Aluminum Donkey

If you want to keep it legit, consider that Windows 10 is about $150-$180 or so, and you'd get much more out of putting that money toward a good video card than another version of Windows. Games perform pretty much identically in Win10 as they do in Win7. I haven't noticed anything running much better in Win10. If you already own Win7 and are using a GTX 970, I'd stick with Win7--there are much better things to blow your money on :) AD

You really should put all of your system specs in your signature, so that way it's easy for people to answer these questions :D The newest version of DCS 2.5 uses much less memory, both system RAM and video card RAM. So, if you *really* wanna beef up your rig, get a killa video card like a GTX 1080 Ti which has 11GB of video memory, and stick with 16GB system RAM. With the 11GB vid card, I'd suspect that DCS will run just fine on only 8GB system RAM. AD

Welcome aboard soldier! Prepare to burn away years of your life on this stuff :D Since you're just starting out with DCS, you can consider yourself VERY fortunate, because this sim has been available for a very long time now, but just recently got a LOT better. The developer (Eagle Dynamics) recently made major improvements to the sim's core engine, and it now runs a lot better than it ever has. As for your braking chute problems in the Su-25T, try deploying the chute at a lower speed. Too fast means too much force on the chute, and too much force means... bye bye chute :) Peace and happy warfare AD

The first thing that comes to mind that really made the sim a lot better is the much improved performance with the latest couple of updates. That last one brought buildings back to the NTTR map, and now I consistently get about 20-30% better framerates even with graphics settings turned up high. There's also a LOT less stuttering. Finally! The new Caucasus map is nice too, although it seems to me that the Vegas area of NTTR is the most impressive :) The latest iteration of 2.5 also uses a lot less video RAM, as well as less system RAM. It runs well on my relatively modest PC :) So, I'd have to say the best thing about 2.5 is the core sim engine has been greatly improved. Now ED can polish the sim's content some more :) AD

Just started noticing this today. It seems to happen at high altitudes. Not a big deal, but it's certainly there. AD

I think the KOM rockets have dual-stage warheads, i.e. each rocket makes one boom to drill the hole, then a second boom to make whatever you're booming go... Boom. That's probably it. AD

Loaded_Dice, are you kidding me? The 6th, 7th and 8th gen Intel stuff kicks @ss. If you're building a new PC for gaming, forget the expensive stuff and get yourself a decently priced Z370 mobo, an Intel i3-8350k CPU, and 16GB of DDR4 (16GB is plenty, btw.) Use your existing video card for now, and try to get a decent deal on a used GTX 1070 or maybe 1080 sometime in the future. That'll run DCS at excellent framerates but won't break the bank. The i3-8350K is quite cheap, but defaults to 4.0 GHz, has 8MB of L3 cache, and runs 4 threads on 4 cores--which means it's awesome for DCS--and you probably won't even have to overclock it! But, the option is there. It requires a Z370 motherboard. And as we all know, if a PC can run DCS World, it'll easily chew through anything else you can throw at it :) AD

Since you already have the Su-27, you already own the major reason I bought FC3. :) The other one is the F-15C, which is an awesome fighter, and the FC3 version has a very convincing flight model, just like the Su-27. There's also the Su-33, which is carrier-capable and is also very well-done (although, being more of a thoroughbred, the Su-27 has better flight performance.) I don't use the A-10A or Su-25A very much. As for the MiG-29, it still has a generic flight model (SFM) and flies like a.. well, a plane in a video game. ;) If that's why you want FC3, then I'd wait it out until ED develops and releases a PFM for it. It looks really cool, it has a superb external 3D model and a pretty nice cockpit, but the outdated flight model makes it feel cheap and 'gamey' :). I'm sure it'll be great when there's a PFM for the MiG-29, until then, I don't fly it much just for that reason. What I'd do if I were you is just wait for the F-15C and/or Su-33 to go on sale really cheap, and buy those two. It'll cost very little bread compared to buying FC3 at full price :) AD

Greetings Mustang, I've just gotten the newest update and haven't noticed this problem yet... My contrails seem fine except that they still flicker on and off sometimes. As I mentioned, I've always run into that in DCS. That being said, the sim now runs much, much better than it ever did! And we even have the buildings and vehicles back in Nevada :) Try checking to make sure that you have the latest video card driver, sometimes that causes some seriously weird stuff to happen. AD

I've had weird stuff happen with contrails and smoke, but it's usually flickering on/off and not the blue "chunks" you're getting here. I'm downloading today's patch, hopefully we get the buildings back :) I'll hafta check to see if contrails are screwy as well. In my case, weird smoke/contrail effects are sometimes fixed by going back to an older version of the video card driver. AD

Instead of asking someone else on the Internet, why not just try it and see? You already have it installed on your computer. AD

Cool, I just flew a mission in the new Caucasus map and it seems to be working well. I assume the other two maps will be sorted out soon :) AD

Greetings everyone, Just downloaded the huge 11GB update, now when I fly in Normandy, the buildings are all black and the general color of the map just seems 'off'. Nevada seems to have no buildings at all! I haven't tried the Caucasus map yet, but I will in a bit... Turning off Deferred Shading has no effect, neither does deleting my Metashaders so the sim can recompile them. At first I was really impressed with the great framerates in Nevada until I realized what was going on :) Any cure for this besides deactivating and re-installing the entire sim from scratch? It's a 100 GB download, which takes a while at... you know, 0.2-0.5 MB/sec ;p Just for the record, I updated to the latest Nvidia driver (391.01). Thanks, AD

Here's my favourite quick mission profile: 1) Take off 2) Fly somewhere 3) Blow $#!* up! AD

It's DCS World. Changing your brand of toilet paper will trigger the DRM :) AD

Everyone gets stutters. It doesn't matter what NASA-certified gaming hardware you have or your settings in DCS. Mortgaging a kidney to buy uber-spec diamond-studded PC gear won't cure it. It's either a problem with DCS World, or a problem with Windows, or a problem with drivers. Best of luck sorting it out--I've tried for ages and it ain't happening. Our best bet is to wait for ED to iron it out for us one of these years, if they can, or if they can be bothered. It seems to happen more when there's other units flying, and happens much less (or not at all) on 'sightseeing' flights. Probably an asset-loading issue, or an oversight in how frames prepared by the CPU are delivered to the video card, or a texture-swapping hitch, or a problem with loading shaders, or just a plain ol' garden-variety screwup. I'm not a coder, but I lean toward the latter :) AD

I use a TM Cougar, so I assign the little pinky button to stick limiter override. That way I just tighten my grip a bit and can pull more Gs. If you don't have one on your stick I can imagine it's a bit of a PIA, but for now there isn't really a practical way of implementing it. Ideally, the flight stick would have a second spring on the pitch axis, and pulling it back past a certain point would cause the stick force to increase, and activate a button you'd map to the deflection override. It would require a custom built setup though, and only for the Flanker. You'd have to remove/disable the spring for any other modules. The stiffening point would probably also move depending on airspeed, so that would make things a lot more complex if you wanted a true-to-life representation, and could probably only be done reasonably well with a good force feedback setup. Apparently, most force feedback sticks are pretty awful :) AD

Hmmm... with a system that mediocre, why bother trying to run DCS at all. Or, quit bragging on the forums like a 12 year old and play the bloody sim. Figure out your own damn settings :) AD

The MiG-15 is the bomb man, one of my favourite modules, always a challenge to make good use of in a DF, but actually outperforms the F-86. Glad you get a kick out of it :) Peace and happy warfare AD

Greetings feli99, Your best bet is to just fire up the sim, load a mission with the aircraft you want to fly and go into "Adjust Controls". Set up the buttons and axes on your stick/throttle the way you like. Don't bother doing it in VR unless you're a glutton for punishment. Get everything set up nicely, and then use your VR headset. It only takes 3 minutes, 5 mins. at most and really is the very best way to get everything set up the way you like. Peace and happy warfare AD

Warhawk, if it makes you feel better, I have a blazing fast M.2 SSD, and DCS *still* stutters like crazy. Even when I turn down all the graphics settings and hardly use any of my video memory or system RAM. The only time I got DCS to run stutter-free was when I did a fresh install of Windows. shortly after, it started stuttering again. I'll be danged if I ever figure out if it's a problem with DCS, or a problem with Windows. I'm inclined to think they're both a little boogered, what with today's PCs being so fast, that sloppily-written software is the norm (not that I'm a coder myself, mind you). That said, I love DCS World's content, and without knowing for sure if it's a problem with DCS or with Windows, I'm not really in a position to judge. But, I've spent ages trying to iron it all out. I wish someone would get off the pot and fix it, instead of mussing and fussing over what paint jobs the planes have or what the stupid clouds look like. AD

If you're hard pressed for money, just find a cheap USB game controller with enough axes and buttons, and use that as your control board. A gamepad or something like it with dual analog sticks will have 4 axes, and a bunch of buttons. AD

That's interesting, but I'm still rather intrigued that ultra-slow cache and memory have little to no impact on load times and game performance... Sort of makes me wonder what the point of all that stuff is for everyday PC use, since it certainly isn't going to affect internet use or playing videos :) Most of all, I'm surprised at how slow the memory can be without affecting the sim much. I'm still surprised at how much stuttering there is, consider that DCS 2.5 seems to be very easy on CPUs now, and framerates are still good when the vid card is loaded at 100%. I wonder how long it'll take to sort all that out--if it ever happens at all. AD

Before blowing any bread, first thing to do is determine if it's a graphics card problem or a problem with your motherboard. Try another card if you have one kicking around, or try you 780 in another, working computer. You'll be right bloody miffed if you buy an expensive card and your mobo is the culprit :) And yes, they want a lot of cash for new graphics cards, it's what the market will bear. AD

Greetings everyone, here's a nifty little test I did for my own casual amusement. My PC specs are below. Newer CPUs have separate multipliers for Core and Cache, with the cache multiplier controlling the L3 cache (I believe). I'm pretty sure the Core multiplier controls the speed of the L1 and L2 caches, and of course, the CPU cores themselves. So, I downclocked my cache to the minimum allowed, which is 8x, for a cache speed of 800 MHz--dreadfully slow by any standards, not just today's. I also downclocked my DDR4 memory to 400 MHz per channel, running my memory at 800 MHz instead of the normal 3000. I monitored them while the machine was running to make sure they were both running at the very low speed I had set them to. It made almost no perceptible difference in the PC's boot time, the loading time for DCS, the mission loading time, or the game's performance. Framerates were slightly lower above Normandy, but raising the RAM speed took care of that, even with the cache multiplier at 8x. The whole point of CPU cache is to be very, very fast, but it seems to make no difference in gaming :) Same with uber-fast system memory. DCS World's performance seems to be entirely dependent on CPU core speed, and the type of video card you have. So, when buying RAM, you can just get the cheapest stuff, and get more :) Also, very low cache and RAM speeds had no effect on stuttering, which I always have (and neither does setting very low graphics options.) AD