[NO BUG] Bad optimization

[Harlikwin]

It appears this is true for high end systems, however on low to mid range systems the performance hit is much worse. If that is indeed the case, and further optimization is difficult for those systems then minimum system requirements should be highlighted on the DCS, Steam product pages of the module.

 

It runs "ok" for me, even though I had to somewhat reduce settings. And I'm running in VR on one of the worst systems posted here. I have zero issues in pancake mode though.

[fl0w]

Further testing concludes that you are definitely able to load up your own MP mission and join the Cat just fine. But memory seems to be ignored once you go into any new server.

[scampaboy]

I had performance problems with the takeoff mission the FPS dropped down to 45 from solid 60 as I was taxiing past the aircraft on the flight line, some where tomcat and some where bugs.

Although I’ve loaded up a single player mission with 4 wingmen and had no trouble

 

I’ve got a 1080ti i7 6700 32 gb ram

[Nealius]

Yep, both Bugs and Cats parked on the ramp eat up a lot of FPS. If I have 2 Tomcats parked, solid 45. As soon as I add a third Tomcat my FPS tanks to 32. Reducing textures to Medium (which gets rid of the normal maps) will give me a massive performance boost at the cost of having a baby-bottom smooth airframe.

[b1n4ry]

If you have FPS issues maybe disable the mirrors. They demand at least 20-30 fps on my system.

[Kazius]

Pre-load the mission in the mission editor. Once loaded, exit to main screen and then log into the multiplayer server.

 

If you don't have the mission, log into the multiplayer server, after timeout / disconnect. Go to the track folder and cut or copy paste into your mission folder. Rename the extension from .trk to .miz. These files are zip files so open with 7zip, winzip or similar program and delete the two track folders as they are not needed and usually take up a lot of memory/drive space.

 

Then load mission in the mission editor, exit to main menu, log into MP server.

 

Loading missions into the ME retain a good chunk of information in the page file and helps a lot for reducing load times into multiplayer servers.

[Boris]

The performance hit this module causes isn't just noticeable on lower end systems, but also on high end systems running VR.

Obviously things really slow down when the limits of the hardware are reached.

 

Running with the Pimax 5k+, the performance in the Tomcat is significantly worse than in any other module. Subjectively I'd say as much as 30%.

 

While being able to run decent settings and get more or less smooth results with other modules, I need to cut the graphics right back with the Tomcat, and then still get stuttering.

[scampaboy]

If you have FPS issues maybe disable the mirrors. They demand at least 20-30 fps on my system.

 

I don’t have them enabled anyway they distract me a lot, I might enable them for a little eye candy while I’m sat on the ramp but apart from that I don’t use them

[Random]

going to 32gb and updating to windows 10 to be able to USE it solved the FPS and loading issues I was having. Running 4k It never drops below 30fps and is usually 45-60 with suitable graphics settings on my rather dated i7 4770k@4.3ghz and 2x780Ti (running just one card for DCS though). Even with cards not really up to 4k its fine!

 

End of the day the F14 is the most complex module so far for DCS. It's bound to be a resource hog.

[Flagrum]

After todays hotfix it seems that ED changed when the "Fly!" dialog appears during the loading process of a mission. Before, it already showed up although seemingly not all loading was finished. That probably lead to many concurrent load attempts of all kinds of stuff - fps dropped.

 

Now the "Fly!" dialog just appears after all loading really has been concluded - and voila, the F-14 is now more responsive. But the load time is still the same for me - now I am just forced to really wait until DCS is ready to go.

 

So, that was not really a fix of the problem, I think. While I was waiting for the "Fly!" dialog to eventually appear, I monitored my system (Ressourcemonitor of Win7): the majority of the time the system was bussy accessing all kind of texture .dds files of the F-14. And it was constantly swapping memory out to the pagefile - which costs an additional heck of a long time-

 

2019-03-18 17:36:50.142 INFO    VISUALIZER: Preload() camera=-159595.570872, 5047.189476, 63359.535720 radius=34500.000000
2019-03-18 17:36:50.142 INFO    EDTERRAINGRAPHICS41: ITerrainGraphicsImpl4::forceLoading(): pos=(-159596, 5047.19, 63359.5), radius=34500
2019-03-18 17:36:51.528 INFO    EDTERRAINGRAPHICS41: surface5 clean up LOD 0: left 4  released 80
2019-03-18 17:36:51.528 INFO    EDTERRAINGRAPHICS41: surface5 clean up 774.886873 ms
2019-03-18 17:37:36.137 INFO    EDTERRAINGRAPHICS41: surface5 clean up LOD 1: left 8  released 76
2019-03-18 17:37:36.137 INFO    EDTERRAINGRAPHICS41: surface5 clean up 4729.904429 ms
2019-03-18 17:37:40.891 INFO    EDTERRAINGRAPHICS41: surface5 clean up 0.000311 ms
2019-03-18 17:37:44.730 INFO    EDTERRAINGRAPHICS41: surface5 clean up 0.000000 ms
2019-03-18 17:39:02.166 INFO    GRAPHICSVISTA: Creating Resource "Unicode" of type 1
2019-03-18 17:41:23.535 ERROR_ONCE DX11BACKEND: texture 'bake2pan_normals' not found. Asked from 'NGMODEL'
2019-03-18 17:49:36.999 INFO    VISUALIZER: Preload() finished

Just look at the time stamps at the end ...

 

To me, this looks like DCS is trying to squeeze in all the F-14 textures, but can't. So it swaps out other stuff to the page file. When I then fly over PG landmasses, everytime DCS loads further map data, it first accesses the pagefile - to swap out some other less important stuff.

 

So ... all the F14 textures seem to clog up my system REAL good...

 

System: i5 2500K, 3.2 GHz, 16 GB RAM, GTX970, DCS on SSD

[Hummingbird]

8-12 GB just meets minimums. Need to keep that in mind.

 

Minimum system requirements (LOW graphics settings): OS 64-bit Windows 7/8/10; DirectX11; CPU: Intel Core i3 at 2.8 GHz or AMD FX; RAM: 8 GB (16 GB for heavy missions); Free hard disk space: 60 GB; Discrete video card NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 / AMD R9 280X or better; requires internet activation.

 

Recommended system requirements (HIGH graphics settings): OS 64-bit Windows 8/10; DirectX11; CPU: Core i5+ at 3+ GHz or AMD FX / Ryzen; RAM: 16 GB (32 GB for heavy missions); Free hard disk space: 120 GB on Solid State Drive (SSD); Discrete video card NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 / AMD Radeon RX VEGA 56 with 8GB VRAM or better; Joystick; requires internet activation.

 

Recommended VR systems requirements (VR graphics settings): OS 64-bit Windows 8/10; DirectX11; CPU: Core i5+ at 3+ GHz or AMD FX / Ryzen; RAM: 16 GB (32 GB for heavy missions); Free hard disk space: 120 GB on Solid State Drive (SSD); Discrete video card NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 / AMD Radeon RX VEGA 64 or better; Joystick; requires internet activation.

 

Oh, I didn't know free SSD space was required to run the game faster?

[Flagrum]

The next hotfix patch will contain RAM usage fixes that we've been working on over the weekend as well as bunch of other QoL stuff.

(https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=235973)

 

Wohoo! :thumbup: Looking forward to it!

[Flagrum]

After todays update: Loading times seem to be substancial better than before, but you really, really, REALLY notice that the F-14 is meant to be flown in a maritime environment. As soon as dry dirt is appearing beneath the aircraft, the slideshow begins.

 

Tried Caucasus now, as the Persian Gulf was not much better than before. Leaner terrain textures ... that was my hope. Tried to bomb the abandoned airfield, coming from the sea. Rolling in was like 20° roll, 10 sec pause, another 25°, 20 sec pause, 50°, 15 sec pause, omg, must correct ... holding stick still for 30 sec, roll 60° in opposite direction, etc. un. fly. able. Gave up, killed DCS with the task manager (that's 5 minutes faster than windows orderly releasing 16GB of RAM that is parked on the pagefile.sys).

 

Might try later again, but you might have guessed it, I am a bit too annoyed right now.

Edited March 22, 2019 by NineLine
removed 1.1

[Strikeeagle345]

After todays update: Loading times seem to be substancial better than before, but you really, really, REALLY notice that the F-14 is meant to be flown in a maritime environment. As soon as dry dirt is appearing beneath the aircraft, the slideshow begins.

 

Tried Caucasus now, as the Persian Gulf was not much better than before. Leaner terrain textures ... that was my hope. Tried to bomb the abandoned airfield, coming from the sea. Rolling in was like 20° roll, 10 sec pause, another 25°, 20 sec pause, 50°, 15 sec pause, omg, must correct ... holding stick still for 30 sec, roll 60° in opposite direction, etc. un. fly. able. Gave up, killed DCS with the task manager (that's 5 minutes faster than windows orderly releasing 16GB of RAM that is parked on the pagefile.sys).

 

Might try later again, but you might have guessed it, I am a bit too annoyed right now.

 

I do not have this issue.:huh:

Edited March 22, 2019 by NineLine
removed 1.1 from quote

[lunaticfringe]

Sounds like a job for popping the shaders folders.

[Flagrum]

I do not have this issue.:huh:

 

With the Harrier or the F-18 I don't have it either.

 

This and your experience tells me this: something is weired with the F-14.

 

I know why my F-14 is lagging so bad: my system spends most of the time fiddling around with the page file, swapping stuff in and out. I assume, it is the terrain textures, that change when flying over ground and that need space in RAM - and therefore other stuff has to be parked on the page file. So, what is clogging up my RAM so that no terrain textures fit in anymore?

 

You have 32 GB RAM - double the size of mine. That might actually help a lot, I guess. But on the other hand, all other modules are performing much better for me, even with "only" 16 GB.

[Strikeeagle345]

With the Harrier or the F-18 I don't have it either.

 

This and your experience tells me this: something is weired with the F-14.

 

I know why my F-14 is lagging so bad: my system spends most of the time fiddling around with the page file, swapping stuff in and out. I assume, it is the terrain textures, that change when flying over ground and that need space in RAM - and therefore other stuff has to be parked on the page file. So, what is clogging up my RAM so that no terrain textures fit in anymore?

 

You have 32 GB RAM - double the size of mine. That might actually help a lot, I guess. But on the other hand, all other modules are performing much better for me, even with "only" 16 GB.

 

Did you delete your Shaders folders? FXO and Medashaders2?

[Cobra847]

With the Harrier or the F-18 I don't have it either.

 

This and your experience tells me this: something is weired with the F-14.

 

I know why my F-14 is lagging so bad: my system spends most of the time fiddling around with the page file, swapping stuff in and out. I assume, it is the terrain textures, that change when flying over ground and that need space in RAM - and therefore other stuff has to be parked on the page file. So, what is clogging up my RAM so that no terrain textures fit in anymore?

 

You have 32 GB RAM - double the size of mine. That might actually help a lot, I guess. But on the other hand, all other modules are performing much better for me, even with "only" 16 GB.

 

Many of our testers are just fine on 16Gb. Your experience is decidedly odd.

 

What are your full specs?

[csdigitaldesign]

Many of our testers are just fine on 16Gb. Your experience is decidedly odd.

 

What are your full specs?

 

It's not odd. I'm having the same issues. I have a GTX 1070 (overclocked), 6700k (overclocked to 4.4ghz), 32gb DD4 RAM, NVME SSD... and an Oculus Rift.

 

I get often 45fps + in the F/A-18 in VR (not always but most of the time).

 

In the F-14B I get like 22fps. If' I'm lucky at high altitudes I get up to 30-45fps. (at the times I'd get 45fps with the F-14 I'd get 90fps with teh F/A-18 ) The worst part about it is the fact sometimes when the FPS is ok at 45fps I get odd stuttering from the VR tracking. I've also had it COMPLETELY black out my screens on my headset sometimes. Other times I can get it to run halfway decently... I've tried lower all the settings down to very low... no change. I can even set them back up to relatively high.. no change.. there is a point if I go to high sure it gets worse... but the fact that like SUPER low and medium setting run EXACTLY the same tells me something strange is going on with this plane.

 

I'm not the only one.. I've seen others saying this on the net and I've talked to somebody else I know with VR and the same issues happen.

 

I don't have these problems in other planes, not even the F/A-18C.

 

One thing I would like HEATBLUR to take note of is when I look down at my cockpit.. like at the panels etc my FPS goes up.. I look outside (but not at the HUD area) and my FPS goes up... I look at the HUD area... my FPS tanks! I've looked very carefully at the area around the HUD and my take away from that is all those rivets are modeled geometry and stuff! It's WAY overkill. I've designed stuff for games (mods etc) in my spare time now for like 15 years... and from what I can tell they just have way too many polys in the frame area around the hud. or at least that's part of the issue.

 

I would suggest to them to optimize some of that area... there are parts that have like long bolts? or something sticking out and obviously they can't remove those or the plane would not look the same. As for the little round rivets that barely stick up? Those can be done with parallax mapping and stuff without any actual modeling being done. I would suspect they could reduce parts of the F-14 by nearly half in terms of rendering costs... but of course that's hard to say without seeing the actual mesh.

 

HEATBLUR for the love of god please make this plane more optimized.. I want to enjoy it in VR but I simply can't. The only real things I can do that are playable are like higher altitude interception because way up there the ONLY thing DCS is rendering much of is the F-14 herself. The second I get near the ground or around a lot of planes.. forget it! FPS tanks. This whole patch has been wonky with the F-14. I'm both happy wth it but also VERY disappointed. The parts I'm happy with I can't enjoy the way I intended to because it runs like crap.

 

P.S. yes I've deleted my shaders.. didn't really help. Also my overclocks on my system are stable and disabling them just give me less performance. No issues with other planes or other games.

Edited March 23, 2019 by csdigitaldesign

[FSKRipper]

It's not odd. I'm having the same issues. I have a GTX 1070 (overclocked), 6700k (overclocked to 4.4ghz), 32gb DD4 RAM, NVME SSD...

 

P.S. yes I've deleted my shaders.. didn't really help. Also my overclocks on my system are stable and disabling them just give me less performance. No issues with other planes or other games.

 

Did you reduced overall texture settings, shadows? How is your experience in non VR?

[csdigitaldesign]

Did you reduced overall texture settings, shadows? How is your experience in non VR?

 

Obviously non-VR runs better but the performance is still much lower then other modules like the F/A-18 in non-VR. The problem of course is I'm right on the edge of comfortably being able to run in VR and since the performance is so much lower with the F-14 it's next to unplayable sometimes.

 

I've reduced texture settings.. no difference (or so small it's hard to notice). My video card has 8gb of VRAM and that's not really an issue. Only if you run out of VRAM do textures tend to make a large performance hit.

 

Lowering shadows does of course make an effect but normally I run on medium... lowering to low helps but still not very playable.. turning them on flat also improves it but not enough to bring it anywhere near that of F/A-18 performance (with the shadows on medium).

Edited March 23, 2019 by csdigitaldesign

[Cornelius]

I spend almost 2 afternoons only with tweaking graphic settings and benchmarking( MSI Afterburner and a short replay on PG map). It's very strange, but differences where only noticable, when I deleted the metashader and fxo folders after every changed setting. So change setting, shut down dcs, delete the folders, start dcs.

[Cobra847]

We can't have the cake and eat it too, even though we've made the F-14 more performant in many cases (e.g. put 20 F-18s on the Ramp and compare the FPS versus if they were F-14s).

 

Rendering triangles is extremely cheap. Nothing about bolts on the front canopy frame is relevant.

Performance is mostly impacted by drawcalls and lighting passes in DCS. That is why (looking out over terrain) your FPS drops dramatically.

Comparing the F-14 to the F-18 in a 1:1 comparison is rather unrealistic unfortunately, especially in VR. Even if we created it to the same standard as the F-18 - you'd still take a performance hit with the F-14.

It has animated crew, a 2-person cockpit (that in general is far more geometrically complex in reality as well, just compare the back walls in each cockpit!), is much bigger, etc.

 

The changing settings not impacting your frames is not that odd- but it does mean you're bottlenecked somewhere.

 

I'm not the only one.. I've seen others saying this on the net and I've talked to somebody else I know with VR and the same issues happen.

 

I understand that there are people with issues. Our tester team included everything from a GTX760 (!) to a 2080 Ti, and I think we've been very prudent about measuring performance.

The F-14 performs worse than the F-18 1:1- yes- but unplayable stutters have not been encountered on any widespread basis yet. I know that it sounds dismissive,

but when we have thousands of customers on similar hardware reporting no issues; we have to evaluate accordingly.

 

Also, I'd reiterate deleting the fxo and metashaders folders on every graphics change. We're not sure why the precompiled shaders are behaving so erratically in DCS.

 

As dismissive as this post sounds, I emphasize with your issues. We're simply in the position of trying to raise fidelity - which is (as always) impossible without reducing performance.

Edited March 23, 2019 by Cobra847

[Cobra847]

With the Harrier or the F-18 I don't have it either.

 

This and your experience tells me this: something is weired with the F-14.

 

I know why my F-14 is lagging so bad: my system spends most of the time fiddling around with the page file, swapping stuff in and out. I assume, it is the terrain textures, that change when flying over ground and that need space in RAM - and therefore other stuff has to be parked on the page file. So, what is clogging up my RAM so that no terrain textures fit in anymore?

 

You have 32 GB RAM - double the size of mine. That might actually help a lot, I guess. But on the other hand, all other modules are performing much better for me, even with "only" 16 GB.

 

Try the latest hotfix. It should cure this issue.

[OnlyforDCS]

Can confirm, latest hotfix has fixed most stuttering and performance problems on my end. However there seems to be something up with some severe crashes when engaging with AIM7Ms. Had it happen to me twice in a row now on the Blue Flag server.