Probably Experiencing the same as everyone

[ctstech25]

Mr. Dowson,

I have read through many of your threads and consider you to be the absolute with regards to MSFS (all versions.) I realize that you probably get about a thousand inquiries a day, so this would be inquiry 1001. I just purchased FSUIPC and am only getting started with the manual (will take awhile to get through it). I just thought you might weigh in on this phenom I'm experiencing.

I am noticing a degradation of performance as I go on longer flights. I have tuned my system IAW different forum suggestions. Currently running Win 7 64 bit, 4 gb ram on a dual core Intel processor. Very pleased with the results. I can get both add on planes PIC 737 and PMDG 747 to give me 30+ fps in complicated airports... LAX,JFK,BOS etc. with most sliders set to slightly over half.

OK here is the weird part. A flight from KSFO to KLAX PIC 737 starts out at 30 - 40 fps taxi, take off and fps goes up to 40 - 50 and sometimes higher. However, as I approach KLAX about 100 miles out fps comes down to 20 fps and by the time I land is at 12 to 14 fps. If I stop the sim, shut down FSX and restart, put the plane back where I left it, not changing anything else, I am back to 30 - 40 fps. On longer flights, like 3 hours or so, the fps is down to 7 or 8 on landing. Reload FSX and I'm back to 30 - 40 fps. This is true for the PMDG 747 as well.

It seems that either the add on planes or FSX is stacking resources and causing the degradation of performance as time goes by in the sim. It feels like either FSX or the addons are taking resources and not releasing them when no longer needed. Is this even possible?

I have tried changing sliders down as I approach destinations, but this seems to have no affect. I'm just wondering if anyone else has experienced this phenomenon? I have seen some threads that seem to be similar, but nothing specific.

I am running FSX with PMDG 747 and PIC 737 add ons, fs2crew (have experienced this phenomenon even without fs2crew), fsuipc4 (have experienced this same phenomenon without fsuipc), so I'm wondering if this is an FSX phenom.

Norman

[Pete Dowson]

OK here is the weird part. A flight from KSFO to KLAX PIC 737 starts out at 30 - 40 fps taxi, take off and fps goes up to 40 - 50 and sometimes higher. However, as I approach KLAX about 100 miles out fps comes down to 20 fps and by the time I land is at 12 to 14 fps. If I stop the sim, shut down FSX and restart, put the plane back where I left it, not changing anything else, I am back to 30 - 40 fps. On longer flights, like 3 hours or so, the fps is down to 7 or 8 on landing. Reload FSX and I'm back to 30 - 40 fps. This is true for the PMDG 747 as well.

Two possibilities spring to mind: one is the intensity of AI traffic as you approach the airport. If you reload a flight or restart FS youare putting the AI traffic situation back to start and it takes a while to grow. You could check that by turning off AI traffic just as a test.

The other possibility if it is more time-related than approach-related is that you have some sort of memory leak which is degrading performance by increasing the swap rate to / from disk. Do you notice an increase in disk activity as the performance reduces? Are you using a 32- or 64-bit edition of Windows?

Are you using a fully updated FSX installation? If not I'd strongly recommend to get it to SP2 or Acceleration level. Both SP1 and SP2 had substantial changes, and one of those was making Simconnect much more efficient and avoiding TCP/IP beffering.

You might want to ask about this on a more generic FSX platform, like the FSX Forums here and over in AVSIM. Someone who has had a similar experience might know the answer.

Oh, one other possibility now occurs to me. Could your system be gradually overheating? If temperatures ramp up too far I think these modern processors, and maybe the graphics ones too, intelligently slow down to prevent damage from overheating.

Regards

Pete

[ctstech25]

It seems it's the AI traffic. I still need to make a true long flight, but I turned off AI traffic and a quick prelim flight into JFK was very responsive and promising. Thank you for taking the time to answer my question.

Norman

[Pete Dowson]

It seems it's the AI traffic. I still need to make a true long flight, but I turned off AI traffic and a quick prelim flight into JFK was very responsive and promising. Thank you for taking the time to answer my question.

You might want to investigate MyTrafficX, which allows you to have the same amount of AI Traffic but with much less impact on performance, or, if you wished, much more traffic for the same performance.

Another add-on which can (now) also improve performance with AI Traffic is "Ultimate traffic 2" -- but you would need the new update which is nearing the end of its Beta testing and looking good. In fact you can run both UT2 and MyTrafficX together, with the latter filling in those airlines and flights (like military) which may not be covered by UT2. They cooperate quite well.

Regards

Pete