>60 HZ broken in the Unity Port

[Fireseth]

The new re-releases of Doom I and II on Steam and GOG do not have "uncappable" framerates as marketing would claim. Anything over 60 HZ, including 120, 144, 160, 240 and uncapped does not work as intended. An FPS counter (such as the integrated Steam FPS counter) can show that the game is running at whatever desired framerate, but the gameplay itself is obviously capped at 60 FPS, always. Compared to every other modern source port there is (GZDoom, Crispy Doom, PrBoom+, Woof!, Doom Retro, etc) 144 HZ works flawlessly. But when it comes to the official Unity source port of classic Doom, it just doesn't work. It's just a disappointment for me because I think the Unity source port is a really solid way to play classic Doom, especially with the in-game addon browser.

I haven't seen much people talk about it on Doomworld, but there have been a few people talking about it elsewhere.

Other mentions of the same issue:
• "Unity port stutters on high refresh rate monitor"

• "Unity Port Doom/Steam Version Doom not working"
• "Frame-rate limiter doesn't properly interpolate frame-rates beyond 60 FPS and remains stuck at 60 FPS even with 120+ or uncapped frame-rates"

And if you really need to know, I have an RTX 2060, Ryzen 5600X, 16GB of ram and a VIOTEK GFV22CB 144 HZ monitor. Every other game that supports high refresh rates works perfectly on 144 HZ, including other games on Unity.

EDIT: I guess this isn't only relating to higher refresh rates since people have complained about subtle stuttering at 60 HZ, or it just doesn't feel right to begin with. It also appears that the developers of the Unity Port are not aware of any of these issues, or at the very least, have never acknowledged them. The best thing we can do is just to spread more awareness and hope someone notices...

Edited August 21, 2022 by Fireseth

[PKr]

But does it work properly at 60hz though? For me personally it's not just >60hz - even if I set the refresh rate to 60, the game is still very choppy.

 

P.S. The issue looks like this, right? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxSD0nCi0_w

Edited August 19, 2022 by PKr

[GooberMan]

If you're going to be talking refresh rate issues, you need to be talking what hardware you're running. Doing so without mentioning it is borderline pointless. For example. I just got two different experiences running on my Intel® HD Graphics 530 and my GeForce 960M running on the same i7-6700HQ system.

 

There is some weird timings going on though. Best results have been on the 960M. I've been getting it to run up to 120Hz on my 120Hz panel with vsync on, but it does require setting the frame limiter to off (ie 0) with vsync on. You can turn vsync off, but then you're at the mercy of whatever frame was last rendered so it can lead to jerky results. With vsync on though, it slowly drifts to timings where it gets locked to 60Hz. This may not be the easiest thing to fix, given that Unity Doom doesn't exactly have access to Unity's internal frame sync code to make it behave a bit better in borderless fullscreen/just plain old windowed modes. In every case though, toggling between fullscreen and windowed has reset the behavior. This suggests to me that the Windows scheduler is at least partly to blame.

Otherwise, needless to say:
 

3 hours ago, Fireseth said:

but the gameplay itself is obviously capped at 60 FPS

The gameplay itself is capped at 35 actually, just like with every other source port.

[PKr]

@GooberMan

 

Rampage IV Formula

i7-3930k @ 4.4GHz, ht-off

32gb ram quad channel 1600MHz 9/9/9/24

GTX 1080 @ G1 Gaming version stock OC speeds

The system is installed on 870 EVO, page file is turned off, the Doom is installed on 860 PRO

1080p G-Sync monitor 60/85/100/120/144Hz modes + 160/170/180Hz oc modes available

 

Thanks to G-Sync I have quite a few options at my disposal when it comes to different configuration setups. So far I have tried:

 

Spoiler

 

Windows 10 settings:

• Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling ON
• Variable Refresh Rate OFF (not related to Nvidia g-sync options)

 

Nvidia:

• G-Sync - Off
• Refresh rate - 60Hz
• Vertical Sync - Application controlled
• Power management mode - Prefer maximum performance
• Max frame rate - Off
• Low latency mode - On

Doom Unity:

• Resolution 1920x1080, VSync ON, Windowed Mode OFF, Set FPS limit 0
• Resolution 1920x1080, VSync OFF, Windowed Mode OFF, Set FPS limit 0
• Resolution 1920x1080, VSync ON, Windowed Mode OFF, Set FPS limit 60
• Resolution 1920x1080, VSync OFF, Windowed Mode OFF, Set FPS limit 60

 

 

 

Spoiler

 

Windows 10 settings:

• Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling ON
• Variable Refresh Rate OFF (not related to Nvidia g-sync options)

Nvidia:

• G-Sync - On (windowed and full screen mode)
• Refresh rate - 144Hz
• Vertical Sync - On
• Power management mode - Prefer maximum performance
• Max frame rate - Off/141
• Low latency mode - On

Doom Unity:

• Resolution 1920x1080, VSync ON, Windowed Mode OFF, Set FPS limit 0 + Nvidia max frame rate - off/141
• Resolution 1920x1080, VSync OFF, Windowed Mode OFF, Set FPS limit 0 + Nvidia max frame rate - off/141 + Nvidia vertical sync OFF
• Resolution 1920x1080, VSync ON, Windowed Mode OFF, Set FPS limit 60/144
• Resolution 1920x1080, VSync OFF, Windowed Mode OFF, Set FPS limit 60/144

 

 

Additionally I have tried playing with "disable fullscreen optimizations" setting for Doom2.exe in different modes, but it doesn't do anything in case of Doom Unity really. I have seen some different behavior in very old games when changing Windows 10 setting called "Variable Refresh Rate", but it doesn't affect Doom Unity port.

 

The only difference between mentioned combinations is the timing of stutters (or maybe even a placebo), but I wouldn't call one combination of settings better than the other.

 

P.S. Oh, forgot to mention that I also tried capping fps at 35/70 in a G-Sync as theoretically it should've made Doom Unity to behave like the original game without any interpolation kicking in, but that doesn't improve the performance.

Edited August 19, 2022 by PKr

[Fireseth]

12 hours ago, PKr said:

But does it work properly at 60hz though?

I haven't regularly used 60 HZ in a long time, so I don't even know if it doesn't work properly at that refresh rate to begin with. All I know is that if I try to activitate a higher refresh rate than 60, it looks the exact same as when the setting is switched to 60.

 

But I think the Unity Port does work at 60 HZ for the most part, since there is a huge visual improvement between the frame limiter setting 30 and 60 FPS. 

 

12 hours ago, PKr said:

The issue looks like this, right? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxSD0nCi0_w

I think so. The more I think about it, I did experience subtle mouse choppiness in the game at 60 HZ (and every other refresh rate after that since it's capped at 60). The reason I didn't mention it previously is because I couldn't tell if that was an issue or that's just how 60 HZ felt like because I haven't played a game capped at that refresh rate in years.

Edited August 19, 2022 by Fireseth

[Mr. Death]

11 hours ago, PKr said:

But does it work properly at 60hz though? For me personally it's not just >60hz - even if I set the refresh rate to 60, the game is still very choppy.

 

P.S. The issue looks like this, right? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxSD0nCi0_w

That is EXACTLY what happens on Xbox as well. Constant little frame stutters and hitches.

Me and several others have tried to raise awareness about this issue in the main Unity Port thread, but the devs haven't directly acknowledged it.

I actually just saw a thread about the stuttering in Doom 1 & 2 (Xbox) on GameFAQS as well. So there are definitely others that are noticing it elsewhere.