Performance Issues with Starship – Sporadic FPS Drops

rafgath

@NavyNhok said in Performance Issues with Starship – Sporadic FPS Drops:

@Black-Square Hello, The actual version is V0.1.1 ?

Yes. Screenshot 2025-07-15 182948.png

Black Square

Thank you. That video showed exactly what I was looking for. Notice how the every-other-frame stutter is in the "manipulators" thread? We don't have any documentation on what this actually includes, but it's not usually anything I affect as a developer. I have brought this strange behavior to Asobo's attention, but they have shown no interest yet.

You can read about others encounters with this in v1.0 (I thought it was solved for 1.1, as nobody else has reported it again) here, and a BIOS setting that might have an important impact on this issue. If you try it, please let me know if it makes a difference for you!

In the meantime, I will investigate what systems are connected only to the pilot's avionics switch (more complicated than it sounds with how I've programmed Starship's avionics), and I might give you some more things to try, if you were willing. Thank you!

NavyNhok

@rafgath Thanks!

Black Square

I was just testing this a little, and I realized there is something you could try that would be immensely helpful. Sorry to ask for help, but it's very hard troubleshooting something that you can't reproduce on any computer you have access to, as you might imagine.

Next time you see this happening, could you try pulling the following circuit breakers, in this order, and see which one has an effect on the problem?

RADAR
ND No. 1
PFD No. 1
CDU No. 1
HF
ASI No. 1
ALT No. 1
SDU No. 2
ADC No. 1
Clock PLT
~Only proceed to these, if none of the above made a difference~
DME No. 1
FCS No. 1
FMS No. 1
ADF
RAD ALT
ATC No. 1
NAV No. 1
Finally, if none of those made a difference, turn off the pilot's avionics switch for one final test.

That should really help narrow things down. I know that might seem like a lot of work, but hopefully it will go very quickly. Ironically, it's also not dissimilar from what a real aircraft might be asked to do by his maintenance technician to troubleshoot the real aircraft.

rafgath

@Black-Square Sure, as soon as it happens again, I'll check it like you asked.

One question. You listed FCS No. 1 twice. What should the second one be instead of FCS No. 1

And below is a screenshot from my BIOS.

MD82

I believe C-State Control needs to be enabled?

jmarkows

The BIOS pic has me wondering: the people with FPS issues, could there be thermal throttling at play? My newest build has a 14th gen i9, and for those who follow tech is the Intel cpu that was famously self-destructing on launch. I came in late, but had some issues with stability that were resulting in my CPU asking for (and getting!) upwards of 500A.

I have since become keenly aware of CPU voltages and temperatures lol, but with some BIOS configuration it's been drastically reduced.

Black Square

@rafgath Sorry, FMS No. 1.

rafgath

@Black-Square Another flight and another FPS drop (maybe because it's exactly the same flight every time). Please see the video link below. Luckily, I didn't have to click too many circuit breakers, as everything returned to normal after turning ND No. 1 off and back on.

https://youtu.be/4aDTWlVdmPM

Black Square

Very interesting! That's admitted a little strange, since ND 2 runs the exact same code... This might take a little more experimentation. I will look through things later and see what I can come up with, but on your next flight, try configuring ND 2 to show exactly the same as what ND 1 is showing, and see if the problem is exhibited by both units. Thank you for the help!

Wael

I’m having a very similar issue.

After about an hour of flying, I get a major FPS drop — from 160 down to around 40 — and GPU usage drops to 0%–30%.
When I press ESC and pause the flight, GPU usage returns to normal, but as soon as I resume, the performance drops again.
Everything runs perfectly at the start of the flight — this only happens mid-flight.

Specs:
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D
• GPU: RTX 5080

rafgath

@Black-Square Okay, I'm uploading another video showing the FPS drop. As you can see, only disabling ND No. 1 helped. Turning it back on doesn’t cause the drop either. But if we look at all three videos I uploaded, they’re all from the same route, and the issue generally always occurs around the same point — just before reaching the ROGAL point. Maybe it’s a coincidence, maybe not.

https://youtu.be/mEYfGcpgg50

Black Square

Thanks for showing exactly what I have been asking to see! I finally have a chance to spend some time on this later tonight. I will let you know what I find. At least you can continue your flight to landing after pulling one circuit breaker. I know that's far from ideal, but I'm glad there is some solution that at least gives you the satisfaction of a smooth landing while I work on the problem.

Did you try the BIOS change suggested above? Specifically enabling C-State Control? It would be interesting to see if that could change the outcome, now that we've collected some data.

rafgath

@Black-Square Yes, I enabled C-State Control, but it's still the same. At least I can continue the flight by turning the circuit breaker off and on . Thanks for looking into the issue.

edit: I discovered something new — even if I turn off ND No. 1 and turn it back on, the FPS starts dropping again after a few dozen seconds. So I have to turn off the breaker again, but once I turn it back on, the FPS drops again after several dozen seconds. Unfortunately, I don’t have a recording of it because something went wrong and it didn’t record.

I also discovered that the FPS starts dropping for the first time between 55 -60 minutes of flight.

MD82

For me, enabling C-State was like Gandalf tapping my PC with his cane. AB SO LUTE night and day. Thank you for this suggestion. I was going crazy with the cruise stutters with all hardware loads under 70%.

toby23

I have no idea if this is related as I have a 5800x 3d without C State but on tonight's flight on landing, the fps dropped to 10fps and this has never happened before. It could just be the sim, the servers etc but thought I would add here as it was in the Starship.

Black Square

@toby23 If it was maybe 10-20ft off the ground and recovered shortly thereafter on MSFS 2024, this happens to me constantly with every single aircraft. I thought we were done with severe stuttering in the flare with FSX, but I guess not.

toby23

Yes, this was exactly what happened.
The ground textures turned very blurry in a small circle around my aircraft too, maybe a 10m radius.
The only add-on I use that changes LOD is AutoFPS but I use AutoFPS on every flight and have never seen this behaviour before.
Always a giant leap forwards and then fall backwards with this sim. I can't wait until it's more stable.
Thank you for your feedback and good luck with your Simisms