Demos rarely function as well as finished games anyway, so it wouldn't have been an accurate representation.

Yet it would have been better than nothing, and it likely would have shown many of us PC users that there was an obvious issue when you were any where near an NPC's face. Which might be be a cause for concern!

I mean seriously it's almost funny if it weren't so damn stupid! I am chugging along fine in the game, and find that I dread going anywhere near civilization because I know there will be some sort of demon people there. I don't know what it is about them, when they look at me, my whole world slows down, almost like I cannot move. It must be some sort of magical spell that causes time to slow down, sometimes it even stops. It is very peculiar, powerful magic it is.

That's a possibility, but we're without it now. We just need to keep this fire lit under their seat and make sure they hurry up and do something about it.

I have to say, it's surprising how little they've seemed to notice. If I were releasing a HIGHLY anticipated game, that had as many preorders as this one did, I would probably keep a 24 or 48 hour staff on standby in case something like this happened. The last thing they should want to do is piss off the fans that buy their games on day one. Those are the fans who actually care about the games, care about the developers, and are willing to put time in for feedback.

Such is typical for any recent PC game. I can't remember the last time I've encountered a PC game running correctly on release for me, it's been so long.

But in my opinion its not caused by NPCs faces or whatever. It runs like crap because the game uses only 1/3 of your computer power(In my case 30% gpu and one cpu core max 80% other cores 10%). The reason you see biggest fps drops when looking at npcs, buildings or animations is because this game elements require more power to display in correct framerate than lets say empty roads or hills

In this world the Flux Capacitor has been mass produced and is readily available in any thrift shop. But you need to have a readily available supply of
1.21 JIGGAWATTS!

I really do hope this gets fixed soon though, I was enjoying the story a lot more than I had with Fallout 3 and Oblivion.

But when I remove their heads, there's suddenly no FPS drops and the game runs smoothly regardless of how many NPCs are on screen.

Its not a PC platform-wide problem, and I have no interest in giving these devs some excuse like "no PC game functions perfectly upon release". On release day, I have purchased CoD: Modern warfare 1 and 2, Metro 2033, Just Cause 2, Oblivion, Fallout 3, Rome: Total War, all the HL2 series, Portal, .... the list goes on... and ALL of those games played fine for me out of the box.

So has there been any dev comment yet anywhere on the forums about this issue? If not it's a fail on their part. This is not some silly glitch (although I've had many of those... people who are walking and then just float away? WTF?), this is a game-breaking, game experience ruining problem that needs to be addressed and addressed fast or they have lost a fan and a customer.

Kataris maybe you are the lucky one, or maybe the heads are problem too(removing heads doesnt work for me) but use of pc power is problem too. It cant be normal that game is running like crap and using only small part of your pc capabilities ?

I think what he was getting at was that the reason the faces are the cause is because there is a lot of complex calculation
that goes on behind the scenes when facial expressions are used (and during speech).

The fact that the game is only utilizing a small percentage of the GPU means when these instances do pop up
there's a bottleneck of data, hence the fps hit and why disabling the heads boosts performance.

This guy is exactly right. All the little fixes (removing heads, reducing water reflections, blah blah blah) just reduce the strain on the graphics card. Because the threshold is limited to 30% for whatever reason, any stress to the video card beyond that 30% is going to cause framerate drops and stuttering.

I think I might have terrible luck

In any case, most companies who aren't valve tend to treat PC users poorly lately. It's generally always the publishers fault for rushing things, with some exceptions.

I also notice the game does not use my hardware. 30% GPU utilization max. Unless I get real close to a barrel fire, where it takes up most of my screen, then it jumps to 40%.

So yes, the heads of the NPC's is what is causing FPS slowdown... BUT if the game was utilizing our entire videocard, then the slowdown would likely go from 100 FPS down to 60 FPS, instead of 50 FPS down to 10 FPS. Does that make sense?

So clearly something is borked about the NPC heads that is causing horrible FPS drops. But if the game was actually using 98% of the GPU (like every other game at Ultra high settings?) the horrible FPS drop probably wouldn't be a gamebreaking problem.

Dev's need to get on both. Figure out why NPC heads are screwing up your game, and figure out why your game is not using our hardware properly causing sub-par performance on stellar gaming systems.

I wholeheartedly approve of the reasoning in this post. Well done.

Come on Devs, it's a reasonable time in the AM now - so let's see you start to sort this mess out. I want to be playing New Vegas without slowdown by tonight.

its confirmed this game is screwed on windows 7 32bit and 64bit, its confirmed XP SP3 32BIT runs fine. i dunno about vista.....

i also approve of the usage of the word "bork"
*highfive*

Screwed on Vista x64 here (and other users have confirmed the same). There's no way in hell I'm reformatting to install XP just because the Devs can't get off their oversized backsides and do something.

I'm also on Vista x64. I have an XP machine, but I don't believe I should be forced to use dated technology to make a modern game function.

You DO NOT HAVE TO REINSTALL XP you can dual boot Windows 7 and xp if you have a big HDD like me i have 150gb + 640gb + 320gb external. space is non issue. aslong as you have the hdd space + XP PRO youll be sweet. Obsidian prob did the QA on PC with xp Lolz

THis needs to be repeated and others confirm .

If true that sure is a bad indicator of platform testing given
the number of Windows 7 6 bit systems being sold today versus XP systems. (exactly).
Further it sounds like they still have issues with CPUS' with mroe than 2 cores. Fallout 3 1.70 did too and there was some ini hack people used
to get around that issue.

Fix the problem Bethesda.
/signed Windows 7 64 bit user and Nvidia 285GTX.
Intel core 2 duo. 197.xx series Nvidia drivers.

From what I'm reading people with more advanced (core wise) systems than 2 cores seem to have more problems than 2 core with this game.

I'm having a fPS drop too that is worse than irritating but may not be as bad as others have reported.

By the way people post system specs when you do bother to post a complaint so a common thread might emerge. It helps narrow down issues.
Failing to post system details does NOBODY any good.

Considering it runs fine on XP, perhaps it's an issue with DX10?

HAHA sorry people I just can't belive this...how did Obsidian overlook this?
I've checked the game at my friends PC and after what I saw....I mean not gameplay - but this infamous slideshow due to the NPC head lag I bursted out laughing.....I'm not buying this game - simply it's broke and unrepairable due to the same crappy engine of Oblivion and FO3, if it was repairable - it would have been repaired long ago....and now things are even worse with F:NV.......

As far as I am aware, Oblivion and FO3 had no such NPC based performance issue. And to say it's "unrepairable" is an indicator that you know little about how things work. The problem can be fixed, the question is, will it be fixed, and when.

I refuse to accept that the only fix for a developer error is finding or buying a decade old Operating System. If that works for you for the time being, that's fine. I don't have nor do i want Windows XP. This game is "Enhanced for multi-core, and build for windows 7" according to the ads and the box.

What did they do, tell the devs, "Good job on getting the game out everyone, lets all take a vacation until next week." Can we have a response please?