Ground traffic causing stuttering

[Zylx]

Hello, I have always had the problem with P3Dv5 that if I have any traffic enabled at all, it decreases performance and causes stuttering when using high quality scenery.  The only solution I've found is to set ground traffic to Freeways Only and set the slider to 0% traffic density.  Even if I add just a little bit of freeway traffic, it causes issues.

Is there any way I can have traffic in P3Dv5 without the performance decrease and stuttering?  In FSX this was never a problem for me, I could have plenty of ground traffic and it was stutter free.  Please, is there any way to fix this?  I miss my ground traffic.

[dave2013]

I had that issue with P3Dv4 and v5 having stuttering, jerky road traffic.

P3Dv6 has smoother road traffic.

Dave

[Zylx]

On 5/5/2025 at 9:41 AM, dave2013 said:

I had that issue with P3Dv4 and v5 having stuttering, jerky road traffic.

P3Dv6 has smoother road traffic.

Dave

That's good to know for the future but unfortunately I don't plan to upgrade anytime soon.  I still need to find out if the add-ons I can't do without will work with P3Dv6 and I'm not looking forward to all the tinkering I may have to do to get everything working.  The only possible solution I found is something called Simple Road Traffic which can be found here:

https://sites.google.com/site/fsxstuffbybk/sceneries/simple-road-traffic

(Note: this website also has some very interesting freeware aircraft and other things)

It says in the description it may be 64 bit compatible but from the way it is written, I don't think it was tested.  The only thing I don't like is it says that it only comes with three different car models and it doesn't seem to be any other models for it.  I have a feeling if it did work in 64 bit P3D than it may work better, or more smoothly than the default traffic.

I can get away with having just highway traffic enabled if I am not flying in around to major cities like New York, Chicago or London, etc.  If I set the traffic to all streets, then it's stutter city, no matter where I fly.

Seeing empty roads all the time sucks but at least than I get smooth flights.

Edited May 8 by Zylx

[Ray Proudfoot]

4 hours ago, Zylx said:

I can get away with having just highway traffic enabled if I am not flying in around to major cities like New York, Chicago or London, etc.  If I set the traffic to all streets, then it's stutter city, no matter where I fly.

You’re asking your CPU to do something it’s incapable of. I don’t have all roads enabled with my faster CPU as I don’t want to see loads of traffic everywhere.

Drop the setting and you should be fine.

[Zylx]

20 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

You’re asking your CPU to do something it’s incapable of. I don’t have all roads enabled with my faster CPU as I don’t want to see loads of traffic everywhere.

Drop the setting and you should be fine.

I am unable to have all roads have traffic at any density, it will still cause stuttering.  Also, even if I have just highway traffic enabled and have the density set to 14% (because I think it's the most realistic density) or even less and I still get stuttering in big cities.

In Orbx manuals, it says to keep traffic below 16% to save resources and also because around 16% is very close to accurate to what you would see in real life, so I never go very high with the ground traffic density.

I know I don't have the latest high end CPU, but it should be able to handle the 14% I have it set at anywhere.

[Ray Proudfoot]

@Zylx, locate your Prepar3d.cfg and paste the JobScheduler section. I’m wondering if your system is properly configured for your CPU.

[Zylx]

6 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

@Zylx, locate your Prepar3d.cfg and paste the JobScheduler section. I’m wondering if your system is properly configured for your CPU.

It should be configured correctly, most I left alone, but I did make one change, I changed MainThreadScheduler=0 to 6 because it suggests doing this in the learning center advanced help page.  Maybe that could be the cause perhaps?

[JobScheduler]
AffinityMask=65535
P3DCoreAffinityMask=65535
MainThreadScheduler=6
RenderThreadScheduler=2
FrameWorkerThreadScheduler=4

[Ray Proudfoot]

@Zylx, that looks fine. I also switched the MainThread to 6 from 0.

Not sure what else I can suggest. Maybe dropping scenery complexity to low and see if that helps. It’s all about balance.

[Zylx]

On 5/9/2025 at 9:45 AM, Ray Proudfoot said:

@Zylx, that looks fine. I also switched the MainThread to 6 from 0.

Not sure what else I can suggest. Maybe dropping scenery complexity to low and see if that helps. It’s all about balance.

Yeah, I do have the graphics and scenery settings pretty high.  You're probably right that the ground traffic would look better if I turn things down a bit.  For example, I could see how setting the Distance LOD and the Draw Distance options could be contributing to the problem.  Thanks for your input Ray, I will turn down some settings and do some testing.

Edited May 10 by Zylx