Not sure how many (if any) FPS I’ve lost with SU14 as I’m always locked at 45fps in VR. But many people seem to be complaining about lost fps.
However, there has been a definite increase in semi-frequent stutters (roughly every 10-60 seconds, sometimes less, it varies a bit). I tried to analyze it with Process Lasso. The stutters coincide with CPU spikes that look like this:
I am running 7800x3D, RTX 4090, 32GB RAM (6000), nvme SSD.
Testing was done in a Cessna flying straight ahead at constant altitude in a rural area (AP engaged).
These correspond to one or more (I think usually at least 2) threads/cores being loaded all the way to 100% (visible in Task Manager) for about a second or so. Unfortunately I don’t have SU13 graphs to compare it to because that was running a lot smoother. But I think it’s safe to say that something in SU14 is causing these periodic “CPU overloads”, even in scenery areas that shouldn’t be taxing on the CPU at all.
The spikes are definitely coming from MSFS, and not some background task, that much is certain.
I suspect it may be related to new “chunks” of scenery being loaded in? Just speculating, but it must be something.
It’s definitely scenery related somehow. When I turned terrain and object LOD down from my usual 100 to 10, the spikes disappeared completely. Turning object LOD back up to 100 hardly made a difference. But increasing terrain LOD progressively showed the sizes of the spikes are almost directly proportional to the terrain LOD setting.
Anyone else observing similar effects? Really hope this gets fixed, these irregular but periodic stutters are highly irritating! Runs great in between them.
I do low, slow ultralight flights, often at an altitude of just several hundred feet. I am close to the ground and can see exactly where this stuff happens. I have noticed that the momentary stutters appear to occur at specific locations.
For example, I’m flying close to the ground, heading towards a POI, and experience a momentary stutter before I reach the POI. If I fly the same route, it often happens in the same spot every time. In some cases, I can approach the POI from a different direction and there is no stutter. In other cases, the stutter occurs at the same distance from the POI regardless of the direction of approach or departure from the POI.
My impression is that it is related to scenery tiles or terrain mapping. It feels like there are edges that are not aligned with each other, creating small tripping points.
If this is true, then flying at higher altitudes may result in periodic stutters because you are crossing many scenery tiles and mapping edges in a relatively short period of time. In other words, the higher altitude and speed provide many more opportunities to encounter non-aligned scenery tile or terrain mapping edges.
Again, just my impression, not based on any scientific data.
Honestly, no i’ve not tried reducing LOD or even checked if it coincides with CPU spikes.
The freeze/stutters for me happen(s) only occasionally, sometimes once a flight maybe but nothing too often. I have seen a few comments though that SU14 seems to use the CPU more though than SU13. That said, I haven’t confirmed that myself.
I am very sure though that on my PC system that there is an fps drop in SU14 compared with SU13. I have a frame rate counter on the screen and I have seen a noticeable drop with SU14.
The occasional freeze/stutter could well be a scenery loading issue but I think the main difference we have is that I also have a general performance loss of perhaps 5 to 6 (?) fps even when on the ground
As is often the case quite a few theories are circulating now as potential causes for drops in fps or stutters/freezes.
Someone on the forum has even put forward a case that it is caused by marine traffic and benchmarked that performance is significantly better when the slider is at 0% irrespective of whether you are flying over an area with marine traffic or not. Not tested this yet tbh but, hey, who knows?
Whatever the cause though I am convinced that SU14 has delivered a significant drop in performance (for a lot of us) compared with SU13.
I am seeing a similar issue. I get a stop/start every 3-5 seconds. Vram is loaded during this time. I hit the ESC key twice and the Vram used drops in half, then in about a minute or two, the vram loads up again to and the stop/start begins again. VERY annoying. It doesn’t happen every where, just in flight.
System
i7 processor
RTX 3070
64 gB ram
3 monitors, 1 large curved screen and two small touch screens
have you tried limiting your fps (to a multiplier of your refresh rate) with rivatuner (RTSS)? I honestly haven’t ran msfs in a while but whenever i tried running it without RTSS i had the intermitent stutter issue
Of course, did you read the first sentence in the initial post?
I’ve been locking to 45fps for ages and ages and advocating for it everywhere. I used to use RTSS but switched to Varjo Base when I got an Aero. It’s at least as good, in fact I find it smoother. It supposedly syncs the frames directly to the refresh rate, at least that’s how they make it sound.
As mentioned, the issue described here started with SU14 and seems to be caused by periodic CPU spikes related to TLOD.
