SmirkingGerbil

Been watching patch drops since 2011 - always pleased with the results. Looking forward to this one. No requests, no demands, no drama. Just thanks for all the hard work.

Welcome to the Brrrrrt. Chuck's Guides, but many other resources exist by various groups, as others have mentioned or will get mentioned. The built in training missions are helpful also. Piecemeal was my approach. Learn one thing, on one Device (i.e. TGP, or DSMS, Up Front Controller) and what it does. The things it can do for you, like Data Entry, or drilling down into a weapons station. Then move on to more complex things like the CDU. Start simple though, like how to use the Gun pipper, and do a gun run. Then move to dropping a dumb bomb, or using a laser guided rocket like the APKWS hydra's, which will lead to other laser guided munitions. One piece, one step, one function at a time. Once you get a few hours in to each MFD (Multi-Function Display), then things will start to glue together, and you will have "ah ha!" moments. Of course these forums are awesome for stuff that is driving you nuts.

Any relation to "I'm Rick James!!!"

Ditto!

Nothing like some weekend masochism to get things started!!!

Still not the prettiest AAR - but no longer whiteknuckle bunched up shoulders for 20 mins!!

Just practice!!! Used to take me 20 white knuckle minutes, now down to about 7 min to transfer 9,000 pounds. Still not pro or pretty, but practical on a mission with JTF-191 Squadron (main flight crew, they helped with a lot of suggestions during qual) and on missions.

The only observation I have with this - when and what model family become the "top end graphics" card that you are optimizing for? GPU companies model lifetimes are shrinking. What is "top end" this quarter, could be eclipsed in 6 months. Where do you set the standard, because at this point, it is a moving goal post with lifetimes measured in months, not even a solid year anymore.

Missing man flight, and other formations as a memorial tribute by our team, JTF-191

Not a good idea . . .

Many posts later - on a mediocre system. With the settings I have described previously - which uses things like Ultra clouds, highest settings for textures and MSAA (but the higher end stuff off like SSAO). Working great. Even Marianas down in the dirt, flying over those beautiful trees, and all the ground assets never drops below 35 FPS. Which I know for all the high end systems that is a sin, but back in the day 30 FPS was the holy grail, and 35 to 40 FPS keeps Marianas smooth. Also, Syria and Marianas are stutter free. As I have mentioned before, I think the one thing that matters (at least on my system more than any other setting), is to set max FPS, based on experimentation and observations. Once I set mine to 45 in NVIDIA CP, even though I can hit 90 FPS depending on map etc. my flights over even the densest maps have been stutter free. But of course, I am Track IR, and 2D. FYI

Doh! My bad.

ZSU Shilka is radar guided, for drop and lead. Not human guided. If you notch them, they will miss. If you have jammers, you can practically walk up to them and hose them down with cannon fire, at least in the A-10.

Ray - been following your updates, and changes. Thanks for posting this stuff. I too have made small changes to things I recommended earlier, and I am also getting improved performance with last update. The biggest change I made recently which really seemed to help, especially with Syria was setting MFR "Max Frame Rate" via NVIDIA control panel. I took the lowest FPS I get in Syria, at about 2500 feet, above a populated area, with my MAV display and TGP active as my baseline of about 55 fps, sometimes as low as 40. I then set MFR to 47. All maps, and scenarios have improved. Most notably I rarely get stutter now, especially on Syria. Thanks for all the detail you are sharing.

I know this has been beat to death. I am not getting a massive FPS loss, and I am not a 120 FPS system guy. However, I know folks are having issues, and I was looking at some more NVIDA tweaks. I tried one more (along with others that contravene other advice!!!) But, I want to focus on the one, that I think had the most impact. Max Frame Rate. In other games, I run 60 to 120 FPS no problem, in DCS currently (and in 2.5) doing good at 50 to 90 - currently 45 to 60 ish 2.7 Syria. So this tweak is to drop about 10 or 15 frames below what you normally average, and set your Max Frame Rate there. This does not affect other games like Borderlands 3 for whatever reason. I did this mainly for DCS, and I can confirm using an FPS counter, it pretty much stays right at 47 - before it would float between 45 and 60+ on Syria. Higher on other maps. However, no stutter, and rock solid performance. I hate it that another tweak I was using, kinda gets over written on other things with this tweak. But I would be interested in knowing if folks set this 10 to 15 frames below their best in DCS if it helps them or not. If it does, I will go over the other tweaks I tried (that are somewhat different than other advice I have followed) and we can check those. I definitely got some smoother better performance with these settings - but I think MFR is the one that others can try and get a measurable verifiable benefit or not.

I only cuss once (Sh*!!), a lot of "comon bro!!!" - oh "hell bro!!" - speaking to boom operator. About 9K pounds transferred. Had to hit the straw a few times, but mostly smooth. I kinda get loud, might overdrive mic, check your volume!!! It can be done, as all those before me have said. Practice, practice, practice. Read, Read, Read. Check curves, check controls.

You know, it is like a water bed. You have to stop moving around so much on take off and landing, then that will calm down. Seriously though, since it is rendering under all land masses, if you (we) just set our water detail to low, then we should get a performance gain??

I fly the P-47D for the same reason I fly the A-10C as my main sled. Different, labor intensive, has unique strengths that other aircraft don't have and once you learn to leverage them effectively, your impact on the battle field is immense. Don't get me wrong, I am learning the F-16, and appreciate the airframe for what it is, and truly enjoy the speed, the model, and what ED has given us with the F-16, so it will become my "other sled", just like the P-51. For whatever reason, I really enjoy being able to tweak the throttle/pitch on a gun run in the P-47, and letting the torque walk my guns onto the targets as I make a pass - sometimes don't even need to hit the rudder or the stick. The engine torque does all the alignment for me.

Well, that is good to know - I didn't realize there was a setting analog for Scenery Details factor - might be closer than I thought. Wasn't trying to be heavily critical, I was going over the settings myself, and wondering how someone "could" do a apples to apples. I wonder if the devs could map it for us, or if it is even possible? I didn't take near the hit some did, and the 2.7 screen is my current settings, with very little frame rate loss. Except for Syria, but Syria always loaded my machine in 2.5 and 2.7. But I am Track IR, with 32 GB of RAM running from an SSD, with an SSD page drive so hard for me to say how much 2.7 really hit me and under what conditions. But overall my experience has been pretty good for the increase in detail etc.

Own both titles. There is only one of them that gives me the full P-47D as I would want it to be. They both however scratch an itch, and they both have their place.

An observation about your statement of "same settings" The graphics settings in 2.5 and 2.7 are not identical. The most prominent changes which did not exist in 2.5 are the settings for "Forest Visibility, Forest Details Factor, and Scenery Details factor". When you do apples to oranges between your two images, the 2.7 image shows softer edges to the forests, and more individual trees are visible - so this is not a "apples to apples" setting. You would need to set the new "Details Settings" and SSAO! to match (if even possible) the old 2.5 settings for those details. So it isn't really a straight up 2.5 better, 2.7 worse comparison, until you figure out how to modify new 2.7 settings to be as close as possible to 2.5. 2.7: 2.5

I had resigned myself to never getting this. Mild cussing, be warned. Yeah, you would cuss too with turbulence and other factors jacking with you for hundreds of attempts to kiss the BOOM - and then one day viola!!

Good news - not sure if I have an answer for this, but in my Squadron, when we run "Operation DCS Liberation" - with a lot of AI activity, like on the TARMAC for take off, everyone experiences frame rate getting tanked. We are not sure if it is AI processes hitting our CPU's or what. Not sure if related, but if the Bomb Drops, and the formation of AI B-17's are all mashing your CPU to do their calculations etc it MIGHT (and I stress might) be related? Others smarter than me can comment and clarify.

@Flappie Unfortunately I have not been able to reproduce this. I should have saved that track the first time. Apologies. I would just "close" this. When/if it happens again, I will keep the track file. Regards,