Does anyone have any advice for dealing with the Bethesda Stutter?

[Bruhmis]

What Browser are you currently using as default?

 

What is it's current regional settings set for?

Google Chrome. Region is Ontario, Canada.

 

in regards to the theory about the time sync, I'm not sure about that. it sounds like you're describing a scenario where the stutter is dependent on what's going on with the OS - whereas the problem I'm having is completely dependent on my activity in the game (if I don't make the game load a significant number of static meshes at a once, the stutter doesn't happen). and yes, I say "I'm having" because the problem returned as quickly as it vanished.

 

The results of the cmd command:

 

 

Leap Indicator: 3(last minute has 61 seconds)

Stratum: 0 (unspecified)

Precision: -6 (15.625ms per tick)

Root Delay: 0.0000000s

Root Dispersion: 0.0000000s

ReferenceId: 0x00000000 (unspecified)

Last Successful Sync Time: unspecified

Source: Local CMOS Clock

Poll Interval: 10 (1024s)

 

[Purr4me]

verify the system clock Time is correct using interweb international settings.

 

Playing Bethesda games, have you ever experiences out of sync voice processing?

 

what I am after is finding the key that is the cause ,discussion and investigation is required.

 

you are currently the only one with known issues and based on what has been discussed here can be the only source to discover

the root of this issue...that we know of at this point.

 

What was considered a case closed, academic issue has thus been canceled out. The problem is on going.

 

your should not be running loose files in Fo4 as Bethesda has made things really tight in obfuscation processing to eliminate

3rd party modding, current posts listed here and other sites enforce this point, using their in game mod installer points to their controls of the data.

 

mods installed outside of their control seem to cause the issues.

 

(if I don't make the game load a significant number of static meshes at a once, the stutter doesn't happen)

That points to the results of 3rd party use. Mods built for distribution on Bethesda website are built in only one way, are uploaded under strict controlled processes.

 

This does not look so good for free enterprise modding for this game.

For discussion purposes only we seem to have found a point of int rest to Eliminate or find a fix for the issue.

1. Either it's a mod problem which provides the loose mesh data as you claim?
2. Or it's Nmm issue/ OS issue..stored data exposing system flaws.

you have narrowed this issue down to very little left.

Edited October 25, 2016 by Purr4me

[Purr4me]

A default game does not contain loose mesh files nor texture files.

A modded game does.

 

the issue is said to occur on default game files, so it leaves very little to deal with.

Forced isolation removes the issue, indicating OS problems.

Returning issues dealing with loose files "mesh files of many" deals with a modded game and the error returns.

 

The question remains, Has Bethesda done something to the games files in the way of updates to force this issue?

Are you the only one that has this issue?

 

There are thousands of complaints that can be used as similar points of contentions.

[BipolarOne]

You know, I only post crazy stuff an generally make an ass of myself to keep it interesting and fun.

 

Official support would point you toward a older video card driver or some windows 10 update we couldn't find via Google/Bing/DuckDuckGo searches I'd guess. Then I'd also guess nobody contacted them 13 pages ago when they should have. This video card driver is 368.81 and it's older, on a ASUS Strix 960 GTX 4096. It's probably similar. Though i5 2500 Sandybridge on a late REV intel Z77 I think, 8Gb 1333mhz DDR3. The computer was reformatted with Win7 Pro 64 which it was much harder to get a clean/simple install of Win7(Vista) I believe it failed 7 times because it wasn't clean enough to use for video game an content creation as a workstation.

 

The borderless fullscreen issue with framerate an stutter is more of a Vista thing, and Win7 is basically an updated/patched Vista. It's a good option only because we can apply a black windows aero effect, or similar desktop themes which suit the end user. Problem is that most people trash the desktop, so it's messy. Shortcuts an links hidden in folders an dropped on the start bar or start menu, and it's now a clean workstation or terminal. But it takes time an work to do that. Hell the hidden updates for Win7 alone would drive anyone mad in 2016. That's coming out of the Win8 Win10 marketing campaign attacks on a person's constitution.

 

We bus overclocked this terminal from video encoding and capturing. This was only because a CPU cooler was added. Then I kept the 9% only because it seemed to play well with FO4 in particular, which in the past had caused problems. FO4 is installed at a 76Gb build on C:/ which is two SATA III 6Gbs interfaces with old sandforce controlled SSDs because they were onsale. It's set up in a 128kb strip RAID O I believe, because I just wanted to try it. It does keep the drives cleaner an more easy to manage. Older games go on D:/ which is the same SSD RAID set up, but old SSDs. The D:/ is a SATA II 3Gbs interface, because that's how the MOBO was built.

 

There's a 12 year old WD Raptor and Blu-Ray W/R on the remaining SATA ports. Still trying to kill those old HDD. It's movies an data storage mainly, but it's used to create backups of data for reasons I find important enough. Compressed files or not and/or in RAID 0 SSD speeds I couldn't tell you the difference. I know that SSD only really gets fast at drive sizes over 256Gb or so. I don't use those, I use 90Gb to 120Gb SSD's and I don't even have the MOBO that is really for that, there's only 2 SATA III interface/ports on it. It was the budget solution from ASUS to get into the PCI-E x16 3.0 and/or Ivybridge. If at any time it didn't work for me I'd save money an improve upon it.

 

I'm curious at how many hours inside the game (what is listed on the save games being used, converted into hours, and how old it is patch wise) Glitches for one thing, and amounts of game mode papyrus/obscript gone wild for another. Save game bloat and/or partial/full corruption, large amounts of deactivated esp/esm and/or issues more particular to Skyrim. Because outside of these it would seem like it would leave a choice to either roll back, keep digging, install Win7 Pro 64 or install win10 Pro 64 to make a cleaner system build. I mean I only went from Windows Home 64 to Pro 64 because another gamer mentioned it to me. I end up working on the terminal too though.

[BipolarOne]

There you go man. Win7 Pro 64 in 2016 from the USA. Can I sell you some partially accurate hard/soft wares? LOL I don't know what Win8 or Win10 looks like, but if I couldn't set it up to work clean an easy I wouldn't do it. We have Photoshop & Paint .net installed now to go with an old Blender 2.49b. The workstation part takes some time an work I think. But then building the O/S was way too much work, and really drained me out of it all. I'm glad the O/S build turned out clean as it is though.

 

iObit uninstaller will launch the default installers an then scan for cleanup on that item which plays into the maintenance of the rig. The LAN is up there to turn it on or off. Steam is pretty obvious. Current is just a shortcut to the current work space. There's a link to the FO4 data folder (or whatever game I'm in currently) VLC to play non-bluray movies, notepad an calculator, Blender 2.49b, PowerISO to write DVD/Bluray discs, and the resource monitor for when everything goes haywire.

 

Mozilla browser, I.E. removed, with add ons Ghostery, Adblock plus, Noscript, HTTPS Anywhere(causes issues), HD YouTube, Downloadable Youtube, and there was more but I turned those off. Advanced System Care Pro, Bandicam, Fallout Shelter, NMM, FO4edit, 4GbFNV.exe, F4SE.exe, Smart Ram Pro is above the toolbar, monitors an cleans ram from Advanced System Care Pro's Suite, Norton 360, ASUS Ai Suite, ASUS GPU Tweek II, Asus Monitor, and Onboard sound basically.

Edited October 26, 2016 by BipolarOne

[BipolarOne]

Hey Man, Check It Out! LOL. Set up FO4 however you normally do. Then run a long play test, if it stutters just ignore it an keep going. In the OP's case it might pay off to take note an write down what area an how much or activities associated with this kind of game lag, but keep playing it. Because it doesn't drop frames when it occurs. I don't particularly remember what we did in the past for stutter.

 

FNV had an Anti-Stutter Mod, but then it had a Anti-Crash mod too. I'd like to know if it's just a Nvidia issue, because AMD cards handle things differently. Most office type gaming keeps rigs with both Nvidia and AMD tech in them to partially diagnose things automatically. If you keep going in a general area noting it, and then move on here or there having a log of it might tell about it or it just might clear itself up.

[Bruhmis]

to answer a few of the direct questions:

-have I experienced voice desync? No, I don't have any recollection of anything like that.
-am I the only person with this problem? no, during my troubleshooting I've found many other people who stutter when loading cells/textures/meshes - both in fallout 4 and previous bethesda titles.
-do I have loose files? no. *some* of the time I've spent testing the game was done with mods, but I've thoroughly tested without mods. I've completely deleted the game and reinstalled it several times, without installing mods afterwards.
-my computer's time is 0.06 seconds behind compared to this: http://www.worldtimeserver.com/


now, a couple interesting things to note:

-after the problem returned, I was unable to replicate the "fix" of running the game sandboxed. doing so now doesn't yield any results.
-yesterday I tried deleting all textures from the game, to determine if it was the loading of textures that was causing the problem. after thoroughly testing the game running without any textures, I wasn't able to notice any reduction in stutter.
-I discovered this: https://steamcommunity.com/app/377160/discussions/0/496881136898870103/?ctp=53

while the above modification did dramatically increase responsiveness, it didn't reduce the stutter at all (even with 12.5 GB of RAM allotted to it)

Edited October 26, 2016 by Bruhmis

[BipolarOne]

This might help a little. fAutoVanityIncrement 0.3000 is way too fast, specially for people with VR sickness. Skyrim did that I believe, well, or Creation Engine SDK did that. Anyway, set it to whatever you want. I use 0.1000 or 1/3 slower. The first tab of the FO4 configurator, type in vanity. It takes a while to kick in vanity mode, and I'm not sure of a way to adjust when it kicks in anymore. But it's going to spin the camera as a screensaver pretty much. If there was stutter, it would show there pretty easy. You could just repeat the same actions again and again though. You know like load in and walk down some stairs. I kind of feel like it's always going to stutter when the game first starts or if it's having to load. Though nothing is stopping you from launching it an letting it go into a slower vanity while you are not even at the terminal, off doing something else. Let it run maybe it will stabilize, who knows.

I started walking more instead of running yesterday. But then yesterday the character spent all day either on guard duty, standing there weapon out, or trying to get dressed up real good for a night out on the town. It eventually worked, got drunk at the bar, an drunk outside wandering around, then walked from Diamond City to that settlement on the railroad tracks. You know, in complete dark, but careful enough to avoid spawns. Chem perks + Biocom mesh + A Chem Visual FX Mod = a good long drunken IMOD (blur basically) From that small change in play style yesterday. Today we spent time standing guard while Piper slept in a bed per player action, but Piper stood guard while the player slept, so it just made sense. That was also to spend a longer amount of time in a general area to test stutter. The most fun thing was building a temporary way to walk to the top of the projector at the drive in theater, just to put a radio beacon an then wire it for power going up the building. Only to tear the scaffolding down after.

Anyway, the next day in the game with Piper still asleep at sunrise. I took the character up to Sanctuary, but walked the whole way with the weapon drawn. This made me see that some of the stutter is just camera changes & the physics collision. There seems to be some kind of lag that isn't framerate drop when the game is first loaded. Then also loading lag. Personally I had to drastically change my play style to enjoy FO4 as a RPG. So I mean, everything is already different. Making a difference between Arcade, Roleplay, and Travel isn't such of a big deal. For one thing I noticed the sounds an the day more, but if there were any hostile targets it would have been more easy to see them beforehand. You know rather than running. Which is an old FO3/FNV trick, go to far too fast, an LOD assets will kind of get stuck under the player character when it was designed to be several hundred feet away, LOL.

20% speed boost works well on T-60 & 30% speed boost on T-45 works really well. You just hot rod the overdrive servos object modification. Which I actually got that from Worsin's Advanced PA versions. I think maybe it was also pulled from some legendary mods. Another way to do it. But you see that way it's PA but it walks faster, yah it will run fast. You can glitch out the NPC's though so you want to do it right. At any rate a travel mode designed around walking in PA sounds easy enough. I mean if it's somewhat possible on foot, sure would be easy in speed boosted PA. Then steady cam it in that mode. The only real changes are looking left an right. Which if you didn't know, the armature will still tweek out a bit with the weapon out if you didn't notice. You just walk with the weapon out an use Controllable Lowered Weapons, press W to walk forward, press D to tweek the armature, but at the same time move the camera to the right, and it will seem like the player character just turned their head. Just do it the other way to look that way. Works best closer up to the character.


W + D + Mouse/Camera to the right.


W + A + Mouse/Camera to the left.

 

Works in PA too. The joke is that the PC is looking for quests. But really it's looking for hostile targets most of the time or you know, just looking around. Don't tell anyone else either, because they are mostly all jerks anyway. Just kidding. That's the point though, slow it down a bit on a already much different an much slower play style as a way to deal with some stutter if it works. But it also worked well for me with the survival mode changes to travel. I still use fast travel to force a reload or to skip a mile or so ahead. Having a travel mode just puts another mini game in it for me, but it is a new idea to use, so I can adjust a bit to a 76Gb modded install of FO4. That and running the game for long periods in a general area instead of running around arcade style in a manic panic overload. You get it right, relax an just let the application run. Well, provided you can make a stable build of FO4. But I mean if you can't do that stutter is probably the least of your problems.

 

If you want a real challenge. Go into the Esc menu display, an make the HUD all the way transparent. I can kind of still hit stuff, and most of the required HUD will still work. Hit R to old school search containers, dialogs still pop up, settlement building still works, and good for screenshots. That would certainly make a travel mode interesting. Not precisely sure where the PC is aiming at, and maybe the PC is drunk or just doesn't care enough to aim an instead shoots indiscriminately from the hip. First person iron sights/scope would still work. With some cameras one can see if it's going to hit or not with the HUD off, and yah it's the middle of the screen, no real skill required, but practice then pop pop hit, VATS buffers that, which is what it's designed for. I told a Russian about this an he said I was crazy. Maybe I am. Actually I am. Bipolar Type One. "oh I'm sorry, you're on medication for your stupid brain." Normies don't really do that, they just s*** on you and kick you around until it's time for them to get whatever it is they want from you, then they are gone pretty darn quickly.

[Bruhmis]

alright, so I've made what I think is a pretty significant discovery.

it seems it's not actually the static meshes that are causing the problems - but the materials. here's what lead me to believe that:

this time, instead of deleting the game's textures, I deleted the materials. when I load into the game, mostly everything is purple and blue. one of the first things I noticed was that distant buildings looked normal - they weren't blue or purple, they had their proper texture and appearance. now, when I move closer to them, their materials load in and they become purple like everything else. and this moment, when their materials load, is the precise moment the stutter occurs.

so, the stutter is occurring at the exact moment that materials are being loaded in. this doesn't necessarily mean that material loading is the root cause of the problem - but it does suggest it rather heavily.

now, another thing I noticed that supports this theory: objects that do not cause stutter when they're loaded, for example; trees, rocks, cars, various terrain decoration etc... all of these objects appear to be in a perpetual material state. Trees and rocks are all purple no matter how far away they are, cars are all normally textured no matter how close they are.

so this means that when I load the game, it basically just loads the materials for trees and rocks and leaves those materials either in RAM or VRAM, hence why it doesn't cause stutter.


So, this all suggests a few possibilities:

-There is an error causing the game not to load in building materials properly (I don't know, is the game supposed to cache all materials? or is my game performing this task normally, loading in the materials only when I get close?)
-For some reason, the game is unable to communicate with my SSD properly, causing large "pauses" each time it needs to access a large file from the disk
-There is something wrong with the material files themselves (unlikely, since reinstalling doesn't fix the issue.)
-The game is using a page file when it's supposed to be using RAM
-Windows is enforcing some kind of "idle state" on my disk, causing background loading to fail
-There is some kind of overhead somewhere, a "middle man" between the game and my SSD

I'm really lost as to what I should to do test any of these theories above.

[BipolarOne]

The sunlight on the ground started flickering. XD ROFL I gave up after that. I'm going to look at optimization type mods later though. Continue on and such. You know it was doing this stutter thing around the time the game launched, and it's kind of doing the same thing now. Which sucks. It's random, LOL. You should just ~TWF an play like that with 3D glasses on. Seriously, it's the only way.

 

THERE'S NO LOAFS OF BREAD IN FALLOUT, DON'T YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS! IT MEANS THERE IS NO TOAST.