Micro-stuttering / hitch & Frametime spikes issue

[Simon Ng]

Hi,

I was having issues with my F16C module not being as smooth as the FA18C module so unchecked the "Mirror" option within my TrackIR settings (screenshot below). This seems to cure the problem in case anyone else was having 'stuttering' caused by TrackIR that is.

Kind regards.

My Specs:

 

AMD Ryzen 5 3600
Asus Prime B450-Plus
Sapphire AMD Radeon RX580 4GB
32GB Corsair  3000MHz
Track IR5
Saitek X52 Pro HOTAS

Edited April 20, 2023 by Simon Ng
Wanted to remove the page break line.

[silverdevil]

2 hours ago, Simon Ng said:

(screenshot below)

no screenshot attached?

[TOViper]

you have to click on NEXT PAGE

Saw it at second glance too ...

[silverdevil]

9 hours ago, TOViper said:

you have to click on NEXT PAGE

Saw it at second glance too ...

weird. i tried that yesterday and got nothing. lol. sorry.

i do have mirror checked though i notice no stutters unless very few.

[EbonySeraphim]

General suggestion to ED: DCS should log a warning when scripts cause very poor performance. Not every time it happens as it could happen every frame, but once every 5 seconds or so when the same script offends more than one time. More than one because external system stutter could randomly catch any script perhaps, but twice on the same script is likely no longer a coincidence.

I just solved my stuttering issues which were giving me 1% and .1% lows of 16/17fps on an MP server with a 90 fps average; and even free flight SP was giving me maybe 110 fps average, but 30-40fps on 1% and .1% lows. The stutters were happening both every 2/3rds of a second, and bigger ones once every 2 seconds or so consistently. My solution was disabling DCS-Export and DCS-BIOS. I dove deep into profiling DCS on my system while trying many of the common suggestions and nothing had any impact on performance. I spent a couple of days on the task so some advice:

• Use MSI Afterburner (you probably already are if you know you have microstutters) so you can actually see what changes matter and which dont
• Test the same map, mission (or one MP one SP) with the same module. Different DCS modules have different baseline performance even if they're sitting on the same airfield
• I only delete the fxo/metashaders folders if graphics drivers or options (in game or driver/DirectX control panel) are changed; spare yourself the shader compile time.
• Most of those dealing with this have end systems we know should average 60fps+ on quite high settings. Despite this, set your graphics options to low, minimally texture quality visible range, and preload radius, and verify if you still have the stutters. If you do, set your graphics options back to what they should be because that isn't your problem.
• RAM speed isn't going to eliminate stuttering assuming the dips are super super low, well below what you know your system usually does. I have PC32000 DDR4 RAM (not the fastest), turning XMP profile off/on made a substantial difference but given this is a 2x speed swing and it didn't half my 1% and .1% lows, it shouldn't have been my focus. My 1% and .1% lows went from 17-ish to 12 on an MP server.
• With 5950X and 64GB of RAM, no background service or other running program made a difference. Even ones that I personally can see take up a little too much (ElGato Audio Service or something). I could have many Chrome tabs open, many with YouTube, and even playing a YouTube video during gameplay. This made no difference.
• DCS full repair, with removing extra files found did nothing
• Disabling hot pluggable devices in DCS did nothing for me
• Disabling Microsoft Root Device Enumerator (and a reboot) did nothing
• Disabling fTPM in UEFI (Trusted Platform Module 2.0) did nothing for me
• Closing nVidia GeForce experience had no effect
• The problem persisted across multiple nVidia driver versions
• Setting a higher PBO max boost didn't help things
• I tried various combinations of G-sync, V-sync=game setting / fast. Though I knew the issue wasn't graphics, frame presentation/sync still changes game loop behavior
• I dove deep into profiling with: Process Explorer, Performance Monitor, uProf (AMD specific). I noticed page fault and presumed that maybe I was dealing with unecessary disk access (my RAM is fast enough, even an nVME SSD could cause hitches). This was not my problem
  • DCS was showing me page faults happening in a sort of spiky way but reporting on page faults / hard faults are generally every second so it's impossible to line it up with the fluid frametime graphs within DCS or MSI Afterburner
  • uProf is a non-trivial tool to use, and was showing me a miss rate on L2 cache that I thought was somewhat validating my suspicions. 5950x has an L3 cache though but I couldn't get uProf to profile L3 cache hits/misses (likely a bug with the tool right now).
• Arbitrarily, I considered maybe the DCS log might be a culprit of something were being logged (disk writes) excessively eventually forcing a very slow IO sync so I opened up the log to see what was going on during actual simulation. I noticed a frequent (but not excessive) message about a DCS-BIOS script failing to compute or construct the F-16 DED line right (this was my test scenario)
  • First step I took was to update it in case there was a performance problem. That didn't fix it
  • Next step: now I'm reminded that I have a bunch of DCS scripts that could be the culprit so I disable them
    • Plugins that caused no performance hit in terms of the stutter: SRS, Tacview, SimShaker, VPC Link Tool (vpcGameGUI.lua), DCS ScratchPad
    • Problems: DCS-BIOS, DCS-Export

Again, each of those plugins created massive microstuttering down in an unacceptable way. Everything I tried that didn't work, I have turned back on and I get no stutters, great performance. They also lowered my average FPS noticeably too, but I would be totally fine with that cost given how I use them with my StreamDeck and I'm well above 60fps anyways. Removing both plugins my .1% lows went up to 73 from 17 in MP, and from 35 -> 85 in the SP free flight Syria mission. My 1% lows are even higher, and sometimes surprisingly close to my average frame rate.

So now I have to overhaul my StreamDeck profiles to operate through hotkeys instead of the DCS-StreamDeck plugin...bummer.

 

Edited May 7, 2023 by EbonySeraphim
Added stuff that I tried that had no impact

[Gui_Santos]

In my case there is nothing that can definitively solve it, I'm on the verge of abandoning DCS.

dcs.log

[Dangerzone]

5 hours ago, Gui_Santos said:

In my case there is nothing that can definitively solve it, I'm on the verge of abandoning DCS.

dcs.log 61.75 kB · 0 downloads

Please correct me if I'm wrong - but according to your log it seems you're running a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti with 16GB RAM, and have a number of graphic hungry options set. (MSAA, Raindrops, Lenseffects, max terrain textures, etc)?

If so - I think you might be asking a bit much from your GPU. I'd suggest trying DCS with all settings on LOW or OFF where possible (and all sliders down to 0 except the preload radius). Then see if this makes any difference. If that works - then maybe look at increasing some graphic settings one by one until you start seeing issues, and back off a couple of steps and see how you go with that.

If I'm reading the log file wrong - can you post a screenshot of your graphic settings in DCS, plus your actual machine specs?

Edited May 9, 2023 by Dangerzone

[Gui_Santos]

13 hours ago, Dangerzone said:

Please correct me if I'm wrong - but according to your log it seems you're running a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti with 16GB RAM, and have a number of graphic hungry options set. (MSAA, Raindrops, Lenseffects, max terrain textures, etc)?

If so - I think you might be asking a bit much from your GPU. I'd suggest trying DCS with all settings on LOW or OFF where possible (and all sliders down to 0 except the preload radius). Then see if this makes any difference. If that works - then maybe look at increasing some graphic settings one by one until you start seeing issues, and back off a couple of steps and see how you go with that.

If I'm reading the log file wrong - can you post a screenshot of your graphic settings in DCS, plus your actual machine specs?

 

Yes, but this configurations always play with 50-60fps before the last updates... 

[Dangerzone]

11 hours ago, Gui_Santos said:

Yes, but this configurations always play with 50-60fps before the last updates... 

Is your problem with MT and ST, or just Multi-Threading?

If multi-threading, the solution will be to switch back to ST and wait - as it appears a number of us are seeing issues with MT - and MT is still just a 'Preview' release at the moment (we're all Beta testing it).

If your problem is with ST as well, I'm not really sure what to say then except to try as I mentioned previously dialing down some settings because from my perspective abandoning DCS before trying to dial down a few settings when you have options seems a little heavy approached. No - I agree you shouldn't have to do this - but in the same place - ED are currently working on performance optimizations - something we've been waiting on for years, and it's now here - in BETA testing, so it would be a shame to abandon DCS right at the edge of where their may be improvements if there are settings that you could dial down a little as a workaround for now. 

However in saying that - that is my perspective - I also understand if DCS is becoming more of a frustration than it is enjoyment then it might be worth putting it down for a while until things are sorted out, but I personally hope you try dialing down the settings if ST is causing you issues for the time being.

[Gui_Santos]

11 hours ago, Dangerzone said:

Is your problem with MT and ST, or just Multi-Threading?

If multi-threading, the solution will be to switch back to ST and wait - as it appears a number of us are seeing issues with MT - and MT is still just a 'Preview' release at the moment (we're all Beta testing it).

If your problem is with ST as well, I'm not really sure what to say then except to try as I mentioned previously dialing down some settings because from my perspective abandoning DCS before trying to dial down a few settings when you have options seems a little heavy approached. No - I agree you shouldn't have to do this - but in the same place - ED are currently working on performance optimizations - something we've been waiting on for years, and it's now here - in BETA testing, so it would be a shame to abandon DCS right at the edge of where their may be improvements if there are settings that you could dial down a little as a workaround for now. 

However in saying that - that is my perspective - I also understand if DCS is becoming more of a frustration than it is enjoyment then it might be worth putting it down for a while until things are sorted out, but I personally hope you try dialing down the settings if ST is causing you issues for the time being.

Is only in ST mode, the MT i have abandoned in the begining with same problems. I am testing any configurations down, but the freezing continues in any ocasions. Tks for all, let's talking about this issues and waiting the ED solutions.

Regards from Brazil.

[Gui_Santos]

Just for the record: After 2 months studying different hypotheses for this sudden drop in performance, I came to the conclusion that after the updates made in the first months of 2023, the DCS started to consume more ram memory, as my pc has only 16GB the limit has arrived, it was to be expected that with the evolution of the game this would happen, but I am at the limit of my motherboard and with no chance of a general equipment upgrade at the moment (I live in Brazil, here the dollar is multiplied by 5.3 in our currency plus the tax that the leftist government imposes on us). I was even waiting for the F14 promotion to buy it, but I declined any new purchases at DCS until I get a memory upgrade or the game goes through some update that optimizes performance and returns to how it was a few months ago. Thank you all for your attention, hugs!

[Wiggo]

Hmm. I have this VERY same kind of problem right after updating to DCS 2.9. Could it be just my windows 10 messing around. No matter what graph settigs i choose, it stutters, just like detailed here. Before i have had this same problem in syria map, but it just went away and i thought it is the dcs. Hmm very Weird. Maby i will try messing with power settings. Hmm. At the same day when i installed DCS 2.9 update i remember switching hibernatin off (just to get rid hibernate.sys to get more free ssd space for a moment). Could it be that, not 2.9? Weird that i havent found pretty much any mention about 2.9 graphics stuttering. Vice versa. My problem is basically on the ground. Dunno why. when I go upper in the air i have nice and steady 40fps with factory high settings, just msaa 4x cause have pretty old computer. 2.8 runned fine,and 2.9 seems to have gave me big boost to FPS but at the same time came THIS. 

[BIGNEWY]

Experiencing stutter in Multi Threading?  

Try disabling Windows core parking it has helped others and worth a try.

 

[Gripen 4-1]

@BIGNEWY 2.9 MT is causing stutter for me too, although I am not on an Intel system. No core parking activated for my Ryzen 5900X. The stutters are random  and not following a pattern. One time I start the caucasus mission it is butter smooth, next time I get stuttering. 

Deactivating core parking seems to help a lot of users, but I think it is not the only MT problem. Don't think it is an Intel problem, stuttering is also present for AMD Cpu's. Fun Fact it happens also in not CPU heavy scenarios. Seems more like a thread / scheduler sync problem.

I know it is difficult to find the cause, but please make this priority. It is no fun in VR with this kind of stuttering. In the past in ST, with the right  settings to hold the VR headsets FPS it felt somehow smoother.

These stutter occur out of nowhere. Although I have the feeling that MT is very, very hard on one CPU core, which is almost maxed out in taskmanager.

[BIGNEWY]

Just now, Gripen 4-1 said:

@BIGNEWY 2.9 MT is causing stutter for me too, although I am not on an Intel system. No core parking activated for my Ryzen 5900X. The stutters are random  and not following a pattern. One time I start the caucasus mission it is butter smooth, next time I get stuttering. 

Deactivating core parking seems to help a lot of users, but I think it is not the only MT problem. Don't think it is an Intel problem, stuttering is also present for AMD Cpu's. Fun Fact it happens also in not CPU heavy scenarios. Seems more like a thread / scheduler sync problem.

I know it is difficult to find the cause, but please make this priority. It is no fun in VR with this kind of stuttering. In the past in ST, with the right  settings to hold the VR headsets FPS it felt somehow smoother.

These stutter occur out of nowhere. Although I have the feeling that MT is very, very hard on one CPU core, which is almost maxed out in taskmanager.

Just some things off the top of me head. 
Do you have hotplug disabled in DCS controls? 
Its worth checking any scripts running, like tacview or anything else just to rule those out also. 

Do you have HAGS enabled in windows? might be worth trying either way. 

If you do have a bottleneck only solution is to reduce settings so it reduces load on the cpu. 

[Gripen 4-1]

Just now, BIGNEWY said:

Just some things off the top of me head. 
Do you have hotplug disabled in DCS controls? 
Its worth checking any scripts running, like tacview or anything else just to rule those out also. 

Do you have HAGS enabled in windows? might be worth trying either way. 

If you do have a bottleneck only solution is to reduce settings so it reduces load on the cpu. 

Hotplug disabled, no scripts runnig, no tacview, started without dcs export for my UFC and without SSA for my haptic pad, but still no joy 

will give hags a try

[BIGNEWY]

Just now, Gripen 4-1 said:

Hotplug disabled, no scripts runnig, no tacview, started without dcs export for my UFC and without SSA for my haptic pad, but still no joy 

will give hags a try

also how quick is your hard drive, and how much spare room does it have, when they start getting full they can run into issues. 

[Gripen 4-1]

@BIGNEWY

no, sorry HAGS made it even worse - constantly stuttering

set the default VR profile, which is very light for my hardware - also stuttering / 1 core is close to maxed out or maxed out.

Have two pcie 4.0 M2 ssd's one for OS and a 2 TB exclusively for DCS 1.22TB free.

Something in MT seems to be bugged

[TOViper]

If it is related to the drive:
Is the SSD maybe slowly dying caused by heavy usage in the past?
I recently heard rumors that some SSD's slowly start producing failures after a certain period of time (or a certain number of reads/write hits?).

Further i remember setting these, which helped me:
Virus scanner, Windows internal virus protection
Windows "Graphic settings"
BIOS: disable C-states

Just my two cents on this ...

Edited October 23, 2023 by TOViper

[GibsonPlayer]

I'm also experiencing this hitching problem. It's even present in the F10 map view. I built a new PC (Ryzen 9 5900X | RTX 3080TI | 64GB | dedicated SSD for DCS) last winter and up until a couple months ago I had silky smooth gameplay with my settings on max. Then, before the 2.9 update, DCS has become unplayable. I updated to 2.9 and the issue hasn't changed. I think I'm starting to see hitching in real life. This is absolutely miserable. The past week I've read dozens of settings for a remedy, but nothing works. Should I start a new thread?

Edited October 23, 2023 by GibsonPlayer

[Hiob]

5 hours ago, BIGNEWY said:

also how quick is your hard drive, and how much spare room does it have, when they start getting full they can run into issues. 

Regarding SSDs as a cause for stuttering -

I just read, that W11 bitlocker encryption severely degrades performance on SSDs. Most people probably won’t encrypt game-drives (I hope) but maybe some people have encrypted their whole system or installed DCS on the System- or Data-Drive that happened to be encrypted.

[BIGNEWY]

2 hours ago, Hiob said:

Regarding SSDs as a cause for stuttering -

I just read, that W11 bitlocker encryption severely degrades performance on SSDs. Most people probably won’t encrypt game-drives (I hope) but maybe some people have encrypted their whole system or installed DCS on the System- or Data-Drive that happened to be encrypted.

thanks for the heads up 

[Gripen 4-1]

10 hours ago, Hiob said:

Regarding SSDs as a cause for stuttering -

I just read, that W11 bitlocker encryption severely degrades performance on SSDs. Most people probably won’t encrypt game-drives (I hope) but maybe some people have encrypted their whole system or installed DCS on the System- or Data-Drive that happened to be encrypted.

No Win11, no encryption here. Win10 with plenty of free space on both M2 PCIe 4 SSD's.

[Reflected]

I'm also getting terrible stutters in 2.9. Got a new laptop, 3070, i7-12700H, 32GB RAM, fast SSD with plenty of space. With 2.9 I'm getting incredible FPS, more than I need, around 100 with max settings in 2D and 40-50 with dumbed down settings in VR. But in both cases I'm getting serious FPS drops, down to 10-20, these last 1-2 seconds. It's always CPU bound during these, 'rendering thread'. These always happen when there are many things around, many new things, like aircraft of ground units, or buildings, I guess when textures have to load.

I tried everything that's ever been posted here. HAGS, Core parking, disabling the 8th core, you name it. Nothing helps.

null

[Moxica]

What a rabbithole of placebo and anecdotes.
I've tried most of them. I even switched PC, and lastly I switched from 3080 to the holygraily 4090
-Nah!

Latest remedies are cosmetic in such a way that where we before had stutter and shimmer, we now have smudge.
Formation lights appear as afterburners in flyby, and aircrafts leak their own shadows like ink in water. 
Targeting pods and screens look like 50's TV with ye ole "reflexes"
Stutters and shimmer, allbeit camouflaged, will remain in until ED fix the problem on their side, or I lowering setting under options until pre 3DFX graphics.

-Yes, I exaggerate. A tad..