Gain FPS with cockpit only shadows

[Motomouse]

If you want more frames per second, one easy way to achieve this, is to turn off the shadows. But many do not like DCS shadowless.

 

If you are ready to loose the world shadows, but love your cockpit shadows, there is a way if you are bold enough to edit your lua config files:

 

In the ... Eagle Dynamics\DCS World OpenBeta\Config\Effects\shadows.lua file I changed the values from {0.02, 2.5, 25.0, 250.0, 1500.0, 7000} to {0.02, 0.5, 0.6, 0.7, 0.8,1 }. This reduces the shadow range drastically and improves performance dramatically :thumbsup:

 

(I choose to modify the shadows high settings for my purpose)

 

{	--high
		4096,
		{0.02, 25.0, 100.0, 400.0, 1500.0, 7000},	
		{0.02, 0.5,  0.6, 0.7, 0.8,1 }   -- original: {0.02, 2.5,  25.0,  250.0, 1500.0, 7000}
	},

 

With 3600X & 1080Ti & Reverb for example you can have high cockpit shadows and still achieve constant 60 FPS!

 

(Disadvantage: No multiplayer)

Edited May 25, 2020 by Motomouse

[ST0RM]

Its sad that we have to continually potato out our settings to get decent FPS.

[The_Nephilim]

Its sad that we have to continually potato out our settings to get decent FPS.

 

Well actually with this level of sim there should be more complex setting we should be able to set in options besides just basic settings..

 

at least these lua files give us these options to modify things when we find them.. but I would hope one day we have control over more refining of setttings in the ingame options..

 

 

Not everybody has the exact same PC nor can afford the more high end this game needs to some extent in VR mostly.. so we need to squeeze more performance when and where we can..

Edited May 25, 2020 by The_Nephilim

[Motomouse]

ED has to add it to the official options, else you can not play multiplayer.

[ilikepie]

or join non IC servers...

[Mustang]

Another alternative

 

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=268560

[sirrah]

If you want more frames per second, one easy way to achieve this, is to turn off the shadows. But many do not like DCS shadowless.

 

If you are ready to loose the world shadows, but love your cockpit shadows, there is a way if you are bold enough to edit your lua config files:

 

In the ... Eagle Dynamics\DCS World OpenBeta\Config\Effects\shadows.lua file I changed the values from {0.02, 2.5, 25.0, 250.0, 1500.0, 7000} to {0.02, 0.5, 0.6, 0.7, 0.8,1 }. This reduces the shadow range drastically and improves performance dramatically :thumbsup:

 

(I choose to modify the shadows high settings for my purpose)

 

{	--high
		4096,
		{0.02, 25.0, 100.0, 400.0, 1500.0, 7000},	
		{0.02, 0.5,  0.6, 0.7, 0.8,1 }   -- original: {0.02, 2.5,  25.0,  250.0, 1500.0, 7000}
	},

 

With 3600X & 1080Ti & Reverb for example you can have high cockpit shadows and still achieve constant 60 FPS!

 

(Disadvantage: No multiplayer)

Wow!! Thanks for sharing Motomouse! This is exactly what I was looking for! :thumbup:

(Well, I rather had ED provide us the option for cockpit only shadows in the core game, but I gave up on wishing and waiting for ED to hear me on this request..)

 

It's things like this that make this community so awesome! :cheer3nc:

[BuzzU]

I don't understand this thread. We already have two shadow settings. One for the plane and the other for the terrain. No editing is needed.

[Motomouse]

You dont understand the shadow settings correctly yet.

 

Shadows off, flat, low, medium, high setting controls the quality/type of the shadows. These are applied to your own plane and scenery objects (planes, bunkers, airfield objects ...).

 

The terrain object setting controls if terrain objects (trees, towns, ...) also use shadows.

 

The thread is about restricting the shadows to in cockpit shadows only. This will for example increase VR FPS from 40 to 60 FPS. (Alternative is no shadows at all for 60 FPS.). There is no such cockpit only shadows setting in DCS yet. It would be a nice addition and very welcome.

[wizav]

Shadows are CPU thing, so it will work only if you have weaker CPU.

[hazzer]

Shadows are CPU thing, so it will work only if you have weaker CPU.

 

My RTX2080ti and i7 9700k can gain 50fps with shadows off, making it go from unbearable to decent, but with no cockpit shadows the game disappoints. This would be a helpful option for the game.

[sirrah]

Just had the opportunity to test this and it really does work very well!

 

I gained ±10fps going from low to "the adjusted" high, which was just enough for my pc to go from too much stutter, to no noticeable stutters at all :thumbup:

Also, as a bonus, the in cockpit shadows are much more crisp

 

I don't play MP, so for me this is a great addition. Thanks again for sharing.

 

 

Oh, by the way, it seems the shadows.lua file gets reset during updates, so you will need to change this after each update.

[Kegetys]

You can also set the values to 0 to remove the rendering of the specific shadow cascade(s) completely which will reduce CPU overhead. Here is the shadows.lua I use: http://junk.kegetys.fi/shadows.lua

 

With that, all shadow settings use the same resolution (4096x4096 pixels, most GPU's should be fine with that) but the different settings have different amount of cascades instead. 'Low' setting has only one cascade, so you get shadows only in the cockpit, medium has two cascades and high has 3. The DCS default has 4 cascades on every setting and only the shadowmap resolution is different.

 

When you use terrain object shadows with that you still get shadows drawn as far as before, just the overhead is less and at least in VR the visual difference is quite small.

[BuzzU]

You dont understand the shadow settings correctly yet.

 

Shadows off, flat, low, medium, high setting controls the quality/type of the shadows. These are applied to your own plane and scenery objects (planes, bunkers, airfield objects ...).

 

The terrain object setting controls if terrain objects (trees, towns, ...) also use shadows.

 

The thread is about restricting the shadows to in cockpit shadows only. This will for example increase VR FPS from 40 to 60 FPS. (Alternative is no shadows at all for 60 FPS.). There is no such cockpit only shadows setting in DCS yet. It would be a nice addition and very welcome.

 

 

You're right. I didn't understand how it worked.

 

Thanks.

[Motomouse]

I use cockpit only shadows now with flat terrain object shadows in combination. The flat terrain object shadows are not costly at all and combined with high cockpit only scenery shadows it looks very nice.

 

Perhaps one way to improve performance for scenery object shadows for ED is to use a low detail lod model instead of the full detailed model to calculate the shadows? But I am no expert if this is possible at all.

[Motomouse]

Thanks Kegetys for your headsup and the lua example

[Hippo]

Many thanks to all who contributed, very helpful.

 

 

(including, and especially the OP, obvs)

Edited May 26, 2020 by Hippo

[Taz1004]

Shadows are CPU thing, so it will work only if you have weaker CPU.

 

Well, from what I read, DCS is CPU heavy so anything you can take off the CPU is a bonus in my opinion. This is actually working well for me.

[toffy]

This was very helpful and made a significant difference in performance. I can now have a good looking cockpit and decent frame times. Thanks to all.

[sirrah]

ED should definitely implement this some way into their core game, so that it won't effect IC check for people who like to fly in MP

[speed-of-heat]

works really well, but agreed, it would be great for this to be modifiable in game or via saved games... i did try just stuffing it into the saved games Config directory, but alas no effect..

[VirusAM]

Gain FPS with cockpit only shadows

 

Shadows are CPU thing, so it will work only if you have weaker CPU.

 

 

 

In VR the most powerful CPU struggles (my i9 9900k struggles a lot in intensive missions) and there every millisecond counts.

 

Great mod...unfortunately i won't try it as no MP no party for me :(

 

ED needs to add this as an official option.

Edited May 29, 2020 by VirusAM

[hazzer]

You can also set the values to 0 to remove the rendering of the specific shadow cascade(s) completely which will reduce CPU overhead. Here is the shadows.lua I use: http://junk.kegetys.fi/shadows.lua

 

With that, all shadow settings use the same resolution (4096x4096 pixels, most GPU's should be fine with that) but the different settings have different amount of cascades instead. 'Low' setting has only one cascade, so you get shadows only in the cockpit, medium has two cascades and high has 3. The DCS default has 4 cascades on every setting and only the shadowmap resolution is different.

 

When you use terrain object shadows with that you still get shadows drawn as far as before, just the overhead is less and at least in VR the visual difference is quite small.

 

 

Hello, I changed the settings in the lua to match your settings. I set low in game. But when I spawned I had shadows on the exterior of my plane and everyone else's too. Any idea?

[speed-of-heat]

did you restart the game between applying the shadows settings?

[hazzer]

did you restart the game between applying the shadows settings?

 

Yes, the shadows are displaying on all external parts of the model as per usual.

 

Have i missed something