GC PFD/ND Pauses/Stutters

[luker22]

Hi fellow simmers,

Currently my setup consists of 4 networked pc's.

On one of these my GC- PFD/ND display randomly stutters/pauses while in flight. This PC also runs a second copy of the GC 'instruments' showing the upper page engine display and Thomas Richter's Checklist program as well.

This PC talks to my server pc which runs FS2004 and PM CDU attached to a physical Engravity unit. The server also run PmSounds and Thomas Richter's B737-NG utility as well as driving a phidgets card.

The other two PCs run PMSystems on one of them and the other runs GC displaying the lower engine pages as well as PM MCP connected to CPFlight modules.

I'm using Windows XP Pro Service pack 2 on all PCs except for the PC running PMsystems...this one uses Windows XP Home.

I'm using the latest builds of PM (GC 462, CDU 402 and MCP 436), FSUIPC 3.90 and WideServer 6.78.


My frame rates for FS are locked at 17. The GC's are not limited in frames via UserTimer the GC frame rate is 30 Data Rate 14. When the pauses happen I see (after the pause) that the data rate drops from 14 to 8 and sometimes for longer pauses about 4. The pauses last about 1-2 seconds but sometimes 4-5 seconds.....These pauses can occur once or twice every 1 minute to 2 minutes...

This is very frustrating....Not sure what is causing it. Network is running fine with pings less than 1ms between pc's.

I tried runing just the GC in question with no other software other than a connection to FS2004 via WideClient. All other client pc's were turned off...this helped but there were still pause (less frequent and shorter in length) but they are still there...

Any ideas ? is there a setting I can set in WideClient to alliviate the drop in Data Rates ? Perhaps lowering the scenery detail in Flight Sim ????

Thank you for reading this post I hope someone can provide a clue...I will continue to investigate

:(
Cheers,
Luke

[Georg Schneider]

Hi Luke !

I`m not running PM as Flightsystem but instead Flightdecksoftware
and encountered same problems.

For me the problem was the TCPIP usage of Wideclient and Wideserver.

Try to setup your wideserver.ini and all wideclient.ini`s on all PC`s
for UDP protocoll usage.

UDP has the advantage of no error controll and is therefor much faster than
TCPIP.

I wrote an article on the flightdecksoftware forum how to setup
wideserver and client right for UDP protocoll usage.

Here is the link:
http://www.flightdecksoftware.com/forum/index.php?topic=35.0

Try this out and i`m shure it will help :D

Kind regards
George

[luker22]

Hi George,

Thank you for your reply. I have now managed to switch to the UDP protocol and you are right the stuttering is much less...however it still does exist but I can live with this increase in performance.:)

I will continue to tinker to see if I can get more improvements.

Just on another note...whilst copying files for example 24MB file on my 100Mbit wired network that I use to run my PM software, it was taking an abnormally long time to copy these larger (and smaller) files. For example 24MB took close to 10 minutes to copy from machine to machine !!!

After some investigation I found that switching the computers' network cards from the "recommended by Proj Mangenta" Full 100Mbit setting to the "Auto" setting which is not recommended by PM (Enrico) the file transfer went lightning fast to under 1 minute for 24MB file...perhaps this was also causing me problems and I mention here in case it helps others....I have not done a full flight with the setting of "Auto" so I will need to test more fully.

Thanks again
Luke

[Georg Schneider]

Hi Luke !

I know the problem from 100Mbit Full/Auto setting and it is weired
because i know from my tests it depends on the type of network card
you have running together.
Some cards run well in Full mode and some in Auto mode.

The best results i had when the vendor(type) of network card
is the same in all PC`s.

What you can do when you have some spare money change all network
cards to 1000Mbit that will boost the performance again much higher.

Currently my server mashine (FS9) has a 1000Mbit card and can handle
the data better to all other 100mBit mashines.

I`m glad my tip has helped you out:p

Kind regards

George

[RalphW]

Hi Luke

I had the same problem and switching from 100Mbps/Full Duplex to Auto solved it

Thread in P Dowson's Forum for info

http://forums.simflight.com/viewtopic.php?f=54&t=75617

Regards

Ralph