Anyone else having MAJOR performance degradation with WMR reprojection...

[Pert Boioioing]

I don't know which update caused this, if it was WMR for SteamVR, SteamVR itself, or an nVidia driver update or what else but recently I've noticed SIGNIFICANTLY worse performance when enabling either

"motionReprojectionMode" : "auto"

or

"motionReprojectionMode" : "motionvector"

in the default.vrsettings file. Enabling either of these settings causes severe stuttering to the point of unplayability.

In Project Cars 2, for example, I might be able to maintain 70-80 FPS with the above motionReprojectionMode settings disabled but the moment either setting is enabled the FPS drops to 30-35 or so. This doesn't make any sense at all since the game is certainly capable of maintaining more than 45 FPS and indeed even more than 60 FPS without those settings enabled. Having the "motionReprojectionIndicatorEnabled" : true setting to show the in-game indicator shows a dark blue box, indicative of a GPU bottleneck, which is as expected because that's the reason for motion reprojection in the first place, to mitigate such a bottleneck.

Prior to whichever update is causing this problem the motionvector reprojection seemed to be working correctly and the gameplay was super smooth. Now, unfortunately, it's garbage.

Additionally I've noticed low, less than 50% GPU usage while the stuttering is occurring. There seems to be plenty of GPU headroom so I don't understand why it's not being properly utilized.

Another example is the racing simulator rFactor 2. Without enabling the WMR motionReprojectionMode settings the game can maintain 90 FPS pretty easily, only dipping in a few spots but even enabling "motionReprojectionMode" : "auto" causes severe FPS drops to the point of unplayable stutters, similar to PCars 2. This again doesn't make much sense since the "auto" setting should not even be invoking the motionvector reprojection because the FPS is naturally over 90.

Relevant hardware:

i7-8700k @ stock 4.3 GHz
16 GB DDR4 @ 3000 MHz
nVidia GTX 1060 6 GB with driver 417.71
Lenovo Explorer HMD

Overall system CPU usage never exceeds 30% in-game and RAM usage never exceeds 12 GB so I don't think it's an issue of being starved for system resources. Despite not having a beast GPU it was previously sufficient for smooth gameplay.

I've checked to make sure supersampling didn't get set anywhere, e.g. in the SteamVR settings where everything is at 100% (i.e. normal). I've also rebooted the system and tried closing all other desktop applications to limit resource usage and avoid unintentional conflicts. Both the WMR Portal app and Windows 10 version 1809 itself are both up to date. I concede that a recent Windows system update might also be the culprit but since the issue is specifically with motionReprojectionMode this is as good of a place as any to ask.

Anyone else recently having performance issues after once enjoying great performance? Any suggestions for things to try to fix this?

EDIT: Strangely, the motionvector reprojection seems to work OK-ish in American Truck Simulator and Euro Truck Simulator 2. In fact I have to turn it to "auto" or else there is a weird double-image in-game whenever the truck is in motion.

[Andrew_WOT1]

Retested after latest WMR for SteamVR update. The problem is still there.
Same symptoms,
- motionReprojection = auto, GPU gets higher load that triggers reprojection dropping to 45 fps
- motionReprojection disabled (commented out) - stable 90 fps.

[WindowsMixedReality]

Originally posted by Andrew_WOT:

The product only exists on Steam and only used by SteamVR/WMR users, why not provide support there where all user base is.
BTW, submitted issue via Feedback Hub, still nothing.

Hi Andre_WOT

I am Julio and I work in on the Windows Mixed Reality support team at Microsoft. I would like to apologize for the delay on this response.

I am sorry to hear that you still are experiencing reprojection performance. We would like to work on that and make sure we properly address it.

We suggest creating a Feedback Hub item so that we can then escalate all details possible to our Engineers team and move from there. You mentioned you have submitted the issue in Feedback Hub, could you please share with us the URL link to your feedback item so that we can find it easily? You can create a short URL link by going to Feedback > My Feedback, in the Feedback Hub then click on your feedback item and use the Share icon to get a short URL.

Regards,
Julio from Microsoft

[Andrew_WOT1]

Hi Julio, here's a few I've created. Somehow I don't see older submissions, perhaps because they were submitted anonymously without signing in.
https://aka.ms/AA4i9vw
https://aka.ms/AA4i233
https://aka.ms/AA4i239

[WindowsMixedReality]

Originally posted by Andrew_WOT:

Hi Julio, here's a few I've created. Somehow I don't see older submissions, perhaps because they were submitted anonymously without signing in.
https://aka.ms/AA4i9vw
https://aka.ms/AA4i233
https://aka.ms/AA4i239

Hi Andrew_WOT,

Thank you for the quick response and sharing with us the Feedback Hub items URLs. We will be following up in this behavior and working in any possible solutions.

Cheers,
Julio from Microsoft.

[Andrew_WOT1]

@WindowsMixedReality
Any luck with that, is motion reprojection synthetic frames generation always on (that could explain performance impact) or auto-toggled based on observed FPS.
If the latter, why does it put extra load on GPU?

[sdubs]

I give up, reprojection now is a complete mess, with it on its a stutter fest,

[WindowsMixedReality]

Hi @Andre_WOT,

We have escalated the scenario to our MR engineering team. We will hopefully have answer soon. Thank you for your patience.

Regards,
Julio from Microsoft.

[sdubs]

@WIndowsMixedReality

Do you have an update, as few weeks back reprojection was running great now it’s a game breaker. Is there a way to go back versions , as it’s a mess when it’s on and off

[Andrew_WOT1]

That's the bitter part. It used to work so much better before. :(
Hope MS did not move all WMR devs to different projects.

[pixelcowboy79]

At some point I also had very decent performance. It lasted about a month. Before that and after that I've had pretty poor performance overall. I'm starting to think about jumping ship soon, probably to Steam's Index or the new vive, if the price and features set is reasonable.

[Andrew_WOT1]

Lack of support for WMR is appalling.
It had some sweet burst of activity with frequent updates and new features being added but now apparently just put on a back burner by MS to die of natural causes.
Too bad as the biggest resolution HMD announced so far is HP Reverb (WMR).
But I am not going to get it just for the lack of support and overall lack of future roadmap for WMR, guess it's just another jump shipped product from MS, like Zune, Windows Phone, etc.
Somewhere deep down really hope I am wrong, but so far the message from support was pretty clear.

[sdubs]

Andrew_mot agree 100% I love my odyssey plus but the support has been nonexistent, how can updates be released that don’t work, I use my wmd for mainly sim racing. The latest update means it a stutter show, I have a rift also which runs smooth as, but the screen door is too bad. I do hope the valve wmd isn’t wmr cos I think that one maybe my next but not if it’s wmr

[Andrew_WOT1]

It's not.
And most likely at least resolution of Vive Pro/Odyssey
https://uploadvr.com/report-valve-index-dev-video-apparently-reveals-render-resolution-and-refresh-rate/

[Charles Childers]

I had the same problem. I found it to be super sampling. The general SS had been reset to default which is set by GPU speed. Mine was set to 200% while I had 170% SS set for application. This totals 340% which caused problems. Rather than reprojection helping it hurt the fps even more (38 fps). I changed the general SS to 100% and things seem to be back to normal. I had not changed SS before the problem happened to me. Something must have reset the general SS to default. It is possible that SS was always set that way and I did not notice because it did not affect game play, So either the general SS was reset by a update or the general SS times application SS did not work until recent update. It most certainly works now and will affect performance big time. Check the SS both in general settings and application settings. You are now getting the full affect of both.

[Andrew_WOT1]

How is it related to the problem described in the thread? That is worse performance with motion reprojection on.
Good tip for those who use SS in both places but not the case here.