5.2 perfect, 5.3 long pausing and stuttering is unflyable

[flynryan692]

Just wanted to report here for the developers of P3D that I'm still having periodic appearing stutters in the newest version of P3D v5 (v5.3.17.28160).

The stutter appears mostly at cruise altitude and lasts for about 10-20 seconds then goes back to fluid performance. In the moment of stutter the simulator is unusable with a framerate of around 0.5 to 3 fps, further my GPU and CPU usage drops to almost 0 %. I checked my system for Thermal Throttling but everything is fine. Stutter periods are very severe and frequent over land areas.

If you need more information about the issue and what I already tried to solve it please look through this thread on Avsim where it's described very detailed:
--> https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/6134 ... own-cause/

Thanks to the developers for looking into the issue! :)

Kind regards
Adrian

I had a similar issue, I ran DeleteGeneratesFiles.exe and it seemed to have fixed it, but you'll have to readd manually added scenery's and redo settings unless you save and back those up. I did have a really strange bad stutter landing in OAK today, but it is a one off at this point so I am not going to make a big deal about it unless it continues to happen.

[5a_49_4f_4e]

As I mentioned in my Avsim post I already disabled ALL Add-Ons and did a few reinstallations. So the issue is not connected to Add-Ons or anything like this at least in my case.

It seems like we'll have to wait for the developers what they found out or fix in the next update.

Kind regards
Adrian

[JorgenSA]

Adrian,

I looked over the thread at AVSIM, and I have a couple of questions:

1. How is your disk setup - meaning, where is P3D installed, and is everything P3D-related located on the same drive?

2. Are your drives HDDs or SSDs?

3. Are you still running your CPU at the base clock rate?

Jorgen

[flynryan692]

As I mentioned in my Avsim post I already disabled ALL Add-Ons and did a few reinstallations. So the issue is not connected to Add-Ons or anything like this at least in my case.

It seems like we'll have to wait for the developers what they found out or fix in the next update.

Kind regards
Adrian

DeleteGeneratedFiles.exe deletes more than just your add-ons. It clears the entirety of your Prepar3d v5 folder in both AppData and ProgramData which contain many other files. Those are freshly generated the next time you start Prepar3d and then you can bring you addons back into the sim. If you're not willing to try a common fix for P3D then I don't know what to tell you.

[JorgenSA]

Allow me a quote:

"If you're not willing to try a common fix for P3D then I don't know what to tell you."

Common fix? My *******.... er, my foot. I did this once. Never again.

A complete uninstall and clean reinstall would be a better suggestion - and also probably quite unnecessary.

Finding root cause is something that seems to have gone completely out of fashion.

Jorgen

[JorgenSA]

Adrian,

I looked the AVSIM thread over again, and saw you had put in a value for AffinityMask, but you weren't sure if that was the correct value.

Here is what you should do about that:

1. If you can turn off Hyperthreading for your CPU, do it (done in the BIOS on the motherboard).

2. Then use this calculator for the value:

https://www.gfsg.co.uk/affinitymask.asp ... m=utilties

Jorgen

[Martyson]

flynryan692 ,

You mentioned:
“DeleteGeneratedFiles.exe deletes more than just your add-ons. It clears the entirety of your Prepar3d v5 folder in both AppData and ProgramData which contain many other files. Those are freshly generated the next time you start Prepar3d and then you can bring you addons back into the sim.

I have run the General Debugging Steps many times.
viewtopic.php?f=6312&t=123246

My Add-ons were disabled from starting but not uninstalled.
The idea here is to get P3D working again then re-enable Add-ons one at a time to find the problem Add-on.

[JorgenSA]

A quote:

"The idea here is to get P3D working again then re-enable Add-ons one at a time to find the problem Add-on."

What makes you think that Adrian's issue is an add-on? How about his system's configuration and settings?

Jorgen

[5a_49_4f_4e]

1. How is your disk setup - meaning, where is P3D installed, and is everything P3D-related located on the same drive?

2. Are your drives HDDs or SSDs?

3. Are you still running your CPU at the base clock rate?

1. I have only one SSD (Samsung 970 EVO NVMe SSD) which is my C drive. Everything is installed on this SSD. P3D and my Add-Ons are installed in a dedicated P3D folder directly on C (not inside Program Files or anything like this).

2. Samsung 970 EVO NVMe SSD, 2 TB.

3. Yes, nothing overclocked.

DeleteGeneratedFiles.exe deletes more than just your add-ons. It clears the entirety of your Prepar3d v5 folder in both AppData and ProgramData which contain many other files. Those are freshly generated the next time you start Prepar3d and then you can bring you addons back into the sim. If you're not willing to try a common fix for P3D then I don't know what to tell you.

I already know what it does and that it doesn't solve the issue. If you would have read my other posts on Avsim you would know that I already tried this and nothing helped. Further you can read there that I reinstalled the sim a few times and when I update I always do a full reinstallation with deleting all leftover files in AppData, ProgramData, etc.
So no need for 'Delete Generated Files' anymore.

I looked the AVSIM thread over again, and saw you had put in a value for AffinityMask, but you weren't sure if that was the correct value.

Here is what you should do about that:

1. If you can turn off Hyperthreading for your CPU, do it (done in the BIOS on the motherboard).

2. Then use this calculator for the value:

https://www.gfsg.co.uk/affinitymask.asp ... m=utilties

I would claim the AffinityMask is not the problem. I tested a lot of different AM's over the time and used some of them with and others without HT switched off. I also went through a lot of guides (there are also some nice interesting posts about this in different Avsim threads) and used a calculator for getting my AffinityMask values. And I remember that I even had the same AffinityMask setting of 21845 for a long time before I had the stutters and it worked fine.


Thanks!
Kind regards
Adrian

[JorgenSA]

Adrian,

I would say that your issue is probably contained here:

"1. I have only one SSD (Samsung 970 EVO NVMe SSD) which is my C drive. Everything is installed on this SSD. P3D and my Add-Ons are installed in a dedicated P3D folder directly on C (not inside Program Files or anything like this).

2. Samsung 970 EVO NVMe SSD, 2 TB.

3. Yes, nothing overclocked."

and that at least some of the issue(s) are caused by disk contention.

If possible, you could try to get another disk (preferably a SSD) and install everything P3D-related on that.

Another thing I would recommend is that you overclock your CPU, at least to over 4 GHz, preferably over 4.5 GHz.

Now, there could be a lot of things causing you not to want to or be able to do this, and you are probably aware that if you overclock the CPU your warranty on that goes out the window.

But this is what I would recommend.

Jorgen

BTW: would you recommend the NVME SSD you have?

[5a_49_4f_4e]

Thanks Jorgen, it is really nice that you try to help me but I think this is something I have already ruled out.

I've already checked some values and informations about my SSD using programs like 'Samsung Magician' or 'CrystalDiskInfo', did a few tests and never found any issues or warnings. Further I have absolutely no problems with this SSD in other games, programs or whatever.
Unfortunately I have no other SSD or HDD to test with but as far as it seems my drive is fine anyway.

Overclocking wouldn't help me either. I already had this CPU a bit overclocked some time ago but in this specific CPU model I get (almost) no advantages from overclocking it because the limit is reached very fast, therefore I brought it back down to stock speeds.


Propably I'm the wrong person if you ask me for my opinion about the SSD becasue it is my first (NVMe) SSD ever but for the time I use it already I have to say it's quite good. I have high read and write speeds and it works like a charm.
But after all my next SSD propably will be a SATA SSD because they are still much cheaper and you won't maybe even notice the difference between those two. With a NVMe SSD your game loads 1-2 seconds faster maybe and that's not worth over a hundred bucks more in my opinion.

But if you decide to buy a SSD please be aware that you have different types of chips they are using. So you have to know if you buy a MLC or TLC SSD for example.

[JorgenSA]

Adrian,

First of all a big thank you for your opinions on the NVMe SSD, that was precisely what I was looking for. I will look into this, my present motherboard (ASUS Z170-A) does not have a NVMe slot, but the ones that I am contemplating do, so I would be cloning my OS drive only to the NVMe, but leave the P3D installation on my present SATA SSDs.

And the reason I suggested moving your P3D installation to a different drive was not that I suspected that something is wrong with your NVMe, but to split the load between the data buses to avoid contention. Doing so has helped improve my system performance, both with loading and stuttering.

Jorgen

[5a_49_4f_4e]

Glad that I could help you, although I have not much information or experience in NVMe SSDs.

And the reason I suggested moving your P3D installation to a different drive was not that I suspected that something is wrong with your NVMe, but to split the load between the data buses to avoid contention. Doing so has helped improve my system performance, both with loading and stuttering.

Sounds good, but that's also something more unlikely because the stutters started around half a year ago and before I had never such issues with and without Add-Ons.

Thanks anyway for your suggestions! I think I'll wait for the next update and see what has changed.

Kind regards
Adrian

[Phillip2]

Hi there

If anything important....what EXACTLY would be the very important benefit of upgrading/reinstalling everything, from 5.2 to 5.3?
Considering the fact that with version 5.2 everything FINALLY works fully optimal and stable..?!

Cheers, Phillip

[saxdreamer787]

Myself and half a three other users have been able to prevent the freezing this afternoon on two online test flights by using the new scheduler settings below

[JobScheduler]
AffinityMask=xxxleave whatever your p3d defaults to
P3DCoreAffinityMask=xxxleave whatever your p3d defaults to
MainThreadScheduler=1
RenderThreadScheduler=2
FrameWorkerThreadScheduler=3

Let me know if you can still replicate the freezing with the above scheduler settings.

I suspect the new (default) scheduler masks in v5.3 are causing the P3D.exe to freeze on many systems including my own.

This seems to have worked for me, been up for about an hour now, with now major degradation to frame rates, thanks Bozo92!!!