Low frame rate hiding and how to stop it

[Sharpezoid]

Hey folks,

We have an issue with our game that causes a low frames for a short period over a load, unfortunately this causes the VIVE hud to appear over our gameplay because of automatic hiding of low frames.  Is there a way to manually enable / disable this so we can avoid this from happening at points of heavy load?

Apologies if this is a common question, I have scanned the Unity XR & VIVE documentation and have yet to find an answer nor do I know what to search for if it is.

Any help greatly appreciated!

Cheers!

@Cory_HTC

[HackPerception]

@Sharpezoid When using Unity - you can use the SteamVR_LoadLevel.cs script to prevent the frame-rate crash that's forcing you into the compositor fallback environment. Here is a video tutorial on how to implement it (and here's a written companion).

The SteamVR_LoadLevel script is essentially a workaround created by Valve - it isn't very flexible and doesn't fully solve the problem but it currently serves as a best practice for loading SteamVR scenes into Unity - although it's not well documented. Past a certain point, if the script doesn't provide a suitable alternative load scenario, you'll need to take a closer look at how your levels are loading into memory to see if there are further optimizations you can make.

On the runtime side, you can disable the compositor fallback screen via SteamVR -> Settings -> Developer -> Do Not Fade to Grid When App Hangs (enable this option to disable the fallback screen). You cannot programmatically enable/disable this option with your application on the end-user side as it's a critical feature for preventing motion sickness - end-users control this setting. It can be helpful to disable in developer and LBE scenarios. Implementing SteamVR_LoadLevel.cs is the first step towards trying to solve this problem across your builds for all users.