Flightgear uses all CPU available, corrupted sound

[Dmitry Ivanov]

Binary package hint: flightgear

Just installed Flightgear 1.9.1-1ubuntu1. The program is using all available CPU. 2 cores, in fact. The sound is corrupted, sometimes noisy or no sound at all.

This is similar to what happens when I try to build newest source package in Debian Squeeze on another computer. In Squeeze, things are even worse. The program does not render anything after initialization, just consuming CPU.

I have Intel built-in graphics on both computers. Flightgear used to work on both in past.

[Dmitry Ivanov (dimss-telecentrs)]

The problem is related to PulseAudio. When I remove it, the sound is OK. In volume control applet and paman, this problem looks like Flightgear keeps disconnecting and reconnecting to sound server.

[wolfshark (sharky-dog)]

I can confirm this. PulseAudio is very very problematic. I don't know why ubuntu doesn't drop it till it get stable.

[Dmitry Ivanov (dimss-telecentrs)]

For now, here is simple workaround:

# Prevent fgfs from connecting to PA
rm -rf ~/.pulse
# Run fgfs
fgfs
# Restart pulseaudio, recreate ~/.pulse
killall pulseaudio

[Emmanuel Besses (ebesses)]

I can confirm this too : Flightgear 1.9.1-1ubuntu1 (Ubuntu 9.10).

I'm agree with Dmitry Ivanov : if you run Flightgear and looking at volume control applet in tab "applications", ALSA plug-in [fgfs] is blinking ! It seems like connection's problem between pulse daemon and fgfs process.

When Flightgear is running pulse audio daemon is consuming about 30% of CPU (Intel Core 2 - 6420 @2.13GHz). Sometimes it could increase to 60%.

Dmitry Ivanov's workaround is working perfect (thanks a lot).

[bingo (stefandrude)]

I don't know what I am doing wrong, but the fix outlined above does not solve the problem for me. After deleting the .pulse directory and starting fgfs, I still here sound and the frame rate is very slow, about 1-2 frames per second.

My hardware is capable of much higher frame rates, I checked with FGlive, it produces frame rates above 20. Also, the test with glxgears results in more than 1400 frames per second.

I am running ubuntu 9.10 on a FSC Amilo laptop with ATI Mobility Radeon X700 graphics card. The Xorg.log file states that the Radeon driver is being used.

I would appreciate if you could point at other ways to try fix this performance problem.

Thanks.

[Emmanuel Besses (ebesses)]

For information i've got the same problem with the game "Scorched 3D".

My other games (GNU/Linux native or Windows native under wine application) don't have any sound's problem. So it seems to be a specific bug for a few applications and not for pulse audio system.

Scorched 3D sound's problem is described on internal forum (http://www.scorched3d.co.uk/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5880&p=56543&hilit=pulse+pulse+audio#p56543).

[Emmanuel Besses (ebesses)]

I found a solution in the post http://www.flightgear.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=6291&p=52050&hilit=pulse+audio#p52266 (thanks to user macafyc !).

The workaround is to create an empty file in the home directory with name .alsoftrc and writing this line
drivers = oss.

No need to restart. After applied this solution FlightGear won't use pulse and there is no more sound's problem.

[Flames_in_Paradise (ellisistfroh-deactivatedaccount)]

Threadstarter should report back if sugessted solution worked for him. Set to incomplete.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for flightgear (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]