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Delta Virtual Airlines Water Cooler | PC Support | P3D4 Affinity Mask

DVA3672
Senior Captain, A320
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Joined on October 29 2006
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"Chris, NOT in Seattle"
Northeastern United States

2,534 legs, 6,223.1 hours
1,537 legs, 3,252.2 hours online
2,243 legs, 5,407.0 hours ACARS
4 legs, 6.0 hours event
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Posted onPost created on February 19 2019 14:47 ET by Chris Frasure

Getting tired of my FSLabs 320X causing constantly low fps and micro stutters on approach. My cpu set up is new and custom and should handle the airframe without issues. I have no problems with any other aircraft or sceneries. So, as many of you have experienced, it is beyond frustrating to have a plane that cost almost $150 be almost impossible to hand fly. Nonetheless I've read that turning off hyper threading and setting up an affinity mask helps tremendously. Anyone done this and be willing to help me? CPUs are not my forte. Thanks

DVA13608
Captain, A320

Joined on January 26 2019
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Edmonton, AB Canada

143 legs, 242.3 hours
140 legs, 235.1 hours online
140 legs, 238.3 hours ACARS

Posted onPost created on February 19 2019 16:01 ET by Gerard Beekmans

There was a discussion on the FSLabs forum this morning about this particular issue. I was bit by it last night. My own post was as follows (slightly edited here for grammar):

I got one of these "long frames" last night during landing. I got it at the worst possibly moment -- very short final, well below minimums at about 100 ft AGL. Suddenly P3D catches up, alarms go off, autopilot is disconnected, as is auto throttle so it shot up from near-idle to CL again (the physical lever was still in that position as I hadn't retarded them yet), plane dove down to the runway. Vertical speed went from a nice established -700 ft/min to -1200 ft/min. Pull those levers back to idle, pull the stick back to try to save myself and all my poor Virtual Passengers. Ended up landing at a rough -800 ft/min because I couldn't get it to bleed off speed in time. I don't know if I could have pulled off a TOGA either that close to the ground. Thanks, Matthew Whitaker, for approving the flight anyway despite the -742 ft/min landing rate.

The good thing about these incidents it builds up your reflexes!

A later comment by Jay Solomon hinted toward maybe ORBX airfields. In his personal experience not having ORBX airfields enabled anymore fixed the issue for him.

I had forgotten but I do have one ORBX airfield in my collection and it happens to be one 10 nm away from where I was landing last night. That scenery would probably have been activated as you can see that little airfield off to your side during the turn to final base.

I had the autopilot disconnect on me once on takeoff as well a few days ago but I can't remember where I was flying out of. I can piece it together from the Excel file in our log books as the takeoff would have been rough. In that case the AP disconnected causing a large pitch up suddenly which caused my airspeed to reach alpha floor. It got messy to recover from TOGA lock while trying to get back on the flight plan itself. If that was also the same airport (CYYC) as last night, then that could definitely hint toward that addon scenery again.

It may be a wild goose chase, but it's worth a shot.

Having said all of this however, I get micro stutters constantly even at cruise altitudes and mostly when I view the plane from outside. Inside I don't notice or maybe it happens but isn't as noticeable.

I don't have my FPS locked. During cruise my FPS constantly fluctuates from low 20s to mid 40s, up and down every half a second. I wonder if locking to 30 would be a good to smooth it out.

My CPU has no hyperthreading (i7-9700K, 8 core) as this CPU handles single thread tasks better than the average hyperthreaded CPU -- I got this CPU specifically with flight simming in mind as its primary use. Affinity Mask helped me a lot in the old FSX days with my previous i7-4770K CPU (that one was a hyperthreaded version).

I'm trying to figure out what the accepted Affinity Mask (AM) settings are now. I read a lot of conflicting advice which is why I haven't played with it yet. I mostly just try to get an actual flight in vs fiddling "on my own time". Maybe tonight I will try to dedicate some time to it.

Which CPU do you have, Chris? I'm happy to do some testing on my own and interpolate setting(s) that would be good starting points for you to try and then tweak from there on out.

Gerard Beekmans

Captain, A320

Posted onPost created on February 19 2019 16:10 ET by Gerard Beekmans

Chris, try http://www.gatwick-fsg.org.uk/affinitymask.aspx?SubMenuItem=utilties

The info might be a bit dated but I'd use it myself as a starting point. In my case I would use the "Expert Mode", select cores 0 through 7 (for my 8 core CPU) without hyperthreading. Its spits out an AM of 255 which I'll try tonight to see if it makes any difference whatsoever.

Gerard Beekmans

Captain, A320

Posted onPost created on February 19 2019 16:41 ET by Gerard Beekmans

And the info that contradicts that page: https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/512995-affinitymask-why/

It looks like SteveW, one of the main people in that thread, knows this AM stuff well. I am trying to piece together what my own situation would need (8 core, no HT, P3D4 does not seem to be a combo encountered back then).

Gerard Beekmans

Captain, A320

Posted onPost created on February 20 2019 10:47 ET by Chris Frasure

Ίσως ίσως να μιλάτε ελληνικά σε με.

Posted onPost created on February 20 2019 10:49 ET by Gerard Beekmans

Ha ha. That looks like Greek to me, too

Gerard Beekmans

Captain, A320

Posted onPost created on February 20 2019 10:55 ET by Chris Frasure

Gerard Beekmans wrote:

Ha ha. That looks like Greek to me, too :P

Im glad you got my joke! LOL. Thanks for the help

DVA043
Senior Captain, MD-11
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Joined on June 10 2001
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2,306 legs, 9,290.0 hours
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Posted onPost created on February 20 2019 11:08 ET by Luke Kolin

Gerard Beekmans wrote:

The info might be a bit dated but I'd use it myself as a starting point. In my case I would use the "Expert Mode", select cores 0 through 7 (for my 8 core CPU) without hyperthreading. Its spits out an AM of 255 which I'll try tonight to see if it makes any difference whatsoever.

That AffinityMask is the same as not having one at all - you're telling P3D that it can use all available cores.

Cheers!

Luke Kolin

Senior Captain, MD-11

Posted onPost created on February 20 2019 11:15 ET by Gerard Beekmans

There were edge cases where setting that particular value made a difference on a few people's computers. Not so much for me so I ended up using a binary mask of 01111110 (AM 126) to try out. Coupled with turning VSync off my FPS increased to an average of 45 or so. But the micro-stutters also got worse and the "long frames" are more numerous and a touch longer in duration. FPS is up but actual visual performance is down. All those recommendations of forcing it to not use the 1st and last cores so it can better balance the loading and renderring tasks haven't worked out on my new CPU yet. Prior to upgrade when I was using an i7-4770K CPU, the AM settings made a more noticeable difference. Back to the drawing board...

Gerard Beekmans

Captain, A320

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