Clipping through ground glitch?

[BillyRay]

I have a very good computer for gaming, it has no problem playing baldurs gate 3 is what I’m saying. I have 400gb, 50 of which is free. I don’t think it’s my software or hardware but I’d love to be corrected. 
 

basically, my game (1.18) has a glitch that happens every 30 or so seconds where the screen will freeze and for a few frames my character will seem to dip beneath the dirt and then bounce back to the position I’m supposed to be in, at which point the computer has been frozen for about 5-10 seconds. In the past I’ve had no problem running the most demanding of games, so I’ve no idea why this is happening. 
 

A few months ago I was happily playing 1.16 on very high graphics and had no complaints. But the game is just… unplayable. I really hope someone has a fix for me. I’ve cleared my drivers cache, freed up disc space, done a ton of virus scans, and nothing seems to help. :(

[Steel General]

I've had much the same experience for several versions.  I've chalked it up to playing on a Windows7 machine with 12GB RAM and 1GB VRAM.  I guess it wasn't that   My framerate only looks great for the first two seconds or so of gameplay, then tanks, and I'm sure not trying to stress the graphics.

It seemed to me that it coincided with chunk loading - the problem vanishes if I stay within a 2-chunk radius.  Also, it doesn't do it when I'm travelling on a boat.  The freeze still happens for the presumed chunkload, but no character position glitches come with it.

But yeah, running to the horizon, everything freezes for most of a second, and when it unfreezes my character is rising from the ground.  What's most irritating was my recent discovery (1.18) that the world clock doesn't stop when my playing freezes, so it's all just lost time in the day.  It doesn't always happen, though - I have long periods of useful exploration - I'm kinda thinking it might be related to tabbing out of the game, or maybe just pausing it.

[Thorfinn]

Are you running ONLY VS? If you have anything else running, virus scanner, anti-malware software, even (especially) a browser with several tabs open, 50gb doesn't go very far.

[EDIT]

BTW, BG3 isn't too demanding. Hardware a decade old or so, and I've heard people running it adequately on systems well below the minimums. Still, something that meets the minimum for BG3 should run VS fine. Like @Steel General says, most likely it sounds like it happens when you are swapping chunks from RAM to disk. Do you know how to open the resource monitor and see if your HDD is pegged?

[/EDIT]

Edited December 20, 2023 by Thorfinn

[BillyRay]

5 hours ago, Steel General said:

It seemed to me that it coincided with chunk loading -

EXACTLY. I notice the screen freezes and then when it unfreezes, all the rain drops seem to come down all at once and then pause for a second. I’ve tried with Arid world settings, but same freezing effect. 
 

The suggestions here sound really good though I’m super happy people have prospective solutions. 

[Thorfinn]

You can also try playing with your view distance. Halving the view distance means you only need to load/render 1/4 as many blocks, which can make a huge difference, depending on your system. Actually, go through all the graphics options. The hover will tell you how much of an FPS drag you can expect.