Bad stuttering of the world (not the cockpit)

[Dirk Steffen]

I have a very strange problem with a fresh Raceroom installation I never had before.

I have a fairly beefy computer spec wise and can run any other racing sim with graphics settings pretty much maxed out (Raceroom included normally).

With Raceroom I get with maxed out settings somewhere around 120-140 FPS when racing with triple screens @ 1080.

The problem:
Usually everything runs smooth without issues but a few laps into the session all of a sudden the entire rendered world (everything but the cockpit and HUD) will stutter like crazy.
It looks like the world is shaking and only rendered at about 3-10 FPS while still the same stable 120-140FPS are reported on the screen.

One anomaly I have seen is that when the stuttering happens the GPU is still properly used (full load) but all CPU cores are saturated at only around 2-5 %
At the same time all other racing sims I am using run perfectly smooth without any issues (mostly AC and ACC).

attempts at fixing it thus far:
- Steam file integrity check
- used several permutations of different v-sync options (in game on/off, NVIDIA different v-sync modes, etc)
- permutations of motion blur (people with certain stuttering issues have reported setting motion blur a certain way fixed their stuttering issues - I run normally all racing sims with motion blur OFF)
- deactivated replays (I thought perhaps some virtual file size when collecting replay data produces the issue)
- elevated process priority in task manager

All of these attempted fixes were to no avail :-(
I am at an end with my medicine here. Does anyone who reads this finds the issue familiar and knows how to fix it?
I am lined up for a first club race with Raceroom tomorrow and I fear not having a chance to race :-(

 

[Tennracer]

@Dirk Steffen Hello sir. I dont remember but are you in VR?

 

[Keith_G]

@Dirk Steffen, sorry but I have no idea. I do get visual movement and blurring in VR from time to time but not enough to cause a problem (other than my head) but I have no idea what could cause this on triple screen. Any time I have the same problem it is usually a program running in the background (such as my cloud backup) but I assume you have already checked that. Hope you find something, would love to race with you again.

 

[Dirk Steffen]

@Dirk Steffen Hello sir. I dont remember but are you in VR?

I am on triple screens.

 

[Tennracer]

@Dirk Steffen I was wondering if you would try to use only 1 monitor to check if the stuttering will be gone?
I dont have a good reason for suggesting this but it is the only thing that I can suggest.
Hope you can get this worked out. Keep us informed of your progress.
Larry

 

[DND]

I would also suggest turning down the shadows with the motion blur as I use triple monitors and found these two things did have an effect on performance.

Are you running any apps other than Crew Chief or TeamSpeak?

 

[Majuh]

You could check your CPU temperatures, maybe your CPU is running too hot.

 

[Dirk Steffen]

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I do not have a performance issue - for the time when Raceroom runs it runs easily at 120 - 140 FPS nutter smooth with everything cranked up to the gills.

Even when this heavy stuttering happens frames are still reported in the same high range.
It is not the FPS dropping and hence Raceroom struggling and stuttering but it is a strange stuttering I have never seen in any other racing sim where the world is strangely moving and skipping rendering frames.

It is a very strange sensation - it looks almost like a large hand takes your car while you are driving and SHAKES the entire car.
I have no such issues with any other racing sim - for example do I have ZERO performance issues with Assetto Corsa Competizione which I run on a mix of Epic (highest) and High (second highest) graphics settings and it runs butter smooth at perfect 60 FPS (adaptive v-sync) and ACC is notorious for its graphics power hunger.

This makes no sense and it seems just like another one of those issue Raceroom seems to have (over the years every time I reinstalled Raceroom always SOMETHING went awry and I never was able to enjoy it).

It looks so far that I have to skip tomorrows race as I also seem to have connection issues with Raceroom and the RaceDepartment servers (which I never have with Assetto Corsa).

 

[Dirk Steffen]

You could check your CPU temperatures, maybe your CPU is running too hot.

Yes, I had that idea as well and it ws one of the first things I checked. It is all fine.

It would also be illogical if it were CPU temp related as I run ACC and AC with cranked up graphics without any issues and especially ACC is properly loading up CPUs judging by the comments in the support forums.

 

[Greame Champion]

Is it to do with a head movement setting?

 

[Dirk Steffen]

Is it to do with a head movement setting?

I have disabled all and any head movements in Raceroom (the cockpit is essentially static and only the world moves).

I just waded through old Raceroom stuttering threads and youtube videos all the way from 2015 to today and my head is spinning so many people had stuttering issues with a plethora of possible / working / not working / never resolved fixes.
My head is spinning.

 

[Tennracer]

@Dirk Steffen are you sure that it is a stutter?
Only reason I'm asking is be cause of the odd nature if how the GT3 Cup car handles!
I'm very disappointed in how this car feels when running on this track yet ic I switch to the 2017 GTE car it does not bounce as severely as the other.

 

[Majuh]

Maybe you could record a video so we can see how it looks like.

 

[Case_]

Try running the 32bit version of the game if you're not running it already.

 

[Tennracer]

@Dirk Steffen have you tried driving different cars on different tracks?

 

[Dirk Steffen]

@Dirk Steffen are you sure that it is a stutter?
Only reason I'm asking is be cause of the odd nature if how the GT3 Cup car handles!
I'm very disappointed in how this car feels when running on this track yet ic I switch to the 2017 GTE car it does not bounce as severely as the other.

No, it is definitely stuttering issues.
The cause of this I have finally drilled down thanks to the internet while you guys had an awesome race ;-)

Maybe you could record a video so we can see how it looks like.

I really cannot do videos :-(

Try running the 32bit version of the game if you're not running it already.

Thanks Martin, I wish I would have seen your post before the race.

As it so happens the way I found a workaround to the problem today was by running into the thread on teh S3 forums you were involved in reporting this EXACT issue related to the bugged 64bit exe.

Unfortunately what I have found so far the only workaround that works on my configuration is to use the 32bit exe which performs much worse than teh 64 bit exe for some reason (about half the frame rate).
It is a workaround though that will make racing online possible again. A shame the developers have not found a solution to these issues so far it seems :-(

@Dirk Steffen have you tried driving different cars on different tracks?

Yes, German here, we like to do our testing rigorous ;-)


So for anyone who may run into this problem in the future - here is some reference that will hopefully help you to diagnose and at least find a workaround until the developers will hopefully some day solve this bug:

The problem manifests itself like this:
- a couple of minutes into a session (usually ~10 minutes of driving for me) horrendous stuttering will happen (looks like ~ 3-4 FPS rendering)
- for some people (myself included) CPU usage will drop drastically (when it happens I have on all cores only ~5-10% CPU usage)
- NOTHING you change in game graphics settings, NVIDIA driver settings, V-sync settings has ANY influence on the problem (hint: it is NOT performance related or related to graphics or driver settings)
- you will get a single message spamming your log file with thousands of entries over a short amount of time like this: "Delta time between frames is too small (rendered the same frame twice?). Delta time is 0.000 ms"
- no game restarts, re-installs, Steam file integrity check, Windows re-installs, etc will have any influence on this problem

The possible cause(s) of the problem:
- bug in "RRRE64.exe"
- users who have certain GPU related tools installed (such as MSI Afterburner)
- Win10 fullscreen rendering optimization

The workaround (as of 2019-07-10):
- start Raceroom exclusively with 32bit exe file

- some users have reported success also by these fixes (but these do not work for everyone):
- disable Win10 fullscreen optimization in exe file

- lower app detection level in RivaTuner Statistics Server to "None"
- terminate RivaTuner and MSI Afterburner
- uninstall RivaTuner and MSI Afterburner

S3 devs have made an attempts to address the problem but the communication about the issue stopped since October 2018 with no fix available.

The best workaround currently for anyone running into this issue is to use the 32bit exe to run Raceroom and live with the performance issues the 32bit exe comes with :-(

Here is a good thread with several users reporting this exact issue on the S3 support forum and some people posting workarounds I have listed (and tested) above:
https://forum.sector3studios.com/index.php?threads/massive-fps-drops.10800/page-6

Thanks especially to @Martin Fiala whose posts I found in that thread above - I wish I would have seen your post here on RD in time for today's race :-(

For reference attached are some system info screens from CPU-Z.

 

[Case_]

S3 devs have made an attempts to address the problem but the communication about the issue stopped since October 2018 with no fix available.

I'm pretty sure I've seen mentions of attempts and active initiative to solve this long-standing issue just a few months back and definitely this year. So the effort to find the solution to the problem is likely not dead, just not resolved yet as it seems to be a particularly tricky one, sadly.
I'll try to see if I can find it later today. I believe they were looking for log files and stuff like that from people suffering from the issue (as you've probably seen, for me it went away, so I can't be of much help to them in this instance anymore).

for some people (myself included) CPU usage will drop drastically (when it happens I have on all cores only ~5-10% CPU usage)

Be aware that core CPU usage (and even overall CPU usage) tells you basically nothing nowadays due to the multithreaded nature of the current CPUs and load spread over multiple cores (even with single-threaded tasks) and things like that. Although a sudden big change obviously is somewhat indicative of an issue (though it might obviously be either a symptom or a cause).

so far the only workaround that works on my configuration is to use the 32bit exe which performs much worse than teh 64 bit exe for some reason (about half the frame rate).

That's kinda weird IMO. The performance should be more or less the same. In fact, on my PC, the 32 bit client even performs somewhat better in certain situations.

 

[Dirk Steffen]

That's kinda weird IMO. The performance should be more or less the same. In fact, on my PC, the 32 bit client even performs somewhat better in certain situations.

It really is indeed strange.
I get with the current 64bit exe (until the issue occurs a couple of minutes into a session) ~120 - 140 FPS with all settings maxed out.
The 32bit exe without changing any setting gives me only ~55 - 80 FPS.

It is just enough of a performance drop that it bothers me as I do have to find some settings I am willing to lower in order to always stay clear above 60 FPS (I run my triple screens at 60Hz).

I have no explanation for that (and can only guess that the 32bit exe is less optimized for this type of computer components running on Win10 - perhaps MSI AB plays a roll with the performance difference between 32bit / 64bit exe on my and your system as well ?).

What components are you running on? I saw you commented somewhere having upgraded your CPU from an i5 to an i7 and since then found no difference in performance between the two exe files.
I run a i7 8700K @ 4.7 (see specs above) Is yours similar?

 

[Jivesauce]

It really is indeed strange.
I get with the current 64bit exe (until the issue occurs a couple of minutes into a session) ~120 - 140 FPS with all settings maxed out.
The 32bit exe without changing any setting gives me only ~55 - 80 FPS.

It is just enough of a performance drop that it bothers me as I do have to find some settings I am willing to lower in order to always stay clear above 60 FPS (I run my triple screens at 60Hz).

I have no explanation for that (and can only guess that the 32bit exe is less optimized for this type of computer components running on Win10 - perhaps MSI AB plays a roll with the performance difference between 32bit / 64bit exe on my and your system as well ?).

What components are you running on? I saw you commented somewhere having upgraded your CPU from an i5 to an i7 and since then found no difference in performance between the two exe files.
I run a i7 8700K @ 4.7 (see specs above) Is yours similar?

Isn't the 32 bit version limited to only 4 gigs of RAM total? Is it possible you are running low on vram when running the 32 bit version? I don't know if there is a way to earmark a specific allocation of system vs. video memory...

 

[bloozmahn]

i had this issue and it turned out to be improper controller configuration.