Consistent 2-3s freezes at specific locations (UK mainly) - I really need some help!

User Support Hub Hardware & Peripherals
22

It seems to me to happen anywhere where there’s photogrammetry within about 50-100 miles of your starting airfield. More remote places in the world or those that have not had the WU treatment yet and I don’t get the wheel.

Strangely, sometimes I don’t get it when I usually do (only about 1 in 25 loads though!)

23

EDIT: before you dive into the tldr below, I just tried again with empty community but also after having deleted the FS Birds from content manager and this time, no freezes! :slight_smile:

Testing more now to see what’s going on but it’s all very strange. Still looks like I’m a few steps nearer a good result! :+1:

——- PREVIOUS TEXT ———

Well I was hoping SU10 would solve this issue but it hasn’t. It’s actually been worse for a while whereby I am getting total freezes for between 2 and 15 seconds now, the most common being around 5 seconds.

I have tried with no mods, tried with PG off, tried with LOD of 10 and Low Terrain Pre Caching. I even bought a USB to RJ45 Ethernet adapter to try a wired connection directly to my gigabit router hub. Nothing makes any difference at all. It is really spoiling my enjoyment.

What on earth could cause the system to hitch for that long before it recovers??

Some areas I fly in are totally fine, so it’s SOMETHING on the map but as I say even with PG off it is the same so I have no clue where to look now.

I have done so much trial and error testing. Some of my notes below f it helps.

But I am at the point that I would gladly pay for someone’s time to connect with me and solve this. I am fairly competent with computers etc but this has me totally stumped. It has to be something on my system but in conjunction with MSFS. As I say some areas are beautifully fluid and NEVER skip a beat so I know it CAN do it. When it’s running nice I get a solid 30fps (vsych locked in-game).

NOTES:

  • Berlin PG was totally OK (TLOD 50 OLOD 140) so I don’t think PG is causing it.
  • South and West UK particularly bad. 3 to 12 second freezes common. Even with empty community. Some mods are installed via MS Store, I removed FS Birds and it SEEMED to freeze less often but this is probably coincidence.
  • Mach Loop freezes in exact same places since SU9 (what this topic was originally about). Even with empty community and low graphics preset.
  • Caribbean and Papua New Guinea totally smooth everywhere.
  • Spain LESU smaller freezes (3 seconds). I have no mods in this area.
  • New Zealand totally smooth.
  • France (where I have the FrenchVFR pack) some small freezes 2-4 seconds).
  • Worst is west UK / Wales.
  • Even Utrecht (Netherlands) which is a SMALL city was freezing. PG on or off was similar,.
  • So it’s definitely map based.
  • Try reducing online data (traffic sliders, AI traffic off etc).
  • Tried really low TLOD (10).
  • Tried the Nvidia 517.40 Studio Driver. DX11 / DX12.

In the “smooth” areas I do see that CPU core 1 usage is quite a lot lower than in busy countries etc so guess this is the problem but not sure how else I can reduce load after you see what I have tried already, and this is only a problem since SU9 for me. On the other hand Berlin is quite heavy and CPU was maxed but no freezes.

HARDWARE MONITORING:

  • GPU ram usage never more than ~5 of 8gb (RTX2070).
  • GPU Processor usage around 60-90% with a few things on Ultra, mainly High. Temperature around 65C max
  • CPU a few threads spike but not necessarily in synch with the freezes. Sometimes it spikes and no freeze, sometimes it spikes and does freeze, sometimes it freezes and no spike at that moment. GPU drops to 0% and reports 1-8fps for those seconds (Steam FPS counter).
  • Sometimes when it freezes I get a spike in the GPU “Copy” graph in Task Manager, but I don’t know what that graph means?
  • RAM usage can go up to 73% of my 16gb (usually around 63%) so I do suspect this and Micha helped me understand that the “committed” is important (how and when it uses the pagefile) but reducing everything (LODS, Resolution) doesn’t seem to reduce that footprint. BUT IMPORTANTLY in the cases like Caribbean it’s still at around 72% but there are NO freezes so I believe it’s something else.

Tried half the resolution of my native (2560x1600 so 1280x800) then also that with double the render scale to end up back at 2560. With DLSS, with TAA. Nothing makes any difference. The only thing that makes my GPU go higher usage (90-100%) and then the average frame rate drop to like 16-20fps is setting a crazy higher render scale than my screen even supports. Anything native and below, even with graphic settings on ultra is not using all the GPU.

If it is CPU bottleneck, which I am sure it is, that would cause small stutters (which I do get and can accept) but what on earth can cause it to just freeze for so long. This is the main issue I need to figure out.

Any ideas or anyone willing to help me get to the bottom of this. I’ll buy you a plane of your choice if you manage to fix it!! :slight_smile:

24

Some airport addon may cause micro-freeze when the texture and LOD are not optimized