Video Stutter/Jitter - Windows MR to blame?

[Smoking Hot Noodle]

When I first started using bigscreen, even though the video compression was not hardware accelerated, I often enjoyed much smoother framerates. This included games and video.

The problem with not having a smooth frame rate is when you are in VR and the screen is 100 meters accross, the stutter is quite jarring. People would certainly riot at a real theater if the movies looked like this. I think a consistant framerate is even more important than resolution and pixelation. Again televisions, computer monitors, you name it, consistent frame rates is the name of the game.

And it's not a configuration issue, the environments themselves are relatively smooth and performant when rendered, it's just the contents on the big screen that is never smooth.

I've talked to others in multiplayer and irregardless of configuration, upload speed, or even when in single player, there is currently no way to experience an even partially smooth video playback on the bigscreen. Picture quality is another thing, that seems to end up being great more times that not, but I find it unwatchable because of the constant stuttering.

I've tried windows Movies & TV, Media Player Classic, MPC-BE, Stereoscopic Player 2D and 3D. It's all the same. I installed reclock, and even a program called SVP to insert artificial frames up to 60fps to make the video abnormally smooth. There is no way around his.

It comes back to the VR smooth framerate thing, if it's not smooth, it completely throws you out of the experience. It's great that the environment is more or less solid, but the content being shared is DOA.

This does not happen on a second monitor in big screen so I am sure this is tied into how the screen sharing is implemented on the primary display.

This is also NOT an issue in steam home, the Microsoft cliff house, and other apps that display your desktop. They are all butter smooth.

So why?

Samsung Oddyssy
Windows 10 Pro
8700k @ 4.8ghz
EVGA 1080 TI
Samsung 2TB SSD
32GB ram.

Other games and software running as expected. lLso note taht I have another system with an HTC Vive and a 1080TI and can reproduce this issue.

Also not that I also have

[shanks]

I assume you are purely talking about Multiplayer? The big screen is no different from what you see on a person's smaller screen, except as you said it's blown up huge so artefacts are more visible.

There are two possible culprits: CPU/GPU performance limitations causing rendering tearing of the whole VR app. Can you check CPU/GPU utilization? Do you have any spare performance? Is your supersampling set to a reasonable max like 2.0?

The second culprit would be on the streamer's end. They may be struggling to encode fast enough to hit framerate. Do you have this issue in every multiplayer room?

This is also NOT an issue in steam home, the Microsoft cliff house, and other apps that display your desktop. They are all butter smooth.

None of them do streaming. Only Bigscreen's multiplayer rooms do streaming.

Are you saying your own local desktop, even in singleplayer, has visual framerate glitching? We don't do any encoding or streaming in singleplayer (like Steam Home/Cliff House etc.). It's literally just capturing your desktop and displaying it straight away. No framerate settings.

What is the framerate of your monitor? Maybe you're perceiving singleplayer glitches because it's a highframe rate monitor we're capturing at 60Hz?

[Smoking Hot Noodle]

Well I have an Asus monitor that can overclock to 165hz. That being said, I have tried 23.976, 24, 60, 120 and 144 hz. Frames don't drop out, they just aren't displayed smoothly. No matter if the video was 24fps or 60.

I just reloaded this system from scratch on wednesday after a bad exerience with Windows Insider Build 17101. Was like this before and like this after.

I've also read on reddit that you're only encoding at 30fps. I don't know if that's true. I don't know if that has any effect, but as I've said, looking at the desktop in the cliff house looks buttery, steam desktop the same.... The environment in BigScreen renders quite fast usually without any interleaving. When I move the mouse accross the big screen, or as I've watched others in multiplayer, it is very clearly not 60fps at all.... whatever it is. I know you're gonna say oh it's upstream or whatever, but why is this happenign for me? I've got 40Mbit up.

I've tried SS settings between 1.0 and 5.0 and it jitters at any settings, except I'm not getting any reprojection at all, and the environment is otherwise smooth.

Maybe this is an nvidia driver issue, an issue because I'm using Windows MR, or maybe we have a very different idea of what smooth frame rate is, that being said, the others (Cliff House destop, steam desktop) work fine.

LIke I said, oddly, when I plugin in a DVI dongle and bring up the same material on a second screen in bigscreem, seems really smooth.

I don't see this kind of jitter even when running a 24fps movie when my monitor is set to 60hz, the 3:2 pulldown is pretty smooth. Not so while on the bigscreen and also on the small screen. On the small screen this won't be that noticable.

I mean, Media Player Classic is taking 9% CPU on this beast of a machine, with SS set to 1.0 and it's just acting like the time in between frames being displayed is very inconsitant, at least to me, being use to watchig stuff on monitors, my projector, tv's etc.

[Smoking Hot Noodle]

I've changed the name of the original topic. I have gone and done some back to back testing between my Vive and Samsung Odyssy systems.

I was able to get mostly smooth video playback on the vive system with the Nvidia driver 370.65.

While I noticed on the vive system, bigscreen is not fond of 4k resolution, it would definitely hitch, HOWEVER, it was redeemably good at 1920x1080p 60hz. There it is, I think this is a Windows MR related issue.

I played around more in Windows MR, and I was in fact wrong, the Steam Desktop in Windows MR is NOT AT ALL buttery smooth.

I'm guessing this is an issue inhenrent to Windows MR in some way, or a combination of things that include a Windows MR headset.

For what it's worth I went back into the Windows Store Version of Big Screen and re-tested and it does still has this frae rate "hitching" as I like to call it, but not as pronouced as the Steam VR version.

Installing The Steam VR beta didn't do anything to help the problem.

The Cliff House Desktop app is the smoothest video experience on Windows MR, but it's not as smooth as the the Vive Steam Desktop and BigScreen.

So I think that narrows it down to not really BigScreen's fault, but if you guys are working with Microsoft, maybe you can learn something.

If this situation improves with an insider build, or any Steam VR or Mixed Reality update, I will report it.

I want to do more testing, tinker with nVidia settings but I'll bet a chicken nugget than any Steam VR program that displays the desktop will have this hitching while trying to watch video or even smooth 60fps gaming.

[Timotheus]

I experience the problem in Singleplayer mode in my room.
Trying to watch Netflix on cinema screen, but the framerate is kinda choppy.
If I open the Steam VR overlay and watch my Desktop from there, the video is smooth.
So something must happen, when the Desktop gets to Bigscreen and displayed there.

RIG: MSI Laptop GE 75 Raider 8SF with RTX 2070, 144Hz Laptopscreen.

[Aywar]

Major lag and low frame rate on Windows MR on this end too for the video stream... it's not the network as I've tried all that, drivers and everything...