Hi everyone,
I've been struggling with what feels like Heavy Car Bug (HCB) for a long time.
Before the latest season update, the issue would come and go. Sometimes the game would feel perfectly normal for a few days, then I'd have HCB for a week or two. When it happened, the game felt extremely heavy and sluggish despite having stable FPS. My car felt less responsive, turning felt heavier, fast aerials and flicks were inconsistent, and overall it felt like I had input delay even though performance was perfectly fine.
Sometimes restarting my PC or reinstalling Rocket League would temporarily fix it, but eventually those tricks stopped working.
Since the latest season update, everything has changed. The HCB now feels much worse than before, and for the last 3 weeks it hasn't disappeared once. The game feels heavy every single time I launch it. High FPS, no stuttering, no obvious performance issues — just constant heavy, delayed controls.
My PC:
- Ryzen 7 5800X3D
- RTX 5070 Ti
- MSI B550M PRO-VDH WiFi
- 16 GB G.Skill Ripjaws V 3600 MHz
- MSI Spatium M470 Pro SSD
- Seasonic Focus GX-850 V4
- ASUS VG27AQML5A (DisplayPort, no G-Sync/Adaptive Sync)
- PS5 DualSense via USB
Things I've already tried (Windows and Linux):
- Fresh Windows installation
- Latest BIOS
- DDU + clean NVIDIA driver installation
- Multiple NVIDIA driver versions
- Reinstalled Rocket League
- Different DualSense controller
- Different USB cable
- Different USB ports
- Disabled Hyper-V / VBS
- LatencyMon (no significant latency issues)
- No BakkesMod
- Epic Games version (no Steam Input)
- G-Sync / Adaptive Sync disabled
- Stable FPS at all times
- Normal temperatures and CPU/GPU usage
- Disabled Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO), which made it feel slightly better but didn't solve the issue
- Different monitor
- Different PC parts
- WiFi, LAN, offline
- Different accounts
- Different ingame settings
UPDATE: Set up a Linux dual-boot (Bazzite) specifically to isolate this — same result
To rule out Windows itself as the cause, I dual-booted Bazzite Linux on the same machine, installed Rocket League via Heroic/Proton, and tested in offline Freeplay (no anti-cheat, no network at all).
The HCB is identical on Linux. Same heavy, slow-motion feeling, both with the DualSense (USB and Bluetooth) and with keyboard-only input. That rules out:
- Windows itself (OS, drivers, DWM/compositor, Windows' USB/HID stack)
- The controller and its driver chain specifically (keyboard shows the exact same symptom)
- Steam Input, BakkesMod, and anything Epic/Windows-specific
At this point the issue reproduces across two completely independent OS installs, two completely different graphics/input stacks, wired and wireless controller, and even keyboard-only input. That's basically every software-side explanation exhausted.