Extreme long loading times - all of a sudden...

[Korentin]

I've had the problem with the long black loading screens since forever with FO4, can't remember when it first appeared but I'm sure it wasn't always like it. I've tried so many things but nothing really works. I've even changed whole computer set ups and monitors but no dice. Only thing in common is Windows 10 so it might have been a windows update that is the cause but then more people would be reporting the problem I'd figure. 

[Lonewanderer]

1 hour ago, Korentin said:

I've had the problem with the long black loading screens since forever with FO4, can't remember when it first appeared but I'm sure it wasn't always like it. I've tried so many things but nothing really works. I've even changed whole computer set ups and monitors but no dice. Only thing in common is Windows 10 so it might have been a windows update that is the cause but then more people would be reporting the problem I'd figure. 

I have Windows 7, SP 1, all patches installed. So it is not Windows 10.

And I still have the problem, despite my changes. They seem to become more frequent if one plays longer (without restarting the game in between). And they seem to be more frequent in and around the Monsignore Placa area. But this is no solution ...

I still think, that they are somehow connected to the frame rate - normal loading is. I think, Bethesda estimates the amount to load and shows loading screens, if they think it will take a while, and no loading screen, if it should be fast. Interestingly the problem occurs only when no loading screen is showed. The GPU does nearly no work, since there are no object except the animated icon.

Could it be, that it becomes too fast? It has to be said: Bethesdas Engine is not bad, it can do a lot and is stable. But some details seem to be real ugly and not up to date. Maybe Beth cannot solve this problem without a massive rewrite - but they will never admit it...

[Zzyxzz]

For me, at least. It seems it was indeed a Windows 10 issue. The issue roughly appeared after my PC did an automatic update. Since then i believe i had issues with extreme long loading screens. Yesterday evening i manually installed the Creator Fall Update and the issues are gone. At least for now. I tested the whole day, several times. Restarted the game and PC. No issues so far.

[Sclerocephalus]

Is anyone of you using texture or mesh replacers ? They don't necessarily require a plugin (so you're technically running the game without mods), but if they don't, they ususally come as loose files.

If so, it might be worth checking the Nexus pages (or wherever you downloaded them from) for similar complaints about long loading times. Specific textures that are compressed in an inappropriate format are known to cause overly long loading times, and certain faulty meshes are known to cause that too.

[Arthmoor]

I would take Sclero's advice one step further and as the author why the mod has not been packaged into a BA2 file since the engine deals with those in a more optimized way. Assuming the textures themselves haven't been run through a snake oil optimization process first.

[Lonewanderer]

1 hour ago, Arthmoor said:

I would take Sclero's advice one step further and as the author why the mod has not been packaged into a BA2 file since the engine deals with those in a more optimized way. Assuming the textures themselves haven't been run through a snake oil optimization process first.

Thanks for the hints - also @Sclerocephalus. But - no. I do not use loose files, I do not have them enabled and there are no loose files. I only have UFO4P, installed by NMM. I have several script sources unpacked, but I hope that has no effect. There are no complied scripts in the folder 'data/scripts'.

The only thing I have that could slow down loading is the HD textures DLC. But the 'real' slow loading has no disk activity at all - see the pictures in my 2nd post. This is what baffles me, there is medium CPU load, a bit GPU load (from the loading icon, nothing else), no disk activity, RAM changes a bit (so something runs), VRAM is stable, mostly quite full, but it never changes (since nothing is rendered). Usually I have high disk activity when it hit 'E' for a door, then all stops, it seems to hang a while, then disk activity comes back and the pause ends, screen comes up and the game continues. And this happens ONLY when leaving an interior area to the world (exterior). It just happend while leaving the Third Rail to Goodneighbour. The hang with no disk activity has different lengths, sometimes it seems normal, and lasts only several seconds, in other cases it lasts quite long. And it always helps, if I Alt-Tab out of Fallout, and back to it again, during this pause. (I play fullscreen again, and this trick works only in fullscreen).

The only thing that really helps is the Load Accelerator. But to disable VSYNC totally in the mid of loading is possibly dangerous. The frame rate goes up to around 450 frames. But it is a cure for a symptom, not for the problem itself. I still think, that something was changed in the communication between the games engine and the driver for VSYNC. I use application controlled VSYNC, as is standard.

[lmstearn]

Looking at the VRAM usage graph, it plateaus at ~6GB. And the CPU looks like it's doing some repetitive stuff. This guy reckons for a vanilla sampling of Fallout the VRAM shouldn't get that high. Wondering if Fallout 4 actually provides full support for GDDR5X?

What does Boris's Ramtest report? Also will limiting the VRAM usage to something like 4GB (3.8GB ) be any different?

Try updating the driver to the latest. But use a reputable cleaner to uninstall all traces of the old driver first.

[Lonewanderer]

6 hours ago, lmstearn said:

Looking at the VRAM usage graph, it plateaus at ~6GB. And the CPU looks like it's doing some repetitive stuff. This guy reckons for a vanilla sampling of Fallout the VRAM shouldn't get that high. Wondering if Fallout 4 actually provides full support for GDDR5X?

What does Boris's Ramtest report? Also will limiting the VRAM usage to something like 4GB (3.8GB ) be any different?

Try updating the driver to the latest. But use a reputable cleaner to uninstall all traces of the old driver first.

I think VRAM usage is ok, since they said, that the HD texture DLC would need a graphic card with more VRAM.

The driver is updated, and I selected 'full install', which deleted all my old profiles. Did that first

At the moment things are average, not really bad, but also not good. I have loading times around 30-60 seconds, and in rather rare cases a bit more. I do not use the Alt Tab trick (Alt Tabbing out of the game in full screen mode normally breaks the long loading pause). 

I put the following lines to fallout.ini:

uExterior Cell Buffer=144
iPreloadSizeLimit=262144000

This seems to help a bit, and should do no damage - I hope. I did NOT change uGridsToLoad, this is at the default 5.

Sometimes I am suspicious of my CPUs behavior, the i7 6850 (actually all of this series) is known to work better with more cores in action, and FO4 obviously uses only one core, or maybe two, it is not written to use more cores. With Witcher 3, which is a much more modern engine my CPU excelled, I can play with maxed out graphics and it uses the CPU nearly fully. Yet I read, that older games, which use only one core may have  performance problems with this CPU. Windows is set to maximum performance mode, so will not try to energy save in mid game. And I use INTELs TurboBoost 3.0 driver. So I hope this is not a reason. Because Fallout Performance Monitor does not show the CPU clocks, only its load.

[Lonewanderer]

Just to conclude this thread, a short report:

1) I started a new game, without mods (except UFO4P in the newest version). I did not use several 'tricks' posted on the Internet for 'faster loading', especially not the 'Load Accelerator' (from Nexus) mod, which just removes the fps limit during loading. While it works fine, I am suspicious that it also damages the game in ways, that are visible later. I now use default values in the INI files, except several changes for mouse acceleration and X/Y axis.

2) During this game I had sometimes extreme long loading time, always when leaving an interior cell towards exterior. This was worst in the beginning and required a lot of patience. In some rare cases I decided to break up the loading time by Alt-Tab (I play in full screen) out of the game during loading, and Alt-Tab back immediately, this helps a lot. But I avoided this too, when possible.

3) I am now level 41, and the game is progressed: Main quest stands after Fort Hagen and Memory Den, I did nearly the full quest line from Railroad (Randolph Safehouse Quest 5 done, all quests for Tinker Tom done). I also have now a lot of settlements, and build up more. In the main quest it says to go to the Glowing Sea. Open are several smaller quest from the BoS (Show no Mercy is done). Automatron started at level 15, but I ignored it first, then did it, Automatron is done now. I avoided the random quests from the BoS (Scribe Haylen, Knight Rhys), because I did not want a location from Far Harbour, which always happens after 2-3 quests. I have not yet started Far Harbour and other DLC quests.

4) During the game I saw very positive effects from the UFO4P, the entire game runs smoother and is changed, because random events work now as planned. After starting the Minutemen quest line (I delayed 'Taking Point' at Three Pines) I have always 3 open quests from the MM. Now quite sensible settlement quests happen, mostly if you near or at the settlement, one time I also had a settlement attack and had to travel to the settlement. Works really fine now, and I think as Bethesda planned it. The quest chaos from MM quests is no more. Quests now come from the radio (after activating it) and from Preston. This looks very good now.

5) The most interesting point: The loading times gradually became faster during the games progress! I now have fairly long loading times too, but the very long loading times have nearly disappeared! So something seems to happen during the long loading times, and mostly in a new game. If several quest lines are closed and done, this becomes better. If one uses the high definition DLC textures, loading times (on a hard disk) are slower, but the loading process, where no disk access happens for 30-60 seconds, sometimes longer, are now nearly gone.

My conclusion: Something happens during loading. AFAIK script engine is off during loading, only at the end it is activated. But something happens, some sorting or memory organization in the engine. It may be, that one of the Microsoft patches to the libraries or some interface between game and NVIDIA driver was changed, and leads to the extreme loading delays. I do not think, that something can be done on mod level, and Bethesda will not do anything, I fear. But as it is now, mid game, I can live with it.

Open problems: What happens now from time to time are LOD textures, which are not removed. Especially on bridges you 'wade' in a washed out texture, which overlays the road texture on the bridge. This seems to happen, when you do not fast travel, but come near to the bridge walking. It is annoying and dangerous, because you cannot see holes in the bridge. But saving the game at this point, leaving the game to the main menu and reloading the save corrects this. The problem is old and was reported often, there seems no solution for it. Maybe this is one of the things which is done during loading too. This is clearly an engine problem, and new to FO4, because Skyrim never had it. (I have Skyrim 64, but have not yet played it, only tested it with the new patches, official and unofficial).

All in all the game plays now fine, with some drawbacks, but much better than before thanks to corrected REs. It also seems harder now, the robot groups from Automatron (which happen for the rest of the game even after solving the quest) are quite unbalanced, there are robots who kill my character around level 30 with a single hit in melee. The robot groups (Raiders with robots) are now integrated into the other RE, and make the game much more diverse and entertaining. Some of these groups are big, very strong and dangerous, especially without a companion, other groups are harmless and small. The Vertibird patrols of the BoS are now much better, they seldom crash and they bring BoS groups or fetch them back. They also often fight Automatron robot groups, and when they do, they seem to 'loot' robots they destroyed. I saw this more than once, when they won the destroyed robot is empty. There are road blocks (Choke Points?) as events often from several groups, Raiders, Robot Raiders, Gunners but also BoS, Minutemen and traders.

The game is more fun than before, and interesting, even before starting Far Harbour or Nuka World, and this is owned to no small part to the UFO4P, I think! The loading times are long sometimes, but the extremes seem to be only in a new game.

 

[Arthmoor]

That LOD issue is one that has existed ever since Oblivion. Every game from that one onward has had it at some point. Oddly, SSE gets it more often than LE, but LE is not immune to it. I've seen it on on occasion. There's nothing we can do about it since it's something deep in the engine and I suspect only a new engine would eliminate the issue.

[alt3rn1ty]

On 10/21/2017 at 8:33 PM, Lonewanderer said:

I have Windows 7, SP 1, all patches installed. So it is not Windows 10.

The problem with windows I mentioned earlier (Wish I could remember where I saw it being discussed), I dont think it is confined to just Windows 10, I am nearly sure its been a problem with windows for a very long time including windows 7.

The solution to it has been fixed in Windows 10 insider, which will get released to everyone at some point to update the Win 10 Creators update which has been out for a while now .. Whether they will also backport the fix to other versions of windows I dont know, Win 7 is now on the dropped from support list isn't it ?, I think it will get security updates until 2020 or thereabouts, but maybe wont get this memory handling fix .. Dont know. Its a shame 7 is coming to end of life, it was I think the best version of windows ever.

 

Edit : Found it 

 

[Lonewanderer]

1 hour ago, alt3rn1ty said:

The problem with windows I mentioned earlier (Wish I could remember where I saw it being discussed), I dont think it is confined to just Windows 10, I am nearly sure its been a problem with windows for a very long time including windows 7.

The solution to it has been fixed in Windows 10 insider, which will get released to everyone at some point to update the Win 10 Creators update which has been out for a while now .. Whether they will also backport the fix to other versions of windows I dont know, Win 7 is now on the dropped from support list isn't it ?, I think it will get security updates until 2020 or thereabouts, but maybe wont get this memory handling fix .. Dont know. Its a shame 7 is coming to end of life, it was I think the best version of windows ever.

 

Edit : Found it 

 

Now this is interesting - thank you for pointing it out!

Concerning Microsoft, and Windows 10: I probably never will use Win10. After their behavior with the Windows 10 upgrade, the nag screens (which I never installed, because I always check the updates before I install them) and their 'explanations', tries to blackmail the user to upgrade, and the fact, that they until today do not even apply security upgrades to Windows 7 in a timely fashion I will never again buy anything from Microsoft. I never really trusted them, but now I trust them not at all. They abuse their monopoly more than ever. Automatic involuntary updates? Spying on me? Not on this computer...

And btw. this bugfix is long overdue, isn't it? And now they fix it, and are proud, despite this bug is obviously in their shitty DirectX for ages. I can only hope that Vulcan becomes the new standard. Windows 7 should be supported until 2020, AFAIK, Windows 8.1 until 2022. You can bet, that they will try to shirk on this, but in the end public pressure will force them to do it. The only way Windows 10 will grow its installation base is by being installed on any preinstalled PCs.

They can go to hell, as far as I am concerned...