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Forza Motorsport 6: Apex open beta arrives May 5 on Windows 10, system reqs revealed

Did you switch from HDD to SDD? If so, did you notice a decrease in stutter/hitching?

Sorry, somehow I missed your question and the one from the user below. I'm probably way too late but anyway... I actually switched it from SSD to HDD, the performance is the same as far as I can tell. Nvidia downscaled it from 2715 x 1524 to 1080p, locked 60 fps, never had any problems with stutter and haven't noticed anything after the change as well. It's pretty smooth.

I'm on the latest version of windows apparently, at least that's what it says on Windows update and the download button is still grayed out...
My Windows Update also said I was on the latest version but I clearly wasn't. I had to use this to get the update but it's probable that the Anniversary Update is already showing up normally on the Windows Update.
 

Xcell Miguel

Gold Member
I just tried the game with my Thrustmaster TX (Leather Edition rim) and I don't get any FFB :/

I hope it's just a bug in this game and that FH3 will not be affected.

I'm using Windows Insider build 14926 and saw someone else not getting FFB with the same wheel (599XX rim) and Windows build.

Those with the Thrustmaster TX, I'd like to know which Windows build are you using if you have FFB in Apex, thanks.
 

MaLDo

Member
This game has two big performance problems. First of them is wrong frame pacing, and second is loading hitches in some tracks.

About frame pacing, I've encountered similar problems with every game using borderless windowed mode. That's why I only use exclusive fullscreen mode. For those problems, RTSS with a 60 fps lock does wonders, but RTSS is not compatible with UWP games. I went to try DXTory after reading that it was compatible with UWP games, but I could not get it to work with Forza Apex. I don't know why.

So, in the nvidia profile for Forza Apex I changed framerate limit to 40 to test how it affects the game, and the game was 40.9 fps for the most part. So I used the 59 fps limit and now the game has perfect framepacing (obviously combined with ingame option 60 fps + VSYNC).

The second problem with hitches seems to mostly affect Brazil track. As is the track is splitted in three parts and the game loads only one at a time, because the hitches are always in the same zone. I hope Turn10 can fix this sometime because having 32 GB of RAM and 8 GB of VRAM to find out that the game have to hitch to load a part of a track is sad. Moving the game into a SSD does nothing.


Also is really odd that every time I launch the game, the windows bar doesn't disappear from the screen, neither the mouse cursor. I really hate this kind of behaviour mostly for a game that can't be played with a mouse. Devs, show the mouse cursor when the user is moving the mouse. Your animated logo at the beginning of the game look clownish with a big white cursor in the middle of the screen.

Posted in Forza forums too, I hope they can fix this game, otherwise is a great "game-demo".
 
Do you mean in the nvidia control panel? as I can't see a frame rate limit there when I looked. I'd like try out the 59fps thing to see if it helps my random stutters.
 
Do you mean in the nvidia control panel? as I can't see a frame rate limit there when I looked. I'd like try out the 59fps thing to see if it helps my random stutters.

nvidia inspector.

RTSS doesn't work w/ UWP games.

edit -

vqONU4H.jpg
 

terrible

Banned
I just tried the game with my Thrustmaster TX (Leather Edition rim) and I don't get any FFB :/

I hope it's just a bug in this game and that FH3 will not be affected.

I'm using Windows Insider build 14926 and saw someone else not getting FFB with the same wheel (599XX rim) and Windows build.

Those with the Thrustmaster TX, I'd like to know which Windows build are you using if you have FFB in Apex, thanks.

I am on the regular Windows 10 build. Version 1607, build 14393.187. FFB is working as intended for me.
 

SliChillax

Member
This game has two big performance problems. First of them is wrong frame pacing, and second is loading hitches in some tracks.

About frame pacing, I've encountered similar problems with every game using borderless windowed mode. That's why I only use exclusive fullscreen mode. For those problems, RTSS with a 60 fps lock does wonders, but RTSS is not compatible with UWP games. I went to try DXTory after reading that it was compatible with UWP games, but I could not get it to work with Forza Apex. I don't know why.

So, in the nvidia profile for Forza Apex I changed framerate limit to 40 to test how it affects the game, and the game was 40.9 fps for the most part. So I used the 59 fps limit and now the game has perfect framepacing (obviously combined with ingame option 60 fps + VSYNC).

The second problem with hitches seems to mostly affect Brazil track. As is the track is splitted in three parts and the game loads only one at a time, because the hitches are always in the same zone. I hope Turn10 can fix this sometime because having 32 GB of RAM and 8 GB of VRAM to find out that the game have to hitch to load a part of a track is sad. Moving the game into a SSD does nothing.


Also is really odd that every time I launch the game, the windows bar doesn't disappear from the screen, neither the mouse cursor. I really hate this kind of behaviour mostly for a game that can't be played with a mouse. Devs, show the mouse cursor when the user is moving the mouse. Your animated logo at the beginning of the game look clownish with a big white cursor in the middle of the screen.

Posted in Forza forums too, I hope they can fix this game, otherwise is a great "game-demo".

I'll try the Nvidia inspector trick as stuttering is sometimes unplayable.
 
About frame pacing, I've encountered similar problems with every game using borderless windowed mode. That's why I only use exclusive fullscreen mode. For those problems, RTSS with a 60 fps lock does wonders, but RTSS is not compatible with UWP games.

Borderless Full Screen DX12 is different to previous Direct X Borderless Full Screen - at least according to this article

Full screen exclusive mode was created back in the original release of DirectDraw to provide games with enhanced performance when using the entire screen. The downside of full screen exclusive mode is that it makes the experience for gamers who wish to do other things on their system, such as alt-tab to another application or run the Windows GameDVR, more clunky with excessive flicker and transition time.

We thought it would be cool if gamers could have the versatility of gaming in a window with the performance of full screen exclusive.

So, with Windows 10, DirectX 12 games which take up the entire screen perform just as well as the old full screen exclusive mode without any of the full screen exclusive mode disadvantages. This is true for both Win32 and UWP games which use DirectX 12.   All of these games can seamlessly alt-tab, run GameDVR, and exhibit normal functionality of a window without any perf degradation vs full screen exclusive.

Detailed video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3wTajGZOsA - probably way over my head but looks interesting.
 

MaLDo

Member
Borderless Full Screen DX12 is different to previous Direct X Borderless Full Screen - at least according to this article



Detailed video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3wTajGZOsA - probably way over my head but looks interesting.


What they are talking about in this quote is performance. I can't compare exclusive fullscreen performance in Forza Apex versus borderless, so I can only believe what they say.

What I'm talking about is framepacing, and this is a totally different beast.

Forza Apex has an incredible performance, more than 100 fps at 4K@ultra with vsync off. But performance is not the problem. Windows composition doesn't know what frames discard to achieve a perfect smooth framerate. Vsync doesn't work correctly as you can see the framerate jumping between 58 and 60 fps.
 
What they are talking about in this quote is performance. I can't compare exclusive fullscreen performance in Forza Apex versus borderless, so I can only believe what they say.

What I'm talking about is framepacing, and this is a totally different beast.

Forza Apex has an incredible performance, more than 100 fps at 4K@ultra with vsync off. But performance is not the problem. Windows composition doesn't know what frames discard to achieve a perfect smooth framerate. Vsync doesn't work correctly as you can see the framerate jumping between 58 and 60 fps.

edit: I messed up my reply - it's not necessarily guaranteed that borderless full screen is the cause of stutter in both dx12 and pre-dx12 titles, as it works completely differently in dx12. It might be of course... but bfs "should" be far better in dx12. It might be 'something else' that's the cause in Forza Apex. I was really just throwing the link in out of interest than anything else.
 

MaLDo

Member
edit: I messed up my reply - it's not necessarily guaranteed that borderless full screen is the cause of stutter in both dx12 and pre-dx12 titles, as it works completely differently in dx12. It might be of course... but bfs "should" be far better in dx12. It might be 'something else' that's the cause in Forza Apex.

Ok, let me say this way.


Forza 6 Apex has horrible framepacing issues. You can alleviate most of them limiting the framerate to 60 fps. I don't know why devs left behind beta phase without fixing framepacing issues in a racing game.

What you can't fix are the loading hitches in some of the tracks.

So I don't shit over UWP, borderless or microsoft. Happier?
 

Xcell Miguel

Gold Member
I think the fact is the game window or engine always refreshes at a defined rate, even unlocked, let me explain what I noticed :
- I own a 144Hz Gsync screen
- most of the time it's set to 120Hz on the desktop and exclusive fullscreen games use 144Hz
- all UWP games except Forza 6 Apex support GSync : my screen's refresh bar changes with the FPS I get
- for most games it even work when they are windowed or when the titlebar is shown (which make the game get out of UWP's fullscreen mode)
- but with Forza, I always get a screen refresh of 120 or 144Hz, depending on my settings, it never "follows" the game's FPS when I unlock it (I get between 90 and 144 FPS depending on the scene).

So Forza Apex window always refreshes at the screen's set refresh rate and just ignore GSync, thus, I think it just doesn't care about it's own FPS, always refreshing the game window/engine at the detected screen refresh rate.

I'm forced to play with 60 FPS locked at 120Hz to get smooth framerate or I get really bad stutter.

I even tried without Gsync and it felt the exact same way, the screen being at 60, 120 or 144Hz, as long as the game's FPS are unlocked it stutters badly.

I really hope that's not an issue in Forza Horizon 3, and hope they'll fix that for Apex, as every other UWP games I own run flawlessly.
 

Xcell Miguel

Gold Member
So just to be clear, you leave G-Sync enabled in Nvidia Control, set the refresh to 120hz in Nvidia Control, and set the refresh to 60hz in-game for the least amount of stutter?

Yep.

Or I can also set the screen to 144Hz and enable the 60 FPS Vsync ingame, it will in fact limit the game to 72 FPS without stutter too. But at this refresh rate on desktop my GPU tend to stay at fullspeed while browsing, so I prefer 120Hz on desktop (also better with 60 FPS videos).
 
I tried PresentMon (a command line benchmarking app, that gets data directly from below the game, meaning the graphics card) on FM Apex to see how this microstutter looks.

The graph here shows frames on the x-axis and MsBetweenDisplayChange on the y-axis:

Mean: 6.471ms (154.53fps)
Min: 0.821ms
Max: 352.564ms
average frametime of the fastest 1% of frames: 1.39ms (718fps)
average frametime of the slowest 1% of frames: 29.95ms (33.38fps)
Standard deviation: 6.50069ms

Total frames rendered: 12,649 (edit: in 89.1 seconds)
Frametimes over 16.67ms: 74 (0.585%)
Frames skipped: 144


Weird start 1700 frames, but the whole benchmark was taken during a race at Brands Hatch GP with 15 opponents. I didn't touch the controls for the first few seconds so all AI cars would pass me and I could start overtaking the pack from the back.
It's almost like the first 1700 frames are v-synced at 16.67ms and only after that it opens up. Also, a frametime of over 350ms "microstutter" is not really "micro", that's 20 frames skipped.
 
Maybe not the right place for this question, but does Forza Horizon 3 have the same wheel support on PC as Apex?

yes, but the Fanatec support will be expanded and they will support multiple input-devices per player (so you can use a Thrustmaster shifter on a Logitech wheel with Fanatec pedals each plugged in directly into your PC via USB), currently that's not in.
 
yes, but the Fanatec support will be expanded and they will support multiple input-devices per player (so you can use a Thrustmaster shifter on a Logitech wheel with Fanatec pedals each plugged in directly into your PC via USB), currently that's not in.

I only have a Logitech G25 with H shifter and pedals. The wheel and pedals work great in Apex but I can't get the shifter to do anything. There's no option in settings beyond sequential shifting. So you're saying that FH3 will have the same support, if not better?
 
I only have a Logitech G25 with H shifter and pedals. The wheel and pedals work great in Apex but I can't get the shifter to do anything. There's no option in settings beyond sequential shifting. So you're saying that FH3 will have the same support, if not better?
Yes and there is a good chance that your shifter will be supported shortly (but don't ask me how shortly).
 
Yes and there is a good chance that your shifter will be supported shortly (but don't ask me how shortly).

Thanks for clarifying that. My last question, which probably belongs in another thread, is: do Horizon titles have the same sim-style handling as Forza Motorsport? I'm not really interested in playing the game on my PC with my wheel if it's an arcade racer.
 
Thanks for clarifying that. My last question, which probably belongs in another thread, is: do Horizon titles have the same sim-style handling as Forza Motorsport? I'm not really interested in playing the game on my PC with my wheel if it's an arcade racer.

There are some similarities as both games use the same engine and simulation underlayer, but Horizon is a lot more forgiving even with all assists off. However, it is still great playing with a wheel, it is not like the true arcade racers ala Burnout or Outrun.
 

Zedox

Member
Thanks for clarifying that. My last question, which probably belongs in another thread, is: do Horizon titles have the same sim-style handling as Forza Motorsport? I'm not really interested in playing the game on my PC with my wheel if it's an arcade racer.

It's more arcade than sim...but not too arcadey.
 

Bluforce

Member
I only have a Logitech G25 with H shifter and pedals. The wheel and pedals work great in Apex but I can't get the shifter to do anything. There's no option in settings beyond sequential shifting. So you're saying that FH3 will have the same support, if not better?

I have the G25 and I use steering wheel, pedals, shifter with clutch.

If I remember correctly, to enable the clutch you have to look into the drivings assist, not the settings.

EDIT:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqYwVLb6VOI
 

TheSeks

Blinded by the luminous glory that is David Bowie's physical manifestation.
So, tried this again with a GPU upgrade. Have more than enough VRAM, but I meet the minimum for actual RAM (need to upgrade that next, in a month or two). Stutter/hardlocks the frame-rate and puts my auto-performance on Medium (okay, whatever) and then completely freezes on trying to rewind to where I can't do anything but attempt to alt-tab (which auto-kills the UWP app).

Fantastic. It's not like these updates have done shit for it, it seems.

Also while I'm bitching

That still isn't fixed, Turn10/MS. *thumbs up*
 

SliChillax

Member
Can't get some of the Forza rewards due to the game being glitched. I finished an event at all variations of Yas Marina and I didn't get a badge. I've also driven 50 different cars and didn't get the platinum badge. What a bummer :/ Also it says in Forza rewards that I need to do 25 events and I've only completed 13. I've completed all 12 main events and at least 10 spotlight events so far, what gives? I've gotten 3 medals on all of them, some even platinum.
 

Ogawa-san

Member
I must be missing something, but today's new Nvidia drivers massively improved Apex for me.

It's now stays pretty damn close to locked 60fps at 4k with a 970, dynamic optimization set to high and force resolution off. Not only that but that annoying constant stuttering is almost completely gone, before the update I had them even at 1080p and medium settings. I went through 3 or 4 races with a full grid, no stuttering. Only got some in a track I can't remember when the crowd came into view.

It makes me hopeful for FH3, I was afraid it'd come with the same issues I had with Apex so far.
 

ghibli99

Member
I must be missing something, but today's new Nvidia drivers massively improved Apex for me.

It's now stays pretty damn close to locked 60fps at 4k with a 970, dynamic optimization set to high and force resolution off. Not only that but that annoying constant stuttering is almost completely gone, before the update I had them even at 1080p and medium settings. I went through 3 or 4 races with a full grid, no stuttering. Only got some in a track I can't remember when the crowd came into view.

It makes me hopeful for FH3, I was afraid it'd come with the same issues I had with Apex so far.
Good stuff! Sounds very promising. :)
 

Afro

Member
I must be missing something, but today's new Nvidia drivers massively improved Apex for me.

It's now stays pretty damn close to locked 60fps at 4k with a 970, dynamic optimization set to high and force resolution off. Not only that but that annoying constant stuttering is almost completely gone, before the update I had them even at 1080p and medium settings. I went through 3 or 4 races with a full grid, no stuttering. Only got some in a track I can't remember when the crowd came into view.

It makes me hopeful for FH3, I was afraid it'd come with the same issues I had with Apex so far.

Was hyped reading this so I installed the FH3 drivers, but I'm sorry to say the game still stutters/hitches for me no matter what I try. I can usually eliminate stutter, but there's just something up w/ this. Hoping FH3 is a different story. I even just downloaded H5: Forge and even that seems to be completely stutter-free even in windowed borderless.
 
I can't tell if it's the latest nvidia driver for horizon or something I did but i'm able to run the game at a locked 60 with minimal buffers right now, it could be a fluke and break next time I play but right now, very smooth.

What I did was go into the nvidia control panel and enable vsync for all applications then turned off vsync in the game and it was smooth, I turned the vsync back on in-game and it's still smooth... normally the game fps counter would hop between 55 and 63 with game vsync on but right now it's 59.95 to 60.05 so pretty much solid.

Also I took this screenshot while on medium settings, I thought it looked nice.

oRQpQ54.png
 

terrible

Banned
I was reading the FH3 PC performance thread and saw this:

If you're suffering from stuttering and have an NVIDIA card can you try enabling "prefer maximum performance" in the 3D tab in Nvidia control panel. This seems to have fixed the issue for some people

I tried it with Apex and it may have solved my stuttering issues. Granted I have had 1-2 hour long sessions with no issues in the past as well so it may just be I didn't give it enough time for the stuttering to kick in but it's worth looking into if you have an Nvidia card.

edit: It wasn't just the new Nvidia drivers that fixed it for me if you're wondering. I still had stuttering when I tried it after updating and restarting my PC previously.
 
Another small thing I have noticed, if I change everything off dynamic to say, medium, the stutter is even less.

Might be because the AI cars are not changing LOD all the time, not sure.
 
Have you guys tried the trick that was posted by HeliosT10 already?
In the nVidia control panel, go to "manage 3D settings" (under the 3D settings branch), switch the energy management mode to "prefer maximum performance"

Mine seems be running a lot smoother, but I changed this setting directly after updating to the newest FH3 improved nVidia driver, so I don't know what part the "maximum performance" setting played and how much of my improvement ist just thanks to the new driver.
 

Momentary

Banned
Isn't the prefer maximum performance thing usually a laptop issue? Most dedicated GPUs are setup to have it in automagically. I'm about to check my right just in case.
 

TheSeks

Blinded by the luminous glory that is David Bowie's physical manifestation.
Reinstalled to try the tweaks people said to do.

Nvidia Max Performance: Still stutters.

Close Chrome: Still stutters.

Turn off X-box DVR/X-box App: No stutters.

WTF. But okay, I'll take that.
 
anybody else have the problem where this game never saves your graphic settings? I'm always having to redo them when I open up the game
 
Isn't the prefer maximum performance thing usually a laptop issue? Most dedicated GPUs are setup to have it in automagically. I'm about to check my right just in case.

In the FH3 performance chat, people with 1080s were reporting that it improved performance... another trick seems to be to deactivate hyperthreading for the CPU
 
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