TacomaSailor

A freeze after "Quit to Desktop" happens but is rare in my system. The sim process not ending is frequent. It issues the END event and all the external processes terminate normally. The Task Bar icon for the sim vanishes but Task Manager and Steam both recognize a FlightSimulater2024.exe process as running. It uses no CPU and does no I/O but does hold a lot of memory. I can terminate the process with Task Manager or use the big blue STOP button in Steam to end it. About 1 of 4 sim sessions end this way.

Nothing has changed here in my opinion... after several decades I can still IGNORE users or posts that I do not want to read or engage with Let them fuss amongst themselves - I do not have to read it

Using ProcMon64 as suggested: with an empty Community Folder I found 114 I/O operations involving the Community Folder during the entire load process. It appears Community plays little role in the load when empty.

I use Resource Monitor and ProcMon64 to track disk usage and network usage. I can track individual I/O operations (Disk reads and writes) so it is easy to see how cache is being used. I have 128GB rolling cache on a dedicated NVMe device. When I fly in a new area I see a lot of network traffic and a lot of writing to the rolling cache. When I return to that area (next session so nothing else gets mapped to the cache) - I see almost NO network traffic and a LOT of reads from the rolling cache. I am not very confident that loading is faster nor is the frame rate improved - but at least I am not so dependent on the cloud. Recently (last two weeks) I have been flying exclusively in the area from Olympia, Washington to the San Juan Islands between the Olympic and Cascade mountains. After a week or so of flying there - I seldom see network traffic and do see a lot of rolling cache reads. That is an area ~150-miles by 50-miles and it seems to all stay in cache.

It might be too soon to know for sure... I installed nVidia RTX driver 566.45 this afternoon. I then did two sessions (boot after the driver install but none between sessions) flying from KORS (very detailed ORBX airport) to KBFI (another very detailed ORBX airport) in the Asobo TBM 930. The frame rate at both airports stayed above 30 (after frame gen) and there was no stuttering or indication of system stress. The GPU stayed at 100% busy (DLSS/Performance TLOD=100 OLOD=200 high trees and clouds) and the max/continuous VRAM usage was 8192. That load before the driver update was a certain trigger for VRAM overload and a severe drop in FPS. A 2nd interesting observation after the driver update - My MSFS 2020 load time plummeted to half (about 2-minutes) of what it had been prior to the update. And this was with 20 detailed addons, including five ORBX airports, Seattle landmarks and SeaTac VFR objects.

nothing during the test sessions - just to be sure there is no confounding effects. Two identical sessions with GPU-Z showing almost identical usage for VRAM and Load - one at 80 FPS (with FG) and one at 18 FPS (with FG). Each was after shutting down the sim and restarting it. Cold and Dark - all I do is hit ready to fly and Shift-C to get in the cockpit. Using DevMode, AfterBurner, and SystemInformer I can see the threads, cpu times, memory, paging, I/O and there is nothing different except for the frame rate. I've read the other discussions and do understand that the problem is caused by VRAM usage exceeding available and then the sim does not clean up properly and the problem remains until end of sim. But, WHY does it happen COLD&DARK with no input from me at all? Oh well - I have a big new system on order - once a normal person can purchase an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D to keep an RTX 4070 Ti Super company. Or - if the 9800X3D delay last into March I will get a new RTX 50xx if they are available. Maybe 24GB VRAM will be enough?

Tag says 2024 When the FPS drops to such a degree - plane is almost impossible to land - response to control inputs lags badly, Just flew another session with same settings and equipment - FPS never dropped below 60 and was in the upper 70 range much of the time. GPU was always > 95% and GPU VRAM was > 7.7 GB Everything about this session was nice, smooth, crystal clear - the sim was really making me into a 2024 believer! This is a dedicated gaming system - no antivirus, no other apps running, nothing in background. I use several monitors to verify nothing but the sim is running on the PC.

Frame Gen/Performance in settings, empty community, stock 172, no changes to settings between sessions and no PC boot. Flying out of KBFI north over Elliot Bay and south over the Green River Valley for all three sessions. Two separate sessions this morning - . First was giving consistent 55 - 80 FPS and second to 50 to 75 except when looking at KSEA which dropped FPS into mid-40 range. 3060 Ti GPU stayed in the 85% - 90% busy with VRAM staying below 7.5 GB (out of 8 GB) Four hours later - exact same scenario expect GPU is at 100% and VRAM is > 7.9 GB while sitting on the ramp dark and cold. FPS is <18 and drops to 12 - 13 when flying. CPU times per frame stay the same in all three sessions. The same thing happened the last two days. First couple sim sessions show 75 - 85 FPS but later sessions are very much lower. In a couple cases - just flying for 30-minutes and then returning to the departure airport caused the FPS to drop from 80+ to less than 20. Changing the graphics settings from Custom (medium and high) to all LOW does not improve the FPS. What is happening? FPS is as shown by Dev Mode/Display FPS.

I slowed the CPU to 4 GHz (20% reduction) and saw a 5% increase (19-seconds) in loading time to the main menu and 24% increase (39seconds) to Ready to Fly

Uninstalled and Reinstalled MSFS 2024 - Did not make any difference in load time but did get rid of all the File Create attempts for the ShaderModuleHash. 5'39" to Main Menu and 1' 40" to Ready to Fly at KBFI with an empty Community Folder

The 2024 sim loads rapidly until 14% Activate Packages appears on the screen (at 2' 53" elapsed) and stays there for 2' 37". During that time the only file activity I see is thousands of IRP_MJ_CREATE ops for: IRP_MJ_CREATE A:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Limitless\."stage>ps"fmt>dxil"ShaderModuleHash>8ba6814270f1f226\dxil IRP_MJ_CREATE A:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Limitless\dxil with variations of the hash code - all the ops end with Name Invalid or Name Not Found. Then at 5' 30" elapsed the sim starts making network requests for Streamed Packages. Less than a minute later the sim is at the Main Menu. If I exclude the 2' 37" spend spinning wheels (??) the sim load time would be less than four-minutes. That is the loading duration I was experiencing until sometime in mid-December. What is the Shader Module Hash and why is the sim spending 2.5 minutes try to create those files?

Water cooled and tuned with Intel XTU (Extreme Tuning Utility) - very stable and processor temps stay below 90° C. I undervolt to keep the temps down. It will run at 5.2 GHz reliably but the water cooling is not enough and the processors go into Thermal Throttling.

Can someone with a similar, "older", CPU give me some loading time numbers. Can someone tell me what their system is doing (CPU, File I/O, Network I/O) between the time the loading screen shows 14% and 25% Activating Packages - that seems to be where the slow down is and seems to be the time my PC is only using the CPU.

No frame lock I can find. nVidia Profile, RTSS, AfterBurner - none of them show a frame lock. The sim settings show no frame lock. The system time is always synced with the PC. I've checked many times.

I ran ProcMon64 to capture the File Activity and Network activity during the 100+ seconds the sim was loading but not doing anything other than keeping one cpu busy: IRP_MJ_CLEANUP 0.0000065 C:\Windows\System32\opengl32.dll SUCCESS IRP_MJ_CLOSE 0.0000038 C:\Windows\System32\opengl32.dll SUCCESS IRP_MJ_READ 0.0003346 C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\nv_dispi.inf_amd64_9425e4c3b1ac1c47\nvgpucomp64.dll Offset: 46,362,624, Length: 16,384, I/O Flags: Non-cached, Paging I/O, Synchronous Paging I/O, Priority: Normal SUCCESS ...repeats hundreds of times IRP_MJ_READ 0.0001383 C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\nv_dispi.inf_amd64_9425e4c3b1ac1c47\nvgpucomp64.dll Offset: 46,260,224, Length: 4,096, I/O Flags: Non-cached, Paging I/O, Synchronous Paging I/O, Priority: Normal SUCCESS FASTIO_NETWORK_QUERY_OPEN 0.0000017 C:\Windows\System32\d3d9.dll FAST IO DISALLOWED IRP_MJ_CREATE 0.0000488 C:\Windows\System32\d3d9.dll Desired Access: Read Attributes, Disposition: Open, Options: Open Reparse Point, Attributes: n/a, ShareMode: Read, Write, Delete, AllocationSize: n/a, OpenResult: Opened SUCCESS IRP_MJ_READ 0.0002858 C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\nv_dispi.inf_amd64_9425e4c3b1ac1c47\nvgpucomp64.dll Offset: 44,069,376, Length: 16,384, I/O Flags: Non-cached, Paging I/O, Synchronous Paging I/O, Priority: Normal SUCCESS FASTIO_QUERY_INFORMATION 0.0000044 C:\Windows\System32\d3d9.dll Type: QueryBasicInformationFile, CreationTime: 11/24/24 03:10:24 PM, LastAccessTime: 1/7/25 06:59:57 PM, LastWriteTime: 11/24/24 03:10:24 PM, ChangeTime: 1/7/25 06:01:05 PM, FileAttributes: A SUCCESS IRP_MJ_CLEANUP 0.0000115 C:\Windows\System32\d3d9.dll SUCCESS IRP_MJ_CLOSE 0.0000030 C:\Windows\System32\d3d9.dll SUCCESS IRP_MJ_CREATE 0.0000578 C:\Windows\System32\d3d9.dll Desired Access: Read Data/List Directory, Execute/Traverse, Synchronize, Disposition: Open, Options: Synchronous IO Non-Alert, Non-Directory File, Attributes: n/a, ShareMode: Read, Delete, AllocationSize: n/a, OpenResult: Opened SUCCESS IRP_MJ_READ 0.0002871 C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\nv_dispi.inf_amd64_9425e4c3b1ac1c47\nvgpucomp64.dll Offset: 44,052,992, Length: 16,384, I/O Flags: Non-cached, Paging I/O, Synchronous Paging I/O, Priority: Normal SUCCESS FASTIO_ACQUIRE_FOR_SECTION_SYNCHRONIZATION 0.0000026 C:\Windows\System32\d3d9.dll SyncType: SyncTypeCreateSection, PageProtection: PAGE_EXECUTE_READWRITE|PAGE_NOCACHE FILE LOCKED WITH ONLY READERS FASTIO_RELEASE_FOR_SECTION_SYNCHRONIZATION 0.0000010 C:\Windows\System32\d3d9.dll SUCCESS FASTIO_ACQUIRE_FOR_SECTION_SYNCHRONIZATION 0.0000010 C:\Windows\System32\d3d9.dll SyncType: SyncTypeOther SUCCESS FASTIO_RELEASE_FOR_SECTION_SYNCHRONIZATION 0.0000004 C:\Windows\System32\d3d9.dll SUCCESS IRP_MJ_CLEANUP 0.0000060 C:\Windows\System32\d3d9.dll SUCCESS IRP_MJ_CLOSE 0.0000036 C:\Windows\System32\d3d9.dll SUCCESS FASTIO_NETWORK_QUERY_OPEN 0.0000012 C:\Windows\System32\d3d8.dll FAST IO DISALLOWED IRP_MJ_READ 0.0002495 C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\nv_dispi.inf_amd64_9425e4c3b1ac1c47\nvgpucomp64.dll Offset: 43,180,544, Length: 16,384, I/O Flags: Non-cached, Paging I/O, Synchronous Paging I/O, Priority: Normal SUCCESS IRP_MJ_CREATE 0.0000312 C:\Windows\System32\d3d8.dll Desired Access: Read Attributes, Disposition: Open, Options: Open Reparse Point, Attributes: n/a, ShareMode: Read, Write, Delete, AllocationSize: n/a NAME NOT FOUND FASTIO_NETWORK_QUERY_OPEN 0.0000011 C:\Windows\System32\d3d.dll FAST IO DISALLOWED IRP_MJ_CREATE 0.0000254 C:\Windows\System32\d3d.dll Desired Access: Read Attributes, Disposition: Open, Options: Open Reparse Point, Attributes: n/a, ShareMode: Read, Write, Delete, AllocationSize: n/a NAME NOT FOUND IRP_MJ_READ 0.0003034 C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\nv_dispi.inf_amd64_9425e4c3b1ac1c47\nvgpucomp64.dll Offset: 45,506,560, Length: 16,384, I/O Flags: Non-cached, Paging I/O, Synchronous Paging I/O, Priority: Normal SUCCESS FASTIO_NETWORK_QUERY_OPEN 0.0000010 C:\Windows\System32\ddraw.dll FAST IO DISALLOWED IRP_MJ_CREATE 0.0000249 C:\Windows\System32\ddraw.dll Desired Access: Read Attributes, Disposition: Open, Options: Open Reparse Point, Attributes: n/a, ShareMode: Read, Write, Delete, AllocationSize: n/a, OpenResult: Opened SUCCESS FASTIO_QUERY_INFORMATION 0.0000028 C:\Windows\System32\ddraw.dll Type: QueryBasicInformationFile, CreationTime: 5/7/22 12:19:35 AM, LastAccessTime: 1/7/25 06:59:57 PM, LastWriteTime: 5/7/22 12:19:35 AM, ChangeTime: 12/11/24 06:30:43 PM, FileAttributes: A SUCCESS IRP_MJ_CLEANUP 0.0000065 C:\Windows\System32\ddraw.dll SUCCESS IRP_MJ_CLOSE 0.0000026 C:\Windows\System32\ddraw.dll SUCCESS IRP_MJ_CREATE 0.0000458 C:\Windows\System32\ddraw.dll Desired Access: Read Data/List Directory, Execute/Traverse, Synchronize, Disposition: Open, Options: Synchronous IO Non-Alert, Non-Directory File, Attributes: n/a, ShareMode: Read, Delete, AllocationSize: n/a, OpenResult: Opened SUCCESS The sequence above from my prior note repeats thousands of times but the I/O rate is less than 1,000 Bytes per second and the Network traffic is negligible. The activity above persists until suddenly the loading screen jumps from 17% Activate Package to 25% and within 40-seconds the sim is finishing loading. My I7-9700K runs at 5.1GHz so I doubt it is the major cause of the slow loading. UserBenchMark shows the i7-12700K to be 48% faster when both types are overclocked to 5 GHz.