Topic-Free Mega Thread - v 1.11.2020

General
4032

Has anyone had experience with a game that appears visibly jittery but its fps/frame-time is reported to be stable?
This is the first time I have had this issue. It’s not really affect gameplay but I’m curious whether there’s a way to get rid of it.

If you look at above video, focus on background hills/mountains, you can see that there are some small stutters.
However, the game’s framerate is stable 60 fps with no framedrop.

This issue happens regardless of framelimiter. So, it’s not caused by Special K.

Both my CPU and GPU usage are ~50%-60%.

Death_Stranding_CPU_GPU_Usage
Death_Stranding_CPU_GPU_Usage1920×1080 398 KB

4033

Is DLSS in use?
From what I am reading the effect causes some dither issue with the mountain area so I wonder if that’s what is interfering and showing up might look like it’s jittering like a bad implementation of temporal AA being overly noise or “shaky” for lack of better wording.

https://preview.redd.it/733bn6pvtxl51.jpg?width=3264&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bc736f4b770252592e705bea3696eed00d0312d5

Hard to find a good example of it it’s probably best in motion but a pattern effect.

EDIT: This is something a recent update introduced, something in the implementation got worsened.
There’s other smaller glitches some artifacts and then now there’s this on the distant mountain terrain.

If it’s wobbling or moving it’s going to look jittery best I can compare to is very poor TAA techniques with visible graphical glitches worst being when the object appears to be moving or shifting almost like the 3D geometry itself is stuttering or well yeah, jitters.
(Vegetation in the recent Assassin’s Creed games close to the TAA ghosting issue like SMAA T2X at low framerate.)

EDIT: Guessing the limiter in SpecialK can also be tuned if it’s very brief short stutters or delays having it update even faster so you can catch what to call it sub-1ms micro (macro?) stutters perhaps.

If this is unrelated entirely to graphical effects or glitches giving the impression of stuttering. :slight_smile:
Think that used to be more of a multi-GPU inherent issue with SLI/Crossfire and the frequent choice of alternate frame rendering as a way to optimize performance across the two or more cards with some drawbacks in turn.

It’s not quite the same but a similar feeling of stuttering or micro stutters going on but might not show up on the FPS limiter depending on how frequently it’s updating.

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4034

When I take a closer look, the issue is actually more like what you described; only distant background objects, like mountains, appear jittery/shaky. The main character does not jitter at all.
So, these jittery/stutters are actually graphical glitches and not related to fps or frametime.
Though I tried disabling DLSS and anti-aliasing, the issue is still persist. I guess this probably is how the game was made and there is nothing end-user could do to get rid of it.

4035

Modern games are complex… Now I don’t know if this is the case with Death Stranding, but you also have Variable Rate Shading on the RTX 20 series and later that can dynamically adjust the shading quality of the game based on the game world being rendered – basically decreasing shading quality for objects in motion or in the distance dynamically while using the “full shading quality” of objects in focus or clear view.

Similar optimization techniques might also be used in the typical post-processing effects – especially when combined with temporal optimizations that take multiple frames into account.

So yeah, modern games are complex…

Since it only seems to be experienced with distant objects I would assume it’s due to something that is either temporal or dynamical in nature and causes those jitters as a result of its processing.

4036

Yeah another one would be screen space effects and solutions that might be flawed in how they’re perceived visually or how am I describing this.

Lower precision shader effects or lower resolution effects can also be inherently noisy and with the temporal anti-aliasing and effects re-using previous frames there can be some I tend to call it dithering but noisiness or lack of detail.

Some games even upscale data from a lower resolution though on PC the actual frame buffer resolution scaling tends to be a toggleable option.

Doesn’t work too well in static screenshots but temporal AA is what I’m having most trouble with the vegetation and finer details almost look like they’re shifting or vibrating even with higher framerate figures or trying to offset the effect by resolution super sampling scaling to limited success.

Graininess or ghosting are other issues overall it differs a bit how bad it looks from title to title and how heavy some of these optimizations are against the reduced visual quality.

Nier Automata has some of this come to think of it and the discussion of screen space effects namely a fixed resolution ambient occlusion effect from memory and the sun ray especially in some scenes.

Anyways the sum of it is a lot of effects together makes for a very rough final image depending on how sensitive the user is to this. :slight_smile:

And with all the shader effects modern game engines throw in optimizations for performance and all that it’s not always easy to try and resolve short of well even brute forcing high-resolution super sampling tends to have limited success especially against the massive performance decrease.
(Full integer as preferred so 2x2 or higher which already makes 1920x1080 → 3840x2160 and a far heavier GPU workload.)

4037

This is why you apply motion blur to things in the background :slight_smile: If they’re not going to update at the same rate as everything else, users shouldn’t have to look at the instability.

4038

Minecraft on Steam when?

4039

Yeah that would probably work really well from Microsoft now that they’re maintaining a newer build plus all their spin-off projects like the recent Dungeons one with support still going for the classic Java build.

Might still be a huge draw to Game Pass on both console and PC though due to just how big it actually is so thus far it’s been Gears, Halo and the Age of Empires games heading to Steam as well.

Sales and the popularity from some of these I would expect Microsoft to have further plans but I’m not sure what properties are going up where but there’s probably a pretty good chance a larger number of their upcoming titles are heading to both.

And if Game Pass and Steam become a thing that might at least also see Microsoft’s own first party titles brought over especially the really big and popular ones I would think especially as it’s still actively developed and maintained. :slight_smile:

When is a big question too, should be some interesting news later this year in regards to announcement and reveals from all these ongoing rumors and the various leaks.
(For those though the leakage of the actual data is a concern, Capcom in particular must have a lot of problems trying to manage how much got messed up with their plans due to this.)

Wonder what Sony is doing too it seems like they’re having problems because for some reason a lot of the details and projects are leaking whereas NDA’s and measures to at least identified how and what leaked and from who tends to really limit information.

Can’t be too many of these testers involved so realistically they should be able to track down some of these whereas as text bits from other insiders to press and sources might be more difficult to find the source of.

Think Microsoft found that Neogaf user from some years back that leaked a ton of stuff through speaking in code on the forums but the ongoing confirmations and re-confirmations and bits of details are nice to see that things are still moving even if the PS5 itself is the main priority for now.

Support for Horizon Zero Dawn is also really pleasant rather than dropping it from poor reception or dwindling initial sales.

But can that hold up for the other projects being ported over, would hope the little shakeup and potential delay with the launch state of HZD means they’re going to be doing it better from now.

And whatever else is coming out or happening this year.
:smiley:

EDIT: Guess eliminating the worst of this pandemic would be a good start at least, get that situation resolved much as it can be other than Anti-Vaccine believers and smaller pockets of wherever it might continue for awhile.

Tons of stuff after that to get back into normal routine again too, going to be tough.

4040

Hmm… start a new thread or renumber this to 2021?

Versioning
  • 2021
  • New Thread

0 voters

4041

(Via Video Card Z and AMD Reddit. - AMD (Navi 2x) XTXH and Nashira Point GPUs spotted - VideoCardz.com )

That’s the spirit AMD don’t let NVIDIA be the only one getting mixed reception from existing 3080 and 3090 GPU owners with the launch of the 3080Ti

Make a 6900XT-H edition HBM and roll right over those 6900XT buyers too!

…Could be a workstation GPU or anything though really to joke a bit less about it. :slight_smile:

EDIT: It does sort a confirm the odd Navi21 having two high-end chips from earlier leaks and what it might have been about.

So the 6800 as the Navi21 XTL chip I think is how that goes, Lite essentially. (60/80 CU’s)
6800XT then uses the XT Navi21 chip with 72/80 CU’s
6900 as the XTX chip with a full 80 units.

Zen3+ already leaking earlier about Navi20 mobile or integrated variants and now there’s this “H” variant as well and well we’ll see what it ends up being. :slight_smile:

Nashira Point from the V-Z article could be about RDNA 3 or if not that maybe AMD’s actually getting somewhere with the compute oriented cards under CDNA replacing GCN.
(“RDNA” as somewhat like a gamer variant.)

4042

Well, seems NieR: Automata’s “final secret” have been unveiled:

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4043

Saw Yoko Taro confirmed it himself too, interesting little skip code there. :smiley:
Sigh ha ha I still recall starting the game on not easy and struggling through the tutorial multiple times.

Going by some of the other games though it’s apparently a thing, Drakengard had that one puzzle at the last route I have no idea how anyone could time it without failing especially the trick at the very end and then outside of the timing and music queues the camera angles also mess with the player.

Also ReShade updated to 4.9.0 now.

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4044

https://twitter.com/AllGamesDelta_/status/1345889928408936456

Via Meta Council.

1365×768 506 KB

That’s a really big building.
Should look into what Epic is valued at, Fortnite of course but the engine and other stuff must have worked out really well the last couple of years.

EDIT: Valued at around 17 - 18 billion.
Up from 4.5 billion going by Wikipedia data so hopefully somewhat correct at least and that’s from just back in early 2018 so yeah that’s some growth alright. (Up to 8.5 by the end of 2018)

4045

I wonder how long their Fortnite money is going to last them. It’s definitely going to die someday, only a matter of time.

4046

Yeah at some point, it’s a pretty huge phenomena though even if it might not be like some of the collect-em-all / “gacha” games although it could still go for years if they keep updating and adding content and collaborating with other popular franchises.

They also only need this upper 1% group of players that keep paying for a lot (Or all.) of the premium stuff though I hate the practice where this is almost targeted and attempts to get as much out of their player base as possible err exploitative or predatory as it’s sometimes called not that all games are as bad as others here but some are really terrible with this.

Wonder what the next big thing will be, usually it tends to go like that the focus shifting over and players moving to what the new popular game is but it could still be a while.

4047

And via a topic on Meta Council.

https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/kqho5a/it_seems_asus_have_increased_their_msrp_prices_of/

As if ASUS wasn’t already the most expensive for some reason and with little benefit, NVIDIA has EVGA and AMD has Sapphire with plenty of others that are also really good even without exclusive partnership and benefits from that.

EDIT: ~ But hey the (ASUS) 3000 series and the 6000 series AMD will no longer be price matched I guess though instead of going to reference price levels where it should be it’s going to cost even more.

Ha ha, how is this even going to work unless brand loyalty pushes sales enough where they can still keep competitive with all the others unless those too raise the cost for 2021 and GPU pricing goes to even worse levels of price/performance.

Pretty sure it’s fairly hard to find a good supply of NVIDIA FE or AMD Reference GPU at least here though I hear stocks still being made (Germany for example and stores there like Micro Center I think it was, Mind Factory too maybe.) so either it doesn’t reach much of the Nordic countries or it’s another case of selling out way faster than I at least can see if anything made it for the week. :smiley:
(Difficult enough to track the 3070’s and 3080’s are basically impossible before they’re gone, short of that nice batch of reference MSI 6800’s there’s still nothing for AMD GPU availability at all either on that side here.)

EDIT: Oh that’s where they are.

From:

1200×675 179 KB

Man the re-selling will be crazy for these as will the estimated actual life time and quality of some of these if run on non-standard settings. (Heavily undervolted.)

EDIT: And that answers whether the others would also follow in increasing pricing.

EDIT: And that’s a situation too it seems, interesting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/31/business/economy/china-tariffs-exclusions-expire.html

EDIT: Affecting AMD GPU’s too and likely other hardware not too surprising but yeah this is going to get rough with the hardware prices.

[img]
ASUS website already has MSRP of their 6800 updated to over $800

[/quote]

4048

Hmm.
https://www.guru3d.com/news_story/asus_geforce_rtx_3060_ultra_photo_leaksyes_ultra.html

So instead of a 3060 Ti 8 GB and a 3060 with 12 GB it’s looking like NVIDIA’s making that the

ALL CAPS

3060 ULTRA

Or maybe just ASUS (ALL CAPS!)
:smiley:

(Not all caps this time.)
All the SKU’s !

So that’s what.

30xx
3050 (?)
3060
3060 U
30xx (?)
3070
3080
3080 Ti (?)
3090

It does cover the low and mid end pretty well in addition to the existing high end plus the 3090 on it’s own along with the 6900XT from AMD whatever the flagship-end or what to call it will be.
(Enthusiast segment I guess.)

Suppose the 3080Ti’s going to be something like a enthusiast product too, going to be really interesting to see what NVIDIA does with that.
(Or it’s going to be two and we have something like the 3080 Super with 20 GB in addition to the 3080 Ti and whatever that will end up with spec wise.)

EDIT: Hmm another Steam client beta update?

That’s one way to resolve the back & forth XInput issue and 4+ devices I guess, custom driver.

4049

I love those little input reads!

4050

It’s actually so annoying having to work around this so I’m happy Steam is handling this now.
We had to use DualShocks to have more than 4 people play a game recently, good thing that particular game had native support for them.

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4051

Yeah after Valve tried I think it’s three times now having to revert their way of supporting this it’s probably a very good way to resolve and guarantee support and functionality for this going forward. :slight_smile:

Direct Input while legacy still seems like it has numerous advantages it’s just that it’s less supported but X Input is more about the XBox Gamepad and what Microsoft wants and unless they were to update it directly I suppose having Valve possibly route the input through Steam instead is a better workaround.

That and I presume it works similar to the staged or tiered way DirectX is set up so you have games on XInput 1.3 to 1.4 to the older 9.3 something version before these and if this works through that little compatibility nightmare that’s a good extra too.

Think Kaldaien had some plans at some point around SpecialK and 1.4 XInput uplifting due to issues in 1.3 and earlier and how this was around for Windows 7 legacy support or a number of ways to route input API usage that could be improved and resolve some additional issues but I don’t think it’s part of the current versions yet.

Also entirely unsure on how this solution on Steam now plays with SpecialK and Steam and Steam features enabled and gamepad support, Kaldaien might have to look into that at some future point if there’s anything going on with that or it could just be a non issue and work as expected without further issues.
:slight_smile:

Getting pretty robust with all that Steam’s input API is offering now and support for PS5, X Series and a good number of other controllers from the Steam ones to Switch to any number of other devices so that seems like a pretty good thing.
(Though I am not tech savvy enough to say anything about the actual underlying API itself or how that would work or how one would work with or through it for third party software like SpecialK.)

EDIT: That must be it.

steamxboxutil.exe
steamxboxutil64.exe

Steam XBox Utility Driver.

And drivers.exe as a 7-zip.

Pop that open extract it something like this.
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\bin\drivers\drivers\Windows10\x64

“Steam Xbox Controller Enhanced Features Driver”

Bunch of INF and SYS driver files there, probably nothing too useful but that seems to be how it works. :slight_smile:

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