FPS drop pattern finally found...

Watkins Glen
Time Trial mode is creating issue with the FPS. Same car, same track, same time side-by-side.
TT on the left 100 fps with little struggles (squiggly green line), Test Day on the right 120 fps rock solid.

Guapore
Same issue.

See signature for technical details.

 

Could that have to do possibly with the Ghost feature? Just guessing, I really have no idea. 20fps is noticeable though

 

I have a big difference in FPS in TT or "test day" 75 vs 110 on Long Beach,
There is a difference from about 30 fps I have this with almost every car track combo, (The old open-wheelers are a bit more fps friendly)
The only car where I don't have that is the F-Retro-Gen3-Turbo. on Long Beach it peaks to 133 fps in TT
The times for this car are not recorded while i do have a ghost,
So I think the fps-loss has something to do with recording the time, and not with recording the ghost.

 

Good thinking.
Maybe this ghost thing could have an impact - because the PC at least have to use some resources to display the replay of the ghost.
Me guess

 

I'll try turning off the ghost and see if the FPS issue goes away... but I really like to see you @SaxOhare and @BrunoB as transparent targets to compete against!! LOL

 

I like how serious you does test this issue out.
But to exclude this possible ghost influence then you better turn off the "Display Ghost" somewhere in the game settings.
Yes it sounds a bit conspira... but you never know

 

Update...
After not adding any "ghosts" to compete against (as suggested), the ~20 fps drop remains at Watkins Glen.

Time recording hypothesis
Since ghosted cars don't seem to have an impact in time trial mode, it leaves the other theory about the time recording being faulty at this track.

Further investigating...
I'm going to try different cars and track details (low, med, high, ultra) to see if it's a car shader issue or if there are some bad geometry that could be causing the issue.

 

Is the FPS drop on Watkins Glen caused by...
1. ...a car type? No, tried different ones, low FPS remain.
2. ...the track details level? No, tried low and ultra, low fps remain.
3. ....shadow details level? No
4. ....vsync? No
5. ...the fact this tracks lacks orange cones where the road splits? No, but that part is just annoying ()




At this point, I'll leave it Reiza to troubleshoot to make this track useable in TT mode.

 

About the time tracking hypothesis...

I just noticed a very small but a little hidden gem / easter egg of a feature. The timeboard keeps track of your name and your time as you pass the finish line. It makes me wonder if such texture-based tracking if messing up the FPS?

Click on the image to make it bigger to better see what I mean.

 

Far-fetched hypothesis: Can network traffic problems somehow interfere with GPU performance, even when CPU usage appears unaffected?

 

My GPU gets throttled in Time Trial on Brasilia Outer (and other circuits)

Driving the F-Retro Gen3 DFY GPU get to 66%
Driving the F-Retro Gen3 Turbo the GPU uses 99% of its power (I use this as a reference car because it doesn't record times)

On a test day the GPU is unlocked and can use its full potential again, 99% when driving the Gen3 DFY

the 66% vs 99% that ratio corresponds to the FPS drop
Maybe a mistake in the timings code, some call that reserves some GPU power

 

Are we seeing a consistent pattern that only the cars that record times in Time Trial are affected by the GPU slowdown, while cars that don't record times are unaffected?

 

It seems unaffected. The not recording Gen3 Turbo is a bug, Maybe this bug gives the key to fixing the frame rate drop in time trial, since this car doesn't throttle my GPU in TT?

 

As a reference, I tested the F-Retro Gen3 DFY in BETA on Brasilia (where recording the TT time also isn't possible). And here I have 99% GPU power and no FPS drop

 

All hypotheses are good and possible but I would say that is most likely not the issue since I have a 1Gb fiber connection and 1Gb network card and using time trial. When I use Afterburner to monitor the issue, only the GPU usage line becomes very "squiggly", thus we can narrow it down to a frame rendering issue, not network.

 

There are more tracks with FPS drops , like Watkins Glen for example.


Edit: I forgot to type the word “drops” after FPS

 

Yes i don't think it is track related

 

To be clear, you think because it only happens during TT Mode, that is not related to the track itself? Is that correct? Also, this significant FPS drop only happens at certain tracks which appear to be track related, thus making the root cause analysis even more tricky.