Oculus Rift with ED problems

Kordred · Jun 29, 2018

Hi

I updated my nvidia GTX 980 driver, and it included an annoying Geforce Experience App that would change your settings for games. After doing that, when I play in VR with the Oculus Rift, it is now really jittery, flashes back and forth between grey (like the sensors aren't tracking) and normal color, and stops updating for a couple seconds at a time.

I uninstalled Geforce Experience, and rolled the driver back to the previous version, but the problems didn't go away. I updated to the latest nvidia driver again, but without the Geforce Experience thing, same problem. No matter how I change the display settings, its the same problem. I used to play in High quality all the time and it was smooth.

I launch ED from the normal desktop app, not steam, and not the Oculus version. Other Oculus games run smooth, just like they used to. The problem is only with using the Rift in ED. ED is smooth as it used to be without the Rift.

EDIT: Also, just discovered it only does this when the window is focused, if I click off the window while in Rift, the Rift view is smooth as ever.

I don't even know where to start, any ideas?

Flapdrol1337 · Jun 29, 2018

Make sure everything is off, shadowplay, windows dvr, game mode, nvidia/windows/other overlays etc.

BigDuke6ixx · Jun 29, 2018

Always custom install and select 'Install Drivers Only'.

Kordred · Jun 30, 2018

So just now the game paused and wouldnt load, until I clicked off the window to unfocus it, then it loaded and was just fine. It has to be something with overlays or something like Flapdrol is saying, I just cant find what. Anyway, thanks.

Blairvoyach · Jul 1, 2018

Kordred said:
So just now the game paused and wouldnt load, until I clicked off the window to unfocus it, then it loaded and was just fine. It has to be something with overlays or something like Flapdrol is saying, I just cant find what. Anyway, thanks.

No idea what the (proper) solution is but I'm having much the same experience. Doesn't matter which version of ED I am using, it becomes unplayable if you have the window in focus. As a work around, which should get you going until we can find what has changed, set your affinity for the Oculus server app to the last two cores (1 physical, 1 virtual) and the rest to your ED executable. That should bring back the smooth frame rates, it does for me. If you don't want to manually set your CPU affinity, you can use this handy utility ED-Affinity which will do the job automatically.

I used to be able to run ED and have Netflix or Plex plus EDSM pinned in my cockpit. For me, I think a combination of Win10 1803 + latest Nvidea drivers & Oculus updates have clashed somewhere. If you find anything out, please let me know.

loribee · Jul 2, 2018

I had this happen to me. I don't think you want to hear it, but the only solution for me was to completely re-install windows from scratch

good luck

dogbite · Jul 2, 2018

You might try Display Driver Uninstall , https://www.wagnardsoft.com/ ( in safe mode) and then install 388.59. That is the last driver Oculus recommended afaik. I found later drivers kept turning on my projector as default audio, killing my speakers every time I started my computer. DDU is safe and completely removes previous driver settings. As BD6 suggests, only install the driver selecting custom install during the new installation.

Kordred · Jul 6, 2018

Update: TLDR version: Blairvoyach's suggestion for ED-Affinity fixed it. Kind of, like he said, its a brute force approach to the real problem, which is unknown.

Things that didn't work, suggested by Frontier Support: (don't read that as snarky, I genuinely appreciate them trying to help)

- Increasing the ED executable application in Task Manager - Details to "above normal" or higher resource priority.

- Reinstalling ED.

- Clean install (choose custom install, and select Clean Installation) of the latest Nvidia Driver without Geforce Experience.

- Clean install of the previous Nvidia driver I was using.

- Reinstalling ED again, but this time also deleting or renaming left over game folders in:
· "C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Frontier_Developments"exists - Delete it
"C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Frontier Developments"exists - Renamethis folder to back up your user settings

- Rebooting in a clean boot with only Oculus software running like here:
http://www.thewindowsclub.com/what-is-clean-boot-state-in-windows

- Going back to a clean install of the 388.59 Nvidia driver.

None of those things worked, so I tried Blairvoyach's suggestion for but used ED-Affinity, and that makes it work, its smooth like before.

Blairvoyach · Jul 7, 2018

Pleased you got it working but as you say, it's brute force and we shouldn't need to do such things. ED is the only app I have this problem with. For me, it manifested as a USB bandwidth problem as I was getting stutters with the grey flashes and then a random 5 second complete PC lockup. I was using the recommended Inateck 4 port card and what I noticed was that if I installed the Inateck drivers, the problem went away for a single run of ED, for that one run it was smooth as glass. Run Ed a second time and the stuttering was back. Switch to the built in Win10 drivers and again, for one run it was smooth again. This fooled me into thinking I had a bandwidth problem and so I forked out £80 for the Startech 4 port, 4 channel card. First run, it was back to normal, second run, stutters, but not as bad.

I really think this is a conflict somewhere between ED and the Oculus software albeit an edge-case as so few seem to be suffering it. Windows updates do NOT help, neither do Nvidea drivers at least in my case. I'd just like to know who to shout at.

In any case, I think I will go with Loribee's thoughts and re-install Win10. Just win10, Oculus 1.27 and ED with the 388.59 Nvidea drivers. Maybe there is something we have installed, in common, that is causing this so I will keep adding back my apps until ED breaks.

I may be some time.....

Blairvoyach · Jul 7, 2018

Well, I think CMDR Loribee nailed it. Windows 10 pro with latest updates, Oculus 1.27 with Dash 2.0 beta and Nvidea 388.59 GPU drivers. ED works perfectly as does Oculus Dash. No stutters or lock-ups. I can have any number of windows pinned in my cockpit and no slow downs. I'll do a clone of my C: drive now so I can always get back to this point. Now to try and find out if I can pinpoint a cause.

Kordred · Jul 7, 2018

ANOTHER UPDATE: After being annoyed at not finding the real problem, and a night of tinkering around, I decided to reinstall windows per Loribee's suggestion, and yes, that fixes it. I am back to nvidia 388.59 and I'm NOT updating lol.

Blairvoyach · Jul 8, 2018

Kordred said:
ANOTHER UPDATE: After being annoyed at not finding the real problem, and a night of tinkering around, I decided to reinstall windows per Loribee's suggestion, and yes, that fixes it. I am back to nvidia 388.59 and I'm NOT updating lol.

Yup, I'm totally with you on that one [up][up]

dogbite · Jul 9, 2018

Well re-installing Windows is certainly going to clean the gremlins out, but for those like myself who would find that monumentally time consuming because of the sheer volume of software I would need to reinstall, be assured 388.59 and using DDU is a good place to start. I have tried several versions after 388.59 only to return and find issues created by them were gone.
I try not to cut off the arm if a finger will save the patient. OMMV

BigDuke6ixx · Jul 9, 2018

dogbite said:
Well re-installing Windows is certainly going to clean the gremlins out, but for those like myself who would find that monumentally time consuming because of the sheer volume of software I would need to reinstall, be assured 388.59 and using DDU is a good place to start. I have tried several versions after 388.59 only to return and find issues created by them were gone.
I try not to cut off the arm if a finger will save the patient. OMMV

Make regular restore points. That way you can just go back to a stable point.

dogbite · Jul 9, 2018

BigDuke6ixx said:
Make regular restore points. That way you can just go back to a stable point.

That would work too assuming the restore point was made while a satisfactory driver ie 388.59 was installed at the time it was created. However just removing the driver and it's registry settings with DDU and installing the preferred one would insure no other registry changes were affected which might be the case depending on what else had be installed since that restore was made.
Not sure why you felt you needed direct your restore point comment to me. I am not the Op and I don't have a problem with my computers. Indeed they not only have restore points, all 3 that I currently use have image files and backups externally.

BigDuke6ixx · Jul 9, 2018

dogbite said:
That would work too assuming the restore point was made while a satisfactory driver ie 388.59 was installed at the time it was created. However just removing the driver and it's registry settings with DDU and installing the preferred one would insure no other registry changes were affected which might be the case depending on what else had be installed since that restore was made.
Not sure why you felt you needed direct your restore point comment to me. I am not the Op and I don't have a problem with my computers. Indeed they not only have restore points, all 3 that I currently use have image files and backups externally.

Just agreeing with you that complete windows reinstalls are time consuming and unnecessary.

dogbite · Jul 10, 2018

BigDuke6ixx said:
Just agreeing with you that complete windows reinstalls are time consuming and unnecessary.

Yep. Don't really want to do that until I build a new computer. Not only unnecessary (usually), but if one doesn't find out the root cause of an issue they risk it's return.

There comes a time when playing become more important than trying to figure out what has happened and that will depend on one's resources and knowledge. As someone who has always had a large game library, I have used backups and cloned boot drives, so as to mitigate a lengthy restore process for years. I can have all the important stuff up in and hour or so.