Forza Horizon the Stutterfest

[hexaae]

So, there is no solution to completely remove (micro) stuttering in this game, despite high fps?

Some people say it "runs smoothly", then you discover they call performance like these random YT videos as "smooth", ignoring the many annoying hitches (keep your eyes at the street borders while driving: trees etc.):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_WOq7t-eBA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whsZgT2kZTc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2C47TI8tW0

This is a MAJOR annoying problem with this game, not something minor to me.... But most players don't care and seem used to micro lags and stuttering.

[PanPan]

If you have drops or stuttering all the time, the issue is usually your GPU driver.
Any video starting by 8K is a joke and encoding at low bandwidth will have stutters.

I have perfect 60 fps in freeroam but i noticed some drops online :
I just played for 3h, but at the end i started to get drops every 5s in last dirt race.
The same race against IA, no drops.

There can be drops after a checkpoint or collision detection.
Maybe Microsoft servers...
Once upon a time, Rbar was causing drops in Hotwheel map.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryGbiJNPeEg

[hexaae]

No it's not an FPS drop problem. FPS are stable way above 60 fps, or even fixed at 60 if I clamp them from NVidia profile inspector or in-game... The problem are micro-lags and hiccups, visible also in those videos... They look like frame skipping for some strange reasons despite the fps counter is stable and 60> (I reach 208fps on 4090 laptop in 2560x1600 with i9-13980HX, 5600MHz DDR5, and 7GB/s RW NVMe).

Yes, drivers can have a role, but this game has always been plagued by micro-stutttering since the beginning. Since I returned to this game recently and I noticed the issue is still present I was asking in case a better solution was found :(

My situation is like in the 3rd video: looks smooth, but has annoying hiccups (sort of micro-lags) randomly if you pay attention. For many, that is already a very good result (I'm sure many would call that video "smooth"), but to me is quite annoying as I am very sensitive to those hitches in racing games...

At present I'm playing with NVidia Profile Inspector with Unknown settings... let's see if I can find something...

[hexaae]

Of course. My full specs in my profile (it's a 240Hz G-Sync 2560x1600 16:10 screen). But it's not a "my case" only: it's common FH5 behavior. You probably also have a lot of micro-stuttering but just don't notice/ignore them, just like in the 3rd video above I'm sure you'd call "running smoothly".
Did you lock it to 60fps from in-game options?

Stuttering and fps are not necessary related. There are games like this with high fps and no drops that have visible "hitches" (more like a frame pacing/skipping issue, with cylical micro-lags).

[PanPan]

Originally posted by hexaae:

it's common FH5 behavior. You probably also have a lot of micro-stuttering but just don't notice/ignore them

No it's not, i can't play with any stutters (unstable frametimes) or drops below 60 fps...
Stuttering is usually because bad Vsync or FrameGen/Reflex...
GTA5 stutters if you don't play in fullscreen or if above 180fps...

https://youtu.be/sk5qr1GxkGM

[hexaae]

In your video you can see f.e. a stutter (lag, hitch, or whatever you call it) at 1:23...

It runs generally better than most videos (or here with my PC) I've seen, but it's not stutter-free.
The truth is this game engine sucks in terms of smoothness. Great gfx detail, lighting and the rest, but has never been as smooth as it should have been, sigh.

[hexaae]

In the meanwhile I've found the best (smoothness wise) cfg for me:
- forced VSync from NVidia Profile Inspector
- in-game option unlimited fps
- in-game vsync is greyed out and I can't select it at all (31 Dec 2024)

[󠀡󠀡]

Disable e cores and use old drivers

[hexaae]

Originally posted by 󠀡󠀡:

Disable e cores and use old drivers

Already tried limiting the game to the first 6 cores for testing and did not eliminate those annoying hicchups. BTW, I noticed that keeping the cfg in the previous msg and adding also fps cap with NVidia Profile Inspector or by in-game settings, always results in a worse stuttering (!?). Tried also to disable G-Sync and any other experiment but nothing completely removes them 100%.
As for drivers since I've had some troubles with R565 branch I already rolled back to NVidia 560.81 GR.

However, as I said and have seen from the many videos on YT is a common issue of this game from the very beginning users just don't care much (they don't see those hitches or find them acceptable)...

[󠀡󠀡]

Originally posted by hexaae:

Originally posted by 󠀡󠀡:

Disable e cores and use old drivers

Already tried limiting the game to the first 6 cores for testing and did not eliminate those annoying hicchups. BTW, I noticed that keeping the cfg in the previous msg and adding also fps cap with NVidia Profile Inspector or by in-game settings, always results in a worse stuttering (!?). Tried also to disable G-Sync and any other experiment but nothing completely removes them 100%.
As for drivers since I've had some troubles with R565 branch I already rolled back to NVidia 560.81 GR.

However, as I said and have seen from the many videos on YT is a common issue of this game from the very beginning users just don't care much (they don't see those hitches or find them acceptable)...

Sorry to hear you have this problem. Maybe the root of the problem is in windows? or windows updates which ♥♥♥♥♥ up sometimes some games? My windows 10 has disabled updates for 13 months now. Only defender updates still running. I have MV C++ installed and no bloatware. As for GPU I have only Nvidia driver + PhysX. Very old drivers 537.42 and everything works.

[hexaae]

...Another option that seems to have a role in these hitches frequency (at least on this ASUS SCAR 18): Settings > Accessibility > BPM matched environment
... and I also changed in 'UserConfigSelections' file:

<PresentInterval value="1"/>

(was 2 at default. It should affect vsync/refresh mode)

[hexaae]

... but it's not an issue for me only. Just search on YT "Forza Horizon 5 max settings" and you'll see how many players are affected by heavy stuttering in this game.
It's a "known" (ignored) problem for many gamers.
Far from being "smooth" to me...

Other examples:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RNEBAIosZo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbaQDdhN1VQ

[kevinbain2294]

You probably need to optimize your system. The game runs flawlessly for me, but I've done a lot of optimizations to my PC.

Make sure Core Parking is off. Put GPU to maximum performance for the FH5 game profile in either Nvidia Profile Inspector or Nvidia Control Panel.

Nvidia Profile Inspector is pretty useful to get more consistent performance out of games.

FH5 itself is extremely optimized so whatever issue you are having is due to your PC not being setup correctly in some way.

Make sure your RAM is using an XMP profile to get the most benefit.

Try using Process Lasso if you are using an Intel CPU. Maybe the game doesn't like being on Core 0 running alongside the OS, so try deselecting Core 0 and have it run on all of your other cores. Also set it to High Priority. Use the Bitsum Power Plan, that should also turn off Core Parking.

This game runs better with Hyper-threading enabled

Make sure you have GPU Scheduling Hardware Acceleration and Game Mode is on in your OS as well.

Turn off background apps and make sure FH5 has High Performance selected in your OS settings

You could also try using the Interrupt Affinity Tool to reduce DPC Latency and Interrupt Latency. These being high can cause stuttering and also input lag. (Some GPUs do not like when you set a custom mask, so you'll just have to test it using LatencyMon. Then if the results are good, try running the game)

Turn on MSI Mode for your GPU and put it to high Priority (use the MSI utility, run it as administrator or else you won't be able to make any changes)

There are more, but these are the ones I remember. They should help you to get the game running smoothly.

[Mandellorian]

Originally posted by kevinbain2294:

You probably need to optimize your system. The game runs flawlessly for me, but I've done a lot of optimizations to my PC.

Make sure Core Parking is off. Put GPU to maximum performance for the FH5 game profile in either Nvidia Profile Inspector or Nvidia Control Panel.

Nvidia Profile Inspector is pretty useful to get more consistent performance out of games.

FH5 itself is extremely optimized so whatever issue you are having is due to your PC not being setup correctly in some way.

Make sure your RAM is using an XMP profile to get the most benefit.

Try using Process Lasso if you are using an Intel CPU. Maybe the game doesn't like being on Core 0 running alongside the OS, so try deselecting Core 0 and have it run on all of your other cores. Also set it to High Priority. Use the Bitsum Power Plan, that should also turn off Core Parking.

This game runs better with Hyper-threading enabled

Make sure you have GPU Scheduling Hardware Acceleration and Game Mode is on in your OS as well.

Turn off background apps and make sure FH5 has High Performance selected in your OS settings

You could also try using the Interrupt Affinity Tool to reduce DPC Latency and Interrupt Latency. These being high can cause stuttering and also input lag. (Some GPUs do not like when you set a custom mask, so you'll just have to test it using LatencyMon. Then if the results are good, try running the game)

Turn on MSI Mode for your GPU and put it to high Priority (use the MSI utility, run it as administrator or else you won't be able to make any changes)

There are more, but these are the ones I remember. They should help you to get the game running smoothly.

I stopped reading the second you said Forza is extremely optimized, at that point it became obvious you know very little about programming and computers.
I`ll be generous and say it might be optimized for the Xbox..In no way shape or form is it optimized for the PC.