FRAME DROPS, STUTTERS! PS4

Arurian

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so i bought the royal edition of FF XV! im playing it on original PS4! frame drop is horrible and its lagging! is it supposed to be like that? or do i have a problem?
 
so i bought the royal edition of FF XV! im playing it on original PS4! frame drop is horrible and its lagging! is it supposed to be like that? or do i have a problem?


That depends.

How is the condition of your Playstation 4?

Some people are more sensitive to frame drops than others, so depending on what you're used to it might be normal for a game like FF XV, I've heard issues regarding frame drop were going around a few months ago too.

Try lower some of the settings if you can and see if the issue persists.
 
That depends.

How is the condition of your Playstation 4?

Some people are more sensitive to frame drops than others, so depending on what you're used to it might be normal for a game like FF XV, I've heard issues regarding frame drop were going around a few months ago too.

Try lower some of the settings if you can and see if the issue persists.
well you cant change settings on PS4..... maybe the game is that way but i dunno.....
 
so i bought the royal edition of FF XV! im playing it on original PS4! frame drop is horrible and its lagging! is it supposed to be like that? or do i have a problem?

Personally... If you're expecting consistent framerates and find them a sticking point, you should be looking into PC gaming rather than using a Playstation- one gives you (relative) control over your framerates, while the other facilitates pickup and play!

Anyway- yeah, you're not going to be able to do much. Framerate drops are common in newer PS4 titles- Tekken 7 for me, in particular, suffers for it. You're reaching the end of the lifecycle for a machine which was NEVER really the Zenith of hardware power for video games.

What could be impacting your performance on your PS4 is the maintenance. You mention an original PS4- have you cleaned it out? The dusk will stop airflow and can suffocate the machine. That could impact your performance. Otherwise, updating to a PS4-Pro and running in lower quality mode would be your next option.

Sorry I can't be more help.
 
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Personally... If you're expecting consistent framerates and find them a sticking point, you should be looking into PC gaming rather than using a Playstation- one gives you (relative) control over your framerates, while the other facilitates pickup and play!

Anyway- yeah, you're not going to be able to do much. Framerate drops are common in newer PS4 titles- Tekken 7 for me, in particular, suffers for it. You're reaching the end of the lifecycle for a machine which was NEVER really the Zenith of hardware power for video games.

What could be impacting your performance on your PS4 is the maintenance. You mention an original PS4- have you cleaned it out? The dusk will stop airflow and can suffocate the machine. That could impact your performance. Otherwise, updating to a PS4-Pro and running in lower quality mode would be your next option.

Sorry I can't be more help.
yea, i was thinking of cleaning it. or getting a PSpro, but i didnt know that it would help! i will try
 
Since the PS4 isn't a PC, it doesn't throttle due to hardware struggles. So dust and such causing excess heat won't actually effect framerates. Instead, it'll just shorten the lifespan of components or -if hot enough- engage an automatic shutdown of the system. And when components fail, they'll fail outright, rather than starting to struggle.

Regardless, while I haven't played XV on a base PS4 since the Royal Edition DLC first released, I can't say for 100% that the latest updates haven't introduced more demand that the base PS4 can't keep up with. But up to the last time I played it, the framerate was almost completely locked, with the base Xbox One being the only one that dropped frames regularly. The main reason for this is because the game uses dynamic resolution scaling, which prioritizes dropping the resolution of a frame rather than dropping the frame as a whole. This means generally performance stays solid at stress points; where it would usually drop frames, it'll instead lose visual fidelity.

Therefore, I'm going to assume that your problem isn't actually framerate drops. It's frame pacing. Specifically on base PS4 (though it's present to some extent on every platform other than base Xbox One when running at 30fps) the framerate cap in FFXV tends to have really bad frame pacing issues. To look smooth, frames need to be delivered at the same rate as the hz of your display, or at a multiple of it. Most displays are 60hz, so each frame at 30fps is supposed to persist for twice as long as 60fps, or 33.3 milliseconds. When a game has incorrect frame pacing, these frames can persist for a longer or shorter duration than intended. If a frame stays around for 16 milliseconds longer, it will look like the game stutters, making it seem very similar to dropped frames. This importantly doesn't actually effect your controller response like real framerate drops do, because the game is still checking for inputs from the controller 30 times a second. TL;DR It's still hitting 30fps, it's just ordering/displaying those frames incorrectly.

This issue will be most apparent when rotating cameras horizontally at a quick pace, or when objects/characters fly across the screen rapidly.

Here's a good video about this problem. It's a problem that only became known by most developers in the last decade or so, but solving it with each game can require vastly different solutions. Heck, even just different hardware they port it to can fix or worsen the problem.


Anyway, if you want to fix the problem without introducing actual framerate drops in the process, your only solutions are to buy a Pro and set the game to the setting that prioritizes stable performance, or to buy a PC strong enough to lock at 60fps. Even on most PC hardware configurations, XV's 30fps lock has the frame pacing issues. So if you went PC, you'd have to be able to lock to 60fps to avoid bad frame pacing and frame drops. Locking to 30 won't work. Of note, the Pro won't lock at 60fps in any mode, since it's not quite powerful enough. But the PC in comparison requires either a GTX1050 (or equivalent) and a modern i5 (as well as probably a drop to medium-high settings and 900p), or a GTX1060 (or equivalent/better) and a modern i5 (or equivalent/better) to lock at 60fps, mostly high settings and 1080p. Keep in mind that this won't be enough for using all of the Nvidia GameWorks settings/max settings, which will require a decently high-ish end rig. That means for PC, if you buy a pre-built desktop to reach those minimum specs required to lock to 60fps (while still hitting console quality graphics) you're looking at $500-700 unless you find a good sale, and $700-900 for a laptop. A Pro is likewise gonna run $400, obviously.

Anyway, hopefully that helps you decide exactly what you want to do :) Frame pacing is unfortunately a problem in a lot of games locked at 30fps. It's not an easy problem to solve, but hopefully it'll be worked out in the future.

EDIT: You can also go with an Xbox One X too, since similar to the PS4 Pro, the setting that prioritizes stability gets rid of 99% of the frame pacing problems.
 
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Since the PS4 isn't a PC, it doesn't throttle due to hardware struggles. So dust and such causing excess heat won't actually effect framerates. Instead, it'll just shorten the lifespan of components or -if hot enough- engage an automatic shutdown of the system. And when components fail, they'll fail outright, rather than starting to struggle.

Regardless, while I haven't played XV on a base PS4 since the Royal Edition DLC first released, I can't say for 100% that the latest updates haven't introduced more demand that the base PS4 can't keep up with. But up to the last time I played it, the framerate was almost completely locked, with the base Xbox One being the only one that dropped frames regularly. The main reason for this is because the game uses dynamic resolution scaling, which prioritizes dropping the resolution of a frame rather than dropping the frame as a whole. This means generally performance stays solid at stress points; where it would usually drop frames, it'll instead lose visual fidelity.

Therefore, I'm going to assume that your problem isn't actually framerate drops. It's frame pacing. Specifically on base PS4 (though it's present to some extent on every platform other than base Xbox One when running at 30fps) the framerate cap in FFXV tends to have really bad frame pacing issues. To look smooth, frames need to be delivered at the same rate as the hz of your display, or at a multiple of it. Most displays are 60hz, so each frame at 30fps is supposed to persist for twice as long as 60fps, or 33.3 milliseconds. When a game has incorrect frame pacing, these frames can persist for a longer or shorter duration than intended. If a frame stays around for 16 milliseconds longer, it will look like the game stutters, making it seem very similar to dropped frames. This importantly doesn't actually effect your controller response like real framerate drops do, because the game is still checking for inputs from the controller 30 times a second. TL;DR It's still hitting 30fps, it's just ordering/displaying those frames incorrectly.

This issue will be most apparent when rotating cameras horizontally at a quick pace, or when objects/characters fly across the screen rapidly.

Here's a good video about this problem. It's a problem that only became known by most developers in the last decade or so, but solving it with each game can require vastly different solutions. Heck, even just different hardware they port it to can fix or worsen the problem.


Anyway, if you want to fix the problem without introducing actual framerate drops in the process, your only solutions are to buy a Pro and set the game to the setting that prioritizes stable performance, or to buy a PC strong enough to lock at 60fps. Even on most PC hardware configurations, XV's 30fps lock has the frame pacing issues. So if you went PC, you'd have to be able to lock to 60fps to avoid bad frame pacing and frame drops. Locking to 30 won't work. Of note, the Pro won't lock at 60fps in any mode, since it's not quite powerful enough. But the PC in comparison requires either a GTX1050 (or equivalent) and a modern i5 (as well as probably a drop to medium-high settings and 900p), or a GTX1060 (or equivalent/better) and a modern i5 (or equivalent/better) to lock at 60fps, mostly high settings and 1080p. Keep in mind that this won't be enough for using all of the Nvidia GameWorks settings/max settings, which will require a decently high-ish end rig. That means for PC, if you buy a pre-built desktop to reach those minimum specs required to lock to 60fps (while still hitting console quality graphics) you're looking at $500-700 unless you find a good sale, and $700-900 for a laptop. A Pro is likewise gonna run $400, obviously.

Anyway, hopefully that helps you decide exactly what you want to do :) Frame pacing is unfortunately a problem in a lot of games locked at 30fps. It's not an easy problem to solve, but hopefully it'll be worked out in the future.

EDIT: You can also go with an Xbox One X too, since similar to the PS4 Pro, the setting that prioritizes stability gets rid of 99% of the frame pacing problems.
thank you for an informative input! yea, i had doubts that cleaning my PS4 will solve it....thats sad....and yea, its "lagging" when the camera moves around the most
 
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