Preload Radius

[lepski]

What does everyone have theirs set for? Mine says 61200. Is that normal? I'm not even sure what it does...lol..

 

Thanks.

[BIGNEWY]

I have mine set to maximum, but I make sacrifices elsewhere and dial down other settings.

 

It is what it says it is, a radius from your position where objects are preloaded, depending on your machine spec you will need to decide what is best.

[msalama]

Always wondered what's the preload distance unit. Meters? Yards? Feet? Inches or centimeters it can't be :D

[Mustang]

Always wondered what's the preload distance unit. Meters? Yards? Feet? Inches or centimeters it can't be :D

 

It's metric, so 150000 is 150km radius around player.

[Gierasimov]

Is there a way to stop ground clutter (grass, rocks, etc) rendering really close and progressing as I move? My preload radius is set to max.

 

Even when I taxi the clutter still visibly renders as I move.

[razo+r]

You got the grass slider for that.

[msalama]

It's metric

 

Thanks, thought so actually, just wasn't sure. S!

[Davee]

For me, I have it set to maximum as I have a lot of ram and hate to see any little hic-up that may arise if I set it lower and it has to reload.

[30mikemike]

So setting the grass slider to max stops the progressive loading?

[Gierasimov]

No, it ain't

 

So setting the grass slider to max stops the progressive loading?

 

This is maxed out too, still the same

[30mikemike]

This is maxed out too, still the same

 

Yeah just tried it and still the same with mine, only on PG & NTTR though. Odd...

[Gierasimov]

Same here only PG and NTTR have it.

[River]

Tree shadow rendering is the same loading circle, hate it, looks ugly and kills imersion.

[Devrim]

...a radius from your position where objects are preloaded...

What objects are those, Bignewy? Airplanes? All type buildings, bunkers?

 

More than that, I wonder, while I'm moving is the "preload circle" moving too? If so, there will always be loading something constantly, right? So, what's difference between set it max or middle?

 

Maybe this option should be removed and embedded in Visibility Range option...

[Wizard1393]

What objects are those, Bignewy? Airplanes? All type buildings, bunkers?

 

More than that, I wonder, while I'm moving is the "preload circle" moving too? If so, there will always be loading something constantly, right? So, what's difference between set it max or middle?

 

Maybe this option should be removed and embedded in Visibility Range option...

 

This I wonder too.

[toutenglisse]

What objects are those, Bignewy? Airplanes? All type buildings, bunkers?

 

More than that, I wonder, while I'm moving is the "preload circle" moving too? If so, there will always be loading something constantly, right? So, what's difference between set it max or middle?

 

Maybe this option should be removed and embedded in Visibility Range option...

 

I think pre-load radius is relative to RAM amount and only pre-load (no rendering) while visibility range is relative to what is rendered (ram/cpu/gpu) - so it might be different options.

 

I think like in many sims pre-load radius is static, and restart a pre-load radius when your visibility range is on the verge of first pre-load radius.

 

Concerning trees shadows radius, it's settled in shadows.lua : 1 of the numbers, from cockpit and from external view, is relative to trees shadows (IIRC, I've stopped messing with this file for performances or "look" means) but it's an IRC breaker.

[twistking]

i'll advise everybody to not max out preload radius without actually having tested, that it works well for your system.

when you run dcs from a hdd, like i did for many years, you get a feeling how the settings balances initial loading time against ram/vram and occasional ingame lags for data-streaming.

 

now with dcs on a ssd i never get those little stutters from data-streaming, that i got occasionaly, even though the ssd is quite old and not very fast by modern standards (~200mb/s reading, i think).

so no reason to go higher on preload.

 

if it runs well for you with preload maxed, then that is great, but if you are still trouble-shooting performance i would go for a more conservative setting and only increase if you get lags or stutters from data-streaming.

i always see people maxing it out "because they can", but that's child's logic. i would advise to go with the "high" preset setting for preload radius, test it and only then increase. if you are low on ram/vram, you might also want to try decreasing it.

Edited September 17, 2019 by twistking

[Worrazen]

I've brainstormed on this in my early times (last months of 1.2 and start of 1.5) but I kinda never got to the bottom of it, I think I did a bit but it's still speculation.

 

Might give it another shot some day. It should be about loading things from HDD but it's relationship with Visibility Radius is kinda not fully clear to me, it's not that simple so I rather not conclude anything rather than being wrong. It's also about naming things, labels could be used in a specific context that we may not immediately understand.

Edited September 18, 2019 by Worrazen

[sc_neo]

@BIGNEWY

 

"It is what it says it is, a radius from your position where objects are preloaded, depending on your machine spec you will need to decide what is best."

 

 

And what exactly does this mean? Does this include buildings that are part of the map like the Las Vegas area, or only dynamic objects that are placed in the ME like ground units, static airfiled objects and such?

[BIGNEWY]

Hi

 

From the manual it says

 

PRELOAD RADIUS. Radius of the preloaded terrain around user position in meters. A large setting can decrease hard disk swapping but it requires more system RAM.

 

So on reflection I think it is terrain only, I will try and check

[sc_neo]

Yep, please do. Because i have played around with this setting numerous times over the years and i could not for the life of me make head or tails of it in sense for actual performance differences, loading times nor RAM load.

[fagulha]

+1

 

Specs: I7 4790k 4.4ghz, 32GB Ram, SSD´s, AIO, Zotac GTX1080ti 11GB, and Valve Index at 120hz.

[BitMaster]

I see it this way, if you have enough RAM, load it while you can while you still can wait and not get stutter. The slower your drive is ( HDD vs. SSD vs. NVMe ) the more this is valid imho.

 

Whereas if you have limited RAM it might very well be contra-productive as you force stuff into memory when there is no real estate available there. That's when you need to lower PLR to fit your rig.

 

YMMV

[sc_neo]

But we don't want ot guess anymore. I'd like to have one of the devs in the know technically layout how preload radious is affecting Vram and system memory. Actually, a bunch of indepth blogposts about Vulkan, AA and all that engine stuff would really go a long way. A lot of good weekends news posts that can be! Like..."hey folks, you want to get the sim you spent so much time on a bit better?"

[BitMaster]

But we don't want ot guess anymore. I'd like to have one of the devs in the know technically layout how preload radious is affecting Vram and system memory. Actually, a bunch of indepth blogposts about Vulkan, AA and all that engine stuff would really go a long way. A lot of good weekends news posts that can be! Like..."hey folks, you want to get the sim you spent so much time on a bit better?"

 

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