The "Vsync" framerate is inconsistent between games
6 years ago
Rhône-Alpes, France

After what Onin pointed out in his thread and our discussion, I investigated a little bit about the framerate issue and here are some interesting things that I discovered.

So, for those who didn't read it, Onin rejected one of my run at the beginning of the week, explaining that my game was running faster than other's and that it was probably due to my framerate which is supposed to be at 60fps thanks to the Vsync being activated. After checking, he was right and my framerate was higher than 60fps, at 66fps more precisely, and that even though the Vsync was activated. I was then surprised to be the first one to have to face a faulty Vsync feature among the runners.

In fact, I am not the only one who didn't run at 60 fps. I did the experiment on several videos on the leaderboard and I tried to time the cutscene just before Sybil's fight : the starting point was the apparition of the mention "The Last Night" and the end point was the spark in which Red appears. And here's what I found :

  • Cadarev, Onin and Eskairie's cutscenes lasted 1m11s.
  • savepoints' cutscene lasted 1m07s.
  • Mine and Vvenzg lasted 1m04s.

Thanks to a very sophisticated cross multiplication, given that it's highly likely that Cadarev, Onin and Eskairie were running at 60fps, I found that savepoints was probably running with a framerate of 63 fps and that Vvenzg, like me, had a 66fps framerate. So there is a little discrepancy in the way the game handles the Vsync framerate from one computer to another and that is quite a pity.

Funnily enough, savepoints' run was the starting point of the development of the load remover because their run saved time on the loading times: actually, their shorter loading times were probably due to their higher framerate, because as I experienced both, I have significantly longer loading times now that I run in 60fps. ^^

To conclude, I'm fully aware that the game is almost not run anymore, and I don't really ask for anything. I just wanted to sort this out a little bit and exposed what I found. There's nothing much to do anyway, the rules are now clear, and I gave a point of comparison in case the moderator verifying has a doubt about the framerate of a run.

Now don't forget to watch Transistor at Bourg-la-Run, December 9th at 2:30 UTC ? (Onin and Strife, if you're reading this and are still interested in commenting on the english restream, don't forget to send me your info as stated in the other thread)

Oh and getting my game to run at 60fps while recording with OBS was a nightmare, I might write a little tutorial for those facing the same problem as me and wanting to submit a PB.

Edited by the author 6 years ago
Sweden

These are some pretty shitty news, I must say. Although it makes a lot of sense that's what's been going on, I guess this now basically means that we'll have to make use of a 3rd party program to constantly lock the framerate at 60, and to always display fps on screen?

What did you use to lock the framerate, and is it reliable enough for everyone to use without it maybe failing mid-run and unlocking the framerate for a couple minutes, which would invalidate the run?

Switzerland

Just ban Transistor tbh.

For Deus Ex: Human Revolution, we use Dxtory to cap it at whatever frame rate we want (since most skips only work at a certain range of FPS). I think the the frame rate limiting is part of the free version, and there was never a problem with it. Then again for that game, it's not a necessity since the overall speed of the game is not frame rate dependent. That's just about what I can contribute to this.

Rhône-Alpes, France

Hey, sorry to come back more than a week later, I've been grinding on the 60fps framerate in order to get ready for my Saturday run, and now that I'm finally comfortable with it, I'm able to reply.

First of all, sorry to have broke that to you savepoints. That sure is bad news, but on a brighter side, the load remover whose design has been initiated with your run is still relevant, because as anyone can verify on the leaderboard, even at 60fps, there are still some differences between loading times from one computer to another (I had to do twice the Port 37 skips in my PB so I can't time it precisely, but there are probably several seconds of difference).

Secondly, the reason I waited so long to reply here was to asssess the stability of the solution I chose to lock my framerate. I tried Dxtory which has been mentioned by Cadarev, but surprisingly, this software can't seem to lock the framerate in Transistor whatsoever. However, I found another software, called RivaTuner Statistics (RTS) which successfully capped my FPS at 60fps, even after hours of playing the game. The only "problem" that I had to face was that OBS lowers the framerate while using RTS, which means when I was capping at 60fps, the game was running at 25fps, but everything was fine after I capped at 120fps.

In the end, my game was running at a stable 59-60fps, and The Empty Set cutscene that I used to check the framerate on the leaderboard lasts a 1m10-11s in my PB, so we are in an acceptable window in my opinion. I don't think it's needed to display the framerate though, because we can always time the Empty Set cutscene and I think that changing maliciously the framerate during cutscenes in order to not get caught would be extremely complicated, given that the game stop as soon as it loses focus.

So to conclude, being too constraining to potential new runners of the game is not necessary imo, we probably won't get any massive number of submits, so mods should have plenty of time to verify new ones if they do look fishy.

Switzerland

Hi, did you tick the "Synchronize Video FPS" box in Dxtory? I just tried to lock the framerate in Transistor with it and it worked without problems. I'm not saying we need to use Dxtory, just so that people don't dismiss it immediately in case they want to use it.

Rhône-Alpes, France

Yep I did, but to be precise, I had problem with Dxtory while using OBS : while OBS was running, depending on the limit I put, the game was at either 30fps or 66fps. :/

But you are right to mention that my PC might be an exception.

Game stats
Followers
143
Runs
121
Players
25
Recent runs
Latest threads
Posted 3 months ago
8 replies
Posted 3 months ago
3 replies
Posted 1 year ago
1 reply
Posted 1 year ago
6 replies