the memory leak still exists

[twistking]

some more testing:

it does not seem to be related to system ram, since when the degradation hits, system ram is not necessarily fully allocated (if one can trust windows task manager, which told me that 80% of ram was in use).

 

i also again saw a correlation between Vram and the fps degradation, where high Vram usage did not automatically lead to the degradation, but inversely states of degradation always had higher Vram usage reported than before.

 

I verified my findings by altering the testing. Note this is all done in Mission Editor, which probably adds to the problem since it accumualtes Vram just by browsing unit types. However this issue also occurs when playing mission outside of Mission Editor.

 

-mission C. autumn caucassus:

#1load: ~60fps ~8000mb Vram

(back to editor and preview again)

#2load: ~30fps ~8200mb Vram

(back to editor, now deleting all units but own aircraft)

#3load: ~30fps ~8200mb Vram

[BIGNEWY]

ED are always working on optimisations, as mentioned we do have some FPS fixes coming in future updates.

 

We are aware of the struggles with only 8GB RAM, which is why it is our minimum suggested RAM on low settings. I will show this thread to the team ( they have probably seen it already) but can not promise any miracles regarding performance with 8GB RAM.

 

Thanks

[twistking]

ED are always working on optimisations, as mentioned we do have some FPS fixes coming in future updates.

 

We are aware of the struggles with only 8GB RAM, which is why it is our minimum suggested RAM on low settings. I will show this thread to the team ( they have probably seen it already) but can not promise any miracles regarding performance with 8GB RAM.

 

Thanks

 

thanks. i'm not expecting them to investigate further, if this is a problem proven to be exclusive to 8gb ram / 4gb Vram.

BUT, as i mentioned before, if it is Vram related i could easily imagine this issue to occur on modern hardware (even the fastest GPUs have "only" 8gb), if you play huge MP missions and have preload radius crancked up.

Also remember that the state of degraded performance on my system still has constant frame timing, so it feels relatively "smooth" and could trick people into thinking, this was just normal DCS performance.

 

*************************************************

*************************************************

Quick recap, for the devs to not having to read the whole thread.

 

** fps degradation on caucassus terrain, maybe Vram related? **

 

i7-860@3.4ghz, 8gb system ram, 4gbVram gtx 770, win10, steam, stable, very high settings, preload radius on medium settings

also tested on another system with 16gb system ram and a gtx 970

 

-> start dcs

-> load simple (!) mission in caucassus terrain

-> preview and note FPS and Vram use

-> back to editor

-> preview again and note FPS and Vram use

-> if no effect, change season and/or add high quality aircraft to the mission

-> preview again and note FPS and Vram use - fps should be lower (50% in my case)

-> as soon as affected by lower FPS, back to editor, delete everything except client aircraft

-> preview again - fps should still be lower

-> restart DCS - fps should be restored

 

-> this does not only happen in Mission Editor, but Mission Editor makes it easier to test. it can happen by loading a SP/MP mission a second or third time AND it can happen within a mission after just playing for a prolonged time.

So you start the mission with full fps and after you come back to your parking position fps have halfed, even though most AI are dead by then.

 

-> When playing small/medium missions without the degradation, i get very good performance for the high settings i run. Way better than what people with better systems sometimes report here, it seems.

Maybe they always run in this state of degraded performance, because they also have only 4gb Vram, but exclusively run Multiplayer with huge missions?!

 

-?? is excessive Vram use reason for state of degraged FPS

-?? is changing the seasons in caucassus really adding all the Vram, or is this a wrong reading in DCS system monitor

-?? why is it possible to have good perforamnce with Vram reported vastly exceeding GPUs Vram, while on loading in another time, only few hundreds megabyte more can lead to degraded fps

Edited September 11, 2019 by twistking

[sc_neo]

@twistking I can easily relate to your issues and i do belive sometime in early 2019 something changed in DCS that is "akin" to a memory leak, either ram or VRAM. For me, DCS has become practically unplayable since, i reckon since maybe early March or so. Unfortunately my GPU is dead (actually id died starting DCS from the desktop haha) and i don't have a replacement to run a couple more tests.

 

 

And i think you raised a valid point, that yes, 16gb memory is pretty much a must right now, that does still mean that DCS should not have any "memory leaky" issues. So, i had an amd 7870 2GB card (which is of course blatendly vram understocked for DCS 2.5) paired with 16gb memory. And i could run DCS at pretty much max settings really well on NTTR, with 25-30ish fps around Vegas, and 40-55fps anywhere else. Caucasus was running not as well since it is more Vram intensive since its 2.5 release in January, but i did not get those complete freezes after playing for some time that i experience since march or so. So even on NTTR, even on very light missions with not much going on, i could run into complete system freezes due to system memory being filled up to the brim after 30-60 min playtime, even when returning to homebase that was running fine on mission start. Again, i cannot recall that DCS was ever so taxing on system memory since it seems to be since March/April this year. Something must have changed.

 

 

 

What i noticed was: loading up a fresh ME NTTR mission with nothing than my aircraft more than once would on the second or third load pretty much completely fill my system memory to the point of completely freezing my sytem, unless i killed every background task like my browser etc. Again, this was not happning pre 2.5 and not in Jan/Feb 2019.

 

 

Now; i kinda feel that DCS is offloading VRAM content to system memory on low Vram cards, and that DCS is not flushing this content from system memory early enough when it is not needed anymore, or when loading a new scenario. Restarting DCS clears everything and you have one good mission load again.

 

 

With my 2GB vram card, vram gets maxed out instantly when loading any mission or map, and i reckon off-loading to system memory begins pretty much right away. And yeah, i know that a 2gb vram card is not up to min specs, and thus i am not complaining.

 

 

 

The question still is; does dcs handle vram loading and flushing as intended by the devs, or do we indeed have some behaviour going on that is akin to a Vram leak that off-loads vram content to system memory until everything clogs up, and people with 8gb vram cards and 16gb memory are affected the same, albeit at a later point so that the issue does not arise that often if at all.

 

 

I will get an 8 gb vram card later this year and i guess this will make for a much better situation. Still, i would like to know whether everything is working as intended or whether bruteforcing dcs with a 11-16gb vram card and 32gb system memory will be the norm.

 

 

@BIGNEWY Could you inquire with the devs whether DCS is actually off-loading Vram content to system memory? Is this a thing or am i dreaming things up here?

Edited September 11, 2019 by sc_neo

[twistking]

@sc_neo:

i have had a different experience to be honest. first of all i think that the behaviour i have described exists since 2.5 or maybe even before that.

also since 2.5 i felt that performance in general has increased over time.

 

from my testing i could not see any system ram usage that felt excessive, it was definitely only vram that was reported to be very high and even with that excessive amount of vram reported, sometimes it ran fine.

also i could only see those performance degradation on caucassus, NTTR was always running well.

also when playing NTTR reported Vram was sometimes decreasing and never got excessive, while on caucassus the reported Vram only increased over time. however since i could soemtimes play smoothly with over 8gb of Vram reported (on a 4gb card) it might just be that Vram management works differently on caucassus and the dcs monitor cannot keep track correctly.

 

see my previous post for all my findings.

[sc_neo]

What i might do to nail this down once my new gpu arrives is make 1 or 2 additionalyl copies of DCS on my drive and revert those back to different patches from early 2018 when 2.5 was launched on stable branch, and maybe a version from late summer 2018 and somthing from january 2019 or so. This should show whether something changed over the last year that is akin to a memory leak.

 

 

@Bignewy Do you have multiple iterations from various releases on you system? If so, could maybe make a short test whether there indeed is a noticeable memory increase between summer 2018 and now?

Edited October 1, 2019 by sc_neo

[BIGNEWY]

 

@Bignewy Do you have multiple iterations from various releases on you system? If so, could maybe make a short test whether there indeed is a noticeable memory increase between summer 2018 and now?

 

 

I have 5 builds including the public ones, but they are all recent. I don't have any older version installed I am afraid.

[sc_neo]

No problem. I'll go on my goose chase when my system is back up and running :)

[Hammer1-1]

Major memory leak presented. First time loading since updating to latest beta and installed the F-16. Zero mods installed on fresh. On further inspection, its generating the world preload extremely slow for me, and Im on an M.2 SSD. It goes from terrain preload @ 4.5gb to world preload @ 22gb memory.

Edited October 5, 2019 by Hammer1-1

[msalama]

@ 22gb memory

 

Does it stay on that 22GB though, or does it just increase and increase until you run out and crash?

[BIGNEWY]

If you are getting a crash please attach your dcs.log we will take a look.

[Hammer1-1]

Does it stay on that 22GB though, or does it just increase and increase until you run out and crash?

 

Not sure. Its not crashing, but just keeps loading and loading and loading. Then once in mission it just stutters because its OOM.

Edited October 5, 2019 by Hammer1-1

[Hammer1-1]

Problem solved - turns out I had corrupt video drivers and it was offloading vram into memory.

[sc_neo]

So my new GPU arrived and i went back with my backup installation to version 2.5.0.15365, the initial public release/stable version of the unified 2.5 build from 4.4.2018. An yeah, i have not have had the time to do proper testing between that and the current release version, but from booting up the same NTTR A-10C instant action mssions, there is a significant difference in RAM usage. For instance, the A-10 CAS instant action, the current build used double the amount of memory, almost 10gb working set vs 4.3gb with the old DCS version.

 

 

 

This needs more rigorous testing, and probably not all cases will be that clear cut. But i feel my hunch was correct, and currently DCS uses substantially more memory than 6 to 12 months ago. I know the VRAM memory purger was added in june last year and this is the only bigger change that i can recall that might have changed things up to what we see now.

 

 

 

@Bignewy Can you recall any change that might have upped DCS 2.5 memory usage significantly within the last 12 months (though my feeling this has changed around early spring this year)?

Edited October 24, 2019 by sc_neo

[BIGNEWY]

@Bignewy Can you recall any change that might have upped DCS 2.5 memory usage significantly within the last 12 months (though my feeling this has changed around early spring this year)?

 

Sorry I dont recall any change, and have not noticed one personally, but I am running 32gb RAM.

[Anatoli-Kagari9]

Still on 16GB DDR3 + i5 2500 from 2012.

 

Installed 2.5 open beta, Normandy, the A-8 and Spitfire, ww2 assets, and have been having a whole lot of fun flying the default missions.

 

I expected heavy stutters in the bomber intercept missions, with lot's of action going on all around my A-8, but I kept betweeen 50 and 40 fps ( no Vsync here ).

 

It's more than acceptbale for me, although O do consider an upgrade of processor and memory when possible.

[twistking]

i think the problem of DCS not clearing vram even when reloading a mission from the main menu is well understood by now. it's bad enough by itself, but the problem gets amplified by "lazy" mastering of the game assets.

please see this thread: it's on the wishlist section, but it could easily be in the bugs section:

https://forums.eagle.ru/forum/english/digital-combat-simulator/dcs-a-10c-ii-tank-killer/wishlist-aa/291915-32-bit-normal-maps

 

that is just wasted performance. i deliberately wrote "lazy", because if this particular case wasn't an oversight (which can always happen, i assume) it's an excessive waste of rescources for no visual benefit.

on lower end hardware (that is still well within the official hardware requirements) this can mean the difference between 50-60fps and 10-15fps. this should not go through testing. the problem is that you might not notice it when you're running on a high end GPU with lots of vram. but for veryone else it means game over!

 

please fix!

[Nexter]

Hello !

 

Reading this thread, I realize that I am not the only one with these problems. I have a lot of stuttering in multiplayer and tried a lot of things to fix it but with no luck. Here's my log and my specs : Intel Core i7-4790k RAM12GB GTX1080 8Go and DCS run on SSD 500Gb

dcs.log

[Taz1004]

Hello !

 

Reading this thread, I realize that I am not the only one with these problems. I have a lot of stuttering in multiplayer and tried a lot of things to fix it but with no luck. Here's my log and my specs : Intel Core i7-4790k RAM12GB GTX1080 8Go and DCS run on SSD 500Gb

 

How can you have 12GB ram on 4790K system? Can you?

What's 8Go?

[twistking]

 

thanks. i'm not expecting them to investigate further, if this is a problem proven to be exclusive to 8gb ram / 4gb Vram.

BUT, as i mentioned before, if it is Vram related i could easily imagine this issue to occur on modern hardware (even the fastest GPUs have "only" 8gb), if you play huge MP missions and have preload radius crancked up.

Also remember that the state of degraded performance on my system still has constant frame timing, so it feels relatively "smooth" and could trick people into thinking, this was just normal DCS performance.

 

*************************************************

*************************************************

Quick recap, for the devs to not having to read the whole thread.

 

** fps degradation on caucassus terrain, maybe Vram related? **

 

i7-860@3.4ghz, 8gb system ram, 4gbVram gtx 770, win10, steam, stable, very high settings, preload radius on medium settings

also tested on another system with 16gb system ram and a gtx 970

 

-> start dcs

-> load simple (!) mission in caucassus terrain

-> preview and note FPS and Vram use

-> back to editor

-> preview again and note FPS and Vram use

-> if no effect, change season and/or add high quality aircraft to the mission

-> preview again and note FPS and Vram use - fps should be lower (50% in my case)

-> as soon as affected by lower FPS, back to editor, delete everything except client aircraft

-> preview again - fps should still be lower

-> restart DCS - fps should be restored

 

-> this does not only happen in Mission Editor, but Mission Editor makes it easier to test. it can happen by loading a SP/MP mission a second or third time AND it can happen within a mission after just playing for a prolonged time.

So you start the mission with full fps and after you come back to your parking position fps have halfed, even though most AI are dead by then.

 

-> When playing small/medium missions without the degradation, i get very good performance for the high settings i run. Way better than what people with better systems sometimes report here, it seems.

Maybe they always run in this state of degraded performance, because they also have only 4gb Vram, but exclusively run Multiplayer with huge missions?!

 

-?? is excessive Vram use reason for state of degraged FPS

-?? is changing the seasons in caucassus really adding all the Vram, or is this a wrong reading in DCS system monitor

-?? why is it possible to have good perforamnce with Vram reported vastly exceeding GPUs Vram, while on loading in another time, only few hundreds megabyte more can lead to degraded fps

 

i'm now on 16gb system ram and problem still exists. i think it's obviously vram related.

graphics card with less than 8gb of vram are still very common (and fast enough to run dcs on high settings if it weren't for the vram "leak"). you have to do something about the engines inability to flush unused data from vram, especially if you consider how brutally inefficient ED's artists author their assets concerning normal map size and resulting vram foodprint.

 

[jonsky7]

I think I've been having this issue since the latest patch (4th Nov), maybe longer.

 

Just now during a game "freeze" (very long pause) task manager reported DCS was using around 17.4GB of ram, but my system usage was at my full 32GB. Nothing else was using 12GB of ram. There was a lot of drive activity during the pause, I presume page file swapping, I have 2x1TB Samsung 970evo M.2 Nvme drives one for windows and the other has DCS and a few other games.

 

Edit: should add that this was during a multiplayer game using different aircraft.

 

Once I closed down DCS, system usage went back down to 3.4GB.

[jonsky7]

Is this normal? I don't really know what's going with it to be honest.

 

Immediately after playing in a multiplayer server

 

And immediately after closing DCS

 

[twistking]

Is this normal? I don't really know what's going with it to be honest.[...]

 

Looks a bit excessive indeed. That said, DCS grabbing huge laods of memory is not a bad thing, the bad thing is the freezes and page-file-swapping you mentioned.

Maybe open a new thread for this. It's obviously related to the problem described in this thread, but then it is very different at the same time, because public MP is such a different beast and from my understanding all "big" public MP servers run missions that are overspeced for what the engine can actually handle.

So to answer your question, i would say that "big" public MP is - in DCS terms - not "normal" in the first place ;)

 

Can you recreate that swapping behaviour also in a single player or controlled MP environment (custom mission, no script framework, sensible number of units etc.)?

[jonsky7]

I did check it during single player and the system usage wasn't as high.

 

To be fair the server I play on does run the CTLD script and the Overlod bot. So there might be an issue with the scripts.

 

My memory usage has only gone through the roof since the latest update. It was usually not much more than 16-20GB before, even on that server. Also the total system usage wasn't much higher than what DCS was reported to be using in the process tab of task manager.

[Taz1004]

On MP, try setting preload radius to smallest, I think 100. It might help.