Whats it mean to get the Windows Wait Cursor during loading screens?

[Zathmo]

During all of my loading screens, my game actually appears to stop loading and I get the windows wait cursor during my loading screens. This kinda freaks me out when it comes to game stability because I feel like the application isn't extremely stable if it can't even load the game on its own. Anybody know what causes this, or if this is normal. I am using Fake Fullscreen, if that is whats causing it.

[dubiousintent]

My interpretation is that it means some background process of the Windows Operating System (probably a file I/O) is now in control, and waiting for something to report back that it's done. The game program has been suspended while the OS has control. This is normal activity, but is not supposed to be blatantly obvious. It usually happens as a "background" activity without affecting game play.

 

This visual indication of the delay is not normal. I have never seen it happen on my older Win7 rig. It suggests you have very limited system memory, so the system is having to swap things out of memory in order to perform necessary functions. It may also indicate that your disk space is getting too full so it is having to hunt around it for bits and pieces of the file it wants and it needs to be "defragmented". (You should always keep at least 10% of disk capacity "free" for defragging purposes.) Consider it an extreme instance of "stuttering".

 

As a simple means to confirm you are running out of memory while playing, I would download and install the tool "Memclean", which periodically (you can set the interval; default is every 15 minutes) tells the OS to perform it's built-in "clean up" of memory. It has a "mini-monitor" that displays memory usage. Doesn't seem to hurt and I have seen memory usage jump into the "yellow" zone unexpectedly in normal (non-game) use but never into "red" on my 8GB RAM system.

And "defrag" your disk. Can't hurt and may help. Some "boilerplate" response follows:

 

Re: Stuttering or "micro-stutters". All visual stuttering problems are caused by the video stream having to wait for the "art assets" required to render the display OR the game writing something to disk (such as a save game file or logging). Mostly these are due to the hard disk drive being orders of magnitude slower than VRAM, with System RAM (e.g. "ENBoost") and "solid state drives" (SSDs) being in between. Keep in mind that this game was designed for older PC and XBox console systems, and it is now possible for your new "latest and greatest" gaming machine to be faster than it can handle. There are internal design choices that cannot be overcome. The following are "mitigations" that have been found to help some people.

Please see the following entries under the 'Solutions to Performance problems' section in the wiki Fallout NV Mod Conflict Troubleshooting" guide if you haven't already.
* 'Issue: "Full screen mode" exhibits CTDs and stutters or micro-stutters'
* 'Issue: Lag or "micro stutters" even with "New Vegas Stutter Remover" installed'
* 'Issue: Win10 Screen tearing in "Borderless Windowed Mode"'
* 'Issue: CTD without warning, "Out of Memory error", or stops responding after the Main Menu' for other settings that can indirectly affect micro-stutter.
* There are also some NVSR configuration suggestions under the 'Issue: Game in slow motion' and entries.
* The 'Issue: What's with these Solid Green billboard signs in the distance (LOD)?' entry under the 'Solutions to Mesh (Red "!" icon) or Texture (solid color) problems' section can also help if your problems started after you installed VWD/LOD texture packages.
* If you are using CASM or some similar "auto-save" mod to manage your save game files (recommended), try increasing the "time between saves" set in the "save frequency"; and reducing the number of occasions it saves to the minimum (e.g. disable most "Autosave Events" in CASM) and see how that impacts the game seeming to freeze temporarily.
* If you have "NVSE logging" enabled (see the 'Checklist Item #4' entry in the wiki "Fallout NV Mod Conflict Troubleshooting" guide), disable it until actually needed.

Reading from or writing to disk for any reason is the slowest thing the game does.

As you can see, there are a number of things that can underlie your problem. If one of these doesn't fix it, I would be interested to hear about any eventual solution that does.

-Dubious-

[Zathmo]

 

My interpretation is that it means some background process of the Windows Operating System (probably a file I/O) is now in control, and waiting for something to report back that it's done. The game program has been suspended while the OS has control. This is normal activity, but is not supposed to be blatantly obvious. It usually happens as a "background" activity without affecting game play.

 

This visual indication of the delay is not normal. I have never seen it happen on my older Win7 rig. It suggests you have very limited system memory, so the system is having to swap things out of memory in order to perform necessary functions. It may also indicate that your disk space is getting too full so it is having to hunt around it for bits and pieces of the file it wants and it needs to be "defragmented". (You should always keep at least 10% of disk capacity "free" for defragging purposes.) Consider it an extreme instance of "stuttering".

 

As a simple means to confirm you are running out of memory while playing, I would download and install the tool "Memclean", which periodically (you can set the interval; default is every 15 minutes) tells the OS to perform it's built-in "clean up" of memory. It has a "mini-monitor" that displays memory usage. Doesn't seem to hurt and I have seen memory usage jump into the "yellow" zone unexpectedly in normal (non-game) use but never into "red" on my 8GB RAM system.

 

And "defrag" your disk. Can't hurt and may help. Some "boilerplate" response follows:

 

Re: Stuttering or "micro-stutters". All visual stuttering problems are caused by the video stream having to wait for the "art assets" required to render the display OR the game writing something to disk (such as a save game file or logging). Mostly these are due to the hard disk drive being orders of magnitude slower than VRAM, with System RAM (e.g. "ENBoost") and "solid state drives" (SSDs) being in between. Keep in mind that this game was designed for older PC and XBox console systems, and it is now possible for your new "latest and greatest" gaming machine to be faster than it can handle. There are internal design choices that cannot be overcome. The following are "mitigations" that have been found to help some people.

 

Please see the following entries under the 'Solutions to Performance problems' section in the wiki Fallout NV Mod Conflict Troubleshooting" guide if you haven't already.

* 'Issue: "Full screen mode" exhibits CTDs and stutters or micro-stutters'

* 'Issue: Lag or "micro stutters" even with "New Vegas Stutter Remover" installed'

* 'Issue: Win10 Screen tearing in "Borderless Windowed Mode"'

* 'Issue: CTD without warning, "Out of Memory error", or stops responding after the Main Menu' for other settings that can indirectly affect micro-stutter.

* There are also some NVSR configuration suggestions under the 'Issue: Game in slow motion' and entries.

* The 'Issue: What's with these Solid Green billboard signs in the distance (LOD)?' entry under the 'Solutions to Mesh (Red "!" icon) or Texture (solid color) problems' section can also help if your problems started after you installed VWD/LOD texture packages.

* If you are using CASM or some similar "auto-save" mod to manage your save game files (recommended), try increasing the "time between saves" set in the "save frequency"; and reducing the number of occasions it saves to the minimum (e.g. disable most "Autosave Events" in CASM) and see how that impacts the game seeming to freeze temporarily.

* If you have "NVSE logging" enabled (see the 'Checklist Item #4' entry in the wiki "Fallout NV Mod Conflict Troubleshooting" guide), disable it until actually needed.

 

Reading from or writing to disk for any reason is the slowest thing the game does.

 

As you can see, there are a number of things that can underlie your problem. If one of these doesn't fix it, I would be interested to hear about any eventual solution that does.

 

-Dubious-

 

I've currently only got 5% disk space left on the SSD I have New Vegas installed on so thats probably a big reason why. I'm also currently running on a GTX 970 and with 8GB Ram. Would getting 16GB of RAM and a GTX 1070 or 1080 help at all? If so, would it also help to decrease stutters a crashing related to loading new cells?

[dubiousintent]

I only have 8GB of system RAM (and a GTX760 w/4GB VRAM) as well, so that should be sufficient. But each release of Windows seems to increase the amount required for the OS, so more system RAM might help.

 

Are you using the FNV 4GB Patcher? Otherwise you are limited to using only 2GB, regardless of total system RAM, because it is a 32-bit game. Try this first.

 

I don't have an SSD, but from what I have read (such as this article) you don't want to run a defragger on it. Combined with ENBoost, there isn't anything else you can do "mechanically" that I am aware of to minimize lag. Please see the 'Issue: Is ENBoost for everyone?' in the wiki "Fallout NV Mod Conflict Troubleshooting" guide.

With an SSD, you should not be getting such extreme lag loading art assets. Most likely it is some other process running in the background that is grabbing control. There are several free "game booster" tools on the web which can help you identify and temporarily shutdown unessential processes in that regard.

 

-Dubious

[Zathmo]

 

I only have 8GB of system RAM (and a GTX760 w/4GB VRAM) as well, so that should be sufficient. But each release of Windows seems to increase the amount required for the OS, so more system RAM might help.

 

Are you using the FNV 4GB Patcher? Otherwise you are limited to using only 2GB, regardless of total system RAM, because it is a 32-bit game. Try this first.

 

I don't have an SSD, but from what I have read (such as this article) you don't want to run a defragger on it. Combined with ENBoost, there isn't anything else you can do "mechanically" that I am aware of to minimize lag. Please see the 'Issue: Is ENBoost for everyone?' in the wiki "Fallout NV Mod Conflict Troubleshooting" guide.

 

With an SSD, you should not be getting such extreme lag loading art assets. Most likely it is some other process running in the background that is grabbing control. There are several free "game booster" tools on the web which can help you identify and temporarily shutdown unessential processes in that regard.

 

-Dubious

 

I wasn't using ENBoost before and just started using it. I also deleted a bunch of stuff from my SSD and now have 15% of free space on it. I jumped into the game and am still getting the wait cursor during loading screens. I also got a Radstorm from Nevada Skies and started sprinting around in it. I ran from Goodsprings and crashed in Hidden Valley, sometimes I wonder if my textures are to high quality. I'm using NMCs and Ojo Buneo's packs together. Could the high quality textures be causing the wait cursor during loading and the crashes?

[dubiousintent]

Re: Using more than one texture pack. Short answer: yes it could.

Image size matters. A 4096 x 4096 image with 16 bit color resolution is 32 MB of data. If your screen is displaying 100 different models with textures that size, that's 3.2 GB of data just for the textures. Since a 32 bit program can only address up to 4 GB of data in total, you can see how trying to display a lot of high resolution models is going to run the game out of memory very quickly. (Thank you for the perspective madmongo.) Now, VRAM is not directly addressed by the program; it's controlled by the video card and can hide the actual addressing from the program, but you get the idea.

Another thing to consider is that larger images take longer to pass through the video pipeline. When such larger sizes were not considered in the game design (and they weren't at the time), bottlenecks are to be expected.

To illustrate such considerations: I use both "Ojo Bueno" and "NMC" texture packs with a 4GB VRAM video card on an older [email protected] system still running Win7 (upgraded from WinXP; simply to show how old it is).

I chose to install "Ojo Bueno - Performance" (textures up to 2048 x 2048) first, because most of it's images indicate it's dealing with more fore- to mid- ground textures. IMO, these tend to use more models with more details and vertices. They are more demanding of video resources.

I installed "NMC - Large" (Typically: 2048 x 2048 Textures & 2048 x 2048 Bumpmaps/Normal maps) second, because it seems to be more "View While Distant/Level of Detail (VWD/LOD)" oriented, which are lower in details and vertices but where the two overlap I wanted the consistency in favor of the NMC imagery color scheme.

You could install them in the reverse order, depending upon which you preferred to win any "overlap" conflicts. I'm quite pleased with the result, both visually and performance wise; but will confess to not being highly demanding in the visual regard compared to others. YMMV.

If you add any VWD/LOD textures, please see the 'Checklist Item #15 & 16' entries in the wiki "Fallout NV Mod Conflict Troubleshooting" guide regarding the need to run both TES4LL and FNVLODGen.

-Dubious-