Strange freezes

[Seregor 2]

Hello, avsim community! Hope y'all are doing good.

After five years of hiatus I returned to the world of flight simulation, built new PC, performed full Prepar3d v5 installation and absolutely loving it! My fps never drop below 30 and everything is running cool.

However, recently I ran into this very strange problem.
I mostly fly PMDG 737NGXu in Europe and my main base of operations is London Stansted airport. I noticed that every time I take-off and head directly east, after several minutes of climbing I begin to experience extreme freezes (every freeze can last between couple seconds and a minute - the longer ones mean the sim goes into the "not responding" state for its duration - but in the end it always recovers). After I fly a bit further, those freezes stop, and everything reverts back to absolutely smooth flight.

I started my investigation, switched off all addons - it is happening even in the very basic scenario in the clean sim state (default F-35, clear skies etc.), but every time in the same location. Even if I slew my aircraft there, put the sim on pause, and just rotate the camera. I began to tune down my graphics settings and found that the single slider is responsible - the "special effects detail" one. When I put it to Low - freezes are gone. Anything higher than Low - freezes come back.
My PC is high-end, and is handling all other setting at near-maximum values with no problem at all.

The general area, where I experience these freezes - (N51*53' E1*5'), and it is the only one so far. I can't figure out, what's so special about this place. There is absolutely no demanding scenery or anything else there. Even more confusing - what does it have to do with the special effects setting?

I have tried every possible combination of hardware and affinity mask settings, but the result is always the same. I am yet to find any logical explanation of such behavior, as well as any means of mitigating it.

Any help will be highly appreciated.

[exeodus 78]

I believe you experiencing a known issue with the area around Clacton (EGSQ), which for me has caused the exact same symptoms you are having in P3D V3, V4, and V5.  I used to know what caused it but I don't remember what it is.  But the moral of the story is this is a P3D issue, nothing to do with your system.

[Ray Proudfoot 8,980]

@Seregor, do you have AIG Ai installed? If so and if you’re tuning v5.4 it’s almost certainly caused by some AIG BGLs causing issues with v5.4.

The solution is to revert to v5.3HF2. Or stop using AIG Ai.

[dave2013 1,130]

I think it is caused by some defect in the shoreline wave effect in that area.

ORBX had a replacement wave effects file that fixed it I think, but you can also just set the special effects detail to Low.

Dave

Edited March 16 by dave2013

[Seregor 2]

Hi!

@Ray Proudfoot I have read your thread in which you described your lockups problem in version 5.4. I indeed use AIG AI Traffic, but for the sake of testing I disabled every add-on I could, and unfortunately it didn't make any difference.

Dave, that's interesting idea. But could you be more specific? What ORBX addon are you talking about exactly? In a matter of fact, I have the whole ORBX Global Range installed (BASE, Vector, openLC Europe, Buildings HD, TerraFlora v2) and again - turning them on/off doesn't affect those freezes at all. Of course I can set special effects to low, but I'd rather use this option only as a last resort. If there is a way to find the exact problem and fix it without the loss of eye-candy, I most certainly use it. I am no stranger to creating my own scenery and using programs like SBuilderX etc. and I think that if there is a defect in shoreline, it can be fixed. I need only the way to find it..

[Ray Proudfoot 8,980]

4 minutes ago, Seregor said:

I have read your thread in which you described your lockups problem in version 5.4. I indeed use AIG AI Traffic, but for the sake of testing I disabled every add-on I could, and unfortunately it didn't make any difference.

That's okay. You can eliminate AIG as a possible cause. Good luck in trying to nail down the cause. These things can be very frustrating.

[Seregor 2]

Quote

I believe you experiencing a known issue with the area around Clacton (EGSQ)

Thank you, Alan! I will search in this direction. But if you can provide more details about this issue from your part, I'll be very grateful.

[Blasb 47]

If you want to fix this issue put the special effects slider all the way to the left. I have not had a single issue after doing that. 🙂

[okupton 309]

Check your audio drivers.  Do you have Realtek installed? I’ve found that uninstalling that has helped me immensely.  The other thing (which you already have done) is don’t use the AIG traffic controller as it uses way too many cpu cycles in my opinion. 

[dave2013 1,130]

10 hours ago, Seregor said:

Dave, that's interesting idea. But could you be more specific?

This post on AVSIM might help:

https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/529866-p3d-v4-freezing-in-london/page/4/

Dave

[Seregor 2]

Alright

Although I always do thorough searches related to my problem before posting anything and asking for help, I somehow missed this whole Clacton area thing going on since 2017 🙂

Now, knowing that the actual issue is excessive use of the wave controller in the shoreline vectors, I managed to selectively correct this issue (by creating a replacement BGL) without the global loss of waves in other areas or the need to tune the special effects slider all the way to the left. No freezes now.

Appreciate the help, folks! All the best

[rooster hancock 2003 38]

Sergey Can you please share your replacement BGL if it solves the problem.

Thanks

[Seregor 2]

Happy to share it! However, the following points should be noted:

1) It was designed and tested only on my system. I compiled this BGL using my own terrain.cfg and existing vector data present in my sim.
Thus, If you have different p3d version or if you don't have ORBX Vector or if you have some different add-on that alters shorelines in that particular area in any way or if you have modified terrain.cfg file that doesn't match mine, this fix won't work for you as I intended it to work for myself, because every mentioned case requires a BGL file to be compiled in a different way. It is likely that it will still help with freezes, but you may experience strange looking or missing shorelines in the area.

2) I made only optimizations sufficient for it to work without freezing on my PC, so I can't guarantee, that would be the case on the not-so-high-end system. I could optimize it more but it would be more time consuming, so I decided against it for now.

Those of you, willing to try it, feel free to do it and let me know how it goes: CVX_CLN_FIX.BGL
Just put it into you addon scenery folder and don't forget to rebuild your scenery library afterwards.