DCS Performance Optimizations?

[JazonXD]

So as we know, DCS isn't exactly the most performance optimized game and the DCS unfortunately doesn't really take use of the whole CPU, frequently tanking framerates in certain situations. So I'm wondering, since I know that it's always been in the road map that there's going to be further performance optimizations, but when can we actually expect one? Thanks.

 

(As I am posting this, I am a DCS 1.5.x player, I do not have 2.0/NTTR, is the performance of NTTR better than 1.5.x? Thanks)

[FlightControl]

So as we know, DCS isn't exactly the most performance optimized game and the DCS unfortunately doesn't really take use of the whole CPU, frequently tanking framerates in certain situations. So I'm wondering, since I know that it's always been in the road map that there's going to be further performance optimizations, but when can we actually expect one? Thanks.

 

 

 

(As I am posting this, I am a DCS 1.5.x player, I do not have 2.0/NTTR, is the performance of NTTR better than 1.5.x? Thanks)

 

 

 

As far as i know, there is nothing in the pipeline to optimize cpu utilization...

 

Sent from mTalk on Windows 10 mobile

[Exorcet]

The latest versions of DCS run pretty well for me. Your set up looks similar to mine. What issues are you having?

[hughlb]

The framerate tanking may have more to do with the API rather than hardware specifically. Plenty of reports of GPU underutilisation.

 

NTTR is highly intensive around Vegas, but I dont have a lot of complaints when taking into account the number of assets on screen, and shadows etc. Biggest issue is stuttering with EDGE, thats been my experience at least.

[dburne]

Performance in DCSW2 has been stellar for me, and very consistent.

DCS 1.5 performance seems to be all over the place for me, not as consistent.

[fyaruny]

I can't really give an answer to your question regarding release dates on updates but do you mind if i ask you, how exactly are you geting preformance issues? When do your framerates drop? In what situations? Also, what are your graphic settings in game?

I ask this because i also used to have preformance issues wich i got rid of all of them, stuttering mostly, by doing 3 things:

- move my dcs to my ssd disk

- press alt+enter every time i enter the game and if i minimize it i will have to press alt+enter again when i get back to the game. (yes because the full screen game setting wont really do anything, if you have windows 8 or windows 10 you can check if its full screen by raising or lowering your volume with keyboard keys, if you dont see the windows volume bar on the left means its fullscreen mode).

- also turn off vsync, i dont know if it will make a diference to you but on my gtx 960 vsync kills my framerate.

I also changed some settings on nvidea control panel but right now i cant remember what i did and im not on my computer.

Note that what actually worked for me may or may not work for you but you can give it a try if you want

Edited June 16, 2016 by fyaruny

[kobac]

Since I know LockOn and now for DCS it has always been fight for more FPS, less stuttering and freezing. I change hardware only due to DCS. I'm not sure the situation will improve in the future with this engine.

[droopy114]

I can't really give an answer to your question regarding release dates on updates but do you mind if i ask you, how exactly are you geting preformance issues? When do your framerates drop? In what situations? Also, what are your graphic settings in game?

I ask this because i also used to have preformance issues wich i got rid of all of them, stuttering mostly, by doing 3 things:

- move my dcs to my ssd disk

- press alt+enter every time i enter the game and if i minimize it i will have to press alt+enter again when i get back to the game. (yes because the full screen game setting wont really do anything, if you have windows 8 or windows 10 you can check if its full screen by raising or lowering your volume with keyboard keys, if you dont see the windows volume bar on the left means its fullscreen mode).

- also turn off vsync, i dont know if it will make a diference to you but on my gtx 960 vsync kills my framerate.

I also changed some settings on nvidea control panel but right now i cant remember what i did and im not on my computer.

Note that what actually worked for me may or may not work for you but you can give it a try if you want

 

Alt+enter when entering the game is essential, to get rid of that stutter. An important thing to do also is to be sure all your settings in Nvidia Control Panel or Nvidia Inspector are set to "application controlled", and probably the most important: the Power Management Mode, set to "prefer maximum performance". DCS is CPU intensive, see here:

 

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=157374

 

The more ghz the better...and the RAM: 8Gb is fine for SP, but not for MP, sadly. Last night i've played on the "TFP Operation Skyfall" server, when joined we were 18 players, i've checked the VRAM usage reported by the game (left Ctrl+Pause twice), it was showing me 14Gb+...

[FraserNZL]

Upgrade your ram mate I use 16gb and on the open conflict server I'm using 80%. I'm thing of going 32gb

[x39crazy]

This actually helped me quite a bit.

Couldn't think why my i7@4.5 and gtx 980 were stuttering noticeably.

Changed NCP and turned off vsync-now I get 200-ish buttery smooth fps in 1.5.3

Thanks all!

[droopy114]

This actually helped me quite a bit.

Couldn't think why my i7@4.5 and gtx 980 were stuttering noticeably.

Changed NCP and turned off vsync-now I get 200-ish buttery smooth fps in 1.5.3

Thanks all!

 

 

Turning off vsync means deal with screen tearing, unless you have a gsync monitor, don't you?

[JazonXD]

The latest versions of DCS run pretty well for me. Your set up looks similar to mine. What issues are you having?

 

I can't really give an answer to your question regarding release dates on updates but do you mind if i ask you, how exactly are you geting preformance issues? When do your framerates drop? In what situations? Also, what are your graphic settings in game?

I ask this because i also used to have preformance issues wich i got rid of all of them, stuttering mostly, by doing 3 things:

- move my dcs to my ssd disk

- press alt+enter every time i enter the game and if i minimize it i will have to press alt+enter again when i get back to the game. (yes because the full screen game setting wont really do anything, if you have windows 8 or windows 10 you can check if its full screen by raising or lowering your volume with keyboard keys, if you dont see the windows volume bar on the left means its fullscreen mode).

- also turn off vsync, i dont know if it will make a diference to you but on my gtx 960 vsync kills my framerate.

I also changed some settings on nvidea control panel but right now i cant remember what i did and im not on my computer.

Note that what actually worked for me may or may not work for you but you can give it a try if you want

Issue I'm having is whenever there's a ground battel going on and i'm up in the air, a few 10 to 20 miles away, as soon as my screen has that ground battle in sight, GPU utilization drops to single digit percentages. Sometimes like 10 or 20%. So basically, it's getting bottlenecked by CPU. Also, CPU always sits at about 30 to 40% so evidently, it's only using about 1 to 2 threads even though I have 4 cores. DCS really likes higher frequency CPU because since it only uses those 1 to 2 cores, the higher the frequency, the more it affect framerates. Otherwise, graphical settings are basically all on high or ultra, Anti Aliasing set to 16x (There is basically no performance difference AT ALL whatsoever between the settings) and depth of field is off. Vsync is off.

 

When the performance tanking happens, I drop from about 70 to 80 fps down to 20 or sometimes even 15. If I'm staring into the sky or I'm simply at a very high altitude, i easily get about 150 to 180.

[unknown]

The only performance problem i noticed is while shooting unguided rockets. If i'm flying around in my MI-8 i get normally 50+ fps to 75(capped there), sometimes it drops to 30+ but that is not a problem for me(singleplayer), but as soon as i point my nose down and let this unguided rockets rain to the ground the fps drops sometimes below 10fps while watching the smoke and explosions. The effects look good but not good enough to justify such low fps on an i7-3770 @3.5GHz, 16GB RAM, Fury X GPU and the game installed on an SSD. Other than that i'm pleased with the performance.

[YoYo]

Turning off vsync means deal with screen tearing, unless you have a gsync monitor, don't you?

 

I can confirm it. I have monitor with G-sync and it helps me a lot. Refresh rate is 60 and in DCS in 95% of the time I have stable 60 fps with Starway or Brthek textures without any problems. 5% - sometimes fps jumps to 37-59 but in campaigns only with many, many objects but this level is acceptable for me.

[tom1502]

I get noticeable stuttering in 1.5 but not 2.0 - and yet they both have the same settings. I have recently upgraded my RAM to 32GB, which has not made a noticeable difference. I don't really understand why there is a problem in 1.5. It does not seem to be graphics related though. I will get a pause, approximately for half a second or so. This definitely happens if I hit the F3, flyby, view while supersonic. Modelling the sonic boom makes it pause.

 

Like I've said though, I don't get any of this in 2.0, and 2.0 works so much better with Oculus Rift that I want to play it far more, but the populated servers are on 1.5! :cry:

[Nu-NRG]

Once you start logging and graphing the HW utilization by DCS, you waive your head in dismay.

[JazonXD]

Once you start logging and graphing the HW utilization by DCS, you waive your head in dismay.

 

pretty much, i have afterburner OSD set up and once it starts lagging, i take a quick look to the corner of my screen and it reveals that my GPU utilization is down to like single digits... smh

[x39crazy]

Turning off vsync means deal with screen tearing, unless you have a gsync monitor, don't you?

 

I was expecting that too, but really it wasn't bad at all and still very playable. I play on a 40" TV.

Turning vsync on made things smoother for sure, but it wasn't a deal breaker.

But I only fly ww2 stuff, primarily the 109 which I'm betting are a tad bit less stressful than the jets? I know the one time I sullied myself with a jet flying the mig-21 it was very jittery.

[flying rabbit]

You will only notice tearing if you deactivate vsync in the gamesettings and press ALT + ENTER to force real fullscreen. Otherwise the windows windowmanager still vsyncs.

[Hydrox]

JazonXD

"Issue I'm having is whenever there's a ground battel going on and i'm up in the air, a few 10 to 20 miles away, as soon as my screen has that ground battle in sight, GPU utilization drops to single digit percentages. Sometimes like 10 or 20%. So basically, it's getting bottlenecked by CPU. Also, CPU always sits at about 30 to 40% so evidently, it's only using about 1 to 2 threads even though I have 4 cores. DCS really likes higher frequency CPU because since it only uses those 1 to 2 cores, the higher the frequency, the more it affect framerates. Otherwise, graphical settings are basically all on high or ultra, Anti Aliasing set to 16x (There is basically no performance difference AT ALL whatsoever between the settings) and depth of field is off. Vsync is off.

 

When the performance tanking happens, I drop from about 70 to 80 fps down to 20 or sometimes even 15. If I'm staring into the sky or I'm simply at a very high altitude, i easily get about 150 to 180. "

 

 

That sums up well my issues, game is just like that here too. Terrible frame drops.

[Insanatrix]

You'll probably never see issue's like that fixed. I'm no expert on it but the only way I've known that a developer has gotten around that was using asynchronous rendering meaning the rendering doesn't run parallel to the simulation but rather as a separate entity. I think that's what they did in DayZ for instance which is why there was a large performance increase in one of the experimental builds but don't quote me on it as I haven't loaded or installed that game in 2 years. Using it as an example though because as a whole ArmA and the RV engine suffers from the same issue's, a massive workload for the CPU and not a whole lot for the GPU.

 

It has it's issues, I'm no programmer by any means, but you could have switches that don't switch because the simulation is behind the rendering, Units that appear to be looking one way when the simulation say's they're looking somewhere else because they are behind the renderer etc... Loads of weird issue's that wouldn't make asynchronous rendering feasible for a game or simulation as heavy as DCS. Which is why usually simulation is tied to rendering in complex games. I use Simulation as a generalization of the workload for the CPU as generally it's the biggest task. Could be scripts, could be AI, could be ballistics.

 

Better multithreading and parallel processing would help but I'm sure I read where ED felt that Pursuing better multithreading wouldn't be feasible or worth the time. Not to say they might not change their minds in the future.

[JazonXD]

You'll probably never see issue's like that fixed. I'm no expert on it but the only way I've known that a developer has gotten around that was using asynchronous rendering meaning the rendering doesn't run parallel to the simulation but rather as a separate entity. I think that's what they did in DayZ for instance which is why there was a large performance increase in one of the experimental builds but don't quote me on it as I haven't loaded or installed that game in 2 years. Using it as an example though because as a whole ArmA and the RV engine suffers from the same issue's, a massive workload for the CPU and not a whole lot for the GPU.

 

It has it's issues, I'm no programmer by any means, but you could have switches that don't switch because the simulation is behind the rendering, Units that appear to be looking one way when the simulation say's they're looking somewhere else because they are behind the renderer etc... Loads of weird issue's that wouldn't make asynchronous rendering feasible for a game or simulation as heavy as DCS. Which is why usually simulation is tied to rendering in complex games. I use Simulation as a generalization of the workload for the CPU as generally it's the biggest task. Could be scripts, could be AI, could be ballistics.

 

Better multithreading and parallel processing would help but I'm sure I read where ED felt that Pursuing better multithreading wouldn't be feasible or worth the time. Not to say they might not change their minds in the future.

 

Ahh, that seems quite unfortunate. It seems as if better multithreading is all there really needs in DCS. I'm obviously no programmer as well but I'd totally imagine that optimizing for better mutithreading is much easier than to change everything to asynch compute or something drastic like that. Hopefully though, I'll just hope and pray...

[Insanatrix]

Ahh, that seems quite unfortunate. It seems as if better multithreading is all there really needs in DCS. I'm obviously no programmer as well but I'd totally imagine that optimizing for better mutithreading is much easier than to change everything to asynch compute or something drastic like that. Hopefully though, I'll just hope and pray...

 

Problem with parallel processing is that everything needs to be written from the ground up to do it. In most cases that would mean an entirely new engine written from scratch. Almost every developer uses an iteration of an already pre-existing engine to run their games on. Try splitting off individual tasks and all of a sudden you have all kinds of crazy things happening because other systems within the engine weren't written with those tasks being run in parallel in mind. Like that old joke, run your compiler and get 1 error, go and fix that error and recompile and you have 10,000 errors now.

 

The resources needed to write a new engine, the time needed to do it etc... Think of how long it's taken DCS to get where it is now and try rewriting everything all over again. Doesn't sound fun, cheap or efficient.

[Fab]

Issue I'm having is whenever there's a ground battel going on and i'm up in the air, a few 10 to 20 miles away, as soon as my screen has that ground battle in sight, GPU utilization drops to single digit percentages. Sometimes like 10 or 20%. So basically, it's getting bottlenecked by CPU. Also, CPU always sits at about 30 to 40% so evidently, it's only using about 1 to 2 threads even though I have 4 cores. DCS really likes higher frequency CPU because since it only uses those 1 to 2 cores, the higher the frequency, the more it affect framerates. Otherwise, graphical settings are basically all on high or ultra, Anti Aliasing set to 16x (There is basically no performance difference AT ALL whatsoever between the settings) and depth of field is off. Vsync is off.

 

When the performance tanking happens, I drop from about 70 to 80 fps down to 20 or sometimes even 15. If I'm staring into the sky or I'm simply at a very high altitude, i easily get about 150 to 180.

 

DCS only uses 2 cores, 1 for sound, and one fro the rest

[adrianstealth]

They need to rebuild the sim on a capable engine &

Call it "DCS evolved" and charge us for it, I'd happily pay to get rid of these prehistoric type problems

 

I think DCS is an amazing sim but I'm not buying content until it runs well & I can use it without issue

I do run the latest high spec PC ( gtx1080 watercooled overclocked etc )

 

2016 is here along with the onset of VR