Stuttering with Oculus Rift

Konnykoks · Aug 17, 2017

Hey,

I've got a problem with my Oculus Rift when playing Raceroom. I give you an example. I start a race and i am getting constant 45 fps. No single drop. After some time, my fps suddenly drop to ~30 and dont get to 45 again. The framerate stays at ~30 for the whole rest of the race. So my game is stuttering a lot. It looks like there are more than one image at the same time. This happens in every race sooner or later. Sometimes it starts from the first second, sometimes it starts after 8 laps or so.

I am using some kind of medium graphic settings and SS at 1.4. Changing these settings doesn't help. The problem is the same with SS at 1.0 and all graphic settings at low.

Changing the ASW settings with the OculusTrayTool also didn't help. Auto, 45 fps or off, it's the same with all settings. Btw the setting "off" seems to work only in the menu. When i start a race my fps are locked to 45, so it seems that ASW is activating itself in Raceroom.

I updated to the newest graphic driver and reinstalled the game but nothing changed.

Other games are working fine.

r9 290 Tri X
Xeon 1230v3
8 GB Ram
Win 10

Can anyone help me with this problem?

It's Konny.

UMC 22 · Aug 17, 2017

Do you have asynchronous reprojection enabled in the SteamVR settings? How much memory does your graphics card have?

Konnykoks · Aug 17, 2017

Asynchronous reprojection is normally disabled. I also tested it with asynchronous reprojection enabled but nothing changed.

My graphics card has 4 GB of VRAM.

UMC 22 · Aug 18, 2017

I have no idea what asynchronous reprojection does, but I do know that Oculus recommend that it's enabled when playing games through SteamVR.

Your card just about meets the specs required for VR, and if it still stutters even on low settings then I'm guessing that isn't the issue. System RAM maybe? I know you have 8GB which is the requirement, but perhaps more would be better? The first day I had VR I had a couple of games eventually crash, something which has not happened since I upgraded from 8GB to 16GB. (However, I also upgraded from a 750ti to a 1060 6GB at the same time, so cannot say with certainty that RAM was causing the crashes.)

Konnykoks · Aug 18, 2017

I dont think that the RAM is the issue, because every other game works fine, but who knows. I think I have to wait until I make a fresh windows install and see if it works then. Anyway, thanks for your help.

Furnace Inferno · Aug 20, 2017

Do you have vsync forced on in the amd drivers? I used Nvidia control panel vsync when I played on a flatscreen as the in-game one gave a lot of judder but this caused the franerare to lock to 45fps in-game and 22fps in menus.

Konnykoks · Aug 21, 2017

I tried to lock the fps to 45 in the catalyst control center but that didnt work either. At the moment, I am not at home to test something else. It seems that I am the only one with this problem, so i think a fresh windows install will solve it. I should do that in the next few weeks.

Stephen Gibb · Aug 27, 2017

Daniel you could try using Oculus Debug Tool this will show you perfomance of GPU and CPU in game by default it is located:
C:\Program Files\Oculus\Support\oculus-diagnostics
set compabatibilty to run as Admin then run it and in service panel set 'Visible Hud' to 'Performance' also set 'Frame Drop Indicator' to 'Enabled', I would also recomend switching off Asynchronous Spacewarp in SteamVR and then enable it in the Debug Tool

Nevermind noticed you had already used the tool

Konnykoks · Sep 1, 2017

So I did a fresh windows install. The first qualifying + race was absolutely fine and i thought that the problem is solved but the stuttering/flickering appeared again in the following races. After that, I installed the game on my ssd instead of the hdd and the stuttering/flickering appeared once more at the end of the first race. I looked at the data from gpu-z but couldnt find anything special. I checked my ram with the integrated tool of win 10 and it says that the ram is ok. Nothing seems to fix my problem.

UMC 22 · Sep 2, 2017

So in my first post I mentioned that Asynchronous Reprojection should be enabled in SteamVR. I said Oculus recommends it but I misspoke... it's S3 that recommends it. Oculus has it's own solution to the problem that AR is designed to prevent, and it's supposed to be far more effective than AR.

So... disable Asynchronous Reprojection and just make sure the Oculus software is running instead. Any difference?

Furnace Inferno · Sep 2, 2017

Have you tried opening the performance overlay with app render time to see what is pushing you over 11ms and causing ASW to activate? If it then goes up past 22ms (45fps) then that would explain why it drops again, although odd it sits around 30 as it should go to 22fps next.

R3E is DX9 and heavily CPU bottlenecked by single core performance, added with you using an AMD GPU which unlike Nvidia drivers doesn't try and spread load across more cores I suspect you just can't hit 90fps with your hardware. That being said I wouldn't have thought you'd struggle to get at least 45fps, what are your CPU clocks and temps, sounds like it might be overheating and downclocking?

Konnykoks · Sep 2, 2017

@Ross Garland I think I tried all combinations already. AR in SteamVR enabled/disabled, ASW in the OculusTrayTool set to Auto/45 fps/Off.

@Furnace Inferno I didnt look what is pushing over 11 ms. I didnt think about that but its a good idea. I think you are right that constant 90 fps is not possible with my hardware but there are several indicators that 45 fps is. For example, I was able to do a race with constant 45 fps (ASW set to 45 fps) with no single drop. The next time I started the exact same race, the game was stuttering/flickering since the first second and i could stand still with no other cars in sight but there is no chance to get the fps to 45. Another possibility is, that the game runs at 45 fps for the half of the race and then suddenly drops under 45 fps and wont go back to 45 again no matter what i do. So it looks like my hardware is capable to do 45 fps. Lowering the graphic settings also dont solve my problem. I would understand short drops under 45 fps but then it should go back to 45 fps right after that. I cant remember the CPU clocks and the temperatures exactly but the temperatures were nowhere near throtteling and the clock speeds looked plausible and didnt change when going from smooth to stutter. I checked the graphics card with GPU-Z yesterday but I couldnt find any difference between the smooth and the stuttering situation. The clock speed is going up and down in both cases. The memory clock is always at 1300 Mhz and the Memory usage was about 3000 MB. Maximum temperature was about 70 degrees.

I gave up for now and removed the game already. Maybe I should wait for new updates of the graphics card/ Raceroom/ SteamVR/ Oculus software or whatever. Also I could try it with my laptop at a later time.

UMC 22 · Sep 2, 2017

Hmm, that's a shame. I just find it very odd I was able to get decent performance even with my 750ti, a card that is way below the recommended specs for VR.

Furnace Inferno · Sep 2, 2017

Konnykoks said:
@Ross Garland I think I tried all combinations already. AR in SteamVR enabled/disabled, ASW in the OculusTrayTool set to Auto/45 fps/Off.

@Furnace Inferno I didnt look what is pushing over 11 ms. I didnt think about that but its a good idea. I think you are right that constant 90 fps is not possible with my hardware but there are several indicators that 45 fps is. For example, I was able to do a race with constant 45 fps (ASW set to 45 fps) with no single drop. The next time I started the exact same race, the game was stuttering/flickering since the first second and i could stand still with no other cars in sight but there is no chance to get the fps to 45. Another possibility is, that the game runs at 45 fps for the half of the race and then suddenly drops under 45 fps and wont go back to 45 again no matter what i do. So it looks like my hardware is capable to do 45 fps. Lowering the graphic settings also dont solve my problem. I would understand short drops under 45 fps but then it should go back to 45 fps right after that. I cant remember the CPU clocks and the temperatures exactly but the temperatures were nowhere near throtteling and the clock speeds looked plausible and didnt change when going from smooth to stutter. I checked the graphics card with GPU-Z yesterday but I couldnt find any difference between the smooth and the stuttering situation. The clock speed is going up and down in both cases. The memory clock is always at 1300 Mhz and the Memory usage was about 3000 MB. Maximum temperature was about 70 degrees.

I gave up for now and removed the game already. Maybe I should wait for new updates of the graphics card/ Raceroom/ SteamVR/ Oculus software or whatever. Also I could try it with my laptop at a later time.

Yeh it should definitely hold 45fps because your CPU isn't some cheap rubbish. Definitely something funny going on at software level, it's just working out what! Perhaps RAM is the issue and there is a memory leak so it starts fine and then once it fills up the framerate gets dragged down.

Maybe ASW only accounts for CPU & GPU render times and doesn't account for streaming issues which would explain why you drop to ~30 rather than lock at 22.5fps like it should if it can't maintain 45fps?

Konnykoks · Sep 4, 2017

So I gave it another try. The most confusing for me is, that even if I have ASW disabled the game locks the framerate to 45 fps in 8/10 cases. I disabled ASW in the OculusTrayTool but as soon as I go on the track it shows 45 fps (The menu is fine with 90 fps). I could even open the Debug Tool and it said that ASW was disabled. In 2/10 cases the framerate could go over 45 fps. I couldnt find any correlation to the AR settings in SteamVR because the two times the framerate could go above 45 fps, AR was enabled. The next time i went on track with AR enabled, the fps were locked to 45 again.

I also looked at the app render times. When the game runs smooth the GPU and CPU render times are below 22 ms and dont vary much (+- 2 or 3 ms). When the game stutters, GPU and CPU render times are going above 22 ms and vary a lot more. I can see the GPU graph going up and down from 1 ms to over 30 ms the whole time.

The CPU clocks were stable on all cores at ~3,5 Ghz all the time. The temperatures were somewhere in the 60s.

The GPU clock varied all the time. Maybe between 700 Mhz and 1000 Mhz (max). Memory clock was at 1300 Mhz and the Memory Usage (dedicated) was stable between 2 and 4 Gb depended on the graphical settings i tested. The GPU temperature was at 69-70 degrees.

Physical memory used was around 6 Gb for the whole test.

Btw, thanks for all the answers so far.

MegamanAT · Sep 8, 2017

The only fix would be to buy a new CPU and GPU...

Furnace Inferno · Sep 8, 2017

Konnykoks said:
So I gave it another try. The most confusing for me is, that even if I have ASW disabled the game locks the framerate to 45 fps in 8/10 cases. I disabled ASW in the OculusTrayTool but as soon as I go on the track it shows 45 fps (The menu is fine with 90 fps). I could even open the Debug Tool and it said that ASW was disabled. In 2/10 cases the framerate could go over 45 fps. I couldnt find any correlation to the AR settings in SteamVR because the two times the framerate could go above 45 fps, AR was enabled. The next time i went on track with AR enabled, the fps were locked to 45 again.

I also looked at the app render times. When the game runs smooth the GPU and CPU render times are below 22 ms and dont vary much (+- 2 or 3 ms). When the game stutters, GPU and CPU render times are going above 22 ms and vary a lot more. I can see the GPU graph going up and down from 1 ms to over 30 ms the whole time.

The CPU clocks were stable on all cores at ~3,5 Ghz all the time. The temperatures were somewhere in the 60s.

The GPU clock varied all the time. Maybe between 700 Mhz and 1000 Mhz (max). Memory clock was at 1300 Mhz and the Memory Usage (dedicated) was stable between 2 and 4 Gb depended on the graphical settings i tested. The GPU temperature was at 69-70 degrees.

Physical memory used was around 6 Gb for the whole test.

Btw, thanks for all the answers so far.

Hmm, there is definitely something funny going on for it to fluctuate that much which isn't performance related. Looking across the net lots of people seem to complain about stutter in this game with varying hardware vr and non-vr. One seems to be caused by using an Xbox one controller.

MegamanAT · Sep 8, 2017

I replaced my 390 with a 1080 just because of min fps. so I can not believe, that your 290 will do the job...

Konnykoks · Sep 17, 2017

So I installed the game on my laptop and my experiences were kind of similar. The game runs at 45 fps but sometimes it drops down to ~ 30 for maybe 1 or 2 seconds. After that its either going back to 45 and its smooth or it fluctuates between 45 and 50 fps which causes slight but unpleasent stuttering. The state of the fps being between 45 and 50 after a big drop can be about 1 lap before going back to steady 45 or it stays in this state and is still there in SteamVR Home after closing the game. At least the fps doesnt stay at ~30 like I experienced with my other PC.

Specs of my laptop:

GTX 1070
i7 6700HQ
16 GB RAM
Win 10

I would say that the game is kind of playable offline but the fps drops and the possibility of experiencing slight stuttering for a longer time is no fun at all. I cant think about driving online because the fps drops would ruin every race.

I am still wondering why there arent more people who are experiencing these issues. There are people in the internet who are reporting about bad performance with the Rift but that is the minority. Maybe I have bad luck that both of my PCs are having these issues or maybe better Hardware (CPU?) can compensate that, I dont know. I Invested many hours to try to get it to work properly on two different PCs but I failed.

In conclusion it seems for me like:

- There are fps drops when using Raceroom together with the Oculus Rift (maybe bad optimization?).

- Dropping below 45 fps can cause problems and further stuttering even after closing Raceroom.

- Maybe other/better Hardware can solve the problems I am experiencing.

@Furnace Inferno XBOX Controller is not the issue because its not plugged in.

UMC 22 · Sep 17, 2017

This is a really strange issue, especially if you are having it on two computers.

I have the Oculus Rift myself and it runs perfectly fine on hardware that is pretty similar to yours so I don't think it is a problem with your specs. Thing is, if this problem is definitely not PC hardware (because you've swapped PCs) then it's quite possible that it might be your Oculus hardware instead. Trouble is, with the cost of VR how can you test a different Oculus set to see if it works any better?

A couple of other (unlikely) things from the top of me head:

Is your headset plugged in via USB 3.0?
How many sensors do you have? Are they on USB 3.0 too?
Are you using your PCs main USB slots, a USB expansion card or a plug-in USB hub?
Have you extended any of the USB or HDMI cables in your setup with third-party cables?