MSFS Now Almost Unflyable for Me

[RandallR 451]

I don't know what's happened in the last few days but MSFS is now a major stutter-fest, especially on takeoff and landing.  My system is an older one and I've always been careful not to push it too far.  Over the last few years FS has actually run well on it.  In fact, I didn't have any issues until the last few days.  In cruise I'm now running at around 19-20 fps (over farm land).  On take-off and approach she's dropping to 14-17 fps and even freezing, making it basically uncontrollable.

This is especially surprising since I've flown into heavy areas such as NYC under storm conditions and still maintained a solid 30 fps and the sim was smooth.  Testing on my system shows no issues and my Internet speeds are excellent.

Looking around the forum I don't see many other posts along this line so it must be something in my system or settings, but why this would change over night is beyond me.

[Silicus 901]

I would totally empty my community folder, restart MSFS and see if any of the add-ons is causing the issues. If anything frame rates should have slightly increased over the last few updates.

 

[JYW 2,991]

Trying the sim with an empty Community folder is indeed a good suggestion.

Aside from that;  have you updated your Nvidia drivers lately?    I just reinstalled MSFS after a 8 month break and when I launched it, I was surprised to get an in-game warning that I needed to update to the latest Nvidia drivers, as the driver I was using was known to have problems with MSFS.   I updated the driver, relaunched and all was well.

Even if you haven't updated your GPU drivers lateley, it's probably worth taking a look in the Nvidia Control Panel, in case something has reset.   When I updated, my Control Panel had reset the power setting to "optimal" rather than "Prefer maximum performance", which has a huge impact.

Is your internet broadband performing ok in your home?   MSFS seems very sensitive to bandwidth speed.

It could also be hardware related.    A few years ago, the thermal paste on my CPU had separated suddenly.  The only reason I found out about this was due to getting 5 FPS in a sim I usually get 50 FPS in!

Edited October 27, 2023 by JYW

[Bert Pieke 7,608]

1 minute ago, JYW said:

Is your internet broadband performing ok in your home?   MSFS seems very sensitive to bandwidth speed.

As stated in an another post... MSFS seems very sensitive to MS servers having sufficient bandwidth, not necessarily the user.

[Mace 1,972]

I had some high cpu usage lately in some odd location.  I did what @Silicus advises, above, and haven't had the problem since.  I added my add-ons back in cautiously after that and now I'm running full-blast again.   

I think I had a mission-scripting app that I downloaded from .to that was causing the problem.  Anyway, that app wasn't a high priority item for me, I just downloaded it to play around with it, and for all I know it could have been the OS polling for an update...I did not feel like digging into Filemon or Task Man to see.

[MrBitstFlyer 3,923]

I find the Map Enhancement tool has FAR fewer bandwidth issues than MS Servers.

[cianpars 1,231]

The latest Nvidia drivers caused a bit of a stutterfest for me and I reverted back to the 537.34 driver I was using before and problem solved.

Edited October 27, 2023 by cianpars

[RandallR 451]

Thanks everyone for your input!

• The only things in the Community folder are Bijan seasons (never any issues) and all of the Navigraph add-ons.  I'm going to remove the Navigraph mods for the g1000 & g3000 (I have been flying g1000-equipped aircraft plus the TBM the last few days) and see if there is any difference.
• My at-home Internet bandwidth is excellent, checking out at about 370 Mbps
• My current nVidia driver is the 537.34.  I usually don't update unless necessary for some particular feature.  If things have been going well I leave them alone.  If nothing else works, I'll try the latest driver update and/or pull the processor and check the thermal paste.

[Bobsk8 12,961]

I would check to make sure you don't have a heat problem causing throttling.

[sd_flyer 6,122]

Try this. Works with me every time after update

Also delete delete and recreate rolling cache 

[Maladoror 89]

If using local cache. Delete it and re-enable or try without.

[Sonosusto 722]

First, it would be important to see your settings. NVIDIA, Sim etc. I find that after an SU that much of my setting change in the sim. I used DX11 and TAA but often it changes to DX12 etc and messes with other settings.

I have outdated stuff and maintain a smooth 30fps.

[RandallR 451]

On the latest suggestions:

• No heat issues - if anything, I'm running cooler
• I have always used rolling cache - I always delete and recreate it after each SU
• After the last SU I had no issues (until this week)
• I've been running DX12 for some time now with good results

Here something interesting - after my previous post I saw an indicator on my task bar... Windows had downloaded a system update, apparently in the background during my last flight!

2023-10 Cumulative Update Preview for .NET Framework 3.5, 4.8 and 4.8.1 for Windows 10 Version 22H2 for x64 (KB5031904)

I rebooted to finish the update.  Even if this interfered with my flight today, it wouldn't have anything to do with the previous couple of days.

[Alvega 2,127]

16 minutes ago, RandallR said:

On the latest suggestions:

• No heat issues - if anything, I'm running cooler
• I have always used rolling cache - I always delete and recreate it after each SU
• After the last SU I had no issues (until this week)
• I've been running DX12 for some time now with good results

Here something interesting - after my previous post I saw an indicator on my task bar... Windows had downloaded a system update, apparently in the background during my last flight!

2023-10 Cumulative Update Preview for .NET Framework 3.5, 4.8 and 4.8.1 for Windows 10 Version 22H2 for x64 (KB5031904)

I rebooted to finish the update.  Even if this interfered with my flight today, it wouldn't have anything to do with the previous couple of days.

Check that you have vsync disabled, both in sim and Nvidia control panel, to make sure nothing is locking your FPS.

[turbomax 3,344]

to top it off: let' s not forget to exclude all MSFS related folders from antivirus protection and kill all unnecessary processes via task manager, incl. startup programs.