Operation Scarlet Dawn - Syria PvE Persistent Campaign

[edmuss]

Recently started playing this in SP, got a couple of queries if you will

CPU frametimes are typically in the 18-20ms range, this significantly affects VR play because it's dragging the GPU frametimes down. Short of waiting for the multithreading update or running it on a seperate server instance is there anything I can do to alleviate this?  I'm shooting for <16ms at all times to keep the headset above refresh rate.

I'm primarily flying the KA50 and a lot of the mission targets are 150+km away, is there any way to filter for closer targets for rotary wing?  Easy enough to simply discard the mission of course if not.

In an instance last night the mission briefing stated grid square BV59 which was nice and close to farp london, pinged the coords into the PVI800 and set route mode to autopilot there, got to the grid searched for an hour or so and found no misison targets.  Eventually gave up after eating a bunch of SAMs and went back to check the coords on the F10 map (should have done that beforehand really!).  The target grid square should have been CV59 not BV59 

Largely user error on my behalf, I'm trying to get more familiar with navigation and flight planning in the shark so not having it written out by the mission forces me to do the legwork.  Loving the missions so far

[Surrexen]

9 hours ago, edmuss said:

Recently started playing this in SP, got a couple of queries if you will

CPU frametimes are typically in the 18-20ms range, this significantly affects VR play because it's dragging the GPU frametimes down. Short of waiting for the multithreading update or running it on a seperate server instance is there anything I can do to alleviate this?  I'm shooting for <16ms at all times to keep the headset above refresh rate.

I'm primarily flying the KA50 and a lot of the mission targets are 150+km away, is there any way to filter for closer targets for rotary wing?  Easy enough to simply discard the mission of course if not.

In an instance last night the mission briefing stated grid square BV59 which was nice and close to farp london, pinged the coords into the PVI800 and set route mode to autopilot there, got to the grid searched for an hour or so and found no misison targets.  Eventually gave up after eating a bunch of SAMs and went back to check the coords on the F10 map (should have done that beforehand really!).  The target grid square should have been CV59 not BV59 

Largely user error on my behalf, I'm trying to get more familiar with navigation and flight planning in the shark so not having it written out by the mission forces me to do the legwork.  Loving the missions so far

It's a fairly 'heavy' mission in terms of objects etc, so VR will likely be rough unless you can run it on a dedicated server or something like that to take the load off your machine. I have a G2 but don't use VR for DCS simply because the performance isn't there for me (unless I do NTTR map or something ... then it's 'ok' but not great). I do other stuff in VR no problem. Perhaps the Through the Inferno series would be better for you in VR as that is more tuned for that sort of thing.

There is not a filter for selecting closer targets at present. You can use the radio menu to 'skip mission' and it will randomly pull another active target, you can keep skipping until you get one that is closer. A feature like this is something that has been requested many times, not sure if/when I'll get time to do it. Also you can use radio menu 'target report' to get exact coordinates of the target including altitude etc etc.

For the mission that was in the wrong grid square, I may have typo'd it ... I'll take a look when I can and correct it for next update (probably whenever the F-15E comes out or something).

Hope that helps

[edmuss]

Thanks for the response, I think the multi threading update will go a long way to alleviating the CPU issue. As long as it's not something that I'm doing terribly wrong then that's ok! It's perfectly playable, I'm just a sucker for keeping the FPS above 60Hz refresh rate for the ultimate in smooth flying

Skipping the missions from the radio menu is no issue, again just making sure I wasn't missing something obvious. A filter based on airframe would be cool but it's by no means a necessity.

It was BV59 (in briefing) and CV59 (coords location) that was mixed up. I should have checked one against the other but person learned. If it's only a typo then hopefully it's easy enough to sort

Edited February 13, 2023 by edmuss

[edmuss]

I'm now achieving much better CPU times thanks to @MoleUK and his suggestion to reduce object draw distance by 20km.  Now getting 60+ fps over farp London with fairly high settings

[hlfritz]

@Surrexen,

hope all is well - it has been a while.  We are having an issue with this mission, latest version.  I have disabled generals by commenting out the 2 timer lines.  It seems that the mission is preventing Voice Attack/Viacom Pro from functioning properly.  We have two Tomcat pilots, both report the same issue of not being able to control the RIO (ARIO commands) via voice attach/viacom pro.  This is with both the single threaded and multi-threaded DCS version.  Any ideas?

Has anyone else reported/experienced this?

Other missions, both single and multi-player, work fine.

Edited March 15, 2023 by hlfritz
added more info

[Surrexen]

2 hours ago, hlfritz said:

@Surrexen,

hope all is well - it has been a while.  We are having an issue with this mission, latest version.  I have disabled generals by commenting out the 2 timer lines.  It seems that the mission is preventing Voice Attack/Viacom Pro from functioning properly.  We have two Tomcat pilots, both report the same issue of not being able to control the RIO (ARIO commands) via voice attach/viacom pro.  This is with both the single threaded and multi-threaded DCS version.  Any ideas?

Has anyone else reported/experienced this?

Other missions, both single and multi-player, work fine.

 

I'm afraid I've got no idea why something like this would happen, I don't have voice attack etc so I can't even test it. That said, the generals script is basically identical between my missions so it seems rather strange that one would not work and all the others are ok. Have you looked at the log files to see what's going on? Maybe it will spit out a particular error about it. I have no heard of this issue from anyone else as yet.

[edmuss]

As an aside, the new MT update makes this run so much better in VR

[phrogZ]

With the last two patches, does someone saw some strange behaviour with the persistence file and static unit? In SnowfoxUnitInterment.lua, there are entries like SnowfoxUnitInterment[28] = "static"

It happens when a static unit is destoyed, normally it shoud go in SnowfoxStaticInterment.lua but it's not.

Did I break something, or is it the latest patch?

 

Edited March 17, 2023 by phrogZ

[Surrexen]

On 3/18/2023 at 7:27 AM, phrogZ said:

With the last two patches, does someone saw some strange behaviour with the persistence file and static unit? In SnowfoxUnitInterment.lua, there are entries like SnowfoxUnitInterment[28] = "static"

It happens when a static unit is destoyed, normally it shoud go in SnowfoxStaticInterment.lua but it's not.

Did I break something, or is it the latest patch?

 

 

I have been away for a few days and have barely even looked at MT etc. Sounds like something changed, I'll check it out during the week.

[winghunter]

I didnt find a thread for your mission "Clear Field Escalation". Its kind of my goto mission for making screenshots for DCS Web Editor/Viewer, because it looks so beautiful.

Hit me on Discord I'll give you beta access.

Edited March 19, 2023 by winghunter

[Surrexen]

On 3/18/2023 at 7:27 AM, phrogZ said:

With the last two patches, does someone saw some strange behaviour with the persistence file and static unit? In SnowfoxUnitInterment.lua, there are entries like SnowfoxUnitInterment[28] = "static"

It happens when a static unit is destoyed, normally it shoud go in SnowfoxStaticInterment.lua but it's not.

Did I break something, or is it the latest patch?

 

 

I've just had a quick look and yes there is definitely something wrong with it. Will investigate, thanks for letting me know.

Edit: Looks like there are some known bugs going on in the scripting engine to do with static objects, so have to wait until that's fixed.

Edited March 20, 2023 by Surrexen

[phrogZ]

On 3/20/2023 at 1:21 AM, Surrexen said:

I've just had a quick look and yes there is definitely something wrong with it. Will investigate, thanks for letting me know.

Edit: Looks like there are some known bugs going on in the scripting engine to do with static objects, so have to wait until that's fixed.

 

There is a bug. The problem has been reported last week, and it seems there is a fix ongoing .

[hlfritz]

Thx Surrexen.  Sorry I did not get back to you sooner, but we did a lot of testing.  Interestingly we find that latest Scarlet Dawn runs fine hosted locally, but does not work on dedicated server.  We tested my modified version and your stock version, same results.  We also tested running the client with standard and multi-thread, same results, did not work on dedicated server and latest version of Scarlet Dawn.

As an FYI, we also tested an older version of Scarlet Dawn is it does work on dedicated server with both standard and multi-threaded client.  If you can tell me where to find an internal version number, I can tell you which version that is if it matters.

[Surrexen]

13 hours ago, hlfritz said:

Thx Surrexen.  Sorry I did not get back to you sooner, but we did a lot of testing.  Interestingly we find that latest Scarlet Dawn runs fine hosted locally, but does not work on dedicated server.  We tested my modified version and your stock version, same results.  We also tested running the client with standard and multi-thread, same results, did not work on dedicated server and latest version of Scarlet Dawn.

As an FYI, we also tested an older version of Scarlet Dawn is it does work on dedicated server with both standard and multi-threaded client.  If you can tell me where to find an internal version number, I can tell you which version that is if it matters.

No version numbers sorry, not for a long time. Again,this isn't something I can test, as I don't have voice attack/viacom etc. I'm afraid you are on your own on this one.

[swartbyron]

Is there a light weight version of this mission about at all?

Operation Scarlet Dawn is the only one of your missions that absolutely chokes my system to a standstill. 

I've tried the usual trick to reduce the number of AI air and ground units but most seem to be locked up in scripting beyond my usual understanding of mission editing. 

 

 

[edmuss]

17 minutes ago, swartbyron said:

Is there a light weight version of this mission about at all?

Operation Scarlet Dawn is the only one of your missions that absolutely chokes my system to a standstill. 

I've tried the usual trick to reduce the number of AI air and ground units but most seem to be locked up in scripting beyond my usual understanding of mission editing. 

 

 

Are you on the open beta MT preview? It makes this mission far easier on the CPU

[swartbyron]

18 minutes ago, edmuss said:

Are you on the open beta MT preview? It makes this mission far easier on the CPU

I am and I do see an improvement but my poor old i7-2600 still cant handle all the AI and Syria map at the same time. Operation Clear Field and Operation Snowfox run beautifully its just the Syria map that needs to be lightly loaded with units if I'm going to use it on my old set-up.

System upgrade for me in May 

 

Edited March 24, 2023 by swartbyron

[edmuss]

Ah yeah, that's a ripe old age for a CPU

You'll be blown away by a modern CPU!

[Surrexen]

4 hours ago, swartbyron said:

I am and I do see an improvement but my poor old i7-2600 still cant handle all the AI and Syria map at the same time. Operation Clear Field and Operation Snowfox run beautifully its just the Syria map that needs to be lightly loaded with units if I'm going to use it on my old set-up.

System upgrade for me in May 

 

 

No there isn't a light version, I tried to keep the unit count reasonable for the map size ... I was holding back as it was  

May isn't that far away really!

I am currently working on a new concept which I will build something for on the Normandy 2.0 map if the concept comes together properly (so far so good). It will be completely different to how I've done things before.

[lei]

Really fun and well made mission. Thanks for it! and now with MT it actually runs smooth even in VR.

A question: is it possible to build FARP or use captured airfield to spawn and rearm? Mostly for helo ops.

[hlfritz]

@phrogZdo you maybe have a pointer to where the issue was reported?  I would like to keep tabs on it.

 

@Surrexenthere also seems to be an issue with the persistency scripting?  or perhaps that was what you were referring to when you replied?  when the mission is started, it does indeed create the 4 files but when units are killed they do not get recorded.  we just noticed this behavior on Monday night and confirmed last night.

[Surrexen]

5 hours ago, hlfritz said:

@phrogZdo you maybe have a pointer to where the issue was reported?  I would like to keep tabs on it.

 

@Surrexenthere also seems to be an issue with the persistency scripting?  or perhaps that was what you were referring to when you replied?  when the mission is started, it does indeed create the 4 files but when units are killed they do not get recorded.  we just noticed this behavior on Monday night and confirmed last night.

Yes, as previously stated, there is a bug. Can't do anything about it. Hopefully fixed in next patch?

[hlfritz]

@Surrexen Thx.  I just did not report the persistency issue before, only voice attack.  And what we see is different than the "static" reporting, we just see nothing.  Do you know if this affects all of your missions?  I.e. Clear Field and Snowfox as well?

[Surrexen]

1 hour ago, hlfritz said:

@Surrexen Thx.  I just did not report the persistency issue before, only voice attack.  And what we see is different than the "static" reporting, we just see nothing.  Do you know if this affects all of your missions?  I.e. Clear Field and Snowfox as well?

It would affect all of them.

[hlfritz]

Thx bro!  And bummer.