Sn8ke_iis

I was skeptical because you have a Gsync panel similar to mine, but I was able to replicate your issue in the Free Flight over Dubai. It's definitely the Hornet and the Gulf Map. Microstutter and frametime issues around 70-80fps especially when looking backwards in the cockpit. Take the TF-51 for a spin on the Gulf Map without the frame rate cap and with Vsync on and you'll see what it's supposed to look like. High frame rates, butter The A-10C had sleight stutter on the Gulf Map but not as bad as the Hornet. A-10 on the Vegas map, no stutter. Putting the TrackIR in precision mode can help too but for some people this could make it worse.

I don't run VR but that is the exact model of RAM I use. I haven't noticed any performance bump from 16-32 GB, but subjectively things seem more stable especially using DCS's built in rendering features (VERY HIGH RAM USAGE). The RGB syncs with my ASUS MB as well. It looks like they source their chips from Samsung and Hynix.

Brian, your information is not correct. I usually game and flight sim on my big screen in 4K unless I'm playing a first person shooter, but I've tested DCS multiple times on my ASUS 27" 166Mhz. Track IR works like butter above 60fps. I can easily hit 166 fps at 1080p and usually in the 120s to 130s over complex areas in 1440p. I just took some benchmarks last night as I just bought a 2080Ti and wanted to calculate the performance bump for a DCS build log I'm working on. Averages flying the TF-51 in the "Flight over Tbilisi" and and Nevada Free Flight (the Vegas Strip) were 129.35 fps and 134.83 fps respectively on a Titan Xp on the "high" preset. A well tuned 1080 Ti is a really close match to a Titan Xp in most games, some games even get higher FPS on a 1080 Ti. DCS specific I don't know as I've never tested a 1080 Ti on my rig. But panning around with my TrackIR is like butter. For the OP, obviously you won't get those kind of frames on a 1070 Ti but the potential is there when your system is properly tuned. A 1070 Ti on sale at Newegg is probably your best purchase right now in terms of performance per dollar. DCS will push your system as hard or harder than any AAA game on the market. However, I would suggest prioritizing the monitor over the card. A monitor is a much better long term investment and won't become obsolescent so fast. You can always get a better card later and you will be future proofed. A good card w/o a good monitor is kind of putting the cart before the horse. A Gsync monitor can help mitigate frame rate drops and frame time fluctuations for your 1060. I would suggest the ASUS 27" 166Hz Gsync. Best gaming monitor I have ever owned hands down. You could also use it for CC if you want as the colors are very accurate. I know the price dropped recently from when I bought one and there is probably a good sale on right now. Early access modules and Early access maps are not a good metric for performance testing and benchmarks. They change with every new OB build. To properly judge performance you need to play a mature module on the two maps that are out of early access, Nevada and Caucasus. Speaking of Vulcan. I also ran a benchmark last night that compares API's on your rig. The performance difference between DX11 and Vulcan was like night and day. Hopefully a Vulcan build gets pushed out some time this next year, but another flight sim is also currently working on converting their engine and code to Vulcan. It's taking a long time.

Buy Sennheiser, don't waste your money on gaming companies trying to reinvent the wheel. They've been making studio grade headphones for longer than PC's have existed. They have a consumer line that are competitive with the gaming stuff. My 2 cents.

First advice, don't get the laptop. For that budget you could build a top of the line mITX similar to mine that's very portable. They make little baby ITX cases but you'll have cooling constraints. I had a big 'ol workstation that I put on castors that was portable. Generally speaking, laptops are so limited in terms of power, cooling, and have excessive fan noise that you'll regret buying it. They tend to go obsolescent faster and have very limited upgradebility except for RAM and SSD. My 2 cents.

Get a Z390 chipset it will give you more upgrade wiggle room down the road for a CPU refresh. If you can find a 1080 Ti used on Ebay from a trustworthy vendor, grab it. New ones are only being scalped now. For factory new warrantied cards you are looking at 2080 or 2080 Ti. If you aren't planning a build for the holidays give it a few months. The 1000 series cards are clearing out fast from the major vendors. 2000 series will drop after the Christmas demand dies down. You can take advantage of current sales to get everything except GPU and you'll save but the vendors know you need a GPU. Just throw your 70 in there to burn it in and wait out the demand spike.

My 2 cents, don't skimp on the HOTAS. All those processors you are looking at will be obsolescent in a couple years, the HOTAS won't. The Warthog model has been around circa 2010. I've have a Cougar set that's older than that. Peripherals don't have to keep up with Moore's law.

1. 50's Korea 2. Cold War Korea 3. 'Nam 4. Balkans 5. Iraq/Iran for Gulf war and Iraq/Iran war scenarios 6. Midway or Some Generic Pacific atoll islands/etc. 7. Bering Straight 8. Eastern Med/Levant 9. Afghanistan - would love to fly over the Hindu Kush again 10. WWII Germany 11. Cold War Germany 12. The Rockies - I know, I know, I just would really like to fly my Sabre or my Spittie from Telluride to Aspen at low level in the DCS engine. A man can dream.:pilotfly:

Polls aren't mobile friendly FYI

New 1080 Ti's are pretty much out of stock at all the major retailers except scalpers as previously mentioned. Scalpers and middlemen were the main drivers of the absurd prices we saw earlier in the year. Thousands of those cards just sat in boxes during the mining craze. Classic rent seeking behavior. Best prices on 1080 Ti were right after the prelaunch of RTX. After the launch and benchmarks the prices went back up LOL. There seemed to be a temporary glut of 1000 series cards that major retailers had stashed for Black Friday, those are gone now. 2080 Ti still from a few retailers at close to MSRP, plus scalpers. Still some decent used Ti but overall the new 1000 series supplies are going pretty quick. Seen some 1070's at fire sale prices from various major retailers and Ebay sellers but they went quick. Prices pretty much stabilized now. Overall it was a buyers market over the weekend with some of the best GPU prices to date. Keep an eye out for sales over the next couple days. People have been getting some steals but you have to be quick.

Picked up the Viggen and MiG-21 along with the new Big Show Campaign for my Spittie. I was looking over my account and I now own everything except the Hornet, Tomcat, Mirage, and Harrier jet fighters. I have no idea how that happened. I think my account was hacked :music_whistling: Thankfully, I was hacked mostly during these sales. It all started with just the Spittie and Sabre. The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. :joystick:

I run ASUS Aura(latest version) for my MoBo and Ram - I like being fickle and changing colors - no issues. I'm on Nvidia 399.24 and Win10 build 1509. I have it stuck in an update loop on a metered connection. I also run 3rd party security software. Definitely recommend process lasso, classify as high performance process and process lasso power management settings. Minimize background processes! This can't be emphasized enough. I run several controller and sim related utilities in my tray and rarely get "stutters" just frame rate drops over busy areas, trees, etc. at low altitudes, which is normal and can be mitigated by not trying to max every graphic setting. I also keep the frame rate limiter at 60fps in Riva Tuner. It's usually something simple like power management setting reset during a driver or windows update. Our computers only do what we tell them to do, if they freeze up or stutter it's because they're confused. I just recently installed some Video editing software and both Avid and Adobe install all kinds of bloatware on your machine. This is typical of most software you install these days. It assumes you want to multitask or be connected to the internet all the time. The latest "stutter" issue I dealt with was because of an upgrade to Crosswind pedals. Weird stutters with controller inputs. Forgot to clear out the axis settings in the controller spreadsheet. Cleared those and butter smooth at 60fps. For the most part I've seen improved performance with the latest OB builds and mature modules out of early access. Still can't turn on Msaa at 4k. But I've been able to bump up to 4096 by 2160 with FXAA enabled in the driver. For the guys having problems getting above 60fps with TrackIR; the only experience I have with high refresh rate monitors is my ASUS 166z Gsync. I prefer big screen 4K at 60hz to the smaller monitor but the image quality is phenomenal. Butter. With my build I can get 90-100fps over complex areas and way over 100+ over ocean, high alt, or desert at 1440p maxed MSAA 2X w/o motion blur or SSAA. Expensive solution but Gsync does work very well. What I would like to see is some kind of build that adjusts graphic settings in real time to keep a target frame rate. I can change up settings quite a bit from module to module and map to map. Easier said than done. I have noticed steadily increasing RAM usage even with older modules even after rebooting and clearing out fxo and metashaders folder. I recently upgraded from 16 to 32 GB ram. So far so good, definitely more stable. RAM usage seems to increase when you have more available. I was typically using 10-12 GB across all modules single player. Now it's more like 14-15GB which is definitely not enough for the OS and everything else when you are pushing settings. A RAM upgrade won't solve stutters, but DCS will use it.

Do the new controllers show and calibrate in Windows? i.e are your usb ports active outside the game? Try plugging in a mouse. Do you have the full setup with MFDs and rudder or just the HOTAS? Are your USB drivers up to date? Are you running through a USB hub? thrustmaster drivers? After you get the script running is should show as Thrustmaster Combined I wouldn't jump to the registry edit without doing some basic troubleshooting and updating drivers first. Good luck!

From the home page of the DCS client go to the Settings cog icon>Controls Tab-(make sure F-86F Sim is in the Dropdown menu)-click MAKE HTML. You only care about the KEYBOARD.html file. This will bring up .HTML text versions of all keyboard callbacks, including ones you may assign yourself. It usually pops up in your default browser. You can keep it as a tab or print, etc. It's a lot of nomenclature, acronyms, and abbreviations so it can be a little overwhelming, but the systems and naming conventions apply to most modern jets. Just Crtl-F the functions you're looking for or scroll. Start with the basics, switches and panels needed for start up, etc. Work from panel to panel. Little chunks at a time. The training missions are very well constructed. No need to learn it all at once. It's not a real airplane, you can always press pause,:thumbup: You can also get to it directly from outside the game as well. It usually points to a default folder in your Saved Games folder under your user name in Windows file manager. That path is C:>(Users)>YOUR USER NAME>Saved Games>DCS.openbeta(or release)>InputlayoutsTxt>F-86F>Keyboard The DCS spreadsheet style controller interface is awesome, you can set up all kinds of modifiers, etc. but is kind of redundant if you own Thrustmaster hardware. I like the GUI and being able to just click on the switch or button. I still use the spreadsheet for my non-thrustmaster stuff. You just have to keep everything reconciled. Don't forget to back up everything, including printing hard copies of your final layout and keyboard files. I keep a backup of my DCSopenbeta folder from my saved games folder on a separate drive as well. That has all your custom missions, layout, pilot log, etc. With that you can restore it to any DCS install. Going through all the tedious work just to lose it is a morale killer. Unfortunately, a high fidelity sim like DCS ain't like pluggin in an XBOX. Happy flyin'

It's not just you, in Early Access the gauges were illuminated by backlight and think they flipped on with cockpit power. There is no keyboard callback for it. I'm not sure when it was removed or the accuracy relative to the historical model. In current real world flying warbirds it's really easy to add an LED to the instrument panel along with a GPS or radio stack. I don't know if the specimens in museums had back light or not.

DO NOT CHANGE POWER SUPPLY CABLES UNLESS SPECIFICALLY FROM THAT MODEL AND MANUFACTURER OF POWER SUPPLY. You will blow components. The wiring diagrams and polarities are not standardized from power supply to power supply and manufacturer to manufacturer. Download Nvidia Inspector and make sure both DCS.exe and run.exe are keyed to the DCS blackshark driver. Then double check power management settings. Or create a new DCS profile from the default driver. Anytime you change or update a driver the power settings can revert to default. Then double check that you pressed alt-enter. Sounds like a driver power setting issue to me.

When I build my Target Profile I pull up the keyboard template in the HTML file and do a lot of copy and pasting. I also still do almost exactly what tom does as well to have a hard copy as you're working and fine tuning. Then you copy and paste the proper nomenclature from the keyfile into the description of the function in Target. Be wary of slight variation between modules like "undercarriage" and "landing gear" and "active pause" or "pause active". There can also be conflicts from TrackIR hotkeys and a few other quirks that might cause some unintended keypresses. You just have to be very methodical in how you choose keys and modifiers. I think the Sabre is the best jet trainer in the game. It will familiarize you with almost every modern system except Tacan, BVR missiles, and precision guided munitions. Plus you can fly historically accurate fighter bomber missions and dogfight migs. Make sure you put the effort in to use the gunsight properly with wingspan estimation on auto and manual. When it works right you can make long distance tracking shots that you would never make by eyeballing tracers. Up close sometimes its just best to cage the sight and shoot off boresight.

I mapped every switch in that cockpit in my Target profile. I'd be happy to share it but I also use MFD's and and my upfront controller for the gunsight switches, and I still have to use a few modifier and shift layers. It was a pretty tedious process and took almost a whole weekend but as the previous poster said, Target really is the best way to go. You can properly model 2 position and 3 position switches instead of just toggles. You definitely come away knowing the systems. I would suggest playing and flying and then gradually building the profile. A lot of those switches you only use in an emergency or very rarely. You can map most of the combat critical stuff to a simple arrangement and then convert to a Target profile later. The Sabre cockpit is about as analog as it gets in DCS and sometimes the most intuitive way is just grab the mouse and flip the switch. That's the way the real Sabre pilots did it. The thing that will get you hooked on Target is the shift layers and modifier layers. I have a standard setup for all my modules for head positioning in cockpit, zoom, comms, TrackIR center and pause, and time accelerate/ decelerate. It makes it a lot easier to jump between aircraft type when you are learning a new module and you don't have to start your controller profile from scratch. You have a template. C:\*your computer name*\*User Name*\AppData\Roaming\Thrustmaster\TARGET\Scripts is the default path. Zip file was compressed with 7-zip. Uncompress and copy to folder and it should come up in the target menu. You might have to load it once through the file manager. The gunsight switches are not modeled in this profile. I have those mapped to my UFC in the DCS spreadsheet. I suggest making a layer for those . If you are not familiar with Target the switch states and options might be a little confusing at first but it gets easier. The GUI is more intuitive than the in game DCS option. DCS F-86F TARGET Controller Layout.pdf DCS F-86 Scripts.zip

You want a new challenge, learn the Spitfire and then play the payware campaigns. I'm having an absolute ball. Buy the Yak and practice precision aerobatics, and stall/spin training. Aerobatics with smoke is really fun. Great plane for sightseeing. L-39 and P-51 around an Air Race course on the Nevada Map? Mission design, highlight videos? Maybe take a break from flight sims and play a fun game on Steam? I just don't see how anyone could get bored with a flight simulator like DCS. There is always something new to learn. Maybe it just hasn't happened to me yet. I wish I had the time to get bored with DCS. I never seem to find enough time to fly these days.

I fly night missions and full moon missions all the time. I see banding on flat screen too. I haven't tried experimenting with the gamma settings for night time though. So I don't think it's just VR. Display settings and general display quality should also play a factor. rtings.com test TVs and monitors on the quality of blacks and shadows. Some displays are better than others with blacks and gradients.

PCIe lanes are relevant to number of GPU's and NVMe drives. Check the fine print on your CPU and MB specs before you order components for a build. i.e. there may be available lanes for 2 GPU's and one NVMe drive or 2 drives and 1 GPU. But not enough lanes for 2 GPUs and 2 NVMe drives. Or one of your expansion slots will be disabled, etc. Depends if you need the slot. IIRC Intel has cut some PCIe lanes on the lower end 9000 series chips as a cost saving measure. Whether you need the lanes depends on component choice/configuration. FYI for people doing a new build this shopping season.

Chipset, bandwidth between components, DD4 memory, PCIe lanes, new motherboard. All variables besides the CPU change. DCS does like single thread performance, newer processors also have different architecture, not just higher clocks and smaller transistors. 9900k has fast single thread performance, but so does a 9600k at less than half the cost. If you are running multiple GPU's or multiple Nvme drives be aware of available PCIe lanes.

Check single thread benchmarks and price to performance in your market. DCS likes fast single thread performance on a single core. If you watch utilization with an OSD, one core will spike up above the others. This is usually the CPU bottleneck. 9900K's have the best single thread performance right now, but it's a pricey premium for that performance. I think 9600K's are running less than $300 US for real good single thread price to performance ratio right now. Thing is with a 9900K you get 8 cores which has benefits in other apps and games besides DCS. DCS potentially could use those extra processors in a Vulcan build. But as of now, you would be spending a lot money for just a few frames.

Wait what? The only reason I switched to WIN10 from WIN7 was when I upgraded to my current CPU 7700K and "they" said it wasn't "supported" any more. I never just tried it though. Why does that not surprise me? I have my version of WIN10 stuck on build 1503 in an update loop on a metered connection so it never downloads. It's the only way to keep it stable. Half the "security updates" were really just .exe files for a pop up to scare you to update. I think I upgraded that 7 license key to WIN10 on another machine too, bummer. WIN10 has been a nightmare for legacy flight sims that were just fine on WIN7. The only advantage is if you play new games that use DX12. DCS renders in the DX11 api, there is no benefit that I'm aware of to running DCS under WIN10. Edit: I've just recently tried out the 399.24 driver upgrading from 388.71 and am very happy with the performance with the latest build of the open beta. Even the Normandy map seems to be running better now too. I'm sticking with 399 for now.

Any particular reason you are wedded to the laptop form factor? For the cost of that gaming laptop you could do a midrange desktop build and still have money leftover for a cheap used laptop for work or school? DCS takes a high end CPU and GPU to get decent performance. Using a laptop will limit performance right out of the gate due to size and power design constraints. Gaming laptops don't make sense in terms of bang for buck. Even the most expensive gaming laptop will be outperformed by a cheaper desktop with few exceptions, and are usually heavy and noisy with a big AC adaptor. Not much actual portability. If you go to LAN parties or something, you can move a standard desktop case and rehook the cables fairly quickly after you do it few times. Another thing to consider, the motherboard I use has tons of USB ports and I still use a usb hub. You will be very limited in available USB ports and power surplus with a laptop and you'd pretty much have to keep it plugged in all the time because the battery will drain too fast. Laptops are good for less graphically intensive strategy games, not so much for flight sims and AAA games.