Aerosoft and Noolaero VDGS system destroys performance in East Frisian Islands and dense wind farms areas

[geloxo]

Hi,

This is problem I have noticed during many months, in particular in the East Frisian Islands area, where performance and freezes have been terrible for a long time after that pack was published by Aerosoft.

I have discovered that problem is indeed caused by Aerosoft and Noolaero Visual Docking Guidance Systems (VDGS), which are a set of extra dependencies needed for some third party airports. Removing those packs solves the performance degradation.

The main files are the following and, as far as I know, they are available both at Aerosoft One and ORBX Central as part of the dependencies required by some airports sold there. You will find them at Community folder:

aerosoft-data-exchange
aerosoft-vdgs-driver
aerosoft-vdgs-model-library

noolaero-module-vdgs

Please note that the system also adds an entry to exe.xml, which is supposed to be executed on game launch:

	<Launch.Addon>
		<Name>Aerosoft VDGS Driver</Name>
		<Disabled>False</Disabled>
		<Path>< Community folder >\aerosoft-vdgs-driver\aerosoft-vdgs-driver.exe</Path>
	</Launch.Addon>

     <Launch.Addon>
       <Name>noolaero-module-vdgs</Name>
       <Disabled>False</Disabled>
       <Path> < Community folder >\noolaero-module-vdgs\Binaries\vdgs-util.exe</Path>
     </Launch.Addon>

Airports using Noolaero solution will also contain a “Modules” folder inside them. Both packs will create compiled content at game´s “Packages” directory as well.

Everything has to be removed to leave no traces of the wasm content. You need to unistall VDGS addon folders, delete “Modules” folders inside the airports themselves and delete folders created at game´s “Packages directory”.

To know which airports are affected navigate to:

\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalState\packages

and check which airport created any subfolders there. You will find the main VDGS folders there as well.

A negative side effect I have seen when those systems are installed is the terrible performance degradation also at areas with high amount of animated objects like the dense wind farms of Alta and Sentinel, at California. Maybe this is the real reason of the performance degradation at East Frisian Islands too, due to their proximity to the north sea offshore wind farms and german coast wind farms.

My guess is that those systems check for simobjects to trigger docking system and accidentally find not only aircraft but also a huge amount of wind turbines or other simobjects types.

Cheers

[saschpe]

It’s worth filing a ticket with Aerosoft so that they can investigate and provide a fix.

[geloxo]

It´s confirmed that Noolaero VDGS also creates the same performance issues. I made test with each system alone and the performance problems are still reproduced with both. So both systems need to be removed.

First post updated to collect all information in a single place.

Cheers

[PacyFire]

I did all of this and still had a performance issue around the East Frisian islands, exhibited by a constant, brief major main thread latency happening twice a second or so, leaving a nice “red fence” in the dev tool monitor. The only thing that solved it was removing the Aerosoft scenery. Stairport Sceneries really borked something there.

[geloxo]

I keep the Aerosoft East Frisian addon and it works well. Do you also have bad performance at the California big wind farms areas? Spawn at the following locations to check it:

Alta: 35.04886, -118.25477 (Next to Mojave airport)
Sentinel: 33.93723, -116.57486 (Next to Palm Springs airport)

If performance is still bad there after removing the East Frisian Islands something from VDGS is still loaded in game. I would suggest you double check game’s Packages folder to be sure no airport addon nor VDGS folders are still there. Any changes need to be done without game running, as everytime you launch game content will be recompiled and loaded. If folders exist there they will be loaded by game, even if you have removed the rest of things.

Cheers

[PacyFire]

@geloxo

Alta: 35.04886, -118.25477 (Next to Mojave airport)

I still have the same rhythmic main thread spikes at Alta, just not as severe as what I saw in East Frisia. I have double-checked that folders ‘aerosoft-data-exchange’,‘aerosoft-vdgs-driver’, ‘aerosoft-vdgs-model-library’ and ‘noolaero-module-vdgs’ no longer exist and the VDGS and Noolaero entries in EXE.XML are disabled. \LocalState\packages only has folders ‘Community’ and ‘Official’. I’m baffled.

[geloxo]

Mmm… do you have a CPU with P+E cores? Some days ago I also found another problem with CPU management under latest Windows 11 update that reproduced exactly the behaviour you describe. I also had those periodic spikes/freezes. Take a look here, just in case:

Simulator developing a 4 second freeze with 2 second gap

Ok, it´s definitelly the CPU handing in Windows, not game, unless devs harcoded something exotic in the latest releases. I found the problem is the allocation of “P cores” on CPU, at least in the case of my i9-12900ks. Setting CPU policy as follows completely removes those periodic freezes and brings back a steady and consistent CPU utlization, like the one we had in the older game versions and without drops to 0% CPU utilization: Long threads: assign them always to “P cores” Short threads: …

Cheers

[CptnDoppie]

This is a super interesting find! I’m seeing the same rhythmic spikes and stutters, also in that same scenery (East Frisian Islands)

I’ve uninstalled both Nool and Aerosofts thing, but deleting the individual Modules folders is going to be a hassle. I imagine especially with Marketplace sceneries. I was using Developer Console Wasm Debugger, and there seems to be quite a few sceneries that use this. Is deleting these bits going to cause issues with those sceneries?

Has anyone mentioned this issue to Nool?

[CptnDoppie]

Good luck getting Aerosofts attention. They don’t fix anything. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen any updates to any scenery I’ve got from them.

[geloxo]

You can delete subfolders or files from any Marketplace content (I had to do it several times to fix the wrong ground services configs as they broke the whole system worldwide). Game will only detect missing main folders (addons folders) not subfolders or files inside those addons. Once any update is scheduled it will replace content, so if patch is intended to modify those Modules folders they will be added again.

Anyway there are not so many airports using Noolaero solution and are mainly ORBX ones. I had to fix only around 10 addons. They are listed here:

Supported airports | Visual Docking Guidance System

I already warned both Aerosoft and Noolaero about this issue.

Whatever is the reason behind this it´s clear that game has problems to handle big amounts of simobjects at once. It´s not only AI airplanes traffic what causes performance drops. 200 AI ships can drop performance dramatically as well and that can be a typical figure next to any main harbour. So I presume that any operation that pretends to check a big list of simobjects every few cycles most likely causes big impacts or bottlenecks as well.

Everything goes via main thread at the end and you can frequently find areas where a total of 500 simobjects are existing at the same time. Little Navmap can easily count them and display ships and airplanes dynamically. I just flew over Rotterdam and I found 600 simobjects there, being most of them ships and just 50 AI airplanes from live traffic.

Cheers

[CptnDoppie]

Just to add a datapoint : I decided to nuke from orbit, and uninstall all my sceneries that use Nool. That seems to confirm your findings: before, I had those constant weird consistent red spikes standing on EDWY. After uninstalling, the spikes are gone, the CPU graph is smooth yellow again (it’s never green on my machine )

So yeah, defo something up there.

As to why there are so many simobjects in that location: the title mentions offshore wind parks, but I also suspect Aerosofts North Sea Industry pack may be involved (on my machine). I don’t use GAIST anymore, and my FSLTL settings are veeery modest.

[CptnDoppie]

Well, I just couldn’t let it go, and did a whole morning’s worth of testing. All tests were done parked at EDWY (as the problem is especially visible there) and also at the airports themselves (just to verify everything works and runs ok there too).

I’ve basically installed each of the following airports one by one, and retested to see if the spikey CPU graph thing returns.

The following airports were tested:
CYUL - Montreal, MK-Studios
EIDW - Dublin, MK-Studios
KPHL - Philadelpia, MK-Studios
ESSA - Arlanda, Orbx
ESGG - Gothenburg, Orbx
ESSB - Bromma, Orbx
ESMS - Malmo, Orbx

This is a mix of Marketplace, Orbx Direct and Contrail purchases.

I have several other airports listed on that Nool page installed (EGLL, EGSS, KLAX by IniScene, NZAA by Flightbeam), but none of these seem to contribute to or trigger the issue.

I’ll keep the rest short. I tested by installing an airport, restarting the sim, spawning in at EDWY, then back to the menu again, and respawning at the airport in question, carefully checking the CPU graph all the time.

The only two airports on the above list that immediately triggered the issue upon installation were ESSB Bromma and ESMS Malmo. Uninstalling these airports made the spikes go away again. All the other airports I’ve left installed, and my PC is still a happy bunny.

I will try to somehow get Orbx’s attention to this issue.

Hope this is of use to someone.

PS: Notice how I’ve only concerned myself with Nool, and not Aerosofts VDGS - I don’t personally care much for VDGS, and any problems with Aerosofts solution are easily remedied by just uninstalling their drivers, leaving the actual airports (EBBR in my case, probably others too) in working order, without having to manually delete files etc.

Update: here’s a link to my post on Orbx Discord: Discord

[RagingWombat839]

I looked in EGLL and NZAA installed from marketplace and couldn’t find a Modules folder. I don’t have the others on this list. Interesting you say that these ones are not causing the problem.

[CptnDoppie]

Also check for a Landmarks folder in SimObjects, and often also a nool-specific config file in a Config folder. For NZAA, there is a SimObjects/Misc folder with Nool stuff in.

[Bondjpf]

Found also in LIRF. I wonder if deleting has any effect on the rest of the airport.

[CptnDoppie]

Worth pointing out that the presence of Nool-related components or Nool VDGS in itself is not necessary automatically an issue. It’s mostly likely related to the Nool-version used by the scenery developer, or some other implementation related thing.

I have LIRF by MK-Studios (from Marketplace) installed myself, and it does not appear to cause this issue.

[PacyFire]

@CptnDoppie

ESMS - Malmo, Orbx

You, good sir, are legend! I removed the Nool files from ESMS and the issue is gone for me. East Frisian islands as well as the wind farm at Alta now running without any spikes.

I must have misunderstood Geloxo’s instructions in post #1 on how to identify airports that needed individual “cleaning”.

Thank you both for investing all this time and effort to identify the culprits!

[geloxo]

Thanks a lot for the testing CptnDoppie. ESSB Bromma and ESMS Malmo are also confirmed as problematic in the Aerosoft forums for the performance degradation at Frisian Islands and other users also pointed to removal of the Modules folders from those two airports alone as solution. However in my case I had to get rid of both systems completely (Aerosoft and Noolaero) and their compiled content in the Packages folder to recover normal performance.

I keep Malmo´s Landmarks (inside SimObjects folder) and I still have good performance. Those are the 3D models for Jetways and APIS as far as I have seen. The problem is clearly on the Modules (the wasm variables). Either wasm content is faulty, it needs to be recompiled according to latest SDK or there´s a bottleneck in the main system scripts when searching for nearby SimObjects to detect the AI airplanes docking process.

The Config folder existing at some airports is just read by Noolaero VDGS when the system loads. If you remove the system this folder will not be used at all by game. The rest on the airports configuration itself is also fine or at least I didn´t find any evident errors.

Cheers

[VisualDarkn]

Really interesting find and that would explain many of my spikes as I use those airports almost every flight.

[FamousSteam42]

Orbx just did an update for Malmo and Bromma. They gave little data on it, could these have had the issue addressed? I’m on a business trip so can’t check at the moment.