FIX FOR CRASH EXPLOIT

Discussion in 'Player Support' started by Exolus, Jan 2, 2013.

  1. Exolus

    Alright guys, this has worked unanimously with everyone in my outfit whom I have shared it to. After doing this, I have not had a single crash in heavy populated fighting areas, even when people around me will crash and report this crash to our platoon members via TeamSpeak. Several other people, whom like I said I have share this with, have reported the exact same thing. Strangely enough, its a pretty easy fix from the Beta client that most everyone should know about. As a plus side, if you have a so-so processor like an earlier i5 or i7, this can also give you a rather significant boost in FPS. My i5 3330 550ti set up saw an average increase of 10-25 fps in all areas of the game, depending on the situation and the population.

    Ok so here is the fix:

    Go into your UserOptions.ini text document within your main Planetside 2 folder. I personally do not have a Steam version, but if you have a non-steam version, the easiest way to get there is to right click on your Planetside 2 shortcut and click Find Target or Open File Location.

    Within this text document is a section labeled [Sound]. At the bottom of that list, add the following:

    SampleRate=44100

    Click save, and you're done! There are other things you can do in this file to improve performance but I'm not going to get into it here.

    Now, specifically what this does is lowers the default Planetside 2 sound sample rate from a theorized studio quality 48000 down to a much more common, DVD/CD quality of 44100. The sound quality is virtualy identical. I can't personally discern a difference, but your processor sure as hell can. Everybody, except for people with ridiculously powerful processors has noticed a large uptick in performance, and no strange crashes.

    It has long be thought that to perform this crash, it has something to do with the sound a lib makes when exploding, or something like that. We're not entirely sure, but either way, this fix seems to work 99% of the time for 99% of people. Give it a shot and tell me your results!
    • Up x 3
  2. Blaank

    To those of you who seem to be one of the few people left after mass crash and ghost town, did you by chance change this setting for performance reasons? If you did, and you aren't crashing, that confirms OP's fix.
  3. Exolus

    ^This was exactly my experience. Was getting crashes, remembered this fix from Beta and that I hadn't applied it to my launch client, applied it, told a couple people about it, and bam, we became the guys not crashing.

    No reason not to give it a shot, if it doesnt fix this for you, please let me know in this thread.
  4. mindbomb

    48khz is more common.
    44.1khz is just for CD audio.
    If 48khz is the native sampling frequency of the audio files, enabling a resampler would only decrease performance.
    • Up x 2
  5. Skadi

    Well... time to add exploding liberators to the list of what causes the crashing theory list.
  6. MSG B

    What the hell...I'll give it a shot. Very frustrating crashing on "rig" like mine =(
  7. Exolus

    So... then why am I getting 15-20 fps increase, and everyone else besides people with the most beast processors are seeing the same thing?

    I mean, I'm sure that what you say pans out most of the time, but this is not what we experience in the game when we actually put this into effect.

    And I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure people would rather know how it actually effected there gameplay, rather then how it MIGHT effect there gameplay through various techno-jargon.
  8. Exolus

    "Oh my god, thank you. I can play this game smoothly now."

    THAT is the most common response I get from someone who implements this in there UserOptions.ini text file.

    So please...don't just say "This will decrease your performance" when exactly the opposite is occurring for 99% of the people who have tried this.
  9. mindbomb

    speaking of the useroptions.ini and audio, something that might help is the 32 float output option.
    for windows vista and windows 7 and 8, 32 float is ideal.
  10. mindbomb

    since there is no timedemo or benchmark, it is very hard to tell the impact of a specific setting. Any increase could be just normal variation.
    • Up x 1
  11. Dryka

    can anyone else confirm this helps?
  12. Exolus

    Hmm, I haven't actually messed around with that yet.

    Indeed, that seems to be set to 0 by default. Im going to set it to 1 and see if I get a performance boost at all.
  13. Exolus

    Sigh... Ok listen. Does going into the warpgate, getting around 30-35 fps, logging out, changing the setting, and getting 40-50fps as soon as I get back in the game? Does that sound like normal variation to you? Its noticeable, and only happens when I change this one setting...

    I'm starting to worry that you're attempting to make people think this won't help them because you are in fact abusing the bug, and this will prevent you from doing that.

    You probably aren't, but your starting to come off as needlessly argumentative toward someone who is just trying to help people with a fix that my Outfit of almost 500 people SWEAR by.
    • Up x 3
  14. Exolus

    Haha, the views on this thread have gone from 13 to about 192 in about 3 minutes. I hope you guys are testing this out for yourselves, please come back and tell us how it worked for you, and more importantly, what your processor is.

    Thanks!
  15. Esjo

    Interesting theory.. I'll give it a try tomorrow, albeit i don't have performance or crash issues. Still going to test it, if only to see if i can verify framerate improvement.

    The reason the theory can hold water is basically because most people use onboard soundcards these days, which means all processing of sound is up to the cpu. Some motherboards even have software sound, and no actual chip from Realtek or other manufacturers.

    Also, turning down the samplerate is really the smart thing to do.. Onboard soundcards are so crap compared to actual cards from Creative etc, that you probably won't hear much difference between the old 22050hz or 32khz versus todays 48khz.

    From wikipedia:

    The full range of human hearing is between 20 Hz and 20 kHz.[3] The minimum sampling rate that satisfies the sampling theorem for this full bandwidth is 40 kHz. The 44.1 kHz sampling rate used for Compact Disc was chosen for this and other technical reasons.
  16. Exolus

    Thank you for posting that informative post Esjo. Definitely sheds more light on what is going on when implementing this fix. I think I generally had the right idea, as it takes a little bit of the pressure off of your processor.

    I will however, go out on a limb and say this fix is probably not going to gain you any fps, if without it, you have fine FPS as it is.
  17. THUGGERNAUT

    thought the exploit had something to do with mass smoke grenades, but will give this a shot.
  18. Jakets

    Well, I gave it a shot and didn't notice any difference. I logged into the warpgate and didn't move for about 60 seconds, my avg frame rate was 42. I applied this tweak to the ini and logged in again repeating the same situation. My avg frame rate was still between 41 - 43 with little or no difference.

    I have already heavily tweaked my ini file however and will post it below for reference. My cpu is a core 2 duo e6700 2.66ghz overclocked to 3.0ghz and my graphics card is a heavily overclocked hd 6750 with latest amd beta drivers.

    I get very playable frame rate with these settings even in the most intense battles, sometimes dropping to about 20fps but usually 30+ the majority of the time. Some settings are ultra. Also let me know if anyone has any other tweaks to try out.

    Code:
    [Display]
    FullscreenRefresh=0
    Maximized=0
    FullscreenWidth=1280
    FullscreenHeight=1024
    WindowedWidth=1024
    WindowedHeight=768
    RenderQuality=1.000000
    Mode=Fullscreen
    FullscreenMode=Fullscreen
     
    [Rendering]
    GraphicsQuality=5
    TextureQuality=0
    ShadowQuality=1
    RenderDistance=1200.00000
    Gamma=0.000000
    MaximumFPS=120
    UseLod0a=1
    VSync=0
    OverallQuality=-1
    LightingQuality=2
    FogShadowsEnable=0
    EffectsQuality=1
    TerrainQuality=5
    FloraQuality=1
    ModelQuality=3
    ParticleLOD=2
    MotionBlur=0
    VerticalFOV=74
     
    [Controls]
    CameraAutoAdjustment=1
    ClickToMove=0
    ClickToMoveRightButton=0
    RailCamera=1
     
    [Sound]
    Master=0.700000
    Music=0.500000
    Game=1.000000
    Dialog=1.000000
    UI=1.000000
    UseFloat32Output=0
    ExclusiveMode=0
    HitIndicator=1
    LowAmmoIndicator=1
    VehicleChatter=1
    MaxVoices=96
     
    [ImageCapture]
    OutputFolder=F:\Pictures\Planetside2
    OutputFilePrefix=screenshot.jpg
     
    [VideoCapture]
    Resolution=2
    Quality=100
    OutputFile=E:\My Videos\Planetside2\PS2Video_0001
     
    [VideoStreamer]
    Resolution=1
    Fps=30
    Kbps=0
    MicRecordVolume=0.000000
    SpeakerRecordVolume=1.000000
    Username=
     
    [Terrain]
    RenderFlora=On
     
    [AutoRefuse]
    FriendInvitation=0
    DuelInvitation=0
    GuildInvitation=0
    HideUi=1
    TradeRequest=0
    HousingInvitation=0
    GroupInvitation=0
     
    [General]
    AutoDetectPerformanceSettings=0
    Profanity=0
    MouseSensitivity=0.150000
    VehicleMouseSensitivity=0.150000
    ScopedMouseSensitivity=0.300000
    FlightMouseSensitivity=0.600000
    InvertVerticalFly=1
    SprintToggle=0
     
    [Video]
    VideoCapturePrefix=PS2Video
     
    [VoiceChat]
    EchoEnabled=1
    EchoVolume=0.500000
    ProximityEnabled=1
    ProximityVolume=0.500000
    FactionEnabled=1
    FactionVolume=0.500000
    GroupEnabled=1
    GroupVolume=0.500000
    GroupLeaderEnabled=1
    GroupLeaderVolume=0.500000
    RaidEnabled=1
    RaidVolume=0.500000
    GuildEnabled=1
    GuildVolume=0.500000
    CustomEnabled=1
    CustomVolume=0.500000
    InputDevice=Default System Device
    OutputDevice=Default System Device
     
    [Voice]
    ReceiveVolume=70.000000
    MicrophoneVolume=50.000000
    Enable=1
     
    [UI]
    WelcomeScreenShown=1
    CentralizedHudMode=1
    MapZoomLevel=6
    MapPositionX=-150.1522522260742
    MapPositionY=-184.2923507397461
    ShowMapTutorial=0
    MapCenterOnPlayer=0
    ShowCertsTutorial=0
    MapStatisticsView=1
    MapFilterShowSquad=1
    MapFilterShowMissions=1
    MapFilterShowResource1=0
    MapFilterShowTerritoryControl=1
    MapFilterShowActivityLevel=0
    MapFilterShowAllies=1
    MapFilterShowFacilities=1
    MapFilterShowObjectives=1
    
    I will trial the sound tweak for a while tonight however and report back if anything seems more stable or i find anything stated to be different with some more testing. Honestly I haven't really had the "crash exploit" happen much, so I am not sure if I can really test that part.
  19. Exolus

    There are many theories as to what the exploit is:

    1. Liberator explosion sound/liberator sound in general. We're not sure. This is the one I am leaning most towards because of various conjecture and coincidances I have come across in my own game time.

    2. C4 stacking. This is probably another way of doing it, as this was something you could actually do in the old planetside lol

    3. Sunderer explosion exploit. Not sure on this one, only heard it stated.

    In my opinion, this is all pointing to something wrong with when a bunch of explosions go off at once in the same area, and the sound coding of Planetside 2 tried to compensate some how, and just can't at the default 48000 setting.

    For some reason, setting this to 44100 (via the fix i have posted) seems to alleviate this issue for pretty much everyone I've shared it with.
    • Up x 1
  20. Cyridius

    Well I just "survived" a crash that took out 90% of my outfit. But I don't have this in my .ini - so that means your solution is wrong or there are multiple crash "exploits".