FPS collapse on long-haul route

[jweber]

I have to say that I use Gizmo beta. On long-haul fligths fps collapses sometimes after several hours. Disabling/enabling in plugin admin bring it back. Not a big issue, just reporting. Of course I´m not sitting in front of the sreen the whole time. When I come back it is sometimes in the 1-digit (6FPS). Might be my device is underperformed, but on shorter routes (between 2 and 4 hours) There is no issue.

Edited November 23, 2020 by jweber

[sundog]

It does sound as though something is leaking or fragmenting memory over time. We have tested SkyMaxx Pro to ensure it does not leak, but its clouds can make memory tighter than it would be otherwise - meaning something else leaking memory will have more of an effect when SkyMaxx Pro is active. Disabling and re-enabling it allows your system to rearrange memory in a more efficient manner.

Do you have any other add-ons installed? It is possible that Gizmo is behind it, but it could be any other add-on as well.

[jweber]

I have a lot of addons installed. I know - one of them could have an influence on this behaviour. I will try to figure out. Just my wish, keep an eye for further releases on this if it is possibe, of course.

Thank you for your always presence in this support forum and trying to help! this is not allways at this level as you provide when I compare with other payware addons.

Edited November 24, 2020 by jweber

[Ben Russell]

I left Gizmo running for about 6 hours yesterday with the IXEG 737 sitting on the tarmac.

There was no collapse of FPS or memory leak.

This does not invalidate your findings. It shows that code changes since the last public beta release may have resolved the issue if there was one.

[jweber]

So in meantime I can say that it is not a Gizmo issue. There is sometime a scattering-overcast-cirrus combination which brings my GPU (which is not the latest, more powerful model) to the limit. Disabling/enabling simply redraws clouds in a slightly different combination and this brings the performance back.

Edited December 2, 2020 by jweber

[sundog]

Anything you can do to reduce memory usage should help; lower SkyMaxx Pro's cloud draw area setting, reduce your AA settings or other graphics settings, limit use of photo-scenery, etc.

 

[jweber]

I will do as far it is still satisfying in visual outcome, thank you. One day, perhaps you will find a solution cloud shaders needing less performance. Or an other approach is - I need new hardware......

Edited December 3, 2020 by jweber

[JvS68]

Just stumbled on this topic and can report seeing the same behavior on long hauls as @jweber, I have a RTX3090 so running our of memory is unlikely. Also not seeing anything suspicious in the log file but happy to capture some debug info of that is possible next time it happens.

Johan

[sundog]

12 hours ago, JvS68 said:

Just stumbled on this topic and can report seeing the same behavior on long hauls as @jweber, I have a RTX3090 so running our of memory is unlikely. Also not seeing anything suspicious in the log file but happy to capture some debug info of that is possible next time it happens.

Johan

It's not just a matter of how much video memory you have, but it could also be a memory fragmentation issue or even a system memory issue. If you could post your log.txt file we could take a look to see if there are any obvious culprits installed. Photo-scenery in particular can eat up massive amounts of memory, no matter how good your system is.

[JvS68]

Hi Frank,

The screenshot of the plugin shows what happens, I also attach the log file of today's flight. You can see in the log that I disables SMP at some point prior tpo that the performance problems manifested again. I use ASXP and it's true that I use ortho scenery & X-Europe but I monitored my VRAM and it never really went above 9-10GB (out of 24).

After I disables SMP (but keeping ASXP active) FPS went back to normal.

Not sure if anything can de derived from this but hope it helps.

 

Johan

Log.txt

[sundog]

Can you try a flight without photoscenery and see if that helps? It's not just about memory usage, it can be about memory fragmentation too.

[JvS68]

Hi Frank,

I wil try that next time, in the meanwhile it just happened again, I tried to collect some more data.

- Screenshot of the plugin windows

- The metar.rwx that got loaded just before FPS plummeted

- Location where I was flying (Zibo 737 at FL310)

- Log.txt file upto the point that I turned off SMP

This flight was still with Ortho scenery, I will try without next time as well but perhaps this is of some help. After turning SMP off and going to default X-Plane weather FPS restored to normal.

Log.txt METAR.rwx

[jweber]

I confirm in my case the same picture. I also fly with photo scenery. Will try without next time.

[dirmer3]

I also seem to get FPS drops in cruise, not sure the length of the flight is related -I rarely do flights over an hour. Weather will be exactly the same and go from 30FPS (I have it locked there) down to 20. I figured it was when the weather was downloading or something. Plugin admin just shows Skymaxx eating up a bunch of frames all of a sudden.

Edited December 12, 2020 by dirmer3

[sundog]

I'm still of the opinion that it's memory fragmentation on your GPU causing this. One thing you might try if it happens again is selecting "force weather reload" in the SkyMaxx Pro menu, or disabling and then re-enabling SkyMaxx Pro via the plugin admin menu. That should force it to dump all of its memory and reload everything, which may allow your video card to organize its memory more efficiently.

[dirmer3]

10 hours ago, sundog said:

I'm still of the opinion that it's memory fragmentation on your GPU causing this. One thing you might try if it happens again is selecting "force weather reload" in the SkyMaxx Pro menu, or disabling and then re-enabling SkyMaxx Pro via the plugin admin menu. That should force it to dump all of its memory and reload everything, which may allow your video card to organize its memory more efficiently.

Thanks! I'll give it a try next time it comes up and report back. I appreciate all your help.

[dirmer3]

Edit - doesn't seem to work. Makes no sense.

It's the CPU time that jumps up not the GPU, btw.

Edited December 14, 2020 by dirmer3

[sundog]

Weird, that always clears things up for me.

What is your cloud draw area slider set to in SMP? You might need to pull back on that a bit.

[dirmer3]

Weird indeed!

My slider is set around 20k, which I don't think is very high.

I did reset my NVIDA settings to default and lowered AA and get better performance now, but I still get the occasional CPU spike, but not as often.

My only guess is that it happens when the weather updates. Would that make sense?

Edited December 15, 2020 by dirmer3

[sundog]

No, 20K isn't high at all. You really shouldn't be having performance issues at that setting.

If fiddling with your graphics settings helped, it does imply that your GPU was overloaded somehow and perhaps weather updates were pushing it over the edge in some complicated matter. GPU issues can lead to CPU issues as the CPU needs to issue commands to the GPU and help manage the GPU's memory when things get tight.

If you have "never change visible weather" enabled in Real Weather Connector, the weather should never completely update all at once. When new weather is downloaded I'd expect a delay of perhaps a fraction of a second while it is processed but that's it...