60 to 0 FPS in 500 feet!

[mutha]

I was happily enjoying my first day of a brand new camp, ready to land my coveted storch kill, when, on descent, my frame rate suddenly went from 60 FPS to about 1 frame every three seconds!

I have every feature turned on and maxed out and it runs 60 FPS until I hit that altitude when stuff's gotta load!

Any advice on the features to disable to avoid this FPS plunge? I don't GV at all because I'm not from the South, so I'm happy to lose visual features for GVS.

I'm terrified that this has already been discussed in detail, summarized and made sticky, but my fear does not outweigh my laziness.

 

Mutha

[Shuffler]

I was happily enjoying my first day of a brand new camp, ready to land my coveted storch kill, when, on descent, my frame rate suddenly went from 60 FPS to about 1 frame every three seconds!

I have every feature turned on and maxed out and it runs 60 FPS until I hit that altitude when stuff's gotta load!

Any advice on the features to disable to avoid this FPS plunge? I don't GV at all because I'm not from the South, so I'm happy to lose visual features for GVS.

I'm terrified that this has already been discussed in detail, summarized and made sticky, but my fear does not outweigh my laziness.

 

Mutha

I was getting a lot of stutters tonight

[Skuzzy]

This sounds like something started running in the background on the computer.

Whether or not this is related, everyone needs to be reminded, when running Windows 10 and an update comes in, it WILL install during a game and can cause everything to come to a grinding halt until the install is done.

In all other versions of Windows, you should set it so you can run it manually.  Windows 7/8 systems got some updates which mimic a lot of Windows 10 data gathering abilities which also cause uneven system performance.  That particular service can be removed from the computer with nice side effects.

Alt-tab, if you can, from the game, then check to see what is running in the background.

Stutters are different from an extended drop in frame rate and we still have not been able to duplicate the stutters some (I say "some" as the reports are very sporadic) people are having.

[mutha]

Heya Skuzzy -

Nothing running in the background, and no updates.  I turned off ground clutter in flight and will see if that helps.

Thanks -

Mutha

[Badger85]

I too have been getting sudden drops in frame rates from 55 fps down to less than 5 fps. I'll be flying just fine for 30 minutes and then, all of a sudden, for 2 minutes I'll get the dropped frames. This happens every 30 minutes or so (although yesterday's sim session didn't have any of this for me). I can't tell what triggers it.

[Skuzzy]

Start the Windows Task Manager before you start the game.
If you get a sudden drop in FPS, then ALT-TAB out of the game and check the process activity in the task manager.  Just look for something using a fair bit of CPU time (order the process list by CPU time).

[mutha]

I don't know if this is the cause, but I reduced my Environment Maps slider from ALL to NONE and I haven't had a severe frame rate drop.

I still get the occasional hiccup, but I haven't had that drastic frame rate drop happen in five hops with this setting.

-Mutha

[Skuzzy]

Well that would make a huge difference.  The EM feature is the most graphically intense feature there is.  I was assuming you were running default settings.