P3Dv4 Cologne Bonn - very bad Performance and stutters

[winstonwolf 11]

Hello,

i think the same - now it’s time to hear from the developers. 

Is there already a investigation of this stutter problem running ?

 

thanks 

michael 

[Aerosoft Team [Inactive Account] 51558]

To be totally honest, not really. See we are simply unable to recreate this. Sure this is one of the densest sceneries you can buy. But as I have shown a few times, it runs fine on our test systems. I am getting a solid 30 to 40 fps on my systems. Now, these are pretty clean systems, not a lot of other add-ons. But if you want to test the performance of an add-on you can only do so on a clean system.  

 

Stuttering in the sim is not caused by an add-on but by one of the many paths of the sim being overloaded. It can be simConnect, CPU, or GPU. Often it is actually caused by the system. Some process that needs a lot of resources and that overloads one of the paths. I have seen that being a RAID configured in the BIOS that was not there anymore (making the system trying to rebuild the RAID every 30 seconds) to a driver for a graphics card that was not there. It can be anything, to be honest. 

 

Now, why does this happen with this add-on and not with others? A question we face for any single add-on we sell. If you sell 1000 copies of an add-on there will be 30 people for whom that particular add-on causes problems. Unexplainable to a degree. If somebody runs it on a laptop, or with a 2007 graphics card or with a zillion other add-ons the reason is often rather obvious. Not always though. When we convince these people to reset the sim, make sure the sim files are all okay and then add the add-on 99% of the issues are solved.

 

Now, why does it happen so often with this product? Basically, because we sold a shit load of it. On average 5% of customers for any given product are unhappy. Not a lot you can do about that. If you get it to 3% you open a bottle of wine, if it is more you assign more people to it.  Looking at support the Airbusses we released are highly problematic as we got hundreds of support tickets. Per sale, it is one of the least demanding products ever. 

 

I will talk to Jo tomorrow to see what plans there are. 

 

[winstonwolf 11]

Thanks Mathijs,

But I have two points .

First , stutter has nothing to do with FPS . You can have 40 or more frames but at the same time you can have stutters .

 

Second Point ,

i don’t think that the stutter behavior in EDDK for my side has something to do with the Scenery himself ( Scenery Objects ) etc. because I can set the options for EDDK from high to off without any influence to the stutters. 

 

But what i don’t understand is, that i don’t have stutters on other Airports. When I have an basic stutter Problem then I have it all over my Airports ?!? 

 

Maybe be someone find an solution in the future .

 

thanks 

michael

[data63 421]

do you have ORBX GEN/GES active? - it's awful dense in this area - even higer than some ORBX NA regions.

[winstonwolf 11]

Hello ,

 

please read my post above.

i also try to disable GE north , south and other Airports in the surroundings. 

It don’t change something with the stutters.

 

michael

[data63 421]

vor 47 Minuten, winstonwolf sagte:

Hello ,

 

please read my post above. 

i

 

sorry, I just found only sth. about "ORBX stuff" which can mean alot.

[Querer 74]

On ‎11‎/‎19‎/‎2018 at 7:22 PM, Mathijs Kok said:

To be totally honest, not really. See we are simply unable to recreate this. Sure this is one of the densest sceneries you can buy. But as I have shown a few times, it runs fine on our test systems. I am getting a solid 30 to 40 fps on my systems. Now, these are pretty clean systems, not a lot of other add-ons. But if you want to test the performance of an add-on you can only do so on a clean system. 

 

I can easily repeat another time what I have written: it is NOT a problem of FPS numbers. I locked mine at 30 and most of the time I reach those 30FPS also around EDDK. That is NOT the problem. The problem is, that while flying around above EDDK, there are regular stutters for about 2-3 seconds where also the FPS drop (I use the FPS numbers only as readout, it would be fine to have EDDK running at 22-25FPS without stutters instead of 30FPS and those annoying stutters), then they return to normal. If I do not move, those stutters are not present and I get constant 30FPS. And the stutters are gone about 4-5nm out. In my case, Aerosofts LSZH Professional is far more heavy on performance and the FPS numbers are lower, but at least there is no stutter, the scenery is displayed smooth at around 23-25FPS. So no, directly taking FPS numbers as a measure makes no sense in this regard...

 

Now, of course you can talk about overloading the rig and that one should test on a clean setup, but sorry to say, that is not my or any other customers job. And to be perfectly honest, in which unrealistic scenario EDDK is used on a otherwise blank and default sim? Even if none of the developers can recreate the vast amount of addons all potential customers have, at least the most prominent and probably the most demanding ones should be included in their performance optimization. Nobody would blame the developer, if EDDK would run with 80FPS on a clean setup instead of 40-50, if in turn this would mean that with demanding other addons still 30FPS and no stutters are possible, no? Means: the product should be tested under WORST CASE scenarios, not in a clean P3D setup...

[Aerosoft Team [Inactive Account] 51558]

But there is just no process that runs every 2 or 3 seconds.

 

I read your post two times but it just does not make sense. If we test an add-on on systems with dozens of add-ons what would the results tell us? That it is fast or slow? That it runs bad in combination with add-on X? What information would that give us?  That OrbX needs resources to run? For sure I can get this add-on to behave slow on my system if I activate all add-on's and set all settings to high I get 12 fps. If I behave sensibly I get the 30 to 40 fps I expect. This is most likely the densest (as in the number of objects per surface) you have on your system. That simply has consequences. 

 

A stutter is caused when some process halts the flow of the sim. That can be because some hardware is not able to handle what it needs to do (and other processes wait for the results to continue). And of course, this only seen when the system is pushed to the limits. Clearly, some part on your system is bouncing against a limit.

 

I discussed this with Jo and he agrees there is simply nothing in the scenery that makes it special. It's just complex and thus hard for hardware. 

 

[winstonwolf 11]

Hello,

Yes Mathijs it’s true what u write.

BUT all the users have the same Problem with EDDK. No stutters at any other Airport or Region, only in EDDK and surroundings. That’s the problem . 

Hope we together find out what causes the Problem. Because I like this Airport. 

 

[Tom A320 4915]

Please read Mathijs' post again, as it explains why the stutters show up for some users with EDDK and not with other add-ons.

 

[Aerosoft Team [Inactive Account] 51558]

3 hours ago, winstonwolf said:

BUT all the users have the same Problem with EDDK. No stutters at any other Airport or Region, only in EDDK and surroundings. That’s the problem . 

Hope we together find out what causes the Problem. Because I like this Airport. 

1

 

I am sorry, we have 22 people reporting these issues and several thousand sales. While we most certainly acknowledge that you are others face this issue we are pretty sure that is all customers would have it this forum would look very different. Basically what I am trying to explain is that there is nothing we can change. There is no optimization possible that will change a lot in this. What I will suggest to Jo is to create a slightly simplified version. 

 

You could also try your framerates WITHOUT this product. On most systems we have seen, it is already a very demanding part of the world. I get very moderate framerates here on default airport. 

 

If you check out this forum you will see that we have had these conversations for nearly every scenery project we ever released. Why something does not work well on certain systems is not always clear, in fact, if it only happens a few systems we mostly never find out. It could be somebody used 'tweaks' that respond badly to a certain style of scenery development, on a system I assisted on a few weeks back it was a RAID driver configured in the BIOS without drives assigned. Every 10 seconds the system tried to find the drives and that in combination with a heavy GPU load caused very bad stutters and low framerates every few seconds. When we are at shows we are often asked to look at users systems and the first thing we do is set a default CFG file. You would be amazed how often that solves problems these users have.

 

So to be clear, we simply see no 'bug'. We are totally unable to recreate this on our reference machines. What we can recreate is a heavy load, that in combination with an already stressed system could easily lead to issues. But as said that is because of the density of the scenery. As said this is most likely the most demanding scenery on your system, so it is not especially surprising it causes problems not seen before. 

 

Please login to display this image.

Complexity like this comes at a cost. 

 

 

[DaveCT2003 2553]

6 hours ago, winstonwolf said:

Hello,

Yes Mathijs it’s true what u write.

BUT all the users have the same Problem with EDDK. No stutters at any other Airport or Region, only in EDDK and surroundings. That’s the problem . 

Hope we together find out what causes the Problem. Because I like this Airport. 

 

 

Can you please provide us with your system specs?

 

CPU and Speed

Any overclocking?

Amount of RAM on the motherboard

GPU and note any overclocking

Power Supply Watts

 

 

[winstonwolf 11]

Hello , 

 

My Specs : 

 

I7 8086K runs with HT on  and XMP Profile 5 GHz 

16 GB RAM

Zotac GTX1080TI no Overclocking 

Powersupply BeQuiet 750W 

 

Michael 

 

[DaveCT2003 2553]

1 minute ago, winstonwolf said:

Hello , 

 

My Specs : 

 

I7 8086K runs with HT on  and XMP Profile 5 GHz 

16 GB RAM

Zotac GTX1080TI no Overclocking 

Powersupply BeQuiet 750W 

 

Michael 

 

 

Thanks Michael.

 

Are you running any non-default shaders?  PTA, TomatoShade, REX Sky Force, etc.?

 

[winstonwolf 11]

I run Tomato with Reflection Profils , but I also disabled all and return to default ShadersHLSL folder. Stutters are also there . 

[DaveCT2003 2553]

10 minutes ago, winstonwolf said:

I run Tomato with Reflection Profils , but I also disabled all and return to default ShadersHLSL folder. Stutters are also there . 

 

Thanks!  I'm going to do some digging on this.

 

In the meantime, can you try backing up and deleting your Prepar3d.cfg and without changing anything other than monitor size, see if things improve?

 

[winstonwolf 11]

Already try this with an new prepar3d.cfg . But also without success . 

 

In the last 10 minutes i takeoff from DigitalDesigns LOWS without any stutters , fly over the Alps ( many Mesh Terrain ) Clouds at Dusk . Without any Stutters . 

 

I think when i have an configuration or an Hardware Problem , why not with this conditions ?

 

Thanks 

 

[DaveCT2003 2553]

35 minutes ago, winstonwolf said:

Already try this with an new prepar3d.cfg . But also without success . 

 

In the last 10 minutes i takeoff from DigitalDesigns LOWS without any stutters , fly over the Alps ( many Mesh Terrain ) Clouds at Dusk . Without any Stutters . 

 

I think when i have an configuration or an Hardware Problem , why not with this conditions ?

 

Thanks 

 

 

Thanks for the additional information!  I've just downloaded the airport and I'm going to see how it's running on my system.

 

 

[Aerosoft Team [Inactive Account] 51558]

42 minutes ago, winstonwolf said:

Already try this with an new prepar3d.cfg . But also without success . 

In the last 10 minutes i takeoff from DigitalDesigns LOWS without any stutters , fly over the Alps ( many Mesh Terrain ) Clouds at Dusk . Without any Stutters . 

I think when i have an configuration or an Hardware Problem , why not with this conditions ?

12

 

Perhaps you missed my posts, but I think I discussed that in some details.

[winstonwolf 11]

Thanks - i read all of your posts.

At the moment i think about an completely fresh install of the sim. But in front I want to check out if something can be wrong with my hardware. 

 

With which Windows Version and with which Nvidia Driver Aerosoft Test the EDDK Airport?

Do you use any tweaking ?  Nvidia Settings ? BIOS Settings ?

thanks 

[Aerosoft Team [Inactive Account] 51558]

All our test systems are always on the last Win10 and we have many different graphics cards, and most of the time they are on the latest driver (though we have to look back many years to remember a serious issue with graphics drivers). No tweaks (how else could we do any serious test?), default Nvdia settings (same), Bios settings are of course totally depending on the hardware but unless you misconfigure something there it should not matter much.

 

Basically, we use default BIOS settings, we install the OS, latest drivers for all but control hardware (they normally suck big balls), update it. Install the latest version of the sim and install the product. Nothing else. That's what our developers create add-ons for and that's what the makers of the sim worked on.

 

Now, this always sets off many people who feel that their special tweak made all the difference in the world, but in 95% of cases, this is simply the best. You get the configuration the people who made the products on expect you to use. A full quarter of our support these days consists of telling people that the tweak they used stopped working after FS2002 but is still doing the rounds on the interwebs.

 

Sure things will look a lot better if you increase the visible range of Autogen objects by 50%. But most of the time they simply have no idea that increasing the radius of a circle by 50% does not mean 50% more trees and houses are loaded. Forgive me for not doing the math (I am sure some kind soul will step in) but it is a sh*t load more. It's like people expecting that a 2k texture is twice as big to load as a 1k texture while in fact, the texture load quadrupled. That 2 Gb texture set your graphics card has to handle is now suddenly 8 Gb. How much memory does your graphics card have? 

[winstonwolf 11]

Hello , 

I decide now to make an fresh install of my Computer . And the First tests then will be the EDDK Scenery . First without any other Addons . Then Step by Step installing the Addons . 

 

Here an Screenshot from my actual Performance while Stuttering in EDDK . 

 

What i find very strange is that CPU core 1 runs on 100 % all the Time . 

 

Michael 

 

 

Please login to display this image.

[Tom A320 4915]

You might not want to use the simple task manager for analysis but the Windows "Performance Monitor" (perfmon.exe) which allows a much more detailed view into your system.

 

[OPabst 2091]

Just for info for all having stutters in EDDK: I am in contact with Jo to find a way of implementing the code to reduce and in best case to eliminate the stutters by keeping the details.

But this will need some time.

[Querer 74]

56 minutes ago, winstonwolf said:

And the First tests then will be the EDDK Scenery . First without any other Addons .

 

And? Do you also have stutters without any other addons? This would be the critical point, if yes, the argumentation of Mathijs is neglected and this would easily explain why us and others have those stutters in EDDK but not on other heavy scenarios...

 

Thanks for your efforts, Oliver. I hope you and Jo will find a solution. So much for "Basically what I am trying to explain is that there is nothing we can change. There is no optimization possible that will change a lot in this" and "Complexity like this comes at a cost."