Stuttering every time areas are loaded and unloaded

[FN]

When instances goes back down and up, it causes a lot of stuttering making exploring a bit annoying due to stutters.

[MaCarBre]

Originally posted by FN_FAL:

When instances goes back down and up, it causes a lot of stuttering making exploring a bit annoying due to stutters.

Which CPU do you have, and do you stutter more than in this example?

[FN]

Originally posted by MaCarBre:

Originally posted by FN_FAL:

When instances goes back down and up, it causes a lot of stuttering making exploring a bit annoying due to stutters.

Which CPU do you have, and do you stutter more than in this example?

4c/8t 11th Gen i3, my stuttering is almost similar to the video for sure its about cell loading and unloading, this game might have a badly implemented garbage collection and it can be further improved.

[Gisbert]

Originally posted by FN_FAL:

Originally posted by MaCarBre:

Which CPU do you have, and do you stutter more than in this example?

4c/8t 11th Gen i3, my stuttering is almost similar to the video for sure its about cell loading and unloading, this game might have a badly implemented garbage collection and it can be further improved.

This game stutters like Jimmy Vulmer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9H57aseuSE&t=350s
This isn't me, but go to min 5:50 and you will see what I mean - my stuttering is the same. And I'm afraid what you see in this video is simply standard and we can only hope that the devs are working on a fix.

I have gone through all of the tweaks and tested several machines.
Even my mom's rig stutters the same way with an i7 13700k/4080 GTX Gaming OC - and she runs Valheim with 300 FPS.

There is a reddit post from MaCarBre:
https://www.reddit.com/r/valheim/comments/1al0zeb/comment/kpciuzg/
Doesn't solved the micro stuttering issue for me, but has improved a few other things for sure. The only positive thing about the whole thematic was that I got my machines properly serviced and retuned - I don't think my pc ran that well even after I bought it new.

I would also generally recommend a few fps tweaks for Valheim:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAUiwMLH6AA

What drives me crazy since a few months is that I swear I didn't used to have this stutter problem to this extend last time I played. I think it was maybe ~1,5+ years ago. Sure it was never smooth, but now it's very annoying. My mother, for example, doesn't even “notice” these stutters. I can't understand it at all, cause it totally messes up my parry timings while stuttering.

So I thought a lot about the cause and
- either the graphics card drivers have changed - of course I was playing with a different earlier driver version at that time. But I no longer had the energy to go through them all recursively
- the unity engine update has changed something
- the devs have changed something in the code
- I'm imagining it all

But in the end - ultimately it doesn't matter though, the devs KNOW how their game is running, the devs should have that on their radar, not their customers. And the devs should fix it, not their customers.

[FN]

Originally posted by Gisbert:

Originally posted by FN_FAL:

4c/8t 11th Gen i3, my stuttering is almost similar to the video for sure its about cell loading and unloading, this game might have a badly implemented garbage collection and it can be further improved.

This game stutters like Jimmy Vulmer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9H57aseuSE&t=350s
Go to min 5:50 and you will see what I mean. And I'm afraid what you see in this video is simply standard and we can only hope that the devs are working on a fix.

I have gone through all of the tweaks and tested several machines.
Even my mom's rig stutters the same way with an i7 13700k/4080 GTX Gaming OC - and she runs Valheim with 300 FPS.

There is a reddit post from MaCarBre:
https://www.reddit.com/r/valheim/comments/1al0zeb/comment/kpciuzg/
Doesn't solved the micro stuttering issue for me, but has improved a few other things for sure. The only positive thing about the whole thematic was that I got my machines properly serviced and retuned - I don't think my pc ran that well even after I bought it new.

I would also generally recommend a few fps tweaks for Valheim:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAUiwMLH6AA

What drives me crazy since a few months is that I swear I didn't used to have this stutter problem to this extend last time I played. I think it was maybe ~1,5+ years ago. Sure it was never smooth, but now it's very annoying. My mother, for example, doesn't even “notice” these stutters. I can't understand it at all, cause it totally messes up my parry timings while stuttering.

So I thought a lot about the cause and
- either the graphics card drivers have changed - of course I was playing with a different earlier driver version at that time. But I no longer had the energy to go through them all recursively
- the unity engine update has changed something
- the devs have changed something in the code
- I'm imagining it all

But in the end - ultimately it doesn't matter though, the devs KNOW how their game is running, the devs should have that on their radar, not their customers. And the devs should fix it, not their customers.

yeah man it really sucks how this game put beefy systems on its knees lol. I'm 100% sure its with their game not the system. Minecraft runs on java virtual machine with a garbage collector and it doesn't run like sht.

[MaCarBre]

Originally posted by FN_FAL:

Originally posted by MaCarBre:

Which CPU do you have, and do you stutter more than in this example?

4c/8t 11th Gen i3, my stuttering is almost similar to the video for sure its about cell loading and unloading, this game might have a badly implemented garbage collection and it can be further improved.

If your stutters feel the same as in first video, you won't be able to improve them much on a DDR4 system. If they feel worse, you might have few option to try tweaking in BIOS settings, as I already mentioned on the link Reddit Gisbert included. This has always been the case in Valheim. Loading and unloading locations and instances has always cause stutters, and it was never smooth on DDR4. DDR5 systems have less problems (example linked in the Reddit thread). A rework of how locations get instantiated would have to be done to fix this, and it's rather big undertaking that might never be done.

Ashlands stutters shown in the Gilbert's video are more pronounces as the biome has the most high instance location, and he keeps walking over the same zone boarder.

[Gisbert]

Originally posted by MaCarBre:

Originally posted by FN_FAL:

4c/8t 11th Gen i3, my stuttering is almost similar to the video for sure its about cell loading and unloading, this game might have a badly implemented garbage collection and it can be further improved.

If your stutters feel the same as in first video, you won't be able to improve them much on a DDR4 system. If they feel worse, you might have few option to try tweaking in BIOS settings, as I already mentioned on the link Reddit Gisbert included. This has always been the case in Valheim. Loading and unloading locations and instances has always cause stutters, and it was never smooth on DDR4. DDR5 systems have less problems (example linked in the Reddit thread). A rework of how locations get instantiated would have to be done to fix this, and it's rather big undertaking that might never be done.

Ashlands stutters shown in the Gilbert's video are more pronounces as the biome has the most high instance location, and he keeps walking over the same zone boarder.

1. Tested on rig with DDR5, feels better than DDR4, but not worth upgrading - mainly because it's not a solution, just a marginal improvement. If it would fix the stuttering, you could think about it, but it simply doesn't. New hardware should not be the solution to making bad code less noticeable.

2. What freaks me out is that YOU have to do this for the devs. There should be a moderator or one of the dev team here to record the problems and bugs. The worst thing about all this is the absence of official support and statements.

What is so difficult about making just one pinned thread and clarifying what the status is, what is being fixed, what is not, what bugs are currently in the known game and a lively exchange with the community about it? Instead, there is silence and a third person who does everything in their spare time. That's ridiculous.

[FN]

Originally posted by Gisbert:

Originally posted by MaCarBre:

If your stutters feel the same as in first video, you won't be able to improve them much on a DDR4 system. If they feel worse, you might have few option to try tweaking in BIOS settings, as I already mentioned on the link Reddit Gisbert included. This has always been the case in Valheim. Loading and unloading locations and instances has always cause stutters, and it was never smooth on DDR4. DDR5 systems have less problems (example linked in the Reddit thread). A rework of how locations get instantiated would have to be done to fix this, and it's rather big undertaking that might never be done.

Ashlands stutters shown in the Gilbert's video are more pronounces as the biome has the most high instance location, and he keeps walking over the same zone boarder.

1. Tested on rig with DDR5, feels better than DDR4, but not worth upgrading - mainly because it's not a solution, just a marginal improvement. If it would fix the stuttering, you could think about it, but it simply doesn't. New hardware should not be the solution to making bad code less noticeable.

2. What freaks me out is that YOU have to do this for the devs. There should be a moderator or one of the dev team here to record the problems and bugs. The worst thing about all this is the absence of official support and statements.

What is so difficult about making just one pinned thread and clarifying what the status is, what is being fixed, what is not, what bugs are currently in the known game and a lively exchange with the community about it? Instead, there is silence and a third person who does everything in their spare time. That's ridiculous.

Yeah upgrading ain't a great way to solve this and its the responsibility of the studio to fix these stuffs. I'm looking forward on what their cooking but I hope its performance/optimization.

[FN]

So I tested a save with 15k instances my fps crawled, this tells me how limited unity is when rendering stuffs that are periodically ticked. This is bad I might as well skip this game for now since I had a plan to do large builds but seems like the performance is dogsht.

[MaCarBre]

Originally posted by Gisbert:

Well, I'm not a part of the development team, but I'm helping main Devs by hunting down the bugs, while also helping players. I was compelled to do that on my own, cuz I love the community and the game, so they've also given me some privileges when it comes to accessing their bug reporting sites and testing earlier builds, and later also decided compensate me for my time. They are a good bunch, don't worry, they just enjoy working as a smaller team. I made sure that they are aware of the increase in stuttering problems in Ashlands, so it's listed as a known issue on the main site at: https://valheim.com/support
They went over the top when trying to design Ashlands on the current system, and that even without expanding the forts like they wanted to (larges cities and dungeons).

Originally posted by FN_FAL:

So I tested a save with 15k instances my fps crawled, this tells me how limited unity is when rendering stuffs that are periodically ticked. This is bad I might as well skip this game for now since I had a plan to do large builds but seems like the performance is dogsht.

Yeah, Valheim is not really feasible or large build making. Devs do plan on making some changes like occlusion culling and maybe even allowing players to merge build pieces into a single instance. But if we gonna see that, it's gonna be for 1.0 or even later. If planned on building in creative mode, you might wanna take a look at this video sharing some tips of how to reduce lag while building big:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_dAVrPiW5o

[FN]

Originally posted by MaCarBre:

Originally posted by Gisbert:

Well, I'm not a part of the development team, but I'm helping main Devs by hunting down the bugs, while also helping players. I was compelled to do that on my own, cuz I love the community and the game, so they've also given me some privileges when it comes to accessing their bug reporting sites and testing earlier builds, and later also decided compensate me for my time. They are a good bunch, don't worry, they just enjoy working as a smaller team. I made sure that they are aware of the increase in stuttering problems in Ashlands, so it's listed as a known issue on the main site at: https://valheim.com/support
They went over the top when trying to design Ashlands on the current system, and that even without expanding the forts like they wanted to (larges cities and dungeons).

Originally posted by FN_FAL:

So I tested a save with 15k instances my fps crawled, this tells me how limited unity is when rendering stuffs that are periodically ticked. This is bad I might as well skip this game for now since I had a plan to do large builds but seems like the performance is dogsht.

Yeah, Valheim is not really feasible or large build making. Devs do plan on making some changes like occlusion culling and maybe even allowing players to merge build pieces into a single instance. But if we gonna see that, it's gonna be for 1.0 or even later. If planned on building in creative mode, you might wanna take a look at this video sharing some tips of how to reduce lag while building big:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_dAVrPiW5o

Occlusion culling should be prioritized, the impact it can provide on rendering unneeded entities/objects can be game changing and its not an old optimization strategy, it is implemented on most games not limited to procedural generated world games.

[MaCarBre]

Originally posted by FN_FAL:

Occlusion culling should be prioritized, the impact it can provide on rendering unneeded entities/objects can be game changing and its not an old optimization strategy, it is implemented on most games not limited to procedural generated world games.

The thing is that the main problem isn't the rendering, rather that the game functions on a single thread and gathers data on it, which cripples the CPU, so when big bases are in question the CPU can't feed the GPU. This is a harder problem to fix as you need multithreading. For reference, it took Bethesda, a much larger team, 5 years to implement this for Skyrim, and they included it in Skyrim special edition, due to which many mods stopped working.

[FN]

Originally posted by MaCarBre:

Originally posted by FN_FAL:

Occlusion culling should be prioritized, the impact it can provide on rendering unneeded entities/objects can be game changing and its not an old optimization strategy, it is implemented on most games not limited to procedural generated world games.

The thing is that the main problem isn't the rendering, rather that the game functioned on a single thread and gathers data on it, which cripples the CPU, so when big bases are in question the CPU can't feed the GPU. This is a harder problem to fix as you need multithreading. For reference, it took Bethesda, a much larger team 5 years to implement this for Skyrim, and they included it in Skyrim special edition, due to which many mods stopped working.

Thats unfortunate, though even single-threaded I hope they can implement some sort of a concurrent tasks handler without blocking the game from processing things. I agree with how tedious Multi-threading can be and its a source of crashes if not well-implemented due to context changing and data handling across threads.