OnlyforDCS

This is really awesome news! Will this be included in the next update?

Same here. Seems kind of unintuitive if that's how it was in the real plane. Would like confirmation that this is indeed a bug.

Very well said. However you won't convince people who believe there are absolutely no problems with spotting. There is no point in debating with someone who won't even acknowledge the subject of the debate. You won't change their minds if they believe themselves to be right, and you to have no case. In my opinion I find spotting to be OKAY at extreme WVR. So within 5-10nm it works okay. But i have a large 1080p monitor, which gives me a pretty big advantage in those conditions. However where spotting really breaks down is in ACM ranges. So really close ranges, between 1-2nm, I have lost countless targets due to them blending into the ground or water, or even sky inexplicably. At these ranges this should not be happening. I think giving units a more defined contrast, and better light reflectivness at those ranges would absolutely make the biggest difference but Im not sure if that is even possible to implement in DCS.

This is not an argument, this is an insult. If you don't have a proper argument to make then maybe refrain from posting.

You can set a program for him, and he does much better then.

That sounds like exactly what Im looking for! Thanks Rudel!

Use your RWR to get a general bearing. Also remember a Heatseeking SAM will give no warning. Jester will also call it out if he sees it. As a pilot you can either use flares or chaff (you tell Jester beforehand which ones you want to dispense) or you can set it up so Jester uses both. I usually let Jester handle both and set a program I want. It's working out pretty good so far, however sometimes you will get hit no matter what you do. IR SAMs are easily avoidable if you stay high enough, and when you break against radar guided sams it's not just enough to break to one direction, you need to mix it up with some shapes and try to head away and towards the ground if at all possible.

I don't use the scroll wheel as I have TrackIR, with that said I do have ZOOM in and out bound on my HOTAS as it would be practically impossible to fly and fight without it in DCS as you have so eloquently pointed out. Your solution to "just zoom in" is not a solution at all, it is a band-aid that we are forced to use in WVR, if we are to have any chance of seeing anything at all outside of the cockpit. Even then it works sporadically unless you happen to be looking at exactly the right spot. Please note Im talking about close ranges of one to two miles, not something at the extreme edge of spotting distance. We like to espouse the realism factor of DCS, how realistic is it to apply binoculars to your vision every time you need to see out of your cockpit?

You've just made the case for improving visibility and spotting in the game.

In the interest of saving space on my disk is there any way to download the Nevada map to another folder instead of "_downloads" or even better to another disk? I've got 40GB free on the SSD that has DCS installed, but I still need to download Nevada, im afraid that once it downloads the map there won't be enough space for it to unpack. Any help would be much appreciated.

It appears this is true for high end systems, however on low to mid range systems the performance hit is much worse. If that is indeed the case, and further optimization is difficult for those systems then minimum system requirements should be highlighted on the DCS, Steam product pages of the module.

Guys reports like these are not really helpful. Please post your full system specs when reporting suspected issues. I've had issues but after upgrading my GFX card they went away, which makes me suspect it's more of a VRAM issue.

This. Pretty much. Seriously these comments "Well I don't have a problem, so it's not a problem" are making me lose my faith in humanity little by little. Seriously, we are NOT real pilots, we are NOT sitting in real cockpits, we are NOT looking directly at objects using ONLY our eyes. There is this thing called a monitor on which things are rendered, depending on your graphics settings and hardware never as well as they would be in real life, we have NO depth perception, we have NO peripheral vision, the TrackIR movement is awkward even at the BEST of times etc. etc. etc If you don't have problems with spotting well I call that BS! Why? Because I've seen youtube videos of the best, absolute best players of this game lose sight of airplanes in situations where it would be impossible to do so in real life, over and over again. I've played with some really great DCS pilots who struggle with spotting. Saying that there isn't a problem and that something can't be done to improve this issue is complete and utter....well I won't say it because Ill get banned but you get the gist of it.

Ahh, awesome thanks!

Yeah Im talking about pure performance here not load times. While it was fine in single-player, it was almost unplayable in multiplayer. (Only in the Tomcat, the other modules worked better). Especially on the ground. In the air it was better, but there were still occasional frame drops or even freezes whenever something was going on which made me suspect that my GTX970 was simply bottlenecking my system as it streamed textures and effects during flight. I've seen reports of some reports of people using 970s with no such issues, but most people who are reporting performance issues seem to have older graphics cards with 4GB or less VRAM.

It was marketed as 4GB but in reality only had 3.5GB. Yeah could be that the memory management on your AMD card is much better, or works better at least in DCS compared to how Nvidia does it, maybe the VRAM is much faster, or works better in tandem with regular system memory. Who knows?

I've tried the same server/mission with the Tomcat, F15C and Mirage. You are right the issue is not limited to the Tomcat, but it is much much more noticable compared to every other module. I guess that is due to the much higher detail/polygon count, textures etc. compared to previous modules. Once everything loads in the performance on the GTX970 was much poorer in the Tomcat compared to other modules.

You only use it on landing approaches when you need more lift, or less lift. Depending on how you're doing in the groove. Basically you pop the DLC out, after your flaps and gear are down. (By using the DLC button). After that you basically use your slider or rotary if you are too low or too high in the glideslope on final approach, if you are on point with your throttle work and on a good glideslope you probably won't need to touch it, but when you are getting close to the deck and your E-bracket is too high or too low, then the DLC can really make a difference much more quickly than any throttle work. It will save your (virtual) life ;)

Im afraid with 2 GB of VRAM you will probably only manage to load up the single player missions and they will not run well. Follow my advice and drop your settings but definitely get a graphics card upgrade before anything else. My recommendation is anything with 6GB of VRAM or more.

Loading times haven't changed, but the texture pop in (when entering a multiplayer server) is now much, much quicker. I had to wait over 2 minutes before I could start up the plane, now it's only 10-15 seconds. I have no idea how you managed to get smooth 60FPS in multiplayer, there was no way I could do it without horrible microstutters and 0 FPS drops every now and then.

Useful tip: You can bind DLC to a slider, go to AXIS commands and you will find a DLC option there. Bind it to a slider or a rotary and it works great! (No need to use up two buttons on your hotas)

This!

As the title says, today I upgraded to the RTX2060. Primarily due to the terrible performance I've had in the Tomcat in multiplayer compared to singleplayer (which mostly worked fine). Since this has fixed all my performance problems in multiplayer (except for the texture pop in, it's still there) this has confirmed my suspicions that the Tomcat uses significantly more VRAM compared to other modules. I game in 1080p and so far have had no performance issues with the GTX970 with any of the other DCS modules. The Tomcat however brought my system to it's knees in the multiplayer arena. This thread is meant as a warning or to help those with 4GB or lower graphics cards. If you are having issues with this module in multiplayer, the reason is your graphics card. I don't know if Heatblur can further optimize this, but in the meantime until you can afford to upgrade there are a couple of things you can do to at least enjoy this module in single player and in light multiplayer servers. Turn off ALL Antialiasing. Set Water detail to Low. Set clutter to 0, and lower your max preload radius to 80%, and trees to 50% Set all shadows to Flat Only. Both in cockpit and in the world outside. Last but not least, if all else fails, drop your world texture levels. You can of course lower your cokpit textures however to me this is not worth the trade-off in looks. This too can significanlty affect performance but if you follow my advice this might not be necessary to get acceptable framerates in singleplayer at least.

I've had this a couple of times, sometimes I could get in the mission fine (after an agonizingly long time of texture pop in) sometimes I timed out. However today I upgraded to a RTX2060 from the GTX970 4GB and the problem is gone. I believe it's a VRAM issue. I believe that 4GB of VRAM seems to be too low for the Tomcat, at least in multiplayer where there are a lot of other player models.

rikkles, you need to turn cold and burn away immediately. At that point tell Jester to switch the radar range to 20 Nm. Once you are at least 15 nm away from the bandits turn back in hot, and tell Jester to STT lock enemy target ahead. Remember you can only lock one bandit at a time with the AIM7, and you won't have the others on your radar once you do. Fire off the Sparrow at around 8 Nm and crank and maneuver until you get the splash, by that time you will be deep in WVR so use your ACM radar modes, either PLA or VSL HI or VSL LO. Jester won't be much help within 10nm.