Random Lag Spikes

[MegaAmoonguss]

Whenever I'm playing, my FPS always ends up dropping hella hard at some point or another, and it's extremely annoying. I'm on a pretty good gaming PC and I'm using ethernet, so I'm really not sure as to what could be causing it. Is there any sort of optimization possible to eliminate the spikes or make them less common? Or is it just inevitable? Thanks for any help.

[SmexxxyBeast]

you could try turning up your fps in the options tab

[TC_Halogen]

Originally Posted by SmexxxyBeast

you could try turning up your fps in the options tab

If only the solution were this simple. If they're using anything that's not Flash 9, their FPS will be capped after a certain point (I believe it's either 60 or 120).

Higher FPS is not the solution to this problem at all, and unfortunately, there is no consistent solution that is a catch all for everyone. Some people have mentioned a number of things over the years:

- utilizing a different flash standalone
- utilizing different browsers (most notably: Chrome's Pepper Flash may have significant differences on performance compared to standalone)
- changing priority on the Flash Player (turning it higher)
- changing processor affinity and assigning it to a single core or different cores as opposed to all processors
- changing to simple view as opposed to the regular view for engines if using in browser

I've gone as far as using Ubuntu 14.04 specifically for FFR. It's that bad for some of us.

[Dinglesberry]

Brother I've been working on optimizing my settings for this game, the fact that stepmania runs so much better than FFR bothers me alot, since I prefer FFR because of the built in songs + score saving.

In my experience, what you need to do is:

-Run the game in Flash Player 9. This is the only flash player I've gotten good FPS from. Limitation is that you can't use rates, which is very unfortunate. I also have Flash Player 11 for using custom rates, but there is noticeable lag.

-Second, use a higher FPS. Ideally, since FFR runs at 30 fps, you need to use a multiple of 30 -> 30, 60, 90, 120, 150 etc. I would suggest going to the level above your refresh rate or equal.. For example, if you have a 60hz monitor, use 60fps. If you have a 144hz monitor like I do, use 150. If you have 120hz, use 120fps etc.

I'm currently trying to research exactly WHY there is slowdown. There must be some significance as to why FFR runs faster in Flash Player 9 vs other versions. I'll probably go through the ^R3 source code at some point to figure it out though.

Try these things though. Also, make sure if you have a nvidia graphics card, that flash player makes use of the graphics card (check app settings in Nvidia Control Panel), and ensure the settings there are nice (high performance, vsync off etc). Halogen suggested a great idea as well, ensure that processor affinity for flash player is high, and set to use all cores if you have a multi core pc.


EDIT: Also to note, I have a theory that flash player actually can't get up to 150 fps and doesn't support FPS that high - I haven't been able to test it much yet, but I have a theory that no matter how good your PC is, flash can't maintain 150 fps. I'll have to do some testing with an FPS monitor or something though.

[PhantomPuppy]

solution: switch to SM after OT is done. huehuehue.

[MegaAmoonguss]

I actually just found out about the standalones today. I'm going to try Flash 9 shortly and hopefully that will at least somewhat fix the issue.

[TC_Halogen]

Originally Posted by Dinglesberry

Brother I've been working on optimizing my settings for this game, the fact that stepmania runs so much better than FFR bothers me alot, since I prefer FFR because of the built in songs + score saving.

In my experience, what you need to do is:

-Run the game in Flash Player 9. This is the only flash player I've gotten good FPS from. Limitation is that you can't use rates, which is very unfortunate. I also have Flash Player 11 for using custom rates, but there is noticeable lag.

-Second, use a higher FPS. Ideally, since FFR runs at 30 fps, you need to use a multiple of 30 -> 30, 60, 90, 120, 150 etc. I would suggest going to the level above your refresh rate or equal.. For example, if you have a 60hz monitor, use 60fps. If you have a 144hz monitor like I do, use 150. If you have 120hz, use 120fps etc.

I'm currently trying to research exactly WHY there is slowdown. There must be some significance as to why FFR runs faster in Flash Player 9 vs other versions. I'll probably go through the ^R3 source code at some point to figure it out though.

Try these things though. Also, make sure if you have a nvidia graphics card, that flash player makes use of the graphics card (check app settings in Nvidia Control Panel), and ensure the settings there are nice (high performance, vsync off etc). Halogen suggested a great idea as well, ensure that processor affinity for flash player is high, and set to use all cores if you have a multi core pc.


EDIT: Also to note, I have a theory that flash player actually can't get up to 150 fps and doesn't support FPS that high - I haven't been able to test it much yet, but I have a theory that no matter how good your PC is, flash can't maintain 150 fps. I'll have to do some testing with an FPS monitor or something though.

A few responses:

- a.) despite the extremely high frame rate likely not being perceptible to human eye with regards to arrow scrolling, the main difference that is easily detectable is the motion tween of the judgment (the animation that plays to show you your judgment on a step). A limitation of 150 FPS would mean that the tween would only be ~5x the normal speed, which should still be noticeable; however, you can set an absurdly high framerate on Flash 9 that is high enough to where you literally don't see the judgment consistently, even if you have the options enabled. This is only with Flash 9 - 10+ don't exhibit this and it might have to do with v-sync.

- b.) Operating system seems to play a key role, as I'm currently playing FFR on Ubuntu 14.04 (LTS) and it runs quite well in Firefox (I couldn't quite test Chromium, was having issues getting it to work and I didn't spend a lot of time working on it anyway).

- c.) Processor affinity seems to be quite inconsistent - in the past, I was able to focus Flash to a single core and get the best results, but that doesn't seem to be the case now.

- d.) I do not know how many people are aware of this, but 30 FPS runs substantially different in terms of performance compared to 31 FPS, but 31 FPS will yield you similar results to 60 FPS in terms of performance (as in, timing of frame skips, how harsh those skips are, etc). This is because the code used to play charts in 30 FPS is the legacy code that plays charts on the earlier engines, while 31 FPS utilizes the new code on the engine. This is also the same reason why you can apply decimal offsets on 31+ FPS, but they will have 0 effect on 30 FPS.

[inDheart]

Originally Posted by TC_Halogen

- d.) I do not know how many people are aware of this, but 30 FPS runs substantially different in terms of performance compared to 31 FPS, but 31 FPS will yield you similar results to 60 FPS in terms of performance (as in, timing of frame skips, how harsh those skips are, etc). This is because the code used to play charts in 30 FPS is the legacy code that plays charts on the earlier engines, while 31 FPS utilizes the new code on the engine. This is also the same reason why you can apply decimal offsets on 31+ FPS, but they will have 0 effect on 30 FPS.

i remember hearing this but i didn't actually realize i should do it until you said it

i've actually set my FPS to 31 now thx AJ