Stutter in VR with Horizons

[Skaldy]

I have just upgraded my GPU to a 4070 Ti. It has made a big improvement in the visual quality as expected. However, ED still suffers from frequent stuttering where the FPS drops well below 90.

The strange thing is I can reduce all the graphics settings so that Task Manager shows that the GPU is only using 30-40% constantly. The CPU is an 8 core at about 50%. Yet even when the hardware is idling like this Elite still stutters and the FPS in the ED window still drops below 90.

My test case is to park near the entrance of a station.

Any suggestions?

 

[Globusdiablo]

My test case is to park near the entrance of a station.

Any suggestions?

You're using the worst place in the game to measure optimisation. In and around starports is very hit and miss. You'll never get a steady frames per second there. It's not your PC or settings, it's poor game optimisation. Accept drops there.

Instead, focus on the part of the game you play the most. I prefer crashing around in a res, so I optimise there (also pretty demanding).

 

[Skaldy]

Thanks for the reply. That basically answers my question - live with the stutters. On a positive note I can max out the settings and still have headroom on the GPU. Looks amazing especially the planetary terrain with ultra settings. Would be nice to have every planet available for landing along with weather and atmosphere but I suspect that will remain a dream.

 

[jojon]

I wonder whether ED would benefit any from Direct Storage (requires DX12, btw), when you get to large handcrafted locations... I keep thinking graphics cards should have on-board SSDs with DMA, for caching stuff...

 

[Skaldy]

Just an update. Yes it does seem that immediately around the station entrance is the worst place for stuttering. Everywhere else is pretty smooth. Have all the graphics on max settings now, so very happy with it.

One thing to note though is that even on minimal settings with the CPU/GPU idling, the stutter at the station is still there, so it's not just a hardware load issue.

 

[Skaldy]

Another update.

After some research and experimentation I found that the main issue appears on the SteamVR Advanced Frame Timing graph. On my system with a Reverb G2 the CPU had about 4ms of highlighted red 'Late Start' on every frame. This meant that the CPU only had about 7ms remaining each frame to get everything done. Which explains why the CPU was only 60% utilized in Task Manager.

So in order to mitigate the stuttering issue I cleared up some background services running and general tidying to ensure minimal load on the CPU. I also used boosted my i7-9700 to 4.9Ghz from about 4.6Ghz previously. Switched off motion smoothing. Set most of my Elite graphics settings to Ultra/Max (4070 Ti) but at the same time made sure the GPU graph on the Advanced Frame Timing was well within 11ms. Enabled AMD FSR 1.0, HMD Image x1.0.

Now everything is running smoothly at 90Hz even around stations. There is an occasional stutter when the CPU goes over 11ms, but it's impossible to eliminate that without a cure for the underlying issue of the 4ms Late Start frames on the CPU (no idea what is causing that)