DCS 2.5.0.14304 NTTR night scenes are terrible.

[DaveRindner]

I dunno, I am just not digging 2.5 graphics. I did totally fresh re-install once 2.5 came out. I don't use Deffered Shade. It looks bad. Either the scene is too dark, where cockpit instruments are difficult to see at night, and during the day every shading burned out. There is no magic Gamma setting that works. It just looks bad. My graphics are nothing like what is posted on YT from ED.

I use HDR and Flare+Dirt. At night NTTR terrain is way too bright. The sky is nicely black. But terrain is 5X brighter the sky, and it looks wrong. Clouds are self-luminant almost solid white. Like their moon illumination is on extra bright. The whole NTTR at night looks terrible.

Has anybody experienced this, and fixed it. Right now I find visuals this unacceptably poor. Hopefully it is a Beta artifact.

 

Tress: Trees looks bad, just bad, in both theatres , day or night. The textures are bright washed yellowish green-ish, and they are slow. The trees spawn, rising out of the ground close enough to see them grow out of ground. This happens regardless of visibility range and tree percentage. Worse still when they grow, the trees are not textured, the textures blends into tree based on distance. I like the trees in 1.5.8 a lot more. With dense forest areas, treetop flying is FPS killer.

With 2.5 with my rig, Goergia is slow and ugly, and NTTR is smoother , then under 2.2, but is also ugly.

 

My CPU is I7-3770K, my GPU is PNY Nvidia Quadro K4000 (3GB), driving a single panel 2560X1440 at native rez. flat panel, memory is 32GB ram.

[Tinkickef]

I think (I hope) that night lighting is high priority at ED. It certainly is broken. I went back to 2.2 without problems for the interim.

 

ED will fix it, it's just that they have so many bugs to squash at the moment. Got to feel sorry for them, must be a big disappointment to have so many negative issues from prior 2.2 users that are used to higher quality terrains.

DS has badly affected night missions on 2.2 since its inception. 2.5 has just made it a lot worse.

 

Only problems I really had on 2.2 night missions were cockpit floods, taxi lights and very little moonlight. Cockpit floods were addressed partly by hanger floodlights going full bright (groom lake) until the bird was up and taxying.

Edited February 16, 2018 by Tinkickef

[DaveRindner]

My hope is that, though I have latest NVIDIA 377.35 reference drivers, that Quadro K4000 GPU just doesn't have DX11 & 12 features used by DCS 2.5 and thus my scenes look different from others. I shun features that would cost FPS, regardless of GPU I would have in future. I don't use MSAA, no anisotropic filter, no Deffered Shade. Cockpit and aircraft textures on High, terrain textures on low. Visibility range is LOW. I find that longer visibility range don't add to the experience. Other features are also on low.

But nighttime is hard not to notice. There is little challenge in flying at night in DCS 2.5. Everything is clearly visible. Like moonlight source is cranke up, alongside ambient illumination.

 

But I am really disappointed with ED regarding their implementation of trees, grass, clutter. Talk about a performance hit. I prefer NOE approach to target, so low level tree shading performance is important. 1.5.8 had excellent Look VS Performance tradeoff on trees. NTTR 2.2 really did not have that much flora.

NTTR FPS , did improve for me in 2.5. And lookwise , daytime, is definitely an improvement. But nighttime, ohvey! Looks terrible. Well hopefully it all gets resolved by beta process.

[msalama]

Clouds are self-luminant almost solid white.

 

https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=3341869&postcount=13

[OnlyforDCS]

no Deffered Shade.

 

Turn this on. 2.5 is built around this feature. If you have this off you might as well be playing another (much uglier) game.

[Kula66]

Vegas seems really dark ... only a few street lights :(

 

VR, DS on, 2xAA etc

[DaveRindner]

Can't. My K4000 cannot handle Deffered Shading. It is by far the biggest FPS killer. Not only that but it looks horrible, when ON. Either it is film noir dark, or bright washout. Regardless of Gamma.

With HDR and Flare effect, no MSAA, no anisotropic filtering, and everything set to low, my rig cannot drive 2.5 faster then 36 fps at 2560X1440. When I first got DCS in 2013, and through out 2014, ran it at 1920X1200 I was getting 48 FPS in KA-50, A-10C, and UH-1H. Today, same rig, cannot drive 2.5 past 30-36 fps, and all too often it drops to low 20's. With 2.5 trees, a feature that I really dislike especcially in Georgia theater, it drops performance to below 20. I am hoping that ED can clean up 2.5. The growing trees are really grating on nerves, and Deffered Shading is slow and has poor optics, on my rig.

Though my rig is dated, it runs my Maya, Houdini, and Realflow really good. Very stable. I love HP Z workstations.

 

I7-3770K, Quadro K4000, 32GBram, 2560X1440 panel, Win10 Pro. X56, TM rudders.

Edited February 18, 2018 by DaveRindner

[DaveRindner]

msalama. Thank you, but no joy! Sadly. I tried a bunch of dates through out months and years, and dates. No difference. Clouds at night are consistently over-luminous.

[DaveRindner]

DCS 2.5 NTTR night time.

 

DCS 2.5 NTTR night time. Love DCS, hate its clouds.

[HotTom]

Turn this on. 2.5 is built around this feature. If you have this off you might as well be playing another (much uglier) game.

 

Sorry, mate but deferred shading is a no-go for me. If I run in HDR, I get a solid 60 FPS. Switch to DS and it drops to 30. Graphics look fine in HDR (yeah, the trees are too 2D) in 2.5.

 

If 2.5 was built around DS, it is (for me) a very shaky foundation. I'm perfectly happy with HDR.

 

I only fly the prop jobs so I haven't experienced the night sky.

Edited February 18, 2018 by HotTom

[AvgWhiteGuy]

Tried flying NTTR last night (after latest update - 2.5.1.16543) with a Quick Mission set for Winter - 5PM....at first I thought DCS had crashed leaving me with just a blank black screen. Then I looked around and found there was a tiny bit of light in the otherwise black sky.

So dark I couldn't see ANYTHING in my cockpit...couldn't even find the floodlights switch.

5pm in Las Vegas in the winter is not nearly that dark...I lived there for years.

 

I was very impressed with he richness of colors in the instant flight 'Takeoff'; the reds were just as I recall in Nevada-Arizona at sunset...stunning.

 

But otherwise I'm finding the cockpit too dark and lacking constrast late in the day and at night. At daytime it's got a weird 'light metallic gray finish'.

 

Love the detail but can't fly in evening/nights right now :(

Edited April 30, 2018 by AvgWhiteGuy
Clarity

[gabuzomeu]

Hello,

try to modify the gamma slider in the options. Set it higher, and you can play at night ( not perfect though but a short term silution)

[ac5]

Tried flying NTTR last night (after latest update - 2.5.1.16543) with a Quick Mission set for Winter - 5PM....at first I thought DCS had crashed leaving me with just a blank black screen. Then I looked around and found there was a tiny bit of light in the otherwise black sky.

So dark I couldn't see ANYTHING in my cockpit...couldn't even find the floodlights switch.

5pm in Las Vegas in the winter is not nearly that dark...I lived there for years.

 

I was very impressed with he richness of colors in the instant flight 'Takeoff'; the reds were just as I recall in Nevada-Arizona at sunset...stunning.

 

But otherwise I'm finding the cockpit too dark and lacking constrast late in the day and at night. At daytime it's got a weird 'light metallic gray finish'.

 

Love the detail but can't fly in evening/nights right now :(

 

For that very reason, sooooooo happy I am staying with the release version for now,

of course with DS off... until (if) they sort it out....