Game occasionally freezes and sometimes crashes because of it

[north sleet]

I've had this issue in the past and it was fixed thanks to a kind user here in this server, but it's back and the old fix doesn't seem to cut it anymore. When playing the game, no matter the graphical quality, I will occasionally freeze in place and will have to either wait for the game to catch up, wait for it to crash, or exit the game myself and restart. This seems to happen for no apparent reason at completely random times.

And when I say no matter the graphics quality, I mean it, because I've played on high and low presets and it still freezes randomly throughout my play session. Graphics quality doesn't seem to affect the chances of the game "catching up" when it freezes, I've also lowered the streaming quality in Virtual Desktop, which was the old solution. This issue persists in the coop mode of the game, and my friend reports of rubber banding back a bit when I come back to life from freezing.

Because it happens no matter what my graphics and streaming settings are, I'm lead to believe that it isn't because I don't have a good enough system, I've got a pretty decent setup. However, in the case that it is because my system is too weak to handle the game and I'm just not knowledgeable enough about PC stuff, I'll list what my setup contains. My setup contains the following:

Quest 3 and Quest 3 controllers
Using Virtual Desktop to stream my PC to my headset
i5-12400F Intel Core
RTX 4060 8GB memory
16GB of memory

TL;DR: Game randomly freezes and I have no idea if it's the fault of the game or my system.

Edit: I tried playing the game with the potato mode on for the streaming quality on Virtual Desktop and it seems to have fixed this issue, but the game looks like ass, of course. What's strange to me is that, with the high preset, the game runs perfectly smooth for me at 72 fps, but it will occasionally freeze on me as stated previously. So, it can't be that my system can't handle it, right?

[delicate trout]

having a very similar issue here. been doing it ever since the beta 2 update. i used to be able to play on high settings with buttery smooth frames just fine so i know it aint the pc. could also just be steamvr being ass as well. could have something to do with them removing the dithering effect? im not too sure.

side note though, it happens literally all the time in the recreation center or whatever the area is called, where theres a huge amount of enemies. literally unplayable to get through there

[fallen nova]

Same and thankfully it rarely crashes but I've had to overclock my PC to overcome that... Might be the issue we had before beta popping up again

[north sleet]

The weird thing is that this happens completely randomly, that ungodly community center with half the radius inside of it will freeze my game just as much as my empty barracks

[delicate trout]

Oh yeah same but its most apparent in there for me. Had to drop my graphics to low and my VD stream bitrate to 30Mbps to be able to play long enough without it freezing to get through it

[north sleet]

It feels like I'm on a constant countdown before the next freeze, no matter where I'm at, and it sucks. Cuz I would understand if I lagged like crazy in that one spot more than others but it's consistent everywhere.

You also mentioned you used to have butter smooth frames, right? Do you have buttery smooth frames with the occasional freezing like me?

As of the recent patch, that is

[delicate trout]

yup. highesat settings, 200Mbps streaming, 90hz refresh, buttery smooth, 50-60fps

then suddenly i freeze

i am noticing a trend of when i pull out my tablet it does hang for a moment

which is strange because like... of all things to lag the game? the tablet?

[north sleet]

I did notice that certain things triggered the freeze on top of the random occasional freezes, such as pulling out my bag, pulling out my tablet, turning on the sensor tripod, putting down the claymore on a stick, and completing objectives sometimes.

I suspect it's cuz the game has to "turn on" the tablet when you grab it cuz it's not doing anything when stored, which causes it to render the map and all the data the tablet has. And the backpack is kinda obvious, it has to load everything in and on your bag. The only thing I could guess for the objectives is that the game has to run through a buncha code to check if the obj is completed and what not, and that causes the major freeze/lag spike.

The interesting thing is that the tablet, bag, and objectives never gave me issues back when I first had this issue, it was always completely random, but now it seems that the freezing can get triggered by these actions. Not only that, but now it seems to be way worse than what I first experienced. I really hope that this is just a growing pain and that they fix/optimize the game upon release or the next beta patch, hopefully the latter.

In addition to the worse than before comment, I have to use an even lower streaming preset now instead of just bumping it down by one, I have to use the lowest of the low now 😭

[delicate trout]

Yeahhh its really painful lmao

Yesterday I was playing, played for 3 hours, only had the stutters from the bag, tablet, running into anomalies, those things. Then, the game crashes, and suddenly after loading it back up its completely unplayable. I stand still and let it load things in, it stabilizes, I start doing what I was doing again, and it starts stuttering really bad and freezing again. Its sooo frustrating, and its very clearly not my pc being ass but some kind of optimization issue or memory leak. Really hoping its fixed soon so I can go hack to enjoying the game as much as I have before

[small finch]

Yeah, it appears the rendering and game loop get out of sync. For me it's happening a bit less than in 0.14.

But when it happens I double tap the side of my meta-quest 3 and then look at my desktop screen. Once it goes to the pause menu, they've usually sync'd themselves back up and I'm good for a while.

[north sleet]

Now that you mention it, a memory leak sounds like it would be the answer to our woes, It was like this for Tarkov when they used to have major memory leaks

[north sleet]

I'm too afraid to do anything else but freeze in place like a deer to headlights when my game starts to freeze, I know it isn't the case but it feels like the less I do the faster it "syncs" back up

[north sleet]

I say that because when the freezing does happen, everything else on my desktop also bugs out and freezes, like my browser that plays a youtube vid in the background

[delicate trout]

Do you use a quest 2 or 3? If so, I find that turning on pass through speeds up the game catching up, and also pauses it for you so you dont get blasted by a mimic while waiting for the game to catch up

[north sleet]

I put my specs in the beginning paragraphs of this discussion lol, but I have a Quest 3

[delicate trout]

Oh right, sorry lmao

[north sleet]

Does it work for the Quest 3?

[delicate trout]

Mhmm! Thats what I use

[north sleet]

Hmm... I guess I'll play on the high streaming setting and give that lil trick you and Kevin do a try

[delicate trout]

Also make sure you're game is in focus, aka: click on the game to ensure its actually in focus. If you can move your cursor its not in focus. I find when its not in focus it stutters a whole lot worse

[north sleet]

Noted, I'll give that a try from the beginning then, cuz I just completed my eastern weapon run of the beta and wanna try out the western weapons now

[delicate trout]

Nice

[north sleet]

Hopefully this gets fixed so we don't have to do this dumb lil fix every time -w-

[delicate trout]

I just got to the outskirts and got myself a sleek black SKS I still gotta play with

[delicate trout]

Here's hoping! But this is kinda just how VR games are, endless jank to get it to work lmao

[north sleet]

Well, that's just what the road to mainstream vr games has

Hopefully VR games become mainstream within our lifetime so we can experience it the same way we experience desktop/console games

[small finch]

Well ITR1 was for the most part really smooth. We have been playing the early access and the beta, so it's to be expected but should get better as more patches come out.

As a developer myself I know you don't optimize stuff you may change or even throw out. Optimization passes are towards the end of the dev cycle.

[north sleet]

Oh I'm well aware of that, there's still gonna be vr exclusive jank that you'll run into though

I remember seeing a post of someone's game being flipped upside down in vr for some reason lmao

The devs also mentioned they'll be doin a lot of bug fixin and optimization for the first few weeks after the 1.0 release, so I hope they fix my issue soon so that I can play smoothly

And anyone else that has this issue, of course

[delicate trout]

oh yeah that happens in virtual desktop for me

a recenter fixes it

[fallen nova]

I've had no issues with it lol I did before but with an upgrade to my ram it just became another area. My thoughts is your running the minimum ram and or system requirements that it's giving you a hardship in that area in-game. If you run 32 gb it doesn't impact you there but anything less it might. It is a GPU/CPU bleed zone because of assets in that area.

[north sleet]

I've listed my specs, so you tell me if I'm running the minimum, I'm not the most knowledgeable about pc stuff

But that's the thing, it doesn't matter if the area I'm in is intensive or not, it still randomly freezes

[fallen nova]

Yeah your running bare minimum specs

The only thing that's really low is the ram because the game uses that to compensate for the leak and 16 is very bad I've had that much ram before and that is why I'm using 32 to get it to not crash lol

[fallen nova]

Basically minimum specs but the ram is your problem.

[north sleet]

If that's the case, then why is it buttery smooth most times and only freezes sometimes? Shouldn't I be freezing way more often?

And like I mentioned, it doesn't matter where I am, it will freeze, be it a low intensity area or high

[fallen nova]

Might be background programs? Multiple issues and the only other one that sticks out is the power but how long does your PC stay on if not playing the game?

If anything your PC might just be old and needs newer hardware.

[north sleet]

I've tried playing with nothing but the game, and could you rephrase that last bit? I don't quite understand

[north sleet]

I recently got a new motherboard and cpu, this is my new comp 😭

[fallen nova]

How long have you had your PC?

Nvm

If it's recent then might be software

[north sleet]

It's a ship of theseis kind of pc, it's basically the "same" pc but with parts constantly getting swapped out

[north sleet]

I also mentioned that this problem wasn't so severe outside of the beta, so it could just be beta unoptimization and jank

The devs did say they're gonna be focusing on optimizing the game after release

[fallen nova]

Settings when starting the game? You have it all on medium and experimental optimization on?

Make sure resolution is at or below 90

Last but not least if all else fails just wait for full release lol

But yeah the PC having swap parts doesn't seem too much but it might just be software side on both ends and beta being just that isn't optimized yet.

[north sleet]

I played on the high streaming setting on VD and had a couple settings that didn't affect my frames much on high while the rest that did on low, and I also had exp op on, when I first tried the beta

[fallen nova]

High streaming?

[north sleet]

I ran into the freezing issue and I want to all low settings and it still happened, so I did the old solution and used the medium streaming setting with low settings and it kept going

[north sleet]

I use an app called Virtual Desktop to stream my desktop to my headset

[fallen nova]

Ah

[north sleet]

And it has several streaming quality settings

Potato, low, medium, high, ultra, and godlike

[fallen nova]

Oh shiz I have to take a screen shot of my settings in VD then for you.

[north sleet]

So I kept going lower and lower until I hit fuckin potato, and that's when the game finally worked as intended

Because I had to take a more extreme measure of the old solution, it's led me to believe that it's just beta jank

[fallen nova]

Yeah I think if anything I can give you my settings because I don't use wire it's all wifi and I have it all setup where it doesn't feel like it's stuttering to hell and back lol yeah when I can I'll show you that way you can do adjustments and see if it helps

[north sleet]

I mean, I think I've set it up pretty well cuz any other vr game runs buttery smooth

I have what I need on and what I don't need off

I looked at a guide on the settings and adjusted acordingly way back when I first got the app

[fallen nova]

But remember the RAM is important tho. I had 16 gb before and I had the same probs as you.

[north sleet]

Yeah, it's def my ram, but the issue is a lot worse than before is my concern

I'd be fine with playing on the medium streaming setting, but I have to stoop down to the potato setting for the beta

[fallen nova]

Upgrade ram and see if that helps. Go to 32 or 24 and hopefully that clears it all up.