Flight Simulator 9: Severe Frame Rate Issue!

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Member for

24 years 2 months

Posts: 6,503

I am really disappointed, having just brought a Boeing 777 all the way to Tampa from London. It has taken me about 8 hours 45 minutes to get as far as I have and I've just had to quit Flight Simulator because of a huge drop in frame rates.

http://www.web-wings.co.uk/flightsim/framerates.jpg

I was using Gatwick Pro scenery with real world weather and 100% AI traffic earlier today and was getting around 13-14 frames per second - not perfect, but adequate. Similarly, yesterday I was flying from Guam to Seoul and the Guam scenery was an add-on. But if you look above, you'll see I am getting just 1 frame a second, flying over default scenery and with no weather or traffic in sight!

On both occasions, I've had the same problem with frame rates in the latter part of the flight. The takeoff, the cruise and the beginning of the descent is perfect, but it's when I'm about ten minutes from landing that this problem seems to occur.

I have changed all of my display settings to "minimal", but have had no luck.

There doesn't seem to be a logical explanation. I have used Flight Simulator 2004 for more than 2 years now and have a decent enough graphics card. I've not had any problems in the past. Can anybody think what might be wrong?

Original post

Member for

20 years 1 month

Posts: 4,255

Looks like it was a Virtual Memory problem. FS uses a LOT of it, trust me.It also can drain a lot on the CPU sometimes, for no reason!
Go on to task manager, and set the Priority to High, and see if that helps. If not, maybe a Defrag could be the order of the day.

If those don't help a bit, then i'm stuck!

Member for

19 years 1 month

Posts: 232

It could well be a virtual memory issue.

Other things that come to mind include overheating (if the computer had been running that long it's worth checking ?) Also are you sure you dont have other programs running in the background ? Anti Virus software kicking in for a scheduled update or scan can cause sudden performance issues too.

Hope this helps,

BC

Member for

24 years 2 months

Posts: 6,503

Thanks to both of you for your suggestions.

When I used Flight Simulator just a couple of days ago, it was running for around three and a half hours. At this point, I started the descent and that's when the problems started with frame rates. Yesterday, it had been running for around nine hours before the same problem occurred again. I haven't yet had a chance to see if the same would happen on a short flight.

I never have any applications running whilst on Flight Simulator - even MSN Messenger gets shut down and my antivirus updates when I start up the PC, so no chance of it prompting me for updates half way through a flight.

It's really peculiar. Like I mentioned earlier, I've been using Flight Simulator for a few years now without problems. Normally I fly with the highest possible scenery settings, real world weather and as much AI traffic as possible. I flew out of Gatwick yesterday ("Gatwick Pro") and obviously saw some impact on the frame rates, but I couldn't understand the huge drop on my descent, with every setting at the bare minimum.

I've still yet to try what you have both suggested but will give it a go in the next day or two.

It looks like Flight Simulator is going to be on hold for a while. :(

EDIT: One thing I didn't mention is that if you quit Flight Simulator and then start it again, you're back to square one. Everything runs perfectly.

Member for

17 years 4 months

Posts: 53

Michael Ive noticed from your screenshots that you have alot of add on scenery. Iv also got all the uk2000 scenery and other like aerosoft/simwings and the free add ons from the likes of avsim.

I basically cant fly in/out of any London airport without getting bad frames and also flying over London gives me problems!