I have sent you the log file in a DM.
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I still experience this issue, recently it’s happened a lot more in an experience such as Tower of Hell or experiences that utilize TeleportService frequently.
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I have not experienced the issue since our last correspondence. I also tried joining Tower of Hell as @checkersoda mentioned above, but I was unable to replicate the issue. It seems to have completely gone away on my end.
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Thankfully this issue is visual, so I can’t complain about its severity, but at least it’s alleviated on one person.
I just joined Tower of Hell to see if something had updated on my end, but it seems to still persist.
If it helps, @perunrx, I can send a log file from my session.
3 Likes
I think I got the solution to the issue!
I don’t think it’s Roblox’s fault. It’s Windows!
I was doing some research the other day because for awhile now I’ve experienced the following on the latest Windows 11 Pro 22H2 update. It doesn’t matter what edition of Windows 11 you have, as I also experienced this on Home before upgrading to Pro.
What you’ll experience:
Windows 11 was a huge hurdle for a lot of Developers (not us, but the people making games or engines like Roblox’s, so more so the engineers of this very platform) and it’s been known quite well for being buggy since release, as well as having a few side effects with programs that worked just fine on Windows 10.
I noticed this issue does not occur on Windows 10 devices. I’m not sure about newer Windows 10 updates, as what I’m going to touch on later could have possibly been added to Windows 10 as of late. The operating system still receives security updates, in specific.
When launching a Roblox game you may notice:
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The app takes a considerable amount of time to show up as an icon in the taskbar, or highlight when pinned. I’ve timed this, and the average is usually about 6-10 seconds for me. I do believe this timing is based on your PC, however. I should also note that it takes a little bit of time after when the icon shows up in the taskbar to open the actual window. There is a high chance you’ll hear audio from the game, but not see the window pop up immediately.
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Streaming Roblox, or opening any form of recording or streaming software can sometimes occur in this white window flashing at a random sequence.
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Voice Chat almost always fails to load depending on the complexity of the game you join.
So, what is going on?
Windows 11 introduced many new security changes, one of which is Core Isolation (Memory Integrity), and VMP.
These two changes were to enhance the security on the Windows operating system by allowing windows to check and lock down high security processes with extensive memory checking to ensure malicious programs don’t tamper with your system. This is a massive security benefit, but it has a drawback.
On Microsoft’s post, by the title “Options to Optimize Gaming Performance in Windows 11”, they say…
“VMP provides core virtual machine services for Windows. Memory Integrity helps prevent attackers from injecting their own malicious code and helps ensure that all drivers loaded onto the OS are signed and trustworthy.”
“As part of continued testing and feedback from users, Microsoft has seen that in some scenarios and some configurations of gaming devices there may be a performance impact with Memory Integrity and VMP on.”
With this in mind I thought I had to try disabling these features.
I do not recommend disabling these if you care about your security over performance! I should also note that this fix might not work for everyone as it seems to only have an effect on some computer configurations!
How do we disable them?
Microsoft provides the solution to disabling both in the original article I linked, in which I made a step by step here:
Memory Integrity
- Searching for “Core Isolation” in Windows search, and opening the first result.
- Switching off the toggle for Memory Integrity.
This will require a restart, but I do not recommend restarting yet until you disable the other setting below!
VMP (Virtual Machine Platform)
- Searching for “Turn windows features on or off” and opening the first result.
- Clicking the checkbox next to “Virtual Machine Platform”.
When you unchecked the box, hit the “OK” button, and windows will make the changes. After this, restart your PC and try running Roblox again.
What if the settings are turned off, but I still experience the issue?
As Microsoft said, it is particular to certain setups. Your case might be different from what I showed here, but this fix doesn’t only just fix Roblox, but issues with other games. I noticed my computer performance just got overall better, I can actually see the Roblox loading screen now, and my voice chat never fails when joining a game.
Feedback for Roblox
I feel like unmuting a users microphone when setting up the voice chat system when they first join is a huge privacy flaw. The system should default to a muted state when starting up, or switching microphones.
I noticed whenever you go to switch your microphone input from within Roblox, the “Mic On” indicator in the Escape menu displays instead of “Mic Off”. The reason why people might be experiencing this visual bug is the added startup lag from Core Isolation’s Memory Integrity, and VMP being turned on. Then, the app as the script fails to get what it needs with the two warning messages in the console relating to voice chat, it keeps the users microphone unmuted when it connects to the server instead of keeping it muted.
I’m not 100% sure this will solve everyone’s issue, but I certainly solved mine, and a lot of other applications issues.
I really hope this also helps engineers.
5 Likes
Contrary to this, I experienced the issue on Windows 10 and with memory integrity off the entire time. I know this for certain because I have an incompatible driver preventing its use. Along with that, VMP has been off as well. Additionally, you mention the mic defaulting to an on state as a privacy issue, but this is a purely visual issue in my testing. The UI does display that it is detecting your input, but it’s not actually outputting it to everyone else. This is not to negate your experience, however. It’s important to note that those actions were successful in correcting the issue on your device.
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Oh okay, yeah then maybe it is purely visual. Maybe Roblox doesn’t send voice chat data. I just could have sworn someone remembered hearing me speak on a game before when I joined a game with it on. I’d have to do more testing to see.
Though, it should be made aware that as you said, this fixed that for me. I don’t get the visual bug anymore, so it’s still very important that the information is displayed to users just in case this happens to fix their issue.
I did state that this issue only fixes for some users on the platform. Newer PC models likely don’t experience as my friend who has a newer system (2022) doesn’t seem to experience the issue.
Different hardware combos could be the issue, just like how with the Studio Refresh update with the DPI thing was causing Explorer related crashes for some users.
If you have any theories as to how this issue occurs, definitely share as I’m interested in trying to find a solution here, or at least make the process easier for engineers & fellow devs with the same issues.
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Not visual for me, ended up getting incredibly embarrassed when a user came up to me and started referring to a conversation I was having on the phone while this bug was occurring.
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I had a feeling I was not going crazy. This was the exact same thing I experienced when said issue was affecting me. I was talking with my friends on call, screamed because of something and someone was like “who just screamed?”.
I was a little embarrassed but it’s not like I was super close to the Players in question, so it likely didn’t matter too much.
Regardless of if this issue is visual or not, it’s incredibly stress inducing to see the icon light up when we didn’t specifically hit the Mic icon anywhere. Users are also being auto banned by what seems to be some sort of moderation AI (when I reported someone abusing VC they got banned in under 2 minutes). This issue is even bigger when you’re trying so hard to not get banned because you thought your microphone was off, and decided to use a few swear words. When it comes to being older, using words like those are pretty common in casual conversation. Even when not directed as an insult, but rather trying to use the swear word as filler, similar to that of “uh”, and “um”.
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Please send me logs in a DM. If you can repro it consistently maybe we could try to investigate it together live?
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Apologies for being late. I sent 5 log files.
For clarity, I joined Tower of Hell about 5 or 6 times and experienced the bug every time I joined the experience. I tried a multitude of things (muting through the Escape menu, muting through the VC mic bubble, changing mic input, teleporting) just in case it gets caught in the logs.
I also joined other games, like Murder Mystery 2, Natural Disaster Survival, and Royale High, to see if the bug would persist, and it did not. I included two logs from Murder Mystery 2 just in case they have any difference that might help figure this bug out.
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You should update this since more information has been discovered.
By this logic, it’s probably because they put task.wait() at the beginning of one of their core scripts when it should be a WaitForChild.
I guess the best workaround is to disable it from privacy settings, in which you are unable to hear other users or unmute. I wonder what happens when you enable the camera in privacy settings. I wonder if it is still possible to disable it.
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Camera is unaffected as it is disabled by default, only microphone is problematic. The workaround of “turn of voice chat” isn’t very helpful especially when disabling microphone access makes it so you can’t hear anyone else, other workarounds previously mentioned (such as changing input device on-join to refresh voice chat) are much more helpful to the situation.
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Whilst those workarounds do work, they might not be reliable as they are a little too hacky for my liking. I did mention disabling microphone access does not allow you to hear other users in my post.
It is also still unclear to me whether this is purely a visual bug or not. The replies and the topic seem to contradict eachother.
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The workarounds are as simple as changing settings in the escape menu, your logic makes zero sense.
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Unless I’ve not been informed about another workaround, changing the input device may not be applicable to some users.
First of all, it has been mentioned that the microphone mute button in the escape menu does not work.
Second of all, I’ve heard that changing other settings (like the device) will disable listening to other users (if the device does not function), but this was mentioned in a previous bug report and may not be intentional behavior. In my case, I cannot test this because I currently do not have access to VC, but I know a handful of people who do. From my knowledge, you can switch the microphone audio device but if it is not functioning you will not be able to listen to other users. For some people, the workaround is as simple as switching the device here and back, but for others with only one microphone device, it’s not that simple. Some users do not have an administrator account (to install a virtual microphone like Voicemeeter), a physical microphone that can be plugged in, or access to a port on their device (like a Windows-based tablet without OTG support, no OTG adapter, etc.).
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Saying that switching input devices is ‘too hacky’ is what doesn’t make sense here. Yes, some people aren’t able to do that, and in that case the ROBLOX employees that focus on bug-fixing need to make this higher priority in that case, but having to change the input device is absolutely not ‘hacky’.
Compare it to changing your graphics level or your mouse acceleration level inside the escape menu, it’s that simple for those who are able to.
Also, I never said the mic mute button worked for this bug.
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In my case where I have a handful of unused input devices that function, either virtual or physical, this is feasible. On some (probably most) systems, this requires the installation of a virtual microphone software (or opening up the device manager and disabling application access of the device), in which case this workaround can be considered hacky. I’ve also helped others fix their studio layout when the best workaround was to delete the Roblox registry keys, and some users considered that workaround hacky. I thought it was quite intuitive for a workaround. In addition, many users might not even know what the setting does, so they are scared to touch it or mess with it.
I think the next best thing, for privacy and security, would be to disable the voice chat feature altogether, or mute the microphone (if supported). It is a setting which does its job no matter what and if there are future voice chat bugs that are not potentially fixed with a workaround, you can guarantee that this setting would work.
Are you able to reproduce it and share logs from such session in DM? From the logs I received so far it looks like players were always muted.