6 minutes ago, newtie said:

My 3080ti handles 320000.00 easily.

I use hi res ground textures too.

It’s been established my settings are not the reason for the problem. Aggressive Windows protection is the issue. Just need to find a way of coping with it.

2 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Expensive? Don’t understand. Do you mean expansive?

No, I mean expensive - in terms of CPU cycles and time. John/PeteD can clarify, but my understanding is that FSUIPC fetches the PMDG state on every frame. Again, it's not time consuming, just a 2K or so block of memory.

2 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Probably via autosave but the question no one has been able to answer is why wasn’t this aggressive intervention by Windows present on every autosave? It’s bad enough to break the link between FSUIPC and P3D.

Some clarifications - first, the "link" is a shared memory segment if they're on the same machine, so it's not actually getting broken  (because strictly speaking, it isn't a link) as much as the call to FSUIPC is timing out (and that timeout is set by the caller). In my own user diagnostics, I've seen successful FSUIPC calls take between 0.1ms and 1000ms, so four orders of magnitude of difference. Writing a client app, calls to FSUIPC6 and below can pause until the next P3D/FSX/FS9 frame. That could be up to 500ms at times.

(I know this is a little too much inside baseball, but I'm writing it to record what I've discovered in the hopes that it helps someone else, and if I'm wrong John or Pete can correct me.)

Ray, I think your question will remain unanswered until PMDG says what they are doing in terms of panel serialization. There definitely seems to be something unusual happening that triggers a lot of anti-virus activity, but simply writing 2K (or 4K, or 256K for that matter) should not trigger such a response if it's being done as a single write.

I wonder how optimized their I/O code is, or whether there's a performance bug lurking there that only came to light with FSX.

Cheers

@Luke,I appreciate your wisdom on this matter most of which I'm afraid goes over my head.

I added extra logging to FSUIPC6 this morning and set autosave to 3 mins once airborne. A flight from Manchester to Heathrow was absolutely fine until I was 3 miles out of 27R at which point it froze for 2m 57s according to the Aivlasoft EFB log. The Task Manager performance screen showed 21 VPs working 100% with only the 3 assigned to P3D threads at normal levels.

Once unfrozen the flight was fine and I landed, taxied and parked.

I notice in ProgramData\LM\P3Dv5 dll.xml there is a call to PMDG_Interface.dll. I also added that to the exclusions in Windows but no joy.

I doubt the FSUIPC6 log will show anything untoward because the sim time never changed. I'm baffled why 9 autosaves would be fine but the 10th one would cause such a massive freeze.

I doubt PMDG are going to reveal what their files do simply because so few now fly P3D. They're far too busy supporting MSFS.

I've asked on Microsoft Windows forums how to use ProcMon to help identify the problem. Failing that I may have to switch off autosave as I rarely need a saved flight as the sim is so stable.

I setp a return flight to Manchester with Autosave turned off. Half-way there the sim froze and didn't recover.

Does anyone know how to use ProcMon to analyse what's going on in Windows please?

20 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Stan, do me a favour and turn it back on for your next PMDG flight. If you get a significant pause it confirms autosave is clashing with the OS protection.

Here’s what I posted to John Dowson earlier…

The fact it’s happening with all aircraft only became clear today by checking the FSUIPC log after a DA62 flight. At half a second I was never going to spot that delay.

The flight out of Helsinki this morning in the PMDG737 had Ai well below the limit of 160 so we can discount that.

I forgot there’s a Radar Contact file (rc4) saved too so I’ve added that to the exclusion list.

I had turned off Live Virus Protection last week and went 3 days without a problem but then it returned so I turned it back on. Strange it would happen with that off.

I’ll add the extra logging and hopefully that will reveal what is causing the issue. But if nothing else I can live with it knowing where the problem lies. But it would be nice to fix it since the sim and computer is great in all other respects.

I’m going to turn on extra logging in FSUIPC tomorrow and monitor what happens.

Although I rarely get a CTD having autosave available is a safety net otherwise the whole flight is wasted.

Ray,

Maybe I'm a freak of the "simulation world", but I never acquired PMDG aircraft.  I really never wanted it because there are just so many other types of aircraft out there. I'm sure I have hundreds of aircraft in my P3d folder.  The "Study Level" type of aircraft really should appeal to me, but it doesn't!  I just enjoy firing up P3d and MSFS daily and fly either a VFR flight (MSFS) or an IFR flight (P3d) from point A to point B.  What makes me satisfied is being able to do it smoothly, reliably, and pleasurably.

I turned off the autosave a long time ago as it was causing problems like freezes and long pauses.  There have been discussions about this issue before.

Software like PMDG planes add more complexity to the already complex simulator.  When you then pile on other addons like ActiveSky, Radar Contact, etc., and think about all the back and forth reads and commands between the sim and these software apps , it is a wonder that everything works as well as it does, but it is also to be expected that more glitches will occur.

Dave

Stan, fully understand how you like to fly the sim. I love the PMDG737 but the freezes are a pain.

However, after adding a couple more executables to the exclusions in Defender I've managed to fly the first successful flight between Manchester and London and back in 4 attempts.

I can't imagine how ASCA or ASP3D might affect the sim but I'm excluding every exe I use.

I enabled logging in simconnect. It generated a 2.1Gb file for a 40min flight. 😮

9 minutes ago, dave2013 said:

I turned off the autosave a long time ago as it was causing problems like freezes and long pauses.  There have been discussions about this issue before.

Software like PMDG planes add more complexity to the already complex simulator.  When you then pile on other addons like ActiveSky, Radar Contact, etc., and think about all the back and forth reads and commands between the sim and these software apps , it is a wonder that everything works as well as it does, but it is also to be expected that more glitches will occur.

Dave

Dave, I hear what you say but I ran exactly the same setup on my old Chillblast. The only difference between that and my new one in Windows 11 versus Windows 10.

The problem has to be the aggressive virus protection in 11. I searched Microsoft’s boards for how to turn it off and you can’t. It’s integral to the OS and it’s there not just for the user’s protection but for other windows users.

My last flight was fine with autosave enabled. The only difference between that and the three failed ones is Radar Contact wasn’t running on a network computer. But that just uses FSUIPC and SimConnect. I doubt it’s a factor. More flying without it will help.

47 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

I searched Microsoft’s boards for how to turn it off and you can’t. It’s integral to the OS and it’s there not just for the user’s protection but for other windows users.

It gets disabled and replaced when you install a better anti-virus/malware/firewall software like Kaspersky, Bitdefender, Norton, etc.

The stock MS firewall is inadequate.  I don't know if Defender's anti-virus/malware is any good, but some of the payware stuff is definitely good.

I have excluded all the sim and addon folders and so far haven't had any issues. 

Dave

53 minutes ago, dave2013 said:

It gets disabled and replaced when you install a better anti-virus/malware/firewall software like Kaspersky, Bitdefender, Norton, etc.

I’ve never felt the need for any antivirus software on my flight sim PC. Other computers have free AV software adequate for my needs. I detest Microsoft treating us like children

1 hour ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

I’ve never felt the need for any antivirus software on my flight sim PC.

Hi Ray, as an I.T. professional I can say for certain that every internet connected machine is under attack constantly.

Essentually attacks are constant probes looking for a port to connect to and looking for targeted unpatched zero day vunerabilities.

Whole countries can be scanned literaly overnight, plus it's automated and constant.

I won't directly name the country where the majority of the attacks were originating from (in my case), but think large population asian country under the red banner.

Protection is about layering these days, e.g. there's the router and its firewall, then there is the Windows firewall as a next layer, the AV to monitor disk and ram processes, the URL scanner to check those links clicked are as safe as possible, plus there are blacklists/white lists, packet monitoring, and the list goes on.

I once detected a network intrusion via packet monitoring and traced to a particular user's workstation, she'd opened a joke chain email sent from a person she knew at a Council. Upon opening the link it immediately embeded malware not detected by either Microsoft or the enterprise level AV we were using at the time. I only found it because I'd setup an enterprise level warning for unusual outgoing IP packets and included a trigger to block the source.

Resolution was to wipe her machine and restore the previous night's backup and delete the affected email from the email server and backups, the user was not happy about loosing work, but the whole thing turned into a good education lesson about opening seemingly innocent emails and links.

If not for the detection, the mailware could have been a major personal or industrial espionage data leak, or perhaps ended up as a ransomware issue.

The point I'm making overall is interent security is a serious business and antimalware is definitely a needed layer of protection.

Cheers

 

 

@Rogen

Hey Rogen-

I too have never run AV because of past problems using it. I also have Defender disabled. After reading your experience, I'm rethinkin' my thinkin', that is, "This isn't going to happen to me." Can you recommend a path/program that will provide a level of security that P3D can operate under?

Thanks, Mark

Edited December 13, 20232 yr by Ray Proudfoot
Edited to remove long quoted post.

@Rogen, I never open mail I don’t know who the sender is. I use Mailwasher Pro which has helped over the years. My P3D PC has no email capability. It’s handled on a separate one. The new PC is just for flying and nothing else.

My router has a robust password. I have never been hacked in 30 years of owning a PC.

I still don’t know the reasons for these P3D freezes. I’m running logging for SimConnect and John Dowson is helping in that regard.

If a lockup is not caused by any software interacting through SimConnect I’ll be contacting Chillblast who built it using the warranty. I’ve been sim flying for over 25 years and never experienced a problem like this.

You would think that if Windows Virus protection didn’t like a particular file a popup would appear asking for confirmation. I suspect it’s something else causing the lockups but no idea what.

41 minutes ago, newtie said:

@Rogen

Hey Rogen-

I too have never run AV because of past problems using it. I also have Defender disabled. After reading your experience, I'm rethinkin' my thinkin', that is, "This isn't going to happen to me." Can you recommend a path/program that will provide a level of security that P3D can operate under?

Thanks, Mark

I'm using Avast One currently.

Has many options available, allows realtime scan exclusions (which I've setup for P3D) and has a free version if you want to trial, does need time spent with it to understand and configure its options - not that all options are needed. You can also temp disable Avast from the system tray for troubleshooting.

I have P3D installed across 4 drives, with one being a ram disk and another being an SSD raid array, main P3D install is on an NMVe drive.

Plus I have around 30 addon discovery xml paths while also being a heavy user of the std. scenery.cfg, as scenery.cfg allows disable/enable of a scenery without P3D restart.

And I don't have any problems regarding AV usage.

Cheers

1 hour ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

The new PC is just for flying and nothing else.

That's fine but it will be connected to the internet.

Sounds like all the usual items for pauses have been investigated, maybe a process of elimination is needed to narrow down.

Unfortunately processes of elimination can be very time consuming.

Sorry I cannot add more to the discussion, I don't have that particular aircraft.

Cheers

Edited December 13, 20232 yr by Rogen