2.1 First Impressions (I know, it's Alpha) :-)

[wilbur81]

My 2.1 first impressions.

 

1. The performance hit is the first noticeable thing for me. (I do not fly VR) I've lost 15 - 20 FPS in around populated areas (whilst keeping nearly identical graphics settings) and there is more stuttering.

 

2. Related to #1 above, the visual differences that are seemingly creating the performance loss are striking, but not necessarily an improvement towards realism. The PBR and Deferred shading are extreme in their effect and wash everything out, making the world too bright and faded. Some of the nuances like reflections off of pavement have actually been lost with PBR, ironically.

 

3. It seems like these new lighting effects are really pleasing to the eye when the sim is played at dusk. However, for mid-day flying, things just get washed out with light and the lighting effects in general seem distracting and unrealistic.

 

4. After about 20 minutes of flying around in the F-15C, trying various settings, I found myself wanting to switch back to 2.0.5. So, I turned off the deferred shading option and thought, initially: "Ahh, back to 'normal'" However, I noticed very quickly that when the deferred shading option is turned off, shadows become almost royal blue and things don't look as good in general as they did in 2.0.X versions of NTTR.

 

5. It's already been mentioned that HUD's (at least in the F-15) have become nearly unreadable with the deferred shading, new lighting, PBR, etc. I'm sure they'll fix this.

 

Overall: I'm a bit disappointed with 2.1. The loss of smooth performance that I enjoyed in 2.0.X is not outweighed by the new lighting system for me. Again, at dawn and dusk, the world looks beautiful. But during 'normal' daylight hours, I'm not impressed and I think the visuals (for mid-day flight hours) have actually taken a step backwards, with a significant performance drop to boot. I know this is all Alpha and ED will address a lot of these things... but Alpha may be around for a long time at the rate we're going. :-)

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Edited May 27, 2017 by wilbur81

[NineLine]

Yeah, there does seem to be some weird performance issues even from the preview video I did to this release, but as you said... Alpha. The deferred shading is fairly new, tweaking is surely to come still.

 

Most things are pretty much observed by all. 3 I am a little less agreeable on, but many factors can change what each of us see.

[Gunny Highway]

Lots of weird things happen at night too. Mainly to do with cockpit lighting and reflections. The Mirage hud looks like the Navflir on the Harrier. I think we all knew this would happen, just have to wait a few months for things to get straightened out. Everything you said, I'm experiencing as well. Big FPS hit, weird reflection wash out issues, etc. Looks good in screenshots though. The pre-release version of normandy didn't seem to have these problems, or at least not that I saw in anyones videos.

[Zimmerdylan]

My first impressions are not very good. I'm very sorry ED but I'm not going to say much that's very positive about Normandy. You folks want constructive criticism and so I'll give you my opinions.

First glance.....TERRIBLE. Just terrible.

 

My first thought was that this map is either designed for people with rigs that are up at the top of the performance spectrum, or it's just buggy. From the things I saw on Youtube, this map isn't anything like what I was looking at. My setup being on the lower end of things shows none of those great details that I saw on Youtube. Honestly, it comes very close to another flight "sim" that I decided was way too gamey looking to play or take seriously. And again, this could be that I'm not using top of the line gamer stuff. If that's the case, well then so be it. I'll just have to begin to phase simming out as I am not going to start investing $700-800 in high end gaming cards, and then hundreds more into high end computers. If this is the direction that sims are moving, then I'll have to bow out pretty soon.

So the performance was just bad. Even with all settings relatively low......bad. Lots of flickering everywhere. AAAnnnnd again, could be that it's just too much for my computer. But I ran Las Vegas just wonderfully, and it still does (Even over the city).

Buildings and other stuff, very boxy, generic. Again, reminds me of yet another sim that I do not fly any more because I chose DCS over it.

I fired off some rounds while flying around. No tracers at all, but black dots floating off into the distance. Gamma seemed so high that a lot of things just blended together.

For me, Normandy was pretty much a bust. I loved NTTR immediately, but Normandy....not so much. I almost want to ask "What was so wrong with the old graphics?"

 

My hope is that this is Alpha and things will get better as we go. I am certainly willing to wait all of it out as you guys have always come through in the past. So after seemingly tearing you apart. I'm ok with it all. You guys will make whatever improvements you need to make and I am sure that naturally, it will get better. I'm sticking with you guys.

 

NTTR after the update.......Ummmm well........Pretty.....different. I can't say that it's too much better than Normandy at this point. Light flashes all over the cockpit whenever I go in and out of cloud shadows (I'm guessing). Ground shadows that are just plain midtone blue.

The mountain textures are very very cartoony. Guys....I have flown all over the Sonoran, and Nevada deserts for a long time. They're dull. They lack color, especially in Nevada. They do not have a bazillion shades of whatever those colors are. 2.1 honestly looks like one of those paintings that the retirees paint of the desert in one of their painting classes. These guys always complaining about the mountain textures haven't been around desert mountains all that much because they are more like they were in 2.0 than they are now.

The shadows of the mountains are also very odd. They are colored weird, and they grow, and move as you fly over them. It really messes up the scenery.

The performance in 2.1 is still quite good. No hits whatsoever for me. I find that strange because down town Vegas is a lot more detailed than anything I have seen in Normandy.

 

Again.....I'm going to ride this out with you guys. But my only hope is that the Caucasus map isn't headed in this direction.

 

Anyone thinking I'm crazy or wrong. It's all good. It's my opinion and I have to stick to it. And my opinion is that this is very early alpha, and my thoughts are just initial observations.

This is all from a guy who doesn't have a 1080 card or a high end i7 processor. If you have a good rig, I'm sure this thing may look a whole lot better to you.

Edited May 27, 2017 by Zimmerdylan

[wilbur81]

The deferred shading is fairly new, tweaking is surely to come still.

Most things are pretty much observed by all. .

 

Fair enough. :-)

[VampireNZ]

My first impressions are not very good. I'm very sorry ED but I'm not going to say much that's very positive about Normandy. You folks want constructive criticism and so I'll give you my opinions.

First glance.....TERRIBLE. Just terrible.

 

....

 

 

This is all from a guy who doesn't have a 1080 card or a high end i7 processor. If you have a good rig, I'm sure this thing may look a whole lot better to you.

 

Oh don't worry - over here with a 1080ti OC Strix and i7 stuff still looks terrible and VR performance is worse. So save your pennies.

 

After many years with DCS (since LOMAC) - I have finally cracked it....

 

 

:thumbup:

 

Not to be negative all the time thou - Flying in DCS in VR is absolutely amazing (If you ignore the stutters etc etc etc),..... and I love the keybinding system. Just wish they would put the brakes on 'new stuff' and fix the 'old stuff'.

Edited May 27, 2017 by VampireNZ

[msalama]

Am I one of the lucky ones then? Because after having successfully gone through the hurdles of getting it to work at all (see https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=3149608&postcount=10), I'm finding it runs very smooth and looks swell too. YAH :D

[Schmidtfire]

It's weird that these huge performance issues were not adressed in any of the preview videos. I wonder if something went sideways going from Normandy "stand alone" (kickstarter backer access version) to the 2.1.0 version with both NTTR/Normandy we have now...

[cthulhu68]

Am I one of the lucky ones then? Because after having successfully gone through the hurdles of getting it to work at all (see https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=3149608&postcount=10), I'm finding it runs very smooth and looks swell too. YAH :D

I had a big drop in FPS too. Decided to try driver update but only updated gpu driver and it didn't help much. Saw msalama's post about VC++ and went back and downloaded that and my FPS got back to normal levels.

[ebabil]

* huge fps drop

* abnormal blue shadows

* weird reflections

* washed out effects

* very bad water textures

Seeing these after four hours downloading is not good.

hopefully it will be fixed within next patches .

[rogonaut]

pretty much the same as mentioned above, the hype is fading. but i know u guys at ED are gonna make it better.

[Rotorhead]

My download finished very late night, so all I have "tested" so far was a quick look at two AI Mudhens flying over Vegas landing at Nellis, just to see how the new effect look like. Sadly, I can only repeat what others say:

 

-FPS drop is noticeable. In 2.0.5, flying over NTTR with no (or few) AI units, most settings to High, vis range on Extreme, I was able to stay very close to 60 FPS even over downtown vegas. Not anymore.

 

-Shadows, both from scenery and planes, are innaturally blue. Plus, aircraft shadows are waaay too blurred. I see that ED was trying to achieve "soft shadow" effect, which is great, but it is extremely overdone. Just walk outside on a sunny day, shadows are black and well defined. You would need a studio lighting to achieve such effect, and even then, it wouldn't look exactly like it does now in DCS. But on a sunny day in desert? No way.

 

-Trees are too bright and stand out innaturally. The same issue was present in early Normandy videos, in the latter ones, it seemed to be not so pronounced. Haven't took a look at Normandy yet, maybe it's better there, but in Nevada, you see distant building blending with terrain and fog just as they should, and bright, almost luminous trees right next to them, as if they weren't affected by distance at all.

 

That's all I have now. In fact, I am pretty busy with other hobies to spend much time in DCS right now, but hopefully will spare a few moments to take a closer look (and to chack out Normandy!).

 

All ind all, I am happy with what ED aimed to do - the new lighting, reflections, etc, are all steps in the right direction. I am, hovewer, very unhappy with how they done it - what are we seeing now certainly wasn't the intended result. After all, pre-release screens and videos didn't look nearly that horrible, and early reviewers praised the smooth performance.

 

So hopefully, this won't be that difficult for ED to fix, and soon, we will all be enjoing what we have seen in the previews. In the meantime, fly safe! :pilotfly:

[Weta43]

My first thought was that this map is either designed for people with rigs that are up at the top of the performance spectrum, or it's just buggy.

 

Of course it's buggy.

 

If it wasn't buggy, it wouldn't be an Alpha, it would be a production release...

 

Was that not obvious ?

[kunterbunt]

Lets all not forget how lucky we all are with our hobby today. I still remember the days when there was no flight simulation available to speak of. And everybody kept saying that I should forget about them, as they are a dying piece of software. This is not and will never be a mass market, so don't wait. There was a time when you could no longer buy a flight stick.

Fortunately mass market compatible ego shooters kept graphic card manufacturers busy and now much more busy because of deep learning. We all can use those cards for our hobby, as simulations need a lot of graphic memory. This is probably also why some people have better performance and others less. make sure your graphic settings match the graphic card memory you have.

We have an exotic hobby, but are lucky that some companies can make enough money to survive and create great things for us.

[Rotorhead]

Lets all not forget how lucky we all are with our hobby today. I still remember the days when there was no flight simulation available to speak of. And everybody kept saying that I should forget about them, as they are a dying piece of software. This is not and will never be a mass market, so don't wait. There was a time when you could no longer buy a flight stick.

 

Very true. I remember playing sims - or "sims" - on my 75MHz Pentium I in the time where a few colored polygons was considered the pinnacle of graphic fidelity and realism. And I, as a small kid back then, always dreamed of a sim where there would be graphics that look like in real life, with trees and grass that move in the wind, and gardens with toolsheds and greenhouses, and people walking on the ground, and power lines I can actually crash into, and plane tyres that compress on the ground, and rotor blades that droop when standing still and cockpit doors that actually open and million other things I knew never will be possible.

 

And now, some 20 years later, look what we have. Hell, there even are bycicles and clothes lines in Normandy! Talk about dream coming true!

 

Fortunately mass market compatible ego shooters kept graphic card manufacturers busy and now much more busy because of deep learning. We all can use those cards for our hobby, as simulations need a lot of graphic memory. This is probably also why some people have better performance and others less. make sure your graphic settings match the graphic card memory you have.

But now wait a little. Sure, we all know that flight sims are amonmgst the most dermanding PC applications, in fact, you can safely say that for flight simming, you can never have enough computing power. That's why people around here invest a lot of their earnings into absurdly powerful rigs. Mine is rather middle of the field these days, but my graphic card is probably the most powerful (and newest) part of my whole build.

 

But that is irrelevant anyway, because the point is, people who used to get 60 FPS yesterday are suddenly getting 40 FPS today with the same settings. I don't see anyone here bashing ED because their high-fidelity product doesn't run at stable 120 FPS on their second-hand laptop with all settings maxed up. In fact, I (and I believe I talk for the majority of users here) have great faith that ED will sucesfully fix the current issues.

 

But there's no way around it, there's simply something broken in the current version (and just as Weta says, in an alpha it's to be expected). Blaming it on users' unrealistic expectations and inadequate hardware (when it was adequate just a day ago) isn't going to help anyone and anything.

[Automan]

Do you guys have noticed that Nevada module still showing 2.0.4 in the updated DCS 2.1?

Is this normal?

[BIGNEWY]

Do you guys have noticed that Nevada module still showing 2.0.4 in the updated DCS 2.1?

Is this normal?

 

it is just the icon has not been changed, I will add it to the list

[kunterbunt]

But that is irrelevant anyway, because the point is, people who used to get 60 FPS yesterday are suddenly getting 40 FPS today with the same settings. I don't see anyone here bashing ED because their high-fidelity product doesn't run at stable 120 FPS on their second-hand laptop with all settings maxed up. In fact, I (and I believe I talk for the majority of users here) have great faith that ED will sucesfully fix the current issues.

 

Well, not actually true, as now we get physical bases rendering and deferred shading. Do you really think this is just a different way of doing things? These new effects need a lot more power to run. It is the correct way to go, but it just needs more graphics power.

[Automan]

it is just the icon has not been changed, I will add it to the list

Thanks Bignewy ;)

[Texac]

So I adjusted all the graphic settings from scratch. I started with low settings and made my way up to high settings. I noticed MSAA is the true FPS killer for me with my GTX960 2GB and i5 4590.

 

Except MSAA at 2x, flat terrain shadows with a resolution of 1920x1080 everything else is set to high.

 

Now I reach up from 45 to almost 50 FPS far out Las Vegas. Over Las Vegas my FPS are jumping from 30 to 40 FPS. With MSAA set to it's maximum I noticed my frames drop lower than 25 over Las Vegas.

[NeilWillis]

Aside from the obvious performance issues, that have been mentioned, my only real criticism so far is that the Normandy region was renowned for the bocage - which consisted of high, dense, almost inpenetrable hedgerows. We have trees in beautiful abundance, but there are simply no hedgerows whatsoever. Low down, the terrain is pretty open, whereas in reality line of sight is measured in tens of yards.

 

For aerial work, the lack of hedges isn't really an issue providing you're looking down on the tree lines, but for Combined Arms, this is simply not Normandy.

 

Are there any plans to fill in the gaps between the trees?

[FragBum]

Yes well it can only get better, given how the previous version got tweaked after 2.05..

 

RGB Colour Space seems to be out looking at cars etc also neat how your shadow on the ground goes from Turquoise to light blue but over buildings seems normal. ;)

 

Both on Rift and on LCD screen.

 

Some other shadows do the same thing in NTTR as well.

 

Bring on the fixes cheers. :thumbup:

[Torso]

I have water turned up to high and in VR, over the water, it looked like a solid color sheet with no reflection. I could not even correctly gauge my height over it when i went low. Not sure why that is. I got a 1080GTX and ran all fine before.

 

There are several already mentioned by previous posters so won't be relisting the issues. You should be able to see them yourselves.

 

I was very much looking forward to this map update, and it is nice in several areas. It just feels what we got today is not comparable to what the backers got weeks ago. Which I kinda expected that with more weeks of tuning this release version would be better and more tuned than the backers version.

 

So far sadly this does not seem to be the case.

 

I know updates will coming soon to address some of the issues. Just a bit confused how these quite obvious and glaring issues reported seemed to be

Edited May 27, 2017 by Torso

[Rotorhead]

Well, not actually true, as now we get physical bases rendering and deferred shading. Do you really think this is just a different way of doing things? These new effects need a lot more power to run. It is the correct way to go, but it just needs more graphics power.

 

Correct, but people are reporting to lose performance even with deferred shading OFF, some say it's even worse than having it ON (haven't tested myself, just going by what I read on this forum). If so, it's definitely a bug.

 

Also, if I remember correctly, both Wags and some pre-release reviewers (not completely sure about Wags though) claimed that the Normandy performance isn't significantly worse than then current NTTR version (small performance drop is to be expected due to higher level of details in Normandy). Now both terrains suffer noticeable performance drop compared to 2.0.5.

 

And even if the new shading is really intended to eat 30% FPS even on high-end graphic cards (I am all for better looks and immersion, but at some point, the tradeoff for more eye candy just stops to be worth it), it still doesn't justify the vibrant blue, fuzzy shadows, trees that stand out in distance like landing beacons and other visual artifacts. If something, more demanding rendering process would make the image more believable, not the other way around!

 

Again, not bashing ED in the slightest (this is what Alpha is for!), but it is time to admit there's something wrong with the current graphics engine.

[OnlyforDCS]

I had a big drop in FPS too. Decided to try driver update but only updated gpu driver and it didn't help much. Saw msalama's post about VC++ and went back and downloaded that and my FPS got back to normal levels.

 

Woah, need to try that VC++ redistributable. Maybe I already have it installed but could you post a link please?