Can we hope for a stuttering fix ?

[Zarakaï]

My friend and I have pretty much the same rig, but for some reason he doesn't have any stuttering issue, while for me it's barely playable. The game runs at 60fps ( 140+ if I disable Vsync, but it still stutters ), but drops to 40 all the time, like, every 5 seconds.

His rig :

i7 7770K
GTX 1080ti
Samsung SSD
32GB of ram
WIN 10 PRO

My rig :

i7 7770
GTX1080
Samsung SSD
16GB of ram
WIN 10 Home

I tried several things already, like installing it on the system SSD, on an HDD, I re-installed my old GTX 970, I tried 4 different drivers, activated Rapid Mode on the SSD via Samsung Magician.

Nothing works. Putting the Details settings to low in the game seems to help, but then it's unplayable since the distant terrain doesn't render correctly, and I just hate all the merry pop-ins.

At this point I'm pretty sure it's not a hardware problem.

[PrimeSonic]

It's not the hardware.
I basically put all the games map data on a RAM Disk and, while I did get like a 20 FPS increase, when the game wants to studder there's no stopping it.

Big bases with lots of things happening inside them just tank the games performance.
And if you have too many little bases with things inside them, same thing.

If you want to play with as little studder as possible, do what I do: ditch conventional bases and live out of your Cyclops 100%.

[Zarakaï]

It does this since the beginning way before I started building a base. And even now my base only has 3 rooms full of lockers, nothing more. Sure I guess having big bases don't really help with the issue, but it's not the cause of it.

From what I've read here and there the problem comes from the way the game loads the terrain, and probably the LODs too. It has been a big problem in open world games since forever. But it's hard to understand why it happens for some people and not others with the same hardware...

Skyrim had this issue ( the old version ), Conan Exiles has this issue, and Subnautica. None are built on the same engine.

Ark however, despite being extremely similar to Conan and built on the same engine, doesn't stutter. And this game is famous for its bad optimization.

I spend more time trying to fix these issues to play the games I love instead of actually playing them. It's exhausting. And no matter how good my rig is, no matter how much money I spend on it, some games just never work.

Maybe I should buy a PS4.

[PrimeSonic]

Yup, this engine does do some funky stuff to make for studering this bad.

The only thing I haven't tried yet was running the entire game off of a RAM Disk.
Maybe that will help. Maybe it won't.

I do know that they really should do something about having to keep bases loaded and rendering at all times.

EDIT: I'll add my specs

i7-6700K
GTX 980Ti
32Gb RAM
Sansung NVMe SSD
Win 10 Pro

[TheTool]

Check this location for correct permissions.
C:\ProgramData\Unknown Worlds\Subnautica
ProgramData is normally a hidden folder.
This location is empty when game is off, but as soon as you load into a world, thousands, (and I mean thousands) of cache files are written and read from here. The more you move around the world, the more get written.
As you move around the map, more and more files are written to this location.
When the game is turned off, all files are deleted from here.
ProgramData belongs to the OS and is not a very permission friendly folder.

The stuttering is because of the permissions of this folder. Every file that gets written and read from here must pass extensive permission requests so game stutters. Also to note an antivirus will also do the same thing for this location. Checking every file as it is written causing stutter.

There are ways to fix this by giving you account full read write permissions for these locatrions, but to do that you have to take ownership of the folders first. Then give your account full read writes, then give ownership of the folders back to trusted installer.
Google "Take ownership"
then Google "Restore ownership to TrustedInstaller"

ProgramData IS NOT for streaming data. It is used, mostly, for app config files.
Who ever decided to put the game cache in a system folder should be fired!

The game cache used to be in our save folders and this wasn't an issue because the game install location has the correct permissions.
However C:\ProgramData\Unknown Worlds\Subnautica does not.

I have 3 PCs I play this on and they all stuttered until I gave my accounts correct permissions.

One rig has a gtx 970 and I get a stable 85 fps all times on ultra.
Other rig had gtx 1080 and I get a stable 120 fps all times on ultra.
No stuttering except for the pop in, which isn't going to be fixed.

[Zarakaï]

Thanks for you help The Tool, unfortunately it didn't work. The framerate still drops to 54-55 fps and then back to 60.

But now that I have almost 20 hours of playtime I notice A LOT more pop-ins than at the beggining of the game, so it just gets worse and worse. At the beggining I only had some terrain and small objects pop-ins, now it's huge chunks of terrain and big objects too.

This is completely broken, no way I'm playing this I'm sick of those broken games. Glad I tried it on my friend's account before buying it.

[PrimeSonic]

Originally posted by Texelion:

But now that I have almost 20 hours of playtime I notice A LOT more pop-ins than at the beggining of the game, so it just gets worse and worse.

That's because everything you do that changes the world in any way gets saved to your save file and has to be constantly checked against the default world state.

You can try deleting these files. It will revert the world back to the default state whille still preserving your general progress.

You'll find the files here.
...\Subnautica\SNAppData\SavedGames\slot####\CellsCache

Note that this does mean that any doors you've unlocked will be locked again.
Just keep that in mind regarding the Aurora, wrecks, and alien doors.

[LUDDE]

Originally posted by TheTool:

Check this location for correct permissions.
C:\ProgramData\Unknown Worlds\Subnautica
ProgramData is normally a hidden folder.
This location is empty when game is off, but as soon as you load into a world, thousands, (and I mean thousands) of cache files are written and read from here. The more you move around the world, the more get written.
As you move around the map, more and more files are written to this location.
When the game is turned off, all files are deleted from here.
ProgramData belongs to the OS and is not a very permission friendly folder.

The stuttering is because of the permissions of this folder. Every file that gets written and read from here must pass extensive permission requests so game stutters. Also to note an antivirus will also do the same thing for this location. Checking every file as it is written causing stutter.

There are ways to fix this by giving you account full read write permissions for these locatrions, but to do that you have to take ownership of the folders first. Then give your account full read writes, then give ownership of the folders back to trusted installer.
Google "Take ownership"
then Google "Restore ownership to TrustedInstaller"

ProgramData IS NOT for streaming data. It is used, mostly, for app config files.
Who ever decided to put the game cache in a system folder should be fired!

The game cache used to be in our save folders and this wasn't an issue because the game install location has the correct permissions.
However C:\ProgramData\Unknown Worlds\Subnautica does not.

I have 3 PCs I play this on and they all stuttered until I gave my accounts correct permissions.

One rig has a gtx 970 and I get a stable 85 fps all times on ultra.
Other rig had gtx 1080 and I get a stable 120 fps all times on ultra.
No stuttering except for the pop in, which isn't going to be fixed.

Thank you sooo so much this worked for me!!! Was experiencing horrible stutters consistelntly, and now they're gone! THANK YOU!

[PrimeSonic]

Originally posted by TheTool:

Check this location for correct permissions.
C:\ProgramData\Unknown Worlds\Subnautica
ProgramData is normally a hidden folder.
This location is empty when game is off, but as soon as you load into a world, thousands, (and I mean thousands) of cache files are written and read from here. The more you move around the world, the more get written.
As you move around the map, more and more files are written to this location.
When the game is turned off, all files are deleted from here.
ProgramData belongs to the OS and is not a very permission friendly folder.

The stuttering is because of the permissions of this folder. Every file that gets written and read from here must pass extensive permission requests so game stutters. Also to note an antivirus will also do the same thing for this location. Checking every file as it is written causing stutter.

There are ways to fix this by giving you account full read write permissions for these locatrions, but to do that you have to take ownership of the folders first. Then give your account full read writes, then give ownership of the folders back to trusted installer.
Google "Take ownership"
then Google "Restore ownership to TrustedInstaller"

ProgramData IS NOT for streaming data. It is used, mostly, for app config files.
Who ever decided to put the game cache in a system folder should be fired!

The game cache used to be in our save folders and this wasn't an issue because the game install location has the correct permissions.
However C:\ProgramData\Unknown Worlds\Subnautica does not.

I have 3 PCs I play this on and they all stuttered until I gave my accounts correct permissions.

One rig has a gtx 970 and I get a stable 85 fps all times on ultra.
Other rig had gtx 1080 and I get a stable 120 fps all times on ultra.
No stuttering except for the pop in, which isn't going to be fixed.

Might as well make this necro worth it.

I did this myself a while back and I haven't had studering outside of some extreme cases.
I run the game with pretty much maxed settings at 3440x1440 and my fps rarely dips under 80.

CPU i7-6700K OC'd to 4.6Ghz
GPU RTX 2080Ti
NVMe SSD Samsung 960 EVO

[TheTool]

Glad it worked for you, as most ppl think this is BS.
Game development companies have no business inside system folders.

[AoD_lexandro]

This should be a sticky. The info is absolutely spot on and majorly improves the games performance when loading data from disc.

I did this tweak right as I was int he lost river and having major stutters every few minutes. Post tweak........barely a blink and only as its loading chunks (known).

[Humpenstilzchen]

@ The Tool
Thx man, I just applied the changes and will test it now. The game overall ran very good for me, but there are locations ingame that are very stuttery like inside of the alien cannon building for example or floating islands as well.

I hope this fixes it.

[Humpenstilzchen]

It worked, no stuttering inside of alien buildings anymore!
Thx a lot!

[Roberta Sparrow]

He didnt explain how to do it can someone simplify it for my dumb dumb brain

[Ugandan Chungus GF]

Play "experimental" under the beta tab in the game properties. Still pop-ins but big performance increase. The cause is the old Unity engine. Experimental is using a newer version of Unity with optimizations/patches almost every day.

[MarkJohnson]

Originally posted by Zarakaï:

My friend and I have pretty much the same rig, but for some reason he doesn't have any stuttering issue, while for me it's barely playable. The game runs at 60fps ( 140+ if I disable Vsync, but it still stutters ), but drops to 40 all the time, like, every 5 seconds.

His rig :

i7 7770K
GTX 1080ti
Samsung SSD
32GB of ram
WIN 10 PRO

My rig :

i7 7770
GTX1080
Samsung SSD
16GB of ram
WIN 10 Home

I tried several things already, like installing it on the system SSD, on an HDD, I re-installed my old GTX 970, I tried 4 different drivers, activated Rapid Mode on the SSD via Samsung Magician.

Nothing works. Putting the Details settings to low in the game seems to help, but then it's unplayable since the distant terrain doesn't render correctly, and I just hate all the merry pop-ins.

At this point I'm pretty sure it's not a hardware problem.

I find the stuttering comes from too high of detail. All of those fishies needing simulated by the AI takes a big hit on performance. Plus the volcanoes that erupt all of the time. If you can hear the volcano in your base, then you are too close and it will affect performance. I find if I play on medium and turn off the FPS counter, it plays perfectly.

I think most people get OCD hung up on the FPS numbers rather than just enjoying the game. But most simulator game have this issue, from the AI overtaking the game play from too much detail.

Remember, the CPU has to process, not only the AI, but a large part of the graphics as well. It can't do both to a high degree at once before you get lag, stuttering, fps drops.