answered Stutters and freez London City Appraoch RW27

[skymatix]

Gentlemen,

 

Background:

I recently discovered that when I am on approach to EGLC, runway 27 my sim (FSX as well as P3D) literally freezes for a few seconds, over the river, on short finals. Furthermore i have 2 more stutters before landing and the last one usually messes up my landing rate making it impossible to use EGLC for the virtual airline i want to use it for. When i approach EGLC from the city side, all is well and I have no problem.

I have lots of autogen on the EGLC apron but I am not too concerned about it currently.

 

What I found on my system:

By disabling EGTR in the scenery library I get about 5% of the freeze/stutter and the airport becomes usable. there is a point where the fps dives down to 15fps but halfway down the runway it goes back to 30+ fps.

* I use Global Base, England, OpenLC & Vector plus EGTR in the area. The freeware EU airport are also enabled. All other 3rd part airports were disabled for testing purposes.

 

Conclusion:

There is at least two pieces of scenery causing this.

By way of elimination I quickly found EGTR to be the biggest contributor but alas not the only one. I am still looking for the other naughty ones

 

Questions:

1) Is this a known issue or am I just unlucky to have it?

2) Apart form disabling EGTR temporarily, is there another way to solve this?

3) Why would EGTR, that is more than 30 miles away, have this influence on this area?

4) Can you please patch and limit EGTR's visible range anyway?

- I see no point in it influencing a place more than 30 miles away and I hate to think what it does to the VAS.usage

 

Your consideration and assistance is appreciated.

 

Regards,

Nico

[Pontiusthepilot]

Hi skymatix.

 

I would be interested to know the details of your hardware and your autogen settings.

 

In my experience, the area within about 80 nautical miles on London is a no go area because of problems similar to those you describe. You might try to see if things improve if youdisable FTX England and use FTX Global alone.

 

Regards.

Pontius.

[skymatix]

Hi Pontius

 

My PC specs;

i7 3770K, 16GB RAM, GTX980 4GB, 250GB SSD, 2TB Seagate HDD, Windows 10 Home 64-bit

 

P3D Settings;

Terrain = Medium

Tessellation = High

Mesh Resolution = 10m

Texture Resolution = 7cm

Scenery Complexity = Dense

Autogen (both) = Normal

 

I have already tried it with "England" disabled!

The ONLY time that I can land on EGLC RW27 is by disabling EGTR in the scenery library as it hits my system way to hard. 

My issue here is definitely related to the combination of EGTR and the scenery in and around London City.

 

Until the developers limit the range of EGTR, I will just disable it until I need to fly there.

It is a pity as it is such a lovely airport, but there is nothing else I can do right now.

 

Regards,

Nico

 

 

 

 

 

[MrEddie]

Hi Nico,

 

I may or may not have the solution to the problem that you may not like or agree with and Orbx will definitely disagree with.  However I can absolutely back this up with a video if I had to.  I was getting horrible freezes and micro stutters, which I did record so I have the evidence of this.  I will be making a follow up video to show the result with the problem solved.  Computers are just machines and software will always have problems, this is why we always have updates and patches.  I do think companies and software developers launch software for us a consumers to test for them and then provide a patch to solve issues.  Anyway, to the problem I had and what I believe is my solution for my very powerful machine.

 

I decided to ditch UTX and GEX in favour of Orbx.  To be exact FTX Global, Vector, openLC Europe, openLC North America, NA Northern California and EU Scotland the Brave.  I have to say the scenery is absolutely stunning and I would not go back to UTX and GEX.  However, they all came at a price namely Stutters and Freezing, something I never experience with UTX and GEX.  I have been using FSX for the past 8 years and was about to format the drive, sell my Saitek Yoke system and buy a first shooter game and give up flight simulation for good.

 

I am well aware that FSX has problems but I did have now problems form nearly a year until I updated to Orbx.  Not sooner did Nick help solve one problem then this other one appeared, freezes and stutters.  Let me describe my first test flight.

 

The PMDG 737 NGX, departing from Runway 8R on the beautiful UK2000 Gatwick Extreme Airport.  It was also very cloudy as Active Sky produced the clouds, with all of the above Orbx products enabled.  The route was the default route in Tutorial 1 of PMDGs training manual flying to Amsterdam, EHAM, via Clacton, passing through Southend before CLN.

 

Frame rates were just great, between 25 and up to 60 fps, I have the video that shows this.  8 minutes into the flight I reached Southend at 6000 feet and then the first micro stutter started lasting about 1 second.  The stutters increased and the duration also to about 3 seconds.  It mattered not wither I was viewing from inside or outside the cockpit.  Then came the turn to the CLN marker.  Unbelievable, 30 second freezes and even longer.  So I now believed that my simulator was done for.  Even some on the support forum said you may expect this in complex scenery like this, which really infuriated me.

 

So I researched this problem for days, all day, trying to find a solution.  Anything from reformatting the drive to buying a new graphics card or even dust.  The amount of tweaks to the CFG file was ridiculous.  Thankfully I listened to none of them and decided to return to basic fault finding techniques.  The simulator ran perfectly prior to Orbx, so it did not take much bran power to come up with the answer, but it does take time to test properly, scientifically.

 

I was also getting graphical flashes and some suggested that it was the Graphics card.  I don't think my new £800 nVidia Quadro K4200 was just about to be chucked in the bin.

 

Anyway here is my full spec:

• Cooler Master Cosmos II Computer Case
• Asus X99 Deluxe Intel LGA 2011 V3 ATX Motherboard
• Intel i7 5960X Extreme Octa Core CPU Processor (3.0 GHz, 20 MB Cache, 140 W, Socket 2011-V3), Overclocked to 4.2GHz
• Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB (4x 8GB) DDR4 2400Mhz CL14 XMP 2.0 Memory
• Samsung 850 PRO 512 GB 2.5 inch SATA III Solid State Drive
• Corsair CW-9060016-WW Hydro Series H105 240mm Rad Extreme Performance All-In-One Liquid CPU Cooler
• PNY Graphics Card NVIDIA QUADRO K4200 4GB DDR5
• Corsair CP-9020090-UK RM550X 550 W ATX/EPS Fully Modular Power Supply Unit

So the testing begun, each test lasted 30 minutes as I had to set up the PMDG manually every time and restart FSX each time:

 

1. Test1 - I flew the test flight again as described above to the CLN marker and the same horrible freezes and stutters.  I simply had average graphical settings, however the scenery still looked fantastic.
2. Test2 - I stopped using ASN just in case the cloud was casing the problem, no joy still the same.
3. Test3 - I opened Scenery Configurator, set up groups and unchecked every addon, with the exception of all the Orbx Scenery.  The only addon I did not disable was the UK2000 Gatwick extreme airport.  As I was flying out of the airport the frame rates were between 25 and 40fps.  When the freezes came I saw a frame rate of 1.5, in believable.  Anyway, back to Test3, you guessed it still exactly the same.
4. Test4 - I then disabled all the FTX_NA files, basically all the FTX files, still no joy.
5. Test5 - I then disabled all the OPENLC Europe files and Lights, still no joy
6. Test6 - All the Orbx addon scenery was now disabled with the exception of ONE, Vector.  So I unchecked them all again and ran the test again.  Tears of Joy, no stutters or Freezes and I mean none.  I tried my best to make them happen by going outside the 737 after Southend at 6000 feet and spinning round at speed and nothing, not a millisecond stutter, pure silk.  However , my testing was not over.  My plan was to now leave Vector disabled and re-engage everything I did in Test5 to Test2, one at a time, running the test each time.  I spent all day on this and my head was pounding after it.
7. Test7 - After Test5, Test4 and Test3 came the big one Test2, switching ASN back on, in each case the SIM ran like silk and I tried to break it by using the hat switch in very heavy cloud and rain spinning around at speed, still silky smooth and getting up to 60fps.
8. Test8 - I switched all the Vector files back on again and not long after Southend it failed again, major stutters and freezes.
9. Test9 - Switched Vector off again and I was back to normal.
10. Test10 - I now increased all the graphical settings in FSX and flew a few more test flights, this time I headed up the Themes at 2000 feet, trying to break the sim, with no success, it took everything I threw at it and still gave me more than 30fps, no stutters or freezes.  I finally landed back at Gatwick 8R.  I also ran this test at night, Orbx is stunning at night, especially London.

My Conclusion:

 

Orbx FTX Global Vector will indefinitely remain disabled until Orbx Support Staff give me a proper scientific answer as to why this is happening.  I only paid about £20 for this pack so I do not intend to make too much of a fuss over £20 (half price sale).  They are also an Australian company so I would have no rights for a refund. I must say, the beauty of the Orbx Scenery far out ways the £20 wasted.  Would I recommend Orbx Scenery, absolutely it is absolutely amazing and I intend to make many videos showing the beauty of this Scenery masterpiece.  However, I will definitely not be enabling Vector, but I will not uninstall it.  To be honest I cannot see the difference and I am so delighted that I discovered the problem, myself.  On a final not I do use NVidia Inspector, which was disable throughout all the tests.  When I re-enabled Inspector, yes you guessed it I ran the same test again, perfect.  I definitely do not use an Affinity Mask (as recommended by one of the PMDG software engineers suggested as this can make the system unstable) but I have enabled all the cores in the registry, which stops some of the cores having a nap when not required.  Bufferpools was causing graphical flashes so I remove this and they stopped.  I definitely have HIGHMEMFIX=1 entered into my CFG file and FSUIPC installed.

 

I really think Orbx have done a great job and I love the software, especially NA Northern California.  Flying into San Fransisco Airport, with flight beams KSFO is Amazing.  The first time I ever flew in a real jet was from Heathrow to San Fran business class so I know what the real flight and landing is like.

 

I hope this long unchecked message will help someone out there if they have a similar problem.  Please not all hardware will get the same result as mine.  My components are less than 2 years old.  Anyway, I have a few more test flights to do.  Iceland to Gatwick then Gatwick to Inverness in Scotland.  

 

Thank you for taking the time to read this. Eddie  

[FreeBird]

I have un installed vector and the pauses and freezes have gone away on my system for what its worth. Even in regions I would get them. So no vector for me.

 

[Richard Lincoln]

Hi,

 

    Densley populated areas will likely cause stutters, prevalent freezing and a drop in frames, this prevalent with most games on the Market. Thanks for all the input. Do I have a solution=No, apart from adjusting your sliders to suit the area.