Radio Active Channel Extender- indoor stuttering

[VAULTRENEGADE]

The radio mod in question is R.A.C.E

 

I've encountered a very strange problem that I've determined this mod to be the cause of. Essentially, any time I'm inside certain cells (it doesn't happen in every cell), I encounter severe stuttering at random intervals (sometimes it's not immediate, other times not). Oddly enough, activating RACE via the pipboy fixes all stuttering immediately, only to have it reoccur once the RACE radio station has been turned off via the pipboy. Leaving the area and re-entering sometimes temporarily fixes it. I'm not sure what's causing this since I only have about 75 songs (equaling 329mb uncompressed/ mono files saved as OGG/ tags removed). Off the top of my head I would assume it's some kind of scripting issue, but inspection via FNVedit didn't reveal anything particularly strange.

I would appreciate some help here.

 

LOAD ORDER

 

ERROR LOG

 

NVAC LOG

 

EDIT: After removing this mod and testing things, the problem still persists. There seems to be random stuttering indoors regardless of what I do. After reinstalling RACE, activating the radio while indoors seems to RELIEVE the stuttering... I'm truly baffled. I've enabled cell purging via the .ini, so I doubt that memory bloat would be the problem.

Edited March 23, 2020 by VAULTRENEGADE

[dubiousintent]

Have you tried the solutions listed in the several "Issue - SOUND" entries under the "Solutions to Performance problems" section of the wiki "Fallout NV Mod Conflict Troubleshooting" guide? Try to determine WHICH types of sounds are stuttering, as that may help pin down the problem. (See the "Music and Sounds" section "File folders by type:" list of the wiki "Getting started creating mods using GECK" article.)

 

-Dubious-

[VAULTRENEGADE]

Have you tried the solutions listed in the several "Issue - SOUND" entries under the "Solutions to Performance problems" section of the wiki "Fallout NV Mod Conflict Troubleshooting" guide? Try to determine WHICH types of sounds are stuttering, as that may help pin down the problem. (See the "Music and Sounds" section "File folders by type:" list of the wiki "Getting started creating mods using GECK" article.)

 

-Dubious-

 

 

Dubious,

As always, thank you for the guidance.

Just to clarify, the "stuttering" I encounter is literally a 10-30 FPS drop in frame rate accompanied by severe micro-stutter; I have not encountered any audio stutter.

Upon further testing, I can confirm that I've encountered an incredibly unique problem which, thus far, I haven't found reported by anyone else. It seems that the source of my FPS drops/ micro-stutter emanates from improperly formatted (vanilla) audio files. The audio files in question seem to include radio files (specifically all OGG files and certain MP3 files without a constant bit rate), as well as some kind of interior static audio file that plays in the absence of music (or radio via pipboy) which I haven't been able identify (all indoor ambience I've tested so far has not been the issue). During testing, I reformatted all stereo MP3 files that GNR uses (these tracks are used when radio is played from the pipboy). My stuttering was instantly resolved while the newly reformatted tracks played. My game began stuttering again with FPS drops the moment the track transitioned into 3 Dog's commentary (OGG files which contained vanilla formatting). To clarify, placed radios work fine and have no effect on the issue I'm experiencing. As far as I can tell, there are only two cases in which the stuttering occurs:

A). while playing a radio station song from the pip boy without a constant bit rate or in OGG format (regardless of being indoors or outside)

B). when no ambient music or radio from the pip boy is being played at all, hence the "silent interior static" file I mentioned earlier.

Could this be a windows 10 issue?

It's possible that the reason I haven't found any previous reports of this problem is due to the fact that my setup is unique- I run the latest version of TTW 2.9 in conjunction with numerous mods/ edits that I have created myself. I generally average 120FPS indoors (made possible by NVTF; VASTLY superior to NVSR if using windows 10) making any sort of stuttering very noticeable. This setup was previously optimized for VR, but I've since switched to 2D to allow myself to utilize ENBoost. I refuse to use TTW 3.2 due to a WIDE array of mod incompatibility issues. Regardless, I've been unable to determine a fix for the OGG files (MP3 files stopped causing lag when formatted to a CBR of 128kbs). Therefore, I'm going to do another clean reinstallation and go from there... I never noticed this problem in Vanilla before but with windows 10, I can't ever be sure these days.

I'll follow up with my results, but if you have any advice here I could certainly use the help.

Edited April 4, 2020 by VAULTRENEGADE

[dubiousintent]

Visual stuttering when audio of a particular format is playing? Never heard of that. Those are (or at least "were" prior to Win10) two different I/O subsystems. But because the audio is "asynchronous", it's length is timed to the match that of the visuals. Which means at "faster than designed" frame rates, things might get out of wack. (Frankly at 120FPS, I would not be concerned about a 10-30FPS drop, but then I don't pursue "max FPS". My primary suggestion would be to turn off the FPS meter and enjoy the game. But "stutter" is another matter.) Here is my "boilerplate" response regarding "stuttering".

 

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 "video pipeline" has always been prone to problems. 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. (These will not help with the "Tick Fix" alternative mod, but the author of NVSR now has a suggested configuration for Win10 linked there.)
* 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.)

The size of your image files also has an impact. Larger/higher resolution is not always "better". Please see the wiki "Display resolution versus Image Size" article.

The 'Issue: What INI edits seem to be most beneficial to performance' entry of the wiki "Fallout NV Mod Conflict Troubleshooting" guide) may also be some help. However, the above mitigations are more likely to have a fundamental beneficial effect with or without any INI adjustments, so consider them as the last resort.

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-

[VAULTRENEGADE]

Turns out it's linked to the engine's inability to function properly over 60 FPS. NVTF did in fact fix the lip syncing issue that occurs, however as we've seen, the game is still prone to a number of unpredictable issues when you don't follow the play book. All audio induced micro-stuttering resolved once I locked my frames at 60 FPS via the Nvidia control panel.

 

Case in point- don't run the game over 60 FPS, even if you use NVTF!

[dubiousintent]

Can't say I am surprised, but thanks for reporting back on your findings. Always good to have confirmation. I've added that caution to my "boilerplate" on stuttering. (Another report or two and I'll add it to the wiki.)

 

-Dubious-

[VAULTRENEGADE]

Can't say I am surprised, but thanks for reporting back on your findings. Always good to have confirmation. I've added that caution to my "boilerplate" on stuttering. (Another report or two and I'll add it to the wiki.)

 

-Dubious-

 

Sounds good, thanks for the help- and stay healthy! Crazy times we're living in.