Talk:Hitman World of Assassination

Friend went to a garage sale and bought a HITMAN III physical disc, even though PCGW says there is no retail disc ever released, I will refrain from making any edits for now but I will attach some pictures below: https://ibb.co/2MzDVm9 https://ibb.co/D8SVqgG

Those pictures are the Xbox One/Xbox Series X version. (physical discs are also available for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5)

HITMAN III physical disc FOR PC are nonexistent, obviously there are for consoles physical discs

The game is changing on all storefronts to be known as Hitman - World of Assassination, should the article be renamed to reflect this and have Hitman 3 redirect to it?

That may be a good idea. It would be a good idea to put "Formerly Hitman III" in brackets or something.

I know, already added details about it a while back on the page. Knew it was today, but didn't have the time yet, working on it now :)

Awesome =0

See the dubious note attached to it; is it really an issue with the game itself or just very weak hardware that can't keep up. Haven't encountered the issue myself....

My hardware is well above the recommended requirements. With a RTX 3070 and Ryzen 7 5700X, there is a 1 frame hitch every time the camera pans to a mirror, or a mirror is rendered on screen but otherwise hidden behind some sort of geometry. This occurs even when every other graphics option is set to the lowest possible setting. It happens regardless of Mirror Reflection Quality being set to Low, Medium, or High. Any hitching was eliminated once mirror reflections were disabled.

Evidently, some other players have observed the same behavior sooner: reddit.com/comments/uwx5i9

Hey, awesome for you to discuss this :) So, from your source-link, I get the feeling that they encounter this issue only when raytracing is on. Can you confirm this? Still, that would be weird as a Digital Foundry video confirmed that mirrors still seemed to use the same planar reflections technique instead of ray-tracing (https://youtu.be/b4S9KBqYYVQ?t=169). Are you sure there is always a 1 frame stutter when bringing any mirror into view? (did you confirm with a frame-time graph or other software that shows an fps graph? Or is it just a feeling?) Also, did you update your GPU-driver to the latest version?

Ray tracing is off; the Reddit original poster also states that RT was off while they were experiencing this. I am using the latest GeForce Game Ready Driver. I've observed frame rates and frame times with RTSS. It is consistently always a spike of 1 frame every time a mirror is in view.

Ok, sorry for reading the source incorrectly then haha. Is it then only a 1 frame hitch only when a mirror comes into view or is it a constant hitch that happens for the whole duration a mirror is into view and thus not only when it comes into view? As from the general knowledge of the game using DX12, does this issue resolve itself after playing a level for a while and looking at a mirror multiple times? As this could be shader-compilation related stutter?

I'll look at this myself tonight or tomorrow with RTSS to confirm it. Sorry for making this something bigger than it might be, it is just a weird issue to me haha.

Edit: oops, forgot that my main computer has issues currently (monitor doesn't work anymore and have no spare), thus probably will be a while before I can test this myself. Maybe in the meanwhile, could you add a better description of this issue on the wikipage with that link you showed from Reddit as an extra source?

Whenever a mirror reflection is displayed on camera, there is a single hitch. Turning the camera away from the mirror and back to it causes a single hitch again. This does not seem to be related to typical D3D12 shader compilation behavior—it happens every single time a mirror is seen in the game, and does not go away during extended play sessions or subsequent launches. I also made sure to ascertain this by deleting and rebuilding the shader cache, and this did not remediate the problem.

I will try to expand the section some time soon.

Video example. There is a spike every time the mirror comes into focus. Any and every mirror is like this. streamable.com/v9qu77

(Edit: Replaced the link with another video that shows the difference with reflections off.)

Nice of you for putting so much work into this :) This indeed seems to be a legit issue. Does it also happen when vsync is turned off? But it remains the question if it is not an too minor issue to mention on PCgamingwiki, I don't know. Because it could be a similar mechanism that games use in cutscenes transitions: drop one frame to give the console/PC time to calculate all graphics, physics etc. needed for the scene. Maybe they kinda use this same mechanic for the mirrors? Thus even though this might be an "issue", isn't it maybe also a feature to work around broken mirror-reflections during the first frame of it being visible? Curious if this will get solved perhaps in the upcoming update.

This occurs irrespective of any vertical sync settings. It even happens when disabled, even when the frame rate exceeds refresh rate.

The notoriety of the issue is when there are multiple reflections loaded across parts of certain rooms. Since one mirror reflection equals one hitch, multiple reflections can or will lead to multiple hitches in quick succession if the camera pans across them. While a hitch happening for every lone mirror can be distracting enough for players, this will become considerably more distracting under extreme circumstances.

In the following video example, reflections are being rendered somewhere in the Marrakesh consulate building. As the camera pans across the room, we can observe numerous frame rate spikes happening within one or two seconds of each other, as opposed to a single spike happening from more isolated conditions. Naturally, these hitches disappear when reflections are turned off. Special K's frame rate graph was used here instead due to its higher precision. (nb: My current Special K configuration leads to decreased performance. This is unrelated to the reflection hitches.)

streamable.com/u6snye

From what I can tell, this also doesn't exactly appear to be a matter of giving the game waiting time to handle the rendering, because reflections are often perfectly visible, without any apparent loading needed, for several milliseconds before the hitching actually happens.

I believe you. Just one thing to double check: this happens when using no mods, plug-ins, overlays, SweetFX or anything else right? Still doubting if this issue is large enough to stay in, but it surely seems to be an issue. Did the patch released yesterday perhaps fix the issue? (low chance, wasn't mentioned in release notes)

I can confirm this is an issue since May 24th patch.

After that, I installed the previous version of the game (with january 2022 patch), and no issue at all with the same setup and drivers.

I forgot to login. Here's is my report on this issue (made the same on official IOI's Zendesk website) :

www.hitmanforum.com/t/hitman-3-bug-report-thread/2963/3053

Support team has escalated the issue to the dedicated engine team about 1 month ago. The patch released yesterday does not solve the problem, not surprised, processing a fix will take some time if they can reproduce it (I hope so...).

In the meantime, I have disabled the mirrors.

@Cn9740 did you report your videos on IOI's support platform ? They show quite clearly the problem and it could speed up a fix.

@Savensepi0l Nice, then lets keep the fix here on PCGW and remove it as soon as the devs release a fix.

The newest release of Nvidia profile inspector seems to have fix my mirror stuttering issue. By setting DXR to disabled - (under 5-common Enable DXR), the stutters have gone away and the game can be played with mirrors enabled again. Not surprisingly, the issue seems to be connected to Raytracing which came with the update that introduced the stuttering issue. This is why not everyone experiences the Microstutters, I'm guessing it only affects Nvidia cards capable of Raytracing.

I just added this solution on Hitman 3's page. Thank you @Cybore.

This is really weird, as DXR is not used for mirrors, there they use their render to texture feature of the Glacier 2 engine.... Btw, can't you just disable ray tracing in-game to get the same effect as doing it at driver level?

I think Hitman 3 does not correctly disable Ray Tracing even when the option is OFF. In this case, the game hangs on a check/operation each time a mirror has to be rendered. Indeed, it's weird because mirrors still use the planar rendering and not RT even when RT is ON, but this is not directly related to Ray Tracing rendering but to a poor implementation of the RT engine check features.

I don't have this kind of stuttering when RT is ON on my side but I can't let this option ON because of low performances with my "old" GPU (RTX2080). This issue can be reproduced when RT is OFF + mirrors ON. With a 144Hz+ monitor, the effect is much more noticeable for the eyes.

> Btw, can't you just disable ray tracing in-game to get the same effect as doing it at driver level?

Nope.

@Mrtnptrs : Your changes about the first negative effects (Disables all ray-traced reflections.) when DXR is disabled is not really a negative effect because this specific stuttering issue is triggered only when Ray Tracing is disabled in-game.

When RT is enabled in-game, I have no stuttering when the mirrors are being rendered. When RT is disabled in-game, I notice stuttering when the mirrors are being rendered. When RT is disabled in-game + DXR disabled at driver level, I have no stuttering when the mirrors are being rendered.

So it's not a negative effect since DXR must be disabled at driver level only when RT is disabled in-game. I hope I have explained myself correctly.

Ok, you are sure you properly tested this for all 4 possible options, thus with DXR enabled/disabled on driver level and in-game ray traced reflections enabled/disabled? And thus only DXR enabled, with in-game ray tracing disabled and in-game mirror reflections enabled results in this stutter? If so, the issue description should be changed to reflect this as it now sounded that this stutter always occurs if mirror reflections are not set to Off.

Also to double check, how did you measure this stutter? By eye or with a realtime FPS/frametime graph (like RTSS)?

With CapFrameX+RTSS, here is my previous video about this issue :

youtube.com/watch?v=3687dwkeKNo

> Ok, you are sure you properly tested this for all 4 possible options

- MIRRORS ON + RT/RTR OFF (in-game) + DXR ON (in NPI) = Mirrors stutters

- MIRRORS ON + RT/RTR ON (in-game) + DXR ON (in NPI) = No mirrors stutters

- MIRRORS ON + RT/RTR OFF (in-game) + DXR OFF (in NPI) = No mirrors stutters

- MIRRORS OFF + RT/RTR OFF (in-game) = No mirrors stutters (DXR value doesn't matter in this case)

All tested with CapFrameX.

> If so, the issue description should be changed to reflect this as it now sounded that this stutter always occurs if mirror reflections are not set to Off.

On my setup, I can reproduce the issue only when RT is OFF in-game, RT ON at driver level and mirrors are ON. When RT is both disabled in-game and at driver level, no mirrors stutter. When RT is both enabled in-game and at driver level, no mirrors stutter.

EDIT :

Made another video with NPI in action : youtu.be/95kPIYD2AIo

Nice testing done, I'll add this information to the article then and add you as a source.

Let me know or edit it yourself if not satisfied with the results :)

No my bad... Actually it's more subtle. I redid the test to be sure.

There is some stuttering in RT ON when the mirrors are rendered but my framerate is already so low with RT ON (this tech is really ressource-intensive) that CapFrameX doesn't detect the stuttering, the value remains at 0% (in fact it's hardly visible to the eyes) but the frametime spikes are there. It may bother someone who has a much better specs than mine (I have an RTX 2080).

So your initial comment were right. You can keep it in the article.

My bad !

Best Regards.

- MIRRORS ON + RT/RTR OFF (in-game) + DXR ON (in NPI) = Mirrors stutters

- MIRRORS ON + RT/RTR ON (in-game) + DXR ON (in NPI) = Mirrors stutters (but you need high framerate to notice the stuttering...)

- MIRRORS ON + RT/RTR OFF (in-game) + DXR OFF (in NPI) = No mirrors stutters

- MIRRORS OFF + RT/RTR OFF (in-game) = No mirrors stutters (DXR value doesn't matter in this case)

Then I'll undo my edit now. But thanks for double checking, see, that's why I asked about it :)

Sorry for the time lost.

Hopefully IOI will be able to look into all this. In the meantime we have a workaround to enjoy the mirrors without stutters.

Have a good day.

I btw fully undid it as all your results got invalidated by this finding. Please next time be sure before making these claims, as I specifically asked you about this and testing it and with what program as I was suspecting that the stutter was just hardly visible. I know you did the right thing and was already wise yourself to retest, but this is usually the way false stories/fixes/solutions are brought into the world. A bit of a slippery slope sometimes...

> this is usually the way false stories/fixes/solutions are brought into the world

Totally agree with this. My claims were based on testing I did this summer (at that time I had not seen spikes with RT ON) but either my memory is faulty (likely) or there has been a change. But the current situation is indeed what we described in the article.

Ahhhh, I was specifically asking about this and assuming you redid your testing with the latest version of the game haha. I'll thus next time have to ask people to do that specifically haha. Ok, next time don't suggest things from memory, but be sure and verify it with the latest version of the game please...

www.nexusmods.com/hitman3/mods/38 www.nexusmods.com/hitman3/mods/39 (Not compatible with other mods that add extra missions or add extra images.)

You do realise Hitman 3 does NOT have properly working HDR. They've been boasting about it since Hitman 2 but it was buggered back then and IO still haven't fixed it in Hitman 3. Every time you enable it, the game turns into a dull, greyed out mess... and YES, I have a HDR monitor (Samsung CRG9).

What does it have to do with HDR?

I still have this as an issue. Sometimes the hitching happens even if a mirror is not in view like in the Dartmoor manor or in the Swedish consulate. Turning it off helps but the mirrors look like shit now.