DCS: F-14A & B - Excessive shimmering in Cockpit

[Schmidtfire]

As the title suggests. I have issues with flickering/shimmering in the Tomcat cockpit. Worst offenders is the ACM panel and around many of the gauges. Love the textures and artwork, but compared to other modules it's very distracting and  brings down the overall visual quality.
Running at 3440x1440 with 2xMSAA and 4xAF, the level of shimmering is way above what I see in other modules.

Hope that this can be improved in some way.

 

Thx!
 

Edited April 26, 2021 by Schmidtfire

[Skysurfer]

Set AF to 16x - there is no reason not to.

[Schmidtfire]

Thanks for the advice, set my AF to 16x.

Looking at a few tutorials and gamplay videos online I see the same shimmering issues. Youtube compression hides it a bit, but it is there.
So it is something that everyone suffer from (at least on 2xMSAA)

After some investigation I think I have found the cause of the shimmering! Thin, brigther lines (wear and tear around VDI bezels, instrument buttons etc) together
with cockpit shake. Amazing detail and artwork, but in motion it becomes an issue. So I guess it's hard to do anything about it without @Cobra847 changing the artwork to have less details around thin edges.

 

Edited April 26, 2021 by Schmidtfire

[Skysurfer]

Have you tried MSAA x4? MSAA shouldn't have too big of an impact on performance. Personally I don't see any shimering on my end - what is your texture setting?

[Schmidtfire]

1 hour ago, Skysurfer said:

Have you tried MSAA x4? MSAA shouldn't have too big of an impact on performance. Personally I don't see any shimering on my end - what is your texture setting?

Textures set to High. MSAA has a really big impact on performance in DCS. It has to do with Deferred shading and cannot be compared to running MSAA in other games.
ED in many cases recommends that it be turned off completely.

Im pretty sure you have shimmering on your end aswell, you are just not noticing it for some reason.  It's very visible in videos.
Look at all the thin lines shimmering and flickering around the cockpit: 
 

 

[Skysurfer]

I would have to specifically look for that next time but it hasn't caught my attention so far. I also run 4x MSAA and it runs just fine. No reason not to on a modern system.

Edited April 26, 2021 by Skysurfer

[draconus]

16 hours ago, Schmidtfire said:

Hope that this can be improved in some way.

Any idea what would that be? I'd say welcome to computer gaming - you can only set what DCS and driver give you.

[Schmidtfire]

2 hours ago, draconus said:

Any idea what would that be? I'd say welcome to computer gaming - you can only set what DCS and driver give you.

My conclusion is that artwork tweaks might mitigate this issue.

It's the really fine hand painted texture work around thin edges that starts to shimmer/flicker a lot when engines are running and cockpit is shaking.
Again, this is most prominent in the F-14 and to some degree in the AJS-37 and C-101.    

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

12 hours ago, Schmidtfire said:

MSAA has a really big impact on performance in DCS. It has to do with Deferred shading

Yes: there have been some excellent reports about how MSAA and deferred shading are essentially incompatible, back when we had DCS 2.0 Alpha.

Whomever says MSAA doesn't have a big impact likely never tried VR.

 

About the shimmering: yes it's present but I'd say that's more of a DCS issue. The Hornet has the worst shimmering because of how many "lines" there are in the cockpit (I don't know how else to describe it): the UFC shimmers, the MFDs shimmer, ... I mean, the FCS page looks like an oscilloscope as soon as you move your head slightly...
In the Falcon only the edges of the round buttons on top of the UFC shimmer, the rest is mostly fine. From my point of view, the Tomcat has some of the least shimmering.

[Schmidtfire]

I agree that it is also a DCS issue, my point is that it CAN be mitigated and suppressed by careful artwork.

Texture detailing has to be tuned to the DCS graphics engine to lessen the effect as much as possible. Why accentuate
thin 3D-model lines by putting wear and tear texturing along the edges? The "lived in" Tomcat cockpit looks great, 
my only suggestion is to dampen or remove some texture detail around edges.

If we had access to a "factory fresh" cockpit mod for F-14, it would be interesting to see the difference. Im pretty sure it would
be a major improvement as far as removing shimmering and flicker.

Edited April 27, 2021 by Schmidtfire

[draconus]

5 hours ago, Schmidtfire said:

I agree that it is also a DCS issue, my point is that it CAN be mitigated and suppressed by careful artwork

If you say so it should be possible to change some cockpit textures (or ask some modder) to test it.