Stuttering? Possible FIX: Use a TV!

[wkduffy]

Can someone--anyone--explain this to me?

I have an Intel i9 12900k cpu and an EVGA RTX 3080Ti (FTW version). I can run pretty much everything on ultra presets here in 2023.

I play with a controller (no hate) on a Samsung 5120 x 1440 super wide display (DPI cable, 32:9 aspect ratio) usually at 60 hz. For me, if camera movement in a game doesn't feel like butter on hot glass (in other words, super smooth left to right and up to down), I don't play it.

With this title, I booted the game at 32:9 in my native resolution and it rendered correctly in full screen. Yay, ultrawide support!

But that joy faded fast. I started to play, and it was performing badly. Panning the camera left and right, the frame pacing was awful, super choppy. Rather than gliding smoothly, objects hitch back and forth while panning. I wouldn't necessarily call it a stutter, but the movement is not smooth in any way.

Thinking it may be my hardware (really?), I tried every config in game to stop it--setting everything to low, even dumping the resolution all the way down to something like 800 x 600 just to see what was going on.

Nope. The hitching frame pace persisted when standing still and just panning the camera left and right. Wobble, wobble, wobble...vomit inducing.

I did try one of the solutions mentioned here: Lowering the refresh rate to 50hz (or alternately to 100hz). Whlie this trick did lessen the frame wobble some, ultimately the hitching was still there (making me sick).

I almost refunded it. I've learned that games made by 2 people often have these kinds of basic problems...and they rarely get fixed.

Then, just out of curiosity, I dragged my big old PC into the living room and hooked it up to my 4k TV using an old HDMI cable. I booted up Madison, and it recognized the TV display and actually set the in-game resolution automatically to 4k by default.

(For the record, the 5120 x 1440 super wide display I have connected to my PC is right around 2k when running at full tilt, so about half the resolution of 4k).

Of course, at 4k resolution, I was not expecting it to run well since it didn't do well at 2k with my PC monitor. I was just...experimenting.

But I couldn't believe what I saw: On the crappy 4k TV, the camera movement in game was smooth as butter, just gliding along like hot snot on a silver platter, not a hitch anywhere. And again, this was at 4k, twice the resolution of my PC monitor.

Say wha?

So in summary: To be able to play this game with smooth camera movement, I'm going to have to lug my rig into the frikken living room, hook it up to my 4k TV with an old HDMI cable, and play it at 2x the resolution of my superwide PC monitor where I am using a DPI cable (and where every other game I play works flawlessly).

Uh....what is going on? Was this game just somehow developed only to be played on a TV screen using a console or something? Or...what am I missing here?