Temetre

Its well possible im misremembering the exact details, but Id be careful to draw quick conclusions. You cant assume a buggy flight model always performs the same. Unintended behaviour is the problem! For example, the Mig-15 vs 15 climb video showed the AI plane go past 7km (23k feet) without too much of a slow down. Yet in your video it seems to struggle a lot more. Lets be real: Basically everyone in this thread is either neutral or disagrees with you, but you seem to see no reason to question your conclusions and even claim its 'well understood' that you are correct? Its fine to disagree, but it seems pointless to talk if your view is set in stone regardless of anything else. You wont convince anyone else with that either.

I think one thing people often miss is that a game, or even simulation, cannot replicate reality. Reality is just infinitely complicated, and eg a plane might sometimes do specific things in specific environments that are hard to explain even in the real world. Where even the designers can only make a good guess why this happens when they start testing the plane. Cant just expect a game engine to simulate that kinda stuff from the get go. Hence every accurate plane in DCS has an insane amount of custom coding/scripting/etc to make the flight model as realistic as possible despite the simplification.

To be fair while I was thinking about that, Pyker did a really good job actually putting that issue into words! If you could easily make a framework where you just enter numbers and the result was realistic, then making simulations and games would be so much easier. Im sure MSFS for example has a very, very complex framework that Asobo devs put a ton of work in, but even then you just 'feel' how most planes use that framework. They inherently feel like MSFS2020/2024 planes. And then have AI make good use of that frameworks is another layer of complexity... but also a very important one in DCS. Oh agreed, there is so much to AI and simulation. Personally Id be happy if the GFM for the AI is just generally in the right ballpark with the performance numbers. And as you say, maybe with the performance numbers of an average well trained pilot, rather than the planes theoretical maximum. Stuff like seeing an AI F-14 do the roll reversal wobble would be pretty funny.

Just to be clear, the guy youre talking to is a beta tester. His literaly role, probably job, is to find, observe and test how the game works. I dont know Pikey personally, but he probably knows a lot more about the games inner workings - and issues - than most of us. I would take his word seriously. And Ive seen, for example, the Heatblur devs say similar things on their discord. Those guys really know what theyre doing. Theres an issue here, youre not applying the same standards to those two aspects: 1. You use the lua number for your original calculation, which might well be accurate. It even makes sense that ED isnt actually applying fantasy values into the lua docs. Actually something that makes them look a bit more sensible and news to me, thanks for that. 2. When challenged on how those numbers actually translate into the ingame physics and flight model, you are using your 'observation' to tell the level of accuracy. Thats a lot less rigorous and scientific approach, especially if you didnt consider this facette yet. And Im not gonna pretend I know the exact issue, but the AI flight model can be deeply broken in very common A2A combat situations, in a way that does clearly not follow physics. To me the energy retention, somewhat during aggressive turns, but especially during climbs is the most obvious. The video of the AI Mig-15 outclimbing a player controlled one is a good example; a track view is better, but this video doesnt even pass the smell test, it should be blindingly obvious that something is quite wrong there. And talking about personal 1v1 experiences? I recently had an honestly quite funny situation where I had my clean F-4E, at good speed, IIRC half fuel and only sidewinders left, do a hard AB climb on Syria trying to shake off an AI Mig-15. The Mig-15 was stuck at my back the entire climb, and even when my plane was approaching stall, the 15' was in stable flight, IIRC fairly low AoA and could easily maneuver even while climbing. Do you know how absurd that situation is? A 50s variant non-afterburning swept wing fighter keeping up with a 1975 3rd gen that should have 4-5 times the nominal climb rate and is optimized for high altitude flight? The F4E can climb and do high altitude better than a Mig-21Bis, and that plane was also a much more powerful high altitude interceptor than the 15'. I recommend that test to you: Take a plane that should clearly have better climb rates and high altitude performance than a Mig-15, any AB 3rd gen or newer should do easily do. Have the AI Mig-15 chase you up. Use F2 to observe the 15s speed, stability and AoA. You will see why most people dont even consider if the AI is broken much of a topic of debate. Its that obvious during climbs.

Agreed with all. I would consider memory that is advertised with XMP speeds, yet doesnt reliably run them to be defective. Idk whats the legal perspective about that is tho.

Btw, just wanna note that this is usually bad advice. XMP is technically 'overclocking', but realistically its manufacturer-defined and the speed your memory is supposed to run at. If XMP causes issues, thats a deeper problem usually.

Ive actually just read of someone with an I7 7900X (older 8 core CPU), who says hes got 99% CPU usage and the game is basically unplayable. The only way to get such a usage with 8 cores is some kind of bug (or hardware issue), so youre probably not alone. Its not special for bugs like this affect people very differently. Ive seen people with powerful CPUs get 3 cores maxed, while my basic mid tier CPU (I5 12400F) just gets weird load spikes distributed over all cores and isnt as affected. Ive actually played a VR liberation mission today, and ran a bit worse, but playable and fun.

Thats normal behaviour. Basically, usually in games you hit a 'bottleneck' in your PC, which could be CPU, GPU, memory and other things. Im gonna oversimplify it a lot (not like im an expert anyway): For example, maybe your GPU could do 100 frames per second, and your CPU can only does 20 fps with the performance bug. But you need both to actually create a frame! So that means that your GPU will create a frame in 10 miliseconds, but then has to wait for the CPU which needs 50 miliseconds. Hence 80% of the GPUs time might be spent waiting on the CPU to do its job, so the graphics cart can finally start to work on the next frame. That is then shown in the 20% GPU usage. When you 'run out' of RAM/VRAM, you might also experience stutters. Thats a memory bottleneck, where the entire PC slows down to wait for files to be loaded into memory. Most PCs and games these days tend to be GPU limited, meaning the GPU sees 100% usage and the CPU has to wait. I think thats why people often expect 100% GPU usage, but complex, CPU heavy games like DCS can be an exception. And in this case you probably have a performance bug that cripples CPU performance, so the GPU spends a lot of time waiting.

Theres a big performance bug currently, causes a ton of CPU load. For some its not as bad, eg my game runs somewhat worse but playable even in VR, but for others DCS became nearly unplayable. I imagine thats your issue. Seems like theres nothing you can really do about it.

Windows says I got 50% average CPU load, which is way too much for the menu. So I definitely have the problem, just to a lesser degree. My CPU also has 65 watt TDP, so with a solid cooler and airflow its not gonna get very hot even at max power draw. And either way the point is that people getting worried about the temperature is mostly born of ignorance. Yes, the CPU shouldnt work that hard in the DCS menu, but thats all there is. It works hard so it creates the quivalent heat from it; and the CPU itself is literally built to work as hard as possible. Your CPU maxing 3 cores and running at 70C is even very far from the load it can handle. You should stress test your CPU to see how it actually acts under max load. Like, 70 degrees is pretty cool for CPU under load. People getting worried about that temperature is just wasted energy. And the idea that "DCS makes my CPU somehow go more hot than it should" is magical thinking. Same way how people thought New Worlds was killing their 3090s, when it had nothing to do with the game specifically.

I think people get really confused, the temperature is not the problem. If your CPU is being used to 30-50% and already runs 90+C, then your cooling sucks. A game cant make your CPU run hotter for the same work. The actual problem is just a DCS performance issue, for some reason even sitting in the main menu it creates a ton of CPU usage. See this weird spikey graph:

Tbh I think thats a big one. Ive driven through Syria with a Land Rover 101 while waiting for Germany (can recommend, thing is a rocket in DCS) and while eg Damascus is impressive form above, it doesnt really look like a real city. Germany a huuuuuuuge improvement on making a City actually look city like. Im honestly quite impressed they even got most of the streets in my small 100k people home town right (its like the 100th biggest city in DCS). The small streets dont match and some areas defintely look more 40s than 80s, but even then I can clearly recognize the layout. And mind, thats while even first phase Germany might already be as big or bigger than Syria, with much more densely populated, detailed land area. I think we should have high expectations for a $60-80 map and good criticism is always worthwhile, but its also pretty damn cool for a DCS map.

Btw, lots of people here saying they got heavy stutters in some situations. You might wanna check your GPU memory, its prossible youre going too high. Below 16 gigs in VR really isnt great, even on other maps. Ive got a 6800 XT with 16 gigs of memory and 32 gigs of RAM; the performance seems fairly similar to Syria, maybe very slightly worse, but no stutters.

Those are valid criticisms, but tbh, it sounds like you got unrealistic expectations about the map. This is probably the most detailed and accurate DCS map, right? And one with the largest detail area to beat already in phase 1. More than this is probably out of the scope of DCS for the foreseeable future, people already complain about the level of memory used or performance (which isnt even bad considering detail+scale). I certainly wouldnt complain about improvements like a bit more fitting architecture, some 80s towns kinda look like 50s towns, or even higher accuracy, but DCS cant be MSFS2024. And even that game has shortcomings that would be unacceptable in DCS.

Dang, I didnt realize how huge this map is going to be. Syria is listed as 900x500, but this is 980x800, and will include areas from the Netherlands to Poland. Also mostly land, not much water. Also happy to see my hometown with its little airport is gonna be included from day one!

Tbh thats why I think it was mostly an excuse. Theres really no reason ED or any other dev could or couldnt put a feature into a plane. A game like DCS has to make compromises and its making them all the time. I suspect that the F35 we get is gonna be a 'frankenplane', not unlike how the Eurofighter might turn out. Combining features of different versions of the aircraft. They probably have to make up a lot of stuff anyway consdering the whole classification thing.

Im also seeing performance issues in the Black Shark III in VR. Activating the systems/screens causes a clear drop in performance. Interior light costs more frames than usual as well. Frametimes seem quite instable, with a constant GPU bottleneck. Tested it both on Cola and Syria. Im getting 60fps over Damascus, 55 if I activate interior light. Skhval sensor can cost another 5-10 frames, which is unusually high compare to other planes I fly. In comparision, the F-4E Phantom gives me 65-70fps low over Damascus, notably which a much higher frame stabilty. This even in the same game session, first flying BS3 and then F-4E. Im using low textures and checked memory, theres no memory bottleneck. PC is: CPU: I5-12400 GPU: AMD 6800 XT (16GB VRAM) RAM: 32 GB DDR-3000

Some 3rd party devs do fudge numbers to simulate some kind of RCS aspect, but its not that realistic. For example a dev told me HB modules radar just 'assumes' a certain percentage of the planes RCS number depending on front/side/rear/top/down aspect. That assumption is treated the same for every aircraft tho. Afaik RB and the others did the same. For there to be real improvement, ED needs to create some kind of system/database for RCS, and then the 3rd party devs probably also need to integrate that system into each of their planes.

Article says it contains F-15EX engine maintenance documentation, but not what it contains about the F-35. Makes me doubt its a big deal? The usual stance is also that ED cannot use leaked classified documentation, even if its easily available. Thats eg why the F-18 is ~5% or so off from the real performance charts, which they werent able to use.

I imagine the days of "we gonna use the weapons that X variant carried at Y date" are over, if that was ever more than an excuse. With the F-35 theyre taking a more speculative approach anyway. Afaik the F-35 block IIB was never even considered a combat capable plane by the air forces receiving it. Tbh that doesnt boost confidence in EDs ability to make a believable F-35.

Thanks for expanded on the topic, thats also my impression. Its "easy" to describe the basics, but any specifics as to how it actually performs in practice is just... near impossible to tell. And its not like the mechanical radars are easy to simulate in the first place. Thats where the F-35s data processing and sensor fusion might come in play. When you combine lots of poor quality data, you might be able to extrapolate better information. Same principle eg how F-16s can network their HTS-pods. Its also where its hard to tell how or if anything works without some documentation thats almost certainly classified.

ED has improved for sure, but it took a lot of time; and as you say, theres still issue with lookdown etc. I dont think 2 years are nearly enough to arrive at an AESA simulation. Those are way more complex, counter-intuitive and just poorly doccumented+classified.

ED has struggled with the Viper radar, and the Hornet cant (couldnt?) use the radar and jammer at the same time. An AESA is so much more complicated (and classified), I really cant see how this is supposed to work out. This is the kinda task that would be difficult for RB/HB radar devs, and theyve done the best radars in the game.

I mean we know basically zero about how/when/if an EF-RWR can detect the F35s radar, right? We know that its probably more difficult, and thats about it.

Its been a long term issue that enemy AI planes overperform in certain areas to a significant degree. Specifically the ability to retain energy, for example while rating or climbing causes a lot of gameplay/realism/simulation issues. This is very apparent when flying mid and early cold war planes, which are more reliant on dogfighting and maneuvering to bring missiles or guns to bear. For example, I was just in combat flying a clean F4 against a rookie Mig-21. In reality, this F4E variant slightly outrates and strongly outclimbs the Mig-21, yet due to the AIs overperformance, it was basically impossible to combat. The Mig would outrate the Phantom as if it was an F16, easily keep up during an aggressive climb where the real plane would fail to keep up, and even show a level of high altitude agility which certainly shouldnt be in a Mig-21s featureset. When it wanted to get into a shooting position for its gun, the Mig just pulled even harder without losing a notable amount of speed. These issues dont just affect the Mig-21, but seemingly most AI planes; the AI Mig-15 is an even bigger offender, it has been outperforming F16s in some tests. Keeping 7g at 700 knots while rating and during aggressive climbs. With earlier cold war planes this is the most problematic, often it becomes near impossible to actually fight PVE dogfights, wich is the primary way to fight for many planes.