VA causing lag spikes that affect VR

[HighwaymanEd]

So this one has been troubling me for about a week now, and I thought for ages that it was something else that I had done to cause it, but I've narrowed the issue down to only occurring when Voice Attack is running.

I've been using VA for years and absolutely cannot fly in VR without it, especially in DCS with the VAICOM plugin and Elite Dangerous with the HCS packs, but since around Tuesday this week, shortly after Windows, Nvidia and SteamVR posted updates, I see issues in VR where my headset completely loses tracking or goes to sleep for a second or two in any and all VR games that I play when VA is running. VA does not need to have any plugins running (I've currently disabled them), or be processing any commands for this issue to happen.

I have VA running as an administrator on my machine, and I'm using Steam VR with my headset. Looking at the utilization in task manager, VA is typically running it around 0.5% CPU utilization, with peaks to around 1.5%. As soon as I start SteamVR however, Voice attack jumps up a little to a baseline of around 1% and peaks of 2% whilst it is idle and starts consuming a little more RAM. As soon as I'm running a game in VR the usage then carries on at the same ~1% baseline, but peaks up at much higher values, sometimes as high as 7%, all whilst VA is effectively idle, not processing any commands, and not listening...



These spikes seem to occur randomly, regardless as to if VA is processing commands, listening, or idle. They occur anywhere from 30 seconds apart, to sometimes 5 minutes or more between them, but whenever they do my VR headset momentarily loses tracking or goes to sleep.

Can anybody offer any advice with regard to what logs I can provide, or where I should be looking for issues?

I've found a few threads relating issues with GSYNC monitors, I don't have any, and use the same TV for my main screen and VR headset that I've been using for years without issues, and also issues relating to the Windows Game bar, which is disabled.

Windows 10 Home 64bit build 1903
Nvidia RTX 2080Ti (451.67)
Steam VR 1.13.9
VoiceAttack 1.8.5

[Pfeil]

The speech recognition engine remains active while listening is disabled, as it needs to be able to recognize commands that override that state, so it's always processing what it hears.

A simple test you can do is to open the VoiceAttack options window (by clicking the icon), which does shut down the speech recognition engine, and additionally removes the hooks for keyboard and mouse activity, to check whether the spikes still seem to occur.

[Gary]

I noticed that you've had VA for a really long time - is this the first time you've encountered this?

If you've got plugins turned off and the spikes still occur, I can only guess that something is interfering with your speech engine to some degree (it's the only thing within VA that runs, 'continuously' - unless you've got a long-running command, inline function or plugin).  You should try turning off speech services to see if the spikes still happen (Options > Recognition > Disable Speech Recognition) .  From there, I would try what is outlined in this thread (ignore the title): https://forum.voiceattack.com/smf/index.php?topic=64.0

After that I would try reinstalling drivers to see if it helps.  Also, a system file scan might be in order (it's good to do from time to time even if there is no perceived issues):  https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4026529/windows-10-using-system-file-checker

I'll keep an eye out to see if anybody else is suddenly having issues after those types of updates.


Edit - looks like Pfeil and I are on the same page

[HighwaymanEd]

The speech recognition engine remains active while listening is disabled, as it needs to be able to recognize commands that override that state, so it's always processing what it hears.

A simple test you can do is to open the VoiceAttack options window (by clicking the icon), which does shut down the speech recognition engine, and additionally removes the hooks for keyboard and mouse activity, to check whether the spikes still seem to occur.

So in response to this, this does indeed stop the spikes in CPU usage and I was able to fly around in IL-2 for 5 minutes without any issues that I would typically have seen over the past few days.

I noticed that you've had VA for a really long time - is this the first time you've encountered this?

Yes, I've had it for years, and have been singing its praises to anyone that will listen

I've not seen anything like this before, and I'm going to say it... "Nothing has changed", at least that I'm aware of other than the updates mentioned, and there was also an HCS voice pack update, but as mentioned, all of the plugins are disabled as that was one of my first troubleshooting steps...

I will go through the suggestions in the thread that you've linked, but I can tell you that one of my flying buddies is seeing exactly the same issue with a very similar setup that has only been occurring over the past few days. He has does not use the HCS packs, so that should rule that one out

I'll post up anything I find of note.

[HighwaymanEd]

Initial results look promising!

I created the new speech profile, although I haven't done much re-training yet. I then ran the repair and it did find a couple of files that it said were corrupted. After that, I re-started VoiceAttack and flew around in IL-2 for 5 minutes with no issues.

We're due to do a multiplayer hop this afternoon, so I'll keep going at it and post up later.

As always, thanks for the prompt response.

[HighwaymanEd]

Hey guys,

Just feeding back that everything was good after the fixes you recommended and I haven't had any issues since.

Thanks again for your help.