Head tracking, 60fps cap and stutter

[Rich97]

Hi everyone, I know this topic has been covered for years now, but really there are some things that don't add up for me. My setup consists of the following components: 

- RTX 3080, Intel i5 13th gen, 64GB Ram (3200 hz ddr4), ssd nvme 1 tb (for DCS only), LG Ultragear gsync 144 hz monitor, TrackNP 5 (the Chinese version of TrackIR 5, which uses the same software and reviewed positively by many users).

I am very happy with my setup, which in single player would allow me to average above 120 fps in flight with a good balance of SSA and MSAA. 

Yet, due to the well-known stuttering problems of the trackIR software, which has a fixed refresh rate of 120 hz, any fps fluctuation other than 60 or 120 causes very annoying stuttering even at high fps: In fact, it only takes drops of a few fps (e.g., from 120 to 90, going from flying at high altitude to hovering over a city, or in situations with several units to render, such as on aircraft carriers) to make the game graphically unacceptable, especially looking sideways inside the cockpit; the result is that it feels like running at 30 fps or even less.

After spending hours and hours in the NVIDIA panel and following endless online tutorials I resigned myself, and for now I solved it by capping the monitor's refresh rate to 60 and doing the same thing with the fps, and turning on the vsync. So I got a more than satisfactory and smooth gaming experience.

I also thought that the problem might be my non-original version of head tracking, yet in the forum I read about the same problem even for those who use the original track ir 5; or to switch to a freesync monitor, but I don't think that's the problem either. 

Yet one doubt always remains with me: is it possible that limiting the hardware is really the only solution? And most importantly how is it possible that from the videos of some YouTubers (spudknocker, GS...) it seems that everything is always smooth as butter i any situation? they also have similar hardware, with gsync monitors etc.. and indeed they recommend in their own videos to rely on gsync to gain as many fps as possible. This means they don't have the same problem, and I really would liketo know how to do it.

What do you guys think? Have you experienced the same problem? More importantly, has a solution been found once and for all? 

[Lange_666]

On 4/28/2023 at 3:30 AM, Rich97 said:

Yet one doubt always remains with me: is it possible that limiting the hardware is really the only solution? And most importantly how is it possible that from the videos of some YouTubers (spudknocker, GS...) it seems that everything is always smooth as butter i any situation? they also have similar hardware, with gsync monitors etc.. and indeed they recommend in their own videos to rely on gsync to gain as many fps as possible. This means they don't have the same problem, and I really would liketo know how to do it.

For me the only solution is limiting the hardware by capping FPS to 60. 120 isn't reachable in all situations so 60 it is. Although i keep my monitors refreshrate at 120 and not 60.
GSync/FreeSync doesn't make it better since that's not the purpose, it's only usefull to prevent tearing when running non synced.
How others do it, i don't know, i guess they don't notice it or don't bother.