Slazi

If you bought it from ED not Steam, it won't work with Steam. Same as all modules.

Same! This is splitting the Steam / non-steam players :(

Ahhh, so I should change back to the standard release? Ok. Thank you.

When is the next patch expected? I'm about to download the OpenAlpha in the hopes this will have it fixed.

3.6 then a 6.1gb patch directly after. Not sure why.

Thanks for the post, but Steam won't let me add another Steam folder on a drive with an existing Steam folder. I'm gonna opt out of the beta. 3.6gb will only take 10 minutes or so to download. Probably easier than moving the trillion gb DCS install.

So for Steam users, we can either opt out of OpenBeta (3.6gb download) or wait for the patch? I was just about to fly :(

Memory related? May be related to leaks

FC is a very helpful guy. I am sure this is true.

Good question! I'm also very interested in this. I am also interested in the difference between player and AI ECM (if any).

I'm on an SSD. I have no stutters loading explosions. Do you have a decent CPU?

A little further testing: I loaded a 24 player multiplayer server - 107th: Through the Inferno. My (overall, not task manager DCS) RAM usage went up to around 12GB on medium / low textures. I used F2 to look at a number of planes and different areas of the map and jumped into a few different air frames. It ended up around 16GB. (Textures medium, Terrain low, Water low) Maxed texture size, my RAM peaked at around 23GB before DCS went funny and crashed. Ram usage dropped down to around 3GB. (Textures high, Terrain high, Water medium) Restarted. It then asked me to re-enter my Combined Ops key after restarting, but anyway... Loading the same server with high-res textures and spawning in an F-5E-3 took me to 19.5GB. Then jumped into KA-50, Mi-8, and AJS-37 took me over 20GB. Using F2 to look around the map took me up to 23GB. Now I'm a little worried 24GB is not enough. I'm pretty sure spawning the MiG-21Bis would bring me over 24GB (as that really used to kill my memory). So 16GB for single player, 24GB+ for mult with high-res textures. You can play with less, but it isn't always smooth due to offloading from RAM to hdd. As long as nobody is spawning in new aircraft, you are generally alright. But if someone joins in a new air frame, you could be left with up to around ten seconds (MiG-21 used to do this to me all the time) where you can't do anything. If you are flying near the ground, you are dead. Results: Loading still takes ages on the first load Quitting is instant. My drive no longer has to do loads of work before DCS can shut down. Reloading seem much faster. HDD isn't working as hard. Other settings: Grass / Clutter 600 (this should only hit fps) Trees 45 (as above?) Preload 59128 (no specific reason for that setting, but seems smooth) I'm running full screen windowed. My advice for DCS players: If you have 8GB, upgrade to 24. You could always get rid of the 8GB and switch it for another 16GB later if you have the money and feel the need. If you have 16GB, upgrade to 32.

I upgraded to 24GB today. Load times are much better (from SSD). What many people don't understand is how data needs to be loaded off of RAM back to the HDD. This takes a lot of times and really slows down loading and reloading. Not sure if 24GB is much better than 16GB for DCS, but I get the feeling it might be.

Spotting seems much easier in 2.5 for both air and ground. I think the new lighting makes a huge difference. I hope they never need to re-add that option. Its a temporary solution.

If it gets much bigger, I'm gonna rename my E: drive to 'DCS'

Amazing write up, Chief. Your advice is logical, clear, and concise. I really like this. Two things to say: 1. I can land and take off fairly smoothly after reading and following this advice. I had to loosen my pedals (as I usually fly helos), but the 'wake up feet' advice really does work. The other essential aspect was trimming and braking. If I trim correctly, I hardly notice when I contact the ground and don't even need to touch the brake. I land only on paved runways atm. 2. Would you consider posting this as a Steam guide if you haven't already? A lot of the newer / more casual players will never visit this forum. It would be good for them to get this information. Thank you for the effort you must have put in to this. Fly safe.

Check your HDD and memory when this happens (on a second screen). I'm almost certain this is due to loading in textures / model information for the aircraft joining. This causes major problems if you only have 16gb of RAM, as the memory is usually at 100% and needs to offload information to disk before it can even load anything new. I often crash when a new player is loaded. Mig-21 is the worst.

2.5 makes me think about upgrading to 32gb. Watch the memory performance stats when you play. My PC was at 20gb of used ram (not all dcs) and needed to do a lot of loading and loading to keep everything running. It's easy to see if you need to upgrade, especially if you have a second screen. Ignore the task manager memory usage.

Yes, it's on Steam and it's fantastic! Steam will also let you download it as fast as your connection runs.

I got a massive surprise when I noticed Steam downloading this. The 10GB update arrived in under thirty minutes somehow. I am so happy ED pushed this out to Steam so early. The biggest thing that struck me was visibility. I can actually see things now. Targets on the ground seem clearly visible from a distance. I also seem to get a better frame rate (pretty steady 100fps compared to around 60 previously). Really really happy!

Definitely interested in this. I was thinking of doing something like this ages ago for the standard 1.5 map, but never quite managed to find the time. I was going to make it multiplayer with score tracking and stats for players. I thought people would love earning 'money' or rep by flying different missions.

Thanks, Chuck. Just copied all these guides to my tablet for easy reference.

It has laser guided bombs, but needs somone to lase.

DCS will only use two cores, and the second core is barely used.

I always thought CPU core speed was the bottleneck for DCS. Multiplayer runs slower than single. If GPU was the bottleneck, it would run at the same speed (assuming the other players weren't in sight). This is also assuming the GPU isn't being used to calculate weather / physics etc... Also, my cpu core maxes out. - Edit - I'm not using 2.X