better performance? IN VR please!

[ThEdUDe]

will you be optimizing the game more? my rtx 3080ti is struggling at times.

[Knsgf]

The game is CPU-, not GPU-heavy.

[ThEdUDe]

Not good

[Geo]

What's your full system specs?
There have been a couple of threads about stutters etc - search to get more info.
I am very sensitive to micro-stuttters and DV behaves significantly better when I close all IO heavy apps, browsers etc... before starting....

[Rumble Truck™]

also what screen resolution are you playing at?

at 1080p with a Ryzen 5 3600 and a RTX 2070 super the game is pretty much pinned at 60 FPS except for loading in bigger yards

[ThEdUDe]

i7-10700K CPU @ 3.80GHz, 32 gb ram, rtx 3080ti. I play in vr

[Geo]

SSD or HDD?

I have the same CPU, a 2TB M.2 Samsung SSD970 Pro, 32GB and a RTX 3070.
All in game graphics settings at max or close to it - except real time shadows - those are turned off (not sure if they still make a difference today - in the past there was a big difference for me).

I play in PC Mode on an Alienware 3418DW in 3440x1440 - game runs at 60Hz (that's fixed max in PC Mode) pretty much everywhere - sometimes drops into the 50s in the Harbor.
Very little stutter otherwise.
Windows 10 fully updated with bi-annual releases and November 2021 Patch
Nvidia Driver 496.49
MSI Afterburner load on boot for Fan and other Setting but not running actively. When I keep Afterburner and Riva Tuner running I get a lot more stutter in in DV (and some other games)....

[ThEdUDe]

pc mode plays fine for me. its the vr that not running good

[ThEdUDe]

Originally posted by Knsgf:

The game is CPU-, not GPU-heavy.

its not cpu heavy. i ran nvidias overlay and gpu was running as it should. this games performance is just garbage. Just for pespective. half life Alyx runs on ultra settings. pretty much all my games (vr and non vr) run on ultra.

[Altfuture]

We do improve performance on every occasion, but there's only so much that can be done in that regard. That said, a potentially notable physics-based CPU optimization is coming to SteamVR players who have been running the game at above 60 FPS (which applies to you), in Simulator, our next major update.

Originally posted by ThEdUDe:

Originally posted by Knsgf:

The game is CPU-, not GPU-heavy.

its not cpu heavy. i ran nvidias overlay and gpu was running as it should. this games performance is just garbage. Just for pespective. half life Alyx runs on ultra settings. pretty much all my games (vr and non vr) run on ultra.

Derail Valley is a physics-based open-world game, and in that sense vastly different from games such as Half Life Alyx. Alyx is by design running a much less hardware demanding environment and calculations under the hood.

[Jeo Nugu]

VR is worse now, actually unplayable, than it was about a year ago or so. (Sorry, I don't remember the version number back then.) I've tried all kinds of combinations of settings in game, as well as motion smoothing options in the SteamVR settings, and nothing helps. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 runs much smoother (zero stuttering) in VR than this game does, and that's saying a lot considering FS 2020's track record for poor performance.

Specs:
i7-10700K
RTX 3080
32 GB RAM
Samsung 860 EVO SSD
Windows 10 (20H2)

[Altfuture]

Originally posted by Jeo Nugu:

VR is worse now, actually unplayable, than it was about a year ago or so. (Sorry, I don't remember the version number back then.) I've tried all kinds of combinations of settings in game, as well as motion smoothing options in the SteamVR settings, and nothing helps. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 runs much smoother (zero stuttering) in VR than this game does, and that's saying a lot considering FS 2020's track record for poor performance.

What are exactly the issues you're experiencing?

[Jeo Nugu]

Originally posted by Altfuture:

Originally posted by Jeo Nugu:

VR is worse now, actually unplayable, than it was about a year ago or so. (Sorry, I don't remember the version number back then.) I've tried all kinds of combinations of settings in game, as well as motion smoothing options in the SteamVR settings, and nothing helps. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 runs much smoother (zero stuttering) in VR than this game does, and that's saying a lot considering FS 2020's track record for poor performance.

What are exactly the issues you're experiencing?

Mostly, when driving the locomotives, the interior and passing scenery have a lot of random stuttering and freezing. The odd thing is, the frame rate itself is not really that low, so it's like the stuttering is "on top" or separate from the frame rate itself. Hard to explain, but this is pretty typical in VR games that suffer from it. American Truck Simulator had it when they first added VR support, but turning on motion smoothing mostly resolved it. Unfortunately, motion smoothing doesn't really seem to have any effect in Derail Valley, although I know some game engines respond to it better than others, and some just don't play nice with motion smoothing at all.

However, before responding to your question, I decided to spend some more time with it today and found that opting in to the Steam VR beta has helped and the stuttering is reduced a substantial amount (to a playable level anyway, if not perfect), although now I'm getting what I had some months ago, which is a perfectly timed "pulse" or "lurching" of the passing scenery. I posted something about it back then, complete with frame time graphs showing the "pulse" clearly visible. Again, it's more noticeable in the cab of the loco, and not so much when just walking/running around. This "pulse/lurch" is intermittent and seems to happen more in some areas of the map than others, although I only drove a couple of jobs between Machine Factory Town and Harbor Town, so I can't say for sure about the rest of the map.

It may be worth mentioning that places like Harbor Town, Oil Well Central, and Farm used to be notorious for stuttering (almost to the point of making me feel a bit woozy), but today they were actually pretty smooth, which I found surprising. (I'm not one to get nauseated in VR, I have over 12,000 hours logged in SteamVR, so I definitely have my "VR legs" as they call it.) ;) Nevertheless, the pulse/lurch thing does have an effect after a while. Not nauseating per se... just, weird.

Anyway, I'm always leery of using the SteamVR beta branch though as they often update it with really small incremental patches and then things often change, (one day things work pretty good, the next day they don't) which is why I have been staying off the beta branch for quite some time now and I just keep my fingers crossed that the updates on the main branch are solid. I mean, if I gotta use the beta to play Derail Valley in VR and then switch to non-beta for other games... ehh... you know, that's doable, I guess. I've been playing DV in pancake mode, which is still cool, but VR is just so much more of an interactive experience, I really miss it.

[Altfuture]

Thanks for the detailed explanation!

For Simulator we've had two relevant major improvements:

- We've eliminated the physics stuttering that used to cause the surroundings have a choppy movement (or a passing train, if you're stationary)
- In VR we've notably optimized CPU usage for anyone running the game at above 60 FPS

I can't tell if those two will solve the issue that you're having (especially since you say that switching to SteamVR beta helps fix it), but it might be it. Please let us know when the update is out.

[LigmaLlama]

Originally posted by Geo:

SSD or HDD?

I have the same CPU, a 2TB M.2 Samsung SSD970 Pro, 32GB and a RTX 3070.
All in game graphics settings at max or close to it - except real time shadows - those are turned off (not sure if they still make a difference today - in the past there was a big difference for me).

I play in PC Mode on an Alienware 3418DW in 3440x1440 - game runs at 60Hz (that's fixed max in PC Mode) pretty much everywhere - sometimes drops into the 50s in the Harbor.
Very little stutter otherwise.
Windows 10 fully updated with bi-annual releases and November 2021 Patch
Nvidia Driver 496.49
MSI Afterburner load on boot for Fan and other Setting but not running actively. When I keep Afterburner and Riva Tuner running I get a lot more stutter in in DV (and some other games)....

Hdd and ssd.. mean bugger all so why are you even mentioning it, the fact you own an alienware shows that, no offence... but please don't mention stuff unrelated. HDD's SSDs, NVMES don't increase fps or anything game related or anything in general EVER!

[Psychopilot]

Although the theme is also a bit older I would like to join here.
I played DV once again today. Actually a good game but the stuttering is annoying. That's why I found this topic.

For me, the stuttering occurs while driving or bein starting a train. On foot everything always runs smoothly.

really bad it is when I have to reshovel coal while driving at more than 40kmh.

I play the game VR with Steam Valve Index

Maybe it will be better after the Stimulator update.

------------------
System Information
------------------
Machine name: HELIOS
Operating System: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
Processor: AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1920X 12-Core Processor (24 CPUs), ~3.8GHz
Memory: 65536MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 65408MB RAM
Page File: 9052MB used, 66084MB available
DirectX Version: DirectX 12

---------------
Display Devices
---------------
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip type: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060
DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC
Device Type: Full Device (POST)
Device Problem Code: No Problem
Display Memory: 44846 MB
Dedicated Memory: 12142 MB
Shared Memory: 32704 MB