Erratic Frame Rate In Some Views - Smoke, Clouds, Airport

[Worrazen]

I don't know how can this be acceptable for what supposedly is a high-profile simulator, but the idea that flying through clouds creates a massive FPS drop to below 10 is a bit ridicolouls, I can understand that a bit, but I can't understand the airport thing when there was like 6 planes landed and when it displayed all the structures it just dipped hard.

 

 

The smoke-lag is not new, I remember it from COD2 ... pain in the ass.

 

I don't know if this is just the current status or it's my machine but I'll just keep a track of my particular areas that don't work, I did a bit of a search seems like this looks like normal, but being only 3 days into this whole thing, I have to start brainstorming somewhere.

 

I expected my machine to brute-force through the graphics engine but I guess not, maybe it's too modern, but then again this GPU is not very new anyway.

 

• Intel Core i7 3820 (sandy bridge E)
  
• Asus P9X79 motherboard
  
• 16 GB Corsair Vengeance @ 1333 (pagefile disabled)
  
• ATI Radeon H5850 1GB @ 14.4 Catalyst (there was no newer non-beta for months)
  
• Currently I have Samsung 128GB SSD occupied for something else (so it's from WD1002FAEX)
  
• Asus Xonar D1 Audio Card
  
• Enermax 620W Galaxy PSU
  
• Saitek-MadCatz CyborgX FLY5 Joystick (a few years old, well preserved, not bought specifically for DCS)
  

 

 

The FPSs range about 40, they go up to 60 for a bit, mostly 20-40, but this is with half the settings I think.

 

 

For the last test, before I drop everything to the lowest possible except the resolution, I'll do it now and report back, but below 1080p is unacceptable and cockpit texture resolution being lower than 1024 also since I already barely see text less than 5 meters away in real life, low-res unreadable text is one of the biggest annoyances in any computer program for me. Even on the hightest settings I barely see things on the ground, I have to be zoomed in a whole lot which ofcourse hides all the instruments.

Edited October 28, 2014 by Worrazen

[T_A]

Most of these issues are due to the limitation of DX9 which is what DCS currently supports.

With EDGE , we would move to DX11 and should have much smoother , constant experience.

[Worrazen]

Oh ... I suppose that might be a major factor.

 

But I just lowered everything to it's lowest and it just doesn't get above 40 FPS, and I have a 144hz monitor so it would be nice to at least have it run 120FPS.

 

 

I'm not sure what EDGE means, maybe a new graphics engine name, I hope it'll be in the free edition as I'm still just beginning to get a hold of this.

 

AMD Mantle might prove to be useful for things like this, for evolving games without the pressures of deadlines and packaged yearly release schedules. The tripple-A term is really a financial descriptor, most of those games are technologically rubbish except graphics.

 

EDIT: Found out about edge now ... sounds very good.

Edited October 28, 2014 by Worrazen

[T_A]

Yes that is exactly what EDGE is , a new graphic engine for DCS

 

more details here:

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=80468

[outlawal2]

And here we go again.. You are NOT going to get 120 fps out of a high fidelity aircraft simulation.. This is not Battlefield, it is simulation and there is a LOT going on here... Do not try to compare frame rates from first person shooters to aircraft simulations..

[ricktoberfest]

And here we go again.. You are NOT going to get 120 fps out of a high fidelity aircraft simulation.. This is not Battlefield, it is simulation and there is a LOT going on here... Do not try to compare frame rates from first person shooters to aircraft simulations..

 

 

This.

 

40 fps is actually pretty good, especially for an older graphics card and CPU like you have

[AtaliaA1]

This.

 

40 fps is actually pretty good, especially for an older graphics card and CPU like you have

 

 

Not only that, He has turned off his page file. a mistake in a DX9 software package. It looks for it upon large file transfers and being older software it doesn't take advantage of the improved instruction set in newer CPUs.

 

U have put a Volkswagen engine in a Ferrari and can't understand why the transmission isn't creating more torch under load.

[jimcarrel]

Yes, I have seen write ups claiming that if you have 16 gigs or more you can turn off page file....... Might work for Facebook, but DCS...nope!

[jeeperz81004]

I am new to this Sim as well and have had horrible frame rates (going through clouds, airports and LOL even bombs dropping from planes). This is something experienced even more with Radeon cards. It is a great looking game, but it is horribly put together (I am a developer and where I work we would get in trouble for this). Others will tell you that it is because it is a complex Sim but they are wrong. I keep hearing about the EDGE engine to which is supposed to offer DX11, but if they do not code it right it will have horrible performance issues to, not sure about the release date (LOL... 2025).

[AtaliaA1]

I am new to this Sim as well and have had horrible frame rates (going through clouds, airports and LOL even bombs dropping from planes). This is something experienced even more with Radeon cards. It is a great looking game, but it is horribly put together (I am a developer and where I work we would get in trouble for this). Others will tell you that it is because it is a complex Sim but they are wrong. I keep hearing about the EDGE engine to which is supposed to offer DX11, but if they do not code it right it will have horrible performance issues to, not sure about the release date (LOL... 2025).

 

I would expound upon the technology but it would rehash what others are already aware of and it is in use by the testers as u read this.

 

Might want to search the forums for more information on this subject. As of now U are behind in the knowledge of it thus far. (not a put down just need to catch up to us.)

[Worrazen]

I've always had pagefile disabled ever since I got more than 8 GB of RAM because i found out it was the source of the windows UI being laggy and some games having temporary freezes every few minutes, It's a big story spanning like 2 years over at tech forums etc, but I just hated the UI lag because I'm fast and multitasking and I despise waiting 10 seconds when right clicking on some winows items.

 

And since April of 2013 with a new PC with a SSD it's been a blast, however if pagefile in this configuration improves performance in FPS it's most definitely a software environment compatability thing that's the game's/DX own problem, plus, I am a PC geek and I tinker with all kinds of settings and one of the major SSD optimizations was to disable the pagefile or move it to a HDD, that's that, but it doesn't mean I can't try just to see what'll happen.

 

Because I focused on pagefile so much, I just know the land a bit and I can tell you DONT ever listen to those "quick 3 click speedup your PC" website claiming how pagefile-haters are wrong and you "need" it unless "programs won't work" - I can tell you that I have never ever seen a program not working and displaying a "no pagefile present" error. You have all these microsoft fanboys talking how pagefile is important, ..etc the whole idea of memory from HDD is ridicolous to me in so many ways, what's the point of RAM then.

 

Look, in theory it should help, but, I found out that in practise it makes it worse, because it doesn't work like microsoft or the lovers say, it doesn't "page out the virtual address space and freeing up more RAM to speed up your PC" - anybody with any idea about computers knows that free RAM doesn't speed up anything ... the pagefile, mem manager, -> it's swapping all the time even if you're nowere NEAR reaching the total RAM usage, that's one of the things I found out, doesn't matter if your RAM is full or not, more than half empty and mem manager keeps HDDs rumbling some sh*t, and it's not just that, it's the Windows that decides what and when is something going to get into pagefile, with all the chunks for all the background stuff even if Im pretty much on minimal with the useless services disabled, one game chunk in the middle of the haystack and the HDD goes into the crazy-mode occasionally having many of these isolated chunk requests it tires to fetch them all at once so it the HDD head goes nuts, that's the moment when my games would just freeze or frame drop to like 2 or something, and no, it wasn't graphical frame-drop, the gameplay it selfs stopped, not just the FPS being low and missing those frame, so there was no frames to display, the CPU is waiting for the chunk of the memory, the windows mem manager to do it's thing to put that chunk into RAM and it has to wait for the HDD to do it's thing, and I don't even know if it's the HDD, it might be the mem manager weird requests forcing the HDD to go into nut mode, as the HDD appears to be loading a lot but I mean, many times I tried with low pagefile size and a smaller game, the time it took for the HDD's pagefile to chug it's thing, so much time passed that would amount to over 1 GB at least and how the heck is that much HDD loading required to load some little asset, in the middle of a mission or the middle of a RTS game when everything on the screen suposses to be loaded in RAM already, supposably only a small dummy chunk of the memory in many cases as I said that when testing I was not going over total RAM usage, so it's a gimmick, and I think it might be more in the logic than in the pagefile it self, the way manager schedules what and when something is not important or is, that's one of the main goals pagefile tries to do is to free more RAM for more important data, even if the application creates dummy (they call it virtual) memory address space and may never need it, only needs it rarely or later, but when it has to read it the HDD has to fetch it, and even if it's just a small chunk or just the header, the application can't continue until it gets that chunk or a confirmation from the HDD that doing lord knows what rumbling the head all over the place taking so long to load some stupid dummy memory that's probably some weird virtual nothingness FFS!

 

And to mention the big problem I had, basically, I was just so sick of the symptoms and confusion and laggies I wanted to get to the bottom of it, and I hooked up an led to a long, put that into the HDD activity on the mobo, so I had the HDD light right there on the desk, when the games, apps, windows UI lags a bit, there was almost always major HDD activity, even if the game was on pause, the freaking HDD was loading some crap for no reason, the windows memory manager just keeps doing stuff in the background and it might not be even the game's paged memory, it might be some part of an antivirus, part of some service, that just needs the memory that happens to be in part in the pagefile, I spent so much time troubleshooting, I'm not making any of this up, but I can admit memory management and pagefile was improved in Win7 compared to XP (What's Vista? never heard of it sorry)

 

I know that the dummy memory that apps create is without a pagefile is then in the RAM, but this is where the logic ends, it's shouldn't be Microsofts job to fix programmer-crap for them, that should be the author's job to fix and make a better application, if the program has 1 GB of dummy memory well that's bad coding, go back and fix it you slob, instead of hoping the pagefile mitigates it enough, it can't fix it, it doesn't fix memory leaks either, it may mitigate it in some cases but with these side effects and absolutely zero user configurability, for me it's a gimmick, it's not good enough for my needs, I rather get more RAM and avoid the side effects.

 

Pagefile is an old Windows 98 thing where PC industry was a little baby, when RAM was very very expensive.

 

 

EDIT2; Oh and all these industry terms around this are weird, I didn use em properly, what they call Virtual Address Space actually has nothing to do with the pagefile is a confilcting term, it should be called something else. Virtual Memory is supposably the pagefile you'd thought, some/devs/orgs people keep using it for pagefile but other's interchangably for VAS.

 

Basically when you have pagefile enabled, you have 4GB of RAM and 4GB of Pagefile, you don't have 8 GB of just "Memory" which is also used to describe RAM, you have 8 GB of Logical Memory, 4GB of Physical and 4GB of Virtual.

 

But anyway VAS is really something that's deeply about CPUs and it's registers, instructions, OS communication, etc - even microsoft and other people in the pagefile "communities" that just mixed these terms around when talking about pagefile.

 

EDIT; Basically for MS everything is Virtual Memory or VAS as the OS sees it, even without pagefile, the internet appended those terms to the pagefile because the word "Virtual" kind of sounds appropriate to use it for pagefile as it's fake and not RAM which is also called physical memory.

 

So the "rarely needed half empty chunks" or wrongly termed by me before as "Virtual Address Space" that pagefile tries to get out of the RAM, are just something else there's no special term for or at least I haven't came across it.

 

And I really didn't plan to go into a wall of text.

 

And here we go again.. You are NOT going to get 120 fps out of a high fidelity aircraft simulation.. This is not Battlefield, it is simulation and there is a LOT going on here... Do not try to compare frame rates from first person shooters to aircraft simulations..

 

That's exactly why AMD Mantle is perfect for this, to take the load off the CPU, so it can have more room to calculate simulation mathematics instead of spoonfeeding the GPU and affecting FPS.

Edited October 30, 2014 by Worrazen

[silviuf]

Sorry Wader8, your post is so big that I didn't have the patience to read it. It seems that you read some things and you know how to handle them. But you were told that this game MIGHT give you erratic behavior with pagefile off, specifically because DCS' graphic engine is old, yet you do not seem to understand this. Then I don't know what this forum's seniors might help you with, this is the official explanation from ED, like it or not.

 

As for the erratic frame rate drops, I have them too: when I look around in the airport, even though the displayed buildings are horrible ugly-looking paper "things", I still get a frame rate drop, like that building was made of high-resolution textures. I don't think there is a logical explanation for this, aside from an graphics engine flaw.

[Wolf Rider]

if your Windows 7 on an SSD is seemingly a bit laggy, you might find you need to run the TRIM function.

Alternatively, you something running the background which is sapping resources, and along these lines, the DCS installed file path and having or not having (depending) the root folder set to full permissions also plays a part in performance...

 

Also, there's no need to run the Page File disabled on Windows 7 (and higher) it does a fine job. Just leave at the default setting (The disabled/ fixed size Page File setting was only really ever effective with Windows XP (and earlier

 

Isn't MANTLE just an AMD attempt at an alternative to DirectX?

 

Smoke has always been a problem, and some have reported a problem with clouds... airports have a lot of buildings which have hitboxes/ collision detection contained within them

Edited November 21, 2014 by Wolf Rider

[siipperi]

This.

 

40 fps is actually pretty good, especially for an older graphics card and CPU like you have

 

40fps is horrible, end of story.

[Mustang]

I actually managed to squeeze out a few more frames by removing the fogApply within the cldDraw.fx in the shaders mod, makes no difference visually and helps with FPS especially in dynamic weather situations.

[cichlidfan]

On some recent tests, thick clouds would drop FPS and raise the GPU temps by at least 5C.

Edited November 22, 2014 by cichlidfan

[Dalminar]

Put DCS on SSD and you will notice an improvement. In the past when I had DCS on HDD, it would pause for a second before an explosion, after I put on SSD it is smooth. It also lowered my mission loading time from over 1min to less than 30sec. However, your old video card will still be a problem.

 

Any hardware-brand-reliant thing such as AMD Mantle is never a good solution.

Edited November 21, 2014 by Dalminar

[ricktoberfest]

40fps is horrible, end of story.

 

 

What do you consider adequate FPS on mid range computer? I've played almost every flight sim out there and any that were even remotely realistic didn't get higher than 40 unless you purpose built a computer with no budget limit

[siipperi]

What do you consider adequate FPS on mid range computer? I've played almost every flight sim out there and any that were even remotely realistic didn't get higher than 40 unless you purpose built a computer with no budget limit

 

I would say mid range fps is around 50fps since if your average fps is around 40 it often means it dips quite low too often. High end computer FPS should be well around 100, if not it means game is poorly optimized in most cases, I haven't really seen game after crysis (when GPUs were still a bit underwhelming) that could justice having bad fps on high end machine.

 

Really the point is that sims often have optimizing problems since they are running on the old engine and too much "stuff" on the background (AI units for example). If my computer is in the end of lifecycle I just turn off AA, post processing effects, and so on.

 

 

I have no idea where forum people have gotten this thinking that they have over 120fps in DCS. Do they just play A10, or do they even play DCS atm? Almost all other modules suffers heavy FPS drops in multiple ways. I have heavily overclocked GTX 670, sure not the newest and best GPU out there but it suffers same fps drops than most people get, and clearly problem is in the smoke/clouds/ground. I expect EDGE to solve this however and happy camper until then. :thumbup:

[ricktoberfest]

I would say mid range fps is around 50fps since if your average fps is around 40 it often means it dips quite low too often. High end computer FPS should be well around 100

 

 

 

I expect EDGE to solve this however and happy camper until then. :thumbup:

 

 

I have a pretty good mid range computer, although about 2 years old now.

 

Intel I5 overclocked to 4.5gHz

Radeon 6850HD overclocked a bit

8 GB Patriot gaming ram

 

I have never seen a flight sim over 40FPS unless I turned all detail down. Now I realize that ATI cards have issues with DX9 so I'm hoping EDGE will fix that, but I would be happy with stable FPS around 30.

 

BTW- I'm pretty sure that the human eye can't distinguish past 30FPS so the only reason to have it higher is for stability and hardware (monitor) issues. (Or bragging rights)

 

The only time I've seen over 50 fps would be GAMES like war thunder, world of planes, etc., or by installing really old flight sims on a modern computer (thinking "Sierra pro pilot" or the "fly" series or MS Flight Sim 2004 and earlier). The recent and fallen MS Flight only achieved stable frame rates above 30 by removing all AI and limiting the map smaller areas, and that was running on DX10 or 11

[Haukka81]

****

BTW- I'm pretty sure that the human eye can't distinguish past 30FPS so the only reason to have it higher is for stability and hardware (monitor) issues. (Or bragging rights)

 

***

 

And you are so wrong like many before you, human eye can see way more than 30fps , just make bit study work :book:

 

 

Good to read: http://amo.net/NT/02-21-01FPS.html

[Wolf Rider]

higher also helps alleviate mouse input lag ;)

 

 

Nice read Haukka :thumbup:

 

the other bit involved in the 24fps selected for movies was; it was the slowest speed at which frame by frame motion became (mostly) fluid to the eye, balanced with cost of film stock and the least amount of per foot needed. (ie 30 frames per second uses 25% more feet of stock than 24 frames per second does)

Edited November 23, 2014 by Wolf Rider

[ricktoberfest]

And you are so wrong like many before you, human eye can see way more than 30fps , just make bit study work :book:

 

 

Good to read: http://amo.net/NT/02-21-01FPS.html

 

 

Ok, I'll give you higher can be better. But this article was written in 2001/2002. I still have yet to see a home computer that costs less than $1000 able to render FSX, or xplane 10 at full (or even high) detail at frame rates of which you expect. DCS has all the computing of those simulations and adds damage effects, accurate weapons simulation, and AI that does more than simply fly from 1 place to another

[audax]

DCS so so great and demanding, even in 10 years no computer could display it at

, right?

[ricktoberfest]

DCS so so great and demanding, even in 10 years no computer could display it at

, right?

 

 

I'm sorry, but what does that prove. That you have a high end computer? That you can create scenarios where only a few units exist so frame rates are high?

 

I can make DCS perform at high frame rates too, but that isn't the norm

 

I do think with time and technology getting faster, that frame rates will improve on DCS. But the games that are current are always evolving to use more of those resources as they are created. EDGE will help to allow GPUs to increase frame rates, but again as graphics effects improve they will slow down already they are leaving effects out so as to not bog down the game