LFS Forum - Stutter/Hitch/Warp when skin not found on LFSW [0.6E]

Originally raised by Wizard DK and simultaneously researched by myself.

Issue:
When an attempt is made to load a skin from LFSW and it is not found, some users experience a stutter, hitch or warp.

Below are selected quotes from the main thread discussing the problem together with conjecture on causes, and possible workarounds.

Quote from Squelch :

Quote from THE WIZARD DK :... regarding lag. another thing i noticed, is when skins download, and the skin is NOT on LFSW , it can freeze my screen for quite some time.. about the same time as it takes a xfg going from one end of straight to another on WE. so thats a serious issue. the same happens, tho its a shorter freeze if many is connected on multiclass servers. if i drive a roadcar, most gtr cars coming out from garage, to track, yanks my connection somehow..

I have the same issue, a definite "hitching" while skins download is turned on and the skin isn't available.

Quote :
really annoying in races. and its a eternal mystery to me why people who had LFS for some time STILL DOESNT UPLOAD THEIR FREAKIN SKINS to LFSW. how hard can it be.. or if you know your skin is private or team skin, change it to one that IS uploaded on lfsw, so all others dont get the message constantly about the missing skin on lfsw. people on S2 / S1 should know this. maybe more info about it when getting lfs download from main site as it seems ppl cant read anymore.. if you dont want people to see your skin? why da hell make it then??? stupid... it really is. at least you can write a text on the skin saying its private.. maybe all the kids drive around with nude ladies or something nowadays, idk,idc, its just annoying to see s2 / s1 persons with white cars and getting the msgs from lfsw constantly.. learn peeps...today.. you all got i think 50 skin uploads for each account. how hard can it be to use 2 min to upload...

We were on CGNL S1 at the same time last night, and my skin wasn't available on LFSW so you might have been suffering as a result of me. I was experimenting with this exact issue, so your report confirms my findings too. I've reviewed the replays, and cannot see anything that confirms the problem, but, it is definitely present in the live game.

For the record, I'm on a AMD 3200+ @2GHz, 2GB Ram, ATI 4850 1GB, Stable and fast ADSL connection.

I know I'm CPU bound, and can tolerate the occasional slow downs, but the hitching while attempting to retrieve the skin - especially at turn in - throws me right off my pace.

GT spec cars leaving the pits is an odd one and I was under the impression this had been fixed. As for the rest of the multiplayer improvements, everything seems to be much more stable, and my impression is that I see fewer people lagging out.

[Edit]
I omitted to say that whenever a new client connects and the sound/message is played to notify you that your own skin wasn't available, seems to cause a slight hitch too. - Hence the reason for my experiment last night.

Quote from THE WIZARD DK :aah.. woohoo im not the only one..

good to know. my con is 30mb so i could not understand why this happened.

thread back on track

Quote from troy :Could be the harddisk, I had some microstuttering too on skin loading so I made symlinks to the skins_x/y/dds folders on my ssd and kept the rest on the old hdd, since then it's not happening anymore.

Symlinks on windows with junction

Quote from NotAnIllusion :It would be lovely if there was a third option to download / apply skins while not in an active session or while not moving.

Quote from Squelch :That's a good point, but it seems to happen whenever the skin isn't available from LFSW, so your suggestion probably doesn't help in this particular case.

I use Link Shell extension for full control of links btw

Such a feature would be welcome.

Can anyone else confirm the stutter/hitch while attempting to find a non existent skin on LFSW?

I wonder what would happen if the skin was cached locally, and wasn't available from LFSW? (after a skin had been deleted for example)

Quote from The Very End :What you mean by stutter / hitch? Is is connection wise or FPS / screen wise?

I had this strange thing yesterday, was having some lag but was fine. Entering corner and everything is ok, then it just seems 0.5 sec disapeared. I was not in the corner anymore I was at the exit of it with an blink of an eye. The others did not notice anything but I have never experienced such a thing in LFS anymore, like a shortime warp.

Quote from Squelch :For me it is a short freeze of the screen, but the frame rate doesn't appear to drop. Warping could be another way of describing it, and as I said before, during cornering is very disconcerting. The replays do not show anything happened at all, so I do not believe it is a connection problem, but could be wrong as the required skins are pre loaded anyway for replays.

Quote from troy :Wouldn't lfs still access the disk while searching for it locally? I know demo users can't use skin downloads and get around that limitation by just putting the skins in their skins folder manually. So it could still be something with disk access? Not 100% sure of course, you only getting it on skins not available on lfsworld rules out dds loading when a new car joins I guess.

Quote from Squelch :You are absolutely right of course, but my point was that the hitch occurs when the skin isn't available, unless you mean the process of searching for the non existent skin on disk is causing the hitch? If that's the case wouldn't the conversion from full to compressed be far more resource intensive than a simple search? I have Full (as opposed to compressed skins) turned on, and available skins do not give any problems. It's only the missing skins that cause a hitch/stutter even with compressed turned on.

My thoughts are that the process of accessing LFSW, or some other agent (antivirus) might be slow and causing the interruption. For now I just set skin downloads to off and the problem is circumvented.

Quote from THE WIZARD DK :i have the exactly same thing.. so its not just you.. what i do is to disconnect when it happens then connect or res lfs, it solves it for me.. sometimes i can do it ingame also by changing thru all cams and go back to cockpit view.. for some reason it also reduces my lag.. dunno why tho..

Quote from cargame.nl :Skin names are mentioned in the InSim so I could make something to auto spectate people who doesnt use a skin which is uploaded to LFSW.

But..

Sadly I can't verify if a skin exists or not because Victor made a general error when you try anything here;
http://www.lfsworld.net/showsk ... e=XFR_justarandomname.JPG

Better would be; "this skin doesn't exist" ... But, no idea if he wants to do this change.
.

Quote from THE WIZARD DK :i think i mentioned that to you at some point recently. to spec people with no skins,actually? maybe im wrong, but was thinking it anyways

remember to add helmet skins also as those gives the same issues.. well with my game anyways. dunno if others have the same also tho?

Quote from E.Reiljans :Hint hint:
http://skins.liveforspeed.net/XRT/512/XRT_NYAN.JPG

Set your user-agent to just "LFS" for it to work.

Quote from cargame.nl :Cool, can do something with this

Quote from Squelch :That could be useful, but is only really relevant for mid race joining.

Quote from Inouva :Happens to me too time to time

i think lfs have already this. the only time i see the "New" skin being applyed is when my car goes under 60kph otherwise when above 70kph there is no skin being apply, in fact i never saw a sking being apply on the fly while racing in my years on lfs.

I dont know if just lucky from my end but was allways like that.

also i'm still experiencing when a car popup in the pit some times i have that small ( 0.1sec) freeze when the game generate the plate on the car.

Quote from TehPaws3D :To me my problem was never with the downloading of them And that screen stutter, To be honest I learned to ignore it. But it was when I was behind a car that I hadn't loaded the skin for, Noticed it when I was behind a [SR] dude when he came out of the pits, When he came from behind the wall, he had a soild white car, and my frames went down to about 2 - 5 FPS until he was out of my field of view, It even lagged when he was in my mirrors, but the second his skin popped up it was all fine and dandy, back up to 200+ FPS or whatever it runs at. xD

It was also saying some weird stuff like "cannot open skin" or such, It was a long time ago, but I thought I should add it in since I was just lurking.

Quote from cargame.nl :So even if the skin is available then it can cause problems. OK then I have no fix for it.

On the other hand I wonder why people demand 2012 stuff while they are at a computer with parts from 2005.

Quote from Neilser :Meh, the issue - whatever it is - is likely there for everyone. It could be that a slower PC highlights the issue/bug/feature... for which we should be grateful, right? Cos then we can squash it

Quote from Squelch :That's a bit harsh. It's only the odd occasion when the skin isn't available that this happens, otherwise I'd say that LFS runs better than it ever has - even on older kit.

http://www.lfs.net/?page=downloads

My gut feeling is that the local search method or accessing LFSW for a non existent skin is not optimal, or has a too higher priority thread. An already saturated CPU would struggle in such a case. I've monitored the network bandwidth, and reviewed replays, niether of which show any problem. The stutter/hitch only seems to happen during a live game, and is most noticeable while driving. A small hitch can be seen while spectating in cockpit view, but is not as pronounced.

It would benefit everybody if LFS was lean and mean in all areas, so therefore allowing for more processing power dedicated to physics rendering imho.

To stress the point. It is not the skin download that appears to be the problem, but the attempt to retrieve a non existent skin. Furthermore, the message notifying that your own skin is not available also shows this behaviour. Perhaps LFS client is waiting for LFSW to reply, and this causes the hitch.

Quote from NotAnIllusion :CPU cores and the GPU are nowhere near 100%, FPS in the 100s and happens occasionally. Very inconveniently in corners or close to other cars. Whatever can be done to minimise or eliminate this is a good thing.