Boosterdog

Got most of that all though you went a bit "Brian Cox" in places for my tiny brain Id say back that the TIR captures a point in time every 8.3ms on a 3D grid which it passes to the game. I dont think TIR suffers from having to think about rendering scenes. It just crunches the positional data and makes it someone elses problem. Getting the image in game to roughly match that works well enough for our brains if the image can be redered in time or in a time that is a specific harmonizastion of the time ( half rate. This is good enough for our brains to be fooled at the rate of display (60 or 120 hz). It would be harder to fool at lower rates. Sync is the wrong term I guess. Small ballpark is perhaps a better one. As long as its there or threabouts its sufficient to allow the motion to be perceived as being smooth. Every game has different demands but by enabling a frametime limiter such as vsync you do actually affect all games equally dont you? Anyhow - when do we get onto religion, football and politics??

All i ever found was the average run of the mill mouse USB polling rate is 125hz. Seems that can be set higher on gaming mice which would indicate that windows isnt too fussy until 1000hz then it goes batshit crazy. All topics point to shooters and reducing lag. I took this as being a way to get the view to a point in a twitch game without lag. Refresh rate still matters but in competative shooters most will forsake everything for fps and reduced lag.

You quoted a topic. The product page supports nothing. My experence differs from yours (thats not to say I think you are wrong mearly that our experience is not the same). Disabling hotplugging, checking all usb related functions, usb hub, powered usb hub, USB 3 or 2 direct make no difference for me. I think ive tried them all over the past 15 years, often more tha once!:-) This is my understanding based on a non gsync monitor. My own expereince of trying out many things leads me back to it every time. TIR polls at 120 fps and has an update rate of around 9ms. As such it points your camera to somewhere about 120 times a second. Since the camera is acting independently of the monitor or your setings in game, to be smooth that needs to coincide with a fully rendered frame at roughly the same location it is pointing the camera at during that refresh cycle. A lower "harmonic" of the 120 (60) is acceptable but anything much other is problematic. If the frame cannot be rendered fully in harmony with the latest polled TIR position, it will result in a noticable stutter which may be more or less noticable dependent upon the subsequent ability of the gpu to render the following frames/s and, most importantly the range of head movement accross those frames itself (ie it will be fine if looking at a fixed point but not if looking left to right) Since you cannot alter what the TIR camera is doing and that its doing it independently of anything, one needs to adjust the external perameters to best match it. In this case doing all you can to ensure an even frame rate that is matched to the polling rate or a harmonic thereof for the camera. At 60hz this is what I have personally found vsync does best provided I can maintain 60 fps minmum. Without vsync, and given my fps would vary in the main between 70-90 fps, the resultant images would not only be unevenly paced but would no longer match the positional updates from the TIR camera inducing the jitters. I would be delighted to be proven wrong and pursuaded otherwise as TIR is a bugbear of mine.

Thats the main product page. link to the referenced thread?

Link?

@Flappie You are right . Its a "edge" case. I cannot reporoduce the issue on map objects or the other static objects that I have placed. Something has certainly changed btween the versions in some respects but, as you say, its not global. I do not know why it should only affect an individual item. The TV tower shadows seem to behave in all sorts of odd ways in 2.7.8. I placed it on a slight incline with the sun casting its shdow on a downward gradient and the were no other shdows in the true side but blocky ones on the sun side! Anyhow - its not the catch I though it may hav been. Apologies to everyone for the false hope.

I can have a look but I can tell you the issue isnt there in 2.7.6.

I will admit that Im very much leaning to just buying the thing. Even if I can only sit in the cockpit going "Kerpow, dakka dakka dakka" for a while.

@Flappie - you may also want to test that and add to the report that Terrain Shadows OFF does not, in fact, turn the shadows off anymore but to the FLAT setting. Below is an image from the same miz as above in 2.7.8. The Terrain Shadows have been set to "off", FXO and Meta 2 deleted and machine rebooted. dcs.log

Yup - its a thing but probably not "the" thing. EDIT - STANDBY ONE....... (see post two below this- shadows "off" is the new "flat")

Thanks Flappie. I dont think it will personally as the fps doesnt return with shadows off or flat, but I guess it could change something deeper I suppose. To add, I did the same test using the other shadow options in combination. I appears that the higher the option selected for shadows, the less obvious the effect but I put this down to the split distances of the cascades. I presume the processing of the cascades is a constant however (that is to say the lower res cascades remain a "thing" even when the higher res takes over on screen) so perhaps there is some hit. Time will tell.

Imnot seeing this - can you explain more please? What I have seen is that default terrain shadows also render the flat shadow. Ive reported that here

Two high res cockpits rendered at the same time, potentially doubling up of FLIR "live action" screens on the MFD, higher detailed ground textures and objects, rotor blade animations. Going slower doesnt help the PC in a helo. The new Helos are a bigger hog than aircraft. I am sure ED know this though so I fully expect some ying for the yang - just perhaps not at the same time. I dont think you would launch something that couldnt be played on anything but an uber rig but then again The Channel Map and Syria exists so perhaps not. The Apache is being offered at a good discount which recently got better with more air miles. You may or may not wish to widly speculate why ED felt the need to do this but I think the Apache is an important launch for them which gives me some hope. Regardless of the reasons, a good discount is a good discount and may not be matched in a sale, post release, for some time. It could be a good half price banker for later enjoyment or it could always exceed in its demands. Until we see it in game and in a game with the new utilisation of Multicore and Vulkan, its a gamble thats going to be bigger for some than others dependent on their exchange rates and personal circumstances. Im still on the fence. I will however speculate that this topic may get moved to the 2.7 bugs section like my similar post did

When selecting Default, the game renders both the default terrain following shadow and the "flat" option shadow at the same time. test.miz DxDiag.txt dcs Log.log Shadow Fault 2.7.8

Triple buffering is not supported in Direct X reliant games on nvidia drivers. It’s an open gl option.

@Ram69 I dont think you are but Im not sure you are under the impression that somehow vsync is limiting you in a way that it isnt. Although its fixing the output a 60 fps doesnt mean that this is all your rig can produce and that increased demands will eat away from this. In heavier scenes, your rig will just work harder to ensure that 60 fps is maintained. It doesnt need to have the headroom "up front". With vsync off the FPS counter may be showing 100 fps but you are not seeing 100 fps. All its doing is reading what the average per second output of the game engine is. Your screen is still only displaying 60 frames every second and those frames are no longer evenly paced. TIR camera works using 60 or 120 Hz. Its very strict about this. Without the system acheiving one or the other TIR will not appear smooth. Frame capping does not ensure even frame pacing and its the frame pacing that is important especially at the lower outputs of 60hz. If you could acheive 120fps at all times and had a 120 hz monitor Id venture that you could possibly live without vsync and use a cap. Ive never had the luxury to see. Vsync in basic form instructs the game engine to throw only 60 even paced frames out per second. The idea behind adaptive vsync you know and yes its crap. Fast sync allows the engine to produce all the frames it can but the front buffer still only shoves out 60 frames to the monitor The idea is to reduce lag whilst preventing tearing by utilising 2 "flip flop" buffers that will always push the most recently completed frame to the front buffer which is not dissimilar in concept to the old triple buffer which Nvidia abandoned for D3D games with the 600 cards. Provided you have enough frames the result should be smooth. The less you are able to produce double the frames required the more the motion can appear jittery and may still fault TIR. Again, personally I avoid it as I cant guarantee a constant 120 fps needed to enure those flip flps are always fully rendered within the 60hz read/draw cycle. Either way, if you are bound to using a monitor without gsync/freesync, the only way to guarantee fluid TIR is to run at a consistent and even paced 60 or 120 fps. And that best acheived, certainly at 60hz, by using vsync. If you are thinking of using Fast sync, the worst place you can be is to be producing between 60-90 fps in the main. It has been ever so.

Thanks Art. Its certainly something Ill take a good long look at when Im back up and running after Christmas. If it can miminise the drop over and above the in game vsync then thats a good start. For all its suck MSAA in DCS is very good at reducing the shimmer. Ive tried several alternatives but always return to it. THere are a couple of NCP options that would also give me an odd frame such as the Gamma Correction and the Ansiotropic Filtering but I hate shimmers as much as stutter!! Ultimately, I think i will have to find some lower compromise as Im not going to pay out for anymore hardware until I see where DCS is heading with how MC/Vulkan is implemented and whatever core changes occur in the interim. I did also say no more modules but the Apache at pretty much half price right now is tempeting even if its a banker for a while.

This is something I’ve considered. Especially given the current state of the market where I could basically buy it Monday and sell it for the same on Tuesday with an almost cast iron guarantee it will meet the price asked. it would be more of a temptation had I not been one who lost a lot of performance in the last two OB patches. Taking a ballpark that the ti would provide between 8 and 10 extra FPS that still only puts me slightly over what I would need in the hind at this time with no guarantee a further patch won’t take it away again. Assuming that the addition of MFDs in the Apache will impact as it does currently, I’d still be firmly back in the bad zone with them activated. Now I know it’s not all about raw FPS. There’s the extra 3gb of gddr5x vram which would come in useful. The reduction of lows is probably also more important that the increase of the highs Certainly something to consider. I have to disassemble my flight gear and store it for the next month due to having relatives staying. Hopefully we will see a couple more patches in OB and perhaps some more news about the core in this time. Either/or may inform on a direction to go. Thank you for your suggestion and experiences.

I would but the missus prefers drowning warm to alive cold (and we're close to a Tesco......apparently)

As someone who lives on flood plain Im kinda invested in the continuation of winters

The city was an issue with my old I5 6600K but less so with the 5600X. Removing/reducing certainly helps. Both my drives are PCie 4.0 and are installed on an X570 board than supports the gen 4 transfer on both sockets. Samsung Pro and a WD Black both with good aftermarket heatsinks to keep everything cool. RAM is best I could buy and probably too much for my use (Samsung B dye dual ranked ya de ya). I think that end of the rig is as good as I could get it for the money and not too shabby for 2D. Certainly meets the expected marks in the stress tests. The aircrat are usually fine. Even the F14 is fine within in its role. Its the helos, you are often a lot closer and lower, upping the demand with additional graphics (blades) to add. Up to 2.7.6 I could run a full carrier deck with the F14 or F18 with deck equipment mods and lots of static deck crew (so about 150 items plus about 10 tasked AI units going about their lauches and landings) but 2.7.7 and new water stopped that dead. The view distance is a good call for the hover to bovver boys (KA50 and Apache). So I will give that a look. For the Mi8 (my favourite) its nicer to have the distance but its not generally a problem with that module. Another thing I tried isaltering some of the shadow mapping. Reducing the map down to 2048 from 4096 helps a lot but it is strictly a very low level preference. Last venture I had was with the Harrier but realistically, if you are much above 250M you would notice. I may revisit that with the Shark to judge how id be seeing stuff Apache like. Cloud settings make perhaps a 2 fps per level on ground level. Its simple to switch using a mod manager. Cloud settings make perhaps a 2 fps per level on ground level. Prior to 2.7 having the old full overcast was a great way of getting away with flat static shadows. I think you are correct in saying the rig simply doesnt cut it in some scenarios. Thats the fear really. To cut it takes £1000-£1500 and even then there is no guarantee as there a few unknowns about the next 12 month and DCS. The Apache is about half the price it will be at present and it is tempting even if my head say it wont play well for me. Had I not been impacted by a large loss going from 2.7.6 to 2.7.7 I would have probably already bought it. Ive tried every Vsync combination I can I think. In the end I came back to the game's Vsync. Fast sync has never worked well for me and causes uneven frame pacing as my GPU places me right in the zone where it has least benefit (70-85 fps) and struggles to fully populate its buffers consistently. I will go have another look however as I cant recall using the NCP force option on my new rig. Thanks.

Forgive me for only quoting one bit of the post and thank you for replying. That bit quoted however does probably best illustrate where our demands and expecations differ. Track IR needs a 60/120 hz refresh rate. Any more or less induces less than smooth movement. In addition without vsync, which I take you do not use, I really notice uneven frame pacing with it compounded by Track IR. The trigger hits are something I notice more in graphically demanding missions. The 85 fps is arbriatry and based upon the hinds PG disaster relief mission which I took apart in the ME. To avoid any huccup when the inital motors trigger (Mortar 121 message) thats the amount of available fps I need - any less hits the vsync and causes a momentary drop to 30 fps, which is the hiccup. That the unseen subsequent impacts further on performance is another matter. Pagefile fixing has not been something Ive bought into. I have 32GB of RAM, its not fully utilized (unless I got the syria) and when I have run comparisons using various page file sizes, I have seen no difference. Same with symbollic links outside of the game's root folder in SP (although I think in MP there are benefits). Not sure I even know how to limit resources so Im quite sure I havent. Certainly everything seems to breathing as it should when monitored. As for other apps, yup Ive pretty much everything I dare - certainly nothing obvious pops up in monitoring. Im sure you could use my rig and say "dude - whats the issue" - Im also sure I could use yours and not enjoy the expereince. Happens a lot when gaming on friends PCs. One is not better than the other - just different needs of the player. Sadly I came from a position years ago of having an uber rig for the time and got too used to always having the BHP to run what I wanted. Agan my expectations may be too demanding but they are where I consider the mimum enjoyable configuartion bar is set for me. For the reasons stated above I do sadly. Graphical integrity is the key to immersion for me as well and I have a bar that falling below would make the game unenjoyable. Ive tried VR. Its ok. But there are too many compromises to make it good let alone great for me. Again, different players, different expectations and no disrespect to anyone who feels different. For a confident purchase, I would need to make up 15-20 fps with the current MFD tech and possibly more given FLIR is being redone and I have no scope to do that and remain "in the game". And thats down to me and me doggedly hanging on to settings I should know I cant have (although why I lost a critical 16 fps in the last 2 patches for seemingly no reason remains a mystery). I know its down to me. Hence the original request for possible ME tips and tricks that may make missions smoother. Thank you for all the replies.

The 8500 miles would seem to indicate an ultimate release price of $85 despite the 79.99 currently advertised. Still very fair for a complex module and quite an incentive to do the pre-order thing with an rough 50% total package discount if you take into account the air miles.

So, Textures medium or high (Mi 8 High, all others Medium), Ground Textures High (All maps DO have a noticable degredation on low I dont care want anyone says), Water Medium (low if only inland, Civvy Traffic Off, Heat haze Low, View Distance Medium ((2.7 - used to be Ultra before 2.2.7) Shadows Medium, 1080P resolution, 2X MSAA, All the later stuff like SSAO off, Clouds Standard, Forests 85%, Clutter 1000, Tree and Scenery factors 0.9, Chimney smoke 1, No rain (its too buggy anyhow), Terrain Shadow default, Vsync on, Full screen on, Cockit global (love to have it on but its off again under 2.7). So there is obvious low hanging fruit for some - default terrain shadows perhaps? - but a low speed at low level (helo) that looks awful. This is my personal mininum. Any lower and I may as well try to go back to LOMAC. Vsync is another - Im very sensitive to stutter - I will end missions if it happens a lot. I have firends who dont even see it they;ve be playing with sub par performance for so long. I do. And vsync (bog standard) is an essential for me to keep the frame pacing exactly where it should be on my low tech monitor. Im also TIR bound with its fixed 60/120hz demands. If I take a harrier (it hovers) with these setting its fine - I have to hammer the ME with AI and IDAS to ruin my day. But in a Helo, its a different matter. Performance wise at ground in the Caucauses in a hind that'll give me 76fps (vsync off to measure). At around 400M Ill be getting 85-95. Which would seem comfortable. However - 85fps is something of a minumum to avoid stutters causes be triggered actions alone. And this gets taken way by MFDs, AI, destruction areas, effects, 32bit maps where 8 bits would suffice, which all then conspire drive the fps down. So, in action I end up with 65-70 fps, without the MFDs which, from expereince will hack of another 10-20 fps if they were present. And we have the rotor graphics and shadows ever present. There a 5=7 fps difference there twix them static and turning. This has been the case over 3 full PC builds, Intel and AMD. Win 10 fresh installs and with optimisations. I dont think its something else. I think its my own personal preferences for gaming v my hardware and I take full responsibily for that. Which is why Im aking if there are other things to try. I think DCS needs two minimum specs one for Helo and one fixed wing. Or it really needs to up its game with making stuff lighter. There is little point getting down in the weeds if you have turn the weeds off.