Performance/lag issues

[YeapGuy]

I'm not sure if anyone else experienced this and if I can get any sort of advice, but I'm having big lag problems with The Lab, and The Lab only. I just got my Rift S recently, tried out a few other games, such as Job Simulator or Nvidia's VR Funhouse, and then got The Lab. And eh, it's not a good experience. Sometimes when I load in, ASW switches on and locks me at 40fps, sometimes I struggle to even get 40fps. And sometimes, everything works out perfect and I get full 80fps without ASW.
And I almost forgot to mention - this depends on the minigame I'm in. Stuff like the solar system or body scan is always fine.

I don't have a bad PC - R5 1600 and GTX 1060 is not the best, but is still fine even in games such as Alyx, which are considerably more demanding than this relative simple tech demo. I never had any fps drops or even ASW turning on in the few other games I tried.
Are The Lab's new updates badly optimized or what? I've read about people with a GTX 770 or GTX 780 running The Lab at 90fps a few years ago. So what's going on?

[Malcolm]

This used to run fine when I had a GTX 1060 but when I tried it recently on my 1080Ti it runs between 40 and 60fps! Unsually the CPU and GPU usage is around 25% so I can't think what the heck is causing it!

[jaystein]

Lots of lag with a 3080ti! I've just done some research and for nVIDIA cards it seems best to turn off the VRSS settings and use application controlled for VR pre rendered frames. I'v also heard to close most monitoring software whenever possible.

[Keith]

Originally posted by jaystein:

Lots of lag with a 3080ti! I've just done some research and for nVIDIA cards it seems best to turn off the VRSS settings and use application controlled for VR pre rendered frames. I've also heard to close most monitoring software whenever possible.

Did these things help your lag? Making sure your driver is up to date is always a good step. Running other applications at the same time as a game, such as overlays, can also decrease performance. But yeah, you should be fine with a 3080ti.

[Garcivic]

Impossible for me with a 3070 and Reverb G2 :-(

All other VR apps run great (SteamVR included)

Can be something related with WMR?

[drugula]

i have giant lag spikes even making the game crash but half life alyx runs at 60 fps with a 1060 ti and others work great including steam vr and index hands demo

[Jon.Topps]

I have a 3070 and the mountain scene, which is basically nothing at all, was HORRIBLY choppy, then other parts of the game worked perfectly fine. I started the Lab up another time and the mountain scene worked fine. It seems like it was a rush job, just to work as a tech demo. It's really not worth more than 10 min of your time, so I wouldn't be too worried.

Also why in the world does a game by Valve not have achievements? I want my little high five for getting to wave 20 of the tower defense game, lol.

[WarBucks]

late to this but I got a VR headset yesterday.

I was having crashing and unplayable jerking lag with a 2080ti and my HP reverb G2 rev2 and this game.

My GF found the problem was SteamVRs "motion smoothing" setting. Turned Motion smoothing off and now its buttery smooth. It probably didnt like the 90Hz

[DocSavage]

Some minigames working nice for me (bow is smooth) but sometimes, my monitoring software show me some GPU lag spikes in some demanding situation (for exemple with the catapult), caused by physics? I dont Know.
I have tons of VRgames, and The lab is not fully optimized in all situations.
I tried unsuccesfully some settings (resolution down to 100%, fix fps 90).
Close app!overlay and stay at 100%, nothing to do more
AMD Vega64 - i7 9700k

[tairasoul]

Originally posted by WarBucks:

late to this but I got a VR headset yesterday.

I was having crashing and unplayable jerking lag with a 2080ti and my HP reverb G2 rev2 and this game.

My GF found the problem was SteamVRs "motion smoothing" setting. Turned Motion smoothing off and now its buttery smooth. It probably didnt like the 90Hz

Where do you find the motion smoothing setting?

[TheLukanator]

Add me to the pile. 2070 and i7-8700 and plenty of ram. Half Life Alyx runs like a dream, as has every other VR game I've tried so far.

First time I ran The Lab, it was perfect until I got to the catapult. I assumed this was physics-related. The second time I ran it- unplayable. It wavers between a smooth 90fps and a broken 20 or so fps. The weird thing is that it does this CONSISTENTLY. I'll be at 90fps for about five seconds, then choppy for five seconds, then back, over and over. What the hell is going on?

[Asym29]

tried turning off ASW and does not help at all add me to the pile

[Felensis]

Same here. i7 12650H + RTX 3070 and the game suffers from lag spikes, fps drops and the Secret Shop is totally broken (see the other thread over here in the discussions for me details). Seems to me that The Lab needs a complete overhaul since it doesn't seem run well with current systems compared to 2016 I suppose.

[Grantrue]

Yes, developer enable VRSS please. Older games have it enabled and there are hardly any dropped frames in them!

[PillowOwl]

My PC, (Specs: Ryzen 5 5600G, GTX 1660 Super) runs all of my VR games perfectly, all except for The Lab. This game ran perfect with a 1060 that i used to have. It just doesn't make sense? Ive noticed even the highest end PCs are having trouble with performance on this game too. Is there any reason why it is like this? So disappointing :(. Please if you know a way to help, please say.
Thankyou.

[Reiner#/]

Same for me. Oculus Quest 2, Nitro 5 laptop with rtx3050, core i7 11800H. The issue is reproducible only here.