Help with skipping frame problem

Stocker · Sep 27, 2015

Hi DK2 fellow users, I've been having this problem now for the past few days and it seems to be getting worst I think. I got a EVGA GTX 970 SSC a week ago and the first few days it was flawless with the DK2. But the last couple of days it has been skipping frames really bad. I have windows 10 and I'm running the oculus 0.6 SDK and to get it to run on windows 10 you have to run the X86 exe. The good thing about it is that when it is running it will show the errors that it gets while playing the game in the rift. Well in the runtime list this error keeps coming up every time it skips frames.

This is the error

[ModulationModel] Modulation sequence decoding failed
[ExternalCamera] Skipped 9 frames

Sometimes I have been getting up to 24 frames skipped and as low at 2 frames skipped, does anyone know what is causing the problem. I have tested the frame rates with MSI afterburner and I am getting a solid 75 FPS and a few drops when loading stations. I've tested the GPU with the Valley Benchmark and set the display to sidebyside 1920x1080 on Ultra and Vsync off and the card is getting 79FPS Average. Also I have done the 3D Mark Firestrike Benchmark to also see if there was a bottle neck in my system. But it seems to fine by my understanding. So I don't know what is causing it.

ranix · Sep 27, 2015

I don't think the GPU has anything to do with this, this is about the external camera. The headtracking camera on the DK2 sucks really bad. It's one of the biggest reasons I'm looking forward to the official release and the Vive.

Stocker · Sep 28, 2015

Yeah I'm thinking its the camera. I have seen on reddit that some people have had the same problem and had to get another camera and it fixed the problem. I'm the same with the Vive, I'm not going to get the Oculus CV1. I saw on a video on youtube from the oculus connect 2 that there is problems with the camera they are using. Tested on youtube said that at times they were getting occlusion a lot with the Oculus controllers.

dementia · Sep 29, 2015

You need to drop to 0.5 of the Oculus runtime. 0.6 is known to have problems in ED. There is much discussion and advice on this in other threads including those from FD themselves.

Stocker · Oct 3, 2015

Thanks for the info Dementia, I'll re-install 0.5 and see how it runs. But I have noticed the other day that the 4 Ram modules on the back on my EVGA 970 SSC seem to be getting hot, I might have to water cool it earlier then my plan was as I'm going to upgrade my motherboard and CPU plus get another 970 so I could SLI. But at this stage I have just opened my computer and I've for a fan blowing air onto it. But surprising part is even with a house floor fan blowing on it, my temps by the X16 precision UI is the card is running at 75 degrees. which I don't like.

dementia · Oct 4, 2015

Stocker said:
Thanks for the info Dementia, I'll re-install 0.5 and see how it runs. But I have noticed the other day that the 4 Ram modules on the back on my EVGA 970 SSC seem to be getting hot, I might have to water cool it earlier then my plan was as I'm going to upgrade my motherboard and CPU plus get another 970 so I could SLI. But at this stage I have just opened my computer and I've for a fan blowing air onto it. But surprising part is even with a house floor fan blowing on it, my temps by the X16 precision UI is the card is running at 75 degrees. which I don't like.

Forget about SLI for the time being (for ED anyway) as ED is not SLI aware so you are dependant on the nVidia drivers and the old/current way they used to do it. The true benefit won't come in until they officially release the new SLI VR capabilities and for games to take advantage of it. In ED you will see marginally improvements and certainly not worth the cash outlay.

Cooling is certainly a serious factor as it would contribute to GPU instabilities. Water cooling is a good option although it can be awkward to install. A house floor fan will not provide enough cooling even in optimal conditions as they are designed for high volume low density air movement. What you need is high density air movement with as much volume as possible but this would become untenable for normal air fans. Liquid cooling works because it provides the equivalent of both in the form of high volume, high thermal surface area in a physically small space.

Some GPU card already come with closed loop liquid cooling which maybe more cost effective (if that is all you are interested in using liquid cooling for) so it worth doing some research on it before you start shopping for modular liquid cooling bits/systems.

Stocker · Oct 4, 2015

Dementia, I've only got the floor fan blowing on it to help with getting the hot air out of the case so the card has at least some cool air. At idle she is only running at 30 degrees and when in supercruise she is at 60-65 degrees but when entering into a station she jumps up to and over 70 degrees. I'm going to be modding my case as it is 10 years old and I'm going to make it a open like a Test bench as I live in Queensland Australia and it gets up to 40 degrees C in summer here during the day and down to about 24 degrees at night.

But the SLI side of things its not ED that is the problem, Its the oculus SDK. Oculus Driver has to hook to the Nvidia Gameworks VR for the SLI to work properly. FD have mentioned it in another thread, Oculus has to finalized their SDK FD can't expose it to the game engine till that is done. Unreal Engine is the same with the UE4 Editor. But there is some hope, from that announcement from FD about the VIVE and Horizons GameWorks VR SLI will be available.

At this stage I'm getting my computer for the VIVE as I won't be buying another Oculus as I want more room to move and to be able to stand. And the reason for the 2 GPU's is for the rendering of the for each eye. Otherwise I would of bought a 980ti.

Also I have done some tests by taking out the left eye glass and running the X16 Precision and the card is only using 2.3 GB of the Vram when at and in the stations. I have also tested it at a Res and its only 2.1 GB. I don't have any anti-aliasing which uses a lot of Vram and have my DSR to X4.0. Also it didn't matter what I had the DSR set to it was the same performance. I did find that everytime a ship spawns in the station or in supercruise it drops frames. Someone else said its the networking that is causing that.

ranix · Oct 4, 2015

dementia said:
The true benefit won't come in until they officially release the new SLI VR capabilities and for games to take advantage of it. In ED you will see marginally improvements and certainly not worth the cash outlay.

This isn't strictly true. SLI will drastically increase framerate in ED at the cost of an insane amount of rendering latency (like 20, 30ms or more). Currently when I enable SLI in VR it makes Elite unplayable. Having SLI is worse than having a single card right now, but I expect this to change with the release of the Vive.

dementia · Oct 4, 2015

ranix said:
This isn't strictly true. SLI will drastically increase framerate in ED at the cost of an insane amount of rendering latency (like 20, 30ms or more). Currently when I enable SLI in VR it makes Elite unplayable. Having SLI is worse than having a single card right now, but I expect this to change with the release of the Vive.

Ok well the end result is the same = not worth the money at this time.

How will a different HMD change this though? That would only the case if the latency issue was due to factors outside of ED and specific to the DK2. Is that your thinking?

- - - Updated - - -

Stocker said:
Dementia, I've only got the floor fan blowing on it to help with getting the hot air out of the case so the card has at least some cool air. At idle she is only running at 30 degrees and when in supercruise she is at 60-65 degrees but when entering into a station she jumps up to and over 70 degrees. I'm going to be modding my case as it is 10 years old and I'm going to make it a open like a Test bench as I live in Queensland Australia and it gets up to 40 degrees C in summer here during the day and down to about 24 degrees at night.

But the SLI side of things its not ED that is the problem, Its the oculus SDK. Oculus Driver has to hook to the Nvidia Gameworks VR for the SLI to work properly. FD have mentioned it in another thread, Oculus has to finalized their SDK FD can't expose it to the game engine till that is done. Unreal Engine is the same with the UE4 Editor. But there is some hope, from that announcement from FD about the VIVE and Horizons GameWorks VR SLI will be available.

At this stage I'm getting my computer for the VIVE as I won't be buying another Oculus as I want more room to move and to be able to stand. And the reason for the 2 GPU's is for the rendering of the for each eye. Otherwise I would of bought a 980ti.

Also I have done some tests by taking out the left eye glass and running the X16 Precision and the card is only using 2.3 GB of the Vram when at and in the stations. I have also tested it at a Res and its only 2.1 GB. I don't have any anti-aliasing which uses a lot of Vram and have my DSR to X4.0. Also it didn't matter what I had the DSR set to it was the same performance. I did find that everytime a ship spawns in the station or in supercruise it drops frames. Someone else said its the networking that is causing that.

Interesting. As another commander has pointed out, the issue seems to be increased latency which seems to make the game unplayable in the Oculus. We're thwarted at every turn!