Studder Test

[hitech]

If your haveing studder problems, please run this test for me.

Rename your sounds folder, (note) This will disable all sounds, but it will let me know if it is sound system releated.


HiTech

[AKIron]

Just tested, still stutters/freezes.

[quig]

Hey that seemed to help some.

Took one quick get-vulched sortie, 4 or 5 different cons and only 1 quick stutter. Normally I would have had many more.

I'll have to test this more later

[flyingaround]

Didn't help one bit.  I would even say made a touch worse.  While trying to up a cv w/no sounds, when I hit esc, took 10seconds to pull it up.  Same cv, 5min later w/ sound, I only had 6fps, but clipboard would pull in a second or 2 max.

hmmm....

[214thCavalier]

No difference with no sounds for me and i use Mitsu sounds.
Not suffering any CTD's as yet anyway even with sounds.
Just a loss of performance with patch 5 and stutters although they could be as a result of the loss in frame rate i guess.

Also renamed all the following folders with no effect.
Sights, Sounds, Films and Maps.

[rshubert]

But it made no difference.

One thing I have noticed, though--the stuttering is worse when I am close to an enemy plane rather than a  friendly.  Is there some difference in the way they are handled?  Could it be related to that?

[TweetyBird]

Renamed the sound folder, and still the stuttering. I know what to look for so now I know exactly when its happening - the first time it sees and object. Since some objects seem to have different views (e.g., a 800 yard view and a 400 yard view), it stutters the first time it encounters these views.  So if I'm fighting a p51 it will stutter when it first sees the 51, stutter again when it gets close to the 51, and should another plane type come close, it will stutter for those planes. Thats why the stuttering online is so much worse than offline. But the reason for the stuttering can be recreated consistantly offline.

1. Reboot computer
2. Start AH2
3. Offline mode
4. Take off and start a slow turn so you can see the stutter
5. Fire guns - should cause a brief stutter on first burst.
6. Start climbing up to drone
7. As distance changes from 600 to 400 yards, there will be a stutter.
8. Shoot the drone.
9. With first fireball there will be a stutter

Theres a trend here.

Compare online test

1.Reboot computer
2. Start AH2
3. Online mode
4. taxi on runway
5. Friendly plane spawns - stutter
6.  Friiedly plane clips tower and explodes - stutter (fireball)
7. Friendly bomber comming into view- stutter
8. Get close to bomber -  stutter
9. Another friendly comming in - stutter
10. get close to him - stutter
11. gv spawns - stutter

Both tests done with sound folder renamed.
In my case, I think hard drive access is creating the stutter. The hard drive is defregmented, so the only problem I can see is perhaps some hard drives have a slow seek rate or perhaps some type of sleep state.

In that case, a ram disk would be a fix if there was a way to tell AH2 to look for those files on a ram disk. Hopefully, the ramdisk could be under 100mb. Maybe an option in AH2 to set up some ram space and move the file that are being accessed into ram. That way those having no stuttering problems wouldn't have to use it, and those with the stuttering could. I am 90% convinced its caused by hard drive access.

Edit: since stutters can happen back to back (e.g., new plane - stutter, new gv - stutter) i don't think any idle or sleep state is the problem on the hard drive. It would have to be seek rate.
Also, I dunno how the program works , but this test of sound could be inconclusive. Even with the sound folder renamed, the program could be attempting to access those files (i.e., accessing the hard drive searching for the sound files). The more I look at the stutters the less I think it has to do with sound, as an outside engine kicks in at about 800 yards and there is no stutter there. Its at 400 yards where the external engine has been playing for awhile. The only thing that changes at 400 yards is the view of the plane (it becomes more defined and I assume a new object).

[WilldCrd]

No change on the studders/screen freeze.
I also use mitsues sounds.


I will say this the other day when you posted a list of things to do
1. deleted cache
and 2. tottally shut down my firewall
this gave me a 20fps increase and almost no studders after about 15 min for game to even out

[Mugzeee]

No change for me. However a squad mate. DJ229 and i were talking about the Mitsu sopund pack maybe causing the stutters or CTDs . So he was going to try and restore to AH2 Sounds to default and see what happens. We will let you know.

[AKIron]

Originally posted by rshubert
But it made no difference.

One thing I have noticed, though--the stuttering is worse when I am close to an enemy plane rather than a  friendly.  Is there some difference in the way they are handled?  Could it be related to that?

I noticed the same thing.

[dracon]

Ok I was fine before Patch 5.  Here are my Specs:

1.7 GHz ABIT TH7-II MoBo, Intel 850 Chipset
512 M RDRAM 400 FSB
ATI Radeon 9600XT with Omega 1.5.51 CAT 4.6 drivers
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz Sound Card, TBSC-4193 drivers  
3 Com NIC
Cable 3M/300kbs
CH HOTAS and Pedals all USB
XP Pro SP-1a

I have:
1.  Set Hardware Acceleration from Standard to Basic. Down 2 clicks
2.  Switched from Mitsui's sounds back to the default.
3.  Renamed my Sounds folder
4.  Reinstalled AH2 from scratch
5.  Renamed my Sounds folder
6.  Reinstalled DX 9.0b

This was done one at a time and as listed above.  My best effort.  I'm sure this will get sorted!

OF Note****** I get a small studder when I "key" the radio!!!

[blackfalcon4]

I have seen big fps drop when the buffs are dropping their eggs, will go down to 1-5 fps, have even seen 0 fps for a few seconds when bombs are falling.
Wasn't even looking at the buffs themselves, they were high overhead. And I was alone just upping the tarmac.
Was using mitsu's sounds and have gone to default one but havn't encountered any buff drops to see if there is any difference.

[hubsonfire]

Heya Hitech, just tried renaming the sounds folder. Granted, its 11 am Monday, so there aren't any major scraps underway, but i just flew through furball island, not 1 single stutter. Normally approaching cons/gvs/smoke or using the hat would do it, and those are normally very easy to replicate, at least for me. I'm using the default sounds, only change at all is using a copy of the wind sound effect as my stall sound.

win xp pro
AMD xp 2400+
Asus A7N8X-X mobo
512mb pc 2700
40gig hdd, recently defragged
256mb geforce fx 5200, 8agp, using omega 53.03 drivers(performance settings)
SB pci 128 soundcard (weak link?)
most recent avail drivers for everything, i think

no AA, no AF, 1024x768 32 bit color,
settings in winders toward performance, all ingame stuff at max perf except gv vis range, which is max. textures per frame is 1, max texture size set at 512 (1024 is default). all stuff in game was at max quality til patch 4, been turning it down bit by bit over the holiday weekend trying to eak a little better performance out.

my average fps run 20s in the smoke, hi 40s- low 60s at alt near just a few planes. vsync on, refresh limited to 60 (old monitor).

hope this helps a little.