Vive: Performance workaround, from stuttering to smooth

Brains MkNutt

B
I have a HTC Vive (not pre) with GTX 980ti and have been getting a fair amount of stuttering regardless of which graphics settings were chosen.

Not sure if this particular issue affects many others, but just in case it does, I thought I'd post what I found and a workaround. The workaround fixes the stuttering and lets me run with VR high and even Ultra settings. It doesn't fix the readability of the text.

I've got the elite launcher added to steam as a non-steam game, not sure if that's relevant or not.
Also, I've already set elite to use 3d vr in the settings, so each time it loads it'll go straight into VR.

First, these are the steps that start elite so it ends up in the stuttering..
1. Start Steam
2. Start Steam VR by clicking the VR icon at the top right in Steam. It goes green and you get the SteamVR status window shown.
3. From steam start the elite launcher
4. Click play in the launcher.
In the elite game window I see a blue steam popup saying 'The Steam Community' 'Access while playing'. Not sure, but this might be steam's Big Picture stuff.

Here's the steps that end up in a perfectly smooth VR run..
1. Start Steam
2. Start Steam VR by clicking the VR icon at the top right in Steam. It goes green and you get the SteamVR status window shown.
3. Exit Steam by Steam's 'Steam' menu and 'Exit' option. You should still have the SteamVR status window open but no steam.
4. Start Steam again. Now you should have a grey VR icon at the top right in steam but still have the SteamVR status window displayed.
5. From steam start the elite launcher
6. Click play in the launcher.
In the elite game window I see a grey steam popup saying 'Access the Steam Community while playing' 'Press shift+tab to begin'.
I'd put it screenshots into this post, but the forum editor hates me. So here's a link to them instead, showing the bits and pieces involved in the two different ways of launching: http://imgur.com/a/C2Nw8

Edit: in case it's important somehow, I'm running Windows 10 and have NVidia driver version 365.10
 
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ArachAu

ArachAu
Weird. I always just boot it up "Launch in VR" from Steam and it's been fine, playing on a 970 here with a custom quality settings that are modestly higher than VR Low in both 2.0 and the 2.1 beta. The "Steam Community" pop up you're getting is only on monitor window it's not rendered out to the Vive.

Have you perhaps thought experimenting by just disabling the steam overlay in game outright? Right click on the game -> Properties. Because you're essentially turning off the Big Picture Steam Overlay in Elite (which as I understand SteamVR uses for the in headset Steam Overlay) by doing as you've described.
 
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Brains MkNutt

B
ArachAu said:
Have you perhaps thought experimenting by just disabling the steam overlay in game outright? Right click on the game -> Properties. Because you're essentially turning off the Big Picture Steam Overlay in Elite (which as I understand SteamVR uses for the in headset Steam Overlay) by doing as you've described.
Click to expand...

Thanks. As it turns out, there's no overlay settings in the Non-Steam game's properties in steam.

However, I dug a little deeper and isolated the problem down to one general setting under the steam's View -> Settings -> In Game.

Elite will have missed frames if 'Use Desktop Game Theatre when launching desktop games while SteamVR is active' is checked. It will be smooth if it's unchecked.
Some screeshots here: http://imgur.com/a/qq40r

I suspect this will only affect people who don't have elite from steam's store and are running the elite launcher from steam's Non-Steam shortcut.

To cut a long story short, for me now there's no problem with missed frames if Steam+VR is started as normal but the elite launcher is run directly from outside steam. This way, it still gets the in-headset overlay.

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starscream_au said:
Thanks for the suggestion but didn't work for me.
I'm using an r9 390 and am still trying to nut out this stutter problem.
Click to expand...

Hope you manage to crack it! I know how disheartening it is.
 

BonusPoints

BonusPoints
I also tried elite for the first time with the HTC and r9 390, getting real bad stutter when moving my head vertically up and down. I'll try some more things tomorrow.
 

shadragon

shadragon
Go to the next lower lever of SS if you see stutter. If I go to 2.0 SS I get all sorts of stutter when I move my head. Backing down to 1.5 I have no issues.
 

BonusPoints

BonusPoints
Doing nothing special for starting up the game but simply changing the graphics option from ultra to VR High fixed the stutter.
 

Yosharian

Yosharian
i7 6700
Strix 980ti
SSD installation
16GB RAM

Getting major stutter while flying around in RES sites. It's not registering on the 'Frame rate GOOD' display thing that's in the Steam VR settings menu (that reports no missed frames). But it's still there. Terrible juddering.

And this is in VR LOW settings.

I suspect it might be due to the fact I had to rollback to a previous driver due to the flickering peripheral visuals bug.

I tried loading Steam VR first, then loading ED 'natively' (which automatically loads 32-bit). Still has the issue.

My normal load is to just load ED from the desktop shortcut, then I can load the 64-bit version of the game since obviously my system is 64-bit.

It's a Steam version of ED.

Current NVIDIA drivers 365.19.
 
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Brains MkNutt

B
Hi Yosharian, it doesn't sound like the steam Desktop Game Theatre problem that this thread was about (sorry about the vague title).

Your suspicion about the drivers sounds about right if it only recently started happening since the driver rollback.
But still, it's strange it doesn't show up in Steam VR's missed frames settings menu.

Might be a long shot, but there used to be a problem with programs like flux (a screen overlay program that fades to red at nightime). See https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/4dk4j1/vive_missing_frames_on_a_980ti_what_could_it_be/ - the poster's setup sounds very similar to yours too. You could try killing off all other background programs to see if there's something causing a conflict.

Also, if you've rolled back drivers, it might be worth trying to reset the NVidia settings, e.g.: https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/4gxgjs/possible_black_magic_fix_if_you_have_regular/
 

Yosharian

Yosharian
Brains MkNutt said:
Hi Yosharian, it doesn't sound like the steam Desktop Game Theatre problem that this thread was about (sorry about the vague title).

Your suspicion about the drivers sounds about right if it only recently started happening since the driver rollback.
But still, it's strange it doesn't show up in Steam VR's missed frames settings menu.

Might be a long shot, but there used to be a problem with programs like flux (a screen overlay program that fades to red at nightime). See https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/4dk4j1/vive_missing_frames_on_a_980ti_what_could_it_be/ - the poster's setup sounds very similar to yours too. You could try killing off all other background programs to see if there's something causing a conflict.

Also, if you've rolled back drivers, it might be worth trying to reset the NVidia settings, e.g.: https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/4gxgjs/possible_black_magic_fix_if_you_have_regular/
Click to expand...
I used flux on my prev. build but haven't installed it on this one yet.

How do I access the frame timings graph shown in that thread? Would like to investigate.
 

unkellsam

U
Excellent find! This solved my problem with all non-steam games. I had done everything to try fixing the problem, including disabling the camera and bluetooth, reinstalling drivers, uninstalling ASUS software, and anything else I could think of. This did the trick!
 
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