Glide

Not all AI will use that vertical loop tactic, but the Su-27 loves it with those engines. Never take the bait, because it can out climb you. Extend out and make horizontal passes until the AI decides to come out of the loop or you get him. Throw a variety of enemies into your dogfights. Give them short range missiles or only guns. They will fight till they run out of fuel after about 1 hour of dogfighting. That's a good workout. Try 4 Blue v 5 Red and 4 Blue v 6 Red depending on the mix. This will guarantee you some action but allow you to choose your fight.

Nice work! Drop out of afterburner, turn 90 degrees to the incoming missile and pop flares. You have to keep your head on swivel mode with IR missiles, so watch and anticipate.

I know! Just when I think it's perfect, it gets more perfect. It never gets boring. The future is bright for flight sims and VR. If you follow the "DCS Press" on Youtube there are more optimizations inbound too.

I saw your main post on your 3090, and thanks for sharing all that. You are living the dream for VR. I've got my 2D set up now so I don't have to look at settings again until something bigger than Syria comes out. I am eyeballing a newer card as soon as there's some stock in the stores. The Radeon RX 6000 series looks very cost effective, so maybe next cyber monday sale.

Makes sense. I only tested the F-16 and F-5E. How is your VR performance?

How much shared GPU memory do you use?

In Task Manager, at the bottom of the Performance tab when you have GPU selected, you will see GPU memory, Dedicated and Shared. The Dedicated and Shared add up to the GPU Memory. Mine is sitting at 0.9/27.0 GB meaning 0.9 USED, 27 AVILABLE of which 0.8/11 GB of Dedicated memory is used and 0.1/16 GB of Shared GPU Memory is used. I am guessing you have an 8GB video card.

That mission must be huge.

Just for reference, at 300 kts with fuel flow at 3000 pph, you should see the horizon line and the FPM line up where the braces attach to the HUD screen. This pic is a tad low. The Viper is in excellent pitch at this point, perfect for AA-Refeuling.

Just to give you an idea of how I brought my VRAM usage down, I chose the settings that worked with Syria map because I was sure these would work with PG and Caucasus. Textures = Medium Terrain Textures = Low Shadows = Off Terrain Object Shadows = Off Water = Low This brought Syria down to about 8GB of VRAM, and Textures = Low brought it down more. Visibility Range = Extreme Preload Radius = Max Clutter/Grass = Max Trees Visibility = Max These did not seem to increase VRAM usage. YMMV. Persian Gulf Map is lighter than Syria. Caucasus is the lightest. I haven't tested the others. If you have the cash and can find inventory, get a card with LOTS of VRAM. 12GB minimun for Syria Map. There are lots of 24GB cards on the market, but inventory looks ugly for now. Prices for 24GB Nvidia cards are crazy high.

Right now the best hardware choice is to get 12GB of VRAM or higher if you can afford it. This will future proof your purchase as much as possible. The future is in VRAM. Also, 32GB of RAM is a must have.

Well, there is a handy function built into your HMD that you can activate by pressing Shift + F10. Your HMD will display data via the Datalink on all friend and foe within 10nm. If you think that's amazing, DCS embeds this technology inside your pilot goggles if you fly a WWII bird. They use quantum tech to reach across the timestream for that, and the rest is a mystery.

Don't leave yet.

If you are like me and have Windows running a desktop background slideshow out of the Screenshots directory, next time you snap a few shots, be mindful of where the horizon sits as you press the capture button. You can even put some tape on the edge of the monitor for alignment. Then snap your panoramic shots while lining up the horizon to your mark, and Windows should display them in order, giving you a very nice wallpaper.

It would be very easy to see shared GPU memory cleared if Mustang's driver is working; it will go to down to .1 GB between missions. I don't know who controls the Shared GPU memory. I did notice that it gets used even when the Dedicated GPU memory is not full during loading, but it clears out by the time the game is loaded.

I see the pattern emerging now. If your card is using Shared GPU Memory AND you have SSAA or MSAA enabled, you will take a big performance hit. If you are using Shared GPU Memory and you have SSAA and MSAA disabled, performance will be ok, but the VRAM leakage seems to occur when the card uses Shared GPU Memory. Unfortunately, this makes it tough for anyone with less than 8GB of VRAM to enjoy Syria. I had to turn down textures, water, shadows, and visibility to get the VRAM usage on Syria down to below 8GB. Get your VRAM usage down as low as you can go, and turn off all antialiasing if you can't keep your card from using Shared GPU memory.

@divinee you are my hero. I went back to Caucasus and Persian Gulf, turned on SSAA X2, SSLR, AF 16X, MFAA, and AATR Supersample X2. My card never ventured into Shared GPU memory, and it was quite simply perfection! No stutters, good frame rates, and all the eye candy you can want. Thank you so much!

The F-16 Free Flight on Syria is a good one to test if you don't want to build a mission. I see now why it all looks so rosy when you have 11GB of VRAM and 32GB of RAM. The game sits at a steady 28 GB of RAM usage and about 11.5 GB of VRAM at 4k with all the goodies turned up high.

Also could not get Persian Gulf to accumulate Shared GPU Memory or stutters with an ordinary ground action/dogfight mission. Going to try adding a few dozen super carriers to see what that does to Shared CPU mem.

After the Syria testing, I flew a couple of Caucasus tests with terrain textures on HIGH. I could not get any Shared GPU memory to accumulate on that map. However, I could get my Dedicated GPU memory usage to go from 9.1 GB to 10.3 GB just by flying over the Super Carrier group. Then I jumped back to Syria and put the Super Carrier group in the bay at Beirut. I could get 1.1 to 1.7 GB of Shared GPU memory right from takeoff. I also noticed that the Shared GPU memory does not get flushed between missions. I'm going to keep an eye on the Shared GPU usage over the weekend.

I did a couple of quick passes on this with the GPU monitor open, and it does seem as though stutters cause a jump in Shared GPU memory usage. I also noted this behavior around the carrier group (did a bolter on the George Washington with my Viper). More investigation required.

I should mention that in light of this excellent observation, my Beirut test mission is a fully built mission with no real ground action (a few units holding positions, no movement) but a very nice dogfight. I'll try this again on a blank (smaller) mission.

2D, and I am holding off VR until this gets sorted. I have been wondering if the shader issue and the VRAM leak are related. If the size of the shader cache stays constant on disk, then DCS may be creating creating shaders erroneously and leaving objects behind in memory. As I mentioned in another thread, I can make stutters on demand launching to Beirut runway and turning my head back and forth toward the city with HIGH terrain textures. However, those stutters do not occur if terrain textures are LOW. I am wondering if those stutters are leaving behind some orphans in VRAM and/or the cache. Could someone with the G2 perform the Beirut test?

Yeah, the 20 and 30 series are way ahead of the software stacks IMHO. Flight sims push the envelope and VR is pushing it even more. These core functions impact the whole community and they are not trivial fixes. Shader cache changes are huge in terms of hours given the size and quality DCS contains. I think I'm up to 220 GB of goodness now.

Personally, I don't use the radar at all on the Viper. I think the target management design is "not optimal" on the Viper; too much slewing and designating ie too much cockpit workload for a single seat fighter) I have Datalink to find them, and Sidewinders to rule them all.