Czar

Kill me dead if this ever comes to reality. So, what you're saying is that active users should fork 10x more money forcefully, just because... and you expect them, all of them to stick around? The last thing a customer that has been away a couple months should face would be a need to open their wallet to be able to launch a mostly PvE videogame.

There is a very prominent stepping effect from the engines sound when spooling down during shut down. It is not linear as a jet engine shutting off. Also a rumbling noise like it is an afterburner effect when idle on the ramp with the B variant inside the cockpit, which feels weird, like a space ship is launching at distance. (video bellow) This happened after cycling from the F2 view back into the cockpit. Loud synthetic afterburner noise in DCS options is turned off/unchecked.

With the wording that you've chosen, it gives an impression the sim is in a way that it is currently not true to its form. There is no proper ground crew, only carrier crews. The pilots appearance on EDs modules are barely visible and currently you can't chose them. Heatblurs customization for the Phantom is coming as it actually needs a system. Having said that. I'd welcome the same randomization system on the carrier for the pilots if customization is not available yet. The M-2000C pilot skin tone and facial features varies depending on livery, if I remember correctly. Use its UAE skin, for example.

With several test flights now, I confirm the slow down of frame rate bellow 900ft is due to VRAM usage with the map. Issue remained with the Radar option on the Phantom Special tab. I've tried just the terrain textures to a lower value and no avail, the issue remained with the F-4 module. You, Joe, I think were 100% right. I was just too stubborn with this issue. Thanks. For 12gb cards, the F-4 + SA map saturates the VRAM enough to cause the phenomenon, despite having had VRAM being used at 100% before in DCS with lower end cards and having no such problem. Things changed, I guess. To fix this, it is needed to use the medium textures settings Holbeach mentioned, for 12gb cards or bellow. To use high textures you'll need a 16gb or more graphics card. SA map is VRAM hungry, for sure. Yeah, the Heatblur birds are known for their heavy textures. And that weighs on the VRAM. Put textures to 'medium' (not terrain textures, the other one) and see if improves.

Omg, I never knew my spanish was that good. Understood. Thanks. I have 12gb VRAM on a 3060 locked at 40fps at 1080p. Usually the card hovers at 50% usage. The lock on fps is to remain constant wherever I look and zoom, and it does. Any map, any module. On the SA map, not even zooming into several trees is needed for this bug to appear. You should use FLAT terrain shadows. The default shadow mapped taxes the GPU by a long mile from the FLAT without too much visual benefit, especially above forests. Note that your plane will always cast shadow maps (dynamic shadows) on the ground, if I remember correctly. It was all flat a while ago when your plane shadow would be cut in half if cast on a slopped terrain. It doesn't happen anymore. You can keep SSS (screen space shadows) for the distant views and it will look just as good. Default shadows are very heavy above forests under 200ft. And that I can see is legitimate weight on the GPU as the lower you go, more shadows are drawn and it is a linear progression on the performance. I don't use default shadows on ground objects so this issue is disconnected to that. Changing High textures to Medium on a 12gb VRAM card is no go. It doesn't make sense as other scenarios I've made and played pushes the data much heavier than these tiny scenarios on the SA map. 901ft agl =80 fps... 899ft agl = 30 fps... yeah... not normal. Heaviest scenario I've ever made and played, attached. The issue does NOT occur there. The difference: Other map (Syria). And it is not that light of a map. Eastern Spear.miz

GPU model doesn't matter as the performance is inconsistent bellow 900ft in the same scenarios. This is why the 'optimization' word is not being thrown around. It is a bug somewhere.

You just wrecked me right there. 4 out of 4 flights with Hornet and Viper displayed zero issues on my testing. 3 out of 5 on the F-4 displayed the issue. From the 2 with no issues, one was Holbeach's last mission posted, the other was with the option checked. Thanks for the findings. I'll keep looking when I get more time in the sim.

Likely correct. Is not even optimization, is a programming issue/design issue somewhere, from my observations. If someone have this issue, just check the Radar Performance Mode box under the F-4 special tab and it is all smooth sailing again. Edit: doubtful of its effectiveness with further testings. Something somewhere in conflict to one another between these two. Thank you.

1. The FPS issue I've shown comes from GPU saturation. Not CPU. In only at the South Atlantic map with the Phantom module. 2. The map isn't heavy by any means. Marianas is much heavier and this issue is absent. Is a combination of two modules for some unknown reason (SA + F-4E). You've read it the wrong way. A 4080 will not show this issue due to sheer power. As soon as the sim upgrades, the issue will become more severe with this GPU. It is a 200 to 400% GPU usage increase down to the number at 900ft agl. At 901ft agl there is a massive increase in performance. This is nowhere near linear. Is an issue with the module's radar and the South Atlantic map being triggered at roughtly 900ft agl instantaneously.

Dude.... the fix is on the F-4 special tab. It is only for the F-4. You're downgrading the graphics for nothing for the 900ft agl problem in specific. Hopefully you can upgrade your system soon. Cheers.

Understood. The F-4 is another beast completely in comparison to other modules, even the Tomcat. My setup can handle it at 40fps locked, but as I monitor my system with "Open Hardware Monitor" on a second monitor live, I don't see a lot of difference from other modules. To add: I used to own a i5 10400 when the F-4 launched and it made me upgrade to a i5 12600k to get it going smoothly, CPU wise. I posted here a video showing it too. The issue with the 900ft agl is GPU related as I monitor it live. GPU goes from 60-70% and smooth at 40fps clocked to 100% max clock and dipping bellow 40 towards 20s fps just by crossing that line of altitude. And I had this issue randomly eliminated before by going on the menu and back into the mission after landing, wherever this issue is. By checking the box of "Radar Performance Mode" on its special tab I got it going normal like other modules, but ofc still is the Heatblur F-4. It can be the map causing havok on the F-4 radar tech by some other tech used, it can be a problem on both. I frequently fly low level with it. No other map it displayed this behavior. I'll continue to test, and if I have anything new I'll remember to post it here. This threw me off DCS for a bit as I just bought both of these addons.

It is not a CPU problem. Read my post above yours.

Are they in queue for aerial refueling? I've seen this happen on AAR queues from many different AI aircraft before.

I confirm where the problem is: F-4 Phantom Module's Radar + South Atlantic Map flying bellow 900ft in populated mission condition*. *-not fully confirmed. Permanent fix* for this issue: Tick the box where it says 'CPU: Radar Performance Mode (WIP)' from the F-4 Special tab, even though the issue affects the GPU rendering. *Edit: doubtful of its effectiveness with further testings. Mission file for consistent testing attached. Don't splash the objective as it is a bit buggy because it was re saved from my sim but originally it is a Briefing Room generated mission. Error windows will appear but it won't crash the sim if you splash the objectives. It features the Viper and the F-4 as playable. Hot spawn on ramp. Fly EAST after taking off and cross the body of water while climbing. Descend near the land on the other side towards bellow 900ft agl above ground. With the Radar Performance Mode box unchecked, the F-4 Suffers severe GPU usage spike right bellow 900ft. Climbing above 900ft AGL the issue stops. With the Radar Performance Mode box CHECKED, the issue is gone completely and the plane can be flown on whatever setting you set up your game. Edit: 1- I couldn't reproduce the issue on Holbeach's missions, even though Demonesque could. 2- It seems the F-4 radar rendering is always on (disconnected from the radar logic in the sim), hence why the issue is always present regardless of telling jester to turn the radar off. Fair skies... @Holbeach @demonesque Falklands - Operation Safe Edge.miz

I tested your falklands mission. No issues from the runway here and GPU load is as expected. Different from @demonesque report. I can't use that medium settings. It is a no go for me. I lock the FPS at 40 for the reason of not having any drop ever on any map, besides Sinai and Afghanistan because I don't own those yet. That's including the heaviest of them all, Marianas above its biggest city. Smooth and I can completely disregard on where I look and at any zoom level without worrying about performance on a 64gb Ram system. Is this issue only triggered by the F-4? I had missions with the F-4 that had zero issues and everything was perfect on startup, taxi and takeoff -> Climb to ~25k ft -> bomb/strike and by that point, if I would dip bellow 900ft AGL the slow down/GPU overload would occur. I had an Sa-6 shooting at me on my latest mission last week and I couldn't mask myself behind the small hills on the region because of the massive input lag this problem induced and it would lead into crashing my plane so I couldn't press at all through the Sa-6 defended area to get to the objective. Other missions the problem appeared magically on landing, a place that was free of this issue when I took off from there. Radar ON or OFF, no difference. Mirrors ON or OFF too. I'll jump into the F-15E, F-18 and F-16 and have full missions on those. I'll report back on each. Edit: I'll use your last mission posted as well with those planes. Perhaps is a faster test. Thanks. Update: I flown your last mission with the Hornet and the Viper. From base to mission and back to base. Zero issues.

Thank you, I completely missed it and didn't connect the name, my bad. I will test it.

That's interesting. Is it a free mission? If it is and you have a link with time to post here I'd appreciate. Thanks. Edit: It is on this thread itself. I was blind.

The developer in charge of the map is not Razbam. The developer is detatched from Razbam. Is the same from Kola map.

Saddly the developer seems to be asleep with this issue. Should a new thread be made to get the deserving attention?

It is not settings based. It is a problem with the map. I got the performance back after landing with a combination of ESC key (pause) that I can't reproduce. (time constraints) If it were dependent on modules the performance would never go back and it would >>>always<<< perform badly near the ground. Something happens after climbing that overflows the GPU/graphics tasking when getting bellow 900ft in unknown conditions. I've put the vegetation sliders, either grass and forests to ZERO without success of fixing the issue on the fly. I've flown low level with the F-4, for fun, on an instant action mission and it performed fine down low at that map region (free flight IA mission). Something is off with the map. I've had low end systems with DCS, many different setups. It is not because the map is "heavy". It is a render issue somewhere.

It is likely ED is looking to work with AI generated voice like the ones present in MSFS, in a new system... hence the new callsigns weren't followed by new recordings. Seems effortless is variety and can produce output based on written words instead of a database of recordings. The whole current native radio comms system is highly outdated, in its limited asset variety and responses, not that AI generated is the thing that should replace everything (that is actually nauseating...). I wouldn't be surprised if it where scrapped to put in place something completely different than what we have today. It will take time...

Look for the FOV value on Options -> System Settings while inside the cockpit. Press RALT+Num 0 (number pad) to save the FOV value. Alternatively: <your windows root drive>:\Users\<your windows username>\Saved Games\DCS\Config\View, look for SnapViews Lua file and edit your field of view from there. I'm not sure if VR takes those values into account. Perhaps you have that elsewhere on your VR software or inside DCS options. Forget about the Stereoscopic 3D image infographic. The moon is rendered at a infinite distance and the VR goggles are still two screens and will always be two screens. Changing the FOV value for the overall render would change directly the rendered moon size in relation to the whole screen. The perception of being small might come from the fact your FOV is too wide, not that reducing FOV to get the moon at the 'correct feeling size' would benefit your gameplay. VR goggles are still an approximation to real life vision. You'll have to prioritize the best way to interact with the sim over something else eventually. Good call on Stellarium! Great app to check this out.

'Best result' is subjective. For me the 'best result' is the moon at ~1/2º of diameter in the sky, measurable, and so on for other things yet to be improved. These old games/based on old visual tech have some things wrong based on the tech limitations and media at the time. Lower end monitors...etc. Things based on nature were often disregarded. The FOV setting present in the sim will affect how big the moon is. If FOV needs to be set high for peripheral vision distorting the moon size on the 2D plain of the screen (vr included, it is 2 screens) it is a limitation of the media/display philosophy/display ergonomics and the moon will appear smaller. All sims are a bundle of compromises, no exception. Make your adjustments via config files for your taste if that doesn't break IC for you and it is all good. I'd prefer DCS to remain with real values for these stuff out of the box while I manage my own setup limitations. The best reference in the game, and would be IRL as well, is the HUD. It projects on the infinity its symbology regardless of your FOV/zoom setting. If you were in a real plane IRL, that would be one of your best tools as well.

...remember also, the VR hands are wearing gloves.

Yes. The moon is larger than 1º in BMS (?). Unless FOV distortion is taking part there. The image on the left, the moon is comically too big, sorry. Seems wrong from first sight. The hand test: You need to extend your arm to make a fair measurement and still I wouldn't trust VR hands to do it. The HUD is the best option to make measurements in sim. Your best option is to contact someone from ED dev team and figure it out the values they put it in and why.