Cannot launch desktop with do/undo commands or use refresh doubling

[what9000]

Recently, I somehow lost the ability to launch Desktop mode for Apollo if I have my frltoggle.exe (NVCP frame rate limiter toggle) or vsynctoggle.exe in do:undo command lists. The full order of issues was initially a loss of frame rate doubling working for VDD, which remained broken even after an Apollo update to the latest version. After updating, my do/undo commands cause the desktop connect to fail unless they are removed, at which point desktop mode can connect. If I launch with the "virtual desktop+" application on Artemis, I can connect, but none of my automation works and everything is back to manual changes, and the requested refresh still won't double. I can force it to a set refresh rate in the advanced display section of audio/video settings, but still cannot use any scripts to effectively limit frame rate to the requested client panel refresh.

I will experiment further on another machine and try a full uninstall/reinstall of Apollo later today to see if anything is fixed. The machine is locked to 23H2, but I did update Nvidia drivers to the latest version. Not sure if that brought any new complications.

[ClassicOldSong]

That means the commands failed to run and errored out.

Don't use the advanced display device config, it's very much problematic.

Double refresh rate should work if you're not using advanced display device config.

[ClassicOldSong]

What advanced display menu? The Windows settings or the one deprecated in Apollo?

Double refresh rate option should work regardlessly, I've tested back and forth for hours to cover every edge case I could have though of.

When do commands fail, the streams won't start. FPS needs to be divided by 1000 in the latest version as now there's fractional refresh rate support, I forget to edit the description text. You can ask ChatGPT to edit the command for you.

[what9000]

the advanced menu in apollo is disabled, I am referring to windows advanced display/display adapter properties for (monitor).
I seem to not know what to ask chatgpt to make it work, or it can't be done in a single do command and requires a batch script. my standard fps request is:

cmd /C "C:\Program Files\Apollo\tools\frltoggle.exe" %SUNSHINE_CLIENT_FPS% --save-previous-or-reuse

and chatgpt is saying to use a batch script:

@echo off
setlocal
set FPS=%SUNSHINE_CLIENT_FPS%
set /a FPS_1000th=%FPS%/1000
cmd /C "C:\Program Files\Apollo\tools\frltoggle.exe %FPS_1000th% --save-previous-or-reuse"
endlocal

[ClassicOldSong]

Yes, calculations cannot be done inline.

[what9000]

I see, thank you for the help. I'll try to get the batch script integrated into my startup commands tonight.

Out of curiosity, is this approach an outlier? As in are people just not setting frame rate caps or toggling vsync? Would NVCP startup/shutdown control be something that could be integrated in a future release?

[ClassicOldSong]

Actually I don't want to integrate third party services, as they can change without any notice and break things. Frame limit is also outside of Apollo's scope as it's just a general purpose streaming software.

I think SteamLink did something similar to what you described but some user complain about it bringing weird behaviors to games.

I myself don't use frame limiter but it seems it kinda necessary for some setups, especially computers with AMD CPUs. So YMMV, you need to try what fits your scenario better.

[what9000]

Understandable. Even if I didn't use a frame limiter or vsync toggle for streaming, my local config would still be different (fps-3 and vsync on to best utilize gsync).

[what9000]

So as an update, some of this appears to be driver related. I was receiving random lockouts for permissions to change any nvidia settings, which was solved only by rolling back to 566.36 drivers. the 570.xx game ready drivers and hotfix would throw up 'access denied' errors for any NVCP setting change. It also appeared to mess with the auto refresh doubling; once I uninstalled and rolled back I was able to automatically double the refresh rate of the panel in windows again.

The issue with 1/1000 scaling of the script by a batch file did not work, however. I ended up reverting to v0.2.9 alpha 8 in order to use standard integer refresh values in the do/undo scripts.