I have just bought the game through steam but am struggling to play because it freezes often. This occurs mostly in flight but I have noticed it once or twice when in the menu system as well. Sound typically continues, but the game is completely unresponsive to input and the picture does not move. After a few seconds, or sometimes minutes, the game will resume from where it was and will play fine until the next freeze, which can happen again quite quickly or sometimes take a while.
I’ve trawled through several forums in the hope that someone has experienced similar and found a solution, but despite me finding lots of posts about hard crashing to the desktop, I can find little about freezing.
Recording showing the freeze is at is on streamable - /wwd0u4, the freeze happens at about 1:35min in.
I have tried the obvious things, like uninstalling/reinstalling the game, uninstalling/reinstalling my graphics drivers using DDU, rolling back drivers to older versions, tweaking various settings in game e.g. disabling v-sync, dropping quality etc. but nothing seems to have made a difference.
I have ran a memory diagnostics which found a couple of bad pages in my RAM. Could this be causing the freezing? I kinda thought that if the system tried to access bad RAM that it would cause a hard crash, possibly even blue screen, rather than a temporary freeze?
I have the same processor and GPU. Almost no problems. It runs ok.
If the RAM shows different bad pages it is maybe good to replace the memory.
Here are my settings. I hope it helps you
It could be also related somehow to locations and sceneries. I was flying for several hours with just little freezes that were solved pretty nicely (so I don’t feel sick). However, today flying around custom airport I have bought (Salzburg) I experienced around 30-40 seconds huge freezes.
My settings were very similar, so I have tweaked the very few differences to match your settings exactly… alas, 5 minutes into a flight and it froze again
I have experimented with different places, and in game settings, such as turning live weather off etc., but it doesn’t seem to make any difference, still get the freezing.
you have only 16gigs of RAM - same as me…I created a page file (virtual RAM on the C drive) of 16 gigs additional vRAM to help with the overload and it works.
There are Windows tutorial vids on how to do it. It is EASY and can be undone easily if you find it doesn’t help (it will definitely help). What ASOBO should have said about minimum specs to run MSFS is that 32 gigs of RAM is minimum…not optimal but essential
@FusionHorse151 Thanks for that, I’ll definitely take a look at doing that! Thing is though, only about 11GB of the 16GB ever seems to be being used, even though my PC says 15.9GB is useable… so would increasing make any difference? Why would it use more when it’s already able to but doesn’t? (I’m not that much of a gamer, so I’m fairly naive with this stuff)
I don’t have an answer for that - I am not a gamer really or a pc ‘geek’ either. My thought is that only averages are reported and ‘spikes’ are not. Either way based on all evidence available out here in the wild, it appears to require the extra overhead. I didn’t invent the idea of creating the page file either - it seems to be a consensus opinion among MSFS users with less than 32gigs ram. My reports showed the same thing as yours - MSFS was not ‘apparently’ accessing more than 11-12 gigs of my 16 available. Not the first time I’ve scratched my head and won’t be the last neither.
Finally - I’m not saying this will absolutely fix your issues - but it is easy, it can be undone if it doesn’t work, and it definitely wont do any harm. Just don’t ask for more space than your C drive has available and give a minimum value that is different from and less than your max value.
@ApprovingAcorn8@SkyHead81@FusionHorse151 Thanks for the replies guys. After 2 days of troubleshooting, reinstalling things, fresh windows installation, tweaking settings etc. I think I’ve finally found the cause… Bluetooth. I have a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard connected up which I think was causing the freezing when they woke/went to sleep. Hopefully I’m not speaking too soon, but since disabling Bluetooth before launching the sim, I haven’t had any more freezing
I hope it helps for you.
I use a Microsoft keyboard and Logitech Trackball. Wireless.
In the past I did experiment with bluetooth (especially headphones), but the flightsims never worked fine with that.
Well isn’t that just a great find. It was indeed my Bluetooth keyboard causing pauses as well.
I normally use a wired keyboard. But when I slide my simpit setup to my desk, I can’t easily reach it, so I have a Bluetooth keyboard on the side that I can pull into my lap to use when I need it.
I had been using an old Bluetooth keyboard since late November without issue. This one doesn’t power down after X time to save batteries. But a couple of weeks ago, I brought home my MS Bluetooth keyboard I had been using with my laptop at the office, since its keys are so much nicer than the old one. It turns out it boasts it’s killer battery life by going to sleep after not being used for 5 minutes. Both this disconnection and reconnection when a key is hit will cause the pause I’ve been experiencing.
I’ve switched back to my old Bluetooth keyboard (even though I hate these keys) and haven’t had a pause at all yet.
Just pushing the topic and giving many thanks to all the technology experts for the good advices. Whenever I didn’t use the keyboard or mouse for a while (on long flights), there were dropouts of up to 20 or 30 seconds. Now all problems are solved finding this thread and the one following by unchecking “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power” in device manager for all usb and bt devices and controllers. Many thanks for that.
Had anyone had a flight freeze? I flew from ZBAA (Beijing China) to RJAA Narita Intl. in an A320neo after being told by ATC to descend. After that, all my controls froze. I could set Autopilot, Altitude, Heading, etc, but my plane seems to sit there in the air. I couldn’t turn left, right, go up or down. I was stuck at that altitude, and even the ATC seemed to be frozen. Any ideas?
