1.5.4 breaks overlays

[styky]

Issue Type (Required):

Crash - During Play

Issue Description (Required):

Since 1.5.4 I am unable to use an overlay without it frequently crashing.

I have been using multiple overlays while playing Darktide since release;

Steam Overlay
Afterburner/Rivatuner Statistics Server
Lumia HUD
etc.

Since 1.5.4 - aside from the frame pacing issues causing stutters and making 300fps look like 30 - while using any overlay the game will hang, completely stop responding and then crash, if it crashes cleanly it complains about Steam Overlay.

This is similar to the hangs I would get previously when I was not in full screen for any length of time prior to 1.5.4.

This is again another reason why forcing window borderless on people is a terrible idea.

[PC] Do You Use Mods? (Optional):

Yes, and I’ve tried disabling them

Reproduction Rate (Required):

Common (<50%)

Platform (Required):

Steam (PC)

Upload Supporting Evidence (Optional):

[FatsharkLev]

I’ve let the development team know and we’ll investigate. Apologies for the inconvenience.

[Axloss]

I will look at the hang and see if I can get any information from it, but since game overlay is not our application we can’t debug it or fix the issue.

[Axloss]

sadly the only information i can get is that gameoverlay asks for cursor position which isn’t really anything i expect it to stall on.

could be sync issue that gameoverlay waits on present which is done by FSR in this case.

I would see if disabling overlay or FSR helps and if it does report it back. We can report it back to AMD if it’s due to FSR.

[styky]

I don’t think FSR is the cause, I don’t like any of these upscaling methods so I generally avoid them and reduce my settings to get a good frame rate. They make the textures look awful for a start - demonstrated here (DLSS) Twitch and here (FSR) Twitch

I have tried using them since 1.5.4 and they do increase the reported FPS but make the frame timing issue worse, it definitely does not feel like more FPS due to the stutters, and the textures look muddy and blurred with LOD pop in being Fallout76 levels of bad.

Honestly I completely lost the impetus to start up the game for almost 2 weeks because in the current state it’s virtually unplayable for me without a lot of messing with settings and even then it’s not as good as it used to be.

I spent another day, another fresh install of windows 11, all the required drivers brand new, fresh steam install, fresh darktide install. I even made sure the firmware for my monitor is up to date and swapped out the DP cable for a brand new one.

I played a few other games to make sure it’s not my hardware; Cyberpunk, Doom Eternal, Titanfall 2, Hitman WoA, GTA5 with shaders, and fully ray traced 4k Minecraft with shaders in full screen*** all run fine and smooth, and I can stream them just like I did previously without any performance loss or issues.

***I note “in full screen” above, because just like Darktide, if I try to play heavily modified minecraft with a shader pack raytracing in a window, I get the same frame timing issues and stutters.

I started up DT and tried the default “high” settings with no ray tracing like I used to select and it’s just unplayable.

Adjust some things down and it gets better but not perfect, honestly this has been my favorite game to play for months since the tree updates and I just want to play it again like I could before.

I have over 3k hours up until 1.5.4 hit, and suddenly the game performs so poorly it is no longer just playable “out of the box” like it was - it was never perfect, but it was a good deal better than it is now.

The frame pacing is now so unstable I can no longer use the Adaptive sync on my Samsung Neo G7 monitor, with it off it stutters more frequently but less severely and introduces frame tearing, when on it stutters less frequently but more severely, but of course no tearing.

The Input lag - the same perceptible input lag that I would notice and immediately know the game had started in windowed rather than full screen prior to 1.5.4. It’s like playing on a cheap bluetooth mouse with polling issues.

And of course, the reason I started this thread - I can no longer use the Steam Overlay or any of my audience interaction overlays for jump scares etc. without it crashing with overlay errors.

I know exactly how to fix all these issues.

Give us who need it the option of full screen again - it just worked.

[styky]

If you really want to solve this and keep windowed mode;

If I stand and look out the window the far side of the mission board and wiggle the camera, the game is fine.

Stand in front of the mission board and look back into the Mourningstar and wiggle the camera, frame rate is so unstable it causes stutters, and the GPU usage drops as low as 60% sometimes.

You can clearly see an “arching” effect of the FPS graph, the lowest points are my mouse at rest, the fps sweeps up as I accelerate the mouse in one direction, it then starts hitching and the average drops until I stop moving the mouse and it stabilizes momentarily before I move back the other way.

This never used to happen. It used to be almost the opposite, it used to have lower utilization looking out of the window and higher looking back into the mourningstar.

I may not know much of how this stuff works in the background, but as a disabled shut in who does nothing except game, I know when what I play is broken.

[styky]

I’ve managed to work out a fix myself for several of the problems introduced by 1.5.4 so I am really only posting to inform others, as I know from reading the bug and performance feedback sections that I am not alone, but Fatshark doesn’t actually care to accept responsibility for their changes breaking things.

Completely removing Xbox Gaming overlay and disabling MS Overlay capture system from Windows 11 allows me to use overlays in Darktide without crashing again.

Get-AppxPackage Microsoft.XboxGamingOverlay | Remove-AppxPackage

reg add HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\GameDVR /f /t REG_DWORD /v "AppCaptureEnabled" /d 0
reg add HKEY_CURRENT_USER\System\GameConfigStore /f /t REG_DWORD /v "GameDVR_Enabled" /d 0

Longest I managed to use an overlay since 1.5.4 was less than one match, sometimes I wouldn’t even get into the match.

After doing the above it’s not crashed in 8hrs of playtime with Steam, Rivatuner and LumiaHUD all active and doing their thing.

Doing this also slightly improved the frame timing issues, but I am going to make another post on that as it takes a bit more to fix and I am still making sure the fix I worked out has no superfluous steps or dangerous instructions.

[Axloss]

yeeez,

sadly this is why I’m not fan of overlays, they hook into our application and when they cause issues we can’t debug them and usually the maintainer of the overlay doesn’t respond when we ask why it crashes.

The conclusion is that this is still an issue? but not as bad? I will ask our QA to reproduce this.

Stand in front of the mission board and look back into the Mourningstar and wiggle the camera, frame rate is so unstable it causes stutters, and the GPU usage drops as low as 60% sometimes.

Im guessing you already following some of the advice here?

Demystifying Fullscreen Optimizations - DirectX Developer Blog

[styky]

Yeah I’ve never been a fan of overlays either, it’s only since becoming a “streamer” through peer pressure I’ve needed them at all, and only conceded to using them with all the talk of Windows improvements to allow them to work better.

I did follow the advice on the DX dev blog, to start with it felt as though toggling FSO on the compat tab wasn’t doing anything at all, but after doing the other steps and trying it again it definitely made some difference.

So my current “fix” to get back to pre 1.5.4 performance in 4k;

Removed the Xbox Overlay and MS Overlay systems as described above - stops overlay crashing and improves stuttering and laggy feeling.

Opened the DT Launcher settings, reset them, and turn everything off/disabled, native res, default threads, start the game and close it again - this was just to help with the problem solving initially, as it rules out all the up scaling tech etc but it seems to make the rest go more smoothly so I’m leaving it in.

Disabled Shader Caching entirely through the nVidia Control Panel or AMD Adrenaline, I chose to disable it system wide but doing so just for Darktide if you can should be fine.

Deleted Dartktide shader cache files - this with the previous step reduced stuttering significantly and helped with the bad LOD pop.

Disable Full Screen optimizations on Darktide.exe - cleaned up last of the stuttering.

Start Darktide and check performance.

If all has gone well you should have a nice jagged FPS and frame time graph as you look around the Mourningstar, but with no spikes or flat spots, no stutters or hitching, and minimal LOD pop.

(I also removed a bunch of the other crap that comes with Windows like Edge, Office, Cortana, widgets, themes, the rest of the Xbox ecosystem, basically anything that isn’t actually needed for the PC to work - this was an instant performance boost in general.)

Here is what wiggling the camera looks like in roughly the same place as before with minimal settings in native 4k, I don’t have any of the lag, stutters, hitching, tearing, or texture pop in that I had previously, and the graphs are far more “natural” looking if that makes any sense.

Turning on DLSS, again wiggling back and forth in roughly the same place with the above changes (and back in Default “High” with RTX enabled!) gives the expected performance boost and no longer causes such awful stutters or LOD pop, there is still an almost imperceptible input lag compared to no DLSS but I expect the majority of people would never notice.

There were still a few things popping (the seals on some distant surfaces) but this is the same as pre 1.5.4 so I bumped mesh up to 3.0 like I had it before and that was enough to stop it from catching my eye.

Not tried FSR yet (I used to use that over DLSS due to the input lag), gonna spend the rest of today playing/streaming then mess around some more tonight.

Looks soooo much better, all the textures are present and correct, the frame rate is stable and it performs as it should!