bandit648

It's not a matter of the right settings or the best HMD. There are some serious issues with VR that simply can't be overcome with the current generation of hardware. I'm on my third HMD and have tried every setting imaginable each time and still get the same results. Sure I can get a smooth experience just flying around with hardly anything on the map. As soon as you start adding in clouds, AI units, etc. the stutter fest begins. When I can fly normal combat missions with lots of units, weather and the same level of sharpness I can see on my 1440p monitor I'm back in. It's too much money and time to invest in a DCS experience that only allows for casual flying.

GunSlinger, This is almost exactly how I feel. I've had the reverb for about a week and thinking of returning it. I've owned and returned the Samsung Odyssey and O+ before the reverb. I can understand why some people love it but in my opinion you have to sacrifice too much in visual quality to obtain playable framerates to make it enjoyable. I was hoping the reverb was going to be the HMD that changes all of that but sadly it appears I'll be back to waiting for that next gen VR experience. Hopefully its not 4 years but that could be an accurate estimate.

I'm seeing water flickering when using dynamic weather under heavy cloud cover. The issue doesn't occur with static weather clouds. The flicker usually starts a few minutes after starting a flight and is only visible from inside the cockpit. If you flip to external view there is no flickering. I've tested this with a variety of aircraft and they all do it. The issue is present in both open beta and stable release. Is anyone else seeing this? I want to use dynamic weather but I can't stand it with this flickering. I'm running 1440p resolution with G-Sync, no VR. I've tested it with a variety of DCS settings and system config and nothing seems to get rid of it. Reducing water detail level down to medium or low helps but it still flickers where the water is reflecting the sun. Here's a video I made of it... https://youtu.be/Xgye29k3IFU

Wags said the new free map is not Vietnam but that's all we know so far. He said it was his most anticipated map so I'm hoping its something in Pacific or European theaters. I think we have enough desert maps for now. I doubt it's Afghanistan. More desert mountains? Not that exciting. With the PG map officially released I hope we hear something about this new free map soon.

Dynamic weather is great except you will eventually encounter the flickering water bug with it which renders it unusable. Its been mentioned on the forums by myself and many others over the past several months but no response from ED. Shame really since in my testing dynamic weather performs better than static weather.

I noticed it in the F-14 but haven't tested other modules. I figured it was something to do with the F-14. Will test the Hornet and others.

I've been testing this out and so far like the results. Nvidia SS seems to reduce the shimmering and not nearly the fps impact as the in-game SSAA. I'm running MSAA 4x/SS 4x and man it looks NICE. Have you tried the SGSS? If I remember the last time I played with SGSS it murdered the fps.

Little update on this... As a test, I installed DCS Stable branch on my Dell XPS laptop which has a GTX 1050 gpu. I had to put most settings on low to maintain a solid 60 fps but it runs fine at 1080p. I ran the same free floating cloud test and sure enough.. ocasional frametime spike/fps drop while floating above the clouds. I was hoping this was something that could be fixed through a combination of settings and hardware but it looks like this is just a DCS engine issue.

Thanks for the suggestion. My CPU utilization is very low while running the test track. I get a spike to 28% on Core 12 but they generally all stay well below 20%. The frametime spike in this track occurs at 20 seconds after the start every time. It happens in just one second so its very easy to miss. You need to be logging perf data in MSI afterburner to see it. I'm using this track because I found I could easily re-produce the issue with it. If I run the same scenario except just let the camera stay still, there's no frametime spikes. It's as if the frametime spike occurs as DCS is trying to read terrain object data from disk/memory.

So I did some more testing and ran the track with real-time monitoring like you did. See my attached screenshot, it looks exactly like yours. That first little dip after the start of the track is the stutter. If you enable logging and the OSD graph like I described in my previous post it will be easier for you to detect. I'm 98% sure this is a DCS engine issue and not something I can solve. I've done similar tests in Prepar3d V3, AeroFly FS2, X-Plane 11, Battlefield 5 and Ace Combat 7 and none of them stutter with frametime spikes like DCS does.

It looks like you captured screenshots of the real-time graph. When you enable logging the selected graph data is saved to a log file in the configured path. You can then open/view the graph with Afterburner. See my attached screen for that. Also, we only need to select GPU Usage, Memory Usage, RAM usage, Framerate and Frametime. You can select those in the Monitoring tab of MSI Afterburner settings. I also like to select those metrics in the OSD. You can select "text,graph" for the frametime and this will allow you to visually see the spike/stutter when it happens. I've been through everything trying to nail this down. Resource Manager, Performance Monitor, MSI Afterburner... The only thing that happens at the same time is disk read and memory read spike. I haven't tried disconnecting devices so I will give it shot. I'll disconnect everything I can and then re-run the test. I did just update all of my drivers yesterday and no change. BIOS is on latest version also. This stutter is basically a frame drop. It happens in 1 second so if you blink you won't see it. If you're flying a normal mission you have to be focusing on something to detect it.

Thanks so much for helping me with this. A couple of questions. Isn't the dip in framerate I circled a stutter? That looks like shortly after you started the track. Mine normally stutters like that 20 seconds in. Also, it looks like your frametime is 0ms?? That is odd.

I was flying a mission in the Hornet with some AI Tomcat’s involved. I got shot down so decided I’d just ALT-J and jump into one of the surviving Tomcats. The external model starts doing this weird twitchy artifact thing. I tested a few more times and its easy to reproduce. I've had others confirm the same. This appears to be a bug. Just put some AI tomcats on the map, F2 view them, then ALT-J to jump into the cockpit. Then switch to the external view.

The fps takes a big hit with mirrors on. On the flip side.. I can load up the carrier deck with Tomcats and not even dip below 60 fps at all. Add more than a few Hornets and it's a different story.

Don't hit F2 after starting the replay track. The camera will just float over the clouds. Also, can you run it capped at 60 fps? If you setup a logging toggle key on afterburner you can start the log as soon the track starts to eliminate all the spikey stuff from loading. That will clean up the graph. If you don't have any stutter then I might have a memory issue I need to look into more. Thanks

Same.. but no issues. Game loads and runs fine.

Thank you sir!

I've been troubleshooting an issue I have with intermittent stutter for months now. Generally I see a quick split second drop down to 30-40 fps and then back to 60. This can happen on an empty map with no units present. At first I thought it was related to static clouds but I've later discovered that the clouds just make it worse and are not the cause. While running my test track I setup perfmon to monitor my disk and memory activity and I found that the exact same time I get the frametime spike I get disk and memory read spikes as well. Apparently DCS is choking while trying to read terrain information as I move through the virtual world. I was able to prove this with a simple test. I setup my test track that is just floating at 400 knots over the ocean towards the terrain off in the distance. I get frametime spike and stutter at the exact same time, every time. If I run the same mission but without moving and just holding at 0 knots I get no stutter. The game is stuttering when trying to read terrain information ahead from disk and memory. Cycling F11 view makes it better but doesn't completely eliminate the issue. I've tested my memory for 5 hours of memtest86 v8 and no errors. This may just be a DCS engine issue but I'd sure like to know if it's something on my end that can be fixed. Does anyone have any ideas? This is my test track floating towards the terrain @ 400 knots This is the same track standing still over the ocean I've attached the track I've used for testing. If someone who knows how to use MSI Afterburner could run this track and record the results I'd really appreciate it. For me, the track stutters with frametime spikes every time at about 20 seconds in. CA_benchmark_clouds.trk

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The other component we're forgetting here is the issue only persists INSIDE the cockpit.. so it has something to do with cockpit glass AND dynamic weather reflections :doh: :doh:

Use the link on the first post of this thread, it works.

Maybe the dynamic clouds use a different shader fx file. I've been through all of them trying to figure out a way to lower the dynamic cloud level and haven't figured out which one controls dynamic clouds yet. I've had pretty good results messing with the cirrus clouds through the \Bazar\shaders\clouds\cirrus.fx file though.

6. Dynamic clouds get a higher density in stormy conditions vs static clouds in level 8. 7. Static clouds can be set to different base levels, while dynamic clouds cannot.