Troubleshooting

Game settings

This game does not assume that it knows better than you what your computer can do and allows you to tweak many things, from the way the rendering engine works down to the accuracy of your physics simulation. Unfortunately, this means that you can configure the game in a way that makes it run really bad on your computer. Here are some tips for what to look out for:

• If you are running into performance problems, try the default settings first. The defaults should deliver a sane performance across most systems.
• If running 4k display with a graphics card that has insufficient pixel fill performance, you can run into performance issues caused by the pixel drawing bottlenecks in the display system. This most commonly happens on laptops with 4k displays. Lowering the "Resolution Scale" slider by 4 notches and raising the "HUD Scale" slider up to the point where the HUD is clearly visible will solve this.
• If you set the display to "No FPS limit" and turn off the "VSync" you are basically telling your GPU to run at 100% all the time, up to overheating. For best results:
  • On variable-framerate monitors (G-Sync, FreeSync) set the framerate limit to something you are comfortable with looking at.
  • For classical monitors, use VSync to not render frames that would not be visible either way.
• A high "Physics Simulation FPS" setting will put a high demand on your CPU. If you turn it up to a high value, and not have the "Dynamic Temporal Simulation Simplification" option turned on, you might experience extreme slowdowns any time something demanding happens with the physics, like simulating exhausts from multiple ships or breaking many asteroids. For best results, leave the "Physics Simulation FPS" at the default value of 60, and have DTSS enabled at all times.

External compatibility

There are a couple of things that we know can crash Delta V, which aren't in our reach:

• Please make sure your system meets the minimum hardware requirements for the game.
• If using AMD Ryzen hardware, make sure that your system runs in the Ryzen-dedicated power plan. See this guide.
• At the top of the list, of course, are outdated drivers. Often a bug report circles around to outdated drivers, so check your drivers first, particularly video drivers. When running AMD cards, ensure that you have at least driver version 22.7.1 which contain significant performance enhancements.
• AMD Software: PRO Edition drivers have been reported to perform much worse than AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition. Players reported performance improvements from 10-15 fps to 60fps after changing the driver flavour.
• Some AMD cards can't handle OpenGL if the video is tunneled through integrated GPU. If you can't launch the game at all with a "unsupported driver" message, check if your monitor is plugged in directly into your GPU.
• Corrupted Windows files. Try to verify your system for corrupted files using the Windows System File Checker tool.
• The Godot engine just doesn't like controllers that have over 22 buttons. You may have to disconnect a HOTAS or similar controller. Please verify that your system no longer detects the controller.
• Some users have reported crashes while using OSD software. We have specific reports of crashes that are resolved when turning off "Riva Statistics Server" or disabling OSD components of ASUS's "GPU Tweak 2".
• Nahimic OSD service is known to cause crashes when enabled.
• NVIDIA Control Panel can be set up to override any setting the game makes and, in the case of dV and a few other games, freezes the display. Go to your NVIDIA Control Panel and in "Manage 3D settings" set "Let the 3D application decide".
• The NVIDIA Control Panel setting for vertical sync is known to cause random crashes, it should also be set to "Let the application decide".
• Using GSync, FreeSync or similar variable refresh rate monitor will have unexpected effects with VSync option turned on, as the game will struggle to understand what is the actual refresh rate of your monitor. Disable VSync and use frame rate limit option instead.
• GSync and FreeSync are reported to cause the game to flash occasionally on some configurations. If you are experiencing game flashing darkened frames or static, try disabling them for this game.
• Running Razer Cortex software in background was reported to cause worse performance.
• If your audio is distorted (ticking at game launch and on dive, opening cinematic sounds like a bad voice changer), check your device (not game) audio output selection. The game could be trying to push audio through a channel designed for voice communication only.
• Rarely, on some system configurations, Bloom causes huge performance loss.
• Some users reported that disabling Steam Overlay improves performance a lot for them.
• On some systems, the exclusive full-screen mode works much faster than the borderless window mode.
• Some driver HDR features can prevent the game window from showing up at all. If you hear the game playing, but see your desktop, try disabling HDR on your monitor.
• When using a mouse with a very high polling rate (ie. 8000 Hz) you can experience degraded performance when moving your mouse cursor. You can use --accumulate-input command-line option to enable in-game workaround, or decrease your polling rate.