Rapierarch

Currently clouds and weather effects are only GPU side decorations. They are not a part of simulation thus nothing in the simulation can interact with them. Just like planes flight model cannot detect you are entering a cloud (warbirds should feel it when you enter a large cumulus) change in humidity, giving radar returns, can be seen by sensors can be seen by ai, even rain should effect flir picture etc..... they are all linked together. weather is not the part of the simulation running on cpu, only temperature, wind force, direction, pressure etc map wide statics changing in function of altitude. Deka is finishing Jef by the end of the year and they made it clear that weather radar is not going to be implemented since weather radar needs weather being a part of simulation. C-130 team which is minimum a year away from EA also informed people that weather radar is not going to be implemented despite being shown in teaser pictures of the cockpit (which is a shame because flying a long haul cargo plane is fighting weather) So my forecast is that we are minimum a year away from such things. I believe ED will finalize the cosmetic weather first and than bring its parameters step by step to simulation. Based on the pace of work that we see from introduction of volumetric clouds till now we can set up our two weeks time frame around 1-3 years until it gets implemented. Edit: 17/10/2022 I have seen a coming soon teaser from C-130J team. So maybe we can get the simulation in 2 years instead of 3 years time.

Dear @draconus, @v81, @nthere, I'm new in DCS forums so I do not know how things run here but I have seen ED shutting down topics because of such discussions. I beg you, please do not to bring this topic to that point that it gets locked. Let's stay on the topic. We know DCS needs lots of improvement in many aspects but main point of my post is to give huge improvement for least amount of work. This topic is not the place to discuss it. I don't wish this to get lost. I hope you understand. Kindest regards,

Hi @twistking, Yes this is totally different. That slider in the setting is preload radius it loads the terrain and world objects on that terrain to your RAM. With SSD's we do not actually need it but if you have huge amount of ram why not. This precaching loads active game assets too and since it is graphical cache it also uses VRAM. I cannot fly Apache without this mod in my current settings for example. No matter what preload radius I set in the slider. For example there is an allied F-16 flying 100 miles away which you are capable of seeing it via external cam if you want, this precaching logic already loads that and it's surroundings to be able to render it instantly if you ever want to switch to external cam and go looking for it. You will immediately see the effect if you now apply the mod and start spamming f2 cameras. It will switch to the camera but model textures will come 1/3 of a second later and in coming 2 seconds all ground textures will be loaded in your view. It is only good for content creators but you do not need that resource hog while you are actually flying.

@twistking Hi, This is a quick band aid solution that we do not need to wait 5 years for implementation.

Nope, I build computers since intel 286. I'm old school I keep everything barebone I use nothing: even no voice attack, no tac view, no virtual joystick no chrome no discord no srs nothing. I play single player. Only thing runs together with DCS is Oculus App since I only fly in VR and most of the time task manager GPU tab to check VRAM usage. I have seen this happening also in 2d when I run dcs without VR for mission editor only. But since it is very seldom I cannot tell how frequent this happens in 2d. Thanks!

Well it is not magic bullet. It does what it is designed to do, takes away vram scheduling from CPU so in a game like DCS it gives some more cpu headroom for you. Most people fly dcs at high texture settings without having minimum 16GB vram and this puts huge load on memory operations since DCS uses incredibly high VRAM. When this happens in VR you get stable powerpoint level low FPS if HAGS is turned off. If it is turned on than you get stutters nervous framerates since VRAM overflow is huge. Both are unplayable But in normal conditions I see little less cpu usage when HAGS is on and little overflows are handled better by a sutter than fps dip. Yes I use Q2 also.

IL and DCS comparison is comparing apples with peers. You can not judge the color quality like that. IL-2 has physical sky with physical based rendering globally. It has volumetric atmospheric effects working side by side truesky weather simulation and lighting is calculated realistically and shadows too if you want to get anything better than that it is raytracing. DCS has none of it. Until the engine gets those capabilities it is not possible to evaluate the color quality. Mind that the oldest map of IL-2 now looks way better and realistic for color gradation than channel map in DCS. Rendering technique makes huge difference. DCS is nowhere near in the same class with all other populer sims now. We are running a dinosaur in our systems. It is not the map that's the problem or we cannot judge it at this state at least.

Dear Flappie, I'm still having that issue. Technical support could not help with that too. HAGS had no effect on it. In fact in VR disabling HAGS puts extra scheduling load to CPU and negatively effects performance since DCS likes to overflow VRAM a lot. Technical support told me to set a gigantic page file which I did. Had no effect and I reported it back. Just wanted to chime in since I have seen my post is linked. I advise everyone checking task manager and manually killing DCS. It happens more than 50% of time with me. It now become a standard procedure for me for quitting DCS. Cheers,

Lod1 model of Hind not the main external model. First lod model that you start seeing after 80 meters has more triangles than entire Mi-8 model. Cockpit + main external. Cockpit of Mi-8 is super simple. Mi-8 is one of the most performant and super optimized models that you can get in game. That model is primarily done for professional clients you would not want a thousands of dollars price tag simulator to stutter.

Hi Specter. Can you tell us what is that VRAM limit set by ED for maps and where does SA peak now? Thanks!

As far as I know (please correct) that ability to enter and leave VR during engine running is only available as a feature in OpenXR runtime. OpenVR or oculus api does not have it. If they move to OpenXR that would be awesome for sure. Especially with Vulkan since they come from same developer.

No you have to create it. I must say I have not tried that method so I do not know it works. I edit directly graphics.lua and use a mod manager to swap that file. I do not think precaching is one of the graphics options so I guess it is not working. Further on in the lua there is a section starting with graphics I believe those options can be modified by this format in autoexe.cfg but not precaching. I also would suggest to set them both 0 or at least set the around objects 0 because it seems to be causing most of the memory usage.

I see no reason that they would say no Wonderful news thank you!!!

will ME integration allow us to use it as minimaps for moving map system in the modules? Except nevada and south atlantic none of the maps have all useful scales. This renders doppler map of Hind utterly useless. I'm craving to have them

Yes Syria please. I did not know you were doing this. That's wonderful. Edit: Sorry how can we install this to use as minimaps? I have scrolled whole pages but may be I have missed it.

Dear, I'm happy that someone else finally noticed this behavior. I never had time to file a bug report because it is a lot of time consuming work and we do not have developers console to pinpoint guilty item there. My tests showed that it is not grass and clutter. But since you have already performed tests can you redo the same test after you applied this edit. Edit this file Saved Games\DCS.openbeta\Config\options.lua Change this below setting to -150000 so it should read like this: [“clutterMaxDistance”] = -150000, This will stop all those rocks and rest of the clutter being drawn and should give you 3% or 5% FPS boost. In my tests what I have seen is the engine is screwed with places where splat textures are used. When first layer of texture starts blending engine goes to hyperventilation and starts rebuilding same metashader at full speed per frame almost over and over again. You should see CPU + GPU hike even when you pause the game. It gets even worse over large areas in splat textures because multiple blendings are happening. That's why Marianas map is useless since all over the island is splat textures. You can also confirm this by moving away from that low fps and note the system clock when you regain your fps. Go immediately to your metashaders2 folder and you will see one or 2 metashaders written exactly at the moment that you regained your fps. This marks the time when DCS engine stopped recreating them. Also it gets worse in SA map over urban areas. But in SA map even over barren landscape there are splat textures but is is not too many layers. You can still trigger this by diving towards the ground. If you pass from those low density splat texture areas at low level level flight it will not trigger the blending. But diving towards ground triggers it. So when you are redoing the tests do it exactly the same way. I believe you looked at the ground in external view and zoomed in to trigger this. So now try it with the edit I have given and see if you can also confirm it is not grass. And if you have time file a bug report to ED not in SA map. This is related to game core. But let's confirm it first. In DCS you can never know anything 100% sure. Cheers. PS: I have already contacted Razbam at the release and they have rechecked the map lods especially for the flowers and local vegetation which are all "speed trees". So map is build per ED specs.

Looks wonderful and finally procedural texturing in maps of DCS. This will help everyone's performance and fidelity. What is the other map that you have worked on for DCS?

All helicopters and FC3 planes I tried can collide with power lines. All the rest can fly through them without any damage. For example: A-10A collides cables suffers damage A-10C II flies through them I have tried A-10CII, Tomcat, M-2000C, F-5. F-18. F-16, Viggen, Harrier all of them fly through them no damage. Su-25T, A-10A collision suffers damage I did not try the rest I do not fly them Huey, Hind, Apache, Hip Collision end of flight Can this be fixed it kills the immersion especially in Viggen. Thanks. PS: I have no track record you can simply try it it is not map or location depended.

Well he wants more immersion, F2 view is probably something he avoids.

Dear, you can hardly notice it in quick action missions. Especially old modules use old ai assets which have LOD's so even if they are loaded you wil hardly notice it. Make a mission starting on the runway. put one apache on the ground 30 km away from and all assets without lods like f-16, chieftain tank, btr-8, ural firefigihter etc all at a distance less then 50km but out of your visual range. Put as much as detailed models. Than start mission you will see the difference in your RAM and possibly VRAM if you can exceed vram in initial test without mod. Game will try to fill it up of course if there is unused place in it.

I use notepad++ but it should work too for this simple edit.

Yes I directly modify the lua file. And use a mod manager to implement it. I never trusted that autoexe.cfg . I suspect that this is not the correct format since graphics options actually begin later in the lua file. When it works you will start seeing that you can lower ram usage by lowering preload radius. Before that it did not have any affect on my system if you use 60000 or zero. Now I use 10000 as preload radius and it is plenty. Also memory usage keeps steady, I mean you will not experience a steady slow pace increase in memory usage in long flight.s

Thanks Uboat. No need to keep any precaching. We have been using it with distances set to zero "0"

Dear ED, Before my summer holidays I have said that I have some ideas to make ED experience better for everyone but I had to evaluate them and will share them when ready. The major focus point of my critics was lack of LOD models in game assets both for some core mods and AI assets.I see that this is moving to the right direction and still expecting LOD models for the rest of the assets and also I’m looking forward to seeing the final LOD levels for Apache and Viper. Current provided LOD1 and LOD2 models reduce CPU load 75% per asset but textures are still inherited from the main model and they still occupy a large portion in video memory. I’m sure that final lod levels will cap it and bring it to the level of Tomcat, KA-50 or Hornet. Last month I was mostly focused on small additions or tweaks which will impact performance and visual fidelity with minimal impact. So any interventions which require remodeling, or recording were out of the question. Also I have waited enough so that I personally and as many of hoggit users can test one of the basic solutions that I’m going to suggest now to implement. Your team can implement any of them pretty easily without tinkering the main code requiring internal testing. Here we go. Easiest first. 1- Separate cockpit textures from object textures and provide same level of quality settings for them: Proposal: New setting in control panel: Object textures: High, Medium, Low Cockpit textures: High, Medium, Low Terrain textures: High, Low. By allowing us to keep cockpit textures separated we can keep it at higher levels together with terrain textures and reduce object textures which mostly covers external models. Those models do not require the same texel density as cockpit and terrain textures since they are rarely seen closer than 30m. This will allow fluent cpu frametimes and relax cpu memory controller tasks and allow especially VR users with 8GB gpu’s to enjoy the best visual quality in game. Cockpit textures are already separated in the game install; they are only under the mods folder. You do not need to manually tag them even. Please make this setting available for us. 2- Precaching function in graphics.lua: (actually this is easier than the other one but probably need internal discussion) Proposal: revise and ,if not necessary, remove. Precaching function given in graphics.lua (see below) apparently remains unchanged since the Lock-on game configuration files. Precaching = { around_camera = 50000; around_objects = 10000; around_types = {"world", "point"}; preload_types = {"map", "world", "mission"}; } Many people in reddit dcs related forums, followed my advice to set both parameters to 0. Which lowered their ram and even Vram usage drastically and provided more resources to be available in their system for multiplayer and VR. I personally removed the full statement from the lua file and it has the same effect as setting the parameters to 0. It has been like that in my system for at least 5 months now. Since this is a sitting sim and max speed in game is almost limited by reality and we have huge game assets but still enough bandwidth for on time delivery to render pipeline: can you reconsider this setting and remove it if it is not necessary. It happens to not break anything in game but looks like it is the problem. Thanks and, Kindest regards, The LOD’s guy PS: I'm going to post a lighter version with some more explanation in hoggit sub on reddit. You are welcome to read that too.

Thanks! Tomcat is looking like a stand alone sim where the rest are added as modules to it