I am having a major issue with MSFS and it only seemingly started after receiving a small patch 2 days ago, it was around 1.6GB. Not sure exactly what it was for but all it has done is make my game pretty unplayable. The issue I am having is there are random stutters constantly, even on the menu, usually every 10-30 seconds that hang the game momentarily. This happens on ANY settings, including with frame gen off/on/ DX11/12 and the lowest possible graphic settings or the highest. It also happens with online mode off or on. I cannot figure this out for the life of me and I have tried everything I can. Things I have tried:
Full game reinstall from scratch (completely wiped it with BCUninstaller)
Wiped NVIDIA drivers with DDU in safe mode, reinstalled
Cleared NVIDIA cache (which is done when using DDU aswell)
Changed network settings such as private/public
Removed any overclocks/reset BIOS settings to defaults just to rule out any weird issues there
Unplugging everything from my PC except necessary devices (keyboard, mouse)
Monitoring background processes to see if there is a correlation between the lag spikes/background tasks. Could not see any issues.
Using process lasso to dedicate cores to MSFS, ensured to turn off smart trim and of course disabled process lasso to see if that in itself was the issue (it was not)
Disabling rolling cache in game and/or enabling it with different sizes, no difference
Checking read/write speeds of the drive its installed to, to see if there is a bandwidth bottleneck somewhere
Changing game settings like nvidia reflex, frame gen, DLSS, DX11/12, bandwidth settings, rolling cache, LOD, off screen rendering settings etc.
Things I wonāt try:
PC hardware changes
Reinstalling Windows
I should also mention that I donāt have any mods, its a clean stock MSFS install with nothing 3rd party.
Here is a video of the issue. What you see happens constantly in game, and it also does it in VR. This issue happens no matter what setup I am using display/resolution wise (VR or Desktop).
Latency-Mon recording:
System specs:
AMD Ryzen 5950X, stock settings PBO and watercooled, hits around 4.8-4.9Ghz on used cores
NVIDIA RTX 4090 + RTX 3060 12GB (Game is set to run on the 4090, it only sees the 4090)
32GB 3200Mhz DDR4 RAM
Game is installed to a 2TB NVME SSD that is NOT the OS/C: drive
Ethernet connection with gigabit internet (960mbps up/down)
Samsung Odyssey g9 240hz 5120x1440 monitor and two other 1080p monitors but it does it even with only one monitor connected, any of them at any resolution or refresh rate. Gsync on/off doesnt seem to matter either.
And just to be clear, the game was working absolutely fine before this update. I donāt know for sure if the update is what messed things up but I canāt think of anything else that changed. Please donāt comment about e.g a CPU bottleneck or something because this is not the issue here. The game worked absolutely fine for me before, I even have benchmark videos on my Youtube of the game playing absolutely fine with zero stutters for hours on end at the highest possible settings and recording at NVENC 4k ultrawide at the same time. Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated as this is just infuriating at this point. I have seen so many posts of similar issues from others with even higher end setups than mine and I just dont understand how the game is in this state right now. Thank you very much.
Potentially not the solution here, but be sure, if you use it, to have the very last version of FSUIPC. Last time I chased stutters with someone, it was the solution; i do hope itās yours too, worth checking
I donāt have that but thank you for the suggestion. I should have added that I donāt use any sim hardware or mods, its a stock MSFS installation with either a keyboard/mouse, controller, or VR headset (Quest Pro + Virtual Desktop).
Hmm. Iāve seen that sort of stuttering on my PC, but it is always associated with the loading of airport scenery objects & AI traffic as I approach large airports. The fact that you are seeing it āusually every 10-30 secondsā suggests that this is not the same cause. Easy to check, though, if you have not already tried:
In General Options | Traffic, turn everything to OFF and sliders to zero, as appropriate, plus
In General Options | Data, turning Bing Data World Graphics, Photogrammetry, Live RW Air Traffic, Live Weather & Multiplayer to OFF, Bandwidth to Unlimited, just for good measure
Of course, some of your settings may already be set this way. See if the stutters persist. If they have gone, then that suggests that AI traffic and/or streaming of Bing Data is probably the culprit. Turn items back on 1-by-1 until the stutters come back to determine the specific item.
However, based on your OP, I think they will still be there. My next thought would be a Windows Update might be the cause. Iāve noticed a bunch of updates - both OS & MS-Store - were installed on my PC recently. If your PC is set to install them automatically, perhaps one of those is causing the issue. Pure speculation here.
Iām on the SU15 beta (v1.37.11.0 at the moment), but Iāve been seeing this AI traffic behavior on the released builds ever since I installed MSFS in December 2023.
My experiences in & around large urban areas & airports such as London, LAX & Manhattan / JFK on the released build (mostly prior to WU16) were pretty bad. Continual stutters & pauses as traffic & scenery loaded made taxiing, takeoff, approach & landing difficult & destroyed any sense of immersion in the sim. SU15 is considerably better in this respect on my PC.
However, the video the OP posted shows a flight over desert terrain, and the āusually every 10-30 secondsā comment is worrisome.
One other thought comes to mind. When I first installed MSFS, I monitored disk reads to my D: drive where I have MSFS installed and noticed that Windows Defender (or Windows Defender SmartScreen - I canāt recall now) was making repeated read/write calls to MSFS files on the drive. It was as though it was checking the files to ensure they were virus free before they were allowed to be accessed by MSFS. I went into Settings | Privacy & Security | Virus & Threat Protection | Virus & Threat Protection Settings | Exclusions | and Excluded the MSFS install, WindowsApps & WPSystem folders.
The OP might want to try that & see if it makes a difference.
@SmotheryVase665 The windows defender thing is something I never thought about, I will try this today and see if it helps. Thank you for your suggestions. As for the other suggestions with traffic etc, yes I had already tried that with no luck unfortunately. Even with the absolute lowest settings possible and online mode fully off too it still does it.
Im not in the beta but my sim is running well at the mo after hours of tweaking and hardware upgrades to get it to run well after su13 tanked performance. so im dreading su15, im pretty sure it will make it worse. , its not right that i should worry about updates but they almost always degrade performance. I still get the occasional ctd and freeze but i get good fps as i have a fast pc so i can live with these issues but i am not looking forward to the su15.
Well Iām not sure exactly what I did to fix the issue but Iāve managed to mitigate my stutters finally. They are not 100% gone but, completely reduced to almost nothing. Within acceptable range and what everyone probably deals with. The stutter is way less frequent and itās not even really a stutter anymore, just a single frame skip when large chunks of terrain load in. Basically unnoticeable unless you are looking for it. A part of me is skeptical though since I donāt feel like I did anything meaningful but yeah, they are gone.
The thing that seems to have fixed it is undervolting my CPU. I am just using PBO, but I also applied a negative voltage offset to my CPU + Level 3 LLC and tried my best to keep it at around 1.35v or less at sustained max loads. Before it would reach around 1.4v which is ānormalā for AMD but still pretty high.
My benchmarks havenāt changed, if anything they actually improved a tiny bit and my CPU temperatures are noticeably cooler too. This was all around worth it, however I am not entirely sure why the game is fixed because of this. I had no issues with anything else on my system, even arguably much more latency-sensitive stuff like my audio interface running at 1ms sample rates etc. And nothing else about my system would hang while MSFS did.
For anyone who needs the specifics of what I did, I have an ASUS X570 Prime Pro and a AMD Ryzen 5950X. I set PBO on in the BIOS and then applied a negative voltage of 0.15v to the CPU, along with Level 3 Load Line Calibration to the CPU. I left the socket settings on auto for both voltage and LLC.
I would also recommend not using rolling cache or anything like that. Finally I can enjoy the game, thanks again.
I had also reset my BIOS to optimised defaults like I mentioned before and doing that didnāt fix the issue. But yeah, Iām just glad itās okay, for now anyway. I just hope this was actually the fix for me and itās not just luck that itās working completely fine right now lol. Thank you very much for your help and suggestions, it got me on the right path to getting this fixed and I appreciate it!
