Stutter before touchdown.. anywhere from 300ft to the moment of touchdown

User Support Hub Install, Performance & Graphics
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you misunderstand me … they are not replays… maybe you do not use replay so you don’t understand how it works… i try to explain

  1. you record you final approach up to the point you want say from 3000 ft till the moment you clear of active
  2. you start your replay (you can just watch it or…)
  3. once your replay starts at the beginning you STOP it and what happens it gives you back control of the aircraft so you land again YOURSELF not just replay… YOU LAND AGAIN Great for practicing landing

If you only use the REPLAY to watch what you did “like a movie” then you see the stutter when it occurred as at that moment there was errors with vectors so that gets recorded.

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Thanks for your detailed post. Just for record i state my hardware.
10850K,3080,32RAM,SSD also i fly in VR
I do not think that I have my settings set too high as a matter of fact I am more on the low side.

What I am trying to get at is that the stutters occur ONLY and ALWAYS just moments before touch down …anywhere from 300AGL to 0AGL,

If the airport was preloaded (say i did circle flight with 737) or I am doing another approach at the same airport (go around) 1st time stutter second approach fine NO stutter

Lastly when I do multiple approaches from recording for landing practice then only the first one had the stutter, every other one is fine, NO stutter

It does not have to happen at all airports happened at LGAV most recent. I will fly again today see if it stutters again.

I strongly believe that it has to do with new LOD objects loading, once they loaded into memory second time they are there ready and do not cause stutter.

Often I see for example landing in TNCM you see people at the beach load… just they are maybe more simple and easier to load so they do not cause stutter for me. also at other airports often one can see some small objects loading as you are approaching rocks etc… and sometimes they might cause this stutter. I think it is something more however like the terminal building that just coincidently decides to load more detail LOD.

I WANT TO STESS OUT that I have no problems taxing taking, off flying and in general flying, yeah there is some micro stutter here and there turning occasionally but to the point that I do not even notice it, These are nothing compared to the stutter at landing. IT IS A ONE MAYBE TWO BIG LONG STUTTERS then smooth for the rest but it is crucial moment so yeah… very annoying

All i can suggest is if you want try a landing at LGAV Fly Tampa scenery runway 03R if you have it. IMPORTANT DO NOT START FROM THIS AIRPORT go from somewhere else so you have direct path to 03R you can fly from Malta LMML, important so you do not over fly LGAV, but do straight in approach to 03R “not giving chance for something to preload first”

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Ah now I understand. At a a guess the actual recording of a replay is not as optimised as it could be which is kind of understandable as the sim is still very much a moving target. And it would appear that good replays are still possible so forgive me for saying but I doubt this is of the highest priority.

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I will have some stutters at takeoff and landings because of logbook trying to log departures and arrivals.

So, first thing I do after loading in is enabling and disabling dev mode, that somehow stops the logbook from the entire session. (also mostly gets rid of the spinning circle bottom right)

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I have no idea of your setup but that sounds to me like slow write speeds. Be sure your drives have 11-15% free space and that they are optimised regularly.

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My write speeds are good afaik.

It’s a known issue:

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I have read somewhere to enable Dev Mode I might try it, Thanks good info, their logbook is useless AF anyways
I do not get the spinning circle more like a 1/4 second pause or two… i will give it a try anyways :slight_smile:

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it has nothing to do with recording or not forget recording lets say I slew to try land again there won’t be a stutter second time

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So I was able to try it out a little more and here are my findings.

  1. I was flying into LGAV from LIRF and on approach stutter and not possible to land.
  2. I started flight at LGAV taxi for take off did a circle flight and I had no issues on the approach it was fairly smooth further down the runway long after touch down there was a tiny stutter or two not the end of the world.

Exactly what I was expecting.

This add-on LGAV is really bad on FPS, it it littered with so much ■■■■ it’s not funny… if you start flight from there everything will load and if you return the stuff will be in memory and will load a lot faster and won’t give any stutters.

So I think it is down to developer to actually check their airports, I also have their Toronto and I have no issues there, probably much better LOD organization.

LOD are a double edge sword as they might improve performance then can cause stutters on initial loading.

DevMode was irrelevant, i rather have it off because it introduces other issues when playing in VR which actually screwed up my first attempt, however I am certain that it has no relevance to my problem or it would be happening at every airport which is not the case.

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I deleted (renamed) CGL file found in the scenery… ground looked little ugly textured at the airport (dirt grass), mesh wasn’t very good… but not a stutter at the approach… hmm… almost 1 GB file BTW… I take that over pretty hills an ditches at the airport, as I rather have smooth no stutter landing then stupid ditch and every bump and cranny at the airport … hmmm… not coping to load all the mash data and every bump and cranny at the airport causing stutters… I wonder…

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Not sure if it is the same issue but check out that post for a workaround: Freeze/Lags while touchdown - but fps around 50 while approaching - #31 by eduio13
Issue is reported here: Freeze during touchdown - since SU10

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yes I have them all disabled/renamed.

Funny I just looked and the effects listed here

…\FS2020\Official\OneStore\fs-base-effects\VisualEffectLibs\Asobo\Base no longer are there unless I deleted them initially, but I dont think I have, as for the other folder, I have them all renamed as per this post.

However, I think it has to do with more with either late loading of LOD objects from airport, maybe airport mesh data, and maybe even info contained in this enormous CGL file.

Some airports are pretty constant stutter just before toughdown, some are hit and miss, one flight it will be great smooth landing next time it will be a friggen stutter, when it happens around 400ft AGL I can handle it, no big deal, worst is when it happens iess then 100ft AGL then the landing quality take a toll and it’s usually cra.p, again worst so far airport was LGAV by FlyTampa, worst add-on performance wise ever !

Anyhow I really think the culprit is the scenery, and perhaps some settings are too high for my system at one point or another, since getting 4090 I have experienced a lot less of these stutters, so I am pretty certain it has to do with scenery, but what exactly that I haven’t got a clue :smiley:

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Hey there. We’re you ever able to resolve this?

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No, not really.

I did upgrade to 4090 and it is much better now, but I would not consider it solved still get them from time to time. I strongly believe it has to do with the airport scenery complexity and design technics as at some airports I will never ever get it and more complex or poorly optimized one will get them more often, but again they are not as bad maybe due to the 4090.

Also I only fly in VR so that adds additional demand on the system.

It very well might be that I am simply requesting too much of my system, since upgrade to 4090 from 3080 did help but again they still do happen now and then just not as severe.

My suspicions are:

  1. LOD’s of objects loading.
  2. Mesh data (height maps) CGL files (not exactly sure what they are and what exact info they contain)

I am not sure if CGL are mesh data (height maps) but I think that is what they are, lately some developers were using CGL files in their designs and these files are ENORMOUS ranging up to 1GB in size !!

Lastly I will add that few scenery that I have which are also high detail and do not contain this CGL file perform much, much better then those that do in every aspect.

So, long story short, now if I do get them I will get them maybe about 150-300 AGL further from threshold so they do not cause such pain at landing and they are much less severe, while before the problem occurred anywhere from 0-50 AGL just as I got over the threshold causing in horrible landings.

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Interesting. I also upgraded to a 4090 and receive that single stutter from time to time. Clearly the after market scenery developers aren’t considering VR. Which makes me apprehensive to buy new scenery.

I did turn down my ground vehicle traffic, water traffic, etc to 20 across the board.

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@AndyCYXU

If I’m understanding correctly- in your first post. You mention that playing back a replay recorded ahead of time of you hanging out at the airport you intend to land at will preload the scenery before you actually take a flight there? Am I getting that right?

I’m at my wits end. I have that 10-300agl stutter on my 13900k RTX4090 NVME SSD machine. Smooth as butter then a hitch while flaring.

If I have to make a replay ahead of my flight of me just sitting at the gate of the arrival airport, I’ll do it.

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maybe I didn’t word it right, “doing a replay” , you don’t have to record anything but, yes loading at arrival airport and maybe pan around a bit then move to departure airport might just help with that pesky stutter during the flare, as if the preloading of destination does take place and helps, I hate it with the passion LOL

Do you use FSRealistic I read it might also be a culprit, but again I see it happen the most at more complex airport poorly designed airports.

I sadly now with 10850K and 4090 in VR still have this from time to time but it seems to have moved to final approach phase as oppose to below 100ft AGL as before.

Let me know if it works for you, not too many people complain about it, not sure if it is a VR only problem or what. Also it does not happen with small GA aircraft, not really, I mostly fly PMDG and also on their forums there are people who claim to have this abysmal performance either at final or during take off, yet not with other aircraft they tried like Fenix for example. I do not have a Fenix since I have a whole HomeCockpit model of 737 which I use in VR and I had enough of FBW A320 so I don’t really care for Fenix, maybe if they made a A330 aside from that I am a Boeing FanBoy :smiley:

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I’m planning on getting FSRealistic maybe once I get my VR issues sorted as well as this landing stutter problem… I’ve read that FSR can be taxing bit of software, that’s why I haven’t run it yet.

I mainly run PMDG 738/9 only as well- I’ve seen this stutter issue with other airliners as well, so I know it’s more a sim issue.

So far I’ve started what’ll be an ongoing experiment… I’ve turned on Replay option under experimental and then loaded up my departure parked at KPAE and created a short 5 second replay of just being parked and I saved it “KPAEgateXX”. Then I went back to main menu/world map and loaded my plane onto the runway I intend to arrive at, 16R KSEA. Once on runway, I switched to drone cam and just flew it around to try and load everything into cache. I gave it a moment for good measure. Back in the cockpit, I went back to the replay box and loaded “KPAEgateXX” file and hit play- it teleports me back to parking at KPAE… I immediately stop the playback and the nature of msfs replay tool is that when you finish playing back a replay it doesn’t teleport you back to where you were before you started playback… So I basically just used replay as a teleport tool to hopefully keep scenery loaded in cache without risk of unloading by going back to main menu. At this point I did the short hop flight from KPAE to KSEA, ILS 16R. Lo and behold… no stutter on flare or final- it just still seemed to mildly stutter after touchdown, on rollout. Still not fixed, but definitely preferable.

Anyways, of course just this one instance doesn’t say much. But I will continue to experiment doing short A to B hops in different places with different scenery and will report back. Ultimately at the end of all of this I’ll have replay scenarios at most of the airports I tend to fly out of and if this all works, it’ll be how I load scenarios until Asobo decides to fix.

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I love FS Realistic, even in VR just have to set it up right so that it doesn’t feel like you are in a boat.

I am kinda sad to hear you are NOT using it as that means FSRealistic is likely NOT the cause “probably”.

Yeah its something to do with the preloading LOD’s or something not the first time where I can see either at go around or replay landing “second attempt” from recording as I explained in first post landing is much much smoother well, pretty much there is no stutter at all.

I tried today a short circle flight today around EPWA (without FSR) and had a super smooth performance, but that was a circle flight… anyways… sadly not enough people have this issue so hard to say if anything ever will be done, also it is rather hard to preproduce, for that reason s well.

Definitely looking forward to see your experience with the preloading of arrival airport when you do more flights. :slight_smile:

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My guess is that this stuttering issue on approach and touchdown is caused by scenery objects being loaded late. This could be caused either by you having slow internet or having MSFS and/or addons installed on a HDD or on a slow SSD.

In that case, there’s not much to go on. If you have slow internet, upgrade to a faster one or try using rolling cache, and if you have a slow HDD or SSD, buy a good quality SSD.

It’s also possible that a large amount of addons you have, mainly scenery, could be the cause of these stutterings. If you have a large amount of addons, do the following: Empty the community folder, transferring your addons folders to a backup folder and do a flight with default aircraft and scenery. If you don’t have stutterings, progressively add your addons back in the community folder, first aircraft, then utilities and then sceneries.

If emptying the community folder doesn’t solve your problem, it’s possible to use a workaround, adapting a workaround found by @AdrianKSFO in using the drone camera to force scenery objects to be loaded before the touchdown.

Instead of starting the flight at the destination airport and using a replay tool to teleport to the origin airport, start the flight at the origin airport and fly normally to the destination airport. When you are on approach for landing, between 2000-1000 ft AGL on the glideslope, hit the Active Pause button and then use the drone camera to simulate the approach you are going to make with your aircraft.

Take the drone to the touchdown point on the runway. You can increase drone speed on settings, so it shouldn’t take more than a few seconds on full speed. It’s very important that you leave the drone as close to the ground as possible, as there are scenery objects that only load when you are on the ground, but be careful that the drone can sometimes go under the ground. You may notice that you may experience stuttering when using the drone in this process. This is actually good. It means the objects have been loaded and you probably won’t have these stutterings when you continue the approach with the aircraft.

It’s not really necessary to fly the drone over the airport afterwards. Once you reach the runway touchdown point with the drone, pan around for a few seconds and that’s it. Click on External/Cockpit camera, disable Active Pause and continue the approach with the aircraft. This should probably solve 90% of stuttering on aproach, especially the stutter before touchdown. If it doesn’t work the first time, try again when you’re closer to the runway, like 500ft AGL.