DCS 2.0 Nevada stutter help

[gazmonalpha]

DCS 2.0 Nevada stutter help

 

I don't stutter now, I added more ram and upgraded to 980ti 6gb

 

Stutters are gone , this is why I said it's not a monitor issue

 

 

It's about pure system power

 

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[Wolf Rider]

yes it does

 

 

no it doesn't....

[Socket7]

Every monitor out there deals with displaying the rendered frame to user in it's own way.

 

Some are better than others. Some are good for some things, and bad for others.

 

Some monitors induce large amounts of input lag by buffering 2 or 3 frames in memory, and performing built in post processing. Some don't. Some let you turn it on and off.

 

There's a lot of magic going on the user has no access to in a monitor. They aren't just dumb devices wiggling an electron beam according to an analog input system.

 

There are many variables for these sorts of issues so there's no need to think someone is wrong, everyone can be right.

[gazmonalpha]

DCS 2.0 Nevada stutter help

 

Sorry but based on my testing which has been in some depth tbh , this has nothing to do with monitors

 

I would be more interested in seeing what specs people still experiencing stutter have ( not including there monitor)

 

Hdd/ cpu/ gpu / what's running in the background ?

 

Win 10 or 8?

 

Are drivers up to date? Including sound

Are mirrors on?

 

 

 

 

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Edited March 14, 2016 by gazmonalpha

[Wolf Rider]

if its a 59.4 Hz monitor... that is something to take into account

[gazmonalpha]

How would this be?

 

 

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[Wolf Rider]

basically a TV without the tuner masquerading as a computer monitor, for one; how is it possible to sync to 59.4, for the second

 

?

[gazmonalpha]

Hmm still believe this is the underlying issue with open alpha sorry

 

 

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[Wolf Rider]

try a later released CPU/ mobo with the newer released Operating System and hardware... makes a huge difference

 

but as always... people are personal with their PC's, and what they believe is what they believe

[Windsortheater]

Anyone having siginificant frame drops only when zooming in on Las Vegas (or city areas)?

 

Get 60FPS locked at normal zoom buzzing vegas at very low altitude.

 

As zoom increases (even with sim paused) FPS starts to tank. Any suggestions?

 

Note - even on lowest preset still get FPS drops below 60 when zooming in to max zoom on a building filled landscape.

 

Running I7 4.2Ghz w/970.

[gazmonalpha]

What's ram?

 

 

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[Redglyph]

It seems to be the loading of objects when they enter the field of view.

 

I have the same exact problem with 1.5.3, when turning the head in a new direction, the rendering freezes suddenly if that's a new direction, or if I zoom more than before and there are objects to display. Then the next time I turn my head in that direction again it's fine.

 

Sometimes it freezes just for a few milliseconds, but it can be up to one or two seconds. Typically 5-10 seconds in the case of NTTR, the first time I start it. It happens later during the flight, it's not only at the start, though it's usually more severe when starting, especially the first time (I suppose the reading is done from the cache the next time, if this part is not flushed, which is probably not often with 16 GB of memory).

 

As shown in my settings up in this thread, the visibility range is high, or ultra, doesn't seem to make any difference. The preload radius, supposedly more relevant here, is maximum.

 

Would there be something wrong with the pre-loading?

 

That's definitely something to do with all the objects, and it's not NTTR-only, though it's more obvious because of the amount of details and the extent of Las Vegas. When re-loading the same mission it's much easier, for example with the Red Flag campaign on A-10C:

- on the first load of mission 5, it remains frozen for about 10 seconds (with the warning beeping during all that time); after that it's possible to look around but every move comes with a freezing, progressively shorter and shorter. Zooming will bring back more stuttering, until all angles have been covered and no new objects come into view.

- on the second load the initial freeze issue is not there anymore, there is still some amount of stuttering but it's not all that bad. I suppose that most of the objects to load are still in the cache - the same observation can be done when loading DCS: on the first time it takes quite some time to start DCS, and ages to load the NTTR map (on hard disk anyway), the second time is much quicker by far.

 

There are some parameters to load fewer vegetation, and to remove the traffic: it's hard to estimate for sure but it seems to help a little bit. Unfortunately I couldn't find any detail level for the airports or other objects on the map.

 

The same problem is obvious for example in X-Plane, if you choose a high detail level in airports, you'll get massive stuttering, it can be cured with this setting on the same hardware installation. Maybe we could benefit from that in DCS too?

 

Perhaps it's not straightforward to code, but couldn't this be alleviated by not rendering objects until they are actually loaded in physical memory, instead of freezing the whole rendering thread until all objects to show are available?

[Buzzles]

Perhaps it's not straightforward to code, but couldn't this be alleviated by not rendering objects until they are actually loaded in physical memory, instead of freezing the whole rendering thread until all objects to show are available?

 

Would that not leave you with a problem of looking at a scene and having objects appear a second or so later than others?

[Redglyph]

Would that not leave you with a problem of looking at a scene and having objects appear a second or so later than others?

 

It could be, when the engine hasn't had the time to fetch the new data in due time. But wouldn't that be better than having the whole rendering frozen? it's a honest question, it might be a matter of preference.

 

P3D is coping with its limited virtual memory (since this dinosaur is still a 32-bit process) by flushing all textures and data of objects that are estimated as not indispensable. If you look inside the cockpit, chances are if you look outside again you will see objects and/or textures appearing in front of you. It's bad when it's happening too often and when it's too obvious like the whole scenery, but here the reason is different and we're supposed to have a prefetch, for which we can set the radius (I'm not sure exactly what it applies to, though), that should minimize the impact to far objects. Except at the very beginning, but that's fine.

[Redglyph]

Wow. Actually an SSD goes a long way to solving the problem. And not even a PCIe, a "standard" SATA 6 Gbps (here, a Corsair Neutron replacing a 'software' RAID0 dual HD).

 

I was expecting a slight improvement, but the loading is actually quite faster, and the stuttering almost disappeared (once I put back enough bushes and trees, high textures & terrain textures, ultra visib. range, medium traffic, ... with lower settings it's simply not there anymore). With those settings, still about 30 to 60 fps over Las Vegas, but it's much smoother.

 

On the first start, there's a slight hesitation but barely visible, nothing compared to the 10-s freeze I had every time on HD with mission 05 of RF.

 

Maybe a first step on a HD would be a defragmentation, though I'm pretty sure my disk was clean, those who have the problem could give it a try. Random disk accesses might still be an issue, however.

[Wolf Rider]

Have you tried turning Prefetch off?

Also, the Z77 chipset is basically, unstable

[Redglyph]

Have you tried turning Prefetch off?

Also, the Z77 chipset is basically, unstable

 

Are you talking about the CPU cache settings, or the disk cache? But in any case, no, and I don't think that would be a good idea ;)

 

I wouldn't know about the Z77, it's a Z87 here. But if your chipset is unstable, wouldn't you get more serious problems than stuttering in simulators?

[Wolf Rider]

Are you talking about the CPU cache settings, or the disk cache? But in any case, no, and I don't think that would be a good idea ;)

 

I wouldn't know about the Z77, it's a Z87 here. But if your chipset is unstable, wouldn't you get more serious problems than stuttering in simulators?

 

 

 

 

 

No, I wasn't "talking" about CPU cache settings, or the disc cache, for that matter, as you offered... I was "talking" about 'Prefetch' as you mentioned :) (kill it in services.msc)

If you're not running a Z77, then good for you :)

yes... if the chipset is unstable, there would be quite a range of 'problems', not all being apparent.

 

 

If you could define your "stuttering" that would go quite a way to giving you help, seeing some of the obvious has been eliminated - and perhaps offer up, as to what brand/ model your motherboard is, what your harddrives are, etc, etc?

Edited April 4, 2016 by Wolf Rider

[hansangb]

I don't know. I had Z77 with CORE I7-3770K and never had a problem running DCS (or anything else). Not that it matters much anymore. I'm on to bigger and badder platform for Oculus use! :)

[Redglyph]

No, I wasn't "talking" about CPU cache settings, or the disc cache, for that matter, as you offered... I was "talking" about 'Prefetch' as you mentioned :) (kill it in services.msc)

If you're not running a Z77, then good for you :)

yes... if the chipset is unstable, there would be quite a range of 'problems', not all being apparent.

 

 

If you could define your "stuttering" that would go quite a way to giving you help, seeing some of the obvious has been eliminated - and perhaps offer up, as to what brand/ model your motherboard is, what your harddrives are, etc, etc?

 

I don't really understand what you are talking about, to be honest, nor why you are using those quotes. Prefetching is a feature in caching, either at the CPU level or for disks, and it's not advised to turn it off. There might be a service called Prefetch in some versions of Windows, or installed to support some peripherals, I don't know, I don't have it.

 

Thanks for your offer to help, but for my part the problem seems to be linked to the loading of scenery parts as explained earlier, and has mostly disappeared (I described it extensively in a post just above, posted a complete log earlier, and other people have been describing it throughout this thread for quite a while). Let's see whether others reach the same conclusion.

[Wolf Rider]

~ Prefetching is a feature in caching, either at the CPU level or for disks, and it's not advised to turn it off. There might be a service called Prefetch in some versions of Windows, or installed to support some peripherals, I don't know, I don't have it.

 

 

 

Actually, you do have it > look here <

 

Thanks for your offer to help, but for my part the problem seems to be linked to the loading of scenery parts as explained earlier, and has mostly disappeared (I described it extensively in a post just above,

 

 

a tad difficult to comprehend what you are saying there when posts are timestamped so close together, perhaps you realized that?

 

 

~ posted a complete log earlier, and other people have been describing it throughout this thread for quite a while). Let's see whether others reach the same conclusion.

 

yes, but you were being asked for your for description of your stuttering - make sense?

[Boris]

I don't stutter now, I added more ram and upgraded to 980ti 6gb

 

Stutters are gone , this is why I said it's not a monitor issue

 

 

It's about pure system power

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I can't see this being about system power.

 

I have a 4770k overclocked to 4200, a 980 ti and 16gb of RAM. Quite a powerful system by anyone's measure, but I still get stuttering.

 

I have my 60hz monitor running at a stable 78hz and get consistent fps in the 68 to 78 fps range. The stats all check out, but engine stutters all the same. It's better in 1.5 than it is in 2.0.

 

I have none of these problems in other games.

[kazereal]

I have my 60hz monitor running at a stable 78hz and get consistent fps in the 68 to 78 fps range. The stats all check out, but engine stutters all the same. It's better in 1.5 than it is in 2.0.

 

 

Monitor refresh rate does not matter: it is separate thing from rendering performance.

 

Looking at direction X has some amount of objects and polygons to render, looking at direction Y might have more to render requiring more rendering time -> lower framerate.

 

On something as complex as Nevada (or Vegas, actually) the variations in required rendering performance can be huge depending on location (height) and direction you are looking at.

 

Modern games can do "port-hole" (portal) optimization where you are certain you will never see more than specified amount of geometry. These are database-driven optimizations where you are limited by design what you can see.

 

In a true simulation like DCS you can hop in a helo, move to any position and look at any distance and orientation in any kind of weather and lighting: similar geometry reduction beforehand simply does not work same way.

 

In addition to having level-of-detail objects (reduced complexity objects) in a far distance, games can render far objects in lower resolution which are then combined with higher resolution renders near the player viewpoint.

 

Comparing to games is not appropriate.

Edited May 7, 2016 by kazereal

[Redglyph]

I don't see why rendering optimizations done in other simulators wouldn't be appropriate in this one. And there's no such thing as "true simulation" ;)

 

But the problem seems to be more related to prefetching, the user gets some rendering performance, let's say 45 FPS, then every once in a while (could be every second or so), the rendering freezes and the same frame remains for the duration of several others (let's say 100-500 ms, sometimes much more). The sudden and recurrent break in regularity is not due to one more complex scene to render, it's something else coming in the way.

 

I can only make assumptions, this would require the knowledge of the source code to be sure, but something stops the rendering and it can be one of many things like

- another task that is in another thread but doesn't release the CPU soon enough - though I would expect that AI / traffic / user control are done in separate hardware threads (or processes) if available on the processor, in which case this shouldn't be the cause here;

- data needed for the rendering are not available, because the point of view has moved in angle and/or position, and the rendering thread then has to rely on lower system layers it can't schedule properly, to read data from the disk;

- massive amount of textures need to be uploaded to the GPU;

- ...

 

The 2nd explanation would have my preference, it's the most likely in this situation, and it explains why on a hard disk the rendering freezes for up to 10 seconds at the beginning, and this almost disappears on an SSD, all other things being equal.

 

Now this is also seen on other simulators, but mostly when fetching textures. If you try Prepar3D with massive ORBX scenery (try South California for example, or photo-realistic regions) and the highest texture resolution, throw the finest mesh to make sure, and you'll get stuttering because it must fetch quite an amount of texture from the disk.

[Wolf Rider]

^^^ what motherboard are you running?

 

you also would do well to consider that not everyone is having "freezing/ stalling/ stuttering" problems - which points back to hardware, the way the system is setup and the operating system - all run in together

Edited May 11, 2016 by Wolf Rider