I too get this, and its bloody annoying. It never used to be like this, and I'm NOT using a patch. I'm on standard 0.5W. It annoys the hell out of me. I get it most on AS2, in the fox. Suddenly it temporarily freezes for a second or 2, and the sound stutters badly, n gradually improves. If it happens on a bend, it always makes me crash cause by the time it comes back, the cars in the wall.

I thought it was the page file causing it, but it isn't. It never occurrec on my old hard disk. Scawen, can you please look into this, its getting to be I can finish only a few of my races because of it. It happens anywhere on Aston Club. Not noticed it else where, and doesn't matter how many are there. I even get it alone. I'm sorry, but this is rapidly becoming unacceptable, and unusable for MP. All it does is makes me angry.

Venus

Quote from Venus :

I too get this, and its bloody annoying.......Scawen, can you please look into this, its getting to be I can finish only a few of my races because of it.

Scawen has already looked into it. This is one of the things that is supposed to be fixed in patch X (and the current test patches). Try out the latest test patch and see if it fixes the problem for you. The stutter is caused by skin loading, and now skins pre-load when each person joins the server.

Quote from Cue-Ball :

Scawen has already looked into it. This is one of the things that is supposed to be fixed in patch X (and the current test patches). Try out the latest test patch and see if it fixes the problem for you. The stutter is caused by skin loading, and now skins pre-load when each person joins the server.

I'm sorry, but it hasn't been fixed. In 0.5W I get it even when I'm alone on a track as I said; so it can't be caused by skin downloading since no one is joining and I'm alone. It happens when there's alot of players, and when I'm alone. Alot of other people have the same problem. I've not noticed any link to the pits, or people joining, cause as I said, it even happens when I'm alone. Its caused by my hard disk doing stuff... I'm not convinced its an LFS problem though, but alot seem to think so. I get a similar problem in windows when the hdd becomes active. I thought it was the page file, but its not - I disabled it, doesn't change it.

Obviously you don't have this problem cue ball, so its understandable you'd think its fixed. Its annoying cause I didn't used to have it either. I just think, they need to take this seriously, and find out once and for all whether its being caused by LFS or not. Its alot worse when LFS is running.

Venus

I just downloaded patch W41, so I hope that might have a solution.

Patch W43 is out now Why not download it instead
Works great for me

Venus, check if you have any background processes taking up CPU, writing to disk or accessing the net. Web-browser, mail client, MSN/AIM, Media player, server processes running, that sort of thing. I had MS SQL Server 2005 (installed with Visual Studio, but unused) running in the background cause that sort of stutter on my computer.

Quote from wien :

Venus, check if you have any background processes taking up CPU, writing to disk or accessing the net. Web-browser, mail client, MSN/AIM, Media player, server processes running, that sort of thing. I had MS SQL Server 2005 (installed with Visual Studio, but unused) running in the background cause that sort of stutter on my computer.

I would second this advice. The hard drive really shouldn't be doing anything if you're on the track alone. All of the graphics and car models would already be loaded. Other than a background process, the only other thing I can think of would be the non-generated sounds, like the noise when you hit a wall or start the car.

If I were you, Venus, I would make sure that everything that could possibly be running in the background is turned off (open Task Manager to verify). If that doesn't fix the problem, try disabling sound - not permanently, but to verify or rule out that cause.

I have... I went thru my system from top to bottom.... nothing is loaded... exited firewall, disabled anti virus, closed off most of items listed under me in task manager (those that could be safely turned off - basically leaving explorer and something called ccapp.exe. Jeez I even tried disabling the page file. Nothing works. It happens even in W41 patch. There is absolutely nothing but basic windows operating. So I'm damned if I know, there's nothing in windows that could be causing it. Everythings closed or disabled (anti virus) and no background process's.

Ven

Quote from Venus :

I have... I went thru my system from top to bottom.... nothing is loaded... exited firewall, disabled anti virus, closed off most of items listed under me in task manager (those that could be safely turned off - basically leaving explorer and something called ccapp.exe.
Ven

ccapp.exe si actually a background process of norton antivirus. You might try disabling it...

Yeh I did that too... lol.. not much I've not tried... still it persists.

V

I guess this question is better over here.


Yesterday I noticed (or confirmed what I think I've heard) that the skins are not loaded while racing as the leading guys who had just joined front of me were all white and when the race had finished their skins showed up. But my question is, why the skins seems to get loaded if you join mid-race? The skin loading causes small pauses at least for me, and could end up with even worse results if you had it at the wrong time. So could all skins be loaded after the race?

I'm getting this exact same thing Blackout, it's gets really bad during the race especially when the server is busy and people leaving and joing regularly.

Quote from Blackout :

I guess this question is better over here.


Yesterday I noticed (or confirmed what I think I've heard) that the skins are not loaded while racing as the leading guys who had just joined front of me were all white and when the race had finished their skins showed up. But my question is, why the skins seems to get loaded if you join mid-race? The skin loading causes small pauses at least for me, and could end up with even worse results if you had it at the wrong time. So could all skins be loaded after the race?

Scawen has said that skins load when you spectate, or when you are stopped/barely moving. If you join, then sit in the pits for a few seconds, the skins should load. If you join, then immediately start driving, the skins won't load until you stop your car.

Any newa on this? Since test patch x30 i've started noticing this again whilst racing. As said, it's true about the skins not loading whilst at high speed, but there is a noticable stutter when someone leaves the pits, maybe it's more an initial syncing issue rather than skins.

Quote from russraine :

Any newa on this? Since test patch x30 i've started noticing this again whilst racing. As said, it's true about the skins not loading whilst at high speed, but there is a noticable stutter when someone leaves the pits, maybe it's more an initial syncing issue rather than skins.

Maybe it's their skin download that causes a small lag spike. I've noticed it some times again, not that bad though.

Quote from AndroidXP :

Maybe it's the STCC license plugin that causes the server to hiccup?

I was on Redline servers last night and the stutter there was related to skins downloading while racing.
Very hard to go through a corner with stutter. I didn't have this problem before I turned my skinz on.
And I also noticed the pit stutter as well, not all the time but sometimes it does happen.

I also had this stuttering once yesterday while a skin was downloading. Annoying as hell.

It started to happend to me occasionally since X10. When someone leaves the pits and a new skin is downloaded a strong stutter appears for half a second. Enough to loose the control. Sometimes the skin is downloaded smoothly, sometimes I crash in full speed race.

For me the pitstutter got worse in X30/31, no unnecessary background programs running, files are not fragmented. Usual stutter lenght for me is about half second whenever someone pits out, even with a skin already in memory.

Am I the only who feels the amount of stutter is based on the amount of cosmic radiation? Sometimes there's a noticeable stutter but for the past months all I get is 'Someone left the pits'.

Quote from Moonclaw :

For me the pitstutter got worse in X30/31, no unnecessary background programs running, files are not fragmented. Usual stutter lenght for me is about half second whenever someone pits out, even with a skin already in memory.

Does it happen in replays too? If so, please post one.

With test patches im having lot of join lag :/

With X10 i didn't had so much of it

Imho is caused by skin download

I get lot of this on demo servers with demo players, every "leaved pits" makes my screen freeze for 0.05-0.15s, and that's way too much.
At least there are some servers with no mid-race join, still if somebody does Shift+P and Enter, I get that short freeze anyway.
(and there's no need to load any textures if he was already in the race with me, right?)

Also I hate the sounds of messages (both connect/chat), I wonder why there's still no option to turn them off. Or maybe I'm just blind.

Stutter from people leaving pits is still there and affecting racing.
Yesterday i nearly crashed because someone left pits.

Hopefully this will be fixed.

maybe an good idea if lfs just caches the new skins in memory during race? Avoiding disk i/o during race/driving?

I do have rather fast system, that is 100% absolutly sure not an issue. Athough installing an hardware raid controller with battery backup cache memory(for write caching) will fix the problem

Interestingly I had this problem for the first time yesterday, on South City Long in the FBM. I was going through the tight hair-pin where your speed drops very low, and I had an big stutter as someone joined, right as I was going over a bump. I ended up hitting the wall as I didn't have enough reaction time left to save the resulting slide.

Quote from DarkTimes :

Interestingly I had this problem for the first time yesterday, on South City Long in the FBM. I was going through the tight hair-pin where your speed drops very low, and I had an big stutter as someone joined, right as I was going over a bump. I ended up hitting the wall as I didn't have enough reaction time left to save the resulting slide.

I have the stutter back since patch.. don' t remember how long ago. Since patch Y it seems a bit worse.