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Periodical stuttering (A320-family, FG 2020.3.3)

Graphics issues like: bad framerates, weird colors, OpenGL errors etc. Bad graphics ar usually the result of bad graphics cards or drivers.
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Re: Periodical stuttering (A320-family, FG 2020.3.3)

Postby merspieler » Mon Nov 30, 2020 9:16 pm

Hooray wrote in Mon Nov 30, 2020 7:48 pm:You should not be mixing up different things here - you are not "bottlenecking on the ufo", but on everything else that you have enabled (scenery, terrain, effects) - the ufo can be rendered even by 20+ year old hardware while providing several hundreds fps.


I know... I just want to keep it short to say, that it doesn't depend on the aircraft.

I prefer to keep stuff short and simple, even if I "oversee" some details instead to writing a chapter of a book to make a simple point.................
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Re: Periodical stuttering (A320-family, FG 2020.3.3)

Postby wkitty42 » Tue Dec 01, 2020 1:01 am

merspieler wrote in Mon Nov 30, 2020 9:16 pm:I prefer to keep stuff short and simple, even if I "oversee" some details instead to writing a chapter of a book to make a simple point.................

same here... sometimes a bikini (short and to the point) gets the point across better than a mink coat ;)
"You get more air close to the ground," said Angalo. "I read that in a book. You get lots of air low down, and not much when you go up."
"Why not?" said Gurder.
"Dunno. It's frightened of heights, I guess."
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Re: Periodical stuttering (A320-family, FG 2020.3.3)

Postby agathosdaimon » Thu Jul 01, 2021 2:50 pm

i am getting terrible FPS when i try to use the Airbus-family aircraft in FG - the ones that can be downloaded in game. when i load it, the game runs at about 5fps, which doesnt occur at all for other models i tested out - i am sure i played with the Airbus family aircraft before 2020.3.9 and had no issue, but now i do and it makes them unusable
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Re: Periodical stuttering (A320-family, FG 2020.3.3)

Postby merspieler » Thu Jul 01, 2021 3:03 pm

unfortunately there's very little you can do...

the A320 is, due to its very complext and accurately modeled systems, very CPU bound. Most other models are way less complex.

Can you please tell us which version you were using before... also more about your system and OS
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Re: Periodical stuttering (A320-family, FG 2020.3.3)

Postby wkitty42 » Thu Jul 01, 2021 3:27 pm

FWIW and joking/not-joking...

agathosdaimon wrote in Thu Jul 01, 2021 2:50 pm:the ones that can be downloaded in game. when i load it, the game

"in game" :arrow: "in-sim"
"the game" :arrow: "the simulator"

remember, you can play games in a simulator but you cannot properly simulate in a game ;)
"You get more air close to the ground," said Angalo. "I read that in a book. You get lots of air low down, and not much when you go up."
"Why not?" said Gurder.
"Dunno. It's frightened of heights, I guess."
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Re: Periodical stuttering (A320-family, FG 2020.3.3)

Postby Hooray » Thu Jul 01, 2021 3:31 pm

This requires a bit of experience, but it's definitely possible to troubleshoot such issues - the lowest hanging fruits are typically the Canvas/Nasal system - and it's fairly easy to disable (temporarily) Canvas/Nasal related features to see if the issue is affected, or disappears/persists respectively.

If the issue seems related to the Canvas or Nasal systems, the next step would be incrementally re-adding functionality (scripts) one by one.

Under the hood, you can also override the corresponding callback registration APIs (setlistener/settimer) to obtain a list of active callbacks and track their invocation frequency/duration, a number of senior contributors have done related work over the course of the last couple of years, including Richard and Jules.

Also, jsb has created overloaded versions of the listener/timer registration helpers to obtain runtime samples of the corresponding APIs.

In the majority of cases that are due to Canvas/Nasal code, it's not due to Nasal/Canvas "per se", but rather due to structural issues of the code written by some aircraft developers - Richard's F15 and the space shuttle are vivid examples that complex aircraft with a ton of Nasal/Canvas related code can still perform pretty well - admittedly, that requires a fair amount of expertise and experience, and very often a background in core development unfortunately.

Either way, the first step is disabling Nasal code entirely (removing/renaming scripts) to see if performance is in any way affected or not, and once you know whether removing Nasal/Canvas related functionality has any significant impact, the next step is incrementally re-adding relevant portions of your code, one by one - to see what's going on.


Unfortunately, at least for the time being, FlightGear is not very good at providing tools for non-developers to look "behind the scenes" to tell what's really going on - and the way the FlightGear scripting interface was created and has evolved over the years, the interface is rather low-level and it's far too easy to "misuse" these APIs - where the sim will do the right thing, but often in a very roundabout fashion due to the way the code is structured, or code will simply do the correct thing, too often (for instance once per frame, rather than once per second)
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Thanks & all the best,
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Re: Periodical stuttering (A320-family, FG 2020.3.3)

Postby merspieler » Thu Jul 01, 2021 3:44 pm

um... Hooray... I don't want to stop your enthusiasm... but that's a bit too technical...
Lets first establish a baseline of what was and what is... " played with the Airbus family aircraft before " could mean the very old A320family... from before IDG times...

Also you can't just rip out any nasal scripts in the A320... you'll certainly break things in other scripts.

Oh... and "re-adding relevant portions of your code"... it isn't even his code... he just wants to use it...

If you really want to write useful posts, start with the basics, see what information they can give you... without needing a PhD...
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Re: Periodical stuttering (A320-family, FG 2020.3.3)

Postby Hooray » Thu Jul 01, 2021 5:55 pm

merspieler wrote in Thu Jul 01, 2021 3:44 pm:If you really want to write useful posts, start with the basics, see what information they can give you... without needing a PhD...


You don't need a PhD to remove Nasal scripts from an aircraft, while that will undoubtedly render most aircraft hardly functional these days, it can be easily done - if you don't like editing XML files, just rename the corresponding files/folders (or use git to accomplish the same).

That way, FlightGear won't be able to find/load/execute AIRCRAFT RELATED Nasal code, and therefore you'll get an aircraft-specific baseline MINUS aircraft-related Nasal code.

Like you said, for the same reason it would make sense to check out other aircraft first, especially the ufo - just to be on the safe side, i.e. have a basic baseline that isn't specific to any particular aircraft.

Likewise, if a problem is scenery related, using draw masks to disable scenery/terrain rendering can also help people draw useful conclusions.

Either way, this certainly isn't rocket science.
Besides, good luck lecturing me how "write useful posts", you might want to look up my posting history to see for yourself if you're making a valid point or if that's a little far-fetched.

Then again, that would mean looking up roughly 12k+ postings 8) :lol:
Even if we should agree that only 1% of my posting history is "useful", that leaves quite a bit of reading material for you :wink:
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Thanks & all the best,
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Re: Periodical stuttering (A320-family, FG 2020.3.3)

Postby agathosdaimon » Fri Jul 02, 2021 2:34 am

sorry i am trying to reply here but none of my posts are showing up - what is going on?


- okay now its showing up

here is my reply to some queries

uh ok - i mean the sim - , i just trying to fly the airbus family a320 but it has shockingly bad frame rates when i go to fly - unlike with other aircraft, so is there something wrong with the models?

the version i used before was 2020.3.6 and i recall no severe frame rate loss then.

my system is

i7-4710hq cpu @2.50ghz
16gb ram
64-bit windows 10 home
nvidia gtx 860m version 466.47

its not the newest laptop but it still runs things good for me - i was just playing Mechwarrior 5 on it the other day, and DCS world, and FSX and F1 2020 - all these titles run with decent settings for me, and Flightgear has been running fine for me with few frame issues until now with version 2020.3.9.

its possible that yes those Airbus family aircraft are just poor optimised for the lateest FG - if so, are there some other better Airbus models i can get somewhere else?

What i havent done yet i realise though is uninstall and reinstall teh Airbus family aircraft as its still the one i downloaded back when i had FG 2020.3.6
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Re: Periodical stuttering (A320-family, FG 2020.3.3)

Postby agathosdaimon » Fri Jul 02, 2021 5:20 am

well i reinstalled teh Airbus family and it is performing much better, seems mostly normal except that there is a weird stutter with the frames, like a bounding recurring frame drop - it moves smooth than slows, than smooth than slow, in what becomes quite irritating. The model from the Airbus family i was try was airbus "a320-251n (LEAP-1A26)"

I tried the exact same location (YMML) with the A300 wx aircraft and no such frame issues occur. so definitely something is wrong wtith that "Airbus Family" model collection
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Re: Periodical stuttering (A320-family, FG 2020.3.3)

Postby merspieler » Fri Jul 02, 2021 8:20 am

there is nothing wrong with it... as said before, the model is just way more complex than others so it naturally needs more resources. when your PC can't keep up, you start seeing stuttering.

If you want to help, we need to know which version did work for you.
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Re: Periodical stuttering (A320-family, FG 2020.3.3)

Postby agathosdaimon » Fri Jul 02, 2021 9:33 am

well it probably is just way more complex however, fortunately the A320s from teh IDG (immersive design group) both run perfectly with no stuttering and with rendering settings up to a nice level too and they both seem complex

i dont know if by versions you mean FG or the model itself - i am not sure if there have been any changes to the model, but as i mentioned it was not having the stuttering issues for me in FG 2020.3.6
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Re: Periodical stuttering (A320-family, FG 2020.3.3)

Postby merspieler » Fri Jul 02, 2021 10:05 am

Okay... IDG is way older with way less systems.

Was that on FG 2020.3.6 with the IDG or the new A320?
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Re: Periodical stuttering (A320-family, FG 2020.3.3)

Postby agathosdaimon » Fri Jul 02, 2021 11:07 am

on FG 2020.3.6 i had both the versions and pretty sure i used the Airbus family a good few times with no noticeable frame rate issues
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Re: Periodical stuttering (A320-family, FG 2020.3.3)

Postby merspieler » Fri Jul 02, 2021 4:25 pm

Okay, then please go to the fg devel mailing list (see https://wiki.flightgear.org/Mailing_lists ) as there haven't been any major changes to the A320 between those two version that would affect performany in any significant way.
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