coolts

What is your OS? your GFX card is 3 generation out of whack http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-radeon-hd-6870-radeon-hd-6850,2782-7.html Like my outgoing GTX 285, its most likey your bottleneck. You wont ever run out of VRAM (pagefile) unles you; disable the windows pagefile then run out or RAM manually set the pagefile too small have dynamic pagefile set and run ou of HD sopace

Meh, mine came today. Will benchmark tonight; Reasons I didnt wait; Price won’t come down much. Prices of 480’s etc. haven’t budged much. All reviews were overwhelmingly positive. I don’t want to pay for a “premium” model. That would be even more expensive and you gain little except maybe a vapor cooler which the 580 already has. $/£ to % performace gains are not worth paying extra. Just overclock yourself. I want to get the best xmas price for my outgoing 285 to offset the cost My 285 was struggling NOW with A-10 AMD worried when they read the 580 reviews and are holding 6900 back for 'tweaks', etc (only a runour ;)) Im not a NVIDIA fanboy having owned all makes of cards from 3dFX onwards but i can say from the bottom of my heart that the ATI catalyst control centre is the pure spawn of satans maggoty-bellend Now I will be proven wrong if; RADEON 6970 is faster than 580 on release And RADEON 6970 is cheaper than 580 on release You can wait all day long. In fact you can wait for ever…. Don’t play DCS beta, wait for the final release. Don’t by a HOTAS Warthog, wait till everyone else does…….don't go outside it might rain. What reviews were you reading? Bit-Tech, Guru3d, Anandtech, Toms hardware, all proper IT sites, all gave glowing reviews and I respect their information. http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2010/11/09/nvidia-geforce-gtx-580-review/1 http://www.anandtech.com/show/4008/nvidias-geforce-gtx-580 http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-580-review/ http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/geforce-gtx-580-gf110-geforce-gtx-480,review-32043.html

How? apart from Jtac reponse Thats what we need. thats what was in the demo screenshots IIRC

So, other than accepting JTAC targets to get the red target triangle, how do i create my own? If we can't then having a wingman say "contact" is not much use as he gives no clue as to the threat location. He might as well say "Ice Cream"

I am having some trouble understanding the correct employment of my wingman. In the “instant action” easy mission for instance the second target consists of 2 trucks and some infantry. Flying towards them my wingman calls “contact”. This I assume means he has visual. I target the trucks in area mode, set SPI, (make sure “broadcast SPI is set”) and call “engage with”, “utility trucks”, or infantry or whatever, “guns” and “default”... “negative” No matter what I say, I get negative. I’m sure this used to work but I may be missing something. Looking at page 313 of the manual on “tasking targets” this seems to imply that as part of a datalinked team, the AI should be creating TAD objects referencing enemy / friendly positions as they did in BlackShark. It also says that you can task targets to allied aircraft if you, “Set the SPI to the location of the TAD symbol that you wish to assign as the target”. The only way i have come across for creating TAD symbols is when tasked by a JTAC. Can TAD symbols be created in flight? Am I doing something wrong, are these features not implemented or is it a WIP issue? (beta 3 BTW)

or they added voice audio so you can communicate with flights of these aircraft over the radio? less of a conspiracy theory i guess :detective_2: havent installed yet

Its a balancing act. BTW, what app are you using to get GFX card load %. Ive had a few hokey ASUS apps but they were a bit.......pants. Pity rivatuner does'nt do it. Now your bottleneck has moved......to your CPU. What CPU are you running?

If you can see all your cores and identify the two DCS cores, (the ones doing all the work ;)), then you can see how much work they are doing whilst running the SIM, (as a %). If as in my case I get 20-30fps and my working cores as working at 60% or so I can say that in MY case the graphics card just can’t render fast enough, (as the CPU still has more to give), and is therefore my bottleneck. Answer = new gfx card. As I have a GTX 285 which is now 2 generations old, fair enough. If you are getting CPU loading of consistently 90-100%, then your CPU can’t keep up with your GFX card. Answer is most likely to upgrade CPU. There are a few caveats; GPU load isn’t measured like CPU load with %, meaning it’s not as east to determine whether your GPU is working hard. In this case, my pure CPU test is therefore not 100% conclusive CPU load within the sim is not flat, obviously over cities, etc., but you get the picture I am ignoring disk I/O bottlenecks here. They aren’t that common in DCS. It’s not ARMAII (unless you have ancient HDD’s) you could have an equally slow gfx card and CPU! (100% load, GPU fan screAming, crap frame rates.....TURN THE GFX SETTINGS DOWN AND START SAVING UP ) People asking “how can a DX9 game tax my setup?” Are missing the point. Pick up a heavy 50” HD TV. Put it down. Pick up a heavy rock. Put it down. Both heavy? One new and one old… funny that ;) (Mower, in your case and in my opinion, your GFX card needs, shall we say, a comfy chair and a tartan blanket for its legs, as the rest of your system is 3 generations or so ahead. It's 3 years old this April! Your CPU will happliy hit 4ghz all day long and DCs wont touch that)

580's sold out everywhere. Still, it makes sense to wait on the red team as £400 is a lot to gamble on a two week wait IMO. Need to sell my 285 in the xmas ebay rush though to offeset the cost, (starts fondling credit card)

Bottleneck test run game in window with task manager open, (assuming you have one monitor. if you have 2 then run fullscreen w/ task manager on second screen), w/performance tab, (or more accurate desktop gadget like "all CPU meter") what is your average core loading whilst playing? WH uses 2 cores, windows will shunt all window-sy tasks to the others

How do you work that out? DCS uses two cores. One for the main app and one for the sound engine. My other cores are therefore bumbling along doing windows stuff. (I am not talking about an aggregate score of all 4 cores here but the 4 separate cores. Under full game load i see, core 1 40-60%, core 2 1-5%, core 3 30-40%, core 4 0-2%) The tasked cores are quite capable of hitting 100% at any time if the app (DCS) tasks them that much. It doesn’t, therefore the limiting factor in my performance scenario isn’t my CPU. IF my CPU was screaming at 100% then that would be working full tilt and would therefore be the bottleneck. DCS doesn’t tax a CPU 100% on purpose like Orthos or3DMark or other benchmarking apps. That is a nonsensical statement. It all depends on your setup. Run task manager, performance tab so you can see all your cores. Run DCS with it open, (windowed if you have to), and see the average and peak CPU%. If it is flat lined at 100%, then you need a faster CPU, assuming you already have dual/quad cores, if its consistently less than 80% then you may need a faster GFX card. You can run perfmon disk I/O as well to see if your disks can’t keep up. As I have a 2 generations (now) old gfx card, (GTX285), my diagnosis is that it is my bottleneck.

There are 3rd party tools but if your CPU is close or at 100% then that is your bottleneck. In it's none optimised state though dcs:a-10 isn't a reliable benchmark. Use blackshark with latest patch which uses two cores.

my overclocked i930 @ 4.1ghz never goes above 60% 2 x core usage and i see average 30fps on my GTX285 that is GPU bottleneck right there. If you have 100% CPU then you have a CPU bottleneck, otherwise GPU. its as simple as that. (assuming its not a disk I/O bottleneck ;), but i have SSD + RAID 1 so its not disk)

Im looking at one of these to replace my GTX285 which is getting on a bit. My usual rule is to sell and replace every year, that way about £100 premium does it. This time, i'm looking at selling my 2 year old card for £120 and having to pony up the remaining £250 to upgrade. So, i lose about £125 card value a year assuming i want to stay cutting edge. Thats not bad in my view as i use the PC every day. Might wait for the new Radeons though. If they are the same in performance bracket, then price, noise and heat will sway me. And DCS performance!

I couldnt get it to work Grimes. I had a JTAC which was to be triggered, so my understanding is that you add its functions to the "triggered actions" tab then call them from a trigger. There are two extra triggers you need to implement first, the usual "activate group", but also the new "group AI in". you then activate the stored tasks using "AI task" calls. My JTAC activated but did bugger all. posiibly a beta issue as when i use the exact same commands using actions in the group tab it all works fine. I hope they update the "AI Task" docs with beta3

I have abandoned triggered actions for now and gone back to bog standard actions which seem to work. possibly a WIP issue but setting triggers to "activate AI", etc seem a bit much for the JTAC logic ATM.

converting metric to imperial is not difficult, HOWEVER, the point of this post is surely that if "imperial" units are chosen from the options then the ME should use "imperial" units and not just the game engine. This has been a limitation of the sim engine for ages. (game engine / sim engine - two different entities) the point is that it takes time to convert for everything. its not a dealbreaker but would be very nice to have. if all the underlying sim code is metric, and it probably is, then we dont need that changed surely, just the text input / output boxes in the ME could have conversion multipliers added to them. thats what i would do. (it works in excel :music_whistling:)

imagine the insurance claims!

I will read that doc next on my list. My JTAC's usually work, but this is the only time i have "triggered" one. I will add an overhead drone to see wether that sparks him into life. **EDIT"" From the "AI Task" Doc Perform TASK 10. FAC - Attack Group. Control of attacking the enemy group by friendly attack aircraft(s). Group type – all. Group tasks – AFAC (in case of aircraft group). Group will acts as FAC and when player arrived into region and established communication with FAC FAC will order him to attack assigned enemy group and will provide terminal attack control. FAC will not order player attack other enemy groups. FAC always knows about the target group and knows where it located. Group for attack can be selected same way In ―Attack Group‖ task. You can also select weapon that FAC will order player to use in attack. Start Enroute Task 6. FAC. Forward air controller. Group type – all. Group tasks – AFAC (for aircrafts). The group will act as FAC. The group will select most important or dangerous targets in battlefield and assign it to player's flight for attack and will provide terminal attack control. There are no limitations on targets those FAC will order player's flight to attack. 7. FAC - Engage Group. The same “FAC - Attack Group” task, but in this task FAC don't know about the target group and where it located. FAC must detect this group during mission. Task priority can be set in ―PRIORITY‖ spin box. Greater value – higher priority.

In the current absence of a beta GUI/ME manual I am having a few issues getting my head round the JTAC advanced actions in the ME and their meaning with relation to getting the most from your JTAC units. Please don’t confuse this with radio-noob-ness. The WarriorX posts have helped me sort the comms system out and I can always contact my JTAC once he is triggered, although getting a response is a different matter. Here are the options as i see them Assumption #1 JTAC “Actions” can be added to a unit on either its “route” or “triggered actions” tabs. Now I am assuming here that the former is the default for bog standard units who you want there for the start of a mission for example, whereas the latter are for dynamically triggered / flag driven events. Assumption #2 The “perform command” action type is where you get your JTAC/FAC call sign and frequencies. This works fine and I can set this in the “route” or “triggered actions” sections and get both to work correctly. The grey area Under the “perform task” action type I can assign “FAC-Attack group” Under the “start enroute task” action type I can assign “FAC-engage group” and “FAC” Now there may very well be many ways to peel an onion but could someone please describe the difference of these three? FAC – has no options and I presume is for pure “enemies within visual range” passive “sentry” type FAC operations? I have used GESKES method of using this FAC type to get taking from a predator drone and allow the actual FAC to be a few miles behind the lines in a safe area. FAC – Engage group, obviously wants to you define a single enemy unit and gives the weapons choice of “auto” only when targeted at a group FAC – Attack group, obviously wants to you define a single enemy unit and gives a whole lot of weapons choice as well as auto once targeted. Now as my humble FAC/JTAC is a hummer and hasn’t got access to missiles and cluster bombs I assume that the FAC – Attack group option is intended to guide the players flight in employing weapons the JTAC chooses. Does that mean that FAC – Engage group implies that the JTAC will engage the enemy ITSELF, (not good), or just won’t define a preferred engagement weapon fron the players flight? JTAC Tests I have created a test mission where I have an enemy convoy crossing a bridge and approaching an area with my JTAC hummer who is pointed at the bridge. The bridge has a trigger zone. Once the enemy convoy hits the Trigger zone it activates several AI TASKS; These were defined on the JTAC units “Triggered Actions” TAB as follows; Now, as soon as these action trigger, i get the JTAC option in my FM comms menu and call him, but get no response. Now either; He has no LOS to the enemy, (i've been repeatedly calling him when the enemy are less than 1km from his posotion and he must be looking right at them. Will he not call back with "no tasking" if this is the case? I’ve chosen the wrong option somewhere The FAC – engage group can’t be triggered dynamically The FAC – Attack group can’t be triggered dynamically I’ve done something else daft. once triggered the JTAC checks once to see if it has an enemy within range then goes to sleep if its targetted unit is not within range. WIP Any help would be appreciated as always guys Cheers C

The mystery solved Following CG's advice i ran through the the final moments of my doomed flight in slow-mo and look what i see. 1 second after bomb release i am dutifully popping flares. hmmmm. flares are kinda close to thet giant metal firework arent they? :helpsmilie: KA-BOOM. :( CMS meets offensive weaponry and the laws of thermodynamics take over. Gotta love ED for the their physics simulations. Never have I had to bear in mind the dangers of my own CMS before! In future I will halt my CMS program till 2 or 3 seconds after launch. The risk of the missile which may be there is less than the giant frickin bomb which i know IS there!

Elegant and simple. Thanks for that!

I am creating little mission where I have two arms smuggler ships in port and a convoy of trucks receiving the “goods” before hitting the road and once past a certain ROE point, becoming fodder for yours truly and his hog. Once the deal is done, I want the trucks to start on their way and the ships to leave port. That will be my signal to shadow the convoy until it crosses a river bridge. Now, if the mission starts at 12:00, how do I get the convoy to hold at WP1 till 12.30 for instance then set off? I’ve got the ‘speed’ and ‘start’ parameters in the “vehicle group” tab, but I recall advice a while back to copy the entire group. (One static with no WP’s and one moving but not visible at start. Once my set time is triggered, I hide the static group and the second one becomes active and sets off on its waypoints). Is this still best practice? Once my convoy cross the bridge trigger zone I have flag triggered and a JTAC ‘s “condition” parameter “is user flag” set to trigger his “FAC – Engage group” action. This bit needs testing as I’m not sure it’s the best way to trigger a JTAC as I don’t want him available till the convoy gets near him.

TBH thats one less thing to worry about for me. That was the least exiting knob in black shark ;)

He's feelin' the hog-love! :joystick::thumbup: