Tomsk

Oh yeah it has definitely got *much* worse, but I think it's the same sort of problem the Caucasus campaigns always had ... just worse :)

Okay so as an update I thought I'd investigate what's going on so here's what I found: - Just removing all the "Static" aircraft made a *HUGE* difference in frame rate. It's still not good (like 20 FPS for me), but it is at least vaguely playable. - Then removing all of the other aircraft (besides the player's flight) also made a significant difference (goes up to 30 FPS). - Removing the ground units seemed to matter a lot less, although pruning them down a bit did gain some framerate. - If you remove *ALL* the ground units, but leave all the aircraft it still runs absolutely terribly (1 FPS). - If you remove *ALL* the units except the player unit, everything runs just great. I've been working on a script to automatically prune MBot missions down to just the units that are likely to actually participate, which also helps very significantly. The limiting factor does just seem to be number of units, DCS doesn't like missions with more than 100 units in them. It seems it especially hates missions with lots of aircraft in them. I think the reason this issue is limited to the caucasus missions is just that those missions tend to have more units in them. The Nevada ones are sparser, and so have less problems. As a side note the caucasus campaign seems thoroughly bugged in other ways: 9 times out of 10 my plane just explodes on mission start.

It's the weirdest thing .. the framerate is totally unplayable as you say ... until you hit "pause" at which point it immediately jumps (for me) to 90 FPS. You can then look round paused, and everything is totally fine. Until you unpause at which point it's unplayable again. TBH it seems to be the same sort of problem that's been affecting MBot campaigns in DCS generally: big framerate problems when unpaused. It seems the update has just made it much worse for the caucasus that it used to be.

Yes this is a known bug, it's been reported a few times already, for example: https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=211384

Same issues with BARO mode. Click the button on the UFC, most of the time the colon never appears (very occasionally it does). However the plane does sort of seem to be in an autopilot mode. It usually doesn't hold altitude very well, and will happily gain or lose thousands of feet over time. However the controls are "sticky" like in autopilot, and it'll give you a warning if you pull hard enough to break out of it.

Apparently a CASE II/III recovery involves a holding pattern of 2 mins level flight, a 1 minute 180 degree turn, another 2 minutes level flight and then another 1 minute 180 degree turn. I wondered if anyone knows whether this is done manually or whether there's an autopilot function for it?

One thing I really hope ED does as part of the ongoing development of the hornet is take a look at the air-to-air missiles as they really do need some attention.

I agree it's a sporadic bug, I've seen it too from time to time. Sometimes you don't see the contact on the radar, so you turn it off and back on again and then it appears. Same elevation, same frequency as before, same everything: not user error, bug. Doesn't happen very often though.

Hi NeilWillis, Did you find this https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=189762? It gives instructions on how to run DCS with (essentially) no graphics card, it works for me on my server for 2.5.1, even with only an onboard Gfx card (which is incredibly sub-par).

Yeah to be clear the problems (for me) only come with big missions (hundreds of units) in VR (which needs good framerates). For other cases the performance is really good.

So I read your post in full and tried your suggested settings. It's just great for flying round an empty map (I get continuous uninterrupted 45 FPS), but on an MBot mission I get 20-25 FPS at best. Unless of course I press the "Pause" key and then look around, and then it goes to perfect uninterrupted 45 FPS again.

DCS truly is incredibly beautiful. I notice this most of all when I fly over the Nevada terrain, which is absolutely stunning. Similarly with the depth and detail of the modelling of the aircraft and systems, truly best in class. I sometimes feel frustrated by the things I feel DCS is lacking, at the moment for me that's been getting a good reliable framerate in VR in bigger missions and a dynamic campaign (although the MBot campaigns are awesome). I see so much potential in DCS, I'd really like to see that potential be realised.

Yeah as I say, I think DCS is essentially single threaded, so it doesn't make good use of multi-cores. So if you have (for example) 4 cores then what you'll see is around 25% CPU utilization across all 4 cores. However what it's actually doing is that it's essentially only using 1 core, but it's splitting the time slices between the 4 cores so you see 25% on each rather than just 1 core with 100%. At least on my machine the whole thing is then totally CPU limited (hence the very low GPU utilization) ... until you pause the simulation which takes a lot of the load off the CPU. Try this: when you see your framerates drop try pausing the simulation (Pause key) and then look around. I find at that point I get a solid 90 FPS until I unpause again.

I've had VR performance problems for a while, but then I like to play the MBot missions and they are very busy. I concluded that the problem is that the CPU is throttling the GPU. What lead me to conclude this is that I get really bad frame rates in places (like < 25 fps with loads of judder), but as soon as I pause the mission and look around paused it shoots up to constant 90 FPS (which is the cap). Then I unpause and it drops back down into the twenties. Conclusion: the graphics card can render it all just fine, but because DCS is (as I understand it) essentially single threaded, the whole thing is blocked up on the CPU trying to run the simulation for all the planes.

Yeah it wasn't perfect, for example it should have worked the same no matter what resolution you were at, but it was a real godsend for VR flying. Yes I can see it could be a problem in MP, but many of us only really fly offline & coop, and I should be able to fly offline however I like.

Thanks Hippo, that's really helpful!. Turns out the answer is "Deferred shading" I'd never thought of turning it off (since it's turned on by default by the "VR" setting, and I didn't actually know what it did). But yes, it absolutely kills the framerate something chronic. I can't get framerates as good as yours, in that test I get around 60FPS with deferred shading off. If I turn on deferred shading then it struggles to hold 30 FPS. The rest of my graphics settings are slightly lower than yours, which is interesting because as you can see from my sig, my CPU is less powerful than yours but my GFX card is a bit better. Seems DCS is very CPU heavy, I see a CPU upgrade in my future :) Again big thanks, I'd never have worked out "deferred shading" was such a problem. Incidentally the script error is nothing big, it's just the script to generate the next mission of the campaign. This mission was generated by the MBot dynamic campaign engine.

I'm getting really bad framerates with this mission in VR, despite using minimum settings and I'd like to know if it's just me (i.e. something is wrong with my setup). The .miz is available here: https://drive.google.com/uc?authuser=0&id=14ITQzG7NY12Z24VEPwWrb0pnt2QWOVxV&export=download My VR performance in general is fine, but this mission seems to cause DCS to really struggle in both 2.5 and 1.5 as soon as I spawn in. I'd be really grateful if another VR user could try it out and see how it performs for them. It doesn't require any particular modules as I modified it so it's for the Su-25T on caucasus. What I find is that I get great FPS when paused, but as soon as I unpause it the FPS goes through the floor. Strangely when running it only uses 40% CPU (all 4 cores), 40% GPU, 3.8 Gb System RAM and 5.6 Gb VRAM .. so it shouldn't be stressing the system at all.

I've been really wanting to play these as they look awesome, but I just can't get satisfactory framerates for VR (e.g. >= 45) in any version (even the "Lite" version of CEF's Mirage over Caucuses) no matter what I try. This is despite running minimum settings in my fairly strong rig (3.5GHz, GTX 1080, 16Gb RAM). Is anyone successfully playing these campaigns in VR?

No that's not it, when I say everything turned down to minimum I mean it :) DCS is only using 3.8Gb of RAM in total, which is definitely not taxing for a 16Gb machine. EDIT: And I can also now confirm this is NOT a 2.5 specific issue, I get the exact same behaviour in 1.5.

It's also worth noting that using Skatezilla's Updater tool this afternoon to try and install the Nevada terrain into my "DCS World 2.5" install infact installed it into my "DCS World 2.5 Open Beta" install. Which was a little vexing.

So I've been trying to play MBot's dynamic campaign, which looks amazing (as a big fan of dynamic campaigns). However, I've been having framerate issues as in < 20 fps with every setting at absolute minimum, using a powerful computer (3.5Ghz Quad Core, GTX 1080, 16 Gb RAM). NOTE: This is NOT a 2.5 specific issue, I get the same behaviour in 1.5. So I've been trying to understand why. So: Flying round the empty caucuses map in 2.5 is smooth as butter, great stable framerates. No complaints. Flying round the caucuses map for an MBot generated mission is terrible < 20 fps. Now MBot's dynamic campaign does create a lot of AI units (several hundred by the looks of it). Thinking these might cause the issue I did some experiments: Since I do have a second (powerful) computer to run as a dedicated server I thought I'd do that. This way I can offload all the expensive CPU calculations for the AI units to my dedicated server, and my client can just focus on rendering. The result is that it makes absolutely no difference if I do that. I get the exact same framerate issues (and infact very similar frame rate), even if I have a second dedicated rig running as a server for the mission. Also as a side-note, the Comms Menu appears to be completely broken in multiplayer. My next thought was that it must be rendering all these units that causes the problem. So still running the mission on my dedicated server and connecting with my desktop, I flew off out into the middle of the sea where I could not see any other unit, or even anything other than sea. The result was the same, the exact same < 20 FPS framerate. The only possible explanation I can come up with is that DCS is offloading the AI workload onto the clients, even when you are running a seperate server. In any case I'm at a total loss where to go next :( NOTE: I'm not saying that this is automatically a bug, and I've not tried it on 1.5 yet to see if it's a problem there. This is more a "does anyone understand what's actually going on here, and what can be done about it".

Been trying to play this campaign with 2.5 ... found the framerates to be a bit unplayable, I found my normal solid 90 FPS was instead in the 15-25 FPS range when playing the campaign. I've got a pretty powerful system as well, so not sure why it's so slow ... EDIT: Okay tried it in 2.0 rather than 2.5 ... even worse.

No scrub all that, watched it played out on youtube and it's actually my mistake. Pontiac 1-1 does actually give a more specific instruction, although it is a lot to digest in one go: This instruction is actually ambiguous, and contains an implicit change of subject. It's easy to misunderstand and think that he's saying he will listen to main, intercept the aircraft, get in formation and report back. Especially if you are listening to the audio rather than reading. I actually thought he was just saying we'll go and intercept it. Apparently all three times I saw this I thought his basic instruction was for me to contact Awacs and get the position of the contact, and tell him. Essentially he wanted me to handle the comms with Magic and report back while he listened to the main channel, which is exactly consistent with what he asked me to do earlier in the mission (with Saxon) and which would seem more normal to me anyway. If he wanted me to break formation, I'd expect an explicit order to do that, rather than a general instruction to intercept it (implicitly breaking formation). A much better order would have been: Possibly a general note for future campaigns is that when giving orders I would suggest that it's best to give the primary task first. I would also suggest complex orders could do with the "player" voice giving a read back, as would very likely happen in real life. A simple "Two, breaking formation and intercepting" would have done wonders here. I absolutely love the radio interactions in the campaign, they are probably the best bit and add incredibly character to it. But I do sometimes find the instructions to be a lot to digest, especially because they can involve subtleties, and you're often busy with something else at the time. In real life, this would be fine because you could just ask for clarification. But several times in the campaign, I've missed some subtle part of the instruction or not exactly understood it, and without any way to repeat it I've just wandered around wondering what it was that I was supposed to do next exactly.

Just playing the Mirage campaign, which is excellent by the way, but find myself stuck circling in Mission 9. So I tried the updated version you posted but same issue. For me Saxon flight does take off, and does kill the Geckos. Then 1 instructs me to contact the AWACS, so I switch to green 4 and start getting BRAs from Magic. And I can request a picture or bogey dope from Magic ... however, there's nothing else I can do. There's no special "F10 option" to either contact Magic in a special way, or to tell 1 that I have contacted Magic. So we just fly round and round in circles. I also tried contacting Magic on red 2, but that also doesn't give me any more options. I'm keeping in good formation with Pontiac 1-1, so I wouldn't have thought it's a trigger issue ...

So my first advice would be "don't give up", many of us have been flying for years and yet we're all still learning. IMO fighting in WWII planes is one of the most challenging things you can do, and it was ages before I could do anything much besides being a target. That's also the fun of it, IMO no-one ever "masters" WWII aerial combat, there is always more to learn and new challenges. The Spitfire is a lot easier for beginners. Beginners tend to think in terms of "turn fighting". It's obvious right, the enemy is in there so just turn to shoot at him, right? But there are other ways to fight, and ultimately I believe it to be the weakest plane in the lineup. The P-51, FW 190 and Bf 109 will all dominate it in the end ... So, the key to understanding the P-51 and (especially) the FW190 is to understand these are not fighters that are really meant to fight on even terms. If you are in a poor position then disengage, it's as simple as that. They cannot turn with the 109 or Spitfire, they will lose that game for sure if your opponent is any good. But their big advantage (and why I fly both them basically exclusively) is that they can generally disengage when they like ... providing they have altitude to dive. The P-51 and the FW-190 are the best diving planes in the game, they are also very fast (especially the 190). The reverse is not true, if a Spitfire doesn't like they fight he cannot escape from a determined 190 without a significant energy advantage: the 190 decides whether the fight happens or not, and this is the ultimate advantage. The easier case is flying the 190 with a Spitfire on your tail. Dive away, head for the deck in a steep dive, full WEP and run like hell. You cannot out-turn him, the Spitfire will win that game every time. But ... the Spitfire will never catch you in a dive, it's much too slow. When you really grok this the Spitfire is not a real threat: you can engage when it suits you, and leave when you want. The only occasions that I've been shot down by a Spitfire in a 190 were due to very poor SA (situational awareness - understanding the position your are in) on my part. When you get more experience there are other ways to defeat a Spitfire: for example high-speed scissors, but understand the basics and know when to leave. The harder case is in the P-51 with a 109 on your tail. The 109 is faster than the P-51, and in the long run you can't outrun him. It's a very challenging situation for the P-51. Dive and get the combat into a high-speed game of scissors, the P-51 is much better at that. When not under threat try to keep altitude in the P-51, the deck is not your friend! IMO as someone who flies both sides the allied planes are at a serious disadvantage: the 109 and 190 are just better planes. For the beginner P-51 or 190 pilot, I recommend the following: fight only on your own terms .. with the advantage. Get an energy advantage and then dive in, take the shot, and then zoom away whether you hit or not. Try to keep that advantage, don't turn with your opponent and bleed energy .. he gains energy quickly, you do not. If you feel threatened: leave, make sure you keep enough altitude in the bank to disengage at will (2Km is a good safety margin for a beginner). Air combat is not chivalry, you don't owe your opponent a fair fight. Fight on your terms, or refuse to fight at all, that is the key to the P-51 and the 190.