Ghost of Tsushima DIRECTOR'S CUT PC Performance thread
- Thread starter hlhbk
- Start date
Only had it happen once early on, but now it keeps happening, and I'll have to restart the game for it to work again. I tried switching to mouse when the controller wasn't registering the trigger, and that didn't work either. It's just random.
It's nothing great, but we officially have our first texture mod, it appears.
www.nexusmods.com
Green Dye for Broken Armor
This mod can change the red broken armor to green color
www.nexusmods.com
I disable steam input with the game to get Dualsense support, but I'd still be very interested in checking that out. I always suspected with Death Stranding it was some sort of input issue since it reports a flat time graph even when it is visibly stuttering, only happens in certain areas as well, you can play for quite a bit without the issue showing up.
What framerate are you running at? I ask because the dev thinks its a high framerate issue. 90% of my standoff's are broken and I'm running around 120fps.
Away on holiday unfortunately, but it should be fairly easy to reproduce. Just stand far away from a fire or one of the fox trees with the green sparkles, and flip back and forth between 4K + DLAA and 4K + TAA
Just shared a config to the directors cut page, should be under the community tab. Might need to faff around with in game sensitivity, stick deadzones and response curve, and it will never feel just like an analog stick but I played for a good few hours like this at 60 fps in game on a 165hz VRR display with basically no noticeable stutter. I think I used ~7 or 10 sensitivity in game and then dialed the stick sensitivity up in steam input.
It's nothing great, but we officially have our first texture mod, it appears.
Green Dye for Broken Armor
This mod can change the red broken armor to green color
Game's been out for five days and still no CJ mod? Man...
Awesome, just downloaded it and had a look. I can see how it resolves the usual stutter you get in the game, so frustrating that it was never fixed. But yeah, no dualsense features and the sensitivity curve not feeling as natural as proper stick support, but nevertheless an interesting workaround.
Another bug I've had that I thought was a feature for a while are with the enemies that throw flash bombs. I was thinking it had an effect on your hearing (which may be intended, temporarily), but not hearing sound effects and even story dialogue persists until going to the menu and back.
Only real issues I've had are the Stand off bug, usually if I alt tabbed out but I've found just hitting pause and unpausing fixes it. Only has happened like 4 or 5 times.
Certain audio channels can drop out during combat for a bit. So you'll hear some stuff still but Jin's attacks and enemies don't make any sound. So I think there's some attack or combination of audio that can happen in combat that kills things, but it comes back after a few seconds.
DLAA caused way too much shimmering, so I found the XeSS Native AA to be the best looking image wise, not sure if its the cause of this, but didn't happen early on when I was using DLAA, but now randomly and infrequently for a second or two a black outline of the environment will get frozen overlayed on the screen. So like a faint black filter will remain on screen while the rest of the game is still running.
Last thing is that if I've been playing for a really long time the game does start to have traversal stutters randomly. But it's pretty random and infrequent as well, and sometimes just goes away without having to close and restart.
So overall some very small minor issues. Overall performance otherwise has been pretty excellent on 7700x and 4090. Never bothered to actually check framerate since there was no screen tearing and everything has looked completely smooth without dips or anything and I've got thing set to 120, no FG or DLSS at 4k.
Certain audio channels can drop out during combat for a bit. So you'll hear some stuff still but Jin's attacks and enemies don't make any sound. So I think there's some attack or combination of audio that can happen in combat that kills things, but it comes back after a few seconds.
DLAA caused way too much shimmering, so I found the XeSS Native AA to be the best looking image wise, not sure if its the cause of this, but didn't happen early on when I was using DLAA, but now randomly and infrequently for a second or two a black outline of the environment will get frozen overlayed on the screen. So like a faint black filter will remain on screen while the rest of the game is still running.
Last thing is that if I've been playing for a really long time the game does start to have traversal stutters randomly. But it's pretty random and infrequent as well, and sometimes just goes away without having to close and restart.
So overall some very small minor issues. Overall performance otherwise has been pretty excellent on 7700x and 4090. Never bothered to actually check framerate since there was no screen tearing and everything has looked completely smooth without dips or anything and I've got thing set to 120, no FG or DLSS at 4k.
Yeah, as it says, no fixes for the memory leak/framerate drops and stutter or the standoff bugs. Hopefully that's not too far behind patch 1.
I played a few hours earlier after limiting 90 fps in the Nvidia thingy and no issues with any of the stand-offs I had.
You're not alone. I can't find anyone on survival or story missions. It must be bugged or something. It can't be that dead.
Not saying this is the fix, but if anything like that happens to me, verifying the files is the first thing I try. Maybe a file failed to update.
I will try this next. Limiting frame rates did not fix it for me as I just got it but after locking to 60, but if all I have to do is pause and unpause I can live with that until a fix comes out. If not I might have to wait until they find the cause and patch it.
Honestly, I think I've tried everything mentioned with the standoff bug, and it's just a random thing that can happen right now. Capping framerate, vsync on/off, window/fullscreen, switching input device, changing the setting for hold/press, etc. When it happens, I just quit to the menu and load the game back up. It puts you right there, you just "lose" the random encounter, or start at the autosave at the fort you're attacking or whatever it is.
I'm just taking a hit when the standoff bug happens. Then I spam z to heal up. It's annoying, but I'll deal with it until it's fixed.
weird man, to me, its the perfect port. not a single hitch in 30 hrs of gameplay. nothing. impecable.
So with the new patch I don't seem to be getting the weird stuttering after a long play session anymore, but what I'm getting instead is the audio starts cutting out for one or two seconds and then comes back again reasonably often after a long play session. I guess that's a bit better than stuttering but it's still kind of annoying, lol.
Apologies if this has been discussed already, I've only just gotten around to launching the game for the first time.
Has anyone else been having audio issues whereby the audio itself seems to be rather loud and crackling? I'm only at the beginning of the game but it's what has stood out for me so far.
Edit: This seems to be specifically towards sound effects? Sword slashes, explosion booms, etc.
Has anyone else been having audio issues whereby the audio itself seems to be rather loud and crackling? I'm only at the beginning of the game but it's what has stood out for me so far.
Edit: This seems to be specifically towards sound effects? Sword slashes, explosion booms, etc.
Last edited:
Well, that's about all I can take. Since getting to Iki island, the audio issues are 10x worse. I keep having to restart the game due to the framerate dropping, or sound effects cutting out. Game is so fun I want to finish everything up, but this is some BS.
Yeah, i've had a flawless experience on the main game, 0 bugs and nice performance. But as soon as i went to Iki the audio is completely busted. Its like the center channel is missing half of the time.
Unfortunately as I just have a 60hz display the mouse emulation just replaces the intermittent larger judder with a constant microstutter, however as Atom said 120hz+ displays apparently get good results. Luckily the game allows you to lock the input glyphs to gamepad even if the input jumps to k/m, so it can actually work decently as a workaround.
You're right as well in that it's intermittent, which probably contributes to why it was never caught out of the gate. Made troubleshooting a huge hassle, as I would keep trying different methods, reboot into the game, run around for a bit - whoo hoo, solved it! Then 2 minutes later - ah, fuck.
Really sucks too as aside from some somewhat high CPU usage and the odd actual frametime stutter when traversing in vehicles (which PS5 can also get) Death Stranding performs exceptionally well on PC. But gamepad players, at least on 60hz displays, are perpetually screwed.
I started getting comfortable with Linux gaming largely because I wanted to see if it could fix this issue - back when I thought it was frame pacing. :) Unfortunately, no - in fact I'd say it's even worse under VKD3D. Issues with actual frame pacing, shader and traversal stutter can be helped sometimes when running a game under Linux, but this seems to be a fundamental gamepad/camera code issue in the game and as such, running under Vulkan does nothing so I doubt the Steam Deck would be any different.
Forbidden West, though to a far lesser extent, has a periodic microstutter issue that's not really related to frame delivery either on my PC too, but haven't seen anyone really raise that aside from the issues with enabled Nvidia reflex, but on a 60hz display it occurs to me without reflex. Now Ghost of Tsushima. Damn I hate frame pacing/camera judder issues, I'm like you in that I'm extremely sensitive to this stuff and it just ruins games for me.
I wonder if Intel's recent additions to PresentMon can reveal these in actual numbers so stuff like this doesn't have to be reported anecdotally?
Last edited:
Yeah, the mouse emulation always has that microstutter sadly, it's noticeable even at higher framerates. I find that coming from the console space to PC gaming that motion smoothness is so much harder to achieve. I think most people just don't notice these issues funnily enough, I for example don't like gaming at high refresh rates above 60 most of the time because the slightest frametime spike is much more noticeable as a stutter than running at lower framerates.
I find that in most games VRR doesn't work well for me either, as somebody that spent a lot of money on a VRR setup in hopes that it would solve my issues, I found myself very disappointed in the performance. Even in games with pretty consistent frametimes I can still notice ever so slight motion judder when relying on VRR with an uncapped framerate, and in motion I notice every little stutter that VRR doesn't catch.
So for me motion smoothness is of utmost importance to the presentation of a game, so in an era of traversal stutters, shader compilations stutters, and all these other framepacing issues, PC gaming is in a rough place for somebody like myself. I was shocked how no other techtubers were even reporting on shader compilation stutters before DF brought the issue to attention.
Fortnite is in a better place now (although still not great), but a few years back I was absolutely flawed by the abhorrent shader compilation stutters. Every person that would exit the bus at the beginning of a match would make the game freeze for literal seconds. The Switch version had less stutters than a freaking 3090. Mind blowing that so many people didn't notice until DF reported on the issue.
The audio drop-outs (SFX, music keeps playing) started at the second part of the map for me, 15h on the first map were flawless in this regard. This and the stand-off bug need to be fixed asap.
Nixxes are quick to respond to a support ticket and follow up, so it seems like they are really trying to figure out that audio issue. Responded to try and disable spacial audio in Windows as a workaround, so I'll give it a shot later.
Right there with you. I've said the same thing literally verbatim about the PC DIY youtuber space many times over at Beyond3D, it shouldn't have taken a multiplatform outlet like Digital Foundry to reveal this, let alone be largely the sole flagbearer for this cause. I don't give a shit about how a $1500 card delivers better framerate "averages" or 1% lows (hell, even .01 lows can be misleading) if so many games exhibit such inconsistent frame delivery - hell it's one of the reasons I haven't been compelled to purchase a 4070 and still chug along with my 3060 atm.
There is perhaps somewhat of a conflict with those channels and spending the time/resources to educate users on what effectively is a software problem considering so often they seem to act as hardware product catalogues, but I really wish some of them would dedicate at least one episode to discussing the issue of shader stutter and possible solutions the industry is working on (API/engine evolution, ubershaders, etc). I think that kind of video would get a ton of views.
Thankfully the winds do seem to be at least blowing in the direction of prioritizing consistent frame delivery in GPU reviews, at least with some outlets. Steve from Gamers Nexus has raised the problem of the usual framerate metrics being inadequate several times, and there was that video with Intel on their Presentmon update and how it can detect animation consistency errors, so he's definitely moving in that direction. They also did a technical review of Dragons Dogma 2 a couple of months back, and that's the key I think - we need these outlets to do more technical reviews of actual games across various IHV's, DF is pretty much the only one atm.
"I don't get those stutters"
"Disable Control Flow Guard"
"Turn on Triple Buffering"
Some don't care, some are clueless, but what you see often is places like Steam forums (aside from you know, the nazis) is people have endless 'fixes' for problems like these and so often it's a result of them just running through the same area after trying something and noticing it's smoother - yes, because their shaders for that area are now compiled or the traversal stutter is lessened a bit due to that area still being resident in their cache. Hence why PC youtubers need to do a better job of educating their userbase on this subject.
I'll give you a recent example. I wanted to play through Dues Ex: Human Revolution again. I have the original release on Steam and the Directors Cut on GoG, so I installed the GoG version. Yikes, brutal stutter. The Steam version however, is basically flawless. The DC was ported from the WiiU version by another studio, while the original Human Revolution release (with the gold filter) was done by Nixxes. I understood the WiiU version was based on an earlier build than the one Nixxes ported, so I assumed that was the reason for the shit performance.
There's a thread on Steam entitled "100% stutter fix!!" for the Directors Cut, and it's basically just vsync changes. A lot of replies with "Thanks, this worked for me!". Except... it doesn't. The real reason the DC stutters so much more than the original though? It has no shader precompilation. Nixxes original port does, you can clearly see it doing that in level loads by watching your CPU spike on a clean cache, but the DC version has none - it's all just-in-time shader compilation, like your typical AA UE4 game. So an entire support thread of people repeating a snake oil 'fix' because they're just re-running the same are with compiled shaders.
Particularly frustrating is that if you're dissatisfied with AAA releases, the AA/indie scene can even be worse in this area, a problem I've tried to cover with my The #StutterStruggle Is Real playlist. I'll probably expand on it in the future but I'm limited by just using Nvidia Shadowplay as it always seems to add random frame pacing issues in the recorded video (or youtube does), so I usually try to to stick to stutters that can really be shown on a frametime graph. So there are a bunch of games with vsync/camera stutter issues that don't show up in frametimes that I can't accurately demonstrate - wonder what's up with that, but it's a problem I've had with Shadowplay recordings across several systems so I dunno.
Last edited:
I ran into that issue with the Director's Cut of Deus Ex a few years back and was dismayed to see that I couldn't buy the original on Steam. I think outside of the YouTube scene your average game journalist is also not privy to these sorts of technical issues, especially with PC games.
I listen to a variety of podcasts from more traditional outlets and the only people I ever hear talk about any of this stuff is Digital Foundry consistently, they're truly an invaluable source of good for these sorts of technical details. I truly feel a lot of games only have a shader pre-compiler in the first place because of their coverage and thank goodness for that.
I also totally agree with the indie scene being even more of a wild west. Disco Elysium, the critical darling, has to run at or a multiple of 50hz to avoid constant stutter with the camera. It's a common issue with Unity games, and isn't fixable on consoles. Bewildering that these issues go unnoticed by so many, but in a way they probably got it better, we're cursed with the knowledge, once you see it you kinda can't unsee it type thing.
I've also struggled with showing off a good demonstration of these sorts of stutters that can't be caught by frametime graphs. I've contemplated literally recording the screen and doing a slomo playback to demonstrate the more nefarious framepacing issues that aren't detected by your software monitors.
Last edited:
They sold the rights to it I think which is why the original was pulled, however you can still get it from cdkeys, albeit not the DLC.
Yep, same with Dave the Diver. How a game was built and devs didn't notice the default Unity tic rate problem in late 2023 is baffling, Unity (apparently) addressed this years ago.
Last edited:
Yeah... I don't experience these issues because I don't have them. To see people making generalizations about these things is infuriating. That is targeted at both camps. I am very sensitive to all this bullshit, that's why I run the system I run and spend hours in .ini file, engine editing, and hex editing tools to accommodate my needs.
How about people just state their issues or non-issues and not attack each other about them? There are damn near an infinite amount of configurations with different tweaks from different vendors. It is really difficult to pinpoint root causes.
Everyone comes here to talk about how well or how bad their setup runs things without listing what they hardware have, what vendor, what clocks, what bios, etc... I'm guilty of not providing the information, but I don't go around demeaning people about their experience whether they are positive or negative. With that said, I mainly provide graphical tweaks for games I do try to provide performance solutions when I can here and on the STEAM forums.
Edit: A bit off topic, but Fuck Koei Tecmo games. Especially Omega Force. They blatantly make low effort ports and never fix shit. At least these other devs try to fix their games.
How about people just state their issues or non-issues and not attack each other about them? There are damn near an infinite amount of configurations with different tweaks from different vendors. It is really difficult to pinpoint root causes.
Everyone comes here to talk about how well or how bad their setup runs things without listing what they hardware have, what vendor, what clocks, what bios, etc... I'm guilty of not providing the information, but I don't go around demeaning people about their experience whether they are positive or negative. With that said, I mainly provide graphical tweaks for games I do try to provide performance solutions when I can here and on the STEAM forums.
Edit: A bit off topic, but Fuck Koei Tecmo games. Especially Omega Force. They blatantly make low effort ports and never fix shit. At least these other devs try to fix their games.
Last edited:
In reference to the camera stutter issue that I noticed and was mentioned in the DF video. I have personally tried multiple different combinations between displays and computers and have found every version to have the issue. I can also report that I was able to point it out to my friend who also noticed, of course there still might be hardware combinations out there where these issues don't present, but it's clearly an issue with the game that should be fixed since it seems to affect a lot of common setups.
May I ask if you're using the in-game vsync? Are you relying on VRR? And if you're playing with kb/m or controller?
I only have to guess what this is referencing as you're not quoting anyone, but if it's in relation to the last few posts between myself and Mr Punished, the discussion obviously has extended beyond this game in particular and is speaking of things such as shader/traversal stutter, and no attention to .ini engine edits (often erroneous solutions to these issues as well) will address those types of problems.
This game, and Nixxes games in general, don't suffer from shader stutter so those specific critiques don't necessarily apply here, but the outgrowth of conversation stemmed from GOT's camera stutter with gamepad in particular.
Provide some context, if you've got a specific problem with something we've said then address it specifically - who is being 'attacked' here?
We've both been quite specific in talking about the examples of games with certain problems and the exact problems they have. Your system will have camera stutter with a gamepad in Death Stranding. You will get shader stutter in the games that have been mentioned. As Alex from DF has said often, "You do not own a magic system".
The 'fixes' touted out on forums for these types of issues have basically become tropes at this point, hence the 'control flow guard' being a running joke now. Like I said, some people just aren't sensitive to certain framerate anomalies, but there is a certain level of gaslighting that can go on when people don't know how to properly evaluate issues such as shader stutter and lead people down a rabbit hole because they don't know basic stuff like how to clear their cache before each test. It's often not done with malice, but just misunderstanding, hence I want other channels other than DF to actually explain it and have a guide to actually help people narrow down the cause of these performance issues.
That doesn't mean there aren't any legitimate tweaks you can do for games, there are a ton! Lord knows fast sync and rivatuner/SpecialK have saved many games with shit internal framerate caps*, and that's not to mention the PC's biggest strength, the mods to not only add content but fix lingering issues with games. And yes, there are plenty of poorly maintained/configured systems out there, but these problems we've been discussing can occur on pristine installs with default clocks.
*(I would argue btw that even if a game's frame pacing can be fixed with utilities like RT or SpecialK, that's still a "game problem", as they shouldn't be necessary in the first place and it should not be expected for your typical PC gamer to know the ins and outs of those apps just to get proper pacing -let alone 'spending hours' in .ini editing. I mean that's a damning statement on the health of PC gaming if you think that's something that should actually be required before someone should be able to complain about a games performance!)
Things such as the clocks of your GPU, the vendor, and your bios mean absolutely nothing wrt to the problems we're talking about. Your BIOS won't affect a game not precompiling shaders. It won't fix a 50hz Unity engine tick rate. It won't fix a gamepad camera stutter issue. It will not remedy a game blocking the render thread when it tries transfer a gigabyte of assets across the PCIE bus into vram.
Last edited:
The game has been playing great for me. I'm not very far into it though. I have yet to encounter the Standoff Bug ya'll are referring to. I have settings maxed, with 120fps.
I grabbed a copy to test, and yup - camera stutter here too, just like DF's video showed. This is more constant, but it's also somewhat similar to what I see in Forbidden West too.
It's likely not something you're going to notice that much unless you're using a gamepad to slowly pan the scene, but it's definitely there on my rig. If you can recognize that microstutter in the timestamped video linked above and you claim you don't see that in your game then fine, it may not happen with every system - but if you can't see the stutter in that video, then you're just not sensitive to it. There are larger skips in that video but there's also a very fine constant microjudder that's exactly what I see constantly when panning.
60hz display, 3060, latest drivers. PCIE4 16X so it shouldn't be the issue with frametimes being affected when running a card in 3.0 8X.
Tried both with and without Nvidia reflex, also Rivatuner and Special K framerate caps - however unlike you, Special K does not fix it for me.
Special K will actually report the microstutters, you can see the small grey blips on the frametime graph at the bottom, even though they're not significant enough to cause any actual framerate fluctuation.
Last edited:
The Special K framerate cap doesn't work for me, but Special K's vsync at 60hz is the only thing I've found that works. It's also a rather temperamental solution since sometimes I load the game and it still has the stutter making me need to restart the game to fix the issue, and if I change any graphical settings at all in the game then I get stutters.
I'm playing on a 144hz screen, but I mostly run at 120hz and use 1/2 vsync for most games. With Ghost of Tsushima supporting multiple vsync combinations I was initially excited hoping I wouldn't need to tinker outside the game to get a good performance, but sadly I noticed the slight stutters with the in-game vsync options. I tried profile inspector's 1/2 vsync and full vsync at 60hz and got even worse performance, I then tried combining those setups with a rivatuner 60fps cap which I have had some success within the past, it did actually make it a bit smoother, but there were still inconsistent and perceptible little stutters.
For Special K I also tried the framerate limiter to no avail, and the 1/2 vsync options, and just about every combination I could think of before just about giving up. Only after messing around with the SKIF injector and launching the game with Special K at 60hz full vsync on was I able to get a smooth resolve. Even now and again I still get little microstutters intermittently, but those happen once or twice over an hour play session, much better than the constant camera stutters.
It's not an elegant solution, and my friend also wasn't able to get it work, so I can only report back what has worked for me. I really don't know what's causing this issue for Ghost of Tsushima, I have seen reports from other people noticing the camera stutters, which does to me point to it being something that most likely affects everyone but is just subtle enough that most folks won't notice. I was happy that Digital Foundry was able to shine a light on the issue but there's still no guarantee for a patch.
I do think it's a non-issue if you're playing with kb/m or relying on VRR however, and not because those necessarily fix the problem but more just disguise it.
Ah, thanks. Unfortunately, no such luck. Forced vsync in SK, no change. Still constant microstutter.