Oubaas

Thanks for the feedback, Milli. Make sure that in your game profile and under "Global Settings" in your Radeon control panel that you have your antialiasing method set to "Multisampling". Setting it to "Adaptive Multisampling" or "Supersampling" in either place will really kill your frame rate if the game sees it. The DCS engine doesn't seem to like AMD's implementation of those modes. Take a look at my original post, I've updated a few things since I originally posted it. I hope you get things sorted out. If you change things to "Multisampling" and your frame rate suddenly jumps up, you might want to try raising your AA level beyond 4X.

Here's a shot of one of my landings from this afternoon's shipboard ops. I could spend a lot of time fooling around with shipboard helicopter ops. I wish we had a U. S. helicopter appropriate for the cause. And a tin can with a nice flight deck to go with it. I haven't looked at what's landable in the U. S. ships yet, because I don't have an appropriate helicopter. :pilotfly:

I voted yes, and I would buy it. But truthfully, the OV-10D+ Bronco would be more relevant to our operating areas and would also be likely to sell more copies. But I'd buy a Pucara if that was what was offered. I like the airplane.

My pleasure, TRIAS. I'm always happy when I can help out a fellow flight simmer! I'm glad you got things sorted out. Oubaas :thumbup:

I think you better listen to snowsniper. I have both 1.5 and 2.0 installed and they both work so well and look so good it just about brings tears to your eyes if you love airplanes. I don't own the Hawk yet, so I can't comment. But after reading the forums about that particular module I decided to wait awhile before purchasing it. I will eventually buy the Hawk, but not until they get a little further down the road with it.

I love the Gazelle, grabbed it the very first day, literally seconds after it went up on the e-shop webpage. I may have even been the first purchaser. If this, their first release, is an example of what I can expect from Polychop, then I'll be purchasing everything they make for DCS. Well done, Polychop team! She's a beauty! Oubaas :thumbup:

If anyone actually tries this final, updated list of settings for Radeon cards, please let me know how it worked for you. These settings work great on my machine. It took a lot of testing to get it all wrung out. Oubaas :thumbup:

OK, I made one more change to my recommended Radeon settings, that being the use of "Enhance Application Settings" under Anti-aliasing Mode in your card settings. My final advice for Radeon card owners, fully updated, can be accessed in this thread: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=165917 If you give it a try, I think that you'll find your problems solved, with decent image quality and performance. Phew! That took a lot of testing. Oubaas :thumbup:

Strange. They worked for me. Try changing your AA from Supersampling to Adaptive Multisampling in your Radeon settings. EDIT: OK, I just did some more testing. For some reason, my game profile for DCS in my Radeon settings was not being used. Instead the game was going for my Global Settings. Having now played with the mess, I have an answer for you. Make sure that your DCS Radeon profile is being used. Change AA Method to "Multisampling". You might want to do that in your Global settings too, in case your game specific profile is not being used. You can also turn ON the Morphological Filtering. Once you've made these changes within your Radeon card settings, go check your frame rate and your image quality. I think you'll be pleased. Oubaas

I noticed that the quality of my graphics and the performance dropped off at some point during the last few updates. So today I spent six hours testing every setting and combination that I could think of and now my quality is back and my performance is acceptable again. Whatever changed, it makes you have to re-do your settings to get back to where you were. You'll be able to increase some settings but may have to decrease others. It's a different balancing act now and your old settings aren't going to do it. Here's my thread on what I came up with: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=165917 There were strange things that I can't explain. For example, if I don't set textures to "High" I lose FPS. My machine wants the high textures. And even weirder, I actually gained FPS when I increased Clutter/Bushes and Trees Visibility. So don't guess, test. I went setting by setting and tried them at all levels. It was tedious, but now I'm happier than I've ever been with image quality and performance. It's worth spending some time on re-testing. It all shakes out different now. :thumbup:

Bah! They're not really sincere when they say that. Buzz 'em anyway! :D Really nice shot razer1! :thumbup:

The UC-12B is on my list. So I'll see your MC-12 and raise you a C-117D, LOL! :lol:

My pleasure, Justificus! I'm always happy to help out a fellow simmer. :thumbup:

Nothing that anyone will ever request as a module in DCS, LOL! It was somewhat less than exciting. :D

Thanks, Silver Dragon! I think I'll try the new experimental stuff and go with the 1.5 Early Access. :thumbup:

Well, it's kind of like a car with a short wheelbase. It just feels a bit snappier when you throw it around. I like the way it flies when I want to try to overstress the airframe. :thumbup:

On the DCS home page under "Downloads" there are three options. DCS 2.0 Early Access (I already have it) DCS 1.5 DCS 1.5 Early Access I'm asuming that DCS 1.5 is the latest stable version and that DCS 1.5 Early Access is sort of the beta version, with newer tweaks and stuff they're trying. Is that correct? I want the latest and greatest, even if it might have some bugs, so I think I want the DCS 1.5 Early Access, is that right? I'm downloading one or the other tonight so that I can go with the ED version and get rid of Steam. I've been much happier with DCSW 2.0 Early Access, and I figure I'll be happier with the non-Steam 1.5 for much the same reasons.

I'm betting that we fly differently and have a different understanding of the term, "sports car". For flathatting and aerobatics, the L-39 is my favorite module. I find it HIGHLY maneuverable despite the fact that it is not the fastest plane in DCS. It's fast enough for aerobatics. I'm retired from real life military aviation and that's just my opinion, based on my point of view formed over all these years. There's a certain way I like to fly for fun and the L-39 does it well for me.

After looking around and not finding much specific on settings for my machine, I just spent six (6) hours going through the graphics options for DCS one at a time, trying every setting, trying combinations, until I squeezed out the the last drop of frame rate that I could get while still maintaining acceptable quality. So I thought I'd share what I found to keep you from having to mess around for six (6) hours. I learned some weird things. For example, if I do not set textures to "High" I lose FPS. Strange but true. But even stranger, my machine loves clutter, bushes, and trees. I can't explain it. That's just what happened. I used the L-39C, same flight every time for consistency. Here's my machine's specs: AMD Phenom II X6 1090T 3.2 GHz ASUS R9280X DC2 TOP @ 1070 MHz GPU, 6400 MHz Memory Clock 16 GB of Corsair DDR3 RAM 1 TB Western Digital 7400 RPM Hard Drive Sound Blaster XFi Xtreme TrackIR 5 And so on and so forth. Now here's the results of six (6) hours of testing. FINAL UPDATED SETTINGS (See explanatory notes below) DCS Options Textures: High Terrain Textures: High Civilian Traffic: Low* (I don't like traffic, thus Low. Works on High.) Water: High Visual Range: Medium Heat Blur: High Shadows: Flat Only Resolution: 1920x1080 Res. of CP Displays: 1024 MSAA: 16xQ HDR: On Depth of Field: Off (I don't like DoF, you may want it.) Lens Effects: Off (I don't like lens effects, you may want them.) Clutter/Grass: 1500 (Max) Trees Visibility: 25000(Max) Preload Radius: 150000 (Max) Anisotropic Filtering: 16x Flat Terrain Shadows: On All right, so there's the in-game system settings. Now on to the AMD Radeon settings. Anti-aliasing Mode: Enhance Application Settings Anti-aliasing Method: Multisampling Morphological Filtering: On Anisotropic Filtering Mode: Use Application Settings Texture Filtering Quality: High Surface Format Optimization: On Wait for Vertical Refresh: Off, unless application specifies OpenGL Triple Buffering: Off Shader Cache: AMD Optimized Tessellation Mode: AMD Optimized Frame Rate Target Control: Disabled These settings give me around 60 FPS consistently in DCSW 2.0 and around 40 FPS consistently in DCSW 1.5 in cockpit view with TrackIR 5, with the best image quality I have had thus far since the whole thing began with Lock On. Actually, I flew Flanker 2.0 before that even. I figure the lower FPS in DCSW 1.5 is due to all that water. If you don't mind lesser water quality, you could set it to Medium in DCSW 1.5. As for me, I like pretty water. Shadows are the big frame rate killer for the Radeon. That's all right with me, because I don't like flickering shadows in the cockpit. My image quality is great with the above settings. It looks very good. I had noticed that my AA was jagged lately and overall image quality wasn't good. These settings fixed all that. Before you balk at turning down shadows, try it. Low and Medium shadows don't look too good and do a lot of flickering. You have to set them to at least High for them to look good. If my machine could handle it, I'd blast them up to Ultra. But until I get a new box, this suits me fine. It gives the cockpit a nice clean look with no flickering, and everything else looks very good as well. Well, I hope this helps somebody. I would have liked to have found this info instead of spending six (6) hours experimenting. I'm surprised my head didn't explode. I don't like drudge work, but it had to be done. So I had to share my results. I hope you find the information useful. EDIT: OK, I just did some more testing. For some reason, my game profile for DCS in my Radeon settings was not being used. Instead the game was going for my Global Settings. Having now played with the mess, I have an answer for those who are still suffering low frame rates. Change AA Method to "Multisampling" in your card's game profile for DCS. You might want to do that in your Global settings too, in case your game specific profile is not being used. You can also turn ON the Morphological Filtering. Once you've made these changes within your Radeon card settings, go check your frame rate and your image quality. I think you'll be pleased. Edit 2: One last thing. After fooling around some more, I recommend that you set Anti-aliasing Mode to "Enhance Application Settings". It does seem to add a little refinement to image quality, or maybe it's just my imagination. But you seem to pick up a few FPS that way as well. The big problem with Radeon cards seems to be that DCS hates the AMD implementation of both "Adaptive Multisampling" and "Supersampling". Those two settings are instant frame rate killers. But if you use simply "Multisampling", you can turn pretty much everything else up to full blast and end up with decent frame rates and excellent image quality. BTW, it seems that things have changed as we've progressed along and received updates. My old settings no longer returned the image quality or performance that they once provided. So if you haven't changed your settings in a while and you've noticed that your image quality and performance have dropped, you need to re-do your settings. You might want to give the settings above a try. I've edited the entries above and they now represent my final advice for Radeon card owners. Give them a try, I think you'll like them. Oubaas :pilotfly:

I'm cruising at just a tick under 200 KMH at around 94% collective. I'm pretty happy with that.

Layers are usually part of a .psd template. That's very convenient when available, but they're not always available. The files in the liveries folder are going to be .dds files - no layers. You need a program that can open .dds files. Here's a free one that works great: http://www.mwgfx.co.uk/programs/dxtbmp.htm In preferences for that little program you need to designate an editor. I chose Paint Shop Pro 8.1 but you can choose any paint program. Photoshop Elements is cheap and good. I'm still using PSP 8.1 because I'm old and set in my ways. Once you've done that, you can open the .dds file in DXTbmp. Up on the menu, choose, "Send Image to Editor". It will then open in your paint program. Make your changes then save. You can close the editor. Back in DXTbmp, up on the menu bar click, "Reload Image After Edit". You'll see your changes. Then just save the file. You can also work with alpha channels and save dds files in other formats, such as 24-bit bitmap. It let's you pretty much manipulate everything and best of all, it's free. Give it a shot. But one caveat - make a copy of the file you intend to modify and use that for your changes. That way you don't screw up your default files. As for how I got rid of the roundels and such, I just sampled nearby color, then hit them with the fill bucket. Then I added some noise and blended and softened until you couldn't tell they were ever there. If you can use the eyedropper and choose various brushes, and maybe set opacities in your paint program, with a little effort you can make things vanish and blend your change into the surrounding area so the change isn't even detectable. If you do it right, it won't look like you painted over the details that you removed with a spray can. If you don't have a sophisticated paint program, Gimp is good and it's free. https://www.gimp.org/downloads/ :thumbup:

Yep, me too. You can temporarily tame the violent cockpit shake issue by turning down cockpit shake to 0 in options. It seems to be broken. The other issues I'm having are no external sound and unable to dismiss control indicator with RCTRL + Enter.

Let's face it, towers need to be buzzed, that's why they put them there. So let's see those tower-buzzing screenshots. And don't tell me you've never buzzed the tower. The Skipper might pretend that he believes that line, but I know better. :D

I think that the question which we all need to answer, being virtual chopper jocks, is, "Do I have what it takes to land on top of a moving truck?" Only you can answer this one. I think you know what to do, cowboy. :D

I'd like to see the Caucasus terrain extended deep into Russia. I spend a lot of time just flying, outside of combat, and I always set my free flight missions up to operate from the Russian side of the mountains. But there's only a few bases on that side. Take it on over to the Bering Strait, up into the arctic, and south to the border. The more Russia that I have to fly around, the better. I want to fly the L-39 over to Siberia to fish for taimen. As for the Nevada map, stretch it on over to include Lemoore and up to include Fallon. That way, when the the F/A-18C comes out, we can do the milk run between Lemoore and Fallon. And then you could stretch it over to the coast and put a carrier out there so we can bounce on the boat. After that, how about a Southern Africa map? We've got some older Mirages coming and we already have the MiG-21. Time for the Border War. :pilotfly: