Stutter Stutter Stutter since 1.3 - near stations, asteroids, and pretty much anything that has a model and collision


Yeah, at first I was encouraged by Support-Vulcan's post as it came along completely out of the blue, suggesting FD really are actively working on the issue without players having to keep prodding and poking. But then the content of the post suggests they're still bemused and scratching their heads, wondering where to even start working on it.
 
I'm still trying things they keep suggesting via my open ticket but nothing we do seems to improve it at all.
Starting to think it'll never be fixed. If I could only go back to 1.2 had no stuttering then :(
 
I was suffering from this issue too. Windows 8.1, 780ti, 60Hz G-Sync 4K screen, 32GB RAM, SSD, 3.5Ghz Quad core CPU. Every other game seemed to work fine, except for Hitman Absolution, which I couldn't get more than 14fps out of. Whilst troubleshooting that, I made an adjustment to msconfig (Start, Run, msconfig, Boot Tab, Advanced Options)

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Selected the Number of Processors tickbox, and set the drop down to highest number.

Now I had no belief this would do ANYTHING, and even now I can't figure out why forcing the number of processors available at boot should change anything, but it did for me. FPS jumped to a solid 60FPS in Hitman, and performance in Elite increased to 60FPS in station for both Monitor but also via Oculus Rift. Stutter in Asteroid fields, and approaching planetary bodies in supercruise also was negated. Head movement in Rift got a lot smoother.

Still don't quite understand why, but I'm not complaining...

Z
 
Hi All,

As always pseudo-science mumbo-jumbo-wishful thinking - YMMV.

My laptop (hey its got an Nvdia card) dropped from 50-55 to 35-45 FPS after 1.3. i purchased a second character during the sales and set up a different windows account to run it on the same machine. I notice FPS was much better, 59-60 FPS. Still get a frame "stutter" around rings to 40ish FPS, but only a coupe of times on the way in, fraction of a second rather than occasionally over a second. FPS obviously lower in station instances and belt instances, but very playable.

I created a 3rd windows account and use this now to play my primary character with the improved FPS and vastly reduced stutter.

I have put the improvement down to 1 or more of the following:

1) The hardware detector is way better at setting up for my setup than I am (very likely).
2) Patch over patch not quite as good as a fresh install (seems unlikely).
3) Other stuff running in my windows account not running in the 2 new accounts.

Very happy now, thought I woudl share.
 
My laptop (hey its got an Nvdia card) dropped from 50-55 to 35-45 FPS after 1.3. i purchased a second character during the sales and set up a different windows account to run it on the same machine. I notice FPS was much better, 59-60 FPS. Still get a frame "stutter" around rings to 40ish FPS, but only a coupe of times on the way in, fraction of a second rather than occasionally over a second. FPS obviously lower in station instances and belt instances, but very playable.

I created a 3rd windows account and use this now to play my primary character with the improved FPS and vastly reduced stutter.

I have put the improvement down to 1 or more of the following:

1) The hardware detector is way better at setting up for my setup than I am (very likely).
2) Patch over patch not quite as good as a fresh install (seems unlikely).
3) Other stuff running in my windows account not running in the 2 new accounts.

Could it also be because your two commanders are in different parts of the galaxy (i.e. one in busier systems than the other)? I'm convinced this plays a part.

Presumably for each Windows account you have installed the game again or is each account accessing the same files?

Thanks for sharing though - a 2nd Windows account is one thing I haven't tried (though I have tried it on a different, underpowered, PC). It also gives me an idea to play around with my 2nd commander to see if that gets the same stuttering in the same system as the 1st commander etc. etc.

With regards to the hardware detection - it thinks my monitor/screen res is 1024x768 when it's actually 1920x1080. But if you look in the config files it lists the most popular GPUs and mine is not in there.
 
No problems Mr Sequence.

Both commanders are in the same part of the galaxy (same dozen or so of worlds actually), now my 2nd character has advanced a bit doing roughly the same sort of thing. On an aside great fun revisiting the smaller ships again, still love the Adder as workhorse.

The thing that got me onto a nice clean install, into a nice clean windows account, was using the 2nd character in conflict zones (when I finally got him to C/D Cobra). I had stutter and frame drop on my original account in the python or vulture, particularly if I joined a lot of NPCs taking out Vipers or Dropships in conflict zones. I also got "gurgly" audio it sound like HMP when missing the multimedia extended instructions if you know what that sounds like.

None of this happened with my 2nd account. I initially put this down to the different ships, but then concluded that was daft, so move my primary account to a nice untouched Local Admin account on Windows 8.1. Audio glitches have gone, FPS much better, and substains even when lots of NPCs fighting. I need to try in a wing as network latency appeared to be a factor for the audio glitch.

Best of luck.

Simon

Could it also be because your two commanders are in different parts of the galaxy (i.e. one in busier systems than the other)? I'm convinced this plays a part.

Presumably for each Windows account you have installed the game again or is each account accessing the same files?

Thanks for sharing though - a 2nd Windows account is one thing I haven't tried (though I have tried it on a different, underpowered, PC). It also gives me an idea to play around with my 2nd commander to see if that gets the same stuttering in the same system as the 1st commander etc. etc.

With regards to the hardware detection - it thinks my monitor/screen res is 1024x768 when it's actually 1920x1080. But if you look in the config files it lists the most popular GPUs and mine is not in there.
 
Not sure if this is old news, but this afternoon I have tried switching the PhysX option in my nVidia Control Panel to something other than Automatic(recommended). Firstly I tried what seemed to be the favourable option from what I've been reading about on this thread and switched it to CPU, however this made any stutter (of any kind) extremely more prevalent. However, I then tried the GPU GTX970 option (my card) and stutter has... more or less all but gone. Not completely but the difference is night and day. How is this making a difference when FD aren't actually using this PhysX?

I am very glad I visited this thread today, as after a bit of trial and error have successfully improved the stuttering no end, so thank you for those suggesting this :)

Before I touched anything at all, more than anything I experienced the micro stuttering phenomenon, particularly on approach to/around planets/stars (although never at stations for landing thankfully) but most certainly in/at RES sites it was the worst, but then changing this PhysX option in my nVidia Control Panel to CPU made such a huge difference in a detrimental manner (with this option I had noticeable freezing stutters for apx half a second and the micro stutter a lot, every ten or so seconds a freeze followed by micro stutters).

But.. now after selecting this GPU GTX 970 option it has all but disappeared for the most part. I hope this hasn't gone against the grain as to what others were seeing inprovements in (like I've said it seemed most were saying changing it to CPU made improvements), but on my end it was selecting my GPU.

This is very confusing and I'm not quite sure what is going on, presumably even having Automatic(recommended) would have been choosing one of these options but somehow selecting each manually makes a difference, negatively or positively. I am delighted to say the least! (from a selfish perspective). I really hope you can all find a solution yourselves as the game now plays just how it should, for me.. glorious. I just made 1 mill BH rewards in less than an hour, so effortlessly and is sooooo much more playable.

My rig if any of this is helpful, any further detailed info feel free to ask and I'll do my best and list it:

CPU: i7-4790 @3.6GHz
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce (ref) GTX 970

(16GB RAM)
(SSD)

Perhaps I just got lucky today, and perhaps will get varied results over the coming days, but if so, or if not I will return to say otherwise.

Edit: I play in my monitor's native res 1440p with everything on its highest setting apart from SMAA on x1.
 
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After a couple of weeks of relative smoothness the stutter was back with a vengeance today. Stalls of at least half a second in a RES. It really makes no sense why it can suddenly just get worse one day. What is the common factor that could cause that? Servers or telemetry sent to/from servers. And yet others have tested in the training scenarios with network cable unplugged and still had stutter. Shader warming disabled. AMD card. Solo.
 
After a couple of weeks of relative smoothness the stutter was back with a vengeance today. Stalls of at least half a second in a RES. It really makes no sense why it can suddenly just get worse one day. What is the common factor that could cause that? Servers or telemetry sent to/from servers. And yet others have tested in the training scenarios with network cable unplugged and still had stutter. Shader warming disabled. AMD card. Solo.

I am not a network expert but since ED uses peer-to-peer network architecture, it might depend on who you are with when an instance is created, which is when you get into a system. If someone has a high latency, maybe it can slow everybody else down. I still don't understand how the network performance affects the framerate so much. Of course, if there is a lot of activity in a given system, that's more information to relay but I don't think it should impact the framerate so severely as it does right now.

My personal experience is the same than yours. No other applications running except the browser and ED Market Connector. Some evenings, I get on average 30 fps, other evenings I get only around 20. There are no explanation. I have a 75Mbps upload/75Mbps download fiber optic internet connection, so I know I'm not the bottleneck.
 
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Stutter stutter stutter ALL DAY LONG in RES points and some stations. It's particularly bad in res points with metallic asteroids. Sometimes half a second goes by before the screen is refreshed - sickening in a DK2. If there are lots of ships the audio chokes out and frame rates drop to 10 fps. It happens with or without a wingman.

This is with a 4GB GTX 970 ($350) and a $1500 gaming PC with a quad core i7, high quality Samsung Evo Pro SSD, and a 20 Mbit upload and 40 Mbit download network speed (verified on several speed test sites). Fresh Win7 install with all the latest drivers and BIOS and very few background applications running. ALL settings set to low except for the Oculus quality so that text can be read. VSync on or off makes no difference. I even tried running at 720p and that didn't help. If my system is not optimized for high frame rates, I don't know what is.

Do we need a Cray Titan supercomputer? Why is it that we can play games like Crysis, Skyrim, and GTA 5 which are drawing thousands of models and beautiful scenery without dropping frames, but when we boot up ED it draws a few asteroids and some ships and frame rates go to hell? Granted, the ship interior is modeled in exquisite detail, but everything outside shouldn't be hammering the GPU nearly that hard.

Another complaint... in most of the asteroid belts the 3D effect on distant asteroids is busted, so they look all blurry in the DK2. Blinking one eye and then the other reveals that the asteroids aren't being rendered in the same way for each eye. It definitely looks embarrassing for any tech demo. Maybe when the settings are set to the lowest possible values this goes away?

Haha... OK sorry about that rant. I really like ED, but as a software developer myself, I think ED's team should focus on making the game run rock-solid first and then worry about adding content later so paying customers don't quit playing the moment they drop into an asteroid belt.
 
Perhaps this should be the replacement soundtrack?
[video=youtube;aYMlHjOQrNU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYMlHjOQrNU[/video]
 
It's interesting to read just how many eureka moments players have had over the course of this issue. It's had every dead rooster, vodka spit and cuban cigar smoke tossed at it and I even burned an effigy to it and it still exists. All these fixes, none of them actually address the issue. If they did we wouldn't be talking about it. We aren't talking about game crashes while entering the station or anything like that, because they aren't happening.
 
microstutter on station approach. longer loading time (jumping- a few more seconds) , are two things i found. didnt hit a res in awhile.
 
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Same issue here : run smooth and perfect from 1.0 to 1.2.

1.3 is a the worse optimisation they could make.

I have stutters in SC when approching plantes with station around.

Never have any stutters outside human bubble.

I do have regular stutters every 30 secs in ressource extraction site. Unplayable RES for me.
 
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It's had every dead rooster, vodka spit and cuban cigar smoke tossed at it and I even burned an effigy to it and it still exists.

LMAO! I just went through this thread and actually tried some of the chicken voodoo stuff for the heck of it (like shader warming, cpu core tweaking, etc). As if spending 5+ hours lowering every setting possible wasn't enough. For me, res's are the worst, with looking around the station in the DK2 coming in second. When I'm winged up and someone suggests going to a metallic res site I have to talk them into looking for a rocky one instead. I guess some people without VR devices can get used to the stu stu stut stutterin. On rare occasions when making a sharp turn hyperspace things get choppy... That poor GPU... a few circles, some text and a skybox are clearly too much for our under-powered gaming rigs and fiber internet. I didn't start playing ED until a week before the 1.3 update so I can't comment on what it was like before the update.

ED has only crashed twice so far since I started playing - that's a pretty good record compared to a lot of games.

The song that Armour posted is freakin hilarious!
 
LMAO! I just went through this thread and actually tried some of the chicken voodoo stuff for the heck of it (like shader warming, cpu core tweaking, etc).

In fairness the shader warming is probably the only thing that isn't voodoo - for me it removes the 'approaching a planet' stutter (AMD card).

Just for a laugh, below is a list of all the voodoo I have tried - when I look back, some of them are cringeworthy (wallpaper timer, really? I must have been desperate LOL).

GraphicsConfiguration.xml - different values for texture size and WPF
core parking (app)
set port forwarding in router (UPnP disabled)
16/2/15 changed Windows sound from 44 to 48khz (cd to dvd quality)
20/2/15 turned of SC music (based on forum post)
21/2/15 disabled several Windows services and other components - see seperate file
21/2/15 uninstalled WinPCap
21/2/15 set wallpaper timer to 1 hour
22/2/15 16:00 HDD set acoustic management to max performance in HD Sentinel
22/2/15 tried training scenarios with Philips monitor 60 and 75hz still microstutter
22/2/15 tried refresh rate of 59Hz still microstutter in training scenario
22/2/15 set PnP O/S to yes in BIOS
23/2/15 swapped HDD and BD-ROM SATA cables over
24/2/15 disabled SpeedStep in BIOS
24/2/15 tried via VGA using VGA/DVI adapter
24/2/15 disabled C1E in BIOS
24/2/15 turned off HWiNFO64 (including disabling driver)
25/2/15 disabled serial port in BIOS
27/2/15 overclocked GPU+mem
27/2/15 underclocked GPU
2/3/15 killed traystatus process
2/3/15 killed googleupdate and googlecrashhandler processes
2/3/15 killed sidebar (gadgets) process
3/3/15 un-installed AVG
3/3/15 tried Shadows=Off
4/3/15 changed some parameters on network adapter - see seperate file
5/3/15 changed max IRQ parameter on network adapter
9/3/15 Windows basic display scheme
9/3/15 set ED32 exe to High/Realtime (changes back to Normal)
9/3/15 core parking registry change http://forum.cakewalk.com/Windows-7-amp-Core-Parking-a-better-way-to-Turn-It-OFF-m1861804.aspx
12/3/15 disabled "virtual cache" in launcher options
12/3/15 turned on Aero
20/3/15 disabled page file
23/3/15 textsuresize to 64 (normally 256) in GraphicsConfigurationOverride.xml
23/3/15 PerformanceScaling from 1 to 0 in AppConfig.xml (suggestion in forum post)
23/3/15 textsuresize to 64 in GraphicsConfigurationOverride.xml
24/3/15 complete un-install (including reg entries) of AMD driver and install Beta 15.3 driver
9/4/15 in BIOS set CPU Margin Enhancement to Performance Mode
20/4/15 in BIOS virtualization tech to disabled
20/4/15 CPU TM function to disabled
24/4/15 installed Beta 15.4 driver (actually same driver version # as 15.3)
29/5/15 installed Beta 15.5 driver
10/6/15 Multimedia Class Scheduler/Windows Audio "fix" here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=154456&page=3&p=2375135&viewfull=1#post2375135
9/7/15 installed AMD 15.7 driver
10/7/15 Radeon Pro with Dynamic Vsync Control, did help with micro-stutter on Low settings – see seperate file


AppConfig.xml settings tried (one at a time):
24/2/15 numworkerthreads=1
25/2/15 UseThreadPriorities=1
27/2/15 OptimiseForPerformance="0"
2/3/15 numworkerthreads=4
2/3/15 tried setting HxW to 1920x1080


AppData->Local->...->Graphics->Settings.xml:
AMDcrashfix=true

I still have a list of another 20 or so things I had intended to try but I know it would be a complete waste of time.
 
Personally I don't think its anything to do with our computers in most cases. I come home from work and fire up the gaming computer.
With 75mbps d/l cable internet (tested) and from a fresh boot, I have horrible freezing in RES one day and smooth sailing the next.
I do notice I have the best performance in the morning when I see few other players. But all day today I have had smooth instances in the RES site I am farming off and on.
 
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