Sideslip
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Posts posted by Sideslip
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Works great for kneeboard pages, scrolling through waypoints, altimeter setting, RWR volume, HUD brightness, target designator size, basically anything repetitive. As said above it needs to be configured as a timed key-press if you want to use it in place of holding a button, but it works just fine.
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I wasn't aware how resource hungry "default" terrain shadows are in 2.5 (they were not really in 1.5.8 ). Thanks Sideslip, if it wasn't for your investigation, i wouldn't tinker with them, as I always preferred to have them on "default".
It really depends how low you are flying. Down low all the closest trees are getting high quality shadows, and the further away they are the fewer get that treatment. Probably wasn't a problem in 1.5.8 because there were so few trees really. And I think the trees may have had flat shadows only regardless of setting.
You might find flat shadows sticking out of the hills during sunrise/sunset, but even on high that doesn't disappear until you have already been staring at it for 20 seconds, so default doesn't really bring any benefit except really really close up. Different considerations for the whirly birds though.
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Any pics on what FXAA does to the GUI and to the cockpt textures blurring wise?
My screen shots of my settings and the comparison of Cockpit Global Illumination on/off both had FXAA on IIRC. That said, the cockpit photo was resized in Photoshop.
Blurring exists, but is extremely minor. YMMV.
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There is a perceivable difference that I can see between terrain textures on High vs Low, it's most prominent on the Winter terrain
On Low there is this really ugly effect of terrain tiles close to the surface
On High the blending is much more pleasing to the eye with no noticeable tiling
Indeed. I didn't experience that at all on normal terrain, but it seems that while there is only 1 set of textures for the base terrain, not so with snow. It's funny because I can't imagine there are many different snow textures that would really necessitate a reduction in quality.
Good find.
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There is the "Map" layer in the F10 map. Unlike the Alt and Sat layers it shouldn't require much zooming in. I believe it's a real aviation navigation map from the area. It seems a little glitchy right now, like some chunks are missing, but mostly fine.
Also, the Alt F10 map is much improved in 2.5, as I used to have to zoom way in just to see the outlines of half the towns on the map. It used to be way harder to visually navigate.
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TrackIR uses a 120fps camera. One would think the head position is updated 120 times per second. If a frame were drawn out of sync with the camera then the position of the view relative to the expected position might be slightly different.
Honestly, I never notice anything significant when I use TrackIR and my FPS fluctuates between 60 and 100. I am more bothered by 60FPS than I am "TrackIR stuttering".
Maybe you can petition TrackIR to develop Tsync... :megalol:
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I've been asked for my NCP settings and have added them to the My" Recommended Settings" tab.
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I would, but I think I'll leave that to the AA thread. There are so many people that swear it's working with override this or enhance that or use Nvidia Profile Inspector CVSAAACMAFS64 V1337... I don't think any conclusion that I come to would be accepted anyway.
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Keep in mind for VR; MFAA and other nVidia hardware level custom settings don't work with headsets that are currently available. A good compromise is MSAAx2 in the DCS settings, but this requires that PD be lowered to 1.2 to balance performance (and it looks great). MFAA would be a huge improvement for VR.
I'm not even sure MFAA works with DCS period, never mind VR.
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Also, please tell Craig that his January paypal statement is available. :lol:
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Great job on these videos. The terrain IS much better and the hills and snow are great but. Trees trees trees and no roads, tracks or pathways through the woods. And also a huge loss of small towns and over 50% loss of building mass in what is left of towns. We will see how this works for mission building but I think I will miss having the dirt roads and tracks to run vehicles through. Lighting definitely needs more work.
I think you are being a little overly critical. Perspective is not the same, but you can see for the most part where there is a town IRL, there is a town in DCS. Little less density, sure, but not too far off. Not bad for a "free" map that is a few years old (it's not really free if it's part of the campaigns you paid for with other modules but whatever).
Also view distance was on Ultra.
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I just read this (I did not know that MSAA works on this way):
It uses an algorithm to find edges, and then essentially increases the resolution (sample points) in that area to get a more accurate pixel color. Instead of a black line on a blue sky being all either blue or black pixels, they are different shades of blue and black as determined by the additional sample points.
This is a good video from Nvidia explaining their MFAA, which is a new way of doing MSAA at reduced performance cost:
If this is true, then I understand why we have a problem in performance especially people who play at higher resolutions and VR users.But it's much easier to scream "ED don't know what they are doing! They broke MSAA!"
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No, there is a difference between rendering a scene ONE time on a big frame buffer which is later splitted, and rendering a scene TWO times on - no matter - one or two buffer(s)...
But it's not splitting the frame. It is 3 different views, that's why there is less distortion with 3 screens set to 170 degrees but 1 screen at 170 degrees is crazy distorted. The scene is rendered 3 times, once for each FOV. The only difference between that and VR is there is some overlap in viewed area, but it all has to be recomputed anyway.
You are confusing the 3 screen setting in DCS with actually using 3 monitors. You can use 1 monitor with the 3 screen setting or 3 monitors with the 1 screen setting.
Excluding the fact that VR will have X degrees FOV rendered 2 times and the 3 screen setting is A+B+C=X degrees FOV, they are the same thing in principle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viewport
1 screen = 1 viewportIn 3D computer graphics it refers to the 2D rectangle used to project the 3D scene to the position of a virtual camera. A viewport is a region of the screen used to display a portion of the total image to be shown.3 screens = 3 viewports
VR = 2 viewports
It does not matter if they overlap or not. In VR they are facing similar directions (not the same mind you) from 2 separate points in space (each eyeball). With the 3 monitors setting they are each facing different directions but are all from the same point in space. Doesn't matter much except for total FOV.
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You maths forgot something fundamental: With VR you are not only changing resolution, but you also render the scene twice from two points of views, this change almost everything...
Yes, as stated above, the resolution is not 2160x1200 but 1080x1200 TWICE. In DCS settings, next to monitor choose "3 screen". You will have the same resolution as before but it is being split and rendered for 3 different views. You will notice an impact to your FPS. This is also similar to what happens with Mirrors and Res of cockpit displays.
However, I know Nvidia was supposed to work some black magic with up to 16 viewports (viewpoints really) with the current 1000 series but I don't know how effective it is or what is required for it to work.
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Wow should be stick for further reference. Thank you for your hard work Slideslip
Once we are on the subject I have a few questions on the graphic setting that some might have the answer.
Heat Blur. Do we have any penalty using them?
Yes there is, but I have yet to measure it. You will only get a performance drop if it is actively blurring, which you wont see unless you are fairly close to another aircraft (A2A refuel, formation, maybe really close dog fighting). So the majority of the time it wont hurt FPS.
Res of cockpit displaysWhat is it doing? I never seen any difference and if so, again what is the penalty.
This is the resolution of things like the Shival TV. If you use trackir and lean into the screen, or zoom in on it, it will look better with a higher resolution. 512 is fine to use it as intended. The "per frame" I think refers to the framerate of the display. Don't quote me on this, but I think if it is not set to "per frame" it might run at like half frame rate or something. Again, really doesn't matter considering what it's designed for. Performance impact can be very high depending what you are looking at through the TV.
Depth of fieldAnother area where I can't see jack shit as difference, visually nor performance wise.
Do not use this setting. It does nothing in the cockpit, it only affects your exterior views. It blurs the SH*T out of everything. It also tanks my FPS from 70-80 to 20-30. It's only use is for making cinematic videos. There must be a way of controlling the depth, but I've never cared to look.
Disable aero interfaceSame here.
o7
Just ignore this. I imagine this is an old setting from when Windows Vista first released (2005?). I can't believe that the aero interface (makes the edges of windows transparent and stuff) could have any impact on performance if you are even capable of running DCS.
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Alt-Enter
DCS does not always run in fullscreen even though you have fullscreen selected. If it is running in fullscreen and you switch to another program or the desktop, DCS will be in windowed when you return. Sometimes it will be in windowed from the start. Alt-enter will toggle between windowed/fullscreen.
Nvidia has an issue with windowed apps and vsync. I found that if vsync is set to on in DCS and DCS is running windowed, fps will get capped to half refresh rate. If vsync is off in DCS, then it will run with "fast sync" even though I don't have that selected.
I recommend vsync on in the Nvidia Control Panel and vsync off within all games you run.
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Important Update: I read that you should delete the "metashaders" and "fxo" folders from your saved games DCS folder. Doing so reduced my vram usage from 8GB to 5GB. I have not noticed a difference in performance otherwise and the visual comparisons should be unchanged, but the vram shown in the comparison images may not be accurate.
Where I read to delete those folders: https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=200906
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Another thing you can try, is to enable DSR on the Nvidia control panel.
for a FHD screen, X2.0 should give it a 4K render target.
you'll get exact results for your rig and current installed DCS.
4 X DSR is whats needed to get 4K (8.2MP) resolution on a 1080p (2MP) screen. 2 X DSR would only be 2715 X 1527 (4.1MP). 4K is 3840X 2160.
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Great topic... and good job.
Looking at comparisons, and making decisions with the best FPS / RAM results from these examples i got smooth DCS with 45-60fps. One more time, smooth on my GTX780ti.
Thanks!
I need to clean up the initial post to make it clear, but don't read too much into the RAM amounts. I had Photoshop running at the same time (and music) to make organizing the shots quicker, so the RAM was probably fluctuating for reasons other than DCS. I have never observed more than 12GB usage from DCS alone, generally around 9 or 10GB. This was also true in multi-player, but only on the aerobatics server with a dozen players and only for 10-15 minutes.
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I've redesigned my guide to be a hell of a lot more aerodynamic than other guides, but I'm pointing to your guide (and soon other guides) for more detail in my guide.
Comments on your recommendations:
Civ. Traffic doesn’t affect performance by more than 1% my any of my benchmarks to date.
Shadows HIGH compared with MEDIUM makes a 0% performance difference to me.
I’ve yet to test Res. of Cockpit Displays by viewing a lot of action through the Warthog pod or whatever may stress this option.
MSAA isn’t necessary in 4K I guess? Cool!
Lens Effects are personal preference, but don’t affect performance by more than 1% in my tests.
I have a professionally calibrated monitor and Gamma 2.0 looks a lot better than 2.2, but this will vary depending on your monitor brightness.
Other than that we’ve come to a lot of the same conclusions it appears
I'll see about incorporating some of your findings into the thread. I want to have pictures for everything though so that it's consistent and everyone can see what the setting is doing. Not hard to get the pictures, just have to find the time. I want to fully test Civ Traffic too, but when I was playing around with it you couldn't even see cars when basically high enough to drop a bomb without killing yourself. So I see no point to have it on unless you are flying helicopters.
I don't doubt that you had little impact going from Medium to High shadows, but I can't change my recommendation based on the results that I had. Remember that the low/med/high settings only affect shadows close to you, so there wont be much impact unless you have lots of shadows nearby (like flying 500ft over a forest).
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OK... Now everything should be working properly. Please continue to let me know if any images aren't working. I plan to eventually clean up the posts so they look a little more professional, but for now it's kinda late.
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Looks like all the pictures except "Shadows" and "Terrain Shadows" are fixed. I can't see the pics in those two spoilers.
Seems the attachments are bugging out, I'll have to delete and re-upload some. I'll try to get that fixed soon. Thanks for letting me know.
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Great post! however, if I turn MSAA off, I don't get any AA even if I force it through the nvidia CP. (override any app settings)
You mean turning on FXAA doesn't work for you? I don't know what the problem would be.
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Great! I just finished fixing it.
Explosion Effects Detail Slider
in DCS Core Wish List
Posted
The new explosion effects look absolutely fantastic, but they can sometimes be a big performance hog. Positioning the camera near a target, a half-second barrage of rockets takes my framerate from 94ish (100% GPU) to 13-25. Granted, while in the cockpit it's more like 35-40 if I am looking at it, but that's still a pretty significant impact. I hate to think how bad it is for someone only getting 40-60 fps to start with. And then dropping 8 X RBK500Us is even worse viewed from the cockpit. These effects are cutting FPS by 60-85% on a GTX 1080.
If we could simply get an "explosion effects" slider in the settings that could scale the effect from like 20% to 100%, that would help tremendously and yet retain the fantastic effect for those with the hardware to run it. I'd probably have it around 50% or so. Probably not a problem a couple years from now.