Unbearable performance with SB3.

[Christian Voveris 1030181]

Hello, I am rather new on Vatsim and so far I love it, except for one problem that keeps me from it enjoying it. Whenever I stay airborne for more than 15 minutes, in cruise or something of the like, my framerate slows down to the decimals, till it eventually freezes causing a CTD. Now I know my system isn't anywhere near powerful, but I wouldn't really clasify it as a vintage either:

 

Intel Celeron 2.66 Ghz processor

512 MB ram

Nvidia FX5200 128 mb graphics card.

 

It runs FS pretty well and Vatsim too, as long as i stay near an airport, which seems strange to me, since there is a lot more traffic for FS to handle there. So far my experiences have been a VFR pattern practice in a major airport with a lot of traffic around - with an acceptable framerate for the whole 40 minutes i flew it, this flight really caught my interest in Vatsim. But then I tried going IFR with a Beech 1900, and while it would give me an 18-20 (locked) FPS at the airport which had quite a few planes p[Mod - Happy Thoughts]ing through, 15 or so minutes into the cruise the FPS gradually plunged and eventually stalled. There were no other traffic planes around, and my radius and update frequency settings are minimal. I then tried a similar flight again, on a different server, with the same result, and failed to reach my destination again. I'm really lost about what could be causing this. It could be my system, but then the good initial performance at airports wouldn't make a lot of sense either.

 

Any help appreciated.

[James Harvey 959593]

I can only recommend more RAM

[Christian Voveris 1030181]

I am considering upgrading and RAM is where I would start, but it just seems really strange that in a seemingly undemanding situation with no traffic around the performance drop by so much. Maybe SB is doing something behind the scenes that I'm not aware of?

[James Harvey 959593]

When you load an airport, FS pre-loads that data, when you fly into the middle of nowhere and FS has to process the textures ect whilst flying (this is done quicker the more RAM you have)

[Christian Voveris 1030181]

Right, and it does work just fine in the middle of a cruise in FS without SB with around 18 to 20 FPS, but with SB on, it eventually goes down below 1 FPS. So while I would expect it to decrease somewhat, a 99% decrease just seems to drastic to be normal.

 

Oh well, I guess I'll have to wait till I upgrade my system to fly on VATSIM. Till then, it's back to the world of perfect American accents in Russia on the radio for me.

[James Harvey 959593]

Sorry I couldn't answer yer question

[Wycliffe Barrett]

Christian

 

I dont want to burst your bubble and I am glad that you find VATSIM such an exciting prospect but.....

 

Your PC is the problem and nothing else.

 

The specification on your machine is just to low. I would be interested to know what OS you are using, also the simulator your using FS9 or FSX.

 

Is your FS9 (if thats what you have) patched to the latest version?

 

There where many problems with memory leaks with the original unpatched version of FS9.

 

How it works is like this, as James suggested when you first load up FS it fetches all textures planes, buildings and autogen for the immediate area. You take off and fly away from the airfield, as you fly forward new autogen is brought into view and so as you look ahead you see scenery coming into focus.

 

It makes no difference if you fly at 5000ft or fl280 the scenery is being brought up ahead of the aircarft.

 

Before FS9 was patched a major problem was identified which was apart from the scenery being brought in, in front of you but it would remain in the cache behind you, so that if you was to do a 180 degree turn you would sensibly see the buildings that you had just p[Mod - Happy Thoughts]ed over.

 

That makes sense, but in actual fact all of the buildings and scenery would stay in cache all the way back to your departure airport.

 

That is a lot of processing and eventually certainly on a machine such as yours which at a guess is probably 4 to 5 yrs old just wouldn't be able to cope.

 

I know you said that you are thinking of upgrading your ram, I suspect you will have a hard time getting ram for your machine now (age) and to be honest it would be easier for you to buy a new computer.

 

I hope this helps, one thing I would suggest is to try a long flight away from an airfield offline and see how long it is before the PC crashes.

 

The data packets that are p[Mod - Happy Thoughts]ed over the network when flying online are quite small and people have been able to fly online with old 14.4k analogue modems.

 

The VATSIM network in of itself does not eat Framerates or PC system memory, only the applications on your machien and the machine itself will do that.

 

Good Luck

 

Wycliffe

[Ross Carlson]

Seems to me that if this problem was due to an FS9 memory leak, it would manifest itself whether he was connected to VATSIM or not.

 

Christian, have you tried flying the exact same flight both with and without SB3, and the problem only occurs when SB3 is running? When you do this test, be sure to reboot your PC between tests, to be sure that one test is not affecting the other.

[Christian Voveris 1030181]

Thanks for the replies. I have the patch installed, and on the second flight I attempted, I had autogen completely off. Offline, I have flown distances of well over 4000 nm in complex models without any noticeable performance loss. As a matter of fact, I flew a 2000nm flight in 4.5 hrs (w time compression), offline, just yesterday. Anyways, I'll try what Ross is suggesting here and then report back.

[Christian Voveris 1030181]

Well, I re-installed FS9 and just tried a quick freight dog-ish night flight from EGCC to EICK, and it worked great. Thanks to everyone here for your help and to the Manchester and Shanwick center controllers, which provided some great ATC.

 

Here's a pic of the sunset over the Irish Sea.