60 fps cap mistiming, variable frame rate?

[CrunchyBiscuit]

This topic is probably only meant for experienced gamers, perfectionists, nerds like me, geeks and experts on the alignment of frequencies. Feel free to contribute, but no uneducated responses please.

Bayonetta is capped at 60 fps, but a very low 60 fps at that (more like ~59.94 fps or something). On most monitors with standard timings (~59.94 Hz), this won't be a problem, but on my monitor and other monitors like mine with a true 60.0000 Hz default refresh rate, this leads to an accumulated missed frame every ~15-20 seconds or so (keep rotating the camera and you'll notice a minor 'skip' every couple of seconds, only properly visible with v-sync enabled on true 60.0000 Hz).

Is there any way to slightly adjust the frame rate cap of the game? Or use a variable frame rate? I tried playing it at 50 fps @ 50 Hz (PAL), but the game just skips frames a lot, since this is one of those rare games that uses an internal timer of ~59.94 Hz for everything. Transformers: Devastation, Metal Gear Rising and The Legend of Korra (all three from PlatinumGames) don't have a problem with 50 fps @ 50 Hz (PAL), but this game does. Funny thing is that Transformers: Devastation also has a default frame rate cap of 60 fps, but it's higher than Bayonetta's (about 59.9899 fps).

The only solution for me is to use CRU (Custom Resolution Utility) to change my refresh rate to 59.94 Hz and restart my system before I can play Bayonetta without missing a frame every ~15-20 seconds, then change it back to true 60.0000 Hz after I'm done playing the game, and restart my system again. Gotta do it every time. It works wonderfully, but it sure is a hassle.

Any ideas or suggestions? Thanks in advance.

[DustyShinigami]

Sorry to hear it didn't work for you. I guess I've just been lucky with the patch. You could also try capping the frame rate using Nvidia Profile Inspector? I read that the game is capped at 59.98fps or something weird.

[Alligator]

That didn't help either. I also tried running the game on a very different PC and the issue was there too. I think the only way to fix this would be to somehow remove the internal frame limiter, but I don't think that's possible.

[DustyShinigami]

Anyone know if Sega are working on another patch? You may need to report the issue to them. That's the trouble with PC gaming - the amount of issues that slip by testers and then when they get fixed they either solve the problem for some, but not others. Or make things worse. :-\

[Alligator]

I usually don't mind playing without vsync, but when the game limits the framerate, the screen tearing gets really bad. No vsync with uncapped framerate would be fine. Also it's a shame that G-Sync doesn't work, because that would likely fix the issue too.

[BeobSlywrakk]

in order for gsync to work correctly, you have to turn off vsync AND be able to cap the fps inside the game to lower than your monitor's max rate. so if your monitor was 60hz, you would want the game to run with a cap of probably 58 fps otherwise you will switch in and out of gsync repeatedly which is undesired. i am pretty sure you cannot use the driver control panel to achieve this.
if your monitor is already faster than 60hz then gsync will probably work correctly by simply disabling vsync.

[Ghaleon4]

Ugh, *THIS*. I have been fighting this exact same issue for YEARS. Every few months, I'll wake up on a Saturday morning and research to see if anyone has found a solution. No other game in my library has frustrated me as badly.

Metal Gear Rising has almost the exact same issue -But at least you can trick it a couple of ways -

A) Use RadeonPro or SpecialK to force the game/display into a 50 hz refresh rate. I use RadeonPro for this (easiest, most stable, less hassle), and there is no perceived stutter after any amount of play time.

or

B) Unlike a lot of other games, this one does a check for available display modes and seems to do its own thing *except* for in situation A described above. Use CRU (Customer Resolution Utility) to delete every-single-damned display mode for your preferred resolution except for 59 hz. If you can get this to work, you'll get slightly better performance than option A, but it's a huge pain for nVidia Surround users because you're likely to have to reset Surround when the table that nVidia stores available display modes in gets corrupted (usually on reboot). So you have to disable/re-enable Surround each time in order to reestablish that table again.

The above tricks do *NOT* work for Bayonetta.

I have tried to create a custom display mode with CRU for exactly 59.94 and 59.7, but the micro stutter returns after 0.5 - 1 hours no matter what.

This whole situation blows my mind. Like, Bayonetta is heralded as one of the best action fighting games of all time, but if you think about it, there is not a single platform that we can play it on correctly:

Xbox 360? Adaptive VSync that hardly ever gets locked in.

PS3? We shall not speak of this again.

Nintendo Platforms? Right. Like I'm gonna walk away from my HD triple-monitor setup to play this at 720p -when these ports have their own issues with smoothness.

For the love of God and all that is holy, please help us Kaldaien!

[Norrel122]

I purchased the game a few months ago and had to stop playing for the same reason. I'm not too tech savvy so please forgive me but I assumed it was due to poor frame rate pacing issues as I experienced the issue even at 1080p using a 1080ti.

For me, since I easily get motion sickness, the constant stuttering would make me want to vomit after only about a half hour of playing it.

The fixes that were suggested to me seemed a bit beyond my technical knowledge and skill so I just stopped playing it entirely.

[TransparentBlue]

I think I managed to make it behave, at-least the frametimes seems a lot better than they ever were on my end, by using the dgVoodoo wrapper, just make sure you change the virtual VRAM to something higher than 256MB and set fast video memory access to on, obviously might wanna disable the watermark too.

[Ghaleon4]

Originally posted by TransparentBlue:

I think I managed to make it behave, at-least the frametimes seems a lot better than they ever were on my end, by using the dgVoodoo wrapper, just make sure you change the virtual VRAM to something higher than 256MB and set fast video memory access to on, obviously might wanna disable the watermark too.

Heya! Do you still feel like this improved your frame pacing? Is it worth giving a shot still?

[TransparentBlue]

It seemed like it did, although it did break a few effects, and I did have a lot more going wrong with framepacing than just what the issue described in the OP is.
I stopped having a lot of the issues I encountered with that game after a fresh reinstall of windows so I cannot really test it again, but I pretty much tried everything I could think off back then and dgVoodoo was the closest to fixing my issues.

[Flappy Pannus]

dammit now I can't unsee this

[RedComet]

Is this the same issue described in this thread?:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/460790/discussions/0/3658515990058532019/

It seems like fps drops over time... After maybe one hour of playtime, fps is locked at 59 instead of 60 which cause stutterings

I had more or less the same issue with metal gear rising, I once let MGR runs for hours, and my fps dropped to 55 lol

I have no issue with more recent and demanding games.

Welp I guess I should avoid buying platinumGames games in the future, this is simply ridiculous

[Ghaleon4]

Rise from the grave, you weary thread -your work is not done!!!
*bump*

[Ghaleon4]

Here's a reddit post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ultrawidemasterrace/comments/dafzpy/bayonetta_pc_frame_pacing/

[Flappy Pannus]

It'a incredible(ly incompetent) how Platinum games has had this bug exist across 4 games now:

- Bayonetta
- Metal Gear Rising
- Transformers: Devastation
- Wonderful 101 Remastered

Yes, it can be worked around somewhat - on Bayonetta/Metal Gear/Transfomers, it will work for a 'while' by using various tricks like fast vsync, borderless window etc (there is apparently a mod for Wonderful which permanently fixes it) but the games are always fighting it. Christ someone please start a gofundme to get Platinum a true 60hz display to hook up to their PC.

However, if you really want to play Bayonetta on the PC at a rock-solid 60fps, there is an option I just tested - Cemu! Cemu also runs Bayonetta 2 extremely well these days, but still has the bug of no character shadows - this isn't a problem in Bayonetta 1 though. While they may be as sharp as the PC version on the highest setting, that's about the only detriment.

There's some time needed of course to build up your shader cache so you'll get stuttering out of the gate (albeit with beta Vulkan drivers and cemu's new asynchronus shader creation even this may no longer apply), but that's largely a one-time thing. As well, the performance is remarkable - at 5k (5120 x 2880) using Vulkan I get 60fps, easy - on a GTX 1660! Bayonetta PC with all the options lowered can't do that.

So an emulated version of a game runs better and doesn't have the bugs of a native PC version. Yikes, Platinum.