Misplaced taxi hold point (>3'000 NM) cause massive FPS drop in career helicopter

[Erydias7697]

ISSUE DESCRIPTION

Abstract

In some career missions, FPS drop dramatically upon 1st call to ATC (taxi clearance) and never recover. This appears to be related to a misplacement of the taxi hold point causing some bottleneck either in the Main Thread or the Manipulators Thread. This appears to be specific to career helicopter missions and to some locations. Encountered this issue several times already.

Issue example : H125 rescue mission located at VARD

Vid no.1 : (https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/iar94RhUMAQ

Associated report : MSFSReport_badFPS_VARD_career_01.03.2026_08h06.txt (31.9 KB)

Events:

1. 0:00 - starting - framerate stable ~50fps - CPUs load is ~50% (several CPUs are above 80%), limited by graphic queue (GPU running at 100%), MainThread delay ~20ms, Manipulators delay ~7-10ms
2. 1:16 - announce taxi - framerate suddendly drops at 15-20fps - CPU load falls below 20% (only 1 CPU appears to stay above 80%, almost every other appears to be idle), GPU load falls below 35%, MainThread delay jumps above 120ms (x6 !), Manipulators delay jumps above 100ms (x14 !)

Every time this issue is encountered, the requested mission taxi holding point is located at 3’400+ NM. (see messages below).

My graphical settings

• 2560x1440
• AA = FSR3 “quality”
• sharpening = 100
• frame gen = FSR3
• nvidia low latency = ON
• dynamic parameters = ON 30FPS

Other notes and observations

• Using dynamic parameters, Terrain LOD and Objet LOD do not seem to be related in any way by this issue
• On vid.1, issue disappears when switching to outside view. Unable to confirm for now if this is always the case (will update).
• Unable to tell if this issue appeared in a recent update (started helicopter career a short while ago).

Issue control test : H125 freeflight starting at VARD

Vid no.2 : (https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/hGAuxeR_Phk

No problem while being in the exact same conditions and configuration. This allows to discard the following hypotheses:

• insufficient hardware performances
• insufficient download bandwidth
• graphical settings

FREQUENCY OF ISSUE

• This appears to happen only for helicopter career missions (encountered this issue several times for tourism and rescue missions
• This appears to be specific to some locations: issue seems to always appear in concerned locations
  • RJTK : 100% (2/2 events)
  • VARD : 100% (2/2 events)
  • LIAP : 100% (3/3 events)
  • (will consolidate statistics with further attempts)

REPRODUCTION STEPS

1. Start an helicopter career mission at one of the identified locations

2. Follow the steps until you announce/request taxi –> issue triggers

YOUR SETTINGS

What peripherals are you using?

N.A.

[PC Only] Are you using Developer Mode or have you made any changes to it?

Only to capture the demonstration video. No change made and issue also triggers without?

[PC Only] What GPU (Graphics Card) do you use?

NVIDIA 2070 super - but I believed this is unrelated because GPU load drops when the issue is triggered and the debug display clearly discards the graphics queue from being the culprit.

[PC Only] What other relevant PC specs can you share?

Cf. graphical settings and report above.

MEDIA

Cf. description

[DementedCorn327]

Is that the same than reported here ?: Opening the ATC window causes a stutter

[Erydias7697]

No it’s not. It is not related to the window itself. During missions you can perform ATC calls using the “quick answer” control (don’t know its actual name in English) without even opening the ATC window and this issue will still occur.

[Erydias7697]

Encountered again today at LIAP :

• no difference between interior and exterior view this time
• again, the taxi hold point is located at 3’400 NM !

Hypothesis : there is a bug where holding points are miscalculated in some locations for helicopter missions, and the game has to load data from that point which is very far away, and maybe falls into a loop of allocating / deallocating data such as “load data for the mission / deallocate data because too far / load data for the mission / (etc…)”

When misplaced, the taxi hold point is always located at ~3’400 NM (~6’300 km), that is the Earth’s radius! Additional hypothesis : some hold point for helicopters in missions are not defined and thus fall back to the Earth center by default.

[Erydias7697]

WORKAROUND

Jumping to next flight step to skip taxi seems to allow avoiding the issue.

This seems to confirm the hypothesis of the 3’400 NM holding point bug!