Found something interesting - Sound

RinaldoGandolphi

So i was toying around the other day, and found disabling in-game sound helps with lag issues a lot...it made a very noticeable difference in abilities firing, ability delay, etc.

There are disadvantages to doing this mind you such as not hearing Snipe, and other in game sounds such as Horse gallops, that would give you an edge.

If your someone who listens to music while playing, just go into the games sound settings and turn them off, then close the game and launcher completely and re-launch, the game runs smoother with sound shut off for some reason.


this patch reintroduced a lot of regressions, Daedric Protection Sorc passive is broken again. Radiant Magelight now longer gives its 10% Spell Crit which they fianlly fixed the patch before.

Is it too much to ask to stop breaking things you patch fix every time you update the game? Whats the point of patching fixes if your just going to regress them every time you put out an update?

Anyways, try turning off sound if your finding you have ability lag and the such all the time, makes a difference, seems like the sound bug regression is back.

Roechacca

I'd rather just not play if I have to kill the sound to get performance . I appriciate you posting the info an hope ZOS reads so they can look .

Rylana

Yeah i noticed the same thing a long time ago OP, and reporting it in detail to ZOS.

Its all about sync and timing within the client. By the time its sent the sound to your soundcard its already on the next 10 down the road, they pile up and get out of sync with whats actually happening, the client tries to compensate by forcing video rendering to slow down causing the stutter effect, and eventually things get so out of line it just freezes until it finds a new start point or crashes completely.

Funny enough one of my tests was actually disabling sound on my machine instead of just in the client. Same exact effect only the client crashed and threw a sound error about 20 seconds in to a big battle.

Coincidence? I dont think so.

Jitterbug

I've noticed something similar when I stream (for no one :-P) that first the sound gets delayed, and then the skills start to as well. This is all solo questing btw.

RinaldoGandolphi

No problem, I noticed a 7-10 fps bump on average during those keep battles you lose sound on by shutting off the audio in the game settings.

All my sound card and video drivers etc are all updated and WHQL(Windows Hardware Quality Labs) signed with Microsoft's dig of approval.

I just found it really strange. I tested 7 other games out of my Steam Library and they don't exhibit this problem, I'm unable to replicate except in ESO.

It doesn't get rid of all the lag in large keep battles, but it seems to help some.

RinaldoGandolphi

Rylana wrote: »

Yeah i noticed the same thing a long time ago OP, and reporting it in detail to ZOS.

Its all about sync and timing within the client. By the time its sent the sound to your soundcard its already on the next 10 down the road, they pile up and get out of sync with whats actually happening, the client tries to compensate by forcing video rendering to slow down causing the stutter effect, and eventually things get so out of line it just freezes until it finds a new start point or crashes completely.

Funny enough one of my tests was actually disabling sound on my machine instead of just in the client. Same exact effect only the client crashed and threw a sound error about 20 seconds in to a big battle.

Coincidence? I dont think so.

Well it seems I'm not the only one to see this issue then. Maybe we can hope they can fix it now.

Very interesting that globally disabling sound would cause such a hard crash. Seems like your able to easily reproduce this, wonder why it hasn't been fixed?

Jitterbug

@ZOS_GinaBruno‌ check this out

Rylana

woodsro wrote: »

Rylana wrote: »

Yeah i noticed the same thing a long time ago OP, and reporting it in detail to ZOS.

Its all about sync and timing within the client. By the time its sent the sound to your soundcard its already on the next 10 down the road, they pile up and get out of sync with whats actually happening, the client tries to compensate by forcing video rendering to slow down causing the stutter effect, and eventually things get so out of line it just freezes until it finds a new start point or crashes completely.

Funny enough one of my tests was actually disabling sound on my machine instead of just in the client. Same exact effect only the client crashed and threw a sound error about 20 seconds in to a big battle.

Coincidence? I dont think so.

Well it seems I'm not the only one to see this issue then. Maybe we can hope they can fix it now.

Very interesting that globally disabling sound would cause such a hard crash. Seems like your able to easily reproduce this, wonder why it hasn't been fixed?

My guess is that the client requires some sort of internal confirmation that sound X has played before Y can proceed. Like I said, sync problem.

Kartalin

This is a sound issue but not directly related to original topic.

In our recent raiding parties, we've found that we occasionally lose our sound when fighting a DC squad, but interestingly it hasn't happened when we've fought against Pacters. So we are left to question whether it's something that is being done on purpose or as a direct result of DC actions. Or it could just be a coincidence. Does 3 times still count as such? Regardless, it's annoying af. Doing a relog can fix it or a reloadui usually gets the sound coming back 10 mins later.

JTorus

Has anyone attempted to run the program/process at a higher priority?

RinaldoGandolphi

JTorus wrote: »

Has anyone attempted to run the program/process at a higher priority?

I have, but it never made any difference for me.

JTorus

woodsro wrote: »

JTorus wrote: »

Has anyone attempted to run the program/process at a higher priority?

I have, but it never made any difference for me.

Figured it wouldn't. I've got a pretty robust system, but I started paying closer attention to where and how some of the things lag out and drop off.

The 'upgraded' lighting effects seems (one of the earlier updates) where it began with the Cyrodiil lag. As mentioned in some other thread sound 'backlogs'. When you die or TP it all comes out at once like theater food after the film's done.

Software and coding isn't my strong suit, but this is indicative of old school TSR's, I know the game was marketed towards low to high end system builds, I suspect some of the issue may be some self governing inside the code to ensure it doesn't crap out the hardware. In doing so, it bottlenecks itself while hardware sits around whistling dixie.

I think the introduction of lowering particle effect distance was an attempt to mitigate this issue, but it seems to happen in close quarters, so the distance thing isn't the issue, likely that the effects that didn't process won't expire and eventually get processed through when something else triggers it.

ZOS_GinaBruno

Rylana wrote: »

Yeah i noticed the same thing a long time ago OP, and reporting it in detail to ZOS.

Its all about sync and timing within the client. By the time its sent the sound to your soundcard its already on the next 10 down the road, they pile up and get out of sync with whats actually happening, the client tries to compensate by forcing video rendering to slow down causing the stutter effect, and eventually things get so out of line it just freezes until it finds a new start point or crashes completely.

Funny enough one of my tests was actually disabling sound on my machine instead of just in the client. Same exact effect only the client crashed and threw a sound error about 20 seconds in to a big battle.

Coincidence? I dont think so.

Could you list out the exact steps you took to disable your sounds (both in-game and on your machine) so we can try and reproduce this? That would help us a lot. Thanks!

Rylana

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Rylana wrote: »

Yeah i noticed the same thing a long time ago OP, and reporting it in detail to ZOS.

Its all about sync and timing within the client. By the time its sent the sound to your soundcard its already on the next 10 down the road, they pile up and get out of sync with whats actually happening, the client tries to compensate by forcing video rendering to slow down causing the stutter effect, and eventually things get so out of line it just freezes until it finds a new start point or crashes completely.

Funny enough one of my tests was actually disabling sound on my machine instead of just in the client. Same exact effect only the client crashed and threw a sound error about 20 seconds in to a big battle.

Coincidence? I dont think so.

Could you list out the exact steps you took to disable your sounds (both in-game and on your machine) so we can try and reproduce this? That would help us a lot. Thanks!

In machine (Win7 32bit)

- Control panel
- Hardware and sound
- Device Manager
- Sound Video and Game Controllers
- Realtek High Definition Audio (this may vary based on machine)
- Right click
- Disable

Start ESO
- Settings
- Audio
- On

Go play Cyrodiil at 9pm East coast time, anywhere there is a big fight on Thornblade. Make sure its thornblade at prime.

Get into fight, watch client stutter and crash.

To check with sound ON.

Repeat steps in Machine except last one to Enable

Start ESO with sound ON

Go back to Cyrodiil. Observe game desyncing and stuttering. It wont crash (usually) but your sound will go out.

To check with sound OFF (in game but sound enabled)

Just turn sound off in ESO settings/audio/checkbox.


The important part is you need to be in a high traffic situation to test it, so whoever on QA is going to do this Gina, please make sure they go to Cyrodiil at primetime during a large keep battle.

ZOS_GinaBruno

Thanks so much, @Rylana! We'll pass all this along now.

RinaldoGandolphi

@ZOS_GinaBruno‌

Thanks for looking into this Gina, I appreciate it.

I also want to add that a few moments ago I looked at my shader.cooked file under Documents/Elder Scrolls Online and it had grown to a whopping 89mb in size. It has never surpassed 8mb in months.

I do not know what caused it to become so large as I haven't touched my graphic settings in game for months. Perhaps this is related to the sound issue somehow?

Thanks again!

saintmurray

Wow that's some really good info maybe this is contributing to all our problems? Could it be a backlog of sounds in an area where there are lots of people making sounds creating a backlog on the megaservers processor? I'm no computer expert but it seems we have all been blaming aoe spamming (the light generated/lighting patch), when rather maybe its a sounds that aoes make...

Cathexis

edit; or its fixed >< lol

themizario

ESO is like your first car. You keep dumping money in to it when you could be putting that money in to a new car that works.

/derail thread

What was something odd you had to do get an old car started or keep running?

Had one car it would die taking corners so I would have to throw it in neutral and be ready to start it as I came out the corner.

Love this game though. Ill be here popping neutral and starting it till the wheels fall off

NotSo

Well that's probably what's causing me to crash every couple hours, seems like it's on a timer as it doesn't matter what I'm doing when crash occurs. Going to swim through some of those eso files when I get back home (in febuary).

frozywozy

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Thanks so much, @Rylana! We'll pass all this along now.

This is probably the biggest effort I have seen to listen and cooperate with players feedbacks so far. Well done, I hope it keeps going in the same direction.

Rylana

saintmurray wrote: »

Wow that's some really good info maybe this is contributing to all our problems? Could it be a backlog of sounds in an area where there are lots of people making sounds creating a backlog on the megaservers processor? I'm no computer expert but it seems we have all been blaming aoe spamming (the light generated/lighting patch), when rather maybe its a sounds that aoes make...

I think its exactly that but not just sounds. Overall clearing of previous actions seems to be a global thing.

It is as if the game just keeps on chugging forward and never clears the back end. Sounds that were still queued to play, visuals that never got cleared from memory.

A couple of good examples.

- The yellow bubble left on the ground by some Nova ultimates. They persist until a hard restart of the client. Why? because they are still rendered in either memory or pagefile. The game never goes back and whitewash/re-rerender areas once they load.
- During sieges, siege engine sounds start to stack on each other. They often also desync under heavy load. I have seen sieges where the wall is going down, I can see the ballistae down below me, then the game stutters, and 20 bolts hit the wall simultaneously. This is the game catching up after something hitched. However, the sounds never play. This is usually around the time my sound totally stops working as well.
- Perma-repentance trails. Ive seen people with a repentance trail after firing the skill that is hundreds if not thousands of meters long, stretching all the way to the edge of visual range. It just follows them everywhere. Its sort of like the nova remnant.
- Living players that appear dead, riding horses, moving around sliding on the ground. The game never goes back to check their render state. They remain dead forever, leaving those who might not realize they are actually alive to keep attempting to rez them.


Essentially the game just caches actions, they get stored in whatever medium that is in use (some to volatile memory, some to pagefile.) People with SSDs even report similar issues, so from what I can tell, its the client not cleaning up after itself.

Now granted, the older your machine, the more out of date the hardware, the worse the experience, but no one I have spoken to thus far has ever reported a seamless game, even with monster rigs that were built last year.

JTorus

Rylana wrote: »

I think its exactly that but not just sounds. Overall clearing of previous actions seems to be a global thing.

It is as if the game just keeps on chugging forward and never clears the back end. Sounds that were still queued to play, visuals that never got cleared from memory.

I bet that's the problem, and I think I can understand why.

PvE, you're constantly in and out of instances. Quests pull you back and forth, from dungeons, to the topside, from one quest phase to another. Each time, the game essentially reloads, thus your character gets pulled away from one instance/phase to another. The surrounding world, your skills, all of it gets a quick refresh.

Can't do that in Cyrodiil, It'd be exploited. (Remember /stuck in beta?) Your toon would be plucked away into thin air before everyone's eyes.

I bet it isn't a matter of necessarily stopping the backlog, it's just the measures they have in place that normally do it are suppressed in Cyrodiil as it'd upset the mechanics of PvP.

This likely ties into the transitus system inside Cyrodiil, and plays a part into the removal of forward camps. They were a mobile version of this transitus system, and often when I either res or port to a transitus shrine, I hear a jumble of sounds (usually like a clunk) as if all my backlogged sounds are pushed through at once. As you pointed out, I bet it isn't limited to sound, but all effects. If my particle range were infinite, I bet sparkles and beams of light would process at Bleakers while I rez at Alessia.

I suspect the attempt is to use the transitus system to in part do a 'refresh' of the environment to your client. It seems pretty successful as usually any performance issues start to clear up. I can see where Forward Camps utilizing this feature created unnecessary overhead on the server end to ensure those constant rezzes were refreshing.

If we rewind all the way back to beta some of us may recall that for a while there, porting in Cyrodiil was just flat out impossible. You'd get stuck in a long loading screen. PvE side things were dandy. Cyrodiil is one huge singular instance (dungeons aside) whereas all the PvE places are segmented.

If the in-game house keeping is done in part through porting, it would explain why lots of us suffer these glitches, since Cyrodiil is massive, we see significantly more action in it, and port less on a 'suppressed' transport system. (So as not to allow player exploitation)

I feel sorry for the poor soul who has to figure this issue out.


(edit, some words, grammar, punctuation, coffee)

Cathexis

Rylana wrote: »

Essentially the game just caches actions, they get stored in whatever medium that is in use (some to volatile memory, some to pagefile.) People with SSDs even report similar issues, so from what I can tell, its the client not cleaning up after itself.

Now granted, the older your machine, the more out of date the hardware, the worse the experience, but no one I have spoken to thus far has ever reported a seamless game, even with monster rigs that were built last year.

hmm... I see large improvements when forcing memory trimming on my system while playing... could be related although I'm not sure if the trims are program specific, but usually if I'm running eso, I'm only running eso, chrome, and ts.

Rylana

JTorus wrote: »

Rylana wrote: »

I think its exactly that but not just sounds. Overall clearing of previous actions seems to be a global thing.

It is as if the game just keeps on chugging forward and never clears the back end. Sounds that were still queued to play, visuals that never got cleared from memory.

I bet that's the problem, and I think I can understand why.

PvE, you're constantly in and out of instances. Quests pull you back and forth, from dungeons, to the topside, from one quest phase to another. Each time, the game essentially reloads, thus your character gets pulled away from one instance/phase to another. The surrounding world, your skills, all of it gets a quick refresh.

Can't do that in Cyrodiil, It'd be exploited. (Remember /stuck in beta?) Your toon would be plucked away into thin air before everyone's eyes.

I bet it isn't a matter of necessarily stopping the backlog, it's just the measures they have in place that normally do it are suppressed in Cyrodiil as it'd upset the mechanics of PvP.

This likely ties into the transitus system inside Cyrodiil, and plays a part into the removal of forward camps. They were a mobile version of this transitus system, and often when I either res or port to a transitus shrine, I hear a jumble of sounds (usually like a clunk) as if all my backlogged sounds are pushed through at once. As you pointed out, I bet it isn't limited to sound, but all effects. If my particle range were infinite, I bet sparkles and beams of light would process at Bleakers while I rez at Alessia.

I suspect the attempt is to use the transitus system to in part do a 'refresh' of the environment to your client. It seems pretty successful as usually any performance issues start to clear up. I can see where Forward Camps utilizing this feature created unnecessary overhead on the server end to ensure those constant rezzes were refreshing.

If we rewind all the way back to beta some of us may recall that for a while there, porting in Cyrodiil was just flat out impossible. You'd get stuck in a long loading screen. PvE side things were dandy. Cyrodiil is one huge singular instance (dungeons aside) whereas all the PvE places are segmented.

If the in-game house keeping is done in part through porting, it would explain why lots of us suffer these glitches, since Cyrodiil is massive, we see significantly more action in it, and port less on a 'suppressed' transport system. (So as not to allow player exploitation)

I feel sorry for the poor soul who has to figure this issue out.


(edit, some words, grammar, punctuation, coffee)

Yep. I have long believed "infinite loading screen" was the game engine trying to resolve the instance for a fresh render of the map.

Every time I get infinite load the game (using resource monitor to watch this) literally dumps and reloads every single dat file again just like on startup. The problem is that normally one will hitch and never complete, for unknown reasons to me.

If I had to wager a guess, it would be because whatever texture, sound, model, or object it is trying to load in at that moment already existed in memory and never dumped, so it cant proceed with the process until that object dumps out, which can take several minutes (or even never happen).

You can see the same issue when arriving in a location that has been previously cleared and needs to reload again. Youll get a load screen out of nowhere, and it can take 2-30 seconds or even more. Ive actually died to these, because they pop up seemingly at random, and your character is just standing there like a mindless zombie because you cant interact with the environment as it builds.

Fivefivesix

Experienced a problem yesterday. I was in Cyrodiil Thornblade and we were attacking a keep. There was quite a few people there zerging around and I died and spawned at a different keep.

When i respawned I had no sound so I just kept playing for a little while without any sound but every once in a while the sound would come back but would sound like I was going through my inventory or attacking someone when I wasnt. It seemed like the sound was coming back from the previous battle. I thought that was kind of strange but continued on.

About 1/2 hour later I ended up in another zerg fight still with no sound and in the middle of it I lagged out and everyone around me stopped moving but I could still run around. I couldn't do any attacks or anything but was able to move around while people stood still in whatever attacking position they were in. About 1 minute later the screen went black then I was at the log in screen.

I have had this happen to me once before where I ended up with no sound and lagged out to the point where the game crashed. Sucks because then I have to wait in queue forever.

I think this thread has some potential to find a solution to this problem and wanted to share my experiences.

Thanks

Goldie

@Rylana During your testing of toggling sound on and off in the bigger battles, at any point does the sound ever seem to "catch up" to the action and fire off a dozen or so sound FX at once?

This is what I keep getting;

I'm in Cyrodiil and I engage in a fairly large battle, say... a resource capture with a few enemy players guarding it.

All of the sudden the sound just quits in the middle of battle.

The game continues, laggy as usual, sometimes for 10 or 15 minutes after the sound quits.

Then comes the BIG lag spike where the game freezes completely for around 3-5 seconds, and BOOM the sound effects for every ability I've cast since the sound quit, fire off simultaneously!

I didn't have this issue until the last update.

Rylana

Goldie wrote: »

@Rylana During your testing of toggling sound on and off in the bigger battles, at any point does the sound ever seem to "catch up" to the action and fire off a dozen or so sound FX at once?

This is what I keep getting;

I'm in Cyrodiil and I engage in a fairly large battle, say... a resource capture with a few enemy players guarding it.

All of the sudden the sound just quits in the middle of battle.

The game continues, laggy as usual, sometimes for 10 or 15 minutes after the sound quits.

Then comes the BIG lag spike where the game freezes completely for around 3-5 seconds, and BOOM the sound effects for every ability I've cast since the sound quit, fire off simultaneously!

I didn't have this issue until the last update.

Thats what I mean by "stuttering."

Your explanation is exactly what I was describing. The game pauses to play catch up. it hitches, and everything fires off sound-wise (sometimes visually as well)

KaneK899ub17_ESO

Rylana wrote: »

snipped to save space

I'm on a six year old rig with an HD 6670 in it or something and I literally never experience these issues. Guildies, though, seem to complain about this stuff a lot. Many of them have strong rigs less than 2 years old. People here with amazing rigs seem to complain about the same things. I'm not convinced it's purely a client issue.