How would you simulate high ROF weapons (inculding cluster munitions) without strangling FPS?

[WelshZeCorgi]

So I am noticing that there are several weapons in DCS that REALLY pulls the FPS down like an anchor. The DPICM rounds for the MLRS, the 7.62 gun pods on the Mi-8 and just cluster bombs in general, though you do need to drop at least 4 in quick succession to get it to really make an impact.

 

Any clue as to what is causing the FPS drop and any clue as to how it could be solved?

[3WA]

Number of objects spawned.  An age old problem in any sim like game, especially fps games I've played.  If the sim doesn't cheat, and actually spawns every bullet or object, well, that all takes CPU time to track each and every object.  Then also, to calculate where it hit on the target, and calculate what damage was done.

So, if your firing an M-61 20mm cannon at 6000 to 6600 rounds per minute ( a little over a 100 rounds a second ), you can imagine how much load that is on your CPU.

Some cluster bombs carry over 200 bomblets in them of varying types, some with physics that will be hard to calculate.

This is why we have to have high end CPU's to play DCS.

Maybe DCS is cheating on some weapons with just an "effects" area, and not cheating on others, where they actually spawn every round.

Edited April 26, 2021 by 3WA

[Elunnia]

I had this issue with my I7 4770K. Now I have a Ryzen 5800x and I have no problem. I would'nt suppose the game was so CPU related. But even in VR it's smoother now, now FPS drop when I drop multiple cannister bombs.

[Arikaj]

11 minutes ago, 3WA said:

Number of objects spawned.  An age old problem in any sim like game, especially fps games I've played.  If the sim doesn't cheat, and actually spawns every bullet or object, well, that all takes CPU time to track each and every object.  Then also, to calculate where it hit on the target, and calculate what damage was done.

So, if your firing an M-61 20mm cannon at 6000 to 6600 rounds per minute ( a little over a 100 rounds a second ), you can imagine how much load that is on your CPU.

Some cluster bombs carry over 200 bomblets in them of varying types, some with physics that will be hard to calculate.

This is why we have to have high end CPU's to play DCS.

Maybe DCS is cheating on some weapons with just an "effects" area, and not cheating on others, where they actually spawn every round.

 

Do you think it will be improved by the introduction of Vulkan API? 

[Tank50us]

and ofc, some of these objects are fully modeled and textured items as well. Take a look at the CBU97 bomblets when they disperse, first you have the 'stacks' and little chutes, and then you have the actual pucks that get thrown out, and each puck can have one of two actions associated with it. It's a lot of things to process, and for a game like DCS, trying to cheat may not be the best option. The only way for ED to improve performance with these things is to massively simplify the objects so that they don't require as much resources, but that's not an easy thing to do, and it will look like crap when people do look at it.

[3WA]

3 minutes ago, Arikaj said:

Do you think it will be improved by the introduction of Vulkan API? 

I'm not sure.  I don't know what is calculating the path of the objects.  GPU or CPU?  I'm betting CPU.

 

2 minutes ago, Tank50us said:

The only way for ED to improve performance with these things is to massively simplify the objects so that they don't require as much resources, but that's not an easy thing to do, and it will look like crap when people do look at it.

 

Yeah, I'd rather just buy a new computer and have it simulated completely.

Edited April 26, 2021 by 3WA

[Arikaj]

2 minutes ago, 3WA said:

I'm not sure.  I don't know what is calculating the path of the objects.  GPU or CPU?  I'm betting CPU.

My bet is also on the CPU. And logically speaking when they finally get us the multi-core support, then it should improve. 

Edited April 26, 2021 by Arikaj

[deathbysybian]

Instead of tracking every bullet just track the path and use statistics to "detect" hits. 

[Northstar98]

One thing you've got to remember is DCS is mostly single core only (well, it technically uses 2, but that's for sound only AFAIK.

 

8 hours ago, deathbysybian said:

Instead of tracking every bullet just track the path and use statistics to "detect" hits. 

 

This is probably the more intensive aspect of it, unless I've misunderstood.

 

From what I've tested the loss in performance comes when the bomblets impact, and my suspicion is that the effects of explosions (which there are numerous of) are what's causing the issues.

 

One thing they could do for bomblets with a massive amount of submunitions is reduce the number of submunitions but make their area of effect larger so to have the same effect on units.