I certainly get a little less fps with 32 cars on the grid, some sometimes (most often at the start of a race) I get a massive pause or stutter and then when I get my fps back there's cars flying all over the place.

What causes this? Do crashes cause the stutter, and make it worse for everyone else? Am I the only person getting this? Or does something else cause this stutter which then effects everyone and results in a big ol' crash before turn 1?

I don't know if it happens for the same reasons or not, but in my case I think my computer (an old but perfect Athlon 2400XP) is a bit too old to handle well a grid with 32 players. In my case: more players on screen, more stutter. I assume that this is because my computer badly needs a lot of upgrades (CPU and graphics, with all things related) to meet some more demanding computational needs (including large grids on LFS).

I've never experiences any kind of stutter in the new patch, also my PC has enough power to handle LFS with 32 cars so I guess it's a hardware problem, I also use to play in servers above 250 ms of ping and I hardly get any complain about lagging.

I haven't really had a chance to try Patch X online, and I didn't get to test anything past about W20 or so, but the other night I ran a couple of races against a dozen AI cars and had a pause right as the lights turned green each time. I'm not sure if this is what you guys are talking about or not, and I'm not sure what causes it, but it's certainly not lag since I was playing single player with AI.

Anyone else seen this? My system is fast with plenty of RAM and a good vid card, so I don't think it's system overload.

Quote from ste_ :

I certainly get a little less fps with 32 cars on the grid, some sometimes (most often at the start of a race) I get a massive pause or stutter and then when I get my fps back there's cars flying all over the place.

What causes this? Do crashes cause the stutter, and make it worse for everyone else? Am I the only person getting this? Or does something else cause this stutter which then effects everyone and results in a big ol' crash before turn 1?

I was getting large pauses on the ConeDodgers AS Cadet server the other day. It wasn't a case of consistantly very low FPS, I would be driving with a low to reasonable FPS, as the track was full, and then the game would pause for ~0.5 seconds, often when there was a big crash near by. This was happening to me a lot, sometimes when there was no one near me, too. As far as I know, I didn't have any taxing programs or processes open in the background.

Yeah, it was on Conedodgers I was getting the massive pause too. Driving the GTR cars around Aston National. Oh, and I'm on an AthlonXP 2400 too Albieg! But like joshdifabio said, it's not a case of always very low fps, it's a case of suddenly the game pauses for a heartbeat and then when it resumes there's carnage.

Downloading skins?

I have noticed that after a race has finished i get stuttering, maybe due to download of skins

I also notice if i Shift+S i get the same

I feel its a game thing, not ConeDodgers Servers

Somewhere around this forum, Scawen mentioned that any servers running WINE, could/may have stuttering problems during players connecting/disconnecting........

Andrew

Many of us have experienced this on my server since patch X too.

Quote from Albieg :

I don't know if it happens for the same reasons or not, but in my case I think my computer (an old but perfect Athlon 2400XP) is a bit too old to handle well a grid with 32 players. In my case: more players on screen, more stutter. I assume that this is because my computer badly needs a lot of upgrades (CPU and graphics, with all things related) to meet some more demanding computational needs (including large grids on LFS).

ive the same booard as yup but its over clocked to 3000 still with 12 maybe 14 plays i can old 30 fps

sometimes the server is the problem...

It's nothing daft like antivirus scanning skins as they are downloaded?

Quote from robps :

It's nothing daft like antivirus scanning skins as they are downloaded?

I personally don't have any programs open which would be causing a problem, I also didn't have any skin downloads around the times of these pauses.

For me, no antivirus running, no other programs running that might cause such an issue, and it definitely wasn't skin downloading. (When I get a skin downloading, i do get a tiny stutter, but it's not really too noticable and way smaller than the mega-stutter I sometimes see)

Many servers have expanded their maximum slots to 47 without increasing their bandwidth. That's one of the main reasons.

The most likely cause is all the extra contact and physics calculations that have to be done when cars hit each other. I usually get these "lags" in T1 crashes, but if the grid manages to avoid contact I can get very reasonable fps even in T1 with a full grid. One or two hits might cause an imperceptible stutter, but a large number of cars having multiple crashes at the same time causes a severe tax on the CPU. So the big ol' crash you see afterwards with cars flying is probably the cause of the stutter, not the other way around.

Quote from ste_ :

I certainly get a little less fps with 32 cars on the grid, some sometimes (most often at the start of a race) I get a massive pause or stutter and then when I get my fps back there's cars flying all over the place.

What causes this? Do crashes cause the stutter, and make it worse for everyone else? Am I the only person getting this? Or does something else cause this stutter which then effects everyone and results in a big ol' crash before turn 1?

i paid for the high res downloads, i cant use them, infact i now have to turn on compressed skins and such when i have never done this before

i always got stutter aproaching the chicaine at aston for some reason

runs fine now i have all the textures on small and compressed

i have to say, the fps never dropped that much with the extra cars, but i did get the "pause" thing and the FPS would drop right down for a half second or so before coming back to normal ?

I had that too with the test patches, haven't tried putting the skins back to uncompressed in patch X, I'll try tonight.

Quote from ste_ :

What causes this? Do crashes cause the stutter, and make it worse for everyone else?

Yes they do. Even the crashes that you can't see.
It seems that there is an area around your car in which calculations of what is happening on track do have an impact on your FPS, even if you can't see the events occuring.

Quote from Sticky-Micky :

i always got stutter aproaching the chicaine at aston for some reason

See above.
When you approach the final chicane at AS3+ you can see the whole straight, the pits, thus the cars leaving the garages, and you got the calculations from the cars coming up hill because they are close to you, even if you can't see them.