FsXA stutters, pauses, freeze-ups and vas...
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  1. #1
    Senior Administrator Roger's Avatar
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    FsXA stutters, pauses, freeze-ups and vas...

    I had got a little fed up with FsXA because I was having a freeze (or pause if you prefer) after about 20 minutes flight time with the image frozen but the sound loop continuing. The sim would resume after about 10 seconds (average) until approx another 20 minutes when the same thing would happen.
    Stutters and micro-pauses were virtually eliminated by locking frame rate in NI (at 23.5fps??) rather than in sim. I have also experienced the odd ping from FSUIPC telling me I was close to a ctd and oom message but the 10 second freeze ups are still a mystery.

    So I ran FsXA windowed with the JF Stinson (as a fairly light model) and a pop-up vas monitor with frame rates displayed to see if I could notice a frame rate drop or vas peak just prior to the freeze. Neither measurement faltered for a second, which I would expect if the sim froze while drawing fresh scenery. So could it be something my pc was throwing out every 20 minutes that could be causing the freeze? I disabled anti-virus, and virtually everything else I could think of without success.

    My settings are conservative with traffic at around 10%; TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=2048 and lod radius at 5.5.

    Any thoughts and have any of you had a similar experience?
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  2. #2
    Try running FSXA in Windowed mode with Windows Task Manager open to the Processes tab. click on the CPU column so it sorts by high loads. You will probably want to also "Show Processes from all users". When it freezes you should see what processes are running at high levels.

    You could also try the same thing with a program called Speccy. It can show you CPU, GPU, and Hard Drive temperatures. That should rule out a heating issue.

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    Senior Administrator Roger's Avatar
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    Thanks Dave, I'll try that later.
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  4. #4
    I run it in windowed mode ..... BUT with the inclusion of a small free program called Pseudo Full Screen by Maarten Boelens - find it at Avsim. Then you get the impression of full screen with better fps (in my experience) plus the ability to move the cursor across to my other screens without the problems of screen jitters, lock ups nor the dreaded ALT & Enter.
    Just remember to run it in Admin mode. Also it works just fine in FS2004, FSXA, FSXSE, P3d v 1 thru 4.
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  5. #5
    Is there any other pattern to the freezes other than time, e.g. geographical location or similar?
    In that case, it could be a bad scenery.

    Disabling the autosave in FSUIPC is also known to help with short hiccups.
    FSXWX weather updates, on the other hand, will cause short sim freezes.

    And a "lightweight" attribute on an aircraft doesn't mean anything. Lots of animated parts with high resolution textures will still hog memory. The only solution is to decrease texture resolution of the respective add-on (with TextureManager or a similar tool).
    Autogen density at "Unlimited" is another open invitation to a memory leak.

  6. #6
    Senior Administrator Roger's Avatar
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    The trip is from KSAN to KMRY following the coast although I never finish the trip as either an oom or a permanent freeze finishes the trip. All scenery is ORBX including Socal, Norcal and all airports inbetween. I also have Global and Vector.
    SYSTEM :
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  7. #7
    Senior Administrator Roger's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Naismith View Post
    I run it in windowed mode ..... BUT with the inclusion of a small free program called Pseudo Full Screen by Maarten Boelens - find it at Avsim. Then you get the impression of full screen with better fps (in my experience) plus the ability to move the cursor across to my other screens without the problems of screen jitters, lock ups nor the dreaded ALT & Enter.
    Just remember to run it in Admin mode. Also it works just fine in FS2004, FSXA, FSXSE, P3d v 1 thru 4.
    Worth a try...thanks for your input!
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  8. #8
    Senior Administrator Roger's Avatar
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    Googling any of the above issues shows many people with similar problems. Does no one here have such problems?
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  9. #9
    SOH-CM-2021 BendyFlyer's Avatar
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    Yes from time to time. All the above suggestions are worthwhile, run as admin, check task manager for unwanted processes etc. Now and then I will actually get a 'FSX fatal error - restarting program' at this point.

    The freeze may simply a choke between what your CPU is capable of and the Video GPU (well it is on my machine always), that is the CPU can handle the stuff but it gets choked occasionally on the video side. Virtually 90% of the time it is or will be a scenery issue causing the hiccup but that said some models with very high quality graphics and modelling can demand a hell of a lot of memory. It actually can be at its worst when taxying about or taking off or landing where basically the view being drawn in the runway and grass areas so that tells me although that is what is being shown the broader texture files for the area are obviously stuffed with objects etc which are not seen but still being processed. I run a mid level autogen as a result and genrally even with a high end model (PMDG DC-6) it will run smooth as silk, so go figure. I can even watch a movie and listen to music at the same time some days. I also do not think the FSX program cleans out the scenery or other cached files very well either and this builds up after a while and if there is a major scenery change where new files are required it will choke there sometimes.

    I can also generate this situation by opening windows within flight sim as it is running , for example, the GPS, the kneeboard and say a pop-up or two. The FSX window interface is clunky at the best of times and imho has something to do with the way the calls are made between FSX and Win7 etc to use a common interface which of course is a boundary box with data or textures in it, the application. Locked frame rates (22-26), start as admin, no virus programs, moderate autogen, traffic set to less than 16% (ORBX recommends it) low level airport traffic and mid level water textures will all help texture loads and no full cloud density over long distances (i can see only 30miles on a good day so that is enough) does wonders all of which really do not change the view significantly as far as fidelity or reality is concerned. oh yeah and shut down google if your not using it, it is a memory hog at times and will do stuff you don't want all the time as long as your connected to the internet you don't need google or another browser.

    The again I am always chasing down rogue scripts or applications which seem to want to run even if they are stopped or turned off by me as admin and it always gets bad for a while after MS does a bunch of so called security or other system updates.

    Not sure if this helps but your in good company after awhile it all settles down again till the next updates. Sigh!

  10. #10
    Senior Administrator huub vink's Avatar
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    Yes Roger, I recognise the problem.

    I always thought it had to do with my (NVidea) video card or DirectX, but until you mentioned your problem here I realise it isn't. You are running another DirectX version and have a completely different video card, so it is not very likely these are causing the issue. Bendflyer's post makes sense. I agree that it is most likely just one of the CPU's which has reached its limit.

    Upgrading your video card seems a logical way forward to reduce the problems.

    Cheers,
    Huub

  11. #11
    Senior Administrator Roger's Avatar
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    Thanks for your input Bendyflyer and Huub. My pc specs are in my signature and I did recently update my video card from a 770 to a 1070 msi with 8 gig of ram but the problems persist.
    I will reduce some settings in the .cfg but water has to be high for Steve's Dx10 cloud shadows to run.

    The testing I was doing and the search for answers was to see if my rig would be likely to run P3Dv4 at reasonable settings and although I could avoid ooms with it being a 64bit program, the 10 second freezes would probably continue.
    SYSTEM :
    OS:Win7 Home Premium 64 bit UAC OFF!
    DX version Dx10 with Steve's Fixer.
    Processor:I5 4670k overclocked to 4.4 gHz with Corsair CW-9060008-WW hydro cooler
    Motherboard:Z87
    RAM:16 gig 1866 gigaHz Corsair ram
    Video Card:MSI 1070 8 gig ram
    HD:2Tb Samsung 850 evo SSD

    To err is human; to forgive is divine

  12. #12

    my input

    I'm not much for on posting on line.

    I experience the same issue about 60% of the time, but never landing or taking off. 10 second complete stop, then full resumption of normal flight.

    I use DX9 mode.

    I never noticed the issue until:

    a) upgrading to My Traffic Professional 6.0
    b) upgrading to a 760 GTX video card.
    c) transferring FSX/A from a Raptor HD to a WD black HD.

    I lean towards a bad flight plan BGL, or an unoptimized AI airplane, or the differences in the hard drive performance.

  13. #13
    A number of months ago I replaced my old WD 750 GB hard drive with a new WD 1TB hard drive. I had all kinds of strange issues do to a conflict between the Intel Radip Storage Drivers and the new Hard Drives firmware. To fix the issue I had to find the last version of Intel Rapid Storage Drivers that were supported by my motherboard chipset. That turned out to be version 12 if I remember correctly.

    I had this happen on 3 laptops in the last 9 months (Windows 7 and Windows 10) that I replaced hard drives on.

    I don't think this relates to you Rodger but it might be something Dave22 would want to look at.

    Quote Originally Posted by Roger View Post
    Thanks for your input Bendyflyer and Huub. My pc specs are in my signature and I did recently update my video card from a 770 to a 1070 msi with 8 gig of ram but the problems persist.
    I will reduce some settings in the .cfg but water has to be high for Steve's Dx10 cloud shadows to run.

    The testing I was doing and the search for answers was to see if my rig would be likely to run P3Dv4 at reasonable settings and although I could avoid ooms with it being a 64bit program, the 10 second freezes would probably continue.
    Quote Originally Posted by Dave22 View Post
    I'm not much for on posting on line.

    I experience the same issue about 60% of the time, but never landing or taking off. 10 second complete stop, then full resumption of normal flight.

    I use DX9 mode.

    I never noticed the issue until:

    a) upgrading to My Traffic Professional 6.0
    b) upgrading to a 760 GTX video card.
    c) transferring FSX/A from a Raptor HD to a WD black HD.

    I lean towards a bad flight plan BGL, or an unoptimized AI airplane, or the differences in the hard drive performance.

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  14. #14
    SOH-CM-2024 Duckie's Avatar
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    This happens to a couple years back. After weeks ( months?) of researching and wrestling with the issue, mt problem turned out to to be a particularly nasty virus. One that neither Malwarebytes nor my AV caught or even recognized.

    This virus was one that just opened processes that were shut down every 30 to 40 seconds. Didn't matter the process, it opened a different one every time then repeated the action continually. The way I detected it was to watch the performance monitor and see the a processor spike to 100 % and RAM go from 10-12% up 70-80%. The spikes lasted for lest than a second but it was enough to freeze the gaming process.

    This situation was not all that apparent when doing other things on the PC like e- mail, typing or Excel processing. Those things just seemed slow at times. However, gaming was almost impossible.

    I was not skilled enough to repair this my self, so while doing more research I found a free online help site that identified the specific problem and walked me through the process of making the repair.

    Don't know if this is your situation. This is just what happened to me.
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  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by Roger View Post
    The testing I was doing and the search for answers was to see if my rig would be likely to run P3Dv4 at reasonable settings and although I could avoid ooms with it being a 64bit program, the 10 second freezes would probably continue.
    I see your logic, but I don't think that would actually be the case. FSX is not using your hardware as best it can, FSX is the bottleneck here, not your PC. I ran FSX without problems on legacy hardware up until about a month ago when I bought an entirely new PC. The first thing I did was install FSX:SE, and saw no meaningful improvement other than I could set my max texture resolution to 2048 instead of only 1024. I have since purchased X-Plane 11 and P3D v4 and the difference is night and day. The new software takes full advantage of my new hardware and I haven't looked back to FSX since. Not only is the performance better, but the image quality is better, the rendering options are better, the stability is better, and I haven't needed to open a .cfg file once.

    P3D offers a 60 day money back guarantee if you are unhappy with the product, and X-Plane 11 has a free demo available, which is fun to mess about it in even if you don't intend on purchasing it. It's just so nice flying with a stable 60fps in a simulator that was designed for current hardware, instead of 12 year old hardware.

    Good luck!

  16. #16
    Windows Defender or other security software could be another culprit. Creating an exception for FSX, at least for testing purposes would be worth a try.


    And if the crash occurs in a specific geographic region, deactivating all regional add-ons for a test should be the next step.

  17. #17
    Senior Administrator Roger's Avatar
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    Lots of really good information there guys! Thanks
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  18. #18
    Senior Administrator Roger's Avatar
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    What I did to improve the issues:

    1. Quit Malware bytes completely rather than just shutting down live monitoring.

    2. Revert TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=1024. This made the biggest difference in terms of cpu load.

    3. Reduced cloud draw distance to 60 miles.

    I tried a number of other things like playing with bufferpools that made no real difference. It is interesting to watch task manager processes and vas while in reduced windowed mode. Only TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=2048 and Malwarebytes added significantly to cpu load, but the freezes although much fewer than before, still happened when all four processors reached 100%. Generally speaking cpu 0 showed the lowest load, with the other 3 constantly close to 100%.
    I didn't change any of my eye-candy (ORBX and REX with soft clouds at minimal cover) because FsXA/Dx10 with cloud shadows and quality scenery is why I still enjoy my virtual world.
    SYSTEM :
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    DX version Dx10 with Steve's Fixer.
    Processor:I5 4670k overclocked to 4.4 gHz with Corsair CW-9060008-WW hydro cooler
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    RAM:16 gig 1866 gigaHz Corsair ram
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    To err is human; to forgive is divine

  19. #19
    Senior Administrator huub vink's Avatar
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    It is an interesting read, thanks for starting this thread. It have given me a lot to think about.

    Huub

  20. #20
    Senior Administrator Roger's Avatar
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    Thanks Huub. With the task manager on processes, highlighting cpu, you can see which processes are using cpu power and which are gobbling up ram. My tweaks over the last few days have made my FsX experience much more enjoyable.
    As ak416 said, "FSX is the bottleneck here, not your PC." So I may jump sooner rather than later for P3Dv4.
    SYSTEM :
    OS:Win7 Home Premium 64 bit UAC OFF!
    DX version Dx10 with Steve's Fixer.
    Processor:I5 4670k overclocked to 4.4 gHz with Corsair CW-9060008-WW hydro cooler
    Motherboard:Z87
    RAM:16 gig 1866 gigaHz Corsair ram
    Video Card:MSI 1070 8 gig ram
    HD:2Tb Samsung 850 evo SSD

    To err is human; to forgive is divine

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