Posted By: CaptSopwith
Performance Issues? Check TrackIR - 04/21/17 01:26 PM
Hi chaps!
I hope everything is doing well. I've had an odd experience with my setup for WOFF yesterday and, with the changes it made, I thought I'd pass this along in the off chance it might be useful.
Like a lot of other players on the board, I have suffered from intermittent stutters, pauses, and even the very rare freeze (which would last a few seconds). I've tried just about every possible combination of settings in the workshop and on my nVidia graphics card. I run a modest system. I have a Dell XPS 8700 with an Intel i7 4000 series chip at 3.6 ghz, I run 16 GB of RAM and have an OEM nVidia 745GTX graphics card with 4GB of video RAM. It's a solid system and I can run most other flight sims - like IL-2 1946, and Falcon BMS with most of the settings cranked up.
I've run WOFF in its stock configuration since I've started playing but the stutters persisted. I've tried dialing the graphics settings back in the Workshop, as advised in the FAQ, which would help at some points but not others. I've tried every type of permutation of nVidia settings I could find, and again, met with intermittent and inconsistent success. I've tried moving CFS3 onto a different core while running. And, you guessed it, sometimes it would help, and sometimes not. I close all background applications (my system only starts four programs on boot) and still no luck.
And then I checked TrackIR.
Now, the FAQ tells us to dial back the "smoothness" settings - which I've tried (again, with the same hit and miss results).
What I didn't think to check was TrackIR's permissions.
I've had TrackIR set to "Run as Administrator" under its compatibility settings for years now - something I started doing back in Windows 7 on my old rig and I carried it over without giving it a second thought. To be honest, I've never noticed an issue in any other sim I fly.
Yesterday, I tried again to solve my mysterious performance issues. This time, I checked for a driver update for TrackIR - not something I've thought to do before. Sure enough, I was one update behind. The latest version of the driver says that it address an issue when TrackIR runs in elevated permissions and the sim does not. Which is precisely what my setup has done entirely by accident.
So I updated the drivers, went back into the program settings, and turned off "Run as Administrator" on TrackIR.
The difference is, literally, has been night and day.
Even on my FPS Stress Test, which is a mission with a 40 on 40 merge in bad weather over a busy part of the front populated with ruined buildings - the sim chugged (FPS down to 25-30 at times) but never stuttered and didn't pause. Frame rate was choppy as anything, but I could still look around without freezing and without stuttering.
And after the merge? Smooth as silk. Even with eighty planes shooting at each other (and in some cases, colliding!)
Looking around no long causes any hiccups in the frame rate, and the stutter effect has disappeared completely. I often couldn't glance around quickly in the sim without the game hanging. And now, that issue has disappeared. Only when the sim is under intense load (like an 80 plane furball in bad weather) does it begin to grind a bit.
I then played through every quick scenario the sim ships with across all four air services - smooth every time.
Then I loaded up some 1918 careers like Jasta 34 and USAS 148 and sure enough, nice and smooth with the sim set to its stock settings after install. The graphics memory read out in the sim clocks in lower than usual and the fps stays nearly locked at 60fps with only a slight dip if I look down into the cockpit of some aircraft.
So, if you are still having those odd issues with FPS that you can't seem to track down - check your TrackIR version, download the latest update, and be sure that WOFF, CFS3 and TrackIR are all playing on the same admin access levels.
Anyway, sorry for the long post - hope this helps anyone who is still experiencing issues!
Cheers!
I hope everything is doing well. I've had an odd experience with my setup for WOFF yesterday and, with the changes it made, I thought I'd pass this along in the off chance it might be useful.
Like a lot of other players on the board, I have suffered from intermittent stutters, pauses, and even the very rare freeze (which would last a few seconds). I've tried just about every possible combination of settings in the workshop and on my nVidia graphics card. I run a modest system. I have a Dell XPS 8700 with an Intel i7 4000 series chip at 3.6 ghz, I run 16 GB of RAM and have an OEM nVidia 745GTX graphics card with 4GB of video RAM. It's a solid system and I can run most other flight sims - like IL-2 1946, and Falcon BMS with most of the settings cranked up.
I've run WOFF in its stock configuration since I've started playing but the stutters persisted. I've tried dialing the graphics settings back in the Workshop, as advised in the FAQ, which would help at some points but not others. I've tried every type of permutation of nVidia settings I could find, and again, met with intermittent and inconsistent success. I've tried moving CFS3 onto a different core while running. And, you guessed it, sometimes it would help, and sometimes not. I close all background applications (my system only starts four programs on boot) and still no luck.
And then I checked TrackIR.
Now, the FAQ tells us to dial back the "smoothness" settings - which I've tried (again, with the same hit and miss results).
What I didn't think to check was TrackIR's permissions.
I've had TrackIR set to "Run as Administrator" under its compatibility settings for years now - something I started doing back in Windows 7 on my old rig and I carried it over without giving it a second thought. To be honest, I've never noticed an issue in any other sim I fly.
Yesterday, I tried again to solve my mysterious performance issues. This time, I checked for a driver update for TrackIR - not something I've thought to do before. Sure enough, I was one update behind. The latest version of the driver says that it address an issue when TrackIR runs in elevated permissions and the sim does not. Which is precisely what my setup has done entirely by accident.
So I updated the drivers, went back into the program settings, and turned off "Run as Administrator" on TrackIR.
The difference is, literally, has been night and day.
Even on my FPS Stress Test, which is a mission with a 40 on 40 merge in bad weather over a busy part of the front populated with ruined buildings - the sim chugged (FPS down to 25-30 at times) but never stuttered and didn't pause. Frame rate was choppy as anything, but I could still look around without freezing and without stuttering.
And after the merge? Smooth as silk. Even with eighty planes shooting at each other (and in some cases, colliding!)
Looking around no long causes any hiccups in the frame rate, and the stutter effect has disappeared completely. I often couldn't glance around quickly in the sim without the game hanging. And now, that issue has disappeared. Only when the sim is under intense load (like an 80 plane furball in bad weather) does it begin to grind a bit.
I then played through every quick scenario the sim ships with across all four air services - smooth every time.
Then I loaded up some 1918 careers like Jasta 34 and USAS 148 and sure enough, nice and smooth with the sim set to its stock settings after install. The graphics memory read out in the sim clocks in lower than usual and the fps stays nearly locked at 60fps with only a slight dip if I look down into the cockpit of some aircraft.
So, if you are still having those odd issues with FPS that you can't seem to track down - check your TrackIR version, download the latest update, and be sure that WOFF, CFS3 and TrackIR are all playing on the same admin access levels.
Anyway, sorry for the long post - hope this helps anyone who is still experiencing issues!
Cheers!