MoleUK

Not even launching in OpenXR. I managed to get on via VD > OpenVR > SteamVR and play for a good while. Tried Oculus link, that was fine for a while till it crashed with this: Can't seem to currently launch in Oculus API at all. Performance wise a bit of a sidegrade for me so far. CPU is bottlenecking harder than in ST on VD > Oculus API > DCS, so it's hard to compare to VD > OpenVR > SteamVR > DCS. Need to do more testing though, as it may be the server bottlenecking, or the objectparse buildup.

Yeah I think this is why VD is having problems when trying to launch in oculus api standalone. I think the priority chain is messed up again in some way so it's trying to force OpenXR which VD can't do without SteamVR.

Same here when trying to launch via VD standalone in the oculus api to bypass SteamVR. Works on link, and works on VD if I go via steamVR. dcs.log dcs.log-20230310-165100.zip

I caved and bought a 5800X3D. Quick benches with and without shadows (on the ground is not going to be the same as in the air, obviously):

If it helps any:

Again, we're talking about different things. You're supposed to see the Petro AI sight overlay like this: I see it like this:

Might just need to change the mic input on VA, as VD creates a virtual one iirc.

I'm talking about the Petro sight. Not the gun sight, the actual AI Petro sight overlay. The petro sight and the target unit list be brings up isn't intended to be affected by the NVG looks like, always has been for me tho.

Ah. This is the way the petro sight has always worked for me in the hind with NVG. Didn't realise it was a bug. On a Quest 2, with and without mods. Makes trying to use him at night almost impossible with the NVG.

Been using VA with VD for months, no issues. I did set VA to specifically send the commands to DCS iirc tho.

Excellent, will give that extra tweak a try as well.

Objects is the one that's really having a huge load on the CPU atm with shadows enabled. You could try the others, some of them are self explanatory.

https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3328443/ Delete lines 87 and 88 as described. All those reflections will be gone. This is universal, so effects every module to some extent. Fixes the shadows off lighting issues in the mi-8 as well. Doesn't break IC or pure textures, so no conflict with MP.

I can only continue to recommend VD for any Q2 or Pico 4 users that haven't tried it with DCS yet. You no longer need to tweak the shortcut, just right click VD and point to DCS shortcut on standalone, or with a steam install just start DCS from within the games tab in VD. New GPU, current performance on a fairly busy MP server (though just after reset) with shadows and reprojection off. In-game settings in video, "medium" on VD is roughly 2000x2100, "high" is roughly 2500x2600 per eye. On link that is 4000x2100 or 5000x2600. If you're on DCS standalone, you need to right click VD in the task bar and point it towards DCS shortcut to launch. If on steam install, you need to launch DCS from within the games tab inside VD. The Q2 isn't perfect, but the current tradeoffs make it worth considering. Though the Pico 4 frankly has it beat on all fronts atm.

Yep, doesn't break IC or pure textures.

Yeah i'm just constantly tinkering with stuff atm so sticking to manually doing it for now lol. Crossing all my fingers in hope that tomorrows patch makes some of these kinds of tricks unnecessary. Just fixing the object buildup problem would be a biggie for me, let alone MT etc. As that object buildup seems to be slowly stealing all my CPU time on my favorite server, and reducing the object draw distance unfortunately can't fix all of that.

Good to know. I like to do it manually for whatever reason. Not currently using a reduced range as the server im mostly playing on atm performs bizarrely well in VR (like, really shockingly well. Shadows high 120 FPS with repro), but may go back down to 60k when playing elsewhere so may set that up cheers. I'll keep looking for any way to tweak the shadows for better performance, but I suspect any changes would be at the shader level which might break IC. A seperate draw distance slider for both objects and shadows would be tremenously useful, particularly if you could alter them while playing in-game as with tree distance etc.

If anyone does find a way to alter the draw distance for shadows, please let me know. I've been tinkering around in the lua and shader files but have yet to find anything. Only found one old line that says it no longer does anything.

Yup, it's effectively the universal draw distance for objects. So if you fly modern modules more regularly at the limits of the tpod etc, you may not want to reduce it. Or you may want to reduce it less agressively, say to 60km. If you're flying cold war modules or helo's you've got a lot more room to be agressive in reducing the distance overall. Because it's the draw distance for the entire direction you're facing, even reducing it by 10km might still free up some CPU overhead, as it's quite a wide arc. Don't know if it's the full 180 degrees, haven't done enough testing there to say for certain. As an aside, I don't know whether the shadows are still being drawn for these objects even after reducing the object draw distance. I've seen one user report they're still being drawn, even before the objects pop in, which is really unfortunate if accurate. Having a seperate draw distance setting we could alter for shadows could be a huge performance increase tool if that is the case.

One user set it to 30000 for helo gameplay and said he didn't notice any negatives, so maybe start there and work your way up if there are problems.

Works fine with pure textures and IC. Ideally ED would put a slider in for this one imo.

I posted this up on hoggit a few days back, figured I'd slap it up here for anyone fortunate enough to not use social media. This is a bruteforce method that will reduce the draw distance of all planes / ground vehicles etc, so keep that trade-off in mind. Open your graphics.lua file in the DCS config folder, find the line with all the values for your current view distance setting (low, medium, high etc), these values start on line 177. Find the "objects = {3000, 80000}" line for your current view distance setting, and alter the second value down from 80000 to your desired distance. I'd suggest starting at 60000 and see how it goes. This sets the distance in metres at which all ground/air vehicles start getting calculcations done for them, in the direction you're facing in a wide arc. Hence why looking in certain directions on busy servers can tank your frames despite nothing apparant being visible, as the CPU is choking on all those distant objects. Changing in-game settings never alters this value, so you have to do it in the .lua and probably re-apply it after each patch. You can drop it a lot more aggressively if you're doing rotor gameplay or you have a particularly old CPU, drop it far enough and spotting can become a problem however. If you're on VR or generally struggle with shadows performance currently, you may see a greater improvement.

Good to hear, from what I understand it fixes similar problems in other cockpits with shadows off. The hip is just a particularly egregious example of it. Glad not to have to look at those very, very low res baked in reflections in the huey as well now.

It's audible, just very quiet. Ideally it'd be incredibly loud and play the Mexican hat dance song though.

It's due to current DCS lighting problems with shadows off. Use this mod to fix it: https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3328443/ It's a universal mod so will affect all modules. Delete lines 87 and 88 as described. This also gets rid of the terrible looking baked in reflections in the huey, and will semi delete the dogtags hanging over the windows in the hip.