[Solved]How to fix ATS VR OBS recording issue(shutters a lot and sometimes with a frozen frame)

[Wesley]

Firstly, the game works mostly well at a stable 90Hz, and there are no issues with any other VR games, even heavy VR modded games like Resident Evil 7/8 or those hooked with UEVR.

I understand that ATS almost exclusively uses one CPU core, but my CPU is an i7-12700 with E-cores, designed specifically for streaming and recording.

Solved!

Please use openxr and openxr OBS plugin instead of oculus mirror!!!

[mojo_musica]

Can't answer questions about graphics with no details of your graphics card, VR system and settings and full PC system specs.
Go to the top of Steam library page for the game and click "help" at the very top.
Click "system information".
Wait for the pop-out window to open and display the information, then right click and select the "copy all text to clipboard" option, and then paste it here.

[Agathos Deimon]

I play ATS using an Index at 80fps/80hz and have no issues recording non stuttering 30 fps Full HD videos using the OBS VR direct capture plugin. GPU is a RTX 4070, CPU an i5-9600k running at fixed 4,6 GHZ.

Its a little tricky to get ATS run smooth at such high FPS in VR, as most guides you will find recommend crazy PD/scaling settings that mostly cost horsepower for almost no visual quality gain.

Most likely in the next two weeks i will have a vid uploading showcasing my settings for ATS & ETS2 as well as a short demotrip through the worst performing area in the game for me.

[Wesley]

Publicado originalmente por mojo_musica:

Can't answer questions about graphics with no details of your graphics card, VR system and settings and full PC system specs.
Go to the top of Steam library page for the game and click "help" at the very top.
Click "system information".
Wait for the pop-out window to open and display the information, then right click and select the "copy all text to clipboard" option, and then paste it here.

Thanks for the reply.

My PC is GTX3090+i7-12700+32GB DDR5200+2T M.2 SSD.
I am using Quest3 and recording through oculus mirror.

[Wesley]

Publicado originalmente por Agathos Deimon:

I play ATS using an Index at 80fps/80hz and have no issues recording non stuttering 30 fps Full HD videos using the OBS VR direct capture plugin. GPU is a RTX 4070, CPU an i5-9600k running at fixed 4,6 GHZ.

Its a little tricky to get ATS run smooth at such high FPS in VR, as most guides you will find recommend crazy PD/scaling settings that mostly cost horsepower for almost no visual quality gain.

Most likely in the next two weeks i will have a vid uploading showcasing my settings for ATS & ETS2 as well as a short demotrip through the worst performing area in the game for me.

I don't use crazy SS because I want a steady framerate in the game. I only modified a few options in the config file and used NPI to achieve better AA.

config.cfg:

uset r_manual_stereo_buffer_scale "1.5"
uset g_lod_factor_pedestrian "8"
uset g_lod_factor_parked "8"
uset g_lod_factor_traffic "8"
uset t_averaging_window_length "60"


Nvidia Profile Inspector:

Maximumpre-rendered frames: 3
Antialiasing - Line gamma: Enabled

Texture filtering DriverControlled LOD Bias: Off
Texture filtering - LOD Bias (DX): -1.5000
Texture filtering - Negative LOD bias: Allow
Texture filtering - Quality: High quality

These changes will affect the game's performance, but I don't think any of them will impact OBS recording.

By the way, I changed my OBS FPS setting from 60 to 30. It seems improved, but it's still a bit laggy.

[Agathos Deimon]

Publicado originalmente por Wesley:

4
config.cfg:

uset r_manual_stereo_buffer_scale "1.5"
uset g_lod_factor_pedestrian "8"
uset g_lod_factor_parked "8"
uset g_lod_factor_traffic "8"
uset t_averaging_window_length "60"


Nvidia Profile Inspector:

Maximumpre-rendered frames: 3
Antialiasing - Line gamma: Enabled

Texture filtering DriverControlled LOD Bias: Off
Texture filtering - LOD Bias (DX): -1.5000
Texture filtering - Negative LOD bias: Allow
Texture filtering - Quality: High quality

These changes will affect the game's performance, but I don't think any of them will impact OBS recording.

By the way, I changed my OBS FPS setting from 60 to 30. It seems improved, but it's still a bit laggy.

Looking at your settings for ATS i think you are not attaining stable 72 or 80 fps for which i would aim using a Quest 3.


If i remember correctly Quest3 has 2x 2.064 x 2.208 displays so buffer scale of 1.5 really puts pressure on GPU (even a 3090) especially if in SteamVR or Oculus Software you are also using values beyond the native resolution of your VR HMD.

Have you checked VR fps using fpsVR? And how often reprojection kicks in?

So my advice would be to lower buffer scale 1st, as i found this really has crazy impact on ATS VR performance for very tiny amounts (if any) of increase in visual quality. To get smoother actions in my view is better to have buffer scale at 1.0 but use AA setting ingame a medium.

Also try to set uset t_averaging_window_length to "0" instead of any number as "0" will disable that function. If you insist of having a number here, suggestion is to choose the number atleast two times the desired FPS. So if you aim for 72 = 144 or 80 = 160. 60 is to low for VR as it is below HMD refresh rate.

Personally i have not tested the impact of the g_lod_factors settings on FPS, as i kept those at 1.0. So this might also need a look at to get mostly stable VR fps.

If usig SteamVR i would also suggest to disable motion smoothing, as i found that to kick in pretty harsh and force reprojection and halfed FPS even in cases where one would only lose a few frames but yet keep FPS above 65-70.

EDIT: I tested the _g_lod_factors and they atleast do not seem to have a noticeable effect on performace. I have to admit i could not see any LOD changes with values of 4 and only barely noticed some with a value of 2.

[_KC76_]

Publicado originalmente por Wesley:

Publicado originalmente por mojo_musica:

Can't answer questions about graphics with no details of your graphics card, VR system and settings and full PC system specs.
Go to the top of Steam library page for the game and click "help" at the very top.
Click "system information".
Wait for the pop-out window to open and display the information, then right click and select the "copy all text to clipboard" option, and then paste it here.

Thanks for the reply.

My PC is GTX3090+i7-12700+32GB DDR5200+2T M.2 SSD.
I am using Quest3 and recording through oculus mirror.

That is not what you were asked for (all you posted was Model Names/descriptions). Please go back up to Mojo's post and re-read the directions.

[Wesley]

Publicado originalmente por Agathos Deimon:

Looking at your settings for ATS i think you are not attaining stable 72 or 80 fps for which i would aim using a Quest 3.

If i remember correctly Quest3 has 2x 2.064 x 2.208 displays so buffer scale of 1.5 really puts pressure on GPU (even a 3090) especially if in SteamVR or Oculus Software you are also using values beyond the native resolution of your VR HMD.

Have you checked VR fps using fpsVR? And how often reprojection kicks in?

So my advice would be to lower buffer scale 1st, as i found this really has crazy impact on ATS VR performance for very tiny amounts (if any) of increase in visual quality. To get smoother actions in my view is better to have buffer scale at 1.0 but use AA setting ingame a medium.

Also try to set uset t_averaging_window_length to "0" instead of any number as "0" will disable that function. If you insist of having a number here, suggestion is to choose the number atleast two times the desired FPS. So if you aim for 72 = 144 or 80 = 160. 60 is to low for VR as it is below HMD refresh rate.

Personally i have not tested the impact of the g_lod_factors settings on FPS, as i kept those at 1.0. So this might also need a look at to get mostly stable VR fps.

If usig SteamVR i would also suggest to disable motion smoothing, as i found that to kick in pretty harsh and force reprojection and halfed FPS even in cases where one would only lose a few frames but yet keep FPS above 65-70.

EDIT: I tested the _g_lod_factors and they atleast do not seem to have a noticeable effect on performace. I have to admit i could not see any LOD changes with values of 4 and only barely noticed some with a value of 2.

Thanks a lot. I found the problem.

I used the OBS log analyzer and discovered that my CPU was overloaded. Following its advice, I set OBS's priority to normal and ran OBS as an administrator. As a result, the recording lag/frozen issue is resolved!

Regarding my game settings, especially the supersampling setting, I switched to SteamVR and checked the settings with fpsVR. I found that if I don't use excessive supersampling (like 300% scaling or over 2 stereo_buffer_scale), it doesn't really impact the fps in the game. This is because my GPU is only operating at 50-60% load, while some of my CPU cores are over 90%, affecting the fps dramatically. So when I am driving on the highway outside the cities with not so heavy traffic, I consistently achieve a stable 90fps most of the time. However, in cities or stuck in heavy traffic, the fps decreases, triggering ASW...

[Agathos Deimon]

Yes ATS tends to be more CPU limited than GPU limited.

One thing you can try, disable motion smoothing/ASW and see how far FPS drop.

As said, i found motion smoothing kicking in way to aggressive. forcing reprojection/ASW where it was not yet really necessary.

OBS issues would have been my next guess if it wasn't game FPS. Have fun recording. :)

[Wesley]

Publicado originalmente por Agathos Deimon:

Yes ATS tends to be more CPU limited than GPU limited.

One thing you can try, disable motion smoothing/ASW and see how far FPS drop.

As said, i found motion smoothing kicking in way to aggressive. forcing reprojection/ASW where it was not yet really necessary.

OBS issues would have been my next guess if it wasn't game FPS. Have fun recording. :)

Your advice is really helpful!

BTW, recently I switch openvr to openxr and using openxr OBS plugin to record.

The openxr mirror is far better than oculus mirror which heavily using GPU costing about around 10fps in ATS. Now I can SS 150% by activating FFR in openxr with mostly stable 72hz even in cities and big traffic now!

[Agathos Deimon]

There is also an OpenVR plugin for OBS that i use to capture VR directly. I do not even need a mirror for that, which makes performance impact almost unnoticable. :)