Stuttering every ~5 seconds in 1.1

[Broco]

Hey everybody. Since 1.1 I have a weird issue that causes the game to "stutter" every 5 seconds or so. I searched on reddit and the forums and the only answers I found were mod-related. So I went and put my game back into vanilla state, just to be sure (only used EnvironmentalVisualEnhancements anyways) but the stuttering still occurs. Well it's not really stuttering, it feels like the game pauses for 1-2 frames every 5 seconds. It doesn't matter how big the vessel is, tried it with a small plane as well as with a 400 part behemoth, no difference, the stuttering occures regardless of the craft, position (I tested landed at runway, in flight at Kerbin and low Kerbin orbit and the Mun).

Has anybody experienced the same issue and is there a known solution?

Thanks in advance

Broco

[Kerbart]

10 minutes ago, Broco said:

Has anybody experienced the same issue and is there a known solution?

Not with KSP but MSFS had this all the time. If I recall correctly it had something to do with loading the textures into the video card (“but 64 bit!” — yes, the textures are in your main memory, but necessarily loaded onto the video card required to actually render them on screen). Never found a solution for it but I didn't look very hard either.

[Broco]

Thanks for your reply. Yes, it's not gamebreaking or too bad, it's just irritating and a little bit annoying to be honest. I was just wondering because it wasn't the case before 1.1.

[Padishar]

This sounds more like the garbage collection stutter to me.  This has been present in every version of KSP but there are a large number of factors that can affect how badly noticeable they are.  To confirm it is the GC you can install the GCMonitor mod and switch it to showing the Mono memory and reduce the scale to 0.125s.  This should show a sawtooth pattern in the graph with the pauses corresponding with the drops.

KSP 1.1 has not significantly reduced the amount of garbage being created in general compared to 1.0.5 though it does appear that Unity5 makes the collection pauses (slightly) less noticeable for some people.  A few issues with specific bits of code in KSP have been fixed which does greatly improve it in some (fairly obscure) cases.

[Broco]

23 hours ago, Padishar said:

This sounds more like the garbage collection stutter to me.  This has been present in every version of KSP but there are a large number of factors that can affect how badly noticeable they are.  To confirm it is the GC you can install the GCMonitor mod and switch it to showing the Mono memory and reduce the scale to 0.125s.  This should show a sawtooth pattern in the graph with the pauses corresponding with the drops.

KSP 1.1 has not significantly reduced the amount of garbage being created in general compared to 1.0.5 though it does appear that Unity5 makes the collection pauses (slightly) less noticeable for some people.  A few issues with specific bits of code in KSP have been fixed which does greatly improve it in some (fairly obscure) cases.

Yep you're right, I just did as you said and got exactly the results you predicted. Is there any way to fix this? Again: It's not gamebreaking but it's damn annoying.

[Padishar]

28 minutes ago, Broco said:

Yep you're right, I just did as you said and got exactly the results you predicted. Is there any way to fix this? Again: It's not gamebreaking but it's damn annoying.

Unfortunately not.  Changing various of the graphics settings may affect how noticeable they are but the only thing that will definitely substantially reduce it is the game creating less garbage.

[LordFerret]

It's funny you've picked this up in v1.1.0, as I first started noticing it in v1.0.5. I too thought it was mod related (adding KAC was when it first became noticeable). I will have to run a test, as Padishar suggests.

[Broco]

Dammit, guess I just have to live with it. On the bright side, installing mods doesn't make it worse, it just stays the same.

Though it's really funny because everyone else struggled with this in pre 1.1 where I had no problem at all (even with a ton of mods installed).

[Padishar]

I started playing KSP at version 0.23 and I have been able to see this in every version of KSP from then.  It has been worse in some and better in others and various mods have, at times, made it significantly worse.  There have been various threads discussing the issue over the years, just search for stutter or GCMonitor and look through the list. E.g. the following thread links to three others that discuss it in detail...

 

[Badsector]

50 minutes ago, Broco said:

Dammit, guess I just have to live with it. On the bright side, installing mods doesn't make it worse, it just stays the same.

Though it's really funny because everyone else struggled with this in pre 1.1 where I had no problem at all (even with a ton of mods installed).

I have experienced this issue by importing a save from a different version of ksp, deleting all contracts have fixed the problem but the best way is start a new game.

[Broco]

Just now, Badsector said:

I have experienced this issue by importing a save from a different version of ksp, deleting all contracts have fixed the problem but the best way is start a new game.

Yeeee... not gonna happen I have around 50 active flights and some awesome missions and I wont sacrifice all of that just because of a little bit annoyance. I'll just deal with it and wait for a patch to fix it.

[Badsector]

2 minutes ago, Broco said:

Yeeee... not gonna happen I have around 50 active flights and some awesome missions and I wont sacrifice all of that just because of a little bit annoyance. I'll just deal with it and wait for a patch to fix it.

You can backup your savefile and try to delete all contract, if that fix the problem you have only to restore your savefile and complete all active contract.

[Broco]

I really dont see the correlation between too much garbage created by the game and the active contracts. I just leave it as it is, maybe it gets fixed, maybe not but I won't fiddle around with my saves for now.

[jrolson]

I cant even build anything because whenever I enter the VAB the stuttering gets so bad...

Feels like my FPS drops down to 5.

Everywhere else in the game is smooth...

 

1.1 feels so buggy, don't think they should of released it.

[winged]

On 22.04.2016 at 6:20 PM, Broco said:

Yeeee... not gonna happen I have around 50 active flights and some awesome missions and I wont sacrifice all of that just because of a little bit annoyance. I'll just deal with it and wait for a patch to fix it.

AFAIK this has something to do with high amount of flights in save, maybe try to delete some flights and check if this helps. Make backup first.

[Galileo]

On 4/22/2016 at 11:20 AM, Broco said:

Yeeee... not gonna happen I have around 50 active flights and some awesome missions and I wont sacrifice all of that just because of a little bit annoyance. I'll just deal with it and wait for a patch to fix it.

There won't be a patch to fix it.  Garbage collection must happen in unity.  There have been discussions about this since the beginning of KSP and many Squad developers have basically said there is nothing they can do.  Sucks it's so noticeable for you.  

[Padishar]

2 hours ago, Berlin said:

and many Squad developers have basically said there is nothing they can do.

[citation needed]

Specifically, I don't recall ever seeing a post from a Squad "developer" (someone that actually writes code) that says anything like that.  While it is true that they are unlikely to be able to completely eliminate it, there is plenty they can do to reduce both the severity and the frequency of the stutters.  I've posted about this before in the threads I indirectly linked to above.

[aluc24]

Hello,

I've been playing KSP since 0.90, and just updated to 1.1. Steam version. Since then, I always had the issue of lag spikes. They happen every few 3-4 seconds. The game freezes for a split second, and then continues to run properly. Several times a minute, the audio spikes too, making crackling sound every time it happens.

Before, I though the issue is with my laptop and no multi-thread support in the old game engine. But with 1.1, that is surely fixed.

This happens both on unmodded and modded KSP installations, it seems to make no difference.

Apart from these lag spikes, I have great performance on 1.1. By now, I suspect that some external program might induce these spikes. I have tried disabling antivirus, defragmenting hard drive. Didn't help. I'm running Windows 10 64bit, basically a clean install with antivirus, and bunch of programs that I use. Maybe one of them is the culprit, but I can't narrow it down. No other games exhibit these lag spikes, just KSP.

My computer is a Lenovo Z500 laptop. Not a gaming machine, but runs KSP smoothly without problems except for these spikes.

 

Has anyone experienced this before? Is there any external program known to cause this behavior? I can provide any detail necessary. Just keep in mind, that, as I said, this issue troubled me since 0.90, and since then, I have re-installed Windows a couple of times, as well as KSP itself, tried both clean and modded versions, and so on. The problem never went away. 

 

Thank you in advance. As I said, if I missed some detail I should have included, just tell me.

[Mutex]

Do they lag spikes stay constant, or do they get worse the longer you play?

[aluc24]

19 minutes ago, Mutex said:

Do they lag spikes stay constant, or do they get worse the longer you play?

No, they are consistent. It's definitely not a memory leak issue, if that's what you're suggesting.

[aluc24]

I think I'm having this problem too, in severe form. I just created a topic about it myself, and noticed this one.

 

A fix is desperately needed. This issue makes the game almost unplayable.

[yanzco]

i too suffer from stuttering every 5 seconds.. heavily modded game..

i play with 64 bit KSP 1.1
makes the game unplayable..

hopes for an update..