Rocket League via Proton - help
 

Howdy folks. I'm trying to improve performance in my favorite game on linux (Rocket League) , and I've run into issues.

I would think that on my hardware (Ryzen R9 3900x, GTX 1080, 32GB RAM, 2TB NVME SSD) this game should be pretty much maxed out. On windows, Rocket League is pretty much always at the max 250 FPS, even at 1440p, which is great as I use a high refresh rate monitor.

On Arch linux with proprietary nvidia drivers installed, I've experienced significantly degraded performance running the game under Steam Proton. The game will run anywhere from 35-60 fps depending on the scene. I understand that /some/ degradation is unavoidable given it's a translation layer, but ProtonDB users all seem to indicate this game runs flawlessly, so I suspect something may be wrong with my setup?

Further confounding me is the fact that neither my CPU not GPU are particularly stressed during gameplay. MangoHUD puts my GPU usage at like 30% and CPU fluctuates around but never really gets above 40%, averaging maybe 15%. On windows, CPU usage is much higher when the game is running so something is squirrely.

Things I have tried that have not worked:

• Switching to various versions of proton within Steam
• Uninstalling/reinstalling nvidia drivers
• Enabling "performance" CPU governor
• Enabling "performance" Nvidia powermizer setting
• Fiddling with schedtool to set task priority and cpu affinity, etc.
• Tried feral "gamemode"
• Running a windows VM with GPU passthrough - this actually worked and gave me 250fps again... but sort of defeats the point of running linux. Odd that the overhead of a VM and an entire different OS somehow beat out proton.

Given my system isn't stressed at all and others have gotten good performance out of this game, I must be doing something wrong...but I don't know what the bottleneck is.

Any help would be amazing.

The overheard of PROTON isn't that big.
I saw a guy running Battlefield 1 and I think he was getting ~110 FPS while under Windows, it would have been ~140 FPS. He was running it through WINE. That's a game that is not available on Steam.

I've ran Bioshock Remastered and Bioshock 2 Remastered with PROTON. OK, these are games from 2009 and 2010. Performance is 160 to 200 FPS.
I have a Ryzen 3600 3.6 GHz + 24 GB 3200 MHz + nVidia 980 GTX 4 GB.

What's your refresh rate under Linux?
Since you have the nVidia drivers install, from your Start menu, open nVidia X Server Settings.
On the left side, you will have GPU 0 - (Geforce GTX 1080)
Under that, you will have DP-5 or whatever the name of your monitor is. Click on that.
On the right side, under the Information tab, it will say
Refresh Rate = ....

~~~~vmelkon

Thanks for the response vmelkon. I suspect that something is up as I didn't think Proton would cut the framerate down to just a fraction.

Though that being said I don't think the issue is my refresh rate. Nvidia X Server Settings is reporting 144 hz for that monitor. I'm on a triple monitor setup so the other two are at 60hz. I've tried running just the 1 monitor on the off chance that multimonitor causes issues with Proton but that didn't have any effect...

I did a search for Rocket League on Proton DB.
It is strange because it says Native and a few people mention that there is a Linux version.
So, if that is true, why don’t you run the Linux version?

Anyway, according to
https://www.protondb.com/app/252950

One guy wrote:
Do not use any Start-Parameter
Some People recommended using $PROTON_USE_D3D11=1$. This option led to bad graphics and the game got really laggy, so don't use it!


One guy wrote:
Performance:
Slight Performance Problems
Game vsynced to my 2nd monitor which is 75hz. Temporarily disabled 2nd monitor, vsync was back to 144hz.

One guy wrote:
Online play for native Linux version is no longer supported. But works great and out-of-the-box with Proton 5.0-10


One guy wrote:
Tested with the Experimental build on Feb. 10th 2021. Worked out of the box without issues.
"NATIVE LINUX SUPPORT" IS MISLEADING!
There is a native client for Rocket League, but following a patch from mid 2020 all online play has been disabled. The ENTIRE point of this game is online multiplayer so this effectively renders the native client useless and pointless.
Uninstalling Rocket League's native Linux client, switching to Steam Play / Proton (force-enabled because of the aforementioned Linux (non)support), and reinstalling worked flawlessly. FPS ran at an unflinching 105-110FPS in several successive casual 4v4 matches.


^^^^^^^^^OK, so it is established that there is a Linux version but has no mutiplayer support.
One guy mentions getting 105 to 110 FPS.
Can you run this game in window mode?
Quite often, running in window mode disabled v-sync.
Can you run in fullscreen mode and disable v-sync from inside the game?

~~~~vmelkon

Yes there is a native linux client but I have not tried using it, as the entire point behind Rocket League is multiplayer, and the linux port does not support multiplayer (anymore).

I have tried windowed mode and fullscreen mode as well as vsync on/off and there doesn't seem to be a difference. In fact I can't even tell the difference between fullscreen mode and borderless windowed when running on linux via i3wm. The FPS are about the same, in any case (playable but not where they should be).

Sounds like i3wm was removing window decorations. I'm guessing that Linux drivers work like on Windows. When a game is run in windowed mode, buffer swapping is not performed (This is information from ~2003). The driver copies the backbuffer to the front buffer (this is slower) and also v-sync gets disabled (gets rid of frame capping to monitor refresh rate).

Too bad I can't test that game. There is no trial version.

Do your other Windows games run ok with Steam PROTON?

Do you have Compositor on your Arch Linux? To make pretty animations and effects using OpenGL? Try to disable that.

~~~~vmelkon

The game is actually free to play, so go ahead and install if you want!

But yes other games seem to work fine via proton. I get the 10-15% FPS hit that you might expect, depending on the game, but nothing like what I'm seeing with Rocket League.

I use picom but disable it before gaming. Enabling it doesn't seem to have made a big difference to FPS, though it does feel somewhat choppier (I think picom is trying to apply its own vsync somehow). In any case I turn it off before gaming so that's not the issue.

I did not find it. I attached a picture of what I see when I search on Steam Store.

~~~~vmelkon

Hello,
I'm sorry to revive this thread, but I'm having the same issue as OP.
Other games run smoothly with Proton, but Rocket League's FPS is always choppy.
Did you ever have any luck figuring this out?
Thanks,

Sadly I have not figured it out - I've just been running Rocket League via windows. I hope someone is able to solve this but so far nothing has helped...

As far as I can tell, it appears that the game is always in Borderless Fullscreen, regardless of the Fullscreen setting being applied in game.

I believe that this could have something to do with the poor framerate. I remember playing Rocket League on Windows, in Borderless Fullscreen, and experiencing a similar framerate. Exclusive Fullscreen was always a buttery smooth 250FPS.

I'm a Linux newbie, so maybe someone with experience will see this and shed some light.

I tested the native Linux client, and (at least on my end, in free play) it was as smooth as on Windows.

Hey Guys, i did test a little bit and now i got some settings where i can play rocket league with proton without the laggy feeling.

Some Info about my Setup:
CPU: Ryzen 9 3900X
GPU: RTX 2080 from MSI
RAM: 3200Mhz from G.Skill with 32GB
Monitor: 240Hz
Proton: 6.3-5
OS: Ubuntu 20.04

I tried like 240Hz which did work very well on windows. Now on Linux it is very laggy.

I turned the Hz from 240 to 120 and now it works fine for me. But my graphics card do like over 240fps.

I tried this myself, and couldn't get the game to run smoothly. Also tried simply limiting the FPS ingame, but changing it to anything other than "Uncapped" just made it worse.

My specs:
Distro:Garuda Linux
Kernel:5.13.8-zen1-1-zen
RAM:16 GB
GPU Driver:NVIDIA 470.57.02
GPU:NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
CPU:Intel Core i7-7700K
Monitor: 144Hz
Proton: 6.3-5 (Also tried Proton 6.14-GE-2)

@GuyOnMoose I saw your protondb entry. We have the same specs and same issue. Shame we can't seem to find a solution...