24 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Dan,

the possibility of a corrupt file may become clearer once i fly the route with Aus 2 deactivated or uninstalled. I have previously verified the files and it made no difference. Disabling FT YSSY Landclass solved the textures around Sydney.

Regarding the pinned topic I don't see the need to run with HT enabled with 24 VPs available and of course lower temps.

With a monitor capable of 30Hz why play around with settings in P3D? Bob Scott explained very clearly why the method he and I use is the best possible solution.

Lockheed-Martin also recommended in the SDK that utilising a core away from 0 if the user prefers to leave the OS to use it. Even with HT enabled Steve always suggests only using 1 of the first few pairs shared with the OS.

With your kit you shouldn't be having blurries. Is that in P3Dv5?

I know your justifications. But it is only a try that costs you 30 minutes. In the before mentioned thread SteveW also discussed this with me once and explained somewhere why HT is usefull. I then decided to try it and use his values. I use it since then. I wouldn't do it, if it was bad. I would not recommend it, if it was bad.

The fps is a different story but running at 60 or whatever needs more power than 30. When i'm parked at Sydney, I get not not more than 26-28. So why unlimited then? Sometimes in the vast australian deserts I could have 100 fps. Do you get 100 fps in Sydney, ORBX AU v2, Sydney City scenery and FT YSSY?

Yes, if the system gets on its limits I have blurries, even in P3D5.4. High fps, long and fast flight, flying low, a recipe to get blurries.

Edited December 26, 20232 yr by blaunarwal

But Steve also warned that too many VPs could raise temperatures... "For some systems we might want to restrict P3D from using an excessive core count as this might adversely affect temperatures."

And this post warns of higher temps with more VPs enabled.

But in this post he advises the best order for the three main threads. So I will switch 6 back to 0 and observe any differences.

And in this post he gave you the settings for your i9-13900K. So yes, i will try HT on and fly Manchester to Heathrow and see what difference there is. I'll log things with HWINFO to check temps against today's flight with it off.

My primary concern is identifying the cause of these lockups and resolving them. Performance with HT enabled is unlikely to change anything bar temperatures which will undoubtedly increase with more cores active.

As for your low and fast flights I can't offer any advice, sorry.

27 minutes ago, blaunarwal said:

When i'm parked at Sydney, I get not not more than 26-28. So why unlimited then? Sometimes in the vast australian deserts I could have 100 fps. Do you get 100 fps in Sydney, ORBX AU v2, Sydney City scenery and FT YSSY?

I can get 30 even with around Ai count of 60+. I guess my settings are different to yours.

If you can't get 30 at heavy airports you need to lower your settings until you can. Even with a 3090 there are limits.

No, I don't get 100 anywhere. I have no need for 100fps. All it does is raise the CPU temp as it's working flat out. By limiting fps to 30 I keep my CPU temp reasonable.

1 hour ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

But Steve also warned that too many VPs could raise temperatures... "For some systems we might want to restrict P3D from using an excessive core count as this might adversely affect temperatures."

And this post warns of higher temps with more VPs enabled.

But in this post he advises the best order for the three main threads. So I will switch 6 back to 0 and observe any differences.

And in this post he gave you the settings for your i9-13900K. So yes, i will try HT on and fly Manchester to Heathrow and see what difference there is. I'll log things with HWINFO to check temps against today's flight with it off.

My primary concern is identifying the cause of these lockups and resolving them. Performance with HT enabled is unlikely to change anything bar temperatures which will undoubtedly increase with more cores active.

This is nothing to do with your specific problem (again, IMO the heat as a symptom, not the cause) but if you do have questions or concerns about heat, then talk to ChillBlast about PL1, PL2 and tau and what they have set them to. This is exactly why they exist. Instead of using a blunt instrument like AffinityMask which provides no guarantees as to power consumption and therefore heat, just set a power limit on the CPU and it will adapt as needed.

PL1 is the short-term power limit, in watts. After tau seconds, it will limit itself to PL2 watts. With my i7-9700K, I found that it was hitting thermal limits when encoding videos, so I set PL2 to 162W and it never got about 88C. Modern K processors (especially yours) will suck power and by default are not limited, unless ChilBlast did so when configuring things.

Again, if you have a heat issue and don't know what PL1 or PL2 are for Intel chips, stop, do not pass go and learn. It's way more effective than manually limiting cores (which can starve you in some cases, or consume too much power in others) or gasp under-volting. If you have a Zen, look at ECO mode. I set mine to 105W and it runs nice and cool.

Cheers

@Luke, the reason i bought a professionally built PC is so I didn't have to learn all about these obscure settings in the BIOS.

I will ask them to talk me through checking them. Hopefully they're already set to their optimal values.

What'a a Zen?

2 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

But Steve also warned that too many VPs could raise temperatures...

Yes, therefore I got the second setting on page 4 Post 2, to avoid my cpu just getting too hot, which it did with the Post 1 setting on page 4.

 

The lockup in Australia is almost certainly a broken file, if you can fly in the UK without problems. The scenery is not more demanding than anything I have in Europe.

It should be easy to repair all ORBX stuff. Maybe even uninstall first and reinstall it afterwards. ORBX is pretty radicaly uninstalling. It deletes everything in the respective directory, so that may also delete something you added, consciously or by accident. Unfortunately it removes mods too. 

Because of the black textures it might be an idea to delete terrain.cfg an let the sim rebuild it. Then add Tongass Fjord entries if you have this scenery. Hope you have a backup of the 40 entries numbered right. Then reinstall Global and synchronize with central. This should add the rest of the entries. You should be fine then about scenery.

Of course other developers sceneries, maybe freeware, may be bad. I removed all OZx sceneries, when I got ORBX Australia v2 to avoid conflicts I had to resolve one by one. Next suspect is AI traffic, aircraft and boats. So for aircraft, AIG AI Manager lets you repair. Maybe you have your own traffic too. This is also a method for boats. Search for that FS9.mdl file somewhere. 

I search *.mdl in the boats directories and list the files by creation date. The oldest i open with double click in the editor and check the code for the FS9 tag "MDL8MDLH" and go on until I find the bad or to the end.

The other method is to sort with date created on disk. So you can find files added recently, That may help you to remember finding something you added but forgot. Often problems arise after adding something new to the sim, which isn't really new and therefore can crash the sim.

27 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

@Luke, the reason i bought a professionally built PC is so I didn't have to learn all about these obscure settings in the BIOS. I will ask them to talk me through checking them. Hopefully they're already set to their optimal values.

I agree with you that you probably don't want to spend time configuring and optimizing those values. Knowing what they are, on the other hand - is IMO important and being able to see those values or being told what they were set to would be important. I am curious if Chillblast provides a report as to the specific configuration they made to your machine when it was assembled. What would happen if the firmware needs to be upgraded and the settings are lost?

28 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

@LukeWhat's a Zen?

The AMD chip. I went AMD for the first time in 20 years last month. Looks like I did so right after most of the teething problems were solved for the AM5 platform.

Cheers

14 minutes ago, blaunarwal said:

Yes, therefore I got the second setting on page 4 Post 2, to avoid my cpu just getting too hot, which it did with the Post 1 setting on page 4.

Thanks. I'll try these after i have nailed the lockup problem.

15 minutes ago, blaunarwal said:

The lockup in Australia is almost certainly a broken file, if you can fly in the UK without problems. The scenery is not more demanding than anything I have in Europe.

It should be easy to repair all ORBX stuff. Maybe even uninstall first and reinstall it afterwards. ORBX is pretty radicaly uninstalling. It deletes everything in the respective directory, so that may also delete something you added, consciously or by accident. Unfortunately it removes mods too. 

Possibly broken and unlikely to be fixed unless they deem it important enough. I'll raise a ticket I think to formalise the issue.

ORBX is a nightmare. I opted for my own Library rather than it merge and replace P3D files. Not so much with AUS perhaps but definitely with FTX Global.

I have uninstalled and reinstalled already so no point in doing it again. I'll just disable whatever layers are necessary. I have no mods.

19 minutes ago, blaunarwal said:

Next suspect is AI traffic, aircraft and boats. So for aircraft, AIG AI Manager lets you repair. Maybe you have your own traffic too. This is also a method for boats. Search for that FS9.mdl file somewhere. 

I'm happy with my AIG installation. I installed the core program and then copied all my plan BGLs from my old computer. I'll run Verify Files but I'm sure they're fine.

Since I installed new drivers 10 days ago I've flown in the troublesome areas causing lockups and things have been fine. It's just Oz at present although I probably need to test more areas.

All my scenery was on the old computer. It was a two week exercise to reinstall everything. I did it properly, no copy and paste.

More when i hear back from ORBX and the plan causing the issues.

21 minutes ago, Luke said:

Knowing what they are, on the other hand - is IMO important and being able to see those values or being told what they were set to would be important. I am curious if Chillblast provides a report as to the specific configuration they made to your machine when it was assembled. What would happen if the firmware needs to be upgraded and the settings are lost?

Agreed and that's a good point. I'll ask them to provide a report on the various settings. I've only changed a couple of things in the BIOS. HT off and fan and cooler settings.

22 minutes ago, Luke said:

The AMD chip. I went AMD for the first time in 20 years last month. Looks like I did so right after most of the teething problems were solved for the AM5 platform.

Ah yes. I remember. I thought long and hard which to go for. Stuck with Intel eventually.

23 minutes ago, Luke said:

The AMD chip. I went AMD for the first time in 20 years last month. Looks like I did so right after most of the teething problems were solved for the AM5 platform.

Interesting point for the AMD systems

 

5 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

I opted for my own Library rather than it merge and replace P3D files. Not so much with AUS perhaps but definitely with FTX Global.

I have uninstalled and reinstalled already so no point in doing it again. I'll just disable whatever layers are necessary. I have no mods.

Library is good. Much easier to repair. You did already, fine. So ORBX is not the Lockup cause i think

 

6 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

I'm happy with my AIG installation. I installed the core program and then copied all my plan BGLs from my old computer. I'll run Verify Files but I'm sure they're fine.

The models are usually most problematic. If you have an old .bgl, it just stopps your ai. If you have a fs9 .mdl, it crashes the sim to desktop. So if you want to solve the problem, invest your time in .mdl search.

 

8 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

I did it properly, no copy and paste

I did it the other way and have no lockups. But i admit, recently landed at an airport without buildings. A reinstall fixed it. So no big issue.

 

11 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Possibly broken and unlikely to be fixed unless they deem it important enough. I'll raise a ticket I think to formalise the issue.

It's not an ORBX problem, since not everyone has it. I fear, it's something on your system only.

 

15 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

the plan causing the issues

How about uploading your plan. I will fly it for you. Maybe I crash then too - hope not. 

6 minutes ago, blaunarwal said:

So ORBX is not the Lockup cause i think

What makes you say that when I have pretty compelling evidence it is.

I have no issues with Ai aircraft. Can we please leave that out of the discussion.

7 minutes ago, blaunarwal said:

How about uploading your plan. I will fly it for you. Maybe I crash then too - hope not. 

I can't attach it directly but it's embedded in the hidden section. Takeoff 35, land 16R.

Spoiler

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>

<SimBase.Document Type="AceXML" version="1,0">
    <Descr>AceXML Document</Descr>
    <FlightPlan.FlightPlan>
        <Title>YSCB to YSSY</Title>
        <FPType>IFR</FPType>
        <RouteType>HighAlt</RouteType>
        <CruisingAlt>18000</CruisingAlt>
        <DepartureID>YSCB</DepartureID>
        <DepartureLLA>S35° 18' 25.00",E149° 11' 42.03",1886</DepartureLLA>
        <DestinationID>YSSY</DestinationID>
        <DestinationLLA>S33° 56' 45.60",E151° 10' 37.59",21</DestinationLLA>
        <Descr>YSCB to YSSY created by Professional Flight Planner X (http://www.flightsimsoft.com/pfpx)</Descr>
        <DeparturePosition>17</DeparturePosition>
        <DepartureName>CANBERRA</DepartureName>
        <DestinationName>KINGSFORD SMITH</DestinationName>
        <AppVersion>
            <AppVersionMajor>10</AppVersionMajor>
            <AppVersionBuild>61472</AppVersionBuild>
        </AppVersion>
        <ATCWaypoint id="YSCB">
            <ATCWaypointType>Airport</ATCWaypointType>
            <WorldPosition>S35° 17' 26.26",E149° 11' 39.99",+001886.00</WorldPosition>
            <ICAO>
                <ICAOIdent>YSCB</ICAOIdent>
            </ICAO>
        </ATCWaypoint>
        <ATCWaypoint id="OGORA">
            <ATCWaypointType>Intersection</ATCWaypointType>
            <WorldPosition>S35° 23' 45.45",E149° 18' 12.65",+000000.00</WorldPosition>
        <ATCAirway>AKMIR3</ATCAirway>
            <ICAO>
                <ICAORegion>YM</ICAORegion>
                <ICAOIdent>OGORA</ICAOIdent>
            </ICAO>
        </ATCWaypoint>
        <ATCWaypoint id="OKERU">
            <ATCWaypointType>Intersection</ATCWaypointType>
            <WorldPosition>S35° 07' 58.00",E149° 19' 04.01",+000000.00</WorldPosition>
        <ATCAirway>AKMIR3</ATCAirway>
            <ICAO>
                <ICAORegion>YM</ICAORegion>
                <ICAOIdent>OKERU</ICAOIdent>
            </ICAO>
        </ATCWaypoint>
        <ATCWaypoint id="AKMIR">
            <ATCWaypointType>Intersection</ATCWaypointType>
            <WorldPosition>S34° 10' 42.80",E150° 06' 24.30",+000000.00</WorldPosition>
        <ATCAirway>AKMIR3</ATCAirway>
            <ICAO>
                <ICAORegion>YM</ICAORegion>
                <ICAOIdent>AKMIR</ICAOIdent>
            </ICAO>
        </ATCWaypoint>
        <ATCWaypoint id="WELSH">
            <ATCWaypointType>Intersection</ATCWaypointType>
            <WorldPosition>S34° 08' 05.82",E150° 18' 29.73",+000000.00</WorldPosition>
        <ATCAirway>W113</ATCAirway>
            <ICAO>
                <ICAORegion>YM</ICAORegion>
                <ICAOIdent>WELSH</ICAOIdent>
            </ICAO>
        </ATCWaypoint>
        <ATCWaypoint id="ODALE">
            <ATCWaypointType>Intersection</ATCWaypointType>
            <WorldPosition>S34° 05' 21.20",E150° 31' 03.89",+000000.00</WorldPosition>
        <ATCAirway>W113</ATCAirway>
            <ICAO>
                <ICAORegion>YM</ICAORegion>
                <ICAOIdent>ODALE</ICAOIdent>
            </ICAO>
        </ATCWaypoint>
        <ATCWaypoint id="KABLO">
            <ATCWaypointType>Intersection</ATCWaypointType>
            <WorldPosition>S34° 04' 16.81",E150° 36' 03.59",+000000.00</WorldPosition>
        <ATCAirway>ODALE7</ATCAirway>
            <ICAO>
                <ICAORegion>YM</ICAORegion>
                <ICAOIdent>KABLO</ICAOIdent>
            </ICAO>
        </ATCWaypoint>
        <ATCWaypoint id="MITSA">
            <ATCWaypointType>Intersection</ATCWaypointType>
            <WorldPosition>S34° 01' 54.90",E150° 47' 00.68",+000000.00</WorldPosition>
        <ATCAirway>ODALE7</ATCAirway>
            <ICAO>
                <ICAORegion>YM</ICAORegion>
                <ICAOIdent>MITSA</ICAOIdent>
            </ICAO>
        </ATCWaypoint>
        <ATCWaypoint id="ANKUB">
            <ATCWaypointType>Intersection</ATCWaypointType>
            <WorldPosition>S33° 59' 11.89",E150° 58' 35.41",+000000.00</WorldPosition>
        <ATCAirway>ODALE7</ATCAirway>
            <ICAO>
                <ICAORegion>YM</ICAORegion>
                <ICAOIdent>ANKUB</ICAOIdent>
            </ICAO>
        </ATCWaypoint>
        <ATCWaypoint id="YSSY">
            <ATCWaypointType>Airport</ATCWaypointType>
            <WorldPosition>S33° 55' 48.34",E151° 10' 18.42",+000021.00</WorldPosition>
        <ATCAirway>ODALE7</ATCAirway>
            <ICAO>
                <ICAOIdent>YSSY</ICAOIdent>
            </ICAO>
        </ATCWaypoint>
    </FlightPlan.FlightPlan>
</SimBase.Document>

 

The fact that these lockups only seem to happen in a specific area is an important--critical, in fact--datapoint that was left out of the initial discussion.  That new (to me) data moves me strongly in the other direction towards software as a cause rather than hardware--a hardware issue shouldn't be triggered by flying certain locations in the sim.

Your problem may well be scenery-related--but I would not summarily discount AI as an issue.  I have seen a bad texture on an AI plane that only appears intermittently (e.g. in a specific region and/or at a specific time) cause CTDs.  It's entirely possible to have never had a problem with the AI config before and to then fly the same route later, but on a different day of the week and/or time and trigger a crash because a relatively obscure AI plane with a defective texture spawned into the reality bubble where it had not before.  A typical large-scale AIG installation has hundreds of planes/liveries with textures sourced from a diverse consortium of dozens of authors--in fact it's very likely there are many that exist in your config that have never been loaded at all.  So the idea that a bad one could be lurking in there despite hundreds of previous flights without the problem isn't out of the realm of possibility...

Since you have a flight plan profile that pretty consistently crashes the sim, I certainly would try flying it with AI turned completely off just to rule that possibility out.

25 minutes ago, Bob Scott said:

The fact that these lockups only seem to happen in a specific area is an important--critical, in fact--datapoint that was left out of the initial discussion.  That new (to me) data moves me strongly in the other direction towards software as a cause rather than hardware--a hardware issue shouldn't be triggered by flying certain locations in the sim.

The lockups were happening in England, Netherlands, Finland, Spain, Palm Springs and Sardinia and as far as I recollect only after I updated to 5.4. I had stayed with 5.3HF2 for a few weeks in November and don't recall this problem then.

I've added very little in regard to Ai. Just updates really. My install was 99.9% copied from my old computer.

The big improvement came after updating my Nvidia drivers.  Flights into Schiphol, Heathrow and a few other of the above airports were fine. So it was natural to assume the drivers had fixed the problem.

But crucially I hadn't flown in Australia with 5.3HF2. Perhaps that would have been okay.

It's easy enough to turn off Ai. I run a Lua script on a networked PC that shows the number of Ai both on the ground and airborne. Sliding the Ai slider to zero and stopping AIG TC is easy enough. But between Canberra and Sydney is a part of the world with little Ai.

First test tomorrow will be with Ai disabled as it's easier. The second will be with it enabled but with AUS v2 uninstalled or deactivated.

Ray, 

I know from years ago that you talked about liking to run at 30hz on your monitor.  If you feel that's the best for you, OK.  However, I continue to run at 60hz and I really don't have any issues with that setting.

I'm not saying that that's the answer to what's going on, but when I tried 30hz, I didn't get the performance I was looking for as far as my system worked.  I was getting pauses and jerkiness that I didn't like. It may be just my system, but when I went back to 60hz, it seemed to work better for me.  Just a thought.

Stan

@spilok, Is your monitor capable of 30Hz without forcing it with NCP? I suspect not. But mine is and it delivers a quality image with no jerkiness or stutters.

There's no point turning off VSync to get the highest possible fps. The sim becomes juttery as the CPU is working flat out.

The number of Ai at Heathrow means I actually have to limit the number to 160 to maintain 30fps. If I didn't the Ai would be over 220 and the frame rate would drop as the CPU would be incapable of delivering 30.

With no Ai I probably could get 60fps but where's the fun in being the only aircraft in the airport? 😁

I've just successfully completed YSCB-YSSY with no Ai running. I've run Verify Files and Verify TextureFiles and sent the logs to a post on the AIG forum as I can't determine if any issues were found and corrected. That tends to rule out AUS v2 being an issue.

I'm going to refly the route with Ai back to normal and see what happens. More later...