extreme game pauses with Star Citizen 1.3

[BlackHawkK]

howdy all, im asking for help here.

since 1.3 went to live, i have had some intermittent extreme game pauses while playing the game. i am primarily racer. i may not be the best, but i enjoy it and i do well at it. since 1.3 has been released ive been a bit confused. Friday, i did ok at it, without many major issues, Saturday, i started having some extreme pausing during races. i also noticed with large groups in BR. Sunday, once again did ok. i played today for around 9 hours to get a decent time racing and out of all that, ive probably had only about 3 or 4 games without these major pauses. i noticed the game played best when there were fewer players.

so here is the question, is it a setting issue? or a hardware issue? it is very possible my hardware just cant keep up with the current build, i did upgrade to a 750ti video card. but it dosnt seem to be a frame rate issue.

someone mentioned during a stream to look at my CPU usage, and knowing that SC is a heavy CPU intensive game, i did, and i noticed that my CPU 1 would hit 100% during these pausing issues. and after the game finished. currently i am running a i5 4670 CPU with a DQ87PG motherboard. ALL drivers and bios are up to date.


i know i could use an upgrade. not sure i can afford it right now, but im sure it should happen sooner then later. what im wanting to know is, is there anyone with a similar configuration that plays the game just fine, even with a lot of players (4+) that is NOT overclocked. and if you had this issue, but figured a way to get a system like this to work, would you please share it here.

so far ive tried everything i can think of to be able to keep laying SC 1.3 its come to my attention im probably being a bitchy betty about the situation since SC is a alpha and all. but man, its the only thing i really have to play with that dosnt involved a bunch of ass hats. ( mechwarrior online.....) but, because of my frustration of the current build, i think im becoming said ass hat, and i would rather stop it now. lol


so, that being said, i understand if no one has any answers, and it may very well be a situation that i will just have to wait till a hot fix comes out or something. but, if anyone does have any ideas that i havnt tried yet. please reply with them, rather they work or not, they would be much appreciated.

<S>!

 

[SPRNinja]

Try deleting your user folder, its the standard SC fix-all, youll need to reset your graphics and keybinds to what you want. That said, 1.3 seems pretty buggy as far as my gameplay has been, ive kinda stopped playing until 1.3.1 (or whatever) comes out

 

[Adiran]

Honestly I havent seen anything about how to fix it. It started in 1.3 and makes it almost unplayable. I doubt its hardware since this patch has all the optimizations. I would say in that case it had to be on their end. But thats just a guess.

 

[Khad]

I have also been hit with huge frame drops/pauses during Arena Commander. Sent my super hornet into the side of a space rock many times.

I chalked it up to it being a new patch and probably breaking a lot of junk. I figure they will smooth it out at some point.

 

[MzHartz]

I'm also getting huge pauses, and a friend of mine not only gets them but crashes when he does. I think it's just something we have to live with this patch.

 

[BlackHawkK]

@SPRNinja yea, usually delete the User folder when i get an update. just safer way to go most times.

Thanks everyone for the responses. its pretty much the same on the 1.3 feedback responses im getting on the RSI forums.

for awhile i was really thinking it was my system. but it seems its all sorts of systems so hard to pin down if its a single hardware issue or not.

yesterday was bad, the new leader board came out and i get tenacious and competitive. its probably makes me good at Work, but i think in this case its just going to lead me to some frustration. i may have to go back to War Thunder or something. Tried going back to Mechwarrior online last night, and in my first match remembered why i quite playing it. the Game is ok, its the people there. very rude and couch pilots. since they implemented the in game voice chat its gotten worse lol. thats one thing i have to say about Star Citizen community is that yea, there are some Trolls, but for the most part a lot of helpful people, and TEST has most of them i think :)

 

[Sawbones]

Quite a few people are having this issue. I went to the Issues Council on the forum and added that I can reproduce the results. Hopefully this will shed some additional light on the issue.

 

[UnderSc0re]

It's definitely not just you and seems to be something they changed with 1.3. I have a few speculations on what changed from earlier patches, such as they're unloading more calculations on our side rather than server side to help with GIM issues but in turn it's causing issues because people are using varying system specs and connections. This could be completely wrong but a thought. Since it's still Alpha this build could be them testing the limits of what they can and cannot do server side at the moment.

I was up way too late with Shive racing last night and we got tons of issues, but he experienced more than me likely due to a lesser computer. One of the things we noticed it was certain users who came in that were causing issues for us. My computer is pretty much the same as Skyy's stream PC and Captain_Richard's gaming PC minus the nice graphics card. My old PC always had tons of CPU issues in game but now I'm fine. My only suggestions could be:

1.) Try Bored Gamer's CFG file for performance. http://boredgamer.co.uk/custom-user-cfg-guide/ This may be able to reduce an calculations your computer is doing and causing you to slow down at problem points like spawn in and death. If you are having trouble getting your PC to create a cfg file find another somewhere in the SC folder or another game and COPY it to desktop then rename it "user" trying not to touch the ".cfg" part. Then paste in the text in his link for Performance Preset. You'll probably need to make a few tweaks but just read the comments and it will tell you what to do. I basically just changed the amount of memory to the GPU and fullscreen windowed mode on. My GPU is on the low end and I really experience no changes from medium or low so I just leave it on low at the moment in hopes it keeps my FPS up.
2.) Backup all your shit and try a fresh install of Windows and SC just to see if that magically fixes things like it is sometimes known to do. (Note, in the last few versions people have had issues with the SC installer getting DirectX11 setup if it's the only DX11 game you have on your PC. I suggest using steam or something to install another DX11 game first like Alien Isolation or something smaller if you can or maybe even after if you are still having issues. You can also get C++ and Microsoft .Net from M$FT too and run them after you install SC just to make sure you have the current versions.)
3.) Popular suggestion and I know probably not in your budget now but SC on either an SSD or it's own fast HDD like a WD Black or Raptor. This will most likely only improve your spawn in and startup times but who knows.
4.) More ram either physical or downloaded. (Last part was a joke.) Can't remember if you are running 8GB or more. May take some of the load off your CPU but yours is pretty damn good for this game.

 

[Huegpaynis]

I get pauses but only when the game first loads. after that, it's actually pretty smooth for me.

 

[BlackHawkK]

@UnderSc0re you know that is something i didnt think about. this could be a sort of networking test.

as to certain people being in the game seems to cause more issues, you know, i noticed that yesterday actually. but at that point, i thought maybe i was getting paranoid in my frustration. i dont know enough about networking and how certain people would cause something like that though, but its good to know i wasnt the only one to see that.

i was looking late last night, and noticed the user.cfg file i got from Eiyron was missing. so yea i think im going to have to redo it, or find where i put his config. i did have DX11 installed from previous games. what i may end up doing is kill 2 birds with 1 hard drive and find a affordable SSD and put a new install of windows and Star citizen like you suggest. right now im running 16 gigs of Gskill it is Intel XMP ready, i just recently realized this and went into the bios and enabled it. but it was the first thing i checked with i started having issues with 1.3 and went back in and disabled it to check. nothing changed.

i will keep poking at it and see if i can find something that helps. if i find something i will post it on the forums and here.

thanks for the help!

 

[Star Pilgrim]

I would say GPU and lack of SSD.
0 pauses here.

Let me explain.

They are yet to optimize the game. Meaning if you have a poor GPU,... well GPU itself strictly is not the issue, the VRAM is.
If you have anything less than 3 GB on medium and up, you are going to experience pauses when all textures can not be uploaded to graphics memory. At that time cache clear occurs.

If your graphics card has loads of VRAM, you will have no hickups.

Which brings me to the SSD.
If textures of new content (some ships or a data previously unloaded) needs to be loaded and you do not have a fast enough drive, you are going to experience a pause (basically a GPU is waiting).

Try lowering shadow resolution and other optimizations in your USER.cfg.

Some people use these settings:
------------------------------------------------

Enable console
Con_Restricted = 0

System setting defaults
r_width = 1920
r_height = 1080
r_Gamma = 1.1
sys_MaxFps = 60
r_VSync = 0
e_ShadowsMaxTexRes = 64
sys_spec_particles = 1
sys_spec_physics = 1
sys_spec_shadows = 1
sys_spec_volumetriceffects = 1
sys_spec_water = 1
sys_spec_Sound = 1
r_ColorGrading = 0
e_GsmCache = 1

r_DepthOfField = 0
r_MotionBlur = 0
g_radialBlur = 0
r_FogShadows = 0
hud_bobHud = 0
r_Sharpening = 0

r_SSReflections = 0
r_HDRBrightLevel = 0   

r_TexMaxAnisotropy = 8
sys_spec_texture = 3

r_SSReflections = 0

e_ParticlesShadows = 0
r_ParticlesMotionBlur = 0
e_Fog = 0

i_Mouse_Accel = 0.0
i_Mouse_Smooth = 0.0

 

[UnderSc0re]

@UnderSc0re you know that is something i didnt think about. this could be a sort of networking test.

as to certain people being in the game seems to cause more issues, you know, i noticed that yesterday actually. but at that point, i thought maybe i was getting paranoid in my frustration. i dont know enough about networking and how certain people would cause something like that though, but its good to know i wasnt the only one to see that.

i was looking late last night, and noticed the user.cfg file i got from Eiyron was missing. so yea i think im going to have to redo it, or find where i put his config. i did have DX11 installed from previous games. what i may end up doing is kill 2 birds with 1 hard drive and find a affordable SSD and put a new install of windows and Star citizen like you suggest. right now im running 16 gigs of Gskill it is Intel XMP ready, i just recently realized this and went into the bios and enabled it. but it was the first thing i checked with i started having issues with 1.3 and went back in and disabled it to check. nothing changed.

i will keep poking at it and see if i can find something that helps. if i find something i will post it on the forums and here.

thanks for the help!

Eiyron's is fairly old and may not be best for this patch. I would still suggest Bored's as he taken the time to check each setting on a mid-range PC and also on a High Performance one for this patch. If you can hold out another month or keep your eye out I'm sure there will be good deals on SSDs as we approach and make it through Black Friday. I know a lot of us are using some for of an 840 or 850 with the occasional Intel or that one Skyy bought for his desktop.