Stutters Short Survey ...

[Guest]

Hello all,Before I ask you to report some info , I wish to say that Flight 3 is absolute fantastic and it's close to perfection. What got my attention though is that while the frame speed is great , i can count numerous kind of little stutters every four - five seconds, and yes I have to admit it spoils a bit the fun when doing a pure sightseeing tour. What are your experiences with stutters and FU III ? Even the cockpit instrument light enabling gives a (very) short stutter , but notice-able, strange ... do you get the same result ?My system : Duron 800 Mhz , Via Kt 133A Mobo, 384 Mb , V5500 and the harddisk is a Mactor, 40 GB,7200 rpm, ATA133 (said the seller) but the Bios reports an ATA100 .Regards,Wouter

[Christopher Low 5,332]

Wouter,I started to notice this recently. However, since my new GeForce 3 Ti 200 graphics card had just arrived, I decided to re-format my hard disk, and then re-install everything. This has cured the problem.I'm not suggesting that you do anything as drastic as that mentioned above, but it might be a good idea to defragment your hard disk. It seems that FU3 is rather sensitive to this kind of thing, so this may solve the problem.If not, well...........you could always re-format !Chris Low,ENGLAND.

[Guest twsimfan]

Wouter,I have a P3-933 w/384MB@133mhz & V5-5500 so my sys should get very similar perforance to yours. Your 100 vs 133 issue may indicate that while you have a 133mhz MoBo... you could have 100mhz memory?? I replaced all my 100mhz stuff with 133mhz after I replaced my MoBo.I get a stutter every once in a while... but not every few seconds... more like once every 10 or 15 minutes. It doesn't effect the cockpit instruments... that is a new one on me.Chris' defrag suggestion is a good one. I haven't defragged my D drive (where FU3 resides on my system) in ages... but FU3 was the first thing installed on it so it should be contiguous. I do defrag my C drive every 3 or 4 weeks so Windows is running smooth... that sort of thing is important for any demanding sim.

[Christopher Low 5,332]

Tom,I just noticed that you have a perfect ratings list (9 feedbacks, 18 points), and yet I distinctly remember you getting a -2 rating from PaulL01 ! How did you get rid of this ? Or is it one of the perks of being a moderator ? :-lolChris Low,ENGLAND.

[Guest twsimfan]

Chris,Paul took exception to my response to his remarks. He went to Tom A with it and Tom removed all of it. Paul hasn't been back. All is well that ends well.

[Guest]

Hi Chris,Good suggestions! Though my copy of FU III came directly on a new and fresh formated HD , it was about the first program that I did install... The Windows 95 operating system installed his standard drivers , but I wanted more and used the Via 4 in 1 (1437) from the Via arena CD delivered together with the new Mobo. But since then my system has MS-DOS compatibility on all the drives, as is reported when viewing properties in "my computer" . Remarkable enough the HD access has remained the same comparing both drivers (standard Windows 95 drivers and Via's 4 in 1) and seems not stuck by that downgrading thing.What you and Tom report, is that there is the possibility to get not a stutter (image freesing moment) at all, except that isolated one, once in a while, and that is of course very good news ! I can hardly believe it ... :-) ... do you have done your housework good enough guys ! :-lol To be more precise , the stutters Iam speaking of , are of the very tiny ones 1/10 of a second, but are coming back in a much too high frequency , the biggest one of freesing moment could be a short 1/2 second and only when the Seattle downtown is loading.I am almost sure you and others must notice this when nearing the city , even with super smooth systems .I think this is what Tom is reporting when he wrote , "more like once every 10 or 15 minutes''Regards,WouterPS, congrats with your new toy, do you get now better framerates with your graphic card?

[Guest]

Hi TomThanks for your report !My memory is 384 MB PC -133 mhz, so perfectly fitting the KT 133A mobo . You wrote "I get a stutter once in a while ... but not every few second.. more like once every 10 or 15 minutes". Do you have an idea when this happened, and what did cause it...? I have to say that FU III, apart from my tiny,machine related ? stutters , given the extreme large texture and scenery files is running well , I have seen MS flight simulator 98/ 2000 on shows with problems running on very advanced stuff, stutters from many many seconds, especially nearing thresholds, spoiling much of the exhibition,could not suppress a big laughter :-lol long live FU III :-jumpy Best regards,Wouter

[Christopher Low 5,332]

Wouter,I should be so lucky ! I didn't expect to get any framerate improvements, and I didn't get any. This is because FU3 is far more CPU intensive than GPU. The 4xS anti-aliasing has improved the graphics though.Chris Low,ENGLAND.

[Guest]

Chris,4x FSAA is eaten much framerate indeed, especially in the cloudy weather scenarios. If I may give an advice for better framerates:When planning to fly in that condition ,use 2x FSAA and put the "cumulusform visibility" slider ALWAYS half way , this is also the advice of "Peter the Great" James, this gives the best results together with the haze slider 50 or 60% (normaly the standard 30%) to the right, to avoid the sudden unreal blue skies.The cumulusform visibility slider is a real FRAME RATE CONTROLLER !Wouter

[Guest PaulL01]

That wasn't very nice Tom.He giveth, and he taketh...:)

[Guest R_Driscoll]

I have an old machine, and stutters are the natural order, along withframerates in the 5 to 15's. But one common cause of stutter notmentioned here is recomputing haze - this is manually set in the flt3.cfg file in several places:(following text can be cut and added to your flt3.cfg file if itis not already there)MaxHazeDelta 0.05; A full haze recalculation is triggered when the local haze conditions change; by a "delta" value. The smaller the value, the more frequent the recalculation.terrain_delta_time 10; This represents how often, in seconds, the terrain will recompute its haze and shading.; Higher numbers will improve your performance at the cost of "jumpy" haze effects.haze_delta_time 10; This represents how often, in seconds, haze in general is recomputed. Higher numbers; will improve your performance at the cost of "jumpy" haze effects.(not just haze - also puff clouds and a few others:)puff_gridHazeCalcTime 4puff_gridHazeCalcTimeVariation 2; Haze calc frequency for puffs (default 4, 2).Backdrop_HazeTimeDelta 3Backdrop_HazeTimeVariation 1; How often backdrop haze is calculated (defaults 3, 1).CloudModel_HazeDistDeltaUpdateTime 7; When under cumuliform clouds, their bases get hazed specially. When these; values are smaller, their update frequency increases, and framerate decreases.; Defaults Dist=1024, Time (seconds)=10, Delta=3CloudModel_HazeTimeDelta 20CloudModel_HazeDistDelta 100; Rate at which the chunks hazes are computed. Smaller values yield more frequent; computation (defaults 20 sec and 100).(etc)(For continuous update, some of these times have a refreshalways option - I don't know which ones do and which ones don't. One that works is:)sky_refreshalways Anyway, that might not be the problem - it affects my cludgy oldfoot pedalled machine (at approx 500 MHz). But you could always fly in clear weather and test this.Above flt3.cfg notes adapted from Peter the Great's original notes.Robert.Australia.Sydney.

[Guest twsimfan]

Paul,How very adult of you. You didn't need to lock up you ratings before slamming me again. I would not have bothered. You will have no problems from me as long as you behave yourself in this forum... and you have been... lately.

[Guest]

Robert,I will have a try with your cfg notes.Thanks for your post.Regards,Wouter