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Swayne_Gretzky's avatar
5 years ago

Half-Life Alyx buggy hand motion and suttering

I bought a Rift S to play HL Alyx and have been having tons of issues. I'm using FPS VR on Steam to track my performance statistics and for the most part it looks good, GPU and CPU frame times are low and performance is a solid 80 frames but my hands will look stuttery in certain parts of the game. I could be looking near a corner of a wall, good frames, stuttery hads, then back up 2 feet in game but physically in same spot and the hand movement is better. 
 
It seems this game has some pretty serious software glitches right now, I don't have any problems playing Robo Recall or Superhot but it is not stop jankyness playing HL Alyx beyond chapter 3. I set Oculus settings to prioritize performance and Steam VR resolution to 70%, seems like my PC should run the game 0 problems at those settings but it still has issues and I have done enough troubleshooting at this point to say it's a problem with Alyx not my hardware. 

i5 9600k - tried at factory clock, OC of 4.6ghz and OC of 4.9ghz, similar performance at every setting
1080ti stock clock - latest drivers installed with DDU, have tried rolling back to Alyx release drivers with same issues
16gb ram - dual channel, tried at stock clock and 3200, problems persist
1tb Samsung 970 Evo m.2 SSD - 160+gb free, have verified game files, reinstalled Alyx, Steam VR and Oculus software, no fix
850 watt PSU that is brand new and hasn't given me any issues
Playing with all non essential background software closed. 

I have tried using Oculus Tray Tool with ASW on and off, issues persist
In Steam VR I have disable advanced supersampling filter 
Game settings all on low

I've all but given up on playing this game smoothly. It seems to be pretty solid in the first 3 chapters but there are occasional CPU spikes in FPS VR and it becomes more noticeable later in the game. Doesn't make any sense at this point and I can't think of any more troubleshooting I could do :(

16 Replies

  • Also another important thing is to make sure SteamVR window is active by clicking on it

  • Uh nevermind, its actually not a solution. I have no idea how to fix it

  • I have an update about topic. I don't know how exaxctly I solved the problem but I can tell what I use and what I changed.

    So I use Quest 2 Air Link and I use 72 hz recommended settings, Auto render resolution. (I think on 120 hz it stutters). Steam settings for game: Auto render resolution. I don't use any steam launch parameters except "-novid" to skip intro.

    What I changed in NVIDIA Control Panel global paremeters:

    Low Latency: Enabled
    Virtual reality pre-rendered frames set to use the 3d application setting
    Refresh rate set to use 3d application setting

    V-Sync: OFF

    Windows 11 settings:

    Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling: Enabled
    Gaming mode: Enabled
    Xbox Game Bar: uninstalled (I believe it helped in non-VR game as well, Fortnite)
    Turn off EVERYTHING on background, basically it can be browser, Discord (which can eat 500 and more MB of VRAM), all kind of launchers (except Steam ofc), everything and what might be important turn off even GeForce Experience

    Oculus setting:

    Pretty much all default
    72 hz, Auto render resolution
    ASW - Auto (On)

     

    The results are amazing for me, it never worked that good. Hand movements without stutters, fights without stutters, puzzles without stutters, weapon selection without stutters, everything work great.

    The game actually require very much VRAM so if you see notification about not enough VRAM it most likely actually mean you have not enough. I've seen it using 13Gb of VRAM while I have only 16Gb in total. If you have not much VRAM then forget about Ultra textures quality for sure. I wish I knew exactly what helped me but finding it out requires too much time which I don't have. I solved the problem for myself and I hope this info will be helpful for someone.

    Once again some of my PC specs and other info if someone need:
    i7-13700KF, 4x8 DDR4-3600 MHz 32Gb Gear 1, RTX 4080 16 Gb, 240 Hz monitor
    Windows 11, Quest 2

    HL Alyx setttings I use: Ultra, DX11

     

    P.S. and one more important thing I did is made more free space on my SSD which definitely could affect. I really can't figure out what else 

    P.P.S. I'm also using FPS VR app and it make me think that some bug in it theoretically could cause an issues. I actually uninstalled it recently and installed back so theoretically it could help 

  • There is something interesting I figured out today related to the topic. I played Into The Radius game (Quest 2 version not PCVR) and at some point I decided to do a break from game so I just pause it, put Quest 2 on charging and go away for a some time. When I returned and put VR on the head, I see guardian boundary was pixelated for some reason but I thought welp strange but doesnt matter much. Then I noticed buggy hand motion (bugged tracking of controllers). And here is interesting part about it: when I turn my body to the side where is the window in reality with daylight (no other lights anywhere, even PC/TV is off) then controller tracking becomes buggy, it is stuttering non-stop. I turn my body to other sides - tracking is completely fine! That was shocking for me because I thought problem is on PC, but turns out its tracking problem. What I did next is I set tracking frequency to 60 hz instead of Auto and restart Quest 2. After that all was ok. Not sure what helped - the restart or tracking frequency change. 

     

     

    TL:DR so for everyone who got buggy hand motion - play around with Guardian and Tracking Frequency and Quest controllers, as it seem to be all about that.

    • imgrimmyxx's avatar
      imgrimmyxx
      Honored Guest

      i know it's an old post but this literally fixed every nuisance in half life alyx, i'm back to playing it at a smooth 120hz ultra settings. you have no idea how grateful i am.

       

      the issue was the tracking frequency. mine was set to auto, i set it at 60 hz and not only did it fix alyx but it fixed every vr game for me. why isn't this the default setting??