Daemoc

Thanks for this. It turns out the Oh-6A was the cause of my stuttering issue. Specifically the scripts/hooks files. I removed all mods as a first step in troubleshooting when this issue came about with the last update, but I must have missed those script files. I spent days trying everything to stop the stuttering and nothing worked. The odd part is it only effected the Caucasus map and I did not use the OH-6 mod on that map. I could use the OH-6 on other maps and I had no stutter. And it only stuttered after the last update. It is just weird. Anyway, just wanted to say thanks again. I can finally play DCS again. The A4 and the OH6 where the only two mods I used, but I think I am done with mods going forward.

Been at this for two days. I still can't make sense of this. I can run this exact mission as a spectator and it runs fine. The second I hop in a vehicle it stutters. If I am inside an aircraft sitting on the tarmac, every time the game stutters, the aircraft bounces. I have started recreating this mission from scratch and I am about 25% the way through it and I still can not reproduce this stutter.

No dice on the power service. I have been testing this all day and here is what I found... 1: Out of all of my large custom missions which are all built very similarly, this only happens on the Caucasus map. 2: If I start a new mission on the Caucasus map, it works fine. 3: If I delete everything from the mission other than my Huey, it runs fine. If you look at the large over all map. I systematically deleted everything outside of the circle and tested it at each stage. It was still bugged. Once I had it narrowed down to this little area, I systematically deleted everything one step at a time and tested. I first deleted all AI air units, then AI tasks then deleted ground units and statics in small areas. The bug was still there until the last pass when I deleted everything. I then loaded the original mission and deleted everything in this little area and left everything else. It was still buggy. There has to be a single unit type somewhere causing this. It has to be a static or ground unit as that was the only thing left on my last pass. One that I did not use on my other missions. I will find it, it is just going to take a lot of trial and error to do so.

I did see that, but I figured it did not apply because of the circumstances involved. I will give it a shot though, it can't hurt. Thanks for the info.

I have no idea what a real F-5 with a single wingtip aim9 should feel like, but this has been my observation as well. At first I thought the rolling moment was a result of asymmetric weight and tried to counter with aileron, which never seemed to behave. Again, no real world experience here, but it just felt off. It got to the point that I would just launch both missiles at the same target because having the single winder was more of a liability in a turn fight. After while I noticed that if I counter the "roll" with rudder instead of aileron, it was easier to control at slower speeds which points to asymmetric drag rather than weight. I don't know how you could test something like this let alone prove anything right or wrong, but my gut tells me the wingtip stores create too much drag.

I made the full time switch to Linux during the Windows 7-10 transition. After a little learning curve, I found Linux to be a much better user experience than Windows will ever be. I know people are afraid of change, but with distros like Mint, anyone can make that change. You can do everything in Mint without a single command line. 90% of my steam library works out of the box using proton. On top of that, a lot of older games that have issues with the newer versions of windows actually run more stable via Linux/Proton. I told myself I would never go back to Windows. Every time I use it I want to pull my hair out. My DCS rig is the only reason I still have a windows machine. DCS is all it does. It is my hope that DCS will at least work under Proton once they make the switch to Vulkan as my DCS rig is going Linux when windows 10 is end of life. DCS working or not.

I had an unusual performance bug show up with the last update. There is a massive frame time spike every second or two. The weird part is, it only effects the Caucasus map, and only my custom missions made before the update. I have three custom missions on this map and they all do it. I am not sure what to make of it. I have attached a video of the issue. https://youtu.be/i_UAQLfO7SU I have similar custom missions on other maps that do not do this, which is even more confusing. My GPU usage drops from >90% to <60% with each lag spike. Nothing stands out in the logs either. Any ideas?

Sorry for the late reply, I have been been super busy. I have been doing a lot of testing, and I think I fixed it with a shader wipe. I have not had the issue since.

I don't think there have been any recent changes. I have been using the new flight model since it was implemented and I have not noticed anything new. One thing to note, you have a lot more power available with the new engine. If you are heavy, the main rotor torque will overpower the available tail rotor. Especially if you do not baby the collective. I should also note, I am not saying there is nothing wrong with the flight model, just my experience with it.

I have noticed this shimmering is only an issue if you have sharpening enabled. I am not saying there is nothing wrong with the texture map. I have no proof of that either way, but I think sharpening is the culprit. I have found the DCS native sharpen fx causes a lot of visual anomalies. Especially if used without some form of up-scaling. That said, the F1 cockpit aliasing is visible even using ReShade sharpening shaders. I think it just the result of fine noise/sand type texture being over sharpened.

I do have that power. Everyone does. I pay for zero subscription services, but I get your point. My little boycott may not change the industry and I am ok with that. I am not a junkie either and I take comfort in the fact that I have a little willpower. For the most part, good games always work. If a game is worth playing, there is always a fan base that keeps them going. I own the disc versions of the only two fallout games that were worthy of the title and I still play them to this day. Oddly enough, they only games that truly disappear are the ones that require online activation and payment to play. Which is just about all AAA games now. And for the record, I do understand that DCS falls into that category, but despite the multitude of little issues it has, I think it is worth it. So I choose to support it. I agree these tech companies are are quickly becoming monopolies and that is a problem, but that is not the reason for the state of the industry. In fact, it proves my point. These entertainment companies make more money than they ever have and they somehow make a worse product. Is that because they have a monopoly, or because people still choose to pay for the **** product they make anyway and complain about it later. It's funny. Just the other day a video popped up in my youtube feed about some game review. I don't even remember what is was about exactly, but this guy was up in arms about this new game he bought and how the devs destroyed the IP. So I get that people can get a little obsessive about IP's, but what I found to be the most ironical of the entire situation was the fact that they knew what the game was before they bought it. Then threw a fit about how bad it was after the fact. Why? Why would you buy it in the first place. You knew exactly what is was and you bought it anyway. I guess the word junkie fits quite well. Anyway, I digress. In the end, it is of my opinion that even if DCS went to a sub model, it would not magically fix the old bugs and engine. At the end of the day, even a sub model is driven by new content and that is where their priority will stay.

While this may be the bottom line, in the end it is much worse than that. Subscriptions are the worst thing to happen to the entertainment industry as a whole. You have zero agency with a subscription. Good, bad, absolutely worthless, you still pay for it. At least when I buy a module or a tv series as a physical copy I only support what I like. Even if I don't "own" it. Paying for netflix, prime, whatever? No thanks. 90% of the industry is garbage and the only thing that keeps these clowns afloat is everyone paying for convenience. The game industry is going the same way, but I guess that's what people want. You pay for ****, you get ****. Is 10-20 bucks a month going to break the bank? No, but I would rather burn my money than give it to someone with zero say in how it is spent. Well, besides taxes for obvious reasons.

I tried to have the convoy ambush something that happens in real time and something dynamic, but it never worked quite right. I think I worked once out of 10 tries. It looked cool when it worked, but it was just too unreliable. I ended up just scripting the entire event. It was still pretty fun though.

A quick screen grab from my latest flight.

I have been using this exact setup for quite a while. It works great. I am about 80% done with a 3D printed scale Huey collective. I still need to model the control plate and the additional box on the top of the head, but it is getting there. It is strictly cosmetic at the moment, but it does have a wire channel in the center if I ever get around to building a custom input device for the head.

Aye, I saw this as well. That said, in game you can run MPR until you run out of fuel. At least it used to be this way. I have been keeping myself honest and only using it during takeoff/climb, but I know you could run it forever before. I guess I have not tried it the last few updates.

As per title. No mods. I have been testing the NS 430 since the update today and it has been still acting up. The first flight I was using the Persian Gulf map, about a 30 minute flight with 5 waypoints. Frame times would spike to over 500ms about every 30 seconds or so. I kept playing with the terrain mode and if finally quit. Made it through the flight. The second flight was Nevada with 8 waypoints that was supposed to be a 45 minute flight. The frametime issue never came up this time, but I had a CTD about 8 minutes in. Just as I was going to hit waypoint 2. When it crashed, Steam and the DCS crash window started fighting each other. (this has never happened before) I had to end task via task manager to get control of my computer again so I did not get the crash log. I do have the video though if you think it would help? I will try to get this to crash again and attach logs/tracks. I just wanted to give you the heads up and see if anyone else has experienced any issues. Also, the terrain view is still all black until I change the range setting. I will have terrain color until I takeoff then it goes black again for some reason. I noticed I changed the range from 10nm to 5nm about 5 mins before I hit waypoint 2 and the terrain color came back for a second. Maybe this caused the crash?

I figured it out. It is door gunners that cause the tracks to break. It is 100% repeatable. I have done a large number of replays with the Huey and never had an issue. I just started making missions where I was using door gunners and the tracks have been breaking ever since. For now, if you want a Huey replay just do not use door gunners. You can have them equipped, you just can't let them fire. I have attached a few tracks for an example. I tried to keep them as simple as possible and short as possible. That said, the ground fire can get a lucky hit in sometimes and just take out the huey, but I have not had that happen in multiple replays of these tracks. Just an FYI. No Guns With Guns I also have a few videos uploading as I type as proof. I will edit and link once they are done. Maybe we can have @Flappie push this along. NoGun.trk WithGun.trk

I have most of those, but I spend most of my time in the Huey. You might as well use that. If the tarmac flickers indefinitely, there is something wrong for sure. I guess it could be a large building casting a shadow outside of view that is being turned off and on. Maybe behind when you turn your head which would remove it from the scene. Maybe a bugged cloud shadow? Upload a Huey track and I will take a look. I am genuinely curious now. Have you tried deleting your shaders? https://forum.dcs.world/topic/184338-what-folders-again-to-empty-when-updating/ Maybe a bugged shader is causing some issues.

I can't see the track exactly how you can as I do not own the module you are using. When I launch the track my camera is locked to a FARP and can't look around. I can access the F10 map and look at everything else from there though. The tarmac will do the same thing the grass is doing, but it will update FAR quicker. It is so quick on my end I do not see it, but it will load in stages. Your PC outclasses mine by a bit, so I am not sure why yours is taking longer to load. I have DCS installed on a high end dedicated PCIe SSD. A slower drive might make the tarmac load slower. Other factors like other software running in the background might do it too. ...malware? Also as a test: 1: Watch the track once and let everything load 2: Exit to the main menu (do not exit the game) 3: Watch the track again Does the tarmac still load in slow? Outside of that, the picture with the shadow seam you circled is in fact a cascade seam. I just noticed your shadow settings are set to medium, that is not helping. The higher you set that, the farther away those ugly cascades will be. Again, they do not go away, so there is no reason to make it look uglier by turning that down. Especially with your PC specs. That seam is really close, even for medium. You did not change any config files by chance did you?

Awesome, thanks for the examples. I will definitely take a look at those. I am not opposed to using tricks or faking things to get around certain issues, that's for sure. Even if it does not work for this particular mission, it is always nice to have options. I think I have to learn the scripting to accomplish what I am attempting though. This mission I am working on, while the biggest one I've done yet, is still rather simple. If I am having this much trouble now, I can only imagine the headache I will run into later. It would not be so bad if I did not have to completely redo everything once something breaks. Hopefully that will not be the case when using scripts. Thanks again for the info and tips gents.

Well... ...that sucks. Hey, at least I can quit trying to get it to work now. I was literally about to go insane. I already made a few changes and it seems to work. It is not what I originally wanted, but the main idea is still there so not all is lost. I guess I will really have to start digging into the scripting. Thanks for the info.

Ok, this is going to be a long one. I am not even sure what I am attempting to do is even possible, but that is the reason for this post. I am finally trying to sit down and create a complicated custom mission. Something I would like to finish and share with others rather than the little experiments I have been doing up until now. I can get troops to embark and disembark from transports if I keep it in a single unit and single stage. But let's say I want to drop troops, have them do a task, then pick them up again... That just refuses to work. Then I tried to just fake it and spawn in a new group to pick up rather than the original drop group. I have had strings of tasks work without issue, only to add a trigger that involves spawning a new unit and it will break everything. No editing way points, tasks, nothing. Just adding a trigger to the map spawning a new unit that can be transported. The original troops refuse to embark after that. Not only that, the only way I can fix that when it breaks is to completely delete all of the units tasks and re-do them from scratch. I spent the better part of 8 hours trying to get this to work and I still don't know what the issue is. It makes no sense whatsoever. Tasks that work one second just seem to break for no reason and can't be fixed unless I delete and re-do everything. I could kick a puppy at this point. Have others had any luck transporting troops more than once? Am I doing something wrong or am I just trying to do something that cannot be done?

I hear ya, I am not trying to preach and I hope I don't come off that way. Again, it's just complicated. I did look at your track. I have a video of what I see uploading as I type, but if there is indeed a video rendering issue on your end I am not going to see it on the track on my end. About the only thing I can do is show you what I see and you let me know if you see something different. The video is almost done, I will edit with the link once it is done. Until then, the only thing I can see flickering is the terrain texture pop in as you bounce around the map. That is normal. Outside of that, everything else looks as it should. My settings attached... Track video examples... https://youtu.be/06kaUU5IA3s https://youtu.be/oAdnfQpWsss

I can imagine. This is all very complicated and outside of most peoples knowledge base. I dabble in computer graphics and I still don't understand it all myself. What little I do understand I have a hard time explaining. I can imagine the ED devs would have a hard time trying to explain it as well. My guess is that's why this "issue" seems to never go away and has never been addressed. It's a graphics limitation that you have to deal with. Maybe they will have better tools to fight this once they transition to Vulkan. The issue is the shadow anomalies (flickering, popping, etc.) are caused by a number of things, all of which are just technical limitations. I have a video I did a while back that really showcased a lot of them. If you watch about the 7:00 mark or so, you will see all of them. https://youtu.be/16hkQWMwdVY?t=425 Issue 1 Cascade Seams: Cascaded shadow maps are segmented into smaller resolutions the farther you get from the camera. Each segment is blended into the next in the attempt to hide the seam, but you will see those transitions as rings at certain distances from the camera. Those are the anomalies you have circled in flappies video. Looking at the circled image, you will see the closer trees have a nice sharp crisp shadow and the trees you circled are blurry. If a shadow happened to fall right on cascade transition you would see a visible seam. Issue 2 Cascade z depth: The different cascade projectors are only rendering certain areas in the scene. Again, using my video as an example you will see the closest cascade seems to just flat out remove shadows from a lot of objects. (eg: A tall building's shadow just seems to cut off a few feet in front of the helicopter. Video timestamp 8:40) Maybe you can get someone from ED to better explain, but my crappy explanation is that the closer cascades are too close to project through the taller buildings that are farther away so no shadow is rendered in that cascade for that particular object. Issue 3 Scene LOD and visibility range: The biggest offender with shadows popping in and out altogether is the LOD and visibility range. With the sun very low on the horizon, tall objects will cast very long shadows. The shadows are so long that the engine visibility range setting will remove the object from view which obviously will remove the shadow as well. Changing LOD's will not remove the shadows completely, but they will change shape depending on the LOD rendered. Again, if you really want to understand it just google "Cascaded Shadow Maps". Those articles will explain it better than I ever could.