Hitching Help on Test

Hey guys!

So the first performance update is in its final stages of polish and we are still hoping to button up everything this week. The results are fantastic, and we cannot wait to get more frames on your screens!

As we’ve mentioned before, if we decide even last minute that it’s not good enough to go, we’ll hold back some more… but at this point we’re working hard to get the final issues resolved.

We definitely could not have gotten this done without your help. The outpouring of time, bug reports, and forum posts have been the best we’ve had since Beta, and it’s made for a much better product! No matter how big our internal test team, we cannot compete with tens of thousands of players, doing what you do! Thank you for that.

One thing I could really use your help on right now is the “Hitching” some people are experiencing.

Now, I want to define what we mean by “Hitching”. “Hitching” is when the screen literally freezes for a second or more. I’m not talking about “Lag”, when you’re seeing things as if they happened in the past, or it’s taken a long time for someone to die on your screen or use a medkit, etc. etc. You “Hitch” when it’s like your computer “locked up” for a noticeable amount of time (say, a second or more).

If you could please get onto the Public Test Server (PTS) over the next couple of days and give us ANY information as to when you get a “Hitch”, that would be fantastic. We are hoping we can turn a collection of anecdotes into a reproducible test case.

We know this problem is rare, but we still want to kill it because, well, it sucks. It’s particularly noticeable when the game is otherwise running smoothly!

So jump on to Test. We’ll be on ourselves, so feel free to shoot us in the face. Except for me, I’m always invulnerable. Muwahaha.

As an example of some of the questions we’d like answered:

Does it happen when you’re alone? In the warp gate? In a huge battle? In a Bugatti Veyron?
Does it happen ONLY when you’re in a vehicle? Only when you’re NOT in a vehicle? Only when you’re eating a pickle?
Does it happen immediately? Only after a few minutes of play? Only after a few hours of play? Only when time is slowed by proximity to a singularity?

Anything you can think of to help us narrow down the problem would be helpful.

Thanks, again.

Ryan

I always experience this when I'm flying and get close to some base, the game always get some freeze and I see things like barrels, soldiers and obstacles appering in the screen, probably a problem with using less cores then should be.
So, Always when I fly over a base, Bio Lab and Amp Stations is the main in this problem.

Right now you guys had to be in PTS ? I was ready to play LOTRO, I had to stop now to help you guys, see how I love this game! lol

how come i'm the only one that liked this post?

GO LIKE THIS POST.

NO WAIT. LOVE IT.

MAKE IT HAPPEN IN LIVE, SOE!!!

thanks Ryan. will jump on PTS tonite.

Ryan, I will do my best to jump on these tonight and throughout the week.

The last time I did so, I ran Procmon on my second monitor so I could see what Planetside2.exe was doing at the time of the hitch. Would this type of information be useful to you (I'd imagine yes), and if so, is there any other file .exe you want me to monitor?

I'm booting up PTS.

Generally it's over bases and faciltiies. I'm generally in a vehicle but when i'm in said facilities my FPS is always low.

I'm assuming as long as you approach slowly (vehicles only augment the issue by making you move faster) it loads more at a time.

Vehicle HUDs still drop my FPS by 10 so that could also play into it but pobably not.

Hmmm the vehicle stuff is interesting but is it something you guys NEVER experience on Live? Reason I ask, is as you may or may not know we stream in data as you move around in the world, and if somehow you're able to move faster than we can load, we'll eventually stop you from moving because we don't want you to fly through a building that hasn't loaded yet! But that should just stop your movement, NOT "freeze-frame". IOW, you'd still see things animate and particles move around etc. etc., you just wouldn't be able to move further in your direction.

This behavior SHOULD be very rare, but if you have background applications using your hard drive or a slow hard drive or just get really unlucky, it can happen.

It should also already exist on Live, and not be something new to the performance update.

I've only had it happen when flying, usually around highly populated areas like biolabs. This doesn't happen on live (I do sometimes have slowdowns from when flying into these facilities on live, but it is very different from the hitching I experience on the test server).

Are there any scheduled time(s) of day when the Devs are testing and would like to have players jump in to increase the population in a specific facility?

I follow many SOE people on Twitter, but never see a "Join us in PTS at x Base" message.

https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/nightly-pts-playtest.156394/#post-2229274

Well if it helps, currently on Live i get massive hitching when i warp to a continent then fly to, or drop pod somewhere on that continent.

Its fairly minor when those places are empty, but when theres a big fight going on the hitches can last long enough to make me wonder whether or not the game has simply crashed (and sometimes it does).

BTW i am on a machine sitting on the lower end of the performance spectrum.

Thank you, WyrdHarper. In the time that you were posting the answer, I also stumbled across it!.

https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/nightly-pts-playtest.156394/

Those damn singularities... throwing all kinds of havoc into physics and netcode.

We're getting a new client up any minute now, and will likely be playing on Test after that, if all goes well. See you then!

Almost always happens the first time I spot a target per game session, and occasionally otherwise also when I'm attempting to spot a target.

I've had this happen in the test server, but never on the live server. It generally happens when there's a lot of scenery in view.

I don't get any hitching on live like I do on test. I run the same setting minus one or two and get less frames and stuff as I do on live.

Ohmygod you probably just explained me why sometimes I see liberators and ESF stopping mid air, they are not actually "lagging" due to bad connection but because the game is preventing them to move to a location that hasn't rendered all the objects on sight yet?
Quite amusing I'd say

If I got that right... lol

*goes testing the test serveer

...i cant replicate so far.

i get low FPS lag and network lag, but no "hitching".

now, ive experienced hitching last week in PTS within the first 5 seconds on entering a new map (either by podding or spawning in a base or sundy), but tonight, nothin....... just the occasional lags.

It happens on live yes, everytime and in the test server too, but the freeze last less than the live server.

I just did some testing in the PTS by flying around (you really need to disable the resources there tbh) and on my side the hitching appears to come either from:

1) new models appearing on screen, that issue was a huge one on live a long time ago while flying and appeared to be triggered by phalanx wrecks appearing

2) vehicle doritos showing up, I had a nice obvious hitch and the vehicle indicators above enemy ESF only appeared at the end of it

My system being a 770 GTX on a 3770K in case you're wondering.

I'll try to do some more testing but it's hard as resources dry up (since people keep shooting each other).