GeneralDynamics

Just to give you some idea of where I am in terms of performance, flying the A-10C over downtown Vegas at around 1000 ft with most of downtown to my right, Helios running, TGP on, and looking straight out the right side of the cockpit as downtown rolls past, I'm getting no stutter with these settings: I get better visual quality with MSAA at 2x and SSAA at 1.5x, but unfortunately SSAA still ain't happening without stutter.

OK, so I guess I lied, or rather the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility that I was using to monitor processor core usage lied. I don't know what "scale" it uses, but I became suspicious of what I thought was a maximum of around 35% core usage on the DCS core. I cross checked with the Windows 10 Resource Monitor and guess what? The last core was maxing out from time to time. Grrrr… After doing some reading about power options in Windows 10, I changed the setting from "Balanced" to "Performance". I didn't think using the default of Balanced would make much difference, but changing it to Performance did seem to improve things somewhat and lessened the amount of stutter I was experiencing. This also seemed to remove the issue I had with the stutter getting worse when overclocking. I'm now running at 5.3 GHz and bought myself some more headroom on the CPU, but not enough for max settings. I also tried turning off hyperthreading, but I found I had more CPU headroom with it turned on which seems contrary to what I had read some time ago. Maybe things have changed over time in that area. @lazduc - Thank you for the suggestion of running Helios on a separate computer. I had thought of that earlier, but if I recall the issue is that while you can send the exports to a second PC to be displayed there, there's no way to route commands (buttons, switches, etc...) from the touch screen back to the sim running on the primary PC. Is there a way to do that I'm not aware of? @David OC - Thank you, too, for the information on Process Lasso. I might give that a try and see if I can use it to only run DCS on 4 or 5 cores and send everything else to the remaining one or two cores. That might be overkill because I thought I read somewhere that DCS only uses two cores if I'm not mistaken? Still worthy of experimentation. The search continues, but that's the fun of it, eh?

I double checked the performance again tonight since we've had a few upgrades since the last time I tested, and nothing has changed. Using one screen only, I get smooth performance even when flying in urban areas with most settings at high/extreme and TGP on. Using the same setting with two screens and Helios running, things are smooth until I fly over urban areas with lots of buildings and high poly counts, then the micro stutter gets pretty bad. Some observations were that on high settings none of my CPU cores are running much over 35%, and only one gets that high. Video memory usage is not maxed out, but I see the stutter starts when the GPU usage tops out around 97/98%. GPU temp levels out around 66C. When running on one screen, the GPU usage stays around 91/92% and performance is smooth. I can only assume that I'm not CPU bound, and that the GPU is the bottleneck. I know the 1080 ti is faster than the Titan X Pascal, but has slightly less memory, so maybe I just need to wait until the 1180s come out with the Volta architecture and HMB2, and perhaps that along with future optimizations as DCSW 2.5 is developed further will finally get us over the hump, those of us that run two screens with Helios anyway. I keep waiting and hoping that we will get there eventually. Best wishes to everyone!

Hi all. So, I scrimped and saved for years and dropped a good bit of money on what I thought would be the ultimate PC build specifically for DCSW 2.5. (See specs in my signature.) The goal was to be able to run DCS stutter free at 60+ fps with all the eye candy turned on in even the most graphically challenging areas of the maps, like flying over Las Vegas downtown at low altitude for instance. I've pretty much achieved that with the rig I built when NOT using Helios and utilizing only one screen, but with Helios running on my 27" touch screen at 1920x1080 plus the main screen at 1920x1080, everything gets skippy stuttery, even with a 1T m.2 PCIE SSD, a Titan X Pascal, 32GB of RAM and an I7-8700K. Overclocking to 5+ GHz only made it worse. *sigh* I'm beginning to think that a supercomputer won't even do it. I don't see that any of my cores are getting maxed out, and I would think that the Titan with 12GB of VRAM should handle about anything DCS could throw at it. I do turn off everything in the system tray that's not essential when running DCS, but that doesn't seem to improve things. Very discouraged at this point - I'm like, good grief! What the hell do I have to build to achieve my dream? I know someone is going to say just run one screen and use the mouse to click on the controls, but I've found that TrackIR and Helios are a must for me for immersion, and I'm not really into VR. Plus, the following video illustrates pretty well what it's like when I try and use the mouse and TIR at the same time:-) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQYNvEPi9-s?version=3&start=75&end=102&autoplay=0&hl=en_US&rel=0 Have any of you Helios users been able to build a rig that will run two screens stutter free with the highest graphics settings? I periodically see people talk about lower frame rates of 30 or so fps, for instance, but is that a steady 30 fps without lag and stutter, or is it choppy? Sometimes I still get stutter even when maintaining 60 fps with vsynch on. I see folks discussing running 4K smoothly with very high settings, but I can't seem get two 1920x1080 screens to work for me and run smoothly unless I start trimming settings back. If any of you have been able to achieve stutter free performance with Helios running and very high settings, then any tricks or suggestions you might could share with me would be truly appreciated. Or maybe it's just not possible. Hopefully I'm just doing something fundamentally wrong that you guys might be able to help me with.

Agreed! We're very fortunate that the DCS development team takes realism this seriously. Thank you ED!

On a whim, I decided to check the accuracy of the DCS World 2.5 Persian Gulf map. I've often wondered just how accurate those real time coordinate updates are in the TAD display. Maybe I'm easily amazed, but holy crap folks... You are pretty much exactly where the coordinates say you are. I started the Persian Gulf Free Flight mission in the A-10C and flew a little ways until I was getting close to town (Fujairah) and paused the mission. I took a screen shot from the cockpit view and edited it by marking a couple of easily recognizable spots on the ground, "1." on the left and "2." on the right both in red. Next I created an image of the TAD display with the coordinates highlighted showing my location. I took those TAD coordinates and plugged them into Google Earth, saved the map image and then marked the same two spots, 1 and 2, and showed their position relative to the marker pinpointing the aircraft position I had plugged in from the TAD coordinates. Damn... I figured the coordinates were probably close enough to keep track of where you were in the sim, but I had no idea they were THIS accurate when compared to the real world. They appear to be spot frikken dead on! I almost wonder if people on the ground in Fujairah looked up and saw an A-10C hovering motionless in the sky while the mission was paused... LOL! Maybe this is common knowledge, but it wasn't for me, at least not this degree of accuracy, so I thought I'd share with the rest of the community. Images mentioned above attached for your viewing pleasure.

A couple more...

Here are a few of them, including the one after I had been hit by a SAM while taking "selfies"... LOL! I don't think these are the best screenshots by any means as I was just fooling around, but they were still good enough to trick the uninitiated into believing they were real, even with the mission text showing on the second one.

Monitor placement is important, too. I worked from home as a software support engineer for eight years prior to my current job, and during that time I periodically experienced severe neck and shoulder pain and fatigue. In addition to the pain and fatigue, I later developed numbness and tingling in my arms, hands and fingers. This prompted me to see a neurologist who took x-rays and found that my cervical vertebrae had become misaligned and were pressing on my spinal cord. Believe it or not, the simple solution to all of this was raising my monitors up to a level that allowed me to keep my head erect instead of looking slightly downward. Afterwards, all my symptoms disappeared like magic.

Thought I'd share this as it's a true testament to the work that's been done by our friends at ED/DCS. So, I took some external screen shots of the A-10C flying over the Caucuses map and sent them to my email account at work. I was showing these to a group of my engineering colleagues all gathered around, and I clearly stated that the SCREEN SHOTS were from my FLIGHT SIM. Apparently, the images were so realistic, the guys didn't even register the fact that I had said "flight sim". On guy says, "Soooo, you were in another plane and snapped these pictures??" Another chimed in and said, "I didn't know you were a pilot... Are you in the Air National Guard or something?" I had a huge grin going at this point, and had to explain AGAIN, NO, these are SCREEN SHOTS from a flight sim on my PC. They couldn't believe it. Way to go ED! I think this certainly validates all your hard work in providing us with the best flight sim software on the planet:-) Best wishes, Neil

Same here - A-10C Nevada CAS instant action.

I've done some additional testing trying to isolate any specific settings or circumstances that may be related to the engine rumble hang. No luck there, but I can report that sometimes I can get the effect to turn off in a new Nellis cold start mission (no engines running prior to start up) by hitting ESCAPE and then RESUME a couple times. It almost seems like some kind of odd timing issue. Other times I still have to bounce SSA to get it to stop. Sorry I'm not able to offer anything more definitive regarding the specific cause.

Engine Rumble periodically hangs in DCSW 2.0 First of all, I'm very impressed with the new sound effects in SSA 1.0.0.32 - great work! There may be a small bug that I've noticed with the Engine Rumble , however. Periodically, and seemingly at random, the engine rumble hangs after I exit a mission in DCSW 2.0 A-10C. Last time just before this post was the Nevada Takeoff instant mission. I had landed, and didn't bother shutting down the engines before exiting the mission. The engine rumble continued after leaving the mission. I shut down the sim and the engine rumble still persisted. The only way I could get rid of it was to restart SSA. Has anyone else experienced this? Thanks! Edit: I use the sound module and a buttkicker amp and transducer.

Why do I enjoy flight simulators? You asked, so I’ll tell you. Wow, where to begin... Probably goes all the way back to my first military air show where I stood in awe as a kid witnessing the raw power and unbelievable capabilities of fighter aircraft for the first time. I mean, yeah, I had seen them on TV, but to see the real thing was an eye opening experience. I was hooked. But alas, a career in the military was not meant to be due to physical limitations. My left ear was nearly completely dead since I was a toddler, don't know why, when or how it happened, and I pretty much destroyed my knees in a dirt bike accident when I was a teen. So, that, as they say, was that. After flailing about at various jobs in my youth, I finally came to the realization that I was going to need a college degree if I was going to get anywhere in life. I had become fascinated with computers in the mid-80s, so I chose to study Computer Systems Engineering and started college at the ripe old age of 28 in 1986. Here’s where things began to get really interesting. The school I attended had a co-op program available in which students could work for various companies to gain experience and also make some extra money to help pay for school. And guess what one of those companies was? General Dynamics (my avatar’s namesake) right next to Carswell AFB in Fort Worth, Texas – home of the F-16! Now we’re talking… Coupled with my love of military aircraft, it was like a dream come true. I could work for General Dynamics every other semester plus summers, and that’s exactly what I did. Projects I had the pleasure of being part of: 1. Wire wrapping circuit boards from schematics for prototype FRUs (Field Replaceable Units) to be tested for the F-16 and also building and testing the associated cabling and connectors. This is when I was taught that all FRUs run on magic smoke… Yes, that’s right. If you let the magic smoke escape, the unit would cease to operate, and on rare occasions I did find that to be the case. 2. Worked on maintaining F-16 Weapons Integration Test Stations. These were complete forward fuselage sections of the aircraft, including the cockpit, avionics, weapons systems, radar, etc., along with hard points where new weapons could be connected and tested with the existing weapons systems or along with prototype FRUs described earlier. Everything related to the weapons systems worked in the cockpit, so you could see nearby aircraft on the radar, lock on, and simulate firing a connected weapon as I recall, minus warhead and propellant of course. All I can say is that it was quite the thrill to actually climb into the cockpit, even if that’s all there was of the aircraft mounted on a test stand. 3. Performed Validation and Verification of the Operational Flight Program used in the Flight Control Computer systems of the Advanced Tactical Fighter, better known today as the F-22 Raptor. DOD acronyms were a hoot. GD had a whole book dedicated to breaking them down. When people asked me what I did, I’d say I worked on the V&V of the OFP used in the FCC of the ATF… Wha? 4. Worked on designing and building F-16 Avionics Test Stations at a General Dynamics subsidiary near Hill AFB, about 30 miles north of Salt Lake City, Utah. There were innumerable added benefits. Being in close proximity to the bases at both locations, I was able to observe all manner of military aircraft flying in and out of the area. One of my favorite activities went like this… We’d all be working away in the facility at Fort Worth, and we’d hear a rumble outside like thunder – it was show time! Some visiting dignitary was being treated to an F-16 mini-airshow. They usually started with a short takeoff followed by a near vertical climb to demonstrate the power of the aircraft. Maneuverability was demonstrated with close radius 9G turns. Low speed stability was shown by placing the aircraft in a near stall attitude, dancing it on its tail while maintaining a horizontal trajectory with control surfaces all quivering nervously to keep the aircraft in the correct orientation. That was followed by transitioning directly to a vertical climb to again demonstrate the sheer power the aircraft possessed. This was all interspersed with dives, turns, climbs and lots of full afterburner. It gave all of us goosebumps every time, and management never seemed to mind us taking a break to watch, I assume because they viewed it as a morale booster. I also had access to GD’s mile long assembly line where I could see the F-16 at each stage of the assembly process. The entire GD complex in Fort Worth was so huge we had golf carts to get around, otherwise we’d be walking for days. My manager and a couple of the guys I had the pleasure of working with in Utah were former F-16 pilots. We’d have get-togethers periodically, and a couple drinks would invariably fuel the subsequent pilot stories, and I remember being mesmerized listening to them talk about tight spots they’d gotten into on past missions. This was all unbelievably fascinating to me, and I consider myself very fortunate to have had the opportunity to be part of it first-hand. Now, to tie all this together (yes, I did actually have a point to make here:)), I had seen the dome simulators used for the F-16 at GD, and also was allowed to actually fly a smaller, 3 screen version, not unlike some of the more elaborate sim pits that some of you guys have built. The difference was there were no PCs beefy enough to run the thing back then. I asked the guy manning the sim how much it cost to run it at the time – I think he said something like $250/hr. I remember saying I was going to need to go home and get some more quarters! But, even at that, the graphics fidelity was nowhere near what we have available in DCS and other PC based sims today. In more or less the same time frame that all I discussed above was happening, the first Microsoft FS was released, and also Spectrum Holobyte’s first Falcon F-16 simulation hit the market. Naturally, I had both that ran on my 8088 based 10MHz DOS PC. Yes kids, that’s an M in MHz, not a G. I wasn’t that impressed with Microsoft’s FS, but I was thrilled with the Falcon sim because it was military, and it featured an aircraft that was near and dear to my heart that I had intimate experience with. I was utterly amazed that I could fly an F-16 on my PC and thought I was in high tech heaven. Because of countless hours spent in Falcon, the sim guy at GD couldn’t believe the knowledge I had of flying the aircraft. He kept saying, ok, now you need to do this, now you need to do that, and I just waived him off and told him I knew what I was doing. He was most surprised when I stuck the landing and he asked if I was a pilot. Turns out that even the F-16 pilots always bounced the landing first time through on the sim, but mine was smooth as silk. So, what did that first Falcon sim look like on the PC in 1987? Here’s a link where you can see for yourself, and try not to laugh (it takes it a little while to start beyond the title screen so just wait a little bit): [ame= ] [/ame] This was demonstrated on a modern PC through a dosbox emulator, so I suspect that’s why it’s so twitchy. Also perhaps because it was being flown from the keyboard rather than from a serial port joystick. I remember it being a little smoother on my 8088, and Spectrum Holobyte touted the fact that an F-16 pilot had given the sim high marks for “accuracy” at the time. Yeesh! Plus, the sound is bad, I assume because there are no sound cards on a modern PC that are compatible with a sim from 1987. The graphics, however, are exactly as I remember them – with pixels the size of postage stamps on a RGB monitor at 320x200 resolution. Compare that to what we have available in DCS today, and you’ll understand why I love flying sims in 2016. I had lost interest in flight sims years ago, but when I discovered DCS A-10C back in 2011, that right there was a whole new ballgame, folks. The current fidelity and realism available with today’s PCs is something that we couldn’t even conceive of back in the day. It is one thing to have discovered PC flight simulation yesterday, but to have been present for the entire evolution from day one is quite another. Add to that the advent of DCS BIOS coupled with Arduino microcontrollers and the capability of building a complete pit… That’s a dream on my bucket list that I hope to complete before I get too old to enjoy it. I’m 57 years old now, and I aim to have my dream pit done at some point before I retire. That also gives me the opportunity to rediscover some of those skills I learned at General Dynamics and put them to good use. So you see, the possibilities that have opened up in recent years with regard to advances in PC platforms, graphics capabilities and physics as they apply to flight simulation have all been very exciting to me, and that, coupled with my background is why I love it so much. It’s an outlet for a passion that could never have been realized otherwise. FYI, General Dynamics did offer me a job when I graduated, but I knew they had laid off thousands of engineers just prior to graduation. I wanted something more stable and not subject to the whims of the government and contract cancellations, etc., so I opted to begin my career as a mainframe network engineer, and I’m still doing related work to this day. *sigh* Boring! I often wonder to this day how things might have turned out had I stuck with it and gone to work for them. Decisions that we make…

Request added on both GeForce threads.

Glad you enjoyed it! I see you're from Roy, Utah. Many years ago I worked for General Dynamics near you at Hill AFB designing and testing avionics test stations for the F-16! Beautiful country where you are:smilewink:

Hi all... I was poking around the web today and ran across this AWESOME Blue Angels video on youtube. It was uploaded Aug 25 2014, so maybe everyone but me has seen it. Did a forum search on the link and there were no hits, so I thought I'd post it in case others had not run across it. So many things to see here - reflections in the pilots visor, his reaction to pulling Gs, vapor over the wings and wing flutter during high G turns, watching the ailerons, not to mention the close formation flying. After flying sims, videos like this give me an entirely new appreciation for what these guys do. Hope you guys enjoy it as much as I did!

Awesome NoJoe! Thank you, and please pass my thanks along to your teacher as well :thumbup:

Sorry all, that I missed this thread and double reported in another thread earlier. I did a search and still overlooked this one somehow. Thanks for moving my report to the correct thread...

There are varying degrees of the same problem in all installed modules.

Running a repair did not resolve the problem.

OK, got the log file attached - had to copy it to a txt file. DCS log file.txt

No textures/buildings after selecting Extreme Visible Range Hi all - I decided to download and reinstall the 1.5 OpenBeta from scratch just to test things out. Steps I took: 1. Downloaded beta files from DCS. 2. Ran install, no problems. 3. Ran update to 1.5.1. 3. Started DCS World OpenBeta. 4. Installed my modules, A-10C, F-15, UH-1, P-51 from module manager. 5. Went to options and configured my settings. I saw that the Visible Range EXTREME setting was now available, so I selected that to see what it would look like. 6. Started A-10C Instant Action East Georgia Spring mission. The mission loaded up, but there were no textures or buildings whatsoever, just kind of a cloudy, strange looking landscape with zero detail. I thought, well, I had done a lot in this Windows session, so I rebooted, started DCS World OpenBeta again, started same mission, same problem. I got out of the mission, went back to settings and selected Visible Range ULTRA. Afterward I had textures and buildings when running the mission again. Stopped the mission, went back to settings, set Visible Range back to EXTREME. Went back into the mission, and I had textures and details, but I'm not sure if they correlate to EXTREME because in the log, I saw the following: 00369.171 ERROR Config: can't open 'Config/terrain/Extreme.lua' I checked my Config/terrain folder, and there is no Extreme.lua file present. Getting out of DCS World OpenBeta and back in again leaving the EXTREME setting in place, I again have no textures when running the mission. I have attached a screen shot and the list of files in my Config/terrain folder. For some reason the file manager is not uploading the DCS log file.

Thanks so much for the info NoJoe! If you do check with your teacher, it would be very interesting if he could attribute the dialect to a specific region:smilewink:

@xray20 - I am familiar with C-130 operations out of Little Rock AFB, but I didn't know it was the 314th until I looked it up, and it IS the 314th as you stated. A friend of mine lives just south of the base, and we've spent many a night watching the C-130s flying overhead training. Those guys train long and hard. Now, the next part of your "story" is also correct. The first USAF aircraft to land at Baghdad Intl was indeed a C-130 and on 6th April 2003 during the second Gulf war just as you reported! But I have not been able to find any information indicating it was a C-130 from the 314th? I'd be curious to know if this was indeed the case? You seem to have a great deal of knowledge in this area. I'm assuming you have either made a study of the conflict or perhaps you were involved in some way? Forgive me, but I had assumed you had done an excellent job of fabricating the whole thing, but I see now that some parts are indeed true fact which contributed to making your narrative that much more believable. I'm quite amazed that being from the UK, you knew about the 314th, where they are stationed, and also about a C-130 being the first coalition aircraft to land at Baghdad Intl! Cheers, Neil