The sim has been pretty much perfect except for this one small thing. If I look vertically from the floor of the cockpit to the overhead there is, without fail, a huge stutter. It only lasts while I look through the "stutter band" and it goes away after that. But if I traverse that territory again from top to bottom (less prominent) or bottom to top (biggest stutter), there's the stutter again.

What I've found so far is it tends to only happen if I lose sight of the horizon. Another interesting part is it can also happen in spot plane as well...but the view of the horizon must disappear for the stutter to show up. It even happens in the air, everything is fine. Not sure if the sim is quickly trying to rebuild ground assets, but it happens at every airport and in every airplane.

I figured it has to do with the terrain loading, so I completely disabled the "Terrain Precache" in the user.opt file by setting OffscreenTerrainPreCaching "Enabled=0." From my understanding, this loads the terrain around the plane completely without the "fade in" of distant terrain objects after panning. Can't quite nail down why, or how this is happening though. I typically fly with my TLOD at 300...but for testing, I dropped it down to 10. The effect pretty much disappears...but I don't think it's directly due to a lower CPU load necessarily. I think that there are just fewer assets to load that pop back into view as the horizon is brought back into the picture. The reason I say that is because with the in-Sim graph, I'll still see a small MainThread spike, even with TLOD at 10. 

I'm genuinely curious if any of you have experienced/experience this. If you don't, then I'll be relieved that it's just user error and can be fixed relatively quickly. If it's an ASOBO issue....god help us all LOL.

Edited October 7, 20232 yr by V1ROTA7E
Clarification

The vertical panning stutter is tied purely to TLOD, like just about everything else in the game.

worst vertical panning stutter is at orbx KVNY.  nice looking airport but no LOD optimization.

here is an example of what I'm talking about. You can see the frametime graph at the bottom left, and the in sim FPS thing in the upper right.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/805267053199228929/1160667924005146764/Microsoft_Flight_Simulator_2023-10-08_15-57-17.mp4?ex=65357f3d&is=65230a3d&hm=64b57c8747310468c0a2e7b4c0e89cd6a9869e627a26840f2a73dd20eb162542&

1 hour ago, V1ROTA7E said:

here is an example of what I'm talking about. You can see the frametime graph at the bottom left, and the in sim FPS thing in the upper right.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/805267053199228929/1160667924005146764/Microsoft_Flight_Simulator_2023-10-08_15-57-17.mp4?ex=65357f3d&is=65230a3d&hm=64b57c8747310468c0a2e7b4c0e89cd6a9869e627a26840f2a73dd20eb162542&

That looks really annoying!  Is it just in that one aircraft? 

I have seen it occasionally in complex aircraft, but not that bad, and I thought it was when the main instruments are coming in and out of view - like it has to redraw them.

I appreciate your sympathy. The only way it goes away, or is reduced, is by bringing down the TLOD to 100 or less....

Is there anything new to do in the sim for weird issues like this? Haven't been up with what's new in awhile.

38 minutes ago, V1ROTA7E said:

..Is there anything new to do in the sim for weird issues like this? Haven't been up with what's new in awhile.

No not really, other than the fact that a lot of people are now running the LOD's at 100 (or just over) anyway, and not seeing much drop off in detail.  I run them at 125.  It does give a better amount of smoothness without a doubt. 

The LOD's mainly sap the CPU (no matter how powerful) so even our 40xx series cards won't help much in that area. 

Everything in life is a compromise I suppose, until we get the better game engine in MSFS 2024 at least.  Apparently, it is more multi-threaded so it shouldn't suffer so much with higher LODs.

Edited October 8, 20232 yr by bobcat999

Yeah, maybe i'll give 125 a shot. I tend to notice the distance details though, hopefully I can let it go until 2024 releases.

I noticed that your real fps was dropping below 30, maybe that is the problem, I don't think FG works smoothly when your real fps are that low.

5 hours ago, Ixoye said:

I noticed that your real fps was dropping below 30, maybe that is the problem, I don't think FG works smoothly when your real fps are that low.

Thanks for replying. Yeah, they are, and that's the real issue. Why are they dropping below 30 during that transition back up through the horizon? Chapstick is correct that it is tied to TLOD, but what specifically, and why is no one else seeming to suffer from this? Even with Bing and PG disabled, in SAFE mode, the issue still exists....it's the weirdest thing.

You really shouldn't be seeing that kind of stuttering with a 7950X3D and a 4090 and FG, especially not with a TLOD that low. 

Out of curiosity, are you seeing the same drop with Frame Generation set to off? 

11 minutes ago, Sethos said:

are you seeing the same drop with Frame Generation set to off? 

Yes, DX11 or 12, doesn't matter. It's literally just when the horizon comes back into view for a split second. Worse going "up" than it is going down (horizon coming from the top of the screen vs coming in from the bottom of the screen). As soon as it "stabalizes" FPS shoot back up to normal and stay there (anywhere from 80-155 FPS).

Is it really the 'horizon' causing it?  Or moving the view vertically through the cockpit?

There is a setting in the options > development menu, linked to the gauges and how they display. 
It might be worth toggling this the other way to how it is set as see how you get on.
This setting, when it was on, showed some improvement for me.  I think it can speed up how the flat screen graphics perform.
Might just be worth a try.

Thanks Rob, I'll give it a shot. I did see that the default way it renders is supposed to increase performance and clarity of the gauges, but hell, i'll try anything at this point (aside from a full reinstall LOL).

 

EDIT: Tried it, unfortunately that wasn't the fix...a guy on the MSFS forums has the same issue. I also tried an extremely FPS friendly plane with minimal gauges and the issue persists; it's gotta have something to do with scenery culling and reloading.

Edited October 9, 20232 yr by V1ROTA7E

I can confirm that I have the same problem. But not all the time it depends either on the airport, I think or I don't know what... at first I thought I had too weak a processor, I am now on an I9 13900KF 3080 and I still sometimes have this problem ... it has become rare but still there on large airports...