Nice, thanks for the info. I contacted both Shadow and MSFS support, they’re both investigating! I’ll let you know of the outcome, if you ever end up going back to the basic tier… 
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I’m curious!
Here’s a little more data for anyone interested:
The CPU’s the bottleneck (who would have thought). I use high/ultra settings at 2880x1800. Lowering the graphics settings doesn’t help with fps. Terrain and object LOD are ~100.
I get ~45 fps flying low over open land areas with scattered clouds, ~60 fps flying low over sea with the coast in sight with scattered clouds, ~30 over Manhatten, ~20 at a busy large airport, ~30 at a busy medium sized airport.
If only i would have found this thread here 10 days ago…
Hi guys!
I am also a Shadow user.
I also have those exactly timed stutters every 4-5 seconds.
It all started about 10 days ago for me…
I have my Shadow for about 4 years. It´s the old “standard package” with the following specs:
CPU: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2678 v3 @ 2.50GHz
RAM: 12 GB
GPU: Nvidia Quadro P5000
C Drive: 256 GB
additionally a D Drive: 2,5 TB
This very same config was able to handle MSFS for the last 27 months without too many problems.
I always had high settings, some settings set to ultra. I don´t fly airliners, just the small GA planes like the C152 or the C172. I was able to fly in a reasonable quality in reasonable framerates.
Since about 10 days the sim became unplayable for me. These constant stutters kill any immersion, as the sim “pauses” for a short period constantly.
I reinstalled my shadow 4 times in the last 10 days, tried different driver versions, tried each sim setting from “all to the lowest” up to “high”… nothing changes the constant stutters.
So, setting the sim to absolutely terribly looking lowest possible settings and everything off or turned down does not make ANY difference.
The ONLY thing i found out: when flying in a GA plane in about 2.000 feet it stutters every 4-5 seconds. Flying in 20.000 ft stutters a bit slower, every 6-7 seconds.
I tested so insanely much the last 10 days that i came to the conclusion, these stutters are completely out of my influence.
The performance-meter, shown in the video above also looks exactly the same at my shadow. As the stutters are shown in the graph, it was the final “evidence” for me, that the stutters really are only happening on my shadow and have nothing to do with the transfer of the stream to my local client.
There is a problem with Shadow and MSFS in the current version.
Today i found this thread here after a chat on the MSFS discord server, where i was pointed towards this thread.
It´s good to see, that i am not the only one on earth with this problem.
So i stop my excessive re-installing-everything-over-and-over-again project for sure. I just can´t use the sim anymore in the current state.
As MSFS is one of my favorites for sure, i will need to think about some other solutions. Maybe the suggested power upgrade? Maybe a new gaming rig? Not so sure at this point…
What bugs me about the power upgrade for my Shadow is, that i won´t be guaranteed to get the same hardware as it was mentioned here. Hmm… let´s see…
Interesting find.
I think it’s definitely the CPU. Because the audio is stuttering as well as inputs.
Very interesting! I started with Shadow just two weeks ago, and the sudden stutter totally threw me off. I could have sworn the first two or three days were smooth.
The power upgrade should be relatively low-risk. You better ask Shadow support if it’s possible to cancel Power, and go back to a regular tier.
I wouldn’t worry too much about the exact specs. It’s quite powerful, with the CPU being the bottleneck for simulations, as always.
But once you have Power it could be hard going back. 
I even run modded Assetto Corsa now ultra with 60 fps.
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I was looking into the Shadow website last night to check, if i can upgrade. If i enter the section, it tells me that i can´t, as i already have a Shadow. Something alike…
Maybe i have to create a new account… BUT: as a long term user, i still have a discount on my expanded diskspace (“D Drive”), which most likely won´t be counted anymore, if i use a new account.
Let´s see, what their support will tell me…
You just have the standard 256 GB diskspace? My MSFS in Premium Deluxe edition already needs about 200 GB or so… 
Yes, disk space is still limited, or you pay for it.
There are Power upgrades available in Frankfurt at the moment. What area are you in?
I am in Frankfurt, but the Interface tells me, nothing available.
I created a Ticket, Support told me, nothing available currently.
What nearly drives me craczy: i thought i had seen it in front of my nose, that i could order one right now, it would take 1 hour till it´s ready. But i tried to change my user-data, as my birthday was displayed incorrect… and then the website told me again, nothing available.
Same for the rest of the day, i tried several times. I am cursed, it seems… 
As i am a madman, i tested some more today… and i think, i found something: i deactivated “Low power Mode” and “Use Nanovg for XML Gauges”, both locqated in the “Experimental” preferences.
This changed things, now i don´t have those “hard” stutters anymore, but relatively “smoother” ones, which seem to be a good bit shorter than before.
So my sim dos freeze for a shorter duration, but still every 5 to 6 secondes, over and over again. It´s still good bit worse than in the better days, like about 2 weeks ago… but could be at least somehow playable. Not perfect, absolutely no question, but maybe it´s a small step from “unplayable” towards “a little annoying, but somehow ok for the moment”.
I´ll continue to try to get a Power upgrade maybe… and start to look around, if i wanna get a new PC with a 4080 GPU. No idea, if they are available yet in my region, but it might be, my days with Shadow are counted…
I´ll update this here, if there´s something more to mention.
That’s right, now I don’t see upgrade offers anymore. There are no announcements. You have to wait and check daily.
I also tried the experimental settings, but they didn’t seem to make a difference.
Hello friends, I have the same problem since 7 days and I was going crazy trying to find a solution. Install, reinstall, change all parameters…etc but nothing solved the problem.
I run FS on an ASUS TUF Gaming Ryzen 7 with RTX 2060 and 16 RAM.
Everything was smooth, all my flights were unbelievably good in ULTRA quality with no lag or stutter.
What happened? I’ve read this whole thread and I can’t figure out what’s going on. I’ve been enjoying my flights every day since the first day I bought my FS until last week, so it’s not about my laptop, it’s not about my connection.
I just submitted a ticket to MS and am waiting for the response. I hope they give us a solution.
It’s horrible to fly in this conditions.
I have found a solution that has worked perfectly for me.
Thinking about what could be affecting performance, I entered the task manager and I was seeing that the Google Drive process that I use appeared multiplied by 4, that is, 4 Google Drive processes. It occurred to me to end the tasks of the 4 processes and return to FS. It has worked perfectly.
Now I have been flying for an hour, in ULTRA and everything is perfect.
I hope that if there is someone with the same case, it works for them and they can enjoy the flights again.
Happy flights!
Have the same problem since 7-10 days ago. Guess it come with new NVidia drivers….
I tested a bunch of older drivers, too, with exactly the same stutters for me. No change at all.
Update: this mentioned ok-ish result for me only lasted for about two days ,then those gamebreaking hard stutters came back.
MSFS is still unplayable for me.
What totally looks confusing to me is, that others seem to have this problem too, but with better hardware than my “Shadow” is providing.
@magnetico74 did yo uchange anything, that may have caused the stutters for you? Windows updates? Nvidia driver updates? Anything to mention?
My past research turned up a few things, but I could not pin-point any in the Shadow cloud PC.
One example was some faulty driver, and device manager kept refreshing and searching for hardware or driver updates. But that’s just to answer your question why others seem to have the same issue.
If you have enabled resizeable bar be sure that 4G decoding is also enabled
What exactly are you talking about? Which bar? What’s 4G?
Don’t worry it doesn’t apply to Macs. However anyone trying to use Resizable Bar without 4G support or when RB is not supported by the gpu can suffer periodical blips and/or microstutters. RB is only for rtx 30 series cards upwards.
I play on a Windows machine. Please be so kind and provide some details.
Simply enable resizable bar in your bios and 4G decoding if there’s a separate setting for it (depends on your mobo), it actually can cause lower fps in some older games but MSFS seems not to mind. I have mine enabled and run smooth with possibly 2 or 3 frames extra.
Out of the box for the rtx3060 (my card) but apparently for others a bios update is required. Oh and if you are normally mainthread limited I’m not sure it will help.