How's the performance?

[wowbagger]

I'm right on the cusp of grabbing the Anton + Channel, specifically to play this ... and Wolfpack.

 

I just wanted to check what the current state of performance is - I'm very picky and sensitive to low frame rates which destroy the illusion for me. I don't use VR and have no problem running any other module or map (using a 2080 and slightly older processor). But the Channel has many reports of desperately low frame rates, and the Anton also had some issues. But others say they run acceptably well. Neither gets a lot of chatter in the forums lately, so I am just checking people's latest experiences before jumping in whole hog.

 

Thanks for any opinions.

[Reflected]

What's your definition of "low"? I have a 2060, and it never went below 35 FPS in the largest battles. On top of this, there are 2 missions with lots of bombers, but you can choose to play with a smaller formation using the F10 menu.

 

This being said, all users are heavily impacted by a DCS bug, not related to this campaign.

https://forums.eagle.ru/forum/english/dcs-world-war-ii/western-europe-1944-1945/x-ray-damage-model-bugs/7144659-reported-stutters-new-dm-offline

[wowbagger]

Yes, I have been watching the damage decal stutter issue - hope they square that away next month.

 

I'm not concerned about campaign missions at all, more just wondering about the map and module itself. I think I've already made the decision anyway, just wanted to make sure there aren't any showing stopping issues with the map or module at this point.

[wowbagger]

Well (bird, map,campaign acquired) flying around in instant action free flight, The Channel map seems no different than the others, performance wise. And it is gorgeous. Now, I've got three weeks to learn this aircraft, and ED has the same amount of time to fix their flak/DM stutter issues, then hopefully December will be a truly Horrido! month. Bring it on.

:pilotfly:

 

[Fang333333]

My performance in the Horrido Campaign with VR is unplayable. I own EVERY aircraft and Every campaign/module/addon/3rd partys ever sold for DCS. I actually came on here to voice my issues. If you have VR, BAIL on Horrido!. I lowered visual settings to a point of being barely enjoyable, and Mission 10 for example STILL turns into a LITERAL, slideshow. I played Baltic Dragons FA/ 18 campaign on much much higher settings and had a few stutters, but nothing terrible in the least. I am actually considering not completing the campaign cuz it just turns into a mess every mission.

[Brainfreeze]

7 minutes ago, Fang333333 said:

My performance in the Horrido Campaign with VR is unplayable. I own EVERY aircraft and Every campaign/module/addon/3rd partys ever sold for DCS. I actually came on here to voice my issues. If you have VR, BAIL on Horrido!. I lowered visual settings to a point of being barely enjoyable, and Mission 10 for example STILL turns into a LITERAL, slideshow. I played Baltic Dragons FA/ 18 campaign on much much higher settings and had a few stutters, but nothing terrible in the least. I am actually considering not completing the campaign cuz it just turns into a mess every mission.

what's your hardware?

[Fang333333]

Hi brainfreeze, I started a new thread about my VR experience but it is a year old custom HP laptop, RTX 2060, Core i79750 2.6 ghz maxed out 32 gb RAM, with 500 GB SSD and 1 TB Hardrive.  Of course Windsows 10 and DCS OB latest patch.

 

I know these maps are not VR optimized but it also seems to just be WAY too many objects or something.

Hope that helps!

 

Thanks!

 

Edited March 2, 2021 by Fang333333

[Reflected]

1) the Channel map still needs some optimization from ED. Please don’t compare it to campaigns set over desert/ ocean/ any other maps. I often get half the fps when compared to Normandy for example. I wish it was further optimized. 

2) there are many bugs currently resulting in loss of performance. At times my fps drops to 10% on any map. ED is aware but if you do have a track it would surely help them find the root cause. 
3) what are your DCS settings?

 

I’m asking this because I designed and tested the campaign on a sub-par laptop without issues, (albeit in 2D) so telling people to bail on the campaign is not very nice. 
 

Most of the Horrido missions have far less units than my other campaigns set over Normandy in order to balance the roughness of the map performance. 
 

so please post your settings and post specific reports of when fps loss occured, along with a track and I can forward it to the relevant people. 
 

thanks!

4 minutes ago, Fang333333 said:

Hi brainfreeze, I started a new thread about my VR experience but it is a year old custom HP laptop, RTX 2060, Core i79750 2.6 ghz maxed out 32 gb RAM, with 500 GB SSD and 1 TB Hardrive. 

 

Thanks!

 

my laptop has quite similar specs. Sadly I had to realize that it merely meets the minimum requirements posted by ED recently, and lags behind the Vr requirements. The newer modules such as the Channel are more demanding on our PCs than, say, the Caucasus or the PG. 

[Fang333333]

Hi Brainfreeze,

First off, I hope you do not take this personal, I have worked with developers in the past and as you know, sometimes something will work great on 1 PC and 5 other PC's will reject it. I will try to get a screenshot of the settings for you. I do not tell people to bail on Horrido! to be mean, I am trying to save grave disappointment for pilots in our community. In my case, I spent weeks programming and setting up hardware for this campaign. After all, do you really want someone to buy a campaign and then HATE the experience and avoid anything else you ever release? Many VR users (Including myself) drop $1000's on this stuff and then have a bad experience and find out it was never meant for VR. Its a good campaign, I am sure wonderful if I was playing 2D, I just cannot say the experience in VR has been pleasant.

Edited March 2, 2021 by Fang333333

[Reflected]

7 minutes ago, Fang333333 said:

Hi Brainfreeze,

First off, I hope you do not take this personal, I have worked with developers in the past and as you know, sometimes something will work great on 1 PC and 5 other PC's will reject it. I will try to get a screenshot of the settings for you. I do not tell people to bail on Horrido! to be mean, I am trying to save grave disappointment for pilots in our community. In my case, I spent weeks programming and setting up hardware for this campaign. After all, do you really want someone to buy a campaign and then HATE the experience and avoid anything else you ever release? Many VR users (Including myself) drop $1000's on this stuff and then have a bad experience and find out it was never meant for VR. Its a good campaign, I am sure wonderful if I was playing 2D, I just cannot say the experience in VR has been pleasant.

 

 

I'm not taking it personally, I'm just saying you're knocking on the wrong door. The campaign has far less units than my other campaigns already. Lack of optimization and current bugs ruin your experience, I understand that and I'm sorry to hear it, but if that's the case it's better to identify the root cause and report it so ED can fix it, right? If I could do anything about it in the mission editor, I would have done it already. When campaigns with more units give me double FPS over Normandy for example? Yes, I could have used Normandy or the Caucasus instead, we'd all have GREAT FPS, but I chose to trust ED to fine tune the Channel. Which I'm sure they'll do now that it's coming out of beta.

 

Something is defo wrong with smoke effects and explosions in the latest beta. That's why I asked you to post your settings and preferably some tracks.

[Brainfreeze]

1 hour ago, Fang333333 said:

Hi Brainfreeze,

First off, I hope you do not take this personal,

 

Err, not me!  Mistaken identity with Reflected.

[Fang333333]

 

 

On 3/2/2021 at 1:31 PM, Brainfreeze said:

Err, not me!  Mistaken identity with Reflected.

Haha Sorry!

Hopefully you can see these settings here. I was definitely enjoying Mission 10. It sucks that the ww2 maps and ww2 stuff is so VR unfriendly

Edited March 4, 2021 by Fang333333

[Reflected]

Thanks a lot for posting it. I can see a few items that would help you:

 

TERRAIN TEXTURES - set it to low. You can hardly see the difference even it 2D, let alone in VR, but it will save you sh*tloads of VRAM.

CIV TRAFFIC - try to turn it off for campaigns so that it doesn't interfere with mission traffic.

MSAA - There's not much difference between 2x and 4x visually, but it's a huge performance hog. Try to set it to 2x first, but if you really wanna boost your FPS, turn it OFF and force your AA through the Nvidia panel.

SSAA - Turn it off. On one hand there's no point using both this and MSAA, on the other hand it costs more FPS than MSAA.

TERRAIN OBJECT SHADOWS - turn it to flat. You'll only see the difference if you fly helos in mountainous areas around sunset, but it will save you a lot of FPS.

 

Also, turn OFF wake turbulence. That's on a different tab. Those turn the game into a slideshow when lots of aircraft are present which is usually the case in WWII campaigns.

 

Try all of the above first and see how much boost you get. Then:

 

PIXEL DENSITY - not sure what your settings are, but each decimal costs dearly in performance. I'm no VR expert but I've read it's better to set it back to 1.0 in game then raise it via the Oculus Tray Tool or whatever software your VR set is using.

 

All of this will give you more FPS in general, it won't however solve the 'slideshow moments'. Those are due to ongoing bugs in DCS that will be solved shortly. They're not related to your system nor the campaign.

 

Let me know if this helped.

[Brainfreeze]

On 3/2/2021 at 6:31 PM, Fang333333 said:

Hi brainfreeze, I started a new thread about my VR experience but it is a year old custom HP laptop, RTX 2060, Core i79750 2.6 ghz maxed out 32 gb RAM, with 500 GB SSD and 1 TB Hardrive.  Of course Windsows 10 and DCS OB latest patch.

 

I know these maps are not VR optimized but it also seems to just be WAY too many objects or something.

Hope that helps!

 

Thanks!

 

 

A laptop will always struggle with DCS.

@Reflected's advice is just the right one to improve FPS.  Regarding VR, if you have a quest 2 then use oculus tray tool and set supersampliing between  1.2 and 1.5 and PD in DCS at 1.  If you have a Reverb G2 then steamVR resolution to slightly above the native resolution of the headset (like 3000x3000) ... This is around 70% setting for me but people get various recommended % depending on their systems.  This will give you crisp cockpit without taxing too much. If still struggling then drop SuperSampling from these.

Edited March 4, 2021 by Brainfreeze

[Fang333333]

On 3/4/2021 at 12:52 AM, Reflected said:

Thanks a lot for posting it. I can see a few items that would help you:

 

TERRAIN TEXTURES - set it to low. You can hardly see the difference even it 2D, let alone in VR, but it will save you sh*tloads of VRAM.

CIV TRAFFIC - try to turn it off for campaigns so that it doesn't interfere with mission traffic.

MSAA - There's not much difference between 2x and 4x visually, but it's a huge performance hog. Try to set it to 2x first, but if you really wanna boost your FPS, turn it OFF and force your AA through the Nvidia panel.

SSAA - Turn it off. On one hand there's no point using both this and MSAA, on the other hand it costs more FPS than MSAA.

TERRAIN OBJECT SHADOWS - turn it to flat. You'll only see the difference if you fly helos in mountainous areas around sunset, but it will save you a lot of FPS.

 

Also, turn OFF wake turbulence. That's on a different tab. Those turn the game into a slideshow when lots of aircraft are present which is usually the case in WWII campaigns.

 

Try all of the above first and see how much boost you get. Then:

 

PIXEL DENSITY - not sure what your settings are, but each decimal costs dearly in performance. I'm no VR expert but I've read it's better to set it back to 1.0 in game then raise it via the Oculus Tray Tool or whatever software your VR set is using.

 

All of this will give you more FPS in general, it won't however solve the 'slideshow moments'. Those are due to ongoing bugs in DCS that will be solved shortly. They're not related to your system nor the campaign.

 

Let me know if this helped.

 

Hi thank you guys! Yeah I am going to look into this right now. See if it helps. yeah Mission 11 is a complete no go so far. The bomb craters bring me down to like 1 frame a minute. If I look away its pretty smooth (For me anyway, but I don't get motion sickness). Then as I pass them they are smooth until the AI objects load. The dogfights with all the AI brings down it to slideshow status, not as bad as the craters but definitely not streamable either. I will try to mess with the new settings and see if it helps.

[Reflected]

You mean the shelling? I just managed to reproduce it in a 'virgin' mission. With only me flying over a shelling zone on an empty map. I went from 60-70 FPS to 20. When I made the campaign it had no performance impact, something went wrong since. I will report it to ED. If you have a track, send it to me please so I can attach that too.

[Fang333333]

Just now, Reflected said:

You mean the shelling? I just managed to reproduce it in a 'virgin' mission. With only me flying over a shelling zone on an empty map. I went from 60-70 FPS to 20. When I made the campaign it had no performance impact, something went wrong since. I will report it to ED. If you have a track, send it to me please so I can attach that too.

I'll be happy to do so. Yeah that shelled zone literally is like a frame a minute. I turn my head and look forward, back to smooth. If you tell me where the track is again I will try to save it after I test the mission today

[Reflected]

Just fly the mission, then after you pass the shelling zone hit 'Quit', then click on 'Save track' on the debriefing screen. The track file will be wherever you save it.