vPilot causes game to stutter

[Kyle Dean]

As the title says I think vPilot is making my game stutter a massive amount. I've only done a few vatsim flights so I don't have much experience and don't know if this is a common issue. But anyway after about an hour in the air the game starts to stutter and progressively gets worse as time goes on. Both times its happened I was in the CRJ from Aerosoft. I'm not really sure what to do to resolve this issue, any help is appreciated. 

[Don Desfosse]

vPilot uses precious little in terms of computer resources.  Others that have suspected it have found that it was something else, e.g. some other program they were using while they were using their sim and vPilot, or a driver issues (e.g. https://forums.vatsim.net/topic/33480-solved-massive-frame-rate-loss-when-connecting-via-vpilot/)

 

[Kyle Dean]

Thanks for getting back quickly. I will try the solution used here and report back after my next flight in Vatsim.

[Kyle Dean]

I tried changing my sound source from default to my specific device, but that didn't change anything. I also tried updating my graphics drivers, but that didn't help either. I am using Sim Connect with OnAir and also FSE, but I'm not sure where to find these files to temporarily rename them. Would a better option to be to delete the alterations made to the game by these programs and see what happens from there? 

Edit: I forgot to mention this but I'm in MSFS and also when this does happen its a little different from what is happening in this other post. I get to fly for about an hour before the starts to stutter. At first its periodically with a high frequency, but only lasts about a second. After that thought the they start to happen more and more often before it never ends. I have 32gb of ram, run a 1080ti, and a i7 7700K. Without running vPilot MSFS runs just fine.

Edited August 21, 2022 at 09:44 PM by Kyle Dean

[Kyle Dean]

I haven't been able to solve the issue yet. I'm wondering though, when I use the command .aircraft it shows some of the AI as using the A320N (I don't know the full name but its not the "generic" one), is this right or should they all be the generic airliner. 

[Don Desfosse]

Hmmm...  That could be a clue.  You should NOT be using high resolution flyable aircraft for model matching AI!  Can you verify exactly which aircraft you are using for model matching (e.g. which ones come up representing these A320Ns)?  If you're using flyable, hi-res aircraft, you shouldn't be, and I'd STRONGLY advise you to change to low-res AI.

 

From the vPilot Tips, Tricks, FAQ and Troubleshooting Guide:

Q: I'm thinking about changing the default aircraft model that vPilot uses for model matching. I'm thinking about using a payware flyable aircraft (e.g. PMDG NGX).  Any pitfalls with that?
A: STRONGLY suggest you DO NOT use a high-resolution flyable aircraft.  Using flyable aircraft as AI generally slows your sim to a crawl, as your sim will attempt to render a higher resolution image, eat up your system resources, lower your frame rates, and in an area where there are a lot of aircraft being rendered, may lower your frame rate to the point that the simulator is unusable.  AI utilize low resolution models that have a low impact on your frame rates.

[Kyle Dean]

Here is the aircraft list. The weird thing is that I have not changed any of the model matching settings so I don't know why I would be using the non AI one. 

[Ross Carlson]

Looks like vPilot is mostly selecting generic and "air traffic" models, which are both suitable for model matching. The only flyable ones I see there are the TBM 930 and the G1000 Skyhawk. I'm not seeing any A320 Neo. Though I realize only half of the list is visible in the screenshot.

Does this issue occur if you fly in an area where there are no other aircraft?

[Kyle Dean]

I would say yes. I have tried turning the model matching setting off. Range 1 and models drawn 0. So have there been planes in the area when the issue happened? Yes but not in game. Though I'm not sure if at the time the planes were being secretly drawn regardless. Though I doubt they were. I was just checking to make sure that it is the correct model that was being displayed. As I may have mentioned earlier I have only test with the CRJ so I did just do an about 1 1/2 hour long flight (starting point in the air) flight in the stock A320 with no issues, though I was in observer mode so I don't interrupt anyone well I'm trying to fix this. I flew constantly at 36000ft without descending but did see some planes rendered when I looked with the .aircraft command.  

[Ross Carlson]

You're saying if you set max planes to zero, the issue still occurs? If so, then it's not caused by the models being drawn, since there are none if you set max planes to zero. They aren't being "secretly" drawn.

[Kyle Dean]

I figured that lol. I've also doe some flights in other aircraft at the problem still occurs. I wonder if vpilot is somehow triggering a memory leak, that's the only other explanation that I can think of. 

[Ross Carlson]

2 hours ago, Kyle Dean said:

I wonder if vpilot is somehow triggering a memory leak

It's easy enough to check that, using Task Manager.

[Ryan Parry]

Rather than making a new thread I will add to this one. vPilot is causing my GPU to spike to 100% when using MSFS.

I made a short video of the problem so that you can see, but the gist of it is launching vPilot causes my GPU to spike from roughly 50-ish% to 100% and a large FPS drop follows. When vPilot is closed the GPU returns to normal and the FPS go back to being ok. I've noticed issues similar to this using SU9, but not as bad, however after SU10 it has gotten much worse. As you'll also notice in the video clip I am not even connected to the network to generate traffic, this is happening when opening the application.

i7-12700K, 3070Ti, 32GB RAM

MSFS SU10

Fenix A320 with quality to to performance and displays rendering from my iGPU and not the 3070 Ti

Flightbeam Denver

Windows 11 Pro 21H2 Version 10.0.22000 Build 22000

Video clip here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/10AI8Low83kYDHARrxDHvVgKA3f3djqJK/view?usp=sharing

 

Edited September 22, 2022 at 05:12 PM by Ryan Parry

[Ryan Parry]

20 hours ago, Ryan Parry said:

Rather than making a new thread I will add to this one. vPilot is causing my GPU to spike to 100% when using MSFS.

I made a short video of the problem so that you can see, but the gist of it is launching vPilot causes my GPU to spike from roughly 50-ish% to 100% and a large FPS drop follows. When vPilot is closed the GPU returns to normal and the FPS go back to being ok. I've noticed issues similar to this using SU9, but not as bad, however after SU10 it has gotten much worse. As you'll also notice in the video clip I am not even connected to the network to generate traffic, this is happening when opening the application.

i7-12700K, 3070Ti, 32GB RAM

MSFS SU10

Fenix A320 with quality to to performance and displays rendering from my iGPU and not the 3070 Ti

Flightbeam Denver

Windows 11 Pro 21H2 Version 10.0.22000 Build 22000

Video clip here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/10AI8Low83kYDHARrxDHvVgKA3f3djqJK/view?usp=sharing

 

aaannnddd nevermind. This was a classic PEBCAK. vPilot was not in my Windows Defender exclusions, but P3D was. I must have deleted vPilot when I meant to delete P3D. All good here.