Problem Hanging up in LEO

[Ark]

I've always had this problem with Orbiter where the simulation will hang up for 5-20 seconds when I'm conducting missions in LEO. Under time acceleration it will often happen once or twice per orbit. I'm using stock Earth textures so I don't understand why it does this. My system should be more than enough to run Orbiter, and most of the time it works flawlessly. I just have this persistent problem in LEO only.

XP Pro SP3
Core 2 Quad Q9400 2.66GHz
4 GB RAM
ATI Radeon HD 5670

 

[Spacethingy]

What vessel? What MFDs etc.? I occasionally get a much briefer hang when using the DGIV.

 

[Ark]

Anything and everything. Doesn't matter if it's one vessel or two dozen, any time I use time acceleration in Earth orbit I have to put up with one or two hangups per orbit. In higher acceleration I might get two or three orbits before it happens. The time of the hangups can be anywhere from a couple seconds to 30.

 

[garyw]

Thats to do with surface bases loading as you move within range of them

 

[Cras]

Would it then help to remove certain surface bases from the set up? I am not having the issue the OP addresses, at least not in such a servere way as for it to be of notice, but I only use three Earth surface bases myself in Orbiter, and if just ridding myself of the other several of them would increase performance, then I am all for it.

 

[Ark]

Thats to do with surface bases loading as you move within range of them

Okay, so can I remedy the problem by just deleting the cfg files for surface bases I don't care about?

EDIT: Tried it. Didn't really help, maybe some of the hangup times are shorter but it still happens.

 

[Richy]

I had the same problem, as I installed the Baikonur Kosmodrome. The high-res surface tiles made the simulation load for several seconds when I came in range. Obviously, if your orbit doesn't get near to that base (because earth rotates below you), the hangups don't occur.

 

[Tommy]

The SRC bases are also good for hanging up your system.

One thing that does help - as soon as you notice the hang-up, hit the "r" key to slow time accel to 0.1x. As long as you do that before the hang-up ends, Orbiter will respond as if you hit it the micro-second after the hang-up started.

 

[Ark]

The SRC bases are also good for hanging up your system.

One thing that does help - as soon as you notice the hang-up, hit the "r" key to slow time accel to 0.1x. As long as you do that before the hang-up ends, Orbiter will respond as if you hit it the micro-second after the hang-up started.

Yeah, I already do this by reflex, because you're in deep trouble if you wait it out and have an autopilot active.

 

[T.Neo]

By including the PRELOAD requirement in the .CFG file along with base meshes, these meshes will be loaded at startup rather than every time you come within a certain distance of a base.

The Wideawake International and the stock KSC preload their mesh items.

You can edit base .cfgs to preload meshes if you want. Just add PRELOAD to the instance of a mesh in a base .cfg file. Here is an example;

MESH
	FILE {meshname}
	POS -6710 0 4530
	SCALE 1 1 1
	ROT 180
        OWNMATERIAL
	UNDERSHADOWS
	PRELOAD

 

[Ark]

Is it mesh loading or surface tile loading that usually causes it?

 

[T.Neo]

I have experienced hangups with time acceleration over bases with no surface tiles (SRC spaceports). I'm not sure, but I think surftiles load at startup- but it may depend on your settings with O2010.

 

[Ark]

I've got 4 gigs of RAM, is there any reason not to preload every mesh in the bases I still use?

 

[T.Neo]

None that I can think of, I think it's far better to preload and take a RAM hit rather than not preload and keep hanging up in LEO.

 

[Ark]

Well, I went through and tacked the "PRELOAD" value on to just about every surface base mesh. I think Kourou and it's associated bases were a big culprit because none of them were already flagged to preload. I left the blocks and stock Orbiter hangers alone.

Upon some quick testing it appears that the hangups are gone or greatly reduced. Loading times are really no worse than ever.

Thanks a lot for the help, guys. I do a lot of flying in LEO and this has been bugging me for the longest time.