xracer

Yeah am going to buy a GTX-780 soon and a 3770k, but for the moment it doesnt help alot on what am hunting for...sudden framedrops! Even the card i have is ok in 90% of the games i play. DCS is more or less the big problem.

To all who have renamed the file "weapon_collision.edm", it may not work the way i thought. As i tested this on bombs it seemed ok, but when i did some tests on the A-10C's damage system by renaming the file related to that it seems like the weapons dont hit the object or at least not destroy it. Problably as of the name of the file :-) So its not like just removing a building EDM...

Forget i even asked. Think i found out something crucial :-)

Actually i have set it high now. As you say 4x should be enough, but seem to get a bit of shimmering if i go below 8x. You have a different card also. I will try 30000, but need to sort out some other stuff first. Thanks fot the tip! Its a joke to play with the major slowdowns sometimes and i will try and and do stuff with that first.

Thanks Timekilla! you know when you mess around with the sims files. At least i don't have the brains to see what they've done mostly. Brilliant programmers and designers thats what they are. This is complex stuff! As of the problems we have apart from maybe the use of cores it could be that they choose the ACAD/Electronic Design Managment type of files (totally guessing here) for the units etc, and i guess its a hell of a code which need to be made to see the total impact on the sim, and then its already too late to change. They used something else before or?? Anyway it looks like these will be our pain for a while lets see. Anyways, hope you have tested this before you thanked me?? If its not working i give up i think. Changing in the advanced lua files is too risky for me i think, Easy to get totally lost. I wondered what would happen without that file and i've just tested briefly. HOPEFULLY what will happen is that we loose the visuals from the weaponpart of the explosion, but as long as you hit something which "burns"and gets destroyed am ok visually. I could not se any difference at impact. Its important to try this out in a small scale scenario. In a big one you will probably ramble along as usual with random slidshows. What needs to be done i think is to use this technique to remove the problems we can without loosing visuals/gameplay quality. So its up to you guys to start to fiddle too with this. I've used quite a few hours on this just to find that it could be a very easy fix. Anyway with my usual luck it could even be that it doesnt work for most, but i've enjoyed it bit so its not wasted for me.

Thanks for info, Miro. My system is also working quite well now, but really there are things still in the sim which brings it to the knees :-) I do know very well that i can do other changes to those files to improve more, but not so important for the moment. Take care!

Yeah but sometimes its better with 4 or more in one shell than one even if their less powerful. Try and see if your comp runs better with the smokemods and leave the bomb original. These are just options but seems like the CBU's arent too important by the looks of things.

There is no boxes in my changes! That pic was just to show what makes the random fps jumps in the sim cause when their dressed thats what gonna happen. And plz dont be so damn negative. There are next to none other options to fix this for us! Also just use medium the improvement are substansial anyway.Obviously i want the eyecandy too and its still there Just try it out. The point is that if you have a mission with quite a few units on the map and they can be quite far away you will get major drops in fps unless you have a very powerful system. That is even if their not doing anything. Thats what my LOD change do improve alot on without sacrificing eyecandy noticibly. The EDM files are just too resource hungry. Anyway this improves gameplay on all systems if the changes i've done are finetuned for each spesific system.

That's alot of truth in that, but then again adjust as high as your comp can handle...OR jagg around in a slideshow if you want :-) Try to optimize spacing, dropdelay to make it better. On my system if i skip ANY of the changes above its back to square one!

My quick guide to playability (updated) My Quick Guide to good playability (In this context more stable fps) Let me first start to say that there is a guide on this forum (by Dredd) which is far superior than this and which also explains stuff about improvements, so that should be your primary guide. This guide is short but effective (i think) and instead of focusing on minor adjustments to gain a few frames/s overall and often in areas of gameplay which there is little action, i've tried to be focused on certain "gamebreakers". So on to the meat of it all: Note! These changes below are made to provide better stability to gameplay, meaning more stable frames/s not the highest or lowest, but still totally superior from default on my system. I've tried as hard as i can to keep eye candy intact, but there are limited possibilities for me on my setup. I will correct and add to this very short list later if i find someting else which i guess is not too obvious in the settings or files. Here goes: Changes in graphics.lua: Section "Camera" subsection "LOW" : set LodMult = 0.3 // not 0.2 or 0.4 or something else Section "Camera" subsection "MEDIUM" : set LodMult = 0.3 // not 0.2 or 0.4 or something else Section "Camera" subsection "HIGH" : set LodMult = 0.3 // not 0.2 or 0.4 or something else Rename one or both of the following files: \Eagle Dynamics\DCS World\Bazar\shaders\ -> PFXExplFire3.fx \Eagle Dynamics\DCS World\Bazar\ParticleEffects\effects\ -> FireVehicle.lua Other changes: Fire and smoke from objects (Size) \Eagle Dynamics\DCS World\Scripts\Database\Vehicles\xxxx In each of the files for each object you can change the following line: GT.visual.fire_size = x.x To a number around 0.2-0.3 which will shrink the size of the fireball from the hit object. If you put it at 0.1 you will probably have just a very short flash drop in framerate. There will still be smoke and fire there for the same default time, just less. Individual object Lod changes: Below type of change will have an positive effect on overall fps in large battles, with lots of air units not too far away. I put up 8 A-10C's in the parking area, put my A-10C on the end of the runway and looked toward the planes. Before the change of the file for the A-10C i had rock steady 13 f/s when they started moving. After changing on these i was up to 21 f/s. Also when adjusted correctly you wont notice any degraded visuals as its too far away anyway. So the more units the more this will inflict. Remember that this can mostly be done with air units and they are considerably more resource hungry than ground objects in most cases. \Eagle Dynamics\DCS World\Bazar\World\Shapes\xxx.lods (Example) model = { lods = { {"ch-47d.edm",17.000000}, {"ch-47d_lod1.edm",30.000000}, {"ch-47d_lod2.edm",80.000000}, {"ch-47d_lod3.edm",150.000000}, {"ch-47d_lod4.edm",800.000000}, {"ch-47d_lod5.edm",7000.000000}, {"ld_tec.edm",50000.000000}, }, collision_shell = "ch-47d-collision.edm", } Change to: model = { lods = { {"ch-47d.edm",17.000000}, {"ch-47d_lod3.edm",30.000000}, {"ch-47d_lod5.edm",80.000000}, {"ch-47d_lod5.edm",150.000000}, {"ch-47d_lod5.edm",800.000000}, {"ch-47d_lod5.edm",7000.000000}, {"ld_tec.edm",50000.000000}, }, collision_shell = "ch-47d-collision.edm", } If you absoultely want to use CBU's you can lessen the fps drop from the explosion by degrading its effectiveness (not a good thing though) \Eagle Dynamics\DCS World\Config\Weapons\bomb_table.lua local function make_CBU_97_105_DATA() line: count = 5, -- number of BLU-108 << Change between 1-5 based on what your system can handle. effect_count = 5, -------------- This i not the way i would have liked to do it and it will degrade eyecandy and effectivness. Happy flying! Hopefully...

Thanks for the tip, Mustang but I have a faster comp too, but used for other things and it has a 6870, which is hotter and slower than this 5850. There are quality differences between XFX and HIS... I wanted to start doing changes to those kind of settings later on, Now i got a boost to start doing something with this sim to make it playable in a medium to low scale kind of scenario, That would be the goal. So now am gonna make myself a list slowly by slowy to see if i can do tricks to with the real bottlenecks which in my opinion is FPS stability :) Maybe am lucky maybe not! Btw. If there are any guys reading this which has directly with the creation of the sim to do, i wanted to say that this is an amazing sim at heart, but for the moment its not possible to enjoy it cause of a generally way to high requirements for hardware. It's a shame...

NB! READ FROM TOP TO BOTTOM and don't skip anything! I start this as a new tread for only do research on these files mainly and if no one involve themselves on this topic, i just run my sim more efficiently without sharing anymore findings as it takes time to write this stuff. Remember that to even test out these changes and see what they do, DO NOT start a major inferno mission with all kinds of stuff going on. I'll attach a test.miz below so you can check the response in small scale! Ok, here is the nitty gritty stuff of which affects at least the CBU-97 employments! Directory in question: X:\Eagle Dynamics\DCS World\Bazar\shaders\effects The following files are located here and a description of what i've found about these. If you haven't backed up these, please do now before you mess up the installation! Explosions.fx <-- This file CANNOT be removed and may be changed to MAYBE alter the explosion Fire.fx <-- This file may be changed to MAYBE alter the explosion FlareTrail.fx <-- Not researched on yet PFXDust.fx <-- This file may be changed to MAYBE alter the explosion PFXExplFire2.fx <-- This file may be changed to MAYBE alter the explosion PFXExplFire3.fx <-- This file removes black smoke from the BOMB ITSELF but not the object it hits! PFXSmoke2.fx <<-- This file may be changed to MAYBE alter the explosion Smoke.fx <-- This file CANNOT be removed and may be modified to alter the explosion My humble understanding of this explosion part and what the sim does is roughly the following and it may be the way sims usually do this: 1. When mission starts, It reads some .FX files and collects settings for injecting later into some .FXO files 2. When you do a mission and an explosion is initiated, that's when the .FXO file spesific for that explosion is loaded and executed. Hopefully it loaded earlier, but i don't know. 3. The execution of the explosion is done by the EFFECTS.DLL file in the BIN directory. The .FXO files are binary files which are used as an resource (maybe executable) by the calling function in EFFECTS.DLL. So to the meat of this: What you can do first as a simple change to get major improvement in FPS stability when the explosion occur is to just rename the file called "PFXExplFire3.fx". You will then get a more visually lighter smokeinferno from the bomb itself. If you hit let say trucks ( attached miz), most smoke left will come from the trucks fire. That is a different matter though. TESTING of test miz: 1. When mission starts, press F2 to get a outside view of the AI plane. 2. The plane will do a circle before it drops the bombs so zoom out and accellerate until it nears the shore again and normalize time. 3. Then press F11 continously until you get to Batumi airport. 4. Then rotate to the seaside part of the runway and use "*" on the numeric keypad to move to the end of the runway like 10-15m above ground. 5. Turn around and put the view on the trucks and activate FPS counter. Adjust so you get minimum FPS and can see the counter clearly. 6. When the bombshells land there is no drop in FPS, but later the FPS counter will start to unstabilze and drop and when the explosion accurs the minimum drop will be seen after a few secs. 7. EXIT the sim completely without doing a direct refly! Do the mission again and again with and without the file "PFXExplFire3.fx" included to check. 8. And most importantly reply in this tread if this improves minimum drop for you. 9. Do research on changes in the files above to check for any improvements Notes! I have 1.2.4 with A-10 and BS2 modules installed. Doing complex missions and still keep things at an acceptable level is probably something which is just not possible without larger changes...Sorry! I did change the complexity of the CBU-97 bomb earlier and that did lessen the FPS drop, but with this above change i can still keep the CBU-97 effectivness intakt. Here is the other change which will lessen the drop even more, but effiecency drops! http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=107951 Hope this helps you guys! test.miz

Yesterday i put up like 25 tanks on a line across the horizen doin like 20 km/h so the dustclouds (light brown color) really kicked in. Absolutely no drop in the FPS at all. But as said above, any combo with more that 2-3 explosions close together with Graphics FX usually brings the system to its knees. The dust alone on my system does nothing to hurt the FPS. I tried to remove the WAV'S OGG's to see if sound prosessing had anything to do with it. Nope. The thing is that i suspect that its just that there are made spesial complete realtime calculating apps in the sim for the explosions which is to much for the systems as of today the way its handled in the sim. Not easy for us to mod. It needs hacking of certain executable/binary files i guess. Only thing to do is to limit the explosion impacts i guess. Another thing i did was remove COMPELTELY all textures from the terrain (objects and ground textures) and tested an explosion. Same story. FPS to the knees....

Another change i tried was on the SAM SA-15 Tor 9A331's warhead properties. I did the following in the warheads.lua file: function simple_aa_warhead(power) -- By Saint << THIS ONE ONLY local res = {}; res.mass = 0.002*power; --old explosion damage effect << MAKES MISSILE WEAKER AND THE EXPLOSION EFFECT IS LESS VISUALLY EQUALS LESS FPS DROP res.expl_mass = 0.002*power; -- << MAKES MISSILE WEAKER AND THE EXPLOSION EFFECT IS LESS VISUALLY EQUALS LESS FPS DROP res.other_factors = {1, 1, 1}; res.obj_factors = {1, 1}; res.concrete_factors = {1, 1, 1}; res.cumulative_factor = 0; res.concrete_obj_factor = 0.0; res.cumulative_thickness = 0.0; calcPiercingMass(res) return res; end -------------- Set up a simple mission with a couple of those units on ground, then fly over with let say the Black Shark and watch in F2 view. Watch the FPS when it get hit. Also note that explosion effect lessens considerably. This is a way to better survive SAM attacks too for those who need that :-) But this isn't exactly a nice way to fix FPS hits though. The explosion effects only i think are compiled into the FXO files so isn't easy to modify unless someone finds any params which works

I have a i7 920 at 3.8 GHz (most of the time), a HD-5850 stock speed, 6 GB mem. More than enough actually. But listen up! This mod doesn't increase the overall FPS (max FPS). It wasn't the intention either with this mod as i have enough of that even on my system. What IS important for the whole sim is to not get sudden major drops in my opinion. What i got with this mod in my particular test which was to view the explosion from a distance and before the mod i had 48 -> 15 FPS!!! now i got 48 -> 36 (That is with that exact cluster config) and that is consistent!! So hope you other guys get a direction to make this sim more FPS consistent. Please do research on this even if we have to do compromises. EDIT: I forgot to mention that i dropped the CBU's on a line of 6 trucks on Batumi airstrip. Obviously with this mod the CBU is less efficient. But i think this is one of the few ways to lessen the drop in FPS in this particular case. Anyway it all comes down to the amount of objects which explodes/ catch fire at the same time. If the bombfragments explodes with a little more timedelay between will also lessen the drop.

Maybe it's done before, but here is something for those who want more, infact major improvement in FPS drop when dropping CBU's. It has obviously a downside (as mentioned before OBJECT COUNT), and that you will see for yourself when applying this change. but can be improved by a couple of other params. Remember backup the file in question! Screenshots are below. If you want a video which proves it i can supply that, but shouldn't be needed. It works bigtime for at least some of the CBU's. The file is bombs_table.lua (Lines are marked MOD THIS) --------------------- t = { count = 1, -- number of BLU-108 << MOD THIS effect_count = 5, -- << AND MAYBE THIS impulse_sigma = 20, -- Not used so far moment_sigma = 0.0001, -- Not used so far empty_dispenser_mass = empty_dispenser_mass, empty_dispenser_L = empty_dispenser_L, empty_dispenser_S = empty_dispenser_S, empty_dispenser_I = empty_dispenser_I, empty_dispenser_Ma = calcMa(empty_dispenser_I, empty_dispenser_L, empty_dispenser_S, 400), empty_dispenser_Mw = calcMw(empty_dispenser_I, empty_dispenser_L, empty_dispenser_S), panel_mass = panel_mass, panel_L = panel_L, panel_S = panel_S, panel_I = panel_I, panel_Ma = calcMa(panel_I, panel_L, panel_S, 400), panel_Mw = calcMw(panel_I, panel_L, panel_S), --Ma = 0.900985 --Mw = 1.675494 -- Release time delays for each group of BLU-108 timeDelayFirstGroup = 0.09, -- << MOD THIS timeDelaySecondGroup = 0.16, -- << MOD THIS ----------------------------- Screenshoots Attached

Been trying to do something with the total trash of FPS in this sim at times. I realize all the effort from all here on this. All these hours researching on this and i've done equally many hours on it. And i have found a conclusion for myself and by this post i would like anyone to prove me wrong on this. Ok her goes: 1. Take the CBU-97 as an example. The sim is very complex in its calculations. What it does is that it calculates many physcal properties of EVERY SINGLE FRAGMENT on this bomb. How EVERY FRAGMENT is affected when it falls from the Sky. This is a fact if you look through the files in details. What happens is that when the bomb is dropped, it first splits the shell in a few parts (which is then still calculated), then it spreads the bombfragments (lots more calculations going on). These fragments are VERY small in size graphically in the sim as you may have noticed when they fall. So here is what happens on my rig. If i have the cameraview horizontally along the ground below where they are gonna hit i have maybe 45 FPS steady in a certain situation. Then when these fragments come into view one by one barely visible cause of their small size my FPS drops steadily to 34!! this is even long before the impact, and no other objects on map!! MY question is how in the world can the devs design it like this when there's no change in He** that our PC's can handle it. I've tried my comp at 2.66 GHz and at 4 GHz and exactly same FPS?? Forget about bottlenecks for a moment. It's great that its designed like this realisticly, but guys you can gain a few FPS when your doing your sunday flight alone on the map without any other things happening, but this is a combatsim and....i can't believe this crap. I've run the sim WITHOUT MOST textures loaded (mostly wireframe) and still FPS drops under 20 when the CBU-97 explodes. But this isn't about the CBU-97 only its about OBJECTS. The sim is adversely affected by the NUMBER of objects existing at the same time on the map and onscreen. That is expected in a way, but how can they handle the problem like this? This is totally if the objects are SMALL or BIG!! So what i wonder will the EDGE engine fix this once for all? I've used too much money on this sim over the years to find out that adjusting LODS, SHADERS, SMOKE etc. isn't the problem. Do any of you ED testers even get to know anything about this and if its gonna be fixed soon. For me it seems like a total redesign if the sim is needed. And by the looks of whats inside all the lua files it's not done in a day :-) I've not done a campain in the sim yet, but is there even a point to try with this system? Anyway i love this sim in a way and there isn't much else to go for. You know if the ARMA guys make their flyables simish, i'm really not really even gonna play DCS at all anymore. I feel almost cheated by ED as i thought they was gonna fix these radical problems with the sim. Anyway that was todays frustration burst for me :-)

What i've done is to map away (rename) stuff in the following folders which i think i can do without: X:\Eagle Dynamics\DCS World\Bazar\Terrain\Structures\High\EDM X:\Eagle Dynamics\DCS World\Bazar\Terrain\Structures\blocks\new2 Also when it comes to explosion problems i think just think there is something going on in the following file and closely related as i do get response by changing values there, but you need to be a expert in geometrics and 3D directX programming to know what u do in there and am not. X:\Eagle Dynamics\DCS World\Bazar\shaders\expl\boom_ffx.fx Also stuff in the hlsl files which have directly with DirectX is interresting X:\Eagle Dynamics\DCS World\Bazar\shaders The above is just as a emergency things to try and get the explosions less complex to calculate. They are the death of this sim. They are straight on unusable in my opinion. The smoke isn't the problem most often its the initial explosion creation. I've also think i've ruled out the soundsystem as a problem as i did some tests on that. Btw. anyone seeing any difference on DirectX 9.0c vs 11?

Nealius, I've been reading most of this thread and i've been trying lots of stuff over the years to make the sim more stable FPS wise when objects starts to do stuff. I can't believe the arguments coming from the ED testers (sorry i say what i mean no fooling around). It is obvious that the guys which actuallly DO the programming of this engine could have given a brief explaination on WHY the sim have these problems and more importantly can something drastically FPS wise be done without lowering the number of objects in the sim. The graphics engine or the interaction between the CPU and GPU work it not a success, end of story. I have a mid to low spec PC (HD 5850/I7 920 OC/ 6GB RAM) and i can usually run 1920x1080x32 and most all at MAX except shadows on low and meduim visual range which is the major impacts on the sim to get general flying around smooth and stutterfree. Thats just in general. The main issue of couse is the extreme FPS drops when ANY kind of smoke explosion etc. occur. You can do another totally different test than these done in this tread. Start FRAPS, start sim and have Civill traffic even on LOW. go to F11 view lets say at Batumi airport. . If you scan slowly horisontally stepwise around with the arrow keys, you will see that you can have 45 FPS stable for a while and then just in one step with the key have 32 FPS stable back and fourth at this point. Why is this happening even WITHOUT smoke and exlosions Yes i know Civil traffic is not good FPS wise but this happens with maybe TWO!! trucks on the road in the area????? They've built the damn big town structures into more or less one file so we can't even drop spesific buildings to make it better...Grrr...What I'm saying is that: THE ONLY WAY TO MAKE THIS SIM PERFORM BETTER THE WAY ITS DESIGNED NOW IS TO LOWER THE AMOUNT OF OBJECTS BEING SHOWN AND CALCULATED! Ok one reason the sim is so slow compared to the "ANOTHER SIM" could be that this sim have more target objects. One thing for sure is that the way objects are drawn and handled in this sim is way out there. The point is, FPS drops like this which is happening suddenly is a total NONO in a sim like this. The sim is meant for smoke and explosions dammit. Ok got a bit angry here, but getting the MAJOR problem away from the sim now is only done by reducing the object count and hopefully get rid of some effects. Thats what i've done and thats simple and fast and lets me run above 30 FPS even at top resolution and almost all at max. Let me have less objects but whats there at least runs better.

Thanks pakfront, i will do that and see if i get something out of it

Hi Chief. am not sure about your problem as i don't have a SLI setup. Anyway what i did to make the startup look a bit more pro :-) was that i renamed the extension to the files StartImage.bmp, StartImage_src.bmp and StartImage-2.bmp to bm and put in a different 1600x900 bmp file as StartImage-2.bmp. I use 1600x900 when running the sim.

Thanks for the info. I've been a little at those wiki pages, but as i can see its just a description og the data types and stuctures. Do you know the background for ED not giving at least a small example of how to use each of these functions? Is it lack of resources? I guess examples would be a little on the tutorial side of things, but god it would have helped. I can't help from saying one thing and that is the Arma developers seems like many classes above in professionalism both about this scripting topic and also how to deal with structuring the delivery of the their sim and its patches to the customers. I've bought and played DCS titles since Lockon first came out cause there really isn't many great alternatives in this category, but over the years i've also put the sim away cause of many annoyances. Anyway i will try and make some missions without LUA and try and enjoy it as best as i can. Btw. thanks for doing a great job on helping out customers on scripting. I see alot of nice feedback. Maybe you yourself can make some tutorial which is so basic that even a nonprogrammer can try out the examples? Examples which shows concrete visuals in the sim?

Hi, i've been fiddling around with the mission editor a little in DCS world after first doing it in BS2. After wasting a few hours in BS2 i found out that the functions with LUA wasn't implemented until DCS World/A-10C was released...Great to have different boxes in the editor which doesn't work and find out by coincidence that their just there for the looks LOL. Anyway, what i wanted to ask or actually more important show me is a explicit small function in the CONDITION FIELD which goes over MORE than one line which uses a Begin....end loop. The example need to be absolutley syntax correct or else i guess i will miss out on this. The example i put in the field obviously has another built in selection in the ingame menus, but i guess there is alot of stuff which isnt?? Also if someone knows alot about using LUA in DCS, it would be nice with some some useful examples of this. I can't believe that a sim with as much is possiblilies as this one don't have more docs on this. I think maybe the sim can be utilized more with these things even for ppl that aren't experts in LUA. Anyone have any views on this? I mean do we need LUA use in the sim to make missions with more surprises?

Thanks BigFootMSR i won't worry anymore now :-)

Hi, I've just installed DCSW, BS2 update and A-10C and when i load/create a mission and push the "OK" button to start the mission i get like 2 loading pics one right after the other on screen (see attachment), then it goes into the cockpit. Before i installed DCSW, i've been using BS2 standalone and never gotten 2 pics at the same time. So i wonder if there is something wrong with the way i've installed it? Just to mention, there is not 2 instances running that i've checked. Anyone get the same?