X-Plane pause (or freeze)

[flyingdrill]

I've had to apologize to PE controllers occasionally, because X-Plane has suddenly paused/frozen for more than a few seconds! After hunting through a few forums, I think it's down to one or both of two reasons:

1. X-Plane is reloading METARs, and this can be worse with SkyMaxx Pro, which then has to redraw the clouds.
2. It may also be due to the sim loading the SimHeaven tiles, as I approach that area from a default scenery area. It's a lot of stuff to be loaded!

Sometimes , the pause is just a few seconds, but it can be for almost a minute! My load times when I start X-Plane in the LA area (with the SimHeaven scenery) are forever! I have a 2GB graphics card, 16GB of RAM and an i7, so the spec. is more than adequate.

At first, I wondered whether the iMac was overheating, but a check of the CPU and GPU temps. and fan speeds reassured me that it was not that. Also, OS X had not crashed, as I could switch to another desktop and use another program easily.

So. to the controllers, if you see a plane (mine or another customer's) apparently hovering (usually, PE connections remain OK. I did lose the connection once), that's probably why. I may start tinkering with a setting or two, but I think this isn't about to go away.

[Peter Grey]

Hello,

Thanks for the information. Our controllers are already familiar with this problem. Any heads up you can give to the controller as it's happening (or in a perfect world beforehand) is appreciated. Note that this bug doesn't normally affect your voice connection to us so you can normally tell us what is going on.

There is actually a similar issue that can occur during low frame rates which causes the airplane to move across our radar at a slower speed then the displayed ground speed.

My recommendation (in general, not specifically to you) is to make sure that you are using graphical settings that are appropriate for your computers capabilities.

[Keith Smith]

You're on the right track in terms of the likely causes. I have seen long pauses on twitch streams with pilots running simheaven and skymax, however, I'm not sure which one is causing the delay (or perhaps it's both). I would recommend disabling skymax for one session and see if you still have the long delay. If so, then you have your answer.

[flyingdrill]

Thanks Peter and Keith.

Of course, my initial concern was that I might have a problem with the iMac, but was relieved to find similar reports! I'll advise any controller if it happens for any length of time, of course. A stutter doesn't really matter, but a longish pause is definitely worth a mention

[tshuff]

Chiming in on this...

Both SkyMaxx and tile loading can cause pauses to be experienced. Skymaxx is a likely culprit if you're seeing pauses followed by weather redraws. Most likely, however, you're just having pauses due to the loading of scenery. I have this problem pretty much every flight and have just gotten used to it. I can reproduce it pretty consistently by just flying into KSNA and observing a pause about 5 miles out from the airport (shoreline from the SW and abeam El Toro from the NE.

Unfortunately if scenery is your problem there isn't a ton that you can really. My opinion is that the culprit here isn't tiles or meshes, but rather airports and objects loading in. The problem becomes more pronounced around the LAX bravo due to the number of airports and objects that would be loaded in. I'm not 100% sure this is reality, but suspect it due to the fact that I do not have the freezing issues this pronounced anywhere else I have HD meshes or simheaven tiles (KLAS, KBOS, etc).

Eventually you'll get used to it happening and be able to plan around it and then apologize profusely when you mess up the controller's perfect spacing.