Glide

If your monitor can do 4k, you will be limited by the amount of VRAM on your 3070 (8GB correct?). At 4k you do not need MSAA or Anisotropic filtering. Make sure you are on a displayport cable and your monitor has displayport 1.2 or 1.4 enabled. You don't need vsync with your card, so let it go as fast as it can. FXAA is a "post-processing" AA that Nvidia can add AFTER rendering for games that don't have AA. Note that I have turned off all AA in my settings. Unless you are really fussy about screenshots, FXAA does not add much, and since it's post processing you need to use Alt-Prntscrn to capture the affect. I would turn that off at 4k too. During missions you want to make sure that our card does NOT use any Shared GPU memory. Performance suffers greatly when the card starts copying shaders from Shared GPU memory to Dedicated GPU memory. You can see this in the Task Manager Performance tab when you click on your GPU. The best way to lower VRAM usage is to lower Terrain Textures to LOW and to limit the number of units in the mission such as the supercarrier group. Caucasus can easily use over 8GB of VRAM causing most cards to have issues. Persian Gulf uses more, and Syria uses over 11GB of VRAM with these settings. I have 11GB of VRAM on my 1080Ti, so I don't fly Syria unless I turn Terrain textures to LOW. I don't fly the WWII maps much. I am not concerned with having the highest FPS with these settings. These settings look the best AND are butter smooth all the time on my rig. Give them a try. YMMV.

Do not forget the trusty boom operator is human in real life.

VRAM is the critical component to watch. Your card has 8GB of VRAM, and depending on how much is in the Caucasus mission, you can cause your card to start swapping Shared GPU memory with Dedicated GPU memory. Watch for this in the Task Manager Performance tab. You do not want your card to use ANY Shared GPU memory. Things get really choppy when that happens. Dropping Terrain Tectures to Low and/or deleting the SuperCarrier group should be enough to get your VRAM usage where it needs to be.

Great medics on those Mi-24V's.

Practice flying in the same pitch at 300 kts behind the tanker just like you fly to catch the ball. For example, on the Viper its around 300 kts with 3000 ppm fuel flow. Sounds like you enjoy long missions, so I'll be captain obvious and remind you that you only need to come to a halt to open the ground crew menu to rearm and refuel. You could easily plan your missions in hops. Hang in there. Edit: I try to get my tankers at 15000 at 300 kts because I know the Viper performs well at that altitude. They always seem to chose their own speed, so play with this a bit until you find the sweet spot.

I don't see any signature, but that could be my issue. I hear you, until I get my grown up 16GB or 24GB card, I have my Syria workarounds. It's too good not to fly, but I want my high terrain textures.

I'm not sure what your specs are, but Syria is limited by VRAM. Get your VRAM usage down as low as you can and do not let your usage grow such that your card starts using Shared GPU Memory. Things get choppy when the card starts copying things between dedicated and shared GPU memory, and DCS leaves the memory cached between loads as long as you don't change maps. For example, I have 11GB of VRAM on my 1080TI. I can play PG and Caucasus all day and my card never uses shared GPU memory. On Syria, I have to set terrain textures = LOW and delete the carrier group for my card to stay out of shared GPU memory.

Yes, at first I missed it, but now the new sounds are part of the rhythm.

Loving the new sidewinder sounds! Whooosh! They seem faster too, but I could be dreaming.

The DCS version lights up nicely:

Your specs are almost ideal. The key to success is to get your VRAM usage down such that the mission does not cause your card to use Shared GPU Memory. If you keep your VRAM usage below 8GB you can have all the goodies turned up. For example, I have 11GB of VRAM in my 1080Ti. I can run Persian Gulf and Caucasus beautifully at 4k on these settings, but I don't have enough to run Syria at these settings because it will take over 11GB of VRAM and force me to use Shared GPU Memory. I can fit Syria in if I drop textures and terrain textures to Medium and Low respectively.

My approach is to make them more challenging by changing the situation. I never load long range missiles because in my world there is a supply shortage. My AI must merge to complete their missions. I also limit short range missiles so my dogfights end up with guns only, and I give them more units than my Blue to balance the fight. Engineer the dogfight such that there are ground units that can strike you if you are in range. This keeps you on your toes. The Su-27's and Mig'29's are fun to fight. The Su-25TM will bite you if you don't watch him. The Su-25T is the most beautiful sitting duck in the game IHMO, great for gun practice. Mig-21Bis' are fun in guns only fights. The AI will agro to your ground support units first (A-10's and Su-25's) before they attach you, so I put them behind the fighter sweep.

I assigned 4 escorts to an A-10C II, and three of them appear to chose the exact same flight path causing them to collide. Escort Bug.trk

@Taz1004 Were the units trying to pass each other on the road? +1 AI cannot cross the steepest parts of the Caucasus regardless of the waypoint altitudes.

I had similar issues when I first started using SuperCarrier. It's very cool to launch with the AI at mission start, but path-finding on the deck is tricky for more than one AI. I moved to having my units airborne at the start of the mission, and then I have the units recover together so there's some traffic to enjoy on the ride home.

Video game, I think.

I read a book on that mission. Check out YT videos showing that shilka downing the Su-25, and be amazed at the volume of fire from one shilka. Also, realize that those rounds eventually come down in someone's backyard.

You need at least 32 GB of RAM for Syria map. Also, you want to tweak your settings to get your VRAM usage low enough that you do not use any Shared GPU memory. If your card less than 6 GB of VRAM you may not be able to get the VRAM usage low enough. If so, disable MSAA and SSAA. You may need to bounce DCS between missions to clear out Shared GPU memory that is not getting flushed after the mission.

Moving to Standalone is easy as pie. The installer does everything for you, and all your modules come across. The licenses you buy for Standalone don't move back to Steam, so you have to pick one to move forward with. Just in case you change your mind. Syria map is fantastic! I could dogfight over Damascus all day. It is resource hungry though. Save up for more VRAM because it's not getting smaller.

The Sidewinder behavior has been evolving nicely, IMHO. They lose tracking with the sun low in the sky, and they pick up friendlies that cross their path. I've been down twice by them over the last month. They are way more fun now.

Monitoring apps take up resources, but they are designed to be lightweight. You will be hitting the hardware limits long before a monitoring app impacts your game. I only turn them on when I'm testing because they destroy immersion for me.

You can run both Stable and Open Beta. Also, Syria map requires over 11GB of VRAM with all the settings up high. You may need to adjust your settings.

This was my favorite mission back in the day, and even better at night. I loved dumping durandals on runways.