Troubleshooting scenery stutters on high-end hardware (RTX 4090 / 5900X / Reverb G2)

In a way, I tested it tonight. I just had the most perfect flight ever in a GA plane over New Zealand. Not very demanding area, but the stutters were so miniscule I mostly could not even spot them. Maybe 5 times in 1 hour there were noticeable stutters (scenery loading possibly) but that’s nothing. Otherwise it was the smoothest and sharpest flight I ever had. So this is somewhat equivalent to disabling photogrammetry and data. Not exactly, I still had live traffic, though no photogrammetry where I flew, I think. Beautiful scenery, mountains etc. Just perfect. Surprisingly with my settings it didn’t push for 45 fps (I locked at 45 to see if it gets there), and CPU was still very close to 30ms at times, probably because of the mountains and live weather. GPU around 20ms. But still no stutters, or they were so small I couldn’t see them even when I was paying hard attention to spot them. I was seriously worried that the motion rig action (it was gusty) and especially vibration transducers (turbulence and engine vibrations) were causing my HMD to vibrate and mask those stutters. But then I though it I can’t see the stutters because of the tyniest head bobbing vibration which I don’t consciously see, they may as well not be there at all, it doesn’t matter.

So it’s the Manhattan and surroundings, which is a heavy photogrammetry area, that gives those stutters, and 737 doesn’t help. Airliners in dense areas is what exacerbates the stutters, and unfortunately that’s what I want to fly as well as those nice scenic GA flights.

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I thought HolographicShell was only relevant for Win11? Anyway, I have a line in my .bat file disabling it, but I’m not sure it’s active at the moment, because I suspected it caused some problems before. I’ll check and maybe disable it and see if it works OK with it again. It looks like scenery density (photogrammetry etc.) is what exacerbates the stutter, as I just wrote above, sparse scenery was almost perfect.

@RomanDesign

Glad to hear you had a good flight experience. I love flying in New Zealand, especially around Queenstown and Mt Cook areas, very beautiful.

Theoretically, to confirm photogrammetry is indeed the issue - you could briefly disable photogrammetry in the settings and do a flight over Manhattan in the 737.

All going well, it might be smoother, hopefully without stutters. If that works, then yes - it could well be a photogrammetry issue. Now obviously you don’t want to fly without photogrammetry because that defeats the purpose. And you may not be able to do anything about it, sadly.

Do you have good internet speed, what’s your bandwidth like? Do you notice any difference in stutters if you fly during the day or night (literally speaking, I’m thinking MSFS server load here and other online users. Where I live, in Australia, 7pm is a real slow time for internet because everyone is online. At 10pm, not so much). I tend to notice I have a better experience when I fly later at night.

PS. I love your motion rig by the way! I’ve watched your videos and purchased the plans from your website. I want to build one, I’m just trying to decide if I have the skills to do it.

Cheers,

1Gb cable, every time of day ehen I measure I get 900+ Mbit. Doesn’t get better than this, in our area at least…

Thanks! Appreciate it. I can’t say I have any advanced skills. I have basic tools, no welding equipment or skills - so I built it out of wood, which is also cheaper. It took some time and effort but wasn’t too difficult to do. Good luck with your buld!

@RomanDesign

Wow, that is good internet! Wish we had that here in Australia. I’m on fixed wireless, 75Mbit down, 10Mbit up.

I wonder - have you tried downloading map data in MSFS and creating a manual cache for the Manhattan region, just to see if that improves the stutters?

Given that your internet speed is already very good, it may not make a difference, but it might help because you don’t have to stream it.

I must admit, I’ve only read about manual caching, I haven’t tried it for myself.

Perhaps it’s worth trying? If it does improve things, you might be able to manually cache the densest areas and simply stream everything else.

That’s an interesting idea, I will try that.

Did you try just turning off Rolling cache?

Yes, I have it off…

4090 requires 13900 for optimal performance

7800X3D will likely top 13900, so I’m waiting for that.

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Since you mention frame generation, you are talking about 2D (non-VR)?

Yep, I had scenery stutters even in 2D.

I had micro stutters on my i10900 rtx3090 until I went into MSFS GENERAL OPTIONS / GRAPHICS / VR “OFF SCREEN TERRAIN PRE-CHACHING” and selected “ULTRA” (opposite to what I though would be best for performance) this was was the fix in my case. Forgive me if someone already mentioned this. Best of luck mate.

Recently upgraded from an 8700k to a 7700x (just as a stopgap for whatever 3D chip is coming though) and am getting much smoother flights in my G2 now. However, I’ve noticed this is only the case if I lock it at exactly 45 FPS (no repro). It’s crazy but:
If I lock it at 40, it stutters.
If I lock it at 46, it stutters.

This must be due to 45fps being exactly half the G2’s 90hz refresh rate, right? Nothing else seems to make sense.

So whoever is having stutters in the G2, try to make your settings so that you can lock it at 45FPS solidly, no variance. It’s the smoothest I’ve ever seen (I was locking at 45 before too but I guess the CPU couldn’t really keep up).

Mine is at ULTRA for ages…

I don’t think I can, with my CPU. Not at native resolution, at least. Well, looks like whatever I can manage I’ll have to live with until 7900X3D is released…

I „removed“ my stutters (that I have had also) with 3 things:

Switching to DX12
Disabling rolling cache
Lock fps on 45fps

While having an indisputable 1% cpu overhead @45fps and some drops to 39 or so on ground this are the best settings so far.

I was doing it with an 8700k before (although delidded), so i think you can! If res is the problem it’s more of a GPU issue

That would imply lowering some CPU-intensive settings. I already run LOD at 100. What else CPU-intensive settings could I lower, without MSFS becoming ugly? It also depends on the situation. I’m sure some flightes in GA airplanes in a sparse area can be solid 45-locked on my system.

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One setting not discussed here so far is to set performance in the nvcp to balanced, not prefer max. Performance. I got this tip here in another thread and to my surprise the experience is smoother on the balanced setting.

At least it is worth a try.

Which setting in Nvidia control panel do you mean “Power Management Mode” - only has 2 options normal or prefer max performance)? or
“Texture Filtering - Quality” (high quality, quality, performance, high performance)