How much 'stuttering' do you experience in MSFS?

[GSalden 4,700]

As I use a zoom of 0.80 on both my front views I have TLOD at 170 and Objects LOD at 160z

The Left view pc has 180/170 as it only drives one 4K display.

[Fielder 3,742]

I use water cooling. But not the radiator fans which came with the cooler. I replaced those with the fans that cooled the most in online tests. They are also the noisiest which means nothing at all to me. It's just white noise, and to me not objectionable.

There are companies whose only products they sell are electronic white noise generators to help people sleep at night, because white noise is very peaceful and relaxing. 

[Noel 4,563]

36 minutes ago, Cpt_Piett said:

Main thing for me is not to go overboard with TLOD. I find that running it at 150 in most scenarios is okay though. It's a good overall setting. 

That's not what I would have expected out of that CPU at 5.1gHz as it's single-threaded perf is around 25% better than my 9900K at 5.0gHz.  I've pretty much assumed a faster CPU would absolutely solve this behavior upon arrivals, the main thread overload, with all other settings being equal. 

One of the final touches on fluid stutter-free animation was using Process Lasso with a few caveats:

• MSFS gets all 8 cores, at 5.0Ghz.
• All other processes are on all cores except Core07.  This includes the various system processes, even though I'm not quite sure how that works and if it works.
• MSFS gets High Priority, and also gets I/O priority as well.
• I start MSFS, start APLv2, start PACX, then run Process Lasso after all have fully initialized.
• Finally, I turn Process Lasso off--all of its associated processes are killed when you turn it off via the taskbar tray.  ALL assignments are retained after closing down PL until the next reboot.

I just landed the PMDG 738 in moderate rain, lots of AI traffic, nary a hitch from gate to gate, with T-LOD at 120. 

Edited October 30, 2022 by Noel

[Cpt_Piett 4,822]

19 minutes ago, Fielder said:

They are also the noisiest which means nothing at all to me.

Yup, the fan noise tend to blend into the background. I'm running 6x120mm fans for my radiators. Then there's the GPU fans. I'm using this freeware app called Fan Control which is excellent for setting up fan curves. 

4 minutes ago, Noel said:

That's not what I would have expected out of that CPU at 5.1gHz as it's single-threaded perf is around 25% better than my 9900K at 5.0gHz.  I've pretty much assumed a faster CPU would absolutely solve this behavior upon arrivals, the main thread overload, with all other settings being equal. 

I guess that would make sense. However TLOD 150 is still my limit with heavy scenery. Instead of changing it during the flight I tend to just leave it there for the duration of the flight. I'm running FSLTL at fairly high settings though, so that's probably 10fps. Without AI traffic I could perhaps run TLOD a little higher, but it's not a big deal for me. With DX12 the CPU is absolutely maxed out running 100% on all P-cores in heavy scenery. 

[Noel 4,563]

That is bizarre.  With your description it seems like we're awfully close performance-wise.  I certainly would never go thru the cost and hassle of changing mobo, CPU and memory just to go from TLOD of 100 to 150 it simply is not hardly worth the time of day, 150 over 100 and even 200 over 100.  My default stable TLOD is 100 wherein I don't need to stop the sim and change anything.  Often I can run PMDG at 150 or higher at departure but guaranteed needs to get close to TLOD 100 at complex arrivals.   We're clearly setup in other ways differently.  For starters at FT KLAS in the PMDG 738 I was seeing the main thread at around 68% until very close to touch down then some spikes into the mid 80% range. 

[Cpt_Piett 4,822]

It is a bit bizarre, I agree. I wonder if it's simply due to the fact that over the last 2-3 Intel generations there's not any huge improvements in terms of instructions per cycle. As I understand it (I may be wrong though) most improvements have been in terms of added cores. 

I saw pretty significant improvements with DX12 and much better multithreading with SU10. But there seems to be the same limit in terms of heavy scenery, AI traffic and complex aircraft. Perhaps this is where the 5800X3D outperforms Intel CPUs. 

Edited October 30, 2022 by Cpt_Piett

[Alpine Scenery 1,609]

It's a LOD coding issue, the MSFS game engine isn't perfectly LOD optimized as some other games are.
That's why the 5800x3D doesn't help as much in certain games, but you'll find similar benefits in games that have "below average" optimization in the code.
Part of it is because of so much 3rd party content, people create things with different levels of optimization and different styles.

 

 

Edited October 30, 2022 by Alpine Scenery

[bbsmitz 132]

2 hours ago, Ixoye said:

The only times I experience a short stutter is when msfs load in some big add-on airports, I use Lod 150 and clouds on high and the rest at Ultra to hold 37-38 fps to avoid stuttering.
1440x3440 V-Sync 50% 75hz

Same boat.  Usually I'll hit some stuttering on final. I'm also running TLOD 300 so I'm sure it'd be better if I made it less.

[Noel 4,563]

8 minutes ago, Alpine Scenery said:

the MSFS game engine isn't perfectly LOD optimized as some other games are

Perhaps it will improve some more, if possible.  I'm never surprised when the main thread starts to choke a bit at complex airports chuck full of RT online traffic quite frankly it's shocking just how excellent it already is.  It harkens me back to P3D v4.5 when arriving anywhere near a few wind turbines would kill performance outright, or when I turned some lighting in the PMDG NGXu the GPU would jump by 20%!  Perhaps there will be some more optimizing to come.

I've opined the pathway mainly will be thru a dynamic optimizer that culls T-LOD (and other variables that matter) the closer you get to touchdown.   As mentioned several times and now once more:  we can afford to cull T-LOD when very near the ground because you're just not going to see as the distant textures usually as sitting behind buildings.  I'm guessing maybe this is already happening to some degree but we won't know it.  Using an algorithm to do this seems like an obvious pathway, but again, perhaps some of this is already happening and helps explain why we don't see worse performance in those busy complex airports.

Edited October 30, 2022 by Noel

[bbsmitz 132]

Double post.

Edited October 30, 2022 by bbsmitz

[Alpine Scenery 1,609]

2 minutes ago, Noel said:

Perhaps it will improve some more, if possible.  I'm never surprised when the main thread starts to choke a bit at complex airports chuck full of RT online traffic quite frankly it's shocking just how excellent it already is.  It harkens me back to P3D v4.5 when arriving anywhere near a few wind turbines would kill performance outright, or when I turned some lighting in the PMDG NGXu the GPU would jump by 20%!  Perhaps there will be some more optimizing to come.

Other games are easier to optimize, because they follow a standard convention and have little third party content and no legacy objects to deal with. RDR 2 (Rockstar games) had the same type of issues as MSFS in optimizing the game, they are at similar levels of detail, but RDR 2 at times has even more complex textures and even a larger number of items on the screen than MSFS. It took Rockstar a LONG time to fix the LOD issues in that game, so I'm not holding my breath for MSFS, but the optimization is just "average" compared to other games. It's not bad, but it's not at the top either.  

[Noel 4,563]

4 hours ago, Alpine Scenery said:

It took Rockstar a LONG time to fix the LOD issues in that game, so I'm not holding my breath for MSFS, but the optimization is just "average" compared to other games. It's not bad, but it's not at the top either.  

Do we know if Rockstar and MS/Asobo have comparable production capacities such that we can predict MS/Asobo will also take a LONG time to fix the LOD issues?  Oh well it is what it is, and it's already amazing. 

[Sky_Pilot071 581]

Almost no stutters with AMD 5900X and LOD 150 / 1440 / DLSS Quality

sp

Edited October 31, 2022 by Sky_Pilot071

[Sunshine13 234]

took a flight from CYYZ to KJFK.  2550x1550 tlod at 150 v sync on Frames locked at 40 using DX11 with TAA Most settings on Ultra Used PMDG 737-800 American Airlines.Total amount of stutters were about 4-6. they occured when I was  leaving the gate at CYYZ.  taking off from runway 23 at CYYZ had no stutters until I landed at KJFK.  While I was taxing to parking Gate turned navigation blue ribbon on had a couple of more stutters.

The few stuterrs that I had could definitely live with..  The stuterrs wee short and bief. My computer  overclocked 4.8 ghz

The bottom line is that we all have different setups for the sim.Basiclly I am trying to use my 25 years of simming.  Wha tkind of airports flying into, using GA or sophisticated jets, ex, PMDG 737-800.

Hopefully everybody is using a speicific drive for Fs 2020, and an M2 SSd

[Fallen_One 4]

13 hours ago, Noel said:

I'm obsessed w/ this issue having had fabulously stutter-free performance for most of MSFS life until some months ago when subtle stuttering of varying quality slowly ensued and I essentially just put up with it as the deterioration was subtle over months.  This came to a head a month ago or so when I installed Bijan's most recent release and that seemed to add enough degredation in performance that it prompted me to start fresh with a complete reinstall of Win 10 and MSFS.  I began getting hard pauses after this which traced back to my forgetting to disable the Win 10 desktop slideshow.  I did a lot of troubleshooting and testing trying to get rid of ALL stutters that were not tied directly to overtaxing of the main thread.  After a few weeks of trial and error troubleshooting I can attest I have nearly 100% stutter-free animation now, better than ever.  It is common even with intense scrutiny to see zero or just one or two brief stutters during an entire 2h flight.  I just did KBWI to KISP in the CRJ700 and witnessed zero stutters of any kind from gate to gate:  total fluid smoothness at 30FPS where I am locked.  I think it's quite possible the quest for higher frame rates may well be driven more by subtle microstutters one is exposed to and less by low frame rate per se, with the assumption that increasing frame rate becomes the pathway to smooth flight.  While it likely is true more processing power can offset some sources of stuttering, I can attest at 30FPS with zero stutters of any kind that there is really nothing lacking in terms of smooth, fluid animation now.  When either CPU or GPU is not taxed/maxed, which will of course jeopardize smooth animation, there historically have been other sources of microstuttering, including ATC text flow and previously the white logging spinner (lower right part of the display) was a culprit but the latter was addressed some SUs ago.  And of course myriad other potential sources of stuttering from outside the sim--this is what I'm focused on here, distinct from simply using settings too high for conditions.

As you scrutinize for stuttering look closely from gate to say a few miles out from arrival landing, so during taxi after pushback, during turns, during ATC speech, etc etc.  I mention a few miles out because this is where it's common to have the main thread become overtaxed esp if T-LOD is set higher than your hardware can cope with, on top of Realtime Traffic and so forth. 

Please vote on this after you've had a hard look.  EXCLUDE stuttering coming from inability to maintain the locked frame rate by Vsync or other as that is predictable and is typically resolved by adjusting settings and/or obtaining stronger components.  There are other questions not about stuttering per se if you care to respond there.

Thanks!

Addendum:  I created this poll to assess if it's worth reviewing the various things I did to get me to stutter-free animation.  The sim has become an absolute joy for me once again!  Could well be that most people do not have issues w/ stuttering but I don't know that to be the case so wanted to ask.  The thread can be used to share findings of troubleshooting and optimization.

 

I really need to set up a time to get with you on how you got yours to be stutter free. I have a pretty good PC and I still have the most random stutters and it’s rather annoying. I don’t care at all about FPS as I just want a smooth simulation.

However, it seems harder and harder to achieve. I am running a i9-10850K, Asus TUF OC 3080 TI, 32GB RAM. I cannot run the sim on ULTRA preset if I want to even attempt to use the Fenix. As soon as it’s on ULTRA in the Fenix I stutter just looking around in the cockpit with AI traffic completely off. 
 

I’m not positive if it’s because I’m running at 1440P. But it has definitely slowly been ruining my want to even continue to use MSFS.