Hard Light Productions Forums

General FreeSpace => FreeSpace & FreeSpace Open Support => Topic started by: SamVision on November 14, 2019, 05:41:44 pm

Title: Major Stuttering at Specific Times
Post by: SamVision on November 14, 2019, 05:41:44 pm
I am experiencing severe stuttering in any campaign I try to play. The stutter occurs whenever there is a radio message or generally when anything scripted occurs. Ive tried lowering all my settings and making sure I have the latest video drivers installed but that doesnt seem to be the issue. Is there a solution for this?
Title: Re: Major Stuttering at Specific Times
Post by: wookieejedi on November 14, 2019, 06:37:50 pm
I've noticed this too, and it's been happening for a long time. Not entirely sure what the cause is, as I can't really reproduce when it happens. A good example of what it looks like is in the first 10 seconds of this video:

https://youtu.be/ler20EdjAfs?t=4 (https://youtu.be/ler20EdjAfs?t=4)
Title: Re: Major Stuttering at Specific Times
Post by: AV8R on November 17, 2019, 05:56:12 pm
Hmmm, your original post may have given it away - "The stutter occurs whenever there is a radio message".

Go into the HUD settings and turn off the video feed during communications (the talking head). You'll still hear the messages you need to hear - just without the command/pilot pictures.

9 times out of 10 this will solve any gameplay stuttering during missions. I believe I read somewhere on this forum that the video messages play at a different frame rate than the game itself and causes some video cards consternation in the process (some handle the difference gracefully, others, no so much).

Give it a go and see how it works. I shut my video feed off ages ago and don't miss it a bit - and have never had stuttering issues since (and besides, the video feed can actually get in the way of your combat view sometimes).

Title: Re: Major Stuttering at Specific Times
Post by: Mito [PL] on November 17, 2019, 06:04:23 pm
Also, if you'd want to improve message readability you could use Axem's 2_HUD with the message script: https://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=91197.0 (https://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=91197.0). I think the only thing you need to do is to unpack the archive and grab the .vp file and throw it into your MediaVPs directory.

This moves the message box closer to the center, while the recent history of a couple previous message lines is in the place messages used to be.

Freespace also lets you see the message log, press F4 ingame and choose "Messages" to see it.

This HUD modification could have some strange effects in mods which also extensively modify their HUDs so in case of trouble you could just remove the 2_HUD file.
Title: Re: Major Stuttering at Specific Times
Post by: SamVision on November 20, 2019, 01:57:30 am
Go into the HUD settings and turn off the video feed during communications (the talking head). You'll still hear the messages you need to hear - just without the command/pilot pictures.
Yeah this fixed half of the problem. Radio messages dont cause stutter anymore, but scripted sequences still do. Anytime a big ship jumps in or something like that the game pauses for a moment.
Title: Re: Major Stuttering at Specific Times
Post by: FrikgFeek on November 20, 2019, 03:47:41 am
That's somewhat normal, the first time a new ship appears the game is loading textures for it. This seems to go much smoother on replays when all the textures are cached. Or maybe it's compiling shaders that again don't need to be recompiled on replays.
Depending on your hardware power the game might just drop a few frames or go into a multi-second long freeze.
Title: Re: Major Stuttering at Specific Times
Post by: Cobra on November 20, 2019, 07:05:30 am
That's somewhat normal, the first time a new ship appears the game is loading textures for it. This seems to go much smoother on replays when all the textures are cached. Or maybe it's compiling shaders that again don't need to be recompiled on replays.
Depending on your hardware power the game might just drop a few frames or go into a multi-second long freeze.


I remember that this went away when the SCP was offering AVX2 builds.
Title: Re: Major Stuttering at Specific Times
Post by: Cyborg17 on November 20, 2019, 10:25:02 am
AMD (I believe) graphics cards also take a hit because there is poor opengl support.
Title: Re: Major Stuttering at Specific Times
Post by: SamVision on November 20, 2019, 08:45:24 pm
Mine is an older nvidia card GTX 670. Also how can it be loading textures, this happens with completely unmodded FSport, no mediavps whatsoever.