Stuttering issues - discussion & suggestions

Your English is great, better than mine!

I forgot to do the tests as I was taking apart my Fana CSP V3 and changing a few things.

Are the stutters you have perfectly timed? They occur at a perfect interval (example. always 1 seconds apart, or always 1.5s apart, or always 0.25s apart, etc.)? And do they happen no matter how low or high your framerate is (eg. stutters still happen even when framerate is 40 fps and even when framerate is 200 fps)? If your answer is yes to both questions then you most likely are suffering from the same type of stutter me and Tero mentioned.

 

I don't know how to measure the stuttering intervals. Sometimes the image freezes (a few hundredths of a second maybe), in addition to the almost constant stuttering.

I have been testing a lot of things and I have finally limited the FPS of the game to 40. So I can play with enough smooth and I have almost no problems of either stuttering or tearing. It's not the best solution, but it works for me.

I have noticed that some cars produce more stuttering than others (Caterham and MCR are perhaps the worst). There are also circuits such as Kansai and Cadwell Park which have stuttering. The Caterham + Kansai is probably the worst combination. Instead, the F3 F301 goes smooth in all tracks.

I do not know what happens with this simulator. Stock Car Extreme worked me completely smoothly, rFactor 2 also works well, but Automobilista...

Regards.

 

Well as some of you are aware I have had major stuttering which has essentially rendered this game useless and the league races virtually unplayable for me but I have now fixed it.

I won't go into detail of what i tried because the list is endless but basically on my system this game does not like WINDOWED mode at all, now I had tried full single screen before but this time it fixed it, butter smooth with over 25 cars on track, to test it I switched to single screen windowed and the stutter was instantly there.

Now this is a problem for me as I use triples and have the game spanned across all 3 using no borders so it emulates full screen and worked great up until the last update, I can't use Nvidia surround as I have a PLP configuration 26" centre 1920x1200 and 2 17" 1280x1024 flipped in portrait, I run a forced res in Windows of 3968x1200 and it lines up nicely.

Now anyone that has triples knows you just can't go back to single screen, it's just too small!

So how do I run the game in full screen with my set up? I remembered a program called SoftTH was used for DX9 games as I wanted to use this for Project Cars but couldn't because it's DX11, this program is basically a DX9.DLL file that replaces the game one and when you fire the game up it uses what you have set your res to in Windows and emulates it in game by giving you that drop down box in the config tool, I pick now 3968x1200 32bit and use full screen and widescreen UI and boom it fires up spanned perfectly!

It would appear the issue is with running Windowed that Windows forces desktop VSync and creates a timing mismatch, using VSync in the game helped a bit but did not eliminate it.

No stutter and smooth as silk, result I can now compete and ran some races last night and can keep up woooooh!

Program in question is here.....SoftTH, this also has more functions for creating custom resolutions for mis matched monitors, it corrects any timing issues so if you are getting stutter especially on corners this program is for you or if you can make sure you run full screen.

One happy Charger

 

I didn't go through the list of tracks like I said I was but I believe Kansai may need to be added to the list. At certain times of the day, during the 2nd half of the "snake" section, the constant, evenly timed stutters happen. Once you're past the long, uphill left-hander, the stutters end. I don't know what time of the day this happens at because I was in an online server but at certain times it happens.

 

I have updated the graphics card drivers (nVidia) and the stutter has decreased. Still, there are cars and tracks that cause more stutter than others.

Regards.

 

I been using MSI Afterburner graphs to "record" stutters. Here's an example:
Imola 72 - 2 laps - 14 opponents
Formula Vintage
"Medium" graphics settings.
In-game 60 FPS Limit. This makes it easier to identify problems, because the Frame Time and FPS lines should be horizontal.

TOP GRAPH - Framerate ms - Should be horizontal - 1000ms/60 = 16.67ms.
MIDDLE GRAPH - Framerate FPS - Should be horizontal - 60FPS.
BOTTOM GRAPH - GPU Usage Percentage - The average is about 30%.

Huge spikes. The top graph peaks at about 100ms!!!
The GPU Usage drops to almost zero!!!

Strange! - There were several bumps with opponents during the race, which produced visual "shudders", but these don't appear on the graphs.

***** I've only shown three graphs, but Afterburner can also display CPU usage for each thread, GPU Core Clock, and many more.

THREE WAYS OF VIEWING THE AFTERBURNER GRAPHS
1. After the race. Pausing the graph logging helps.
2. Realtime - Run Automobilsta in a bordered window.
3. Realtime - Put the graphs on a second monitor - I haven't tried this.

AFTERBURNER DOWNLOAD
MSI Global

 

I've also been trying to see whether disk activity is causing stuttering.


I find it easier to use the AI driver instead of driving the car myself, so I can concentrate on the graphs. Though I don't know whether the AI driver affects the results.

 

An interesting thing I found with the recommended 'max pre rendered frames=1' setting. I always monitor my GPU GTX760 power use with MSI afterburner and found that when set to '=1' the GPU works alot harder. When set to 'use the 3D appl;cation setting' I find about %25 less power useage and no stuttering. Card load is alot less!

 

This seems to be the same with RF2.

 

I've found that DynHud seems to causing most of my stuttering problems. Thanks to the members who have posted about this.

I used MSI Afterburner to produce the graphs of FrameTime and FrameRate.
Race - Two laps of Kansai
One Formula Vintage car controlled by the AI driver.
In-game 60 FPS limiter so that the graphs are horizontal and the spikes are easier to see.
Ignore the very tall vertical lines on the graphs. These are when the Automobilista menus are shown before and after the race.
The graphs were produced after a fresh Windows installation.

GRAPH 1 - Dynhud enabled - d3d9.dll is in the main folder. Two large spikes.


GRAPH 2 - Dynhud disabled - d3d9.dll removed from the main folder. Very smooth graphs.


GRAPH 3 - Dynhud enabled again - d3d9.dll is in the main folder. One large spike.


I have tried all the solutions to stuttering that I could find e.g.
In-game settings.
Different NVidia drivers.
I've installed the latest and older versions of Java in the DynHud folder.
Reinstalled Windows 10 - Home and Professional.
I've used the DynHud editor to remove all the widgets from the screen. The stuttering still occurs.

***** I love using DynHud - it's a great app!!!! ******
The problem might not be in DynHud itself, but it could be how Java reacts with my hardware/software combination.

 

THREE MAIN TYPES OF STUTTERING?

1. Random stutters.
2. Regular stutters at the same point on the track.

I've cured most of 1 and 2 on my system by disabling DynHud - see post #70.

3. "Shuddering" when two cars move close together or touch. The cars seem to "jump" to a new position on the screen. I wonder whether it happens when the "physics" calculations become too complex and cannot keep up with the frame rate.

 

Changing this setting didn't make a difference to my Automobilista but it did raise the FPS for Race 07 by 10 - 20 frames at certain times. More headroom is always better. Thank you for the tip.

 

3. "Shuddering" when two cars move close together or touch.

It also happens to me. It's quite rare and frustrating that kind of jump that gives the other car.

Regards.

 

I thought I had this resolved long ago but it has come back to haunt me and it's much worse than before (before official release).

(Regular stuttering at certain points in tracks, usually at corners.)

What I did to work around it before was by:

(1) turning off the game's V-Sync and setting the FPS limiter in game to 60 FPS.

(2) V-Sync will then be handled by Nvidia by forcing V-Sync to either On (Smooth) or On (Fast). The latter seems to be the best for me.

That was months ago and the following were my specs:
3840x2160 G-Sync
16GB RAM DDR4
i7-4790K
GTX 1080 2x SLI

Now:
3840x2160 (no G-Sync)
i7-6700K
64GB DDR4
GTX1080 2x SLI (upgraded both)

I wonder what could be the cause. I thought I was going crazy with the AA (8xMSAA+8xSGSSAA) but even without AA it's going crazy.

As for me, disabling DynHUD or HUD in general doesn't do a thing.

(The following is info that I can give as far as I remember based on today's run.)

Cars: F-Extreme, F-V12, Metalmoro, Mini Challenge
Tracks: Brasilia Exterior, Salvador

This isn't my first time reporting this (in fact I already did months ago and posted some long posts regarding my observations and workarounds) so I'd say it's pretty much relevant to all tracks and cars.

I play with default settings (tracks and cars both).

(The following are what some users have reported to fix this issue for them (also before official release). They are not in any order, the numbering is just there for cleaner formatting.)

(1) Disable DynHUD.

(2) Use less intensive FFB settings (180 instead of 360).

 

does it make sense to have both frame cap and vsync simulataneously?

 

I have the stuttering issues but only when I leave my Bodnar Wheel software open after changing wheel rotation etc. So just be aware that certain apps if left open can cause this! Soooo any Bodnar owners take note

 

Apologizes for quoting an old post, but did you try to make Sky Update Frames like 1 trilion or something like that? I mean postpone the stutter in a way that would not appear during the race, is that possible?
We had league races where I turned off time progress for like a month, in the first race this was ON again some people still had this issue, I believe this was the main source of our problems

 

Latest update(s) seems to have fixed the DynHUD stottering issues here, but still can´t run 360 Hz with my Accuforce. In AC it´s no problem.

 

We have 3 possible causes of stutter:
- DynHud
- Spotter
- Sky update frames

on my pc:
- disabling DynHud reduce stutter
- Spotter no matter if it is on or off, stutter is there
- Sky update frames gives me stutter only on replays

 

To be honest the only moment AMS ran smooth here was in the first update back in early access, after that the game was never normal again, with or without GID or DynHUD, clean install, mod or detault cars. So I kind of don't care anymore since it's still playable
But the sky update frames are a pain because this stutter is more serious, what is the point of having day/night cycle if the game becomes a russian roulette. We wanted to use this feature but it's just too risky