Significant Performance Degradation with Live Weather (in some places)

[Zadma]

ISSUE DESCRIPTION

Description of the issue:

Severe degradation of performance (increased MainThread and Manipulators response times resulting in decreased frame rates) occurs when flying over Tokyo, Japan (and likely other untested areas) when live weather is enabled.

Did you experience this issue before you joined the Beta?

Unknown

[PC Only] Did you remove all your community mods/add-ons? If yes, are you still experiencing the issue?

Yes

FREQUENCY OF ISSUE

How often does this occur for you (Example: Just once, every time on sim load, intermittently)?

Every time

REPRODUCTION STEPS

Please list clear steps you took in order to help our test team reproduce the same issue:

1. Begin a free flight session flying over downtown Tokyo with live weather enabled
2. Observe poor performance
3. Disable live weather
4. Observe near-immediate performance increase
5. Re-enable live weather
6. Observe immediate decrease in performance

YOUR SETTINGS

If the issue still occurs with no mods and add-ons, please continue to report your issue. If not, please move this post to the User Support Hub.

What peripherals are you using, if relevant:

n/a

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

Only to capture FPS/performance data

[PC Only] Many issues may be due to an outdated graphics card. Please state your Graphics Card Driver Manufacturer (NVIDIA, Intel, AMD) and Version:

AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE

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

n/a

MEDIA

Please add a screenshot or video of the issue occurring.

Tokyo - Live Weather OFF

Tokyo - Live Weather ON

[END OF FIRST USER REPORT]

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For anyone who wants to contribute on this issue, Click on the button below to use this template:

Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?
•

Provide extra information to complete the original description of the issue:
•

If relevant, provide additional screenshots/video:
•

[Zadma]

For comparison, here is performance flying over Seoul:

Live Weather OFF

Live Weather ON

While a performance hit is observed, it’s significantly more manageable than that over Tokyo.

[WaterLattice34]

Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?
• Yes. Flying over Tokyo I average 85 FPS with live weather off. With live weather on my average FPS tanks to as low as 25 FPS.

Flying over NYC with live weather off I average 70 FPS. Turning live weather on has little impact on FPS.

[SmotheryVase665]

I think it would be useful to the test team if users provided the UTC date & time of their flights, with perhaps a screenshot or two, to see if the issue is with any live weather or a particular type of live weather.

E.g. do folks see this when the live weather shows clear skies, cumulus, rain, thunderstorms, stratus, etc… or any and all of these (& more)? Over time, reports with this information may build a better picture of what is going on.

Also, if the FPS widget showing the Lat/Lon values is not provided, the location of the flight would be good too.

[Zadma]

Good point, I’ll gather some more data with full screenshots. That being said, when I initially tested, I was comparing NYC to Tokyo where NYC was heavily overcast and rainy and Tokyo was partly cloudy at best, so it seems more tied to region than the weather itself - we’ll see.

[WaterLattice34]

For starters:

Live weather off:

Live weather on:

Time is 19:46 UTC. Location is anywhere near or above Tokyo.

[WaterLattice34]

EGLL Live weather on. It’s OK.

Using weather presets does result in FPS regression at Tokyo and other locations but I think that’s normal. Definitely not as bad as using Live weather at Tokyo.

I think the next step will be test Tokyo when there are clear skies. I am leaning towards this being a region specific issue.

[DrVenkman3876]

I can confirm the same over Tokyo as per the OP and in posts in the general SU3 Feedback thread last night.

As of just a few moments ago, 1500’ MSL over Tokyo Tower:

Live Weather:

Toggle Live Weather off:

Then setting Rain preset to create a heavy overcast/clouds situation:

Date/local time in the names of the screenshots (UTC -5, US Central Daylight Time), so approximately 20:58 UTC.

[DDArthur5357]

Weird. Helluva difference in gpu and cpu useage…

[Zadma]

Actually, GPU is pretty consistent in my examples, which is interesting. Really all about the CPU it seems.

[SeedyL3205]

Thank you for the bug report.

We have created an internal ticket to see if our team already has this logged, and if not they will attempt to reproduce the issue and create a new bug report. This item is now marked as feedback-logged. If there is an existing bug report or one is created, we will move this thread to bug-logged.

[DrVenkman3876]

Manipulators and Mainthread going absolutely nuts in Live Weather here. I have not seen this anywhere else in the sim, though since this situation exists here, chances are it exists elsewhere.

As a control, I see nothing like this over Nagasaki; Nagoya; or Fukushima. Spawing into heavy overcast over Narita International shows significant performance degradation, but not nearly to the extent as over Tokyo proper.

Spawning south of Seoul, approximately over the river, shows very substantial decrease in performance with Live weather, though not to the extent of Tokyo:

Time approximately 21:26 UTC.

[CasualOne7471]

Didnt people post in the previous version that toyko performance was bad? Several as a matter of fact. Particularly Tokyo

[Boeingspeedbird]

Xbox-x tonight a stuttery mess - worse than .7

[DrVenkman3876]

Please read the thread title and first post - this isn’t about generally good or bad performance overall. It is about the effect of setting Live Weather on in specific places such that it destroys performance, while turning Live weather off causes performance to increase greatly.

[TranquilitySea]

It could be an issue with the Meteoblue data for the Tokyo area.

[Salty9649]

Out of curiosity, has anyone tried disabling the Japan World Update and see what happens?

[WaterLattice34]

Posting in the SU3 Beta Discussion thread or other threads will not get attention and is not the same as filing a bug report as has been done here. I’m happy this was quickly feedback-logged.

If this issue was reported as a bug in another topic please link to it.

[CptPiett8113]

I’m getting similar performance with live weather on vs off flying above Tokyo CBD at 3000ft. Real time (around 10mins before I posted this).

[SmotheryVase665]

I’m noticing Live weather thunderstorms have a big impact on performance. This is on a flight from Hong Kong (VHHH) to Noibai Intl (VVNB) on v1.5.8.0.

At this point (~ 22:30 UTC today):

My framerates dropped precipitously into the 30’s (external view):

and 40’s (cockpit view):

Earlier in the flight they were both in the 50’s:

If you happen to be either taking of or landing at the time - rather than cruising at 31,000 ft - this probably will cause stutters, as it did in a .7-build performance test flight on my PC, reported here.

(Of course, your experience will vary based on your hardware & MSFS settings).

Edit:
I ran another taxi-test at VHHH, but this time with a custom Thunderstorm weather setting rather than live weather. Framerates were consistently in the 50’s, with a median of 52.9:

This seems to rule out thunderstorms themselves reducing performance, and lends credence that reduced performance can be caused by having live weather enabled.