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#4477982 - 06/13/19 07:44 PM Re: Need Help With Stutter Testing [Re: HarryH]  
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Panama Red Offline
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Thank you.

I figured it was an error, but I make mistakes too, so I was just checking. winkngrin


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#4478408 - 06/16/19 09:12 PM Re: Need Help With Stutter Testing [Re: HarryH]  
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Hi,

Just wanted to finish documenting my results.

Here is a link to my video showing the flight turning to the right as opposed to the left in Harry's video
The issue can just barely be noticed around the 3:19 mark in the video.
This would be around the 2:02 mark in the Z Time of the mission.



I am happy figured out how to do a 2K recording with my triple screen.]
Here is a 2k Video - even using time compression the issue occurs at the same spot in the flight.



Here is a MSI Afterburner trace showing the issue.
Normally I would see a drop in GPU usage corresponding to the FPS drop.
No really seeing that here - perhaps the load the recording puts on the video card is masking it.
[Linked Image]

I did not post this to extend this discussion.
As others think, I think this is just the way it is.

Regards,



Attached Files 03a Third run.jpg
Last edited by Stache; 06/16/19 09:58 PM.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. A. Einstein

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#4478418 - 06/16/19 10:23 PM Re: Need Help With Stutter Testing [Re: HarryH]  
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Gentlemen, I was comparing your videos and I don't think you are in the same spot. See the image below of the test at more or less same time, when the first Fokker comes into view. Disregarding the sky, you can tell these are two different airfields. Perhaps same fields but in different location? Even trees are different. Is one of you using the airfield mod and the other one isn't? This could explain why they fly to the left while the other to the right. Just a guess.

[Linked Image]

Attached Files Capture.JPG

"Take the cylinder out of my kidneys,
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#4478426 - 06/16/19 11:41 PM Re: Need Help With Stutter Testing [Re: HarryH]  
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Different Dates?

Ad mentioned I am not using any mods.

[Linked Image]

Attached Files flight info (Medium).jpg
Last edited by Stache; 06/16/19 11:45 PM.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. A. Einstein

(System Specs:)

I7-6700k OC 4.4GHZ, 16GB DDR4 3200Mhz; Gigabyte Gaming 7 MB, G1 OC'ed GTX980ti; Three-Acer XB271HU WQHD Gsync 144Mhz; Samsung 950-512GB NVMe SSD; WD 2TB-7200rpm; Cooler Master HAF XB EVO, Nepton 240M cooler, V1000 PS; Windows 10 PRO; VKB GunfighterPro Stick; Thrustmaster TPR Pedals; Saitek Throttle; Dual TM MFD panels; TrackIR 5; Windows 10 v1909
#4478434 - 06/17/19 12:54 AM Re: Need Help With Stutter Testing [Re: HarryH]  
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What you failed to mention was the stuttering of the lead planes during take off and the single stutter when passing from the low level to higher level at ~55 seconds during take off. But then, these are normal stutters that I have on all of my WOFF UE games (no matter what PC it is on).


CPU = i9 11900K
GPU = RTX 3080 Ti
Monitor = ASUS ROG Swift PG32UQX 2160p G-sync
#4478436 - 06/17/19 01:05 AM Re: Need Help With Stutter Testing [Re: HarryH]  
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Thanks for the input PR.
I cannot discern anything of note at takeoff.
As for the second - please see note in the afterburner trace.
Regards,

Last edited by Stache; 06/17/19 01:48 AM.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. A. Einstein

(System Specs:)

I7-6700k OC 4.4GHZ, 16GB DDR4 3200Mhz; Gigabyte Gaming 7 MB, G1 OC'ed GTX980ti; Three-Acer XB271HU WQHD Gsync 144Mhz; Samsung 950-512GB NVMe SSD; WD 2TB-7200rpm; Cooler Master HAF XB EVO, Nepton 240M cooler, V1000 PS; Windows 10 PRO; VKB GunfighterPro Stick; Thrustmaster TPR Pedals; Saitek Throttle; Dual TM MFD panels; TrackIR 5; Windows 10 v1909
#4478468 - 06/17/19 10:23 AM Re: Need Help With Stutter Testing [Re: kksnowbear]  
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Originally Posted by kksnowbear
Originally Posted by 33lima
HarryH, do you have WoFF on a conventional hard drive or on a Solid State Drive? If your stutter is really related to stuff being loaded, an SSD should help, and they are neither expensive to buy nor difficult to install.

Following an ATAG forum suggestion, I recently eliminated horrible pauses in Cliffs of Dover every time a radio message was being played, by using a Steam function simply to move CloD from the HDD I had it on, to an SSD. Likewise, an SSD has long been known to reduce the regular hiccups you would get playing routes with denser than stock scenery in MS Train Simulator, which loaded the terrain and scenery in quite small chunks as you moved along the line; not seen since I moved to playing MSTS content in Open Rails AND moving it onto an SSD.


Of course, everything you've said about SSDs is correct. And they have been known to work wonders when eliminating this type of stutter from most any other game I can think of.

However - don't get me started about this game and (this specific) stutter - let me tell you this: Not only have I tried (what I call) "stupid fast" storage; that is to say a Samsung 950 Pro NVMe drive with a read speed in excess of 2200 Mbit/s...but I've also gone as far as creating a RAMdrive to load the entire sim to...

...and it makes absolutely. No. Difference. (And we're talking RAM that is easily many, many times faster than even a 'stupid fast' SSD.) Years ago, I tried 4 SSDs in a RAID 0 array (hardware based, not a crappy motherboard software implementation.) Nothing changed.

This game is plagued with (this specific) stutter. There is no solution, IMHO. It has nothing to do with settings, or how much someone spends on hardware, what FPS they claim to have, overclocking (really?), or anything else. CFS3 was known for this issue long ago, and it seems to be going nowhere, in spite of decades of technological improvement in hardware (like SSDs). People who have insisted they have no stutter, but then post videos which show this exact issue...or claiming they never drop below x FPS, but turn around and say they have the same recognizable hitch or glitch or whatever...

I build lots of gaming machines for 'competitive gamers'. Already done several this year. Every one comes with a 100% absolute money-back guarantee, yet no one's ever brought one back. They're out there, every single one of them, playing all sorts of different games, usually in some sort of competitive environment by some very picky players. Many of them overclocked to within an inch of their bloody little silicon lives...

...and no one has any complaints about stutter, or any performance issues at all. I must have some idea what I'm doing. At least they seem to think so...every single one this year so far was a referral from other people I've built for.

Unfortunately, as accurate and well-founded as your mention of faster storage may be...it doesn't solve this issue. TBH, I'm not even sure it improves the issue at all; where, as you pointed out, other games are often improved substantially. Even with the RAMdrive, the stutter I've tested repeatedly is unchanged.

People often don't see the stutter simply because they're not encountering the condition(s) which would trigger the stutter. This is why a repeatable test is important. I tried to do the same thing a long time ago and was blasted for it, by people who just couldn't admit this problem exists. Yet, somehow, oddly enough, it is the one subject that still comes up after all this time, and the one thing that (most) people do acknowledge, and the one thing there's been no solution for (well, maybe the cloud 'popping' issues, as well).

If there are no stutters, then why's it still coming up?

My observations, for whatever it's worth.

HH - best of luck, in all sincerity. But, as you have so accurately observed: A test that can be reliably duplicated is paramount, first and foremost.


Like everything else in CFS3 they made decisions in the coding to limit the impact they would have on computer systems envisioned for 2002 and a few years after. From the behaviours I've observed while trying to push things farther out with compositescenerybudgets.xml, you usually reach a point where the underlying code can't properly manage the scope of the memory required, and it either slows to a crawl, hitches badly, or crashes. This happens in cases where hardware monitoring shows that a modern high end system is not even close to reaching it's processing and memory limits.

For years I've chased after eliminating a repeating stutter with hardware improvements. I eventually attributed the issue to the code needing to flush a fixed memory buffer on a regular basis, and no amount of hardware was going to change that. Only limiting the amount of what was being pushed through that bottleneck could make the hitch happen less frequently.

p.s. It seems to be related to blitting because the speed and direction the screen is scrolling has an effect, with pure left to right at high speed at low altitude (more visible scenery objects to calculate) being the worst.


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On Time

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#4478479 - 06/17/19 12:04 PM Re: Need Help With Stutter Testing [Re: MajorMagee]  
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Originally Posted by MajorMagee
Like everything else in CFS3 they made decisions...

MM,

Thank you, thank you, thank you...this has got to be the most lucid explanation I've ever seen of what's going on here, and by far the nearest to completely accurate, far as I'm concerned. Although I'd have to give it some thought, I believe your assessment is probably spot-on.

What's been offensive to me all this time is people saying it was my setup (it's not), or - like you touched on - that their (much more) expensive hardware somehow solved the problem (it doesn't). Just like you said, I realized long ago that the hardware isn't even breaking a sweat to deal with the sim, but these problems are happening anyway.

As for why it was done in the first place, I agree and understand what you mean. My conversations with AnKor have confirmed that these issues are probably due to "the engine" being designed around the way systems worked at the time it was being developed - and things have changed dramatically since then.

Originally Posted by MajorMagee
...and no amount of hardware was going to change that

Precisely. It's just very annoying to me that it's sometimes represented as "My brand new $2000 system doesn't have this issue", when just as you say, no amount of hardware (or money spent thereon) is solving this issue. The problem I have with it is that, for the more impressionable people who are here or wander through and read this, they are convinced to go out and spend a ton of money for newer and newer hardware, when it's not the issue and it's not gong to solve the problem. It's very misleading and inaccurate, and I think it's really doing people a serious wrong when there's a lot of money involved.**

On that note, and out of curiosity...what do you believe is a reasonable system to run this sim, beyond which there is a decided diminishing return? I've often wondered...but it seems to me you could probably do just fine with first-gen 'Core i' CPUs and maybe a 780 GPU? Maybe that's a bit conservative, but man, I can build systems like that for very little...

Your thoughts?

** To be clear: I don't care and it's not my business how much someone spends or can afford to spend on computers. My specific concern is when it's represented that buying new and often very expensive components has somehow changed the fact that this sim is built on an old engine that just cannot benefit in proportion to the cost of top-end hardware.

Last edited by kksnowbear; 06/17/19 12:08 PM.
#4478487 - 06/17/19 12:34 PM Re: Need Help With Stutter Testing [Re: HarryH]  
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Panama Red Offline
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From playing this game since OFF3 (more than 10 years ago), I can categorically say the stronger the PC, the smoother the game.

Does it stop the loading "stutters", no, but it does keep the game running at 60 FPS or more which visually makes the game far smoother that if you have a weaker PC that drops the game down into the 40 FPS when things get hot and heavy or down low close to the terrain.

I can definitely tell the difference in smoothness from my top gaming PC (i9 9900K, RTX 208 TI) to my older gaming PC (i7 6700K, GTX 980 Ti).

Are the loading "stutters" there in both PC's, yes, but overall smoothness if far greater in the new PC than the older PC.


CPU = i9 11900K
GPU = RTX 3080 Ti
Monitor = ASUS ROG Swift PG32UQX 2160p G-sync
#4478492 - 06/17/19 12:52 PM Re: Need Help With Stutter Testing [Re: HarryH]  
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The stutters aren't limited to loading, and that's been proven. Panning the view around may (or may not) help, but there will still be stutters later in the sim.

No one's saying faster hardware doesn't run better. I'm saying it doesn't solve the stutters, doesn't guarantee a stable frame rate with no dips, and doesn't add performance to this sim anywhere near in proportion to cost. Not everyone can afford thousands of dollars in new computer hardware every year or so, and if you're going to have dips and hitches anyway ( as you've said yourself) then might as well save a few thousand dollars.

#4478499 - 06/17/19 01:23 PM Re: Need Help With Stutter Testing [Re: HarryH]  
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There you go again, tell me what something is worth to me and what is not worth something to me !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I do not tell you what size house to live in, so do not tell me what my PC / game experience is worth to me too.

It my not be worth anything to you, but you have different standards for things versus me, so keep you judgment calls to your self, and not say that others should or should not do when it comes to what they are willing to spend their money on.


CPU = i9 11900K
GPU = RTX 3080 Ti
Monitor = ASUS ROG Swift PG32UQX 2160p G-sync
#4478502 - 06/17/19 01:33 PM Re: Need Help With Stutter Testing [Re: HarryH]  
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I never said anything about you personally. I said "Not everyone can afford thousands of dollars in new computer hardware every year or so..." I'm glad if you have lots of disposable income, but most everyone I know can't afford that.

Stop trying to make something out of nothing.

#4478503 - 06/17/19 01:46 PM Re: Need Help With Stutter Testing [Re: HarryH]  
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But you are incorrect, strong hardware does stop all the dips, Except for the loading stutters, so it is well worth it to me, even if it is not worth it to you.

And yes, it is something to me when you espouse incorrect opinions about things when you do not even own the game (or have you repurchased it again) ???


CPU = i9 11900K
GPU = RTX 3080 Ti
Monitor = ASUS ROG Swift PG32UQX 2160p G-sync
#4478504 - 06/17/19 01:53 PM Re: Need Help With Stutter Testing [Re: HarryH]  
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Originally Posted by Panama Red
Normally anytime you get a "hitch" like that is when the game is "loading" something, be it new planes or new terrain.

I normally get this "hitch" at about 1,000 ft during take-off and then it is fine till it loads some more terrain or squadrons further into the game and I have a pretty decent PC.

You will find, the higher the Scenery Detail or Regional Air Activity you have in the Workshop, the more small "hitches" you will have during the game.

But then this is a 2002 "executable" and AnKor has done wonders just getting us this far with this old CFS3.exe.


Obviously, it happens even later in the game than just loading for you, too.

#4478506 - 06/17/19 02:18 PM Re: Need Help With Stutter Testing [Re: HarryH]  
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That is correct, it can happen at anytime the game loads new planes or terrain as you are flying, being at the beginning, middle or end of the game.

One way to reduce the various loading stutters is to lower you Regional Air Activity setting, Airfield settings, Woods settings and Detail setting. That way it is not continously loading as many new things as you are flying your mission.

But then everything has a cost, so it is up to you whether reducing these things visually is worth the lessening the occasional loading stutter as you are flying your missions.

As they say, "to each his own".


CPU = i9 11900K
GPU = RTX 3080 Ti
Monitor = ASUS ROG Swift PG32UQX 2160p G-sync
#4478528 - 06/17/19 04:26 PM Re: Need Help With Stutter Testing [Re: HarryH]  
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Agreed, but as was discussed above: No amount of settings changes, or cost, will actually eliminate the stutters.

Everything has a cost, yes. The problem is just as Major described it, no amount if hardware fixes this.

Absolutely, to each his own. I simply prefer not to spend 3x as much money on hardware just to wind up with a system playing a game that still stutters. Like I said, if you're going to have stutters anyway, then save a few thousand dollars. I can almost certainly get within 95% of the performance for less than 35% of the cost.

#4478541 - 06/17/19 06:17 PM Re: Need Help With Stutter Testing [Re: HarryH]  
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Isn't that is what is so great about this country and game, you get to make your own choice as to what you think is important and what you think is not important and then go with it. biggrin


CPU = i9 11900K
GPU = RTX 3080 Ti
Monitor = ASUS ROG Swift PG32UQX 2160p G-sync
#4478555 - 06/17/19 08:22 PM Re: Need Help With Stutter Testing [Re: HarryH]  
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Yes sir, and for the record, I spent 10 years defending that very freedom.

I hope you understand it's just strongly against my beliefs to advise anyone to spend a lot of money - especially those who don't have a lot - when they're not really getting that much more for a lot more cost. Diminishing returns, and all that. And that well-known effect is amplified with older games like WOFF/WOTR - they're just not written to take advantage of the hardware, just like Major said. The few problems that remain are just not going to be corrected by even a million-dollar system.

I have never built a $3000 computer. I have built a good many $500-$1000 machines which I'd stack up cost-per-performance against most anything. And, if you're like most I do business with, it doesn't matter how good it is if you can't afford it. Like most guys, I've admired many beautiful high-performance cars. I drive a Toyota pickup, because that's far closer to my reality.

In fact, the biggest reason I do what I do (after just enjoyment of the work) is that I can bring very high performance down to where every day working people with families can possibly afford it. Or maybe a kid who's working part time in retail. That kid needs to save his money for school or helping his family - and that's exactly the advice I give them. Let me build you a machine that will handle most anything you can throw at it, and keep the extra $2000. Haven't had anyone yet object, and they're all very pleased with the outcome. I also offer them a week or two, no-questions-asked return if they just aren't impressed. No one's ever asked me to take one back yet.

Last edited by kksnowbear; 06/17/19 08:44 PM.
#4478792 - 06/19/19 01:34 AM Re: Need Help With Stutter Testing [Re: HarryH]  
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Well I am a glutton for punishment, aren't I?

...but as far as I'm concerned, I've finally beaten the infamous stutter challenge. Of course, the competition organizer would quibble and invalidate my video entry, since the AI "isn't set right" or some other argument (he loves to argue). Thankfully I won't know, as I'm so tired of his comments, he's now set to "ignore".

For those that are interested, I do agree with the Major, the stutters come from the fact that it's a very old game engine design. As some of you know I used to be "in the industry" albeit on the soundcard side, but Creative also were one of the first 3D graphics add-in vendors. Back in the late 90's / early 2000's, the developers were always talking about the 3D pipeline and how critical it was to optimize the game engine's communication with the then very limited 3D hardware resources. 3D accelerator cards at that time had a fraction of the dedicated memory that they have today, so games had to be extremely mindful of that in their design.

All that said, I have made some pretty significant improvements to my WOFF performance recently, one coming from the discovery that the roll settings in TrackIR absolutely can mess with things. By fine tuning my TrackIR profile, running G-Sync at half refresh rate, making numerous tweaks in the Inspector, and admittedly by turning down the terrain detail settings (although the challenge organizer never did specify the required detail settings), I've successfully recorded a video that's extremely close to, or actually surpasses the demands of the original test. The final discovery was that, surprisingly enough, the BT mod was NOT helping me! I disabled it. The only way I could get close to the test requirements in terms of the action was to "force" the AI into retreat mode by setting the combat mode to "advantage". Other than that, I think I've more than met the test requirements (and I'm finally mastering the darned Dr1!). You be the judge. If you agree, feel free to give me a thumbsup



System: i5 8600K @ 3.6GHz,16GB DDR4 @2666MHz. RTX2080, MSI Z370 mobo, Dell 27" G-SYNC @ 144Hz. 2560x1440

#4478795 - 06/19/19 02:00 AM Re: Need Help With Stutter Testing [Re: HarryH]  
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Wow how smooth is that,excellent work HH. I don't have Gsync but I'd be more than happy to have a copy of your tweaked trackir profile if that's possible? Yep the BT mod is giving me water texture issues,PR and JJJ are (I think) having a nosy to try and help.
Hope they can get me sorted because I love Triple J,s ME but if I can somehow disable the BT part of it then brilliant.

I wasn't logged in to my YouTube account so I couldn't give you a thumbs up there but here it is ..Great work pal. thumbsup


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Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
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