Frequent VR freezes and screen blackouts

Great Minds think alike…I unplugged/switched off my monitor last night but still same issues.

Will check all the other good suggestions, and am unplugging other non-essentials as I go.

Here’s a thought I had.

I almost always fly add-on aircraft and never a default one so just flew a default albeit short flight in the Beechcraft Bonanza and no issues.

Now gonna fly the same in the F-14 and see what happens.

My community folder is outside the sim and liked with ‘add-on linker’ I wonder!?..

:laughing:

That’s a good lead to follow.

Two blackouts on the ground, first one cut the engines! Then two turns around my beloved Mach Loop and then home to RAE Llanbedr where my Dad worked and I grew up.

No further issues.

I think I will re-install this bird directly into the main Community folder and see if there is any benefit…

More testing fun tomorrow…

Will keep you posted

OK here is my Hypothesis.

When installing the Sim, the initial install from MS-store asks you where you would like to install. As I have a dedicated NVMe2 drive (C) for Windows I wanted to install on a dedicated 1Tb NVMe2 drive (I) for MSFS. so selected that drive.

Checking my installation folders last night I realise that this installs the core package on the selected drive with linked folders on the C drive.

As previously stated my community folder is separate on the (I) and I wondered if all this linking is causing issues?

Checking the Zendesk info as per your suggestion they strongly advise installing the core 1.3gb program to the (C) drive and THEN setting up a separate folder called MSFS or something on the other (I) and selecting that when prompted to download the content from the actual SIM.

This will eliminate one set of links for sure and hopefully impact my issue.

And so, as you may have suspected by now I have done a complete un-install and am re-installing a clean version on the (C) drive with content only on the (I) drive.

This will take all day but hey well worth the effort.

If this work then it highlights a floor in their installation process when it gives you the option to install on another drive at the Package level as this ( as the Zendesk article says) may cause issues down the road!!

Will get back to you when up and running and theory tested.

Great news. I hope that’s the issue. It’s obviously a pain with all the reinstalling but if you solve the issue the so be it. Good luck and please post your results. You may have found something that helps a lot of people.

Do you have the old or new headset cable? The new one has a little switch on it.

You most likely have the old cable and the only good solution is to contact HP and demand a revision 2 cable - they may try and be difficult at first.

Sorry, saw you have rev2 already.

Do you see the audio level change in the mixed reality mirror or in the headset when this problem happens?

All Done,. Initial thoughts are good. Need some tinkering as all settings are out. Flew F-15 around the Loop and up to RAF Valley no problems.

Took the H-145 for a spin from London City across town to Heathrow which is one of the most intense areas. All OK until boundary of Heathrow Airport then several small and one long blackout.

Mind you it is still in development and that is a very busy and resources intense area.

So more testing on Friday night with a long haul a320nx flight to further test things then over the weekend I will Publish the results.

I do have some good things to be able to contribute but just want to hammer the testing first.

Bad News! It’s still there!!!

On top of that I’m now getting the dreaded
“The initialization of VR failed. Please check that OpenXR is installed on your computer and your headset can use it.”
Message every time I come out of VR and want to go back in.
Never had it before GASP!

The Whole thing seems unstable.

The only other thing on a Hardware persepctive is that I run a 4K monitor and just wondering if with two 4k devices it’s too much even for the RTX3090.

Even if you unplug it windows is still attempting to render everything at 4K.

Perhaps I should spend some dosh on a 1440p monitor

Another thought before I go nuts I shall lower the display settings to 1440 and then 1080 and see if that impacts it.

Wow, massive jump in fps in VR and altho got a couple of flashes over gatwick add-on (which is pretty big), the whole thing felt more alive and responsive.

I feel a new monitor coming on and downgrading to 1440p

Spent £350 on a Samsung Odyssey G5 32" 1440p display. 75 fps in PC mode. still only 30 in VR and blackouts STILL OCURRING! I’m ready to pack this Sim in.

I have been using it since beta but these VR issues have ruined it for me

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I am experiencing the same issue, I have never had this issue with MSFS and my Reverb G2, now is unplayable in VR because of the blackouts and sim freezes

Hoorah! At last someone with the same issue. I didn’t mean hoorah for your misery but I really thought I was alone and going mad.

I have now tried just about everything possible from a hardware related perspective trying to diagnose this issue over months.

As I have 2 HP Reverb G2 headsets and they both exhibit exactly the same issue I can pretty much say that it isn’t a hardware issue. Yes I have tried all versions of the cable including the new power switch version.

I have an externally powered usb3 hub too.

I have uninstalled and re-installed MSFS2020 several times on different nvme.2 hard drives with no effect. I have disabled/deleted/moved the community folder and that had no effect.

I thought it was only happening on add-on aircraft but that isn’t so either as it happens on all aircraft.

I had an ethernet cable run under my home to facilitate a constant connection to my router in case of wi-fi dropouts - No change.

The change to a 1440p from 4K monitor freed up more resources from my i910900k/RTX 3090 system but that had no effect either.

No matter what settings you use it still happens.

So the only thing left that I can put it down to is some sort of software conflict.

Last night I disabled Corsair iCue as I remember it had some issues crashing the sim a few versions ago due to some included Lenovo drivers.

At first it seemed to work as I flew my Mkix Spitfire for a couple of turns of the Mach Loop.

Then I swapped to the F-14 Tomcat and suffered 2 small blackouts but no hangs on the same route.

I am going to continue testing minimal app running system to see if I can find any program causing an issue but am not really confident.

As you have only begun to experience this issue I wonder if you can catalogue any changes you made to the system prior to this happening.

Also any background programs running that we might have in common.

I too have steam VR and Windows Mixed Reality Portal for Steam VR installed although not running when accessing MSFS which was purchased direct from MS store.

And I can confirm that no other Sims…X-plane 11 or IL-2 Sturmovik, Elite dangerous Odyssey or games such as Half Life Alyx suffer from this issue.

Let’s see if we can find the culprit together.

Mark

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I too had the power management problem with USB ports that I had to correct in Device Manager as the overarching Power Management settings in Win10 were not impacting the device manager settings for USB ports that defaulted to shut off to save power (argh). I would also see if you have the most up to date Bios on the MOBO as that can impact USB ports. What firewall/virus software are you running…I had a free 30 day trial with my PC of McAfee and it was a mess getting it to work with MSFS given the constant internet connection and file transfers so I turned it off/deleted it and just use the MS Defender built in program and it’s been fine ever since. I also had a few CTDs that started after the latest World Update when in VR that stopped after I manually updated the 2 C++ package files in Windows 10 (that strangely were not getting updated with the normal Windows updates). There were 2 C++ files I downloaded directly from MS and that somehow impacted my system where the CTDs stopped. You could try that or just do a complete re-install of Win10. Also, does it happen in 2D as well or only in VR? What PSU wattage are you running and have you checked the power usage with a tool like HwInfo64 that can log a ton of stats on your entire system to a file for later review, you can see hundreds of stats tracked over time and maybe look for an odd spike or power problem or something that matches with the time stamp on when you have the freezes (I know it passed that stress test though from your earlier posts but I would still just log a flight knowing it will likely freeze temporarily and then check that log file for the rough time period it happened to see what the hardware is doing to completely rule that out, including data flow over internet to see if the freezes are some sort of studder on the internet signal as MSFS uses that a lot more than other games). Good luck and my system is quite similar and I only had that C++ file problem. I too use the c: drive for the main game and my e: drive for the large data packages. My setup: i910900k, 3090, 64gb, G2 (original cable and now V2 cable), MS Store version of MSFS, Asus z590 using Wifi for internet connection, temps running at 50C on CPU and 70C on GPU. Happy to help if I can think of anything else to try, don’t give up and sorry to hear about the long trail of trouble here.

Hi, Thanks for the input. Most things have been tried. I am running Total AV anti-virus software and have tried it disabled and closed and no difference. No CTDs. All drivers are constantly kept up to date as is Bios and Windows files. Interestingly there was a C++ 2012 update this morning on MS Store. Haven’t seen it happen in 2D altho I never usually fly in that mode. I have a Corsair HX 1000Watt Platinum power supply. I too wonder if the internet signal is dropped periodically but had no way of monitoring it.
OK, have downloaded HwInfo64 7.1 and am running it.
Not sure how to monitor the whole flight but will run it tonight if I get a chance of a flight and take a look afterwards. I guess I hit logging Start? Where do I go to look at report and any tips on how to run it to measure the internet service?
Many thanks,
Mark

HWInfo64 has an option to save a log file of every metric it tracks but you activate that by hitting Start (and I think you can set up ahead of time where that file is stored). I started the log file first, did a flight, then stopped the file. I just opened it in google sheets (or excel would work) and then took a look at the data. I also have the program just running in the background and even without the log file being saved it has some graphs that I set up to show me temperatures and usage of cpu and GPU (but you can pick whatever you want). At any point I can click on the small icon in the system tray and the graphs I setup maximize and I can see then and it looks to be maybe the last rolling 30 minutes or so of each metric in a nice graph. I used a few YouTube videos to see how to setup HWInfo64 as it’s not intuitive how to set up the rolling graphs and has a lot of customization (almost too much). I will look at it tonight to see if network traffic us included, but if not Task Manager for Windows has that I think or other freeware apps can track your network traffic to see if that’s a possible problem. On the C++ in my case the Windows Update process didn’t show any of that and I did it manually here for the 2 files listed:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/the-latest-supported-visual-c-downloads-2647da03-1eea-4433-9aff-95f26a218cc0

I just looked at my “sensor status” page for HWInfo64 and it does have both Ethernet and wifi and shows the total download and upload size and speed, tracked over time. So you will get that data both in the rolling graphs it shows for the last 15-30 minutes or so and then for longer time periods if you start the log file. Make sure to stop the log file when done or it just runs and keeps recording to the file location you set up. I took a picture of the bottom portion of the Sensor Status page that has the network stuff (it’s all the way at the bottom of a long list) and you can also see some graphs I have on the right for cpu and gpu (low usage as nothing running). The graphs on the right are set up one by one when you look at each sensor in the program it gives you an option to create a graph so theoretically you could have dozens of these graphs just monitoring on a rolling basis in the background (not stored data unless you turn on the log file).

I have exactly the same problem with my Reverb G2 in MSFS 2020, my rig is I9 990K Asus RTX 3080 OC 32gig 3200mhz.
Exactly every time I come 1mile from an airport, the headset goes out and flashes at 3-5 second intervals, then everything returns to normal. I have logged cpu, gpu, frame, etc. everything seems completely normal during these blackouts. I have tested everything that you describe in the thread … hope that someone who is smarter than me can come up with something new to change to make this problem end

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Yep that’s exactly it.

I do not think it is a hardware issue because it ONLY occurs in MSFS.

Like you I get these at an Airport/Airfield and or at the transition of sceneries and Airports whether they are MSFS or Add-ons.