Bagpipe Posted August 31, 2020 Share Posted August 31, 2020 Dear ED, With respect, it seems that in order to counter the performance issues in DCS of late that you have further limited the draw distance within the sim. To the point where it is now almost unbearable to taxi around my new found Syrian airbases due to shadows popping in and out all over the place and so on and so forth. Could you give a loose idea of how/roughly when this will be looked at or indeed whether it shall be looked at, at all? It is visible from any altitude though most noticeable the closer to the ground you are and is something that the community have been upset about for some time. I do not believe that holding out for Vulkan/Vulcan will solve this issue as it will most likely revert textures to blurs if performance is impeached, as can be experienced in other sims which have gone down this route. This is something which needs to be addressed and from what i gather from other games and sims is something that if done well can actually save a whole lot of processing power for other areas. I know to the people developing this side of the sim this will most likely be a :doh: facepalm moment as I do not possess the experience or knowledge to lecture on this subject. The lighting is looking grand, the new map tech is coming along very nicely, the bugs are being squashed slowly but surely and the other less obvious tweaks are awesome too (missiles etc.) BUT there is STILL this GLARING omission in that we have to contend with our imaginations to block out the hideous site of the *insert correct phraseology here* "LOD line" :( Please advise as best you can Much Love FlyB :smilewink: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bagpipe Posted August 31, 2020 Author Share Posted August 31, 2020 Hopefully clear from the images what i mean... If you look at the shadows from the posts the "LOD line" is just feet from the aircraft and to me is now excessively limited. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rrohde Posted August 31, 2020 Share Posted August 31, 2020 +1 PC: AMD Ryzen 9 5950X | MSI Suprim GeForce 3090 TI | ASUS Prime X570-P | 128GB DDR4 3600 RAM | 2TB Samsung 870 EVO SSD | Win10 Pro 64bit Gear: HP Reverb G2 | JetPad FSE | VKB Gunfighter Pro Mk.III w/ MCG Ultimate VKBcontrollers.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Worrazen Posted September 1, 2020 Share Posted September 1, 2020 (edited) LODs, Color and Lighting a huge tuning part that can significantly change the perception of visual quality and realism (that said, I don't want DCS to look like over-saturated over-bloomed and over-reflected competitor products) I'm not that touchy on postprocess effects, I'm not part of the crowd who sits and waits for the RTX reflections, a lot of it is just a bonus to me, my attention is more on the terrain texture LODs and terrain shadow LODs, I think they are too agressive, LODs levels are too rough (need more of them, gradual) and there is one particular near shadow LOD transition that is particularly noticable which produces an illusion of a line that keeps following you, but your camera has to be at a specific height and angle from the terrain to see this in action so it's not always a problem, but only at low level flight. That said, this is hardly the biggest issue, as much as I want to say "hey it's annoying", but then again I need to hold back and put it in perspective relative to everything else and the focus of the simulator, it's not a module problem, it's not a gamplay problem, it's not affecting any system, so hopefully it gets fixed somewhere before or at least at the time of new rendering engine using Vulkan API is released. Edited September 1, 2020 by Worrazen Modules: A-10C I/II, F/A-18C, Mig-21Bis, M-2000C, AJS-37, Spitfire LF Mk. IX, P-47, FC3, SC, CA, WW2AP, CE2. Terrains: NTTR, Normandy, Persian Gulf, Syria Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bagpipe Posted September 1, 2020 Author Share Posted September 1, 2020 LODs, Color and Lighting a huge tuning part that can significantly change the perception of visual quality and realism (that said, I don't want DCS to look like over-saturated over-bloomed and over-reflected competitor products) I'm not that touchy on postprocess effects, I'm not part of the crowd who sits and waits for the RTX reflections, a lot of it is just a bonus to me, my attention is more on the terrain texture LODs and terrain shadow LODs, I think they are too agressive, LODs levels are too rough (need more of them, gradual) and there is one particular near shadow LOD transition that is particularly noticable, and it expresses it self like a line that keeps following you, but your camera has to be at a specific height and angle from the terrain to see this in action so it's not always a problem, but only at low level flight. That said, this is hardly the biggest issue, as much as I want to say "hey it's annoying", but then again I need to hold back and put it in perspective relative to everything else and the focus of the simulator, it's not a module problem, it's not a gamplay problem, it's not affecting any system, so hopefully it gets fixed somewhere before or at least at the time of new rendering engine using Vulkan API is released. THIS! absolutely. I just feel that why bother putting the effort in to bring this beautiful terrain with the detail of the airbases and the shrubbery and foliage only for the very basic LOD configuration to let it down entirely. If you fly low level in Syria at around sunrise near the mountains you notice huge square shadows popping in and out where it is rendering a bush' shadow as a HUGE block until you pass within the LOD range and it shrinks down to practically no shadow as it should be. It's a minor detail but at the same time has a huge imapct on immersion and overall wow factor. I love simulation as much as the next DCS fan but hey, if we didn't care about graphics there are other far less expensive ways to enjoy the hobby without DCS... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bagpipe Posted September 20, 2020 Author Share Posted September 20, 2020 Any comments from ED regarding this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ED Team BIGNEWY Posted September 22, 2020 ED Team Share Posted September 22, 2020 Please post a track replay showing it happen and let us know your dcs settings, in particular shadow settings. also let us know if you are using any shader or terrain mods thanks Forum rules - DCS Crashing? Try this first - Cleanup and Repair - Discord BIGNEWY#8703 - Youtube - Patch Status Windows 11, NVIDIA MSI RTX 3090, Intel® i9-10900K 3.70GHz, 5.30GHz Turbo, Corsair Hydro Series H150i Pro, 64GB DDR @3200, ASUS ROG Strix Z490-F Gaming, HP Reverb G2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bagpipe Posted September 22, 2020 Author Share Posted September 22, 2020 Please post a track replay showing it happen and let us know your dcs settings, in particular shadow settings. also let us know if you are using any shader or terrain mods thanks Hi, I didn't think it was necessary to post a track as you can clearly see it in the second screenshot, to be honest. Everything shadows related is set to max and currently running SSLR on and MSAA x4. SSAA off for now due to performance issues. No mods what so ever. Has been an issue for as long as I can remember but is now a lot more pronounced due to more object dense maps being released. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bagpipe Posted September 22, 2020 Author Share Posted September 22, 2020 It seems to me that the detail scaling is not refined enough at ground level/low altitude. You see it work fine as you climb, the detail drops out and you have basic textures etc but coming back down, the sim seems to struggle to pop the objects back in at a distance less noticeable to the eye. It may be more obvious to me as I have a larger monitor (its not huge though) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ED Team BIGNEWY Posted September 22, 2020 ED Team Share Posted September 22, 2020 Thanks, We ask for tracks so we can see exactly what you are seeing, time of day, weather settings and so on. Just makes things easier to investigate. Forum rules - DCS Crashing? Try this first - Cleanup and Repair - Discord BIGNEWY#8703 - Youtube - Patch Status Windows 11, NVIDIA MSI RTX 3090, Intel® i9-10900K 3.70GHz, 5.30GHz Turbo, Corsair Hydro Series H150i Pro, 64GB DDR @3200, ASUS ROG Strix Z490-F Gaming, HP Reverb G2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unltd Posted September 22, 2020 Share Posted September 22, 2020 (edited) Just watching a trak mission replay from Lomac (flaming cliffs) 1.11. up on youtube circa 2005. It's amazing how much of the sim survives through to today (clouds, smoke stack effect, lod pop for various types of objects, wingman AI or lack there of, even HMCS on the A10A, A10 Hud graphics etc...). I can remember vividly the first time ED added a shadows option...enabling shadows on your exterior weapons brought everything to a crawl. For the time, that game version was amazing for what it did do and we overlooked the issues mentioned above...now 15 years on, seeing the same stuff sort of leaves you feeling like a fool for paying for the same problems like 20 times over. Edited September 22, 2020 by unltd Ryzen 5950x PBO | MSI RTX 3090 | 32gb 3600 RAM | 2 x SSD | Quest 3 | TM Warthog Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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