Size of the maps in HDD and performance questions!?

[Shadoware]

I would like to buy some new maps. Does anyone knows the real size they occupy on the disk?

 

Another issue: I notice some freezes and micro freezes during gameplay. I moved the terrain folder to my SSD and that diminished the problem but didnt solved it completely then I put pre-load radius at maximum and the problem seem to disappear for while. This micro freeze problem also occurs to you with the game on hard drive and pre-load radius at max? SSD is really mandatory at this moment?

 

The open beta version performance is worst or better than current 2.5? Should I use the Open beta versaion?

[Exorcet]

Map size:

Black Sea (free map for reference): 16.1 GB

NTTR: 33.0 GB

Normandy: 15.4 GB

Gulf: 32.8 GB

 

 

SSD is generally said to improve performance, I would recommend using one over HDD. You can install both the OB and Stable on the same machine. I use Stable more often and currently it runs better for me.

[Worrazen]

I don't want to nag on the devs but technically in a perfect scenario even if you use an HDD you shouldn't get any stuttering or hitching such as FPS drops, on a HDD you would simply get slower poping in of the textures and unrendered voids for longer periods, LODs would take longer to show higher-res versions, and that's it, it should have never affect FPS or the execution of the engine (main thread) but it kinda does.

 

Unfortunately this still happens with SSDs albeit far less, which kinda confirms there's something off with some component that deals with asset loading (File/Disk IO) or something that processes those loaded files at the similar moment.

 

At the time I just didn't want to bother with it more and quit nagging about this and just concluded let's just throw raw horsepower at it and fix it that way, and so the SDDs were made a minimum standard officially, you will actually violate the sim's requirements if you use an HDD now.

 

Also I was at the time (3-4 years back if not more) talking how HDD loading would stutter the F-10 View and Mission editor, I actually had a case of low GPU memory at the time which kinda dramatized everything for a while, I got over that soon, but I wasn't completely wrong, this still happens, even with a SSD, but it's less dramatic, the textures load fast but the scrolling is laggy, and what at the time I couldn't decipher ... (because you can have so many things creating a soup of lag that may be tricky to figure out which is which and separate) ... I recently discovered that there is quite a sheer number of draw calls that are drawn on the F-10 AWACS view in ALT mode as well as the Mission editor in ALT mode, and when you scroll around exactly in that moment it's putting a lot of strain on the main thread (CPU) because of what I've seen a momentary spike of extra draw calls and perhaps or because of the existing driver/API/game overheads and inefficiencies, so it turns out this part may have nothing to do with File/Disk IO (HDD/SSD) loading because there's not much any disk activity when you do it while the draw calls go through the roof, but this is my observation and speculation, not necessairly the conclusion, as always with these things. There's nothing we can do about that other than to wait for DCS to support Vulkan API which will tolerate much higher draw calls, among other things.

 

... infact I should be calling this hitching, because it's not a constant stutter recurring, it happens sporadically and it's a "one of stutter" which I think it's referred to a "hitch" to indicate it's just one little freeze.

 

Even if the SSD requirement doesn't fix all of stuttering/hitching, because it can't, I still thin it was the correct decision, it got one big factor out of the way, it's much easier to tackle the rest now.

 

I'm digging into this issue exactly and have reported on it in the Bugs->Performance section recently, but I have more documentation of it happening and clues still in progress, althoguht it may take some time (if it's not fixed before) due to my chores and PC maintenance, I currently don't have DCS installed.

Edited June 25, 2020 by Worrazen

[Shadoware]

Thanks for the answers!

 

I think we all hope ED fix these issues soon.

 

Did anyone tried the beta versuin?

[Lange_666]

The Open Beta in general is not better in performance then the Stable version. If you go that road thinking it would remove stutter then a switch is a pure waste of time. Stutters can have a lot of various causes.

[Shadoware]

The Open Beta in general is not better in performance then the Stable version. If you go that road thinking it would remove stutter then a switch is a pure waste of time. Stutters can have a lot of various causes.

 

 

Ok but I think I could get more updates in the F-16 faster right?

 

Do you think I would have more problems with OB or the change worh it?

[Lange_666]

You get updates faster but in general with more bugs.

Sometimes the updates is really bad (like going from 2.5.5 to 2.5.6) and if you only have the OB version, you're a bit stuck with it if you don't want to work your way through a switch back to stable or a downgrade.

Best thing if you can't wait is install both (if you have the space) and switch with Skatezilla's utility, works really nice.