Generally shimmering shadows, trees, river banks and shores

[Hogges]

Hi,

 

I hope this is the right section of the forum to post this in.

 

Playing DCS I can't help but notice the generally large amount of shimmering going on in the scenery. Mostly visible in the shadows but also quite noticeably with trees, river banks and shore areas. I find that this is especially prevalent at low level and low sun settings. I have been flying the Huey a lot recently where, naturally, you spend a lot of time down low so that might be the reason why I have noticed it even more in the past few days.

 

I thus wanted to post this here as I would generally be interested in others' opinions on this topic but mostly because I feel that this is absolutely something that would have a great visual impact if this issue could be eliminated or at the very least mitigated by the developers.

 

I am absolutely no expert and am more than happy to be proven wrong by someone more knowledgeable on the topic but I do feel that the current anti-aliasing methods used in DCS have something to do with this. After reading into this topic it seems that the two solutions we have are rather old technology now and have been somewhat replaced by more contemporary and also somewhat less performance hungry methods. I have seen in other games the great effect that temporal AA has on shimmering like this so perhaps with the current work going on with the DCS core this is something that could be introduced in the future?

 

In case you don't know what I mean, I went ahead and picked examples out of official DCS videos to show it:

 

Visible at 0:17

Visible at 4:03

Visible at 1:21

 

 

Thank you in advance for taking this into account and I am always happy to provide more information.

Edited January 30, 2021 by Hogges

[thrustvector]

well same here i posted above/below you i get the almost like flashes on screen mainly over water in a rotor too

similar thing.....i think?

Edited January 30, 2021 by thrustvector

[Glide]

On 1/30/2021 at 6:29 AM, Hogges said:

I am always happy to provide more information

Can you post your settings of DCS and NCP?

[Flappie]

Here's another topic about shimmering shadows, with a video. I experience the exact same thing from my end.I take it we all have it.

Maybe the greatly awaited 2.5.7 version will fix this.

[Hogges]

Hey guys,

 

Thanks for your input.

 

Happy to provide my settings but I completely agree with Flappie. This seems to be a general issue with the way rendering and anti-aliasing is currently working in DCS. This is also why I picked official DCS videos to showcase this. After all, if ED themselves presently have no solution for this, we at least know that it is not our system or set up.  At best, we can play around with the settings to mitigate the effects.

 

Thus, I have arrived at the following:

 

 

In the Nvidia settings I enable MFAA, Maximum Performance, LOD-Bias on "Clamp" and also V-Sync plus setting my monitor to 60HZ. The last two are more to sync everything up with TrackIR as that also runs at 60HZ or increments of 60 and I feel that this gives me the smoothest experience and am not too concerned with reaching the maximum frame rate.

 

My system is:

i9-9900K

RTX 2080 Ti

32GB RAM

DCS installed on an NVMe SSD

 

For me, the above is currently my best workaround to limit the shimmering and get the best possible visuals whilst maintaining rock-steady frames. I'd like to get "Default" terrain shadows to work but find them incredibly performance hungry in the large wooden areas of the Caucasus map, which I use exclusively.

 

Perhaps this might be a starting point for other users looking to find the best setup for reducing the shimmering effects.

Edited February 20, 2021 by Hogges

[Mustang]

SGSSAA all the way with DCS

 

 

 

 

[3WA]

I get this problem on multiple games.  One way that seems to help is to put my game in windowed mode.  It helps a little.  I don't know why.  Just discovered it by accident.

 

EDIT: Been having this problem also with DCS and I just checked whether clicking full screen makes a difference or not.  Doesn't seem to on DCS.

What really helped was setting all the anti-alias stuff to maximum.  I can't remember all the names, there's like three of them.  Set to 4X, ON, and 2X.  Also set textures to high, and cockpit resolution to 1024.  Left everything else at lowest.

Still a slight bit of shimmering, but much better.  Unfortunately, I went from 60-70 fps to 8 fps, so .

I'll have to see if my old GTX-770 has that Profile Inspector above and try it.

Edited February 22, 2021 by 3WA

[Hiob]

On 2/20/2021 at 6:19 PM, Hogges said:

 

 

 

 

The only thing that contributes to the flickering of the shadows (or the lack of...) in your settings is "Terrain Object Shadow: Flat" (which is ok, it's a tradeoff between looks and flickering - but I find the flickering the most annoying.

 

I would suggest, that you trade "Visible Range" for "SSAA 1.5" and "Cockpit Displays 1024"... for best looks. Also Cockpit Global Illumination ads to the immersion - but that's a matter of taste for sure. Water to medium would be my last recommendation for performance if needed.

In NV controlpanel I leave everything to default except for the "high performance"-settings in power and texture filtering and the LOD-clamp.

[Glide]

1 hour ago, Hiob said:

"high performance"-settings in power and texture filtering and the LOD-clamp.

I believe with your hardware  LOD-clamp does nothing anymore, but that is the correct setting when using AF with older (Fermi?) cards.

[Glide]

On 2/20/2021 at 9:25 AM, Mustang said:

SGSSAA all the way with DCS

Thanks for that tip!  I'm using 2x SGSS to match my SSAA x2.  Looking good!

[Hiob]

On the SGSSAA-matter: is this exclusive to the Profile Inspector? I‘m not familiar with it. I only used the control panel up to now... 

5 hours ago, glide said:

I believe with your hardware  LOD-clamp does nothing anymore, but that is the correct setting when using AF with older (Fermi?) cards.

You may be correct. I read about in a VR guide and it sounded plausible. Since it hadn‘t an negative impact on visuals I went with it. 

[Glide]

13 minutes ago, Hiob said:

On the SGSSAA-matter: is this exclusive to the Profile Inspector? I‘m not familiar with it. I only used the control panel up to now... 

You may be correct. I read about in a VR guide and it sounded plausible. Since it hadn‘t an negative impact on visuals I went with it. 

I just got caught up on that LOD stuff the other day myself. 

 

Profile Inspector on Github.  There's a digital profile for it under the dropdown.  Look for Black Shark.  This is my first time trying it.   Be careful to reset any "non-standard" settings in Profile Inspector if you decide to go back to using NCP.  I am nervous that the NCP will screech at trying to read the settings after Profile Inspector changes them.  Use at own risk. 

Edited February 22, 2021 by glide

[Hiob]

Thank you! I thing I stick to the out-of-the-box stuff.

I‘m happy with my settings on 4K for the most part.

Except: can the profile inspector help with the flickering of fences?

[OttoPus]

Il 19/2/2021 at 18:44, Flappie ha scritto:

Here's another topic about shimmering shadows, with a video. I experience the exact same thing from my end.I take it we all have it.

Maybe the greatly awaited 2.5.7 version will fix this.

 

I don't think so, if you notice the shimmering is there in the 2.7 promo videos. You can see it in action even looking at far clouds near the horizon...

[Glide]

1 hour ago, Hiob said:

Except: can the profile inspector help with the flickering of fences?

I believe MSAA is best for fences since they are mostly just edges.  SSAA does the entire texture surface for jaggies.

[30mikemike]

In game MSAA x4 and Inspector Supersampling x2...Changed it to this today and I can honestly say DCS has never looked better. 1440p. 

[Glide]

2 hours ago, 30mikemike said:

In game MSAA x4 and Inspector Supersampling x2...Changed it to this today and I can honestly say DCS has never looked better. 1440p. 

I've been flying SSAA x2 with MSAA x2  with AF x16 and  Antialiasing - Transparancy OFF in the NCP.  This looks fabulous!  At first I had both MultiSample and 2x Sparse Grid Supersample enabled in Inspector, but after I switched to this heavy AA, I don't think that's needed anymore.  No shimmering yet.  I'm sticking with these settings.  Wow!  I'm using Vsync = FAST in NCP with the FPS counter turned off.   Cheers!

[30mikemike]

10 hours ago, glide said:

I've been flying SSAA x2 with MSAA x2  with AF x16 and  Antialiasing - Transparancy OFF in the NCP.  This looks fabulous!  At first I had both MultiSample and 2x Sparse Grid Supersample enabled in Inspector, but after I switched to this heavy AA, I don't think that's needed anymore.  No shimmering yet.  I'm sticking with these settings.  Wow!  I'm using Vsync = FAST in NCP with the FPS counter turned off.   Cheers!

 

Ah ok so you’re back to the in-game AA settings? 
I was running in game MSAA x2 and SSAA x1.5 until I read this post yesterday and spent a bit of time experimenting. 
if I run MSAA x2 and SSAA x2 it put my FPS down to about 54 over dense areas and with me running TrackIR I absolutely need a stable 60 FPS.

 

So far I’m impressed with the Supersampling coming from Nvidia Inspector, literally no shimmering whatsoever.

[Glide]

38 minutes ago, 30mikemike said:

Ah ok so you’re back to the in-game AA settings? 

Yep, got my brain reorganized.   My FPS are probably in the 30-40ish  range but I don't look at the FPS counter.  As long as I'm over 30 fps my eyes can't tell.  I have TrackIR Pro, and I don't see how DCS settings affect it.  Lucky again.  I also can't see the affect of Antialiasing - Transparency anymore.  Everything looks great except those water edges that shimmer in the distance.  No fix for that except don't look there.

[30mikemike]

15 minutes ago, glide said:

Yep, got my brain reorganized.   My FPS are probably in the 30-40ish  range but I don't look at the FPS counter.  As long as I'm over 30 fps my eyes can't tell.  I have TrackIR Pro, and I don't see how DCS settings affect it.  Lucky again.  I also can't see the affect of Antialiasing - Transparency anymore.  Everything looks great except those water edges that shimmer in the distance.  No fix for that except don't look there.

Yeah those water edges are really annoying to be fair. Hoping they can sort those going forward.

That’s really strange re your TrackIR as anything other than 60 FPS on my TrackIR Pro is a juddering mess, but lock to 60 FPS and it’s glass smooth. Weird.

I’m also praying that these new clouds aren’t going to be a big FPS hog! 

Edited March 3, 2021 by 30mikemike

[Glide]

Those TrackIR issues are common around the forum.  I wonder if moving the view with the mouse or keyboard creates the same issue.

[30mikemike]

1 minute ago, glide said:

Those TrackIR issues are common around the forum.  I wonder if moving the view with the mouse or keyboard creates the same issue.

No, seems fine when doing that. It’s because TrackIR refreshes at divisions of 60. So 60 FPS, 120 FPS etc and it’ll be smooth. I believe that’s the simple explanation anyway. Seeing as no one can maintain a solid 120FPS on any PC is why 60FPS is deemed as the ‘perfect’ FPS to lock to when using TrackIR.

 

Hopefully one day they’ll sort out the horrific ASW artifacts on the Rift-S and I’ll go back to using that but in the meantime I’m having a blast with TrackIR.

[Glide]

My TrackIR says it samples at 120 fps.  I'm not sure how ppl are changing their TrackIr refresh rates.

 

Here's a thread on the issue.  Might be a multi monitor issue.  Try with just one monitor.

 

Cheers.

 

[Glide]

I think I see what ppl mean by juddering.  If you try to focus your eyes BEFORE you turn the camera, the images blur until you stop moving your head.  If you let your eyes go blurry and focus AFTER you turn the camera, you don't notice.  Just goes to show how personal this stuff really is.

 

I turned both Multisample and 2X SG Supersample AA-transparency back on in Inspector because I can see the difference when reading the cockpit.

 

I was thinking this over in my sleep probably, but if SSAA does the entire texture and MSAA only does edges, with SSAA x2 and MSAA x2 you end up with x4 on the edges, correct?  Anyway, this seems like the sweet spot for now on my 1080Ti.