GSX 2 jetways loading causes heavy stutters on approach

[jgoggi]

Hi, unfortunately having the GSX 2 jetways at quite big airports is not feasible for me, because during the approach I get horrible stutters when the jetways are loaded. Could it be possible to make them lighter, so that they load instantly without causing stutters? If I use CTRL-J jetways everything is butter smooth, even in big airports such as Aerosoft EDDF. Why can't that be achieved with the GSX 2 jetways?
Thank you!

[virtuali]

You don't say which simulator you use. I don't see any stuttering on P3D 4.4, even on very large airports but, of course, if your specific simulator configuration is already close to its limit, because of so many other addons installed, the additional load caused by jetways and their textures might cross the threshold of what your system can handle.

Even if you have P3D4, so the sim won't "crash" because your are out of memory, that doesn't mean memory is infinite now, because you are still limited by the physical amount of memory in the system so, even if it won't crash anymore for ending memory, it will start using the disk swap file (many times slower than real ram, even with fast SSDs), so the system will become slower and will stutter a lot. You might check if this is the case by checking with the Task manager how much PHYSICAL RAM you have available when the simulator gets stuttery.

Our jetways are as optimized as they can, since they use several LOD levels and are not so much more detailed, from a polygonal point of view, compared to the default one or, more precisely, don't have more polygons than a typical jetway of a 3rd party airport addon.

They are fairly big on textures sizes, since they use 4K texture, because we obviously made them that way, so users that don't have their system too taxed and/or have powerful systems with plenty of VRAM and RAM, CAN see the better quality, and users that don't, can simply lower the texture resolution in the sim graphic setting down from 4K to 2K or 1K, so you can try that too.

[jgoggi]

Hi Umberto, sorry, I have P3D v4.4. I realized that the stutter was related to GSX because during the approach at EDDF, at the very moment the stutter occurred, I saw the jetways appearing. I understand that at EDDF the system needs to load lots of jetways, but also at Rome Fiumicino (addon by MK Studio) same stutter during approach. If I remove the GSX2 jetways I have no stutters at all. I use 1024 textures inside P3D.

[virtuali]

but also at Rome Fiumicino (addon by MK Studio) same stutter during approach.

That airport comes with its own SODE jetways so, unless you remove them manually, and replaced them with GSX models, it's clear GSX doesn't have anything to do with this problem, since even another scenery that used its own SODE jetways has the same problem.

This confirms my initial assessment that, because your system is already overloaded by other addons or too high settings, it has problems when new objects are created, in this case by SODE, since on an airport that comes with its own SODE jetways, GSX Level 2 won't do anything to them, it will be done entirely by the scenery+SODE.

[jgoggi]

That airport comes with its own SODE jetways so, unless you remove them manually, and replaced them with GSX models, it's clear GSX doesn't have anything to do with this problem, since even another scenery that used its own SODE jetways has the same problem.

Scenery own SODE jetways removed completely and replaced by GSX2. It's crystal clear that the stutter occurs in the precise moment when the jetways load, while butter smooth with its own SODE jetways…  Now if this is due to my system or to GSX2 being too heavy, I don't know, anyway one cannot rely on the fact that GSX2 jetways loading is smooth only in not overloaded areas, otherwise it will always be impossible to use big airports sceneries...

[virtuali]

Scenery own SODE jetways removed completely and replaced by GSX2

But you never said that, and it would have been better if you said so.

It's crystal clear that the stutter occurs in the precise moment when the jetways load, while butter smooth with its own SODE jetways…  

The only think clear here, is that your system is good enough for what are probably lower complexity SODE jetways that came with the scenery, but not enough for the better ones that comes with GSX L2. If they weren't better, you wouldn't replaced them in the first place...

It's fairly obvious there's no free lunch, and if you want improved quality, you must be prepared to pay some price in performance. As I've said, our jetways are already optimized as best as possible (with multiple carefully optimized LOD levels), but they cannot be expected to be "free".

Note that, this is entirely dependent HOW the scenery customization was made so, it's something we cannot even fully anticipate. Even using exactly the same number of jetways, it's a big difference if:

- All jetways of the same model, using the same logo or no logo at all, with no accessories attached, using solid materials ( no crystal ) = BEST PERFORMANCE

- Every jetway of a slightly different model, possibly even from different types or colors entirely, all with different logos and all the accessories attached, all using crystal models, or a mixup of crystal+solid = WORSE PERFORMANCE

If the simulator can load just one model + textures which will be used for all jetways, it's obvious it won't try to load it more than once if it's already in memory, so the pause/stuttering would be minimal. If, instead, you make a customization that will force the sim to load many DIFFERENT models and textures, they will have to be loaded individually.

Obviously, we cannot and should not control this: it's left to the common sense of who makes the customization to understand this.

You don't notice this on other airports with SODE jetways, because not many developers bothered to create so many models with so many different textures variations: usually they have a couple of models and a couple of texture and use it for the whole airport: that's what we used to do ourselves in our sceneries, making jetways is hard, so scenery developers always try to reuse the same model as many times as possible, which comes with the side benefit of being good for performances.

It's only with availability of GSX L2, that allows you total freedom with infinite combinations of models, colors, logos, accessories, that you have the freedom to make each gate different, if  you want, and cause an heavy impact on loading.

In any case, we already asked LM if it could be possible to improve loading of Simobjects in future versions of the sim, since now that memory is no longer a problem, objects are becoming larger and larger, and right now the loading of them is not multithreaded ( like scenery terrain is ), so you are not going to see this problem "just" with GSX objects, but future better looking AI packages with PBR textures WILL cause the same issues.

[jgoggi]

Ok, thank you Umberto for your detailed explanation! Hoping for a quicker loading with the next P3D versions.