The Curious Case of the Fallout 4 Controller Lag

[j3huty]

Block of text inbound. Skip to the next bold line if you want to skip the story of how I discovered the issue.

So I decided to fire up Fallout 4 after not playing it for about 4 or 5 months. I got the itch, and it had to be scratched. I started up Nexus Mod Manager, and launched the game through F4SE. It was running fine...For a few minutes. After a little bit the game very suddenly started chugging. Horrible, skippy FPS, totally unplayable. I sighed to myself and close the game, and stare at my mod list for a while. The game hadn't been doing this last time I played it, I knew that, but I figured one of my mods must be causing issues. It had been a good amount of time since the last time I played and I had no idea which mod was the last I installed, or which one could be causing this issue.

Naturally, I uninstalled every mod I had and tried loading back into my save. Issue happened again, but a little faster this time. At this point Im thinking "f*** me" and assuming my save is somehow corrupted, so I start a new game. The problem persisted into the new game. So now I know its not a mod, and it's not a corrupt save. I decide to uninstall fallout 4 entirely and reinstall it.

Fresh install ready, I try to loading into a new game without installing any mods. Chugging happens again after a few minutes. Im now tweaking (lowering) settings and have the game running in a borderless window, and I have overclocked my card and CPU just to see if its somehow a hardware problem (it wasnt and isnt).

So it's not a problem with my hardware, which make sense since the game has always run just fine for me, but interestingly I had tabbed out at one point to look at my program I had monitoring the GPU and CPU, and when I tabbed back into Fallout 4 the chugging had subsided, only to return after playing for another minute or two.

So tabbing out of the game and coming back will stop the lag. Weird. So what happens when I tab out? Well I have to put my controller down and I have to eventually click back into the game with my mouse. It also pauses the game. I at this point I start playing with just my keyboard in mouse, but leave my controller plugged in still. The issue continues, but now it will chug shortly and recover very quickly without tabbing out of the game. I lean back and start playing with my controller again, and the issue goes back to normal.

I unplug my controller entirely and play with mouse and keyboard for a while and the issue subsides entirely. I reinstall all mods and no issues. Bump all settings back up and no issues, rock solid 60fps, no chugging. Plug the controller back in, chugging, until I stop and wiggle the mouse a little, at which point the chugging will stop, but soon continue after a little bit.

So, the story so far.

-Controller is directly causing Fallout 4 to lag

-Tabbing out of Fallout and returning will fix it temporarily (issue will come back if controller is used again)

-Wiggling/using mouse will fix temporarily, if I unplug the controller I can play with KB+M fine with no issues at all.

I use a PS4 controller (dualshock 4) on my PC. I have a program called DS4Windows that handles the controller in the event that a game does not natively support DS4 on PC. Now, I thought Fallout 4 could be having issues interfacing with this program and its emulation of an Xbox 360 controller, even though I had used this exact same set-up when I logged hundreds of hours on Fallout 4 with it before with no issues. Interestingly with Fallout 4 it CAN utilize a DS4 without the use of a program like DS4Windows. So I disabled the program and tried using the controller as a default HID device, which works fine as far as controlling the game but was still causing the chugging issue.

I have tried to re-install both the DS4 driver for use with DS4windows, and I have tried updating the Xbox controller driver, which the program uses to make games think you have a 360 pad, and neither has worked. It isn't an issue with the program anyways, since using the controller completely without it still causes the issue. The controller doesn't cause problems in any other game I use it for so the issue seems to be how Fallout 4 is interfacing with the controller.

I can't find any information on this on the net, only one post that someone has a similar issue but with an Xbox One controller, which Im not using, and their solution was the update their Xbox One driver, which I don't have and can't do. Seems to me that it's a Fallout issue, but I have no idea how to fix it.

Thank you for any help you can provide.

Video of it in action.

Edited October 10, 2017 by j3huty

[nabernas]

The TRUTH I fear is That Mr. Todd and Bethesda have a "off the Table" deal with Microsoft to DISABLE PS4 Dualshockers to make them useless, forcing you to buy a XBox One controlller for PC use and I have yet to see or hear any contradicting intelligence to that matter. I know Sony sucks to work with but this is SAD, and depressing, controllers used to be a great option for PC players but if others continue this Bethesda-lead controller seperation, we are f*#@ed.