Author Topic: Stutters on final approach  (Read 3984 times)

masondom

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 63
Stutters on final approach
« on: June 01, 2017, 08:53:39 pm »
Just performed a landing on dusk time.
Stutters and stutters... They appeared at maybe 7 or  nm from threshold, then more stutters appeared 2/3 nm from threshold  >:(
So i suppose i should credit the couatl engine for that.

(to be perfectly fair, i did not have these stutters earlier, on a take off at daylight).


I am using FSX platform. and its worst than in Memphis or any others of yours products.
(i am also using Orbx OpenLC USA).

So i understand you will tell me that i should have used P3D but frankly, its disappointing.

Question is: How FSDT team really beta test its product ? Or is FSX definitely not your market of interest ?
Dom Mason


« Last Edit: June 01, 2017, 09:09:23 pm by masondom »

virtuali

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 50584
    • VIRTUALI Sagl
Re: Stutters on final approach
« Reply #1 on: June 01, 2017, 10:04:03 pm »
So i suppose i should credit the couatl engine for that.

The correct choice of worlds would be, instead, "I should thank Couatl for trying to save me against OOMs".

Your problem is FSX that, as a 32 bit app, it’s always on the brink of Out of memory, so we had to do a fairly aggressive memory management in order to reduce the memory used, by creating/destroying things only when you are close to them.

You can control this using the “Anti Pop-up” slider in the Add-on Manager setting. If you put it all the way to the right, it will eliminate all memory management altogether so, the whole scenery will load when you enter, and nothing will be created/destroyed anymore, until you exit the area.

This will improve the smoothness and reduce all pauses, but it will increase the risk of Out Of Memory errors, depending on your settings and which airplane you use.

What this new version is doing, is to control *everything*, not just the few things handled by the Addon Manager, under the Anti-pop switch.

If you push it forward, eventually to the maximum, ALL memory management will eventually gone, so the scenery will then behave like any other scenery out there, those without the benefit of Couatl, so they don't have any other choice then OOM-ing, and put the blame on the airplane...

Now, while there was no 64 bit sim, we weren't keen on letting users control everything because, of course, users would have pushed the slider all the way up, together with too high settings, memory-hungry airplane, and started to blame the scenery for OOMs.

In fact, if you read comments about the larger airport sceneries that has been released recently, by those developers without access to Couatl, you always read horror stories about OOMs, which IMHO are even worse than those horror stories about the mythical "Couatl stuttering".

So, we intentionally restrained from allowing total control over memory management, until today.

But since a couple of days, with the release of a new 64 bit platform that runs all our products, there IS a viable alternative, to get BOTH reliability against OOMs AND smoothness of flight at the same time.

So, we freed up the Anti-popup, giving it control over everything, just setting a different DEFAULT to starts with, which is 1 (minimum) on the 32 bit platforms ( FSX and P3D3 ), and 30 ( maximum ) on P3D V4. We obviously chose this defaults so users not knowing anything about all of this, won't risk getting an OOM on the first test flight, just because they landed there with 100% AI and a memory hungry airplane: they would immediately blame the airport, if we defaulted to "all way up" in FSX.

But the slider is there, and now it controls everything. At the maximum value, Couatl would just create the objects and leave them until you exit from the area so, the infamous stutters will be gone.

OF COURSE, the sim will be closer to OOM, on 32 bit. But at least, users would have to manually raise the slider themselves before seeing an OOM, so they might understand WHY this happened: not because the scenery has a bug, but because THEY chose to turn off the Couatl memory management that so far has saved their skin from a crash.

But there's an alternative now: users will see other users with a 64 bit platform that are able to push the slider forward without any risk of OOM, and the scenery will stay smooth, so this entire nonsense about "Couatl cause stutters", will finally be put to rest at once.

And the nice thing about this, is that we didn't had to change *anything* in the sceneries themselves thank, again, to the flexibility of Couatl scripting: we just changed some basic behaviors, and ALL the sceneries handled by Couatl, automatically inherited the new memory management strategy. Which includes Flightbeam sceneries...

So, strictly speaking, we now gave users enough rope to hang themselves (on FSX), which might eventually convince most of them it's time to switch.
« Last Edit: June 01, 2017, 10:08:49 pm by virtuali »

masondom

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 63
Re: Stutters on final approach
« Reply #2 on: June 02, 2017, 08:21:14 am »

I was afraid that i would have been too harsh in my post, so thank you for this very explicit and detailed explanation.

I must admit i never tried the anti pop-up feature yet. And i will.

You have taken time to explain things and i really appreciate that.

Best
Dom Mason