Occasional Stuttering with 1080 gtx ti

MythossMythoss USA Join Date: 2016-07-05 Member: 219598Members
So this game has gotten a bit better since i last played, but I still have occasional stuttering when moving to the surface or new bioms. I suspect it's textures not being streamed properly and they are trying to load all at once from the hard drive. When I look up my vram usage it's only sitting at about 5 gb. Is there anyway to force this game to utilize my 11gb of vram (or some of it) so textures are stored longer. Alternatively a better long term fix would be to stream textures slower to prevent hiccups.

Anyone try making a ram disk?

Not to be rude, but this has been an issue for years now. It's about time this gets fixed...

I have a sdd and a 7700k i7 for reference. It does this on all my computers.

Comments

  • Kouji_SanKouji_San Sr. Hινε Uρкεερεг - EUPT Deputy The Netherlands Join Date: 2003-05-13 Member: 16271Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
    edited December 2017
    It's not your PC, it's probably the engine doing stuff it wasn't supposed to do. It has gotten a lot better. However, it seems like it still has quite an issue with chunk-loading and texture-streaming when moving quickly, something the Seamoth excels at!


    And you're so damn rude yo, I should have a rude-off with you, but that would be rude :D

    Judging from the fact that it has been an issue for quite some time, it feels like this is still a big issue within Unity. An engine made for closed in corridor shooters/horrors, not so much made for a huge open world filled with water... Hope they get this sorted out at some point though, the Xbone needs it more, but it's also prevalent on big rigs you yours still, which hints at this being an engine optimization or choke issue...
  • MythossMythoss USA Join Date: 2016-07-05 Member: 219598Members
    Obraxis wrote: »
    Textures are actually not streamed in, they are all pre-loaded into RAM as are most of the assets before the game starts. The issue is mostly to do with I/O speed of the drives in your system as the Terrain Data is loaded in/out.

    We've recently done a lot of work in this area, and are continuing to work on it.

    I've definitely noticed it has gotten better. There is no way to offload some of this to system or vram? Seems like that would be the best way to reduce stuttering, though I am not a programmer so my knowledge is limited. I just know that other games use more of my VRAM and less loading from my harddrive (aside from the initial load). Thanks for your efforts in trying to resolve this.
  • Kouji_SanKouji_San Sr. Hινε Uρкεερεг - EUPT Deputy The Netherlands Join Date: 2003-05-13 Member: 16271Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
    VRAM is generally used for textures. So if I read Obby's post correctly, the thing that seems to be stuttering is the chunk-loading (Terrain Data), which is a CPU/HDD thing?
  • cdaragorncdaragorn Join Date: 2016-02-07 Member: 212685Members
    Mythoss wrote: »
    Obraxis wrote: »
    Textures are actually not streamed in, they are all pre-loaded into RAM as are most of the assets before the game starts. The issue is mostly to do with I/O speed of the drives in your system as the Terrain Data is loaded in/out.

    We've recently done a lot of work in this area, and are continuing to work on it.

    I've definitely noticed it has gotten better. There is no way to offload some of this to system or vram? Seems like that would be the best way to reduce stuttering, though I am not a programmer so my knowledge is limited. I just know that other games use more of my VRAM and less loading from my harddrive (aside from the initial load). Thanks for your efforts in trying to resolve this.

    Other games use more of your VRAM because they have more textures than Subnautica does. How much VRAM is being used doesn't tell you anything about what's actually going on underneath.

    If what @Obraxis is saying is true, then the problem is terrain data. There are certainly ways you can offload that to other threads, but I doubt they can actually do that. They're constrained by what Unity can and cannot do and I don't think Unity has any way to separate loading model assets like that.

    They are certainly making a lot of progress speeding this up. I haven't had the game stop for 30+ seconds while loading a new area in since this latest update. I look forward to even more improvements.
  • 0x6A72320x6A7232 US Join Date: 2016-10-06 Member: 222906Members
    @Mythoss if you want to hack a fix, copy the terrain data (C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Subnautica\SNUnmanagedData\Build18\CompiledOctreesCache) to a RAMDisk and symlink it. This will require a bit of work, but should zap your performance issues, I *think*. Assuming you've got the RAM to offload it all and still run the game fine (folder is about 3.2 GB in size).

    Example would be:

    1) Move the folder in a backup location
    2) Copy the folder from the backup location to the RAMDisk
    3) From an elevated command prompt, put something this (replace with your particular drive letter and paths, of course):
    mklink /d "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Subnautica\SNUnmanagedData\Build18\CompiledOctreesCache" "R:\CompiledOctreesCache"
    

    You could even make a script to set this up:
    xcopy /e /i "C:\path-to-backup-terrain-files" "R:\CompiledOctreesCache"
    mklink /d "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Subnautica\SNUnmanagedData\Build18\CompiledOctreesCache" "R:\CompiledOctreesCache"
    

    You'd have to manually update the terrain every time an update hit, however, unless you built that into your script (yes that's possible).

    Please note I haven't tested this, and you could very well end up having to re-verify your game install or even do an uninstall / reinstall, your game may crash, you may lose your save, etc etc but you should be able to do something like this, theoretically.
  • MaalterommMaalteromm Brasil Join Date: 2017-09-22 Member: 233183Members
    I used to run from a ramdisk, around a year ago, but it didn't perform that well back then. As you modified the game, picking/dropping/scanning resources, building stuff, the amount of information which had to be loaded from disk changed and grew overtime. After a while it reached my RAM cap.
    Just launching with the textures on the ramdisk increased performance, but stuttering would quickly set in after a while.

    Let it rest for a year and got myself a small SSD for OSes and occasional gaming. Within the new drive (and after all improvements in the game performance) it runs real smoothly.

    Ramdisks are cool, but require lots of ram to be properly set up. *IF* you have tons of ram to spare, just run the entire game folder from a ramdisk.
  • 0x6A72320x6A7232 US Join Date: 2016-10-06 Member: 222906Members
    Maalteromm wrote: »
    I used to run from a ramdisk, around a year ago, but it didn't perform that well back then. As you modified the game, picking/dropping/scanning resources, building stuff, the amount of information which had to be loaded from disk changed and grew overtime. After a while it reached my RAM cap.
    Just launching with the textures on the ramdisk increased performance, but stuttering would quickly set in after a while.

    Let it rest for a year and got myself a small SSD for OSes and occasional gaming. Within the new drive (and after all improvements in the game performance) it runs real smoothly.

    Ramdisks are cool, but require lots of ram to be properly set up. *IF* you have tons of ram to spare, just run the entire game folder from a ramdisk.

    That's why I said to only run the terrain from the RAMDisk - the terrain is not alterable now (and is only stored in \Build18\ instead of a separate copy in each saved game), so it will not grow in size.
  • MaalterommMaalteromm Brasil Join Date: 2017-09-22 Member: 233183Members
    0x6A7232 wrote: »
    Maalteromm wrote: »
    I used to run from a ramdisk, around a year ago, but it didn't perform that well back then. As you modified the game, picking/dropping/scanning resources, building stuff, the amount of information which had to be loaded from disk changed and grew overtime. After a while it reached my RAM cap.
    Just launching with the textures on the ramdisk increased performance, but stuttering would quickly set in after a while.

    Let it rest for a year and got myself a small SSD for OSes and occasional gaming. Within the new drive (and after all improvements in the game performance) it runs real smoothly.

    Ramdisks are cool, but require lots of ram to be properly set up. *IF* you have tons of ram to spare, just run the entire game folder from a ramdisk.

    That's why I said to only run the terrain from the RAMDisk - the terrain is not alterable now (and is only stored in \Build18\ instead of a separate copy in each saved game), so it will not grow in size.

    I know, back in the day they were experimenting with terraforming and it's folder reached 5-10gb in no time. That's why they dropped it?
    And he will still have to deal with the stuff I mentioned (resources/items picked/dropped, bases built), which I believe is read from the drive as you approach it. They certainly won't have the same impact as terrain, but if something is bottlenecking his drive i/o he might still feel stuttering.

    I might copy the folder to a HDD and check how much does it feel like the performance improved since then.
  • 0x6A72320x6A7232 US Join Date: 2016-10-06 Member: 222906Members
    Maalteromm wrote: »
    0x6A7232 wrote: »
    Maalteromm wrote: »
    I used to run from a ramdisk, around a year ago, but it didn't perform that well back then. As you modified the game, picking/dropping/scanning resources, building stuff, the amount of information which had to be loaded from disk changed and grew overtime. After a while it reached my RAM cap.
    Just launching with the textures on the ramdisk increased performance, but stuttering would quickly set in after a while.

    Let it rest for a year and got myself a small SSD for OSes and occasional gaming. Within the new drive (and after all improvements in the game performance) it runs real smoothly.

    Ramdisks are cool, but require lots of ram to be properly set up. *IF* you have tons of ram to spare, just run the entire game folder from a ramdisk.

    That's why I said to only run the terrain from the RAMDisk - the terrain is not alterable now (and is only stored in \Build18\ instead of a separate copy in each saved game), so it will not grow in size.

    I know, back in the day they were experimenting with terraforming and it's folder reached 5-10gb in no time. That's why they dropped it?
    And he will still have to deal with the stuff I mentioned (resources/items picked/dropped, bases built), which I believe is read from the drive as you approach it. They certainly won't have the same impact as terrain, but if something is bottlenecking his drive i/o he might still feel stuttering.

    I might copy the folder to a HDD and check how much does it feel like the performance improved since then.

    Ideally, you could use something like DIMMDrive to automatically handle all this stuff for you, but 1) it's expensive ($20) so you'd want to wait for a decent sale, and 2) last time I tried it, it didn't work with Subnautica, so I requested a refund.
  • MaalterommMaalteromm Brasil Join Date: 2017-09-22 Member: 233183Members
    edited December 2017
    0x6A7232 wrote: »
    Maalteromm wrote: »
    0x6A7232 wrote: »
    Maalteromm wrote: »
    I used to run from a ramdisk, around a year ago, but it didn't perform that well back then. As you modified the game, picking/dropping/scanning resources, building stuff, the amount of information which had to be loaded from disk changed and grew overtime. After a while it reached my RAM cap.
    Just launching with the textures on the ramdisk increased performance, but stuttering would quickly set in after a while.

    Let it rest for a year and got myself a small SSD for OSes and occasional gaming. Within the new drive (and after all improvements in the game performance) it runs real smoothly.

    Ramdisks are cool, but require lots of ram to be properly set up. *IF* you have tons of ram to spare, just run the entire game folder from a ramdisk.

    That's why I said to only run the terrain from the RAMDisk - the terrain is not alterable now (and is only stored in \Build18\ instead of a separate copy in each saved game), so it will not grow in size.

    I know, back in the day they were experimenting with terraforming and it's folder reached 5-10gb in no time. That's why they dropped it?
    And he will still have to deal with the stuff I mentioned (resources/items picked/dropped, bases built), which I believe is read from the drive as you approach it. They certainly won't have the same impact as terrain, but if something is bottlenecking his drive i/o he might still feel stuttering.

    I might copy the folder to a HDD and check how much does it feel like the performance improved since then.

    Ideally, you could use something like DIMMDrive to automatically handle all this stuff for you, but 1) it's expensive ($20) so you'd want to wait for a decent sale, and 2) last time I tried it, it didn't work with Subnautica, so I requested a refund.

    I used a software provided with my current moba (a cheap Asrock) that creates a ramdrive. It was rather troublesome setting up: create the ramdrive, copy folder to drive (whole game was ~6Gb so it took a while to read this from a HDD), rename the original SN folder in steam, link the ramdrive to the place of the old steam folder.
    After finishing playing I had to kind of do the reverse procedure.
    I made a script for it, didn't make the process much faster, but at least spared me the work of doing it.

    Another solution would be trying to check if anything is clogging HDD access, diagnostic tools would help identify if any programs are continually reading the drive, such as an antivirus, malware, etc...
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