Networking stutter?

[Emilian Huminiuc]

Tonight's Spa race in the WEC-Experience championship was a stutterfest (as long as I was alive in it).
Looking at the trace file I noticed that it is now spammed by some DebugUtilities:

DebugUtiliti   59: DebugUtilities::SetCurrentThreadName LMU-HTTPWorker id6320 : thread ID :

Looking back at the log timestamps where it appears, this is something new since the 3rd of July, which corresponds to Update #5 Patch 3

 

[timekiller001]

I know what you are experiencing, I've had the same. The game is putting out frames fine, but is running slowed down, especially in proximity of others. As others pointed out it is CPU related. From what I've read, using multiple tools at once that use the same plug-in, it can be overloaded and cause the same issues like this.
Multi-class races are also the worst for this issue.

I'm using an older CPU, so on my end I know it's the hardware, but I've stopped using Crewchief, avoided three-class races (and upgraded my RAM from 16 to 32GB) and it's fine now.

 

[Emilian Huminiuc]

Looked a bit more into this.
Apparently Spa Endurance with a full grid (62 cars) is now heavier on the GPU than LeMans (requires much more than 16GB video RAM on 1920x1080 triples).

With:

    "Opponent Detail": 3,
    "Opponent Detail#": "0=Low 1=Medium 2=High 3=Full",
    "Opponent Texture Override": 2,
    "Opponent Texture Override#": "For opponents' vehicle textures: -1=use Opponent Detail, 0-2=override value",

It still needs about 1.5GB extra which it uses in Shared Video RAM (causing the stutters as it shuffles data between main GPU RAM and shared)

With:

    "Opponent Detail": 3,
    "Opponent Detail#": "0=Low 1=Medium 2=High 3=Full",
    "Opponent Texture Override": 1,
    "Opponent Texture Override#": "For opponents' vehicle textures: -1=use Opponent Detail, 0-2=override value",

it's marginally ok, it still dips some in the vicinity of the pits, but needs "only" ~14.8 GB Video RAM.
With "Opponent Texture Override": 0 there's another 1GB less of Video RAM used, but performance is similar.

I had previously taken part in several races with 62 cars both at LeMans and at Spa with no issues, apart a slight dip in fps right at the start, which was to be expected.
Something has changed in the June 10th, or subsequent updates.
FWIW: AMD 5900x CPU, 64GB RAM, RTX 4070Ti SUPER.

 

[Aysedasi]

I certainly struggled in the couple of 62 car races I did at Spa when I had my 8Gb card. That was long before 10th June though. I've not tried it since.

 

[Atomic Andi]

it probably got worse because there are more different liveries
or they just messed it up

"Opponent Texture Override":

is quite a weird setting, having it on the default "-1" seems to use less RAM than 1, (while opponent detail is on high)
but maybe with 1 you get less swapping?

 

[muzwakai]

I'm still getting game pauses it seems when other cars join the race. When it comes back the cars around me are further ahead. But also now I'm getting the "slower" framerate issue too. After cars join it goes bad for a while and comes good again, but when there's multiple cars joining it just stays that way. I'm in Australia...

 

[muzwakai]

Troubleshooted a bit!

I fixed the "slower" framerate issue.
Checked my refresh rate in Windows it had defaulted to 75Hz so changed it back to 144Hz. My desktop resolution had defaulted to 1440p so I changed it back to 4k. Must have auto defaulted settings for some reason. I don't think those settings were causing those issues though.

I turned off Freesync Premium in Windows AMD software, which I think is what actually fixed it. Would be G-Sync on nVidia cards. (I mean it could have just been the rebooting Windows that fixed it, lol).

However the freezes are still happening and other cars keep progressing forwards. This is definitely when another car joins the race. It freezes then the HUD says "player_name has taken the wheel". Or whatever that exact message is but every time this happens the same.

It plays beautifully otherwise but a complete mess with cars joining if I'm around other cars at the time.

 

[Lazza]

Troubleshooted a bit!

I fixed the "slower" framerate issue.
Checked my refresh rate in Windows it had defaulted to 75Hz so changed it back to 144Hz. My desktop resolution had defaulted to 1440p so I changed it back to 4k. Must have auto defaulted settings for some reason. I don't think those settings were causing those issues though.

I turned off Freesync Premium in Windows AMD software, which I think is what actually fixed it. Would be G-Sync on nVidia cards. (I mean it could have just been the rebooting Windows that fixed it, lol).

However the freezes are still happening and other cars keep progressing forwards. This is definitely when another car joins the race. It freezes then the HUD says "player_name has taken the wheel". Or whatever that exact message is but every time this happens the same.

It plays beautifully otherwise but a complete mess with cars joining if I'm around other cars at the time.

The join lag is normal at this point, wouldn’t expect a fix anytime soon. An associated interruption to the FFB is by design, any slowdowns cause the FFB to be muted as a safety measure.

 

[muzwakai]

The join lag is normal at this point, wouldn’t expect a fix anytime soon. An associated interruption to the FFB is by design, any slowdowns cause the FFB to be muted as a safety measure.

That sucks, I moved to weeklies because I'm a silver Hypercar driver and now that makes practice sessions unplayable.
The pause is 0.5 to 2 seconds.