Note - I posted this at SimHQ earlier today before reading up on some things on these forums. A couple things I already have on my list to try is capping FPS at 30 and making the edit to line 146 in graphics.lua. I just wanted to repost it here as well to see if there's anything else I could try (other than getting a new computer. Not an option. ;) )
I've had DCS World and FC3 for a while, but just tried for the first time this weekend to play through the The Valley campaign mission #1. However, sitting on the runway, anytime I look toward the North I get a big FPS drop (probably into the low-mid teens). As I take off, everything is smooth looking out over the ocean, but as soon as I turn North toward the objective, I get a FPS drop again. I tried to play through the mission, but couldn't as the low FPS continued all the way up the coast and over the objective.
I thought it was strange because I had been flying "create fast mission" and "instant action" missions with the same settings (High) without noticing issues. I jumped into the instant action mission and maybe noticed a little stuttering (could have been there before but wasn't bad enough to really notice, so I dropped down to Medium and performance became pretty smooth. I did find that the stuttering was related to looking at cities, which makes sense. Lot of buildings, trees, etc...
Went back to the The Valley mission #1 and still had pretty noticable stuttering. So I dropped things down to Low and still noticed a FPS drop whenever I looked North from the runway. At this point, the FPS was better than it was when I tried at High, but the drop when looking in that certain direction was still very noticeable.
I gave up on the campaign mission and went back to "create fast mission." With everything set to High, except Scene and Water set to Medium (4xAA, HDR, cockpit shadows and TSSAA off, although having those higher/on earlier in my trials didn't seem to make a difference, they used to be at 8X, Normal, On, and On), I was able to fly all over the place and get very smooth performance, heavily populated or not.
Here are my questions:
1) I haven't been playing a lot, so I'm not sure if something changed or if I just never noticed the FPS drop before. Did anyone notice a drop in FPS in any of the recent patches?
2) Has anyone else noticed a large drop in FPS in the The Valley campaign mission #1 that they don't see in the other "create fast mission" missions? Is there something specific about that mission that would make performance worse?
3) Just out of curiosity, can anyone share what settings they've found to have the biggest impact on FPS? I can get my own results through lot of trial and error, but if someone else can share their experiences as a starting point, that would be helpful.
Thanks.
