What the hell has just happened to the performance??? Halved framerate from April Update?

Logged on today, like literally every other day, to face unprecedented performance issues. Barely scraping 55fps in VR. Absolutely, undeniably unplayable. So the April update has broken something.

Any playtime within 'normal space' is jittery as hell. Supercruise, less so, but all gameplay now plagued by those horrific frame-skips, which are usually far less frequent. I've certainly had to force myself to up my tolerance level of the occasional pause/judder effect these last few months of playing, but this has now just reached a level I can't even begin to imagine getting used to. I find most of the frame-skips are caused by the contacts tab updating, and I genuinely thought since they were updating the HUD for this update, that they would optimise this process or something, but I was being very naive, clearly.

I've been playing non-stop (quite literally every day) for these past few months since I really got into the game, so this massive performance drop is not a subjective thing that I hadn't noticed before.

Last night, played for several hours at 90fps and now I'm seeing fluctutations between 50 and 70fps at best, in normal space. I haven't even got as far as checking planet surfaces as I had to get that headset off my face after 20 minutes of jittery mess. Both CPU and GPU are up at around 14-16ms frametime, along with massive frame-skips when the contact list updates or when NPC audio comes across the comms. This is the case no matter how low I tried setting the graphical options.

This is the most disappointing thing I could have imagined, being a hugely committed player. Hardly relevant, but I just bought my friend a PC rig this morning (yes, really) to let him experience the game for himself too. I'm obviously regretting this now.

Please, someone tell me this isn't just me experiencing this!

PC Specs, as usual:

i7 9900k
1080ti
G-Skill 3600mhz
Samsung PRO SSD
 
Yes this latest update has definitely introduced a massive frame rate hit, even in non VR. I run a GTX970 with adaptive sync, and a frame cap of 60FPS. Before the update it never dropped below 60FPS. I could run with most detail set to high, I have now had to drop to low settings to play the game. (bug report raised.)
 
Yes this latest update has definitely introduced a massive frame rate hit, even in non VR. I run a GTX970 with adaptive sync, and a frame cap of 60FPS. Before the update it never dropped below 60FPS. I could run with most detail set to high, I have now had to drop to low settings to play the game. (bug report raised.)
Including links to bug reports let's others add weight to them
 
Sounds like another stellar update,...Some can't even log in due to commander data retrieval issues. I imagine there will be plenty of patches for the next few days so think happy thoughts gang!
 
I have not played for a year or so and yeah me to. No matter what settings I change I get a dip in frame rates no matter what I am doing or where I am doing it, set to 60 fps it drops to either 45,51 for a second or two. Up the frames and it will drop more. Set it to off and the frames go from about 180 to 110 for the same second or two. No matter what the fps is that stutter is still present.

Ryzen 2700x
Vega 64
 
UPDATE: The poor average framerate can be fixed by deleting the graphic options folder under C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Frontier Developments\Elite Dangerous\Options.

AS FOR THE FRAME SKIPS IN VR - well we're truly at a loss now. If you thought it was bad before, this is a whole new level of lag. Had a quick go at a bounty mission and it was so disorientating having a lag spike every few seconds. It's absolutely awful.

I've never figured out what causes these frame skips - it seems a lot of people don't notice them as the forums are plagued with players claiming everything is "butter smooth" for them. But I've wasted tons of money upgrading CPUs and motherboards in an attempt to fix these issues to find they are inherent with the game itself. It's weird because the GPU nor CPU are hitting the 11ms threshold so it seems to be an internal thing within the game. Most notably when the contact tab updates it often gives me that split second lag and skips a frame or two. Other times it does it without any clear link or reason at all.

I would do anything to have consistent, smooth gameplay in Elite, but I fear it will never happen. It's a shame this isn't more of a priority over updated HUD menus and revised training simulations...
 
Was also suffering very low frame rates, then noticed the "Frame Rate Limit" in graphics settings was set to 30. Upped the value to 60 and all seems fine now.

Can't remember whether this is a new setting, or was previously a lower limit.
Now seems to be an upper limit as well.

Hope this helps.
 
UPDATE: The poor average framerate can be fixed by deleting the graphic options folder under C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Frontier Developments\Elite Dangerous\Options.

This seems to help, but be aware you may want to jot down your settings first, as this will reset them.
 
I turned on the vertical sync up to 60 fps, in the game now more than 30 fps does not rise. This is clearly a error in the game.

UPD. But after the reboot, it became again 45 fps instead of 80. And not immediately. After entering the hangar, the FPS goes down from 80 to 45 for 6 seconds, as if some part of the memory is clogged.
 
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I can confirm this as well. GTX 960 for me and 32GB of RAM. Proc is a intel core i7-4790 at 3.6 Ghz Something is very wrong here and I think this needs to be brought over to support immediately.
 
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Confirming similar VR problems after patch. Also: A few seconds after entering hangar from main menu the VR performance suddenly halves and the game becomes absolutely unplayable. Frame rate issue does not go away after flying outside station either. This does not happen when I start one of the training missions (fighter launch tutorial).

2080ti, 32GB RAM at 4000Mhz, Intel 9900K CPU at 4.9Ghz, Pimax 5K plus
 
Haven't tried VR yet, but I'm seeing essentially zero change in performance without VR.

What FX/volumetric quality settings are you guys using? I was comparing the changes in the new GraphicsConfiguration.xml and noticed they increased the number of blur passes for the volumetric effects of the medium and high quality settings (no change for ultra or low though).
 
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