windows wants to do some "housekeeping", it can interrupt any running programs... The only way I know of to avoid these kind of problems, is to disable as many Windows services as possible.

Just to add to that, there can be Adobe updates, Java updates, Google updates etc that run on timers as well..

Edited October 18, 20223 yr by Bert Pieke

I often wish we could have a barebones OS on which we could run our sim.

2 hours ago, Noel said:

This has been several days of troubleshooting in trying to nail down the source in order to get rid of recurrent hard pauses about every 60 seconds.  Here is the main thread on this tale:   https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/625315-ideas-on-how-to-troubleshoot-recurrent-hard-pauses/?do=findComment&comment=4858145

It's probably slightly early to celebrate but some interesting findings I'll pass along in case it helps someone.  I've done so many things it's hard to keep track of it all and worse yet not sure always what was the major factor that really seemed to work.  I wasn't the most careful troubleshooter in that I didn't test after each change because doing a test is takes a lot of time, but I can tell you what I'm pretty sure didn't make a difference.

Unproven, but this was the first action that seemed to make a difference on this, and it was independent of DX11 or DX12, i.e. they were happening in both:  I changed the desktop slideshow from 1 minute to 1 day.  I'm guessing this is something I had done a long time ago but as I just reinstalled Win 10 a week ago or so I'm guessing I just had forgotten to do this.  I'm not certain this was it but it was shortly after this that I first noted flights without these hard pauses. 

Here's a video of the hard pause I'm referring to which frame rate drops below 30 (vsync to 30) when there is ample CPU/GPU/VRAM headroom--notice the very steady looking graphs on the upper right when suddenly turns red w/ the drop in frame rate and associated stutter:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XN58UY8w2Y

Here's a look at what files seemed to be associated w/ this I was able to capture:

I did stop running Steam automatically when Windows starts hoping to lose any polling it might be doing as a long shot, and this DID NOT change the 55-60 second hard pause issue.   All of the Defender and RT virus and threat protection settings had no impact.  

So not sure exactly why I'm no longer getting these hard pauses but at least there is hope for others experiencing!

After getting rid of those I was playing around with RTSS for frame rate limiting, which I'd done previously and concluded it was not better than in-sim vsync to 30.  I never could get rid of slight "shimmies" for lack of a better word--be taxiing along and suddenly a very slight vibration/shaking for a brief time then back to smooth.  Without a doubt, vsync to 30 (for me and my 60Hz screen), is the most fluid, most stutter-free.  

DX11 v DX12 for best total stutter-free?  DX12, in-sim Vsync, no other limiters needed. 

This may also be a red herring but I'll share it because the flight I'm in now, flying out of Lima PE to Cuzco, all aspects of taxi, turning, take off the on up to altitude were virtually 100% flawless.  I had a lot of this prior to SU10, a lot of very stable, smooth flights, but then things when to H E L L !  Not sure if this last maneuver really helped, but one of the files that seemed to be associated w/ stutters (running ProcMon) was audiodg.exe.  This is the most common file playing while running MSFS!  I had done this early on to no avail, but that was when looking at the hard pause issue.  So just prior to this flight I assigned audiodg.exe to Core0 and Core01, and took flightsimulator.exe and FSUIPC7 off of those two of my eight cores.   Voila, this flight has been perfection city!  And Lima is a huge area w/ gobs of buildings.  Nary a hiccough for the entire flight no matter how hard I turned during taxi, etc.

And this was way unexpected.  Note how relatively steady the DevMode OSD graph behaves during flight in the linked short video above.  Just a few vertical lines then of course the hard pause FPS drop, then very stable graph--that was DX11.  Now look at DX12 which has been near perfection for freedom from stutters--the OSD looks like it would be a stutter-fest!

Not sure if that top bar is frametime but that's what I called it.   This is a lower demand section of my taxi but as I say Lima is all of 10 million plus people and their infrastructure which looked real and fabulous and remained totally stutter free all the way to....I'm just coming into Cuzco and hopefully it will remain so!   Be sure to use 1080p in Youtube...

 

Great news Noel,

In the bottom video you GPU timing was perfect, far enough ahead of the Main thread timing to give your CPU some breathing room. There is an app I came across that allows you to set automatically which cores any given app can use. I need to find it again as I have been doing some testing  today to try and maintain a solid 50fps in the Fenix with FSLTL. I have been experimenting using the Ecores 16,17,18 & 19 for the FSLTL injector and SpadNext. I also enabled my on board GPU and shifted the display rendering of the Fenix to that and I think I have finally got it. Just need to find that app so I can set the affinity automatically.

Btw are you running a 60Hz monitor? How do you find panning at 30fps? My basic 4K TV is not the best at 30fps when panning around, it has zero motion settings. I have a 65 inch Sony X90J in my family room that I have been thinking about trying to see how the VRR works and what the sim looks like in HDR. I have been toying with the idea on picking up a 50 inch X90J for my sim

5 minutes ago, Mace said:

I often wish we could have a barebones OS on which we could run our sim.

If ever the deep dark web came out with a skeleton-mode Windows 10 that had absolutely no fat or junk I'd be tempted to buy.

Lord knows Microsoft would never consider such a thing themselves. An OS without minesweeper and candy crush pre-installed? 😮 A digital sin!

Edited October 18, 20223 yr by WestAir

Hi guys.  I'm confused.

I've been on the other thread and I'm having an absolutely precise stopwatch timed 1/3 second pause every 60 seconds.  

I ran all the Windows repair RUN commands, no problems found, disconnected everything from the PC including all drives and USB controls except the wired Xbox controller to fly, used a wired mouse, disabled all the USB sleep modes, and more from YT's and that other thread.  It still persists.

I've never used slideshow as I like my 747 background but to be fair in troubleshooting I went to Background.

It was set to Photo so I went to Slideshow which was set (I guess by default) to 30 minutes and changed it to 1 day.

Still have the exact 60 second 1/3 second pause which is extremely frustrating.

I even installed the game Skyrim, and one would think that if it was endemic to the PC itself I'd see the pause while playing that game, I don't but I'm not sure if that's a valid test though.

At this point I've pretty much given up.  I've seen only one other person with this problem and it was on Microsoft's game called UBOAT and there was some file editing they had to do with of all things, a spreadsheet program.

Now, @Noel can you please elaborate on this audiodg.exe to Core0 and Core01?  How does a person assign something to Core0 and Core1?  You mentioned that you did but not how.

I'd very much appreciate any help in doing this if there's a shred of hope in stopping these pauses.

Many thanks and please forgive me if I "hijacked" this thread as it was not my intention.  I didn't even know this thread existed until a friend here just called me and told me about it.

Best regards, Jack.

I noticed the same issue with the sludeshow about a year ago. I thought it too obscure to mention. I am glad you did. Mine was set to change every hour. The slideshow should not be changing the desktop when a fullscreen window has the foreground. Windows does not even send wm_paint messages to a window/application that is not visible. No cpu cycles should be used when this occurs. Something strange is occurring. I tracked it down using the Xbox gamebar. It has a resource window that stays on top and shows you any resource using 2% or more of the cpu. A month ago I started getting a stutter every 30 minutes. It was some new dell instrument something word not allowed that came from an update. I just used the gamebar and it only had msfs listed until the stutter and thats when I could see two processes, msfs and dell.

I have a static desktop wallpaper and still get this hard pause every 60 or 80s only with the Fbw neo. All other planes are okay. Go figure!

5 hours ago, Noel said:

Not sure if this last maneuver really helped, but one of the files that seemed to be associated w/ stutters (running ProcMon) was audiodg.exe.  This is the most common file playing while running MSFS!  I had done this early on to no avail, but that was when looking at the hard pause issue.  So just prior to this flight I assigned audiodg.exe to Core0 and Core01, and took flightsimulator.exe and FSUIPC7 off of those two of my eight cores.   Voila, this flight has been perfection city!  And Lima is a huge area w/ gobs of buildings.  Nary a hiccough for the entire flight no matter how hard I turned during taxi, etc.

Nice find! Wonder if it’s related to the terrible loud sound spikes I sometimes get upon MSFS start? Anyway I’ll change the core assignments. Some info on audiodg.exe:

Quote

Basically, Audiodg.exe [Windows Audio Device Graph Isolation] file hosts the audio engine for the operating system. So, this file is utilized for all the Audio processing and Digital Signal Processing (DSP). Vendors are able to install their own DSP and audio effects into the audio pipeline, which are then processed by audiodg.exe.

 

3 hours ago, RJC68 said:

There is an app I came across that allows you to set automatically which cores any given app can use.

Process Lasso perhaps?