P3DV4.2 Now "Buggy" For Me

[iflygary]

Wow, I'm really at a loss.  I've  just gotten back into some heavy flightsimming over the last couple of weeks and now P3DV4.2 has become choppy and very slow.  I now have stutters/pauses every few seconds and it's even a challenge to change vehicles.  It hangs up as though it's going to crash just selecting different vehicles and I can't access all of the planes I have downloaded.  I did a reinstall of the client only but oddly, all of the  exact settings I had prior to doing the reinstall were all still there. Is this the case when doing a client reinstall????  I'd hate to have to reinstall all of my sceneries, planes, etc. to resolve the issues.  Any suggestions????

 

Gary

[TerryM]

Gary,

 

The configuration is held in text files that are not part of the originally install.... they are created when you run the application, so they would not be reinstalled or refreshed as part of a new client install because the installer knows nothing of them. This is also common place with upgrades, because in most instances you don't want an upgrade to wipe out your existing configuration.  If you want a complete wipe of configuration, you will need to manually remove the configuration files and then re-run the client so it creates them from scratch with the default settings. 

 

As for saying its buggy..... what is it you mean exactly? 

• Have you noticed specific areas of concern?  Is it slow to load scenarios, slow to render when you fly around...... are you flying GA or tubeliners?
• Are you seeing the CPU spike, the GPU spike, high memory usage, high disk activity, high page file usage? 
• Are you running a virus scanner, and if so.... and are your sim folders excluded from being scanned? 
• Graphically, are you running a HD monitor (1920*1080), 2K or 4K.... what are your settings......knowing this will help determine the load on rendering. 

This is the sort of information that will enable people here to help identify the cause. One thing to note is that the first time you run the client after install, its always sluggish, it must be setting a load of values in the background (maybe shading caches etc)..... however after that first initial run it's usually ok

 

Personally I did notice a 'reasonable' performance hit with graphics when moving from v4.1 to v4.2 but it wasn't so huge it was unworkable. As you have a GTX 970, you will need to be using 'moderate' graphics settings. As we all know with graphics, its always a balancing game.....for example casting and receiving shadows for all vegetation and buildings will 'kill' your machine frame rates if its not top of the range, due to it having to cast shadows for all trees, hills, buildings.......whereas casting/receiving on your internal vehicle, sim objects and clouds will not, and it will still look very acceptable..... there are loads of posts on settings and I'm sure you can find someone with a similar setup as yourself to compare against, but knowing you monitor will help here as the load on a single 4K monitor is higher than a triple HD monitor setup. 

 

Whilst 4.2 does have a number of bugs, one of the annoying ones being the ATC window, most people are happy with the performance they are getting, so it would be interesting to see whats causing your problem., either way, I hope you're back up and running soon....

 

Terry

[iflygary]

Terry,

Thanks for replying.  As far as buggy what I mean is on the opening screen there is lots of lag.  I can't select all of the aircraft I have loaded.  The up and down arrows to navigate between selecting aircraft have delayed responses when I tried to change aircraft.  Also I can't select all of the aircraft I have downloaded. Also in response to your questions.

   *Loading sceneries or scenarios are no problem.  Load times are fine as well.  I only fly GA, period.

    *CPU usage I feel is normal.  It's mostly in the mid to high 60's and on occasion will get into the 80's when

      I'm flying in heaving rain.

    *My settings are modest with the only thing being maxed out is "Special effects Detail".  Also as far as my  

      monitor goes it's an Acer HD gaming monitor capable of 144hz.

 

My frames per second are really good in most cases.  It's just the lagging/stuttering I experience every 5-10 seconds and of course the issues on the start up screen.

 

Gary

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

could it be that you have anti virus, anti malware or other security related software  software busy checking everything?

[TerryM]

Gary, 

 

The lagging or stuttering every 5-10 seconds could be a number of things.......

• Could be your graphics card struggling to render content based on your settings
• Could be the CPU struggling to keep up, however I run the same CPU in one of my machines and it handles things perfectly, so its unlikely to be the CPU 
• Could be struggling for memory and paging like crazy, but once again I doubt that also as 16GB is more than enough
• Could be disk activity..... are you on an SSD or a mechanical drive, user access control (UAC) enabled?, system drive? etc 

HOWEVER, the fact your having issues with the menu screens and selecting aircraft is a little strange and indicates disk, or memory, and possibly an outside process interacting with the files being used, even when generating a flight it's looks at your aircraft folders, thumbnails etc. 

 

My first suggestion would be to run a monitoring tool such as RivaTuner..... its free, and it'll dump CPU & GPU speeds, loads etc, memory usage, disk activity..... do a couple of tests with the same settings, aircraft and location, and look for high usage, slow processes, or slow disk activity for example. 

 

Once done, I would then suggest that you completely disable any antivirus software and do the same tests again.....same settings, aircraft and location

 

Finally check you have the latest version of FSUIPC installed because if you haven't updated that, that could be causing low-level volatility..... it caused a few issues for me. 

 

Correlate the information and let us know how you get on

 

Terry

[Doug Sawatzky]

11 hours ago, iflygary said:

The up and down arrows to navigate between selecting aircraft have delayed responses when I tried to change aircraft.  Also I can't select all of the aircraft I have downloaded.

 

23 hours ago, iflygary said:

It hangs up as though it's going to crash just selecting different vehicles and I can't access all of the planes I have downloaded.

 

Are you able to mark a few aircraft as favorites and select favorites only? Does that make any difference?

[iflygary]

Terry and Doug,

I will report back in the morning and let the both of you guys know!!   Also Nick, thanks for the tip.  I disabled my antivirus and still the same thing is happening.  It's definitely a P34 issue only because I also have FSX Steam installed on my system and it's performing quite normally!!  Thanks for the feedback gentlemen.

 

Gary

[iflygary]

Well sorry for the delay but I finally have more information.  After trying all suggestions to no avail, I decided to start off from scratch.  I uninstalled P3DV4 and reinstalled it.  All is now working fine again except for this issue that I am not sure how to fix.  Whenever I execute P3DV4 from the shortcut icon on my desktop that the game created, I still cannot access all of my aircraft.  By chance, I decided to execute the game from the exe file in the P3Dv4 game folder and behold, I can select all of my aircraft.  However when I tried to delete the shortcut that the game created and drag a new one to the desktop, I get an error message with a red X stating "The program can't start because api.dll is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem".  So in short, it now seems as though the only way I can access all of my aircraft is through the root P3D.exe.

 

Gary

[Nick Cooper]

That is not the way to create a desktop shortcut.

 

You are in fact dragging the Prepar3D.exe file out of the P3D folder onto the desktop where it

is no longer in the P3D folder and cannot therefore see the files.

 

The correct way to create a desktop shortcut is to right click on Prepar3D.exe and select

Send to\Desktop (create shortcut)

[iflygary]

1 hour ago, Nick Cooper said:

That is not the way to create a desktop shortcut.

 

You are in fact dragging the Prepar3D.exe file out of the P3D folder onto the desktop where it

is no longer in the P3D folder and cannot therefore see the files.

 

The correct way to create a desktop shortcut is to right click on Prepar3D.exe and select

Send to\Desktop (create shortcut)

Nick,

Good news, bad news!! You are correct sir, haha talk about having a brain slip moment.  It worked as far as creating the shortcut the proper way and now P3D does in fact execute, but even with the new shortcut, once again I can't make the selection of the aircraft.  I'm thinking out loud here, but could there be something on my desktop that is corrupt and causing this?????

[Nick Cooper]

Try deleting C:\Users\your name\AppData\Roaming\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v4\Prepar3D.cfg.

Restart P3D and it will build another one.

[iflygary]

4 hours ago, Nick Cooper said:

Try deleting C:\Users\your name\AppData\Roaming\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v4\Prepar3D.cfg.

Restart P3D and it will build another one.

Nick,

I am back up and running again sir!! Thank you so much for all of your help  Just a couple of final questions.  I haven't touched my P3d.cfg yet.  I'm almost nervous to do so as far as making any adjustments.  Are there any absolutely necessary P3DV4 adjustments that really make a difference???  As you can see from the attached screenshot, my ground textures aren't as crisp as before and I'm getting this straight line shadow, while only on the ground, that I wasn't getting before.  Any ideas regarding this?  Once again, thank you for all of your help thus far!!