Is ED letting down their VR customers?? Yes I'm venting!

[schmiefel]

I don't think that the main problem for a lot of VR users in DCS is that they can't max everything even with a top notch system, but to get a consistent performance over all modules, maps and scenarios in SP and MP. 

Maybe ED has to offer a new system with which one could save different settings for several scenarios that get loaded automatically with the chosen scenario, e.g. at least a standard setting if one goes SP or MP and this combined for each map / module as long as those are still on different technical and details level.

I think one main focus task at least should be to get each module, scenario and map on the same level and technology for the so called stable version and leave 'improvements' and testing for different new / alternate approaches to the beta?

[Ala12Rv-Tundra]

23 minutes ago, schmiefel said:

I don't think that the main problem for a lot of VR users in DCS is that they can't max everything even with a top notch system, but to get a consistent performance over all modules, maps and scenarios in SP and MP. 

Maybe ED has to offer a new system with which one could save different settings for several scenarios that get loaded automatically with the chosen scenario, e.g. at least a standard setting if one goes SP or MP and this combined for each map / module as long as those are still on different technical and details level.

I think one main focus task at least should be to get each module, scenario and map on the same level and technology for the so called stable version and leave 'improvements' and testing for different new / alternate approaches to the beta?

But it´s impossible with DCS being a sandbox. Some guys could fly with no clouds, flat shadows and 10 ground units, others full weather Syria full budget Liberation MP.
ED has offered customized graphic options besides the several default ones for ages. I have two, a regular one and another one for Marianas, with all shadows to flat.

[schmiefel]

2 hours ago, Ala12Rv-Tundra said:

ED has offered customized graphic options besides the several default ones for ages. I have two, a regular one and another one for Marianas, with all shadows to flat.

I know, but the usability of those is very limited. You even can't give them individual names, not thinking about to connect them automatically to e.g. a certain map or MP server with a given scenario. Even if it will take forever to improve DCS graphics and game engine that's something that ED could have improved since its basic implementation. I am not asking for rocket science but more and better organizable options. Instead of rolling out another free map, that lacks in most everything to make good use of, such usability improvements would help DCS and esp. but not exclusively the VR users much more, wouldn't it?

Edited August 29, 2021 by schmiefel

[Ala12Rv-Tundra]

1 hour ago, schmiefel said:

I know, but the usability of those is very limited. You even can't give them individual names, not thinking about to connect them automatically to e.g. a certain map or MP server with a given scenario. Even if it will take forever to improve DCS graphics and game engine that's something that ED could have improved since its basic implementation. I am not asking for rocket science but more and better organizable options. Instead of rolling out another free map, that lacks in most everything to make good use of, such usability improvements would help DCS and esp. but not exclusively the VR users much more, wouldn't it?

 

I understand  your point for advanced options but at the same time I can´t help thinking it takes literally seconds to choice a profile before joining a server or using a light SP mission or heavy SP mission.
the Marianas free map is a testbed for ground objects and scenery, on my virtual sqn we have found good usage for Farillion bombing range competitions, carrier ops and we are trying to set an OceanSky air-to-air guns only PvP arena so new guys don´t even have to buy a map to join the competitions.

[C3PO]

Without wanting to sound annoying, you need to go nVidia. 3090 and it runs brilliantly with a G2. I’m sure things will get optimised in game too. 

Edited August 29, 2021 by C3PO

[VR Flight Guy in PJ Pants]

I have posted it before, when there is a similar product out there which runs pretty great on a lesser system like mine, and with VR in mind, all I think is DCS can do better. I know it is not an overnight thing, as the new map demonstrates the possibility, and if ED wants to charge me for that, i cannot speak for others, my credit card will be ready.

[Ala12Rv-Tundra]

1 hour ago, C3PO said:

Without wanting to sound annoying, you need to go nVidia. 3090 and it runs brilliantly with a G2. I’m sure things will get optimised in game too. 

 

You think the game is that biased towards Nvidia stuff? 

[schmiefel]

33 minutes ago, Ala12Rv-Tundra said:

You think the game is that biased towards Nvidia stuff? 

I think VR is more biased to NV stuff or from another point of view: AMD lacks VR support to be equally usable.

[C3PO]

11 hours ago, Ala12Rv-Tundra said:

You think the game is that biased towards Nvidia stuff? 

No - I just think nVidia is more “tuned” to VR from what I’ve seen of benchmarks across different games. 

Edited August 30, 2021 by C3PO

[Nick_17]

On 8/27/2021 at 4:48 PM, RackMonkey said:

You can see by my sig that I have new and top notch hardware. I run an FRS mod, a shader mod and Process Lasso. My CPU is OC'd to 5.0 and the GPU has been up'd to 2580 and yet I still have to balance between having stutters and a resolution that is usable. And there doesn't seem to be a happy medium. 

 

If I want to get enough FPS to get rid of the stutters, I have drop all the setting so low that I can't recognize the instruments that are right in front of my face. If I want to see the instruments, MFD's, or ground targets I have to up the resolution to a point where the FPS is in the teens. And I still can't see anything because of the aliasing.

 

I had the same experience a few weeks ago when my Reverb G2 arrived and while i had pretty good performance with the Rift S on almost max ingame settings (MSAA x2) i had a lot of stutters and a high fps impact when i changed to the G2. First i though it was just because of the much higher Resolution of the G2 and i was prepared to lower some settings, but even with lowest ingame settings, things did not change. I still had some stutters and quite low fps. The only thing that really helped was lowering the SteamVR Resolution to about 50%.

 

A few days later I experimented a bit and changed the ingame settings back to my Rift S standard and set the SteamVR Resolution as low as the native Rift S Resolution. I thought the performance should the be about the same as before, maybe just a bit lower. But it was unplayble and i thought there must be something wrong. I checked a few forums about the Reverb G2 if there is a way to achieve better performance and stumbled upon a website that suggested a few things i haven't tried before (Edit: Website = https://vr4dcs.com/2020/12/24/how-to-nail-reverb-setup/ . One of which was disabling "ghost monitors". I checked my windows display settings and saw that there were 4 new displays above my real monitors. I disabled them and restarted my PC. (I think i also disabled the windows game mode which was suggested there as well).

 

After the restart I launched DCS again and saw a huge performance boost. Since that day I play with 100% Steam VR Resolution and high ingame settings (almost max, just MSAA x2 and Visib Range = high) with about 40 fps and no stutters. No clue what those ghost monitors are and why they pop up when connecting my G2, but they reduced my performance by a LOT.

Some suggested this to a few friends with a G2 but some of them didn't see any change, might be worth a try tho.

Edited August 30, 2021 by Nick_17

[Hotdognz]

16 hours ago, C3PO said:

Without wanting to sound annoying, you need to go nVidia. 3090 and it runs brilliantly with a G2. I’m sure things will get optimised in game too. 

 

Even a 3090 in DCS VR still needs plenty of tweaking to get a decent performance online in a PVE mission, believe me I have spent hours doing just that, after a few shader mods its running OK, except for the Marianas map which runs quite bad with my same settings I use for The Channel map which is a heavy GPU use map.

 

[5ephir0th]

I dont think that to make VR have a better performance 2D side must suffer from it, i just think that the problemas we see on VR are there on 2D, just that VR need so much resources that make it more visible.

 

I love DCS, 95% of my playtime is on DCS, the reason to upgrade my current rig is DCS, i have VR HMD due to DCS... But i´m starting to hate DCS due to VR and, for me, theres no going back to 2D.

 

I know ED has to make money with a constant module development, i have planes that i almost not flown and i don´t regret cause at least it was money that goes to DCS but DCS engine is already a monster and or ED team make focus and spent a good (huge) amount of resources on engine or it will turn the monster that kill DCS/ED. Theres no way, due the nature of DCS, that we are on 2021 and still theres no multithreading and the worst is that theres no news about it (or Vulkan) since 2021 roadmap release.

 

I don´t want new modules or maps, just a complete revamp of DCS core.

[dburne]

2 minutes ago, 5ephir0th said:

 

I don´t want new modules or maps, just a complete revamp of DCS core.

 

Only problem with that is if they stop generating modules and maps to only work on the core, then they stop generating revenue.

[5ephir0th]

1 minute ago, dburne said:

 

Only problem with that is if they stop generating modules and maps to only work on the core, then they stop generating revenue.

 

That´s what i explained prior to that sentence

[eaglecash867]

47 minutes ago, 5ephir0th said:

I dont think that to make VR have a better performance 2D side must suffer from it, i just think that the problemas we see on VR are there on 2D, just that VR need so much resources that make it more visible.

Very true.  It was a long time ago, and a lot of people may have forgotten, but DCS and its predecessor were difficult to get good performance on, even in 2D, until our hardware got fast enough to run it well.

[LithiumR]

4 hours ago, 5ephir0th said:

I dont think that to make VR have a better performance 2D side must suffer from it, i just think that the problemas we see on VR are there on 2D, just that VR need so much resources that make it more visible.

 

I love DCS, 95% of my playtime is on DCS, the reason to upgrade my current rig is DCS, i have VR HMD due to DCS... But i´m starting to hate DCS due to VR and, for me, theres no going back to 2D.

 

I’m know ED has to make money with constant a module development, i have planes that i almost not flown and i don´t regret cause at least it was money that goes to DCS but DCS engine is already a monster and or ED team make focus and spent a good (huge) amount of resources on engine or it will turn the monster that kill DCS/ED. Theres no way, due the nature of DCS, that we are on 2021 and still theres no multithreading and the worst is that theres no news about it (or Vulkan) since 2021 roadmap release.

 

I don´t want new modules or maps, just a complete revamp of DCS core.

This is also my point of view explained in an earlier comment. As a long time customer I love DCS. I’m not hating on ED... they have taken on an extremely ambitious project and done well imo. BUT vr has thrown a wrench in the works. 
 

For me I don’t want to nor will I go back to 2D and at the same time I don’t think it’s financially possible for ED to focus resources on engine optimization (VR or otherwise) because they continually have to focus on modules to make payroll. Maybe an impossible situation for ED. 
 

Maybe ED is waiting for a higher % of VR users before they commit more resources to optimizing it... but if they don’t optimize it there won’t be a higher % of VR users and ultimately I think that will lead to a dwindling player base. There is zero doubt in my mind that that the future (which is now really) of flight summing IS VR.  Idk what the answer is. 

[dburne]

11 minutes ago, LithiumR said:

This is also my point of view explained in an earlier comment. As a long time customer I love DCS. I’m not hating on ED... they have taken on an extremely ambitious project and done well imo. BUT vr has thrown a wrench in the works. 
 

For me I don’t want to nor will I go back to 2D and at the same time I don’t think it’s financially possible for ED to focus resources on engine optimization (VR or otherwise) because they continually have to focus on modules to make payroll. Maybe an impossible situation for ED. 
 

Maybe ED is waiting for a higher % of VR users before they commit more resources to optimizing it... but if they don’t optimize it there won’t be a higher % of VR users and ultimately I think that will lead to a dwindling player base. There is zero doubt in my mind that that the future (which is now really) of flight summing IS VR.  Idk what the answer is. 

 

It is also tough when newer headsets with higher native resolution come out and folks think they are going to be able to run DCS at that higher resolution and get gorgeous results with same performance. Not gonna  happen. So then the look to ED to do some optimizing of the graphics engine to allow them to get those better results with good performance.

 

I have a nice 5k Headset with the Vive Pro 2 but I know I can not run DCS at that resolution. So I make compromises  that I am happy with.

[LithiumR]

44 minutes ago, dburne said:

 

It is also tough when newer headsets with higher native resolution come out and folks think they are going to be able to run DCS at that higher resolution and get gorgeous results with same performance. Not gonna  happen. So then the look to ED to do some optimizing of the graphics engine to allow them to get those better results with good performance.

 

I have a nice 5k Headset with the Vive Pro 2 but I know I can not run DCS at that resolution. So I make compromises  that I am happy with.

And I totally get that. I’m not looking for eye candy as much as I’m looking for less ghosting, less double image, and less flashing/ twitching. Which seems to be common even on the best hardware and subsequently why I’m reluctant to go drop 5k on a new rig. If I’m just going to experience the same performance but with shadows on why bother haha. 
 

And I’m not sure if it’s just a hard problem for ED to solve or if they just ignore it. I know there are very simple bug fixes that ED just ignores... maybe because they don’t have the manpower? Or they can’t afford to take focus off of the current “money maker”? The P-51 ram air controls come to mind. Easy easy easy fix... but totally ignored. Not trying to shift focus away from the topic at hand... just an example that makes me wonder, “If Ed doesn’t have the resources to fix 2 lines in a lua file how will they ever be able to optimize?”. It kills my hope.

 

But I digress. 20+ years of simming says DCS probably has not lost me as a customer regardless of my current complaints. Me being out of DCS is most likely temporary. Me voicing any of this is really just hoping it might have some influence on the devs to optimize... for me yes but also because I know I’m not alone and I really want DCS to do well and have a great player base. If I was alone in these issues I probably wouldn’t even bring it up. But if I, as a 10 year customer, am at nearly a breaking point I think that there is little hope of expanding or even holding onto the current player base. 
 

Anyway. At this point I’m just rambling. I’m sure ED is doing the best they can. 

Edited August 30, 2021 by LithiumR
Grammar and added some stuff

[schmiefel]

55 minutes ago, dburne said:

It is also tough when newer headsets with higher native resolution come out and folks think they are going to be able to run DCS at that higher resolution and get gorgeous results with same performance. Not gonna  happen. So then the look to ED to do some optimizing of the graphics engine to allow them to get those better results with good performance.

It's one thing that we need for sure high-end hardware to run other high-end systems like new highres VR sets. But it's another thing that DCS isn't still well balanced throughout its own content and we get more and more complex content that older content doesn't fit in. Plus it's lacking a lot in optimizing what it still has - just look a those shader mods that most of us VR users need to get at least a decent performance even with high-level hardware. And there are VR technologies getting a standard like OpenXR that ED seems to completely ignore, so we have to run VR over several external software layers, which doesn't push performance, too.

[5ephir0th]

1 hour ago, dburne said:

 

It is also tough when newer headsets with higher native resolution come out and folks think they are going to be able to run DCS at that higher resolution and get gorgeous results with same performance. Not gonna  happen. So then the look to ED to do some optimizing of the graphics engine to allow them to get those better results with good performance.

 

I have a nice 5k Headset with the Vive Pro 2 but I know I can not run DCS at that resolution. So I make compromises  that I am happy with.

 

I can accept that if:

1. Game engine doesn´t make use of a more than 10 years old graphic API (DirectX 11)
2. Game engine make use of CPU technology avalible since more than 15 years (Multi core CPUs)

3. Game engine doesn´t have serious issues with RAM/VRAM usage (you can try to convince me that a 17gb VRAM usage reported from some 3090 users for DCS in any graphic setting is logical)
4. Game doens´t stutter even if your GPU usage are at 60%, maybe due to a poor implementation of data disk streaming
5. Etc

I don´t expect from ED that they make DCS runs on Reverb G2 and RTX 1060 at 90 fps with maxed settings, just the game engine catch up today (or even yesterday) hardware posibilities that can make it way more efficient.

 

The big problem of DCS is that the engine "looks" so inefficient that if they try to enhance on others areas like IA the performance will be worse.

Anyway, i love DCS and ED and they have all my support, thats for sure.

Edited August 30, 2021 by 5ephir0th

[GunSlingerAUS]

On 8/30/2021 at 5:20 AM, C3PO said:

Without wanting to sound annoying, you need to go nVidia. 3090 and it runs brilliantly with a G2. I’m sure things will get optimised in game too. 

 

 

I have a 3090 with an 11900K and 64GB of RAM, and find the G2 runs terribly in DCS. 45fps with half decent gfx, or 60fps with 2007-era graphics, is not to my liking. 

[The_Nephilim]

4 hours ago, GunSlingerAUS said:

 

I have a 3090 with an 11900K and 64GB of RAM, and find the G2 runs terribly in DCS. 45fps with half decent gfx, or 60fps with 2007-era graphics, is not to my liking. 

Wonder why sounds like a bad config or something?

I dont think ED is letting down the VR users sure it could run better but I have a lowly 1080GTX and looks good to me on low settings with a G2.

 

 

EDIT: well I checked what it looked like in full rez on the G2 which is like 3xxx  x   3xxxx but I have itlike 30% at 1784x1748 while not in its full glory it still is fun to fly in this sim.. I have put in a tree mod and the shader mod which helps performance a bit. I am hopefull with Vulkan in the near future I hope.

Edited August 31, 2021 by The_Nephilim

[C3PO]

5 hours ago, GunSlingerAUS said:

 

I have a 3090 with an 11900K and 64GB of RAM, and find the G2 runs terribly in DCS. 45fps with half decent gfx, or 60fps with 2007-era graphics, is not to my liking. 

But what’s the resolution it is running at? Also, chasing FPS in VR I have found to be pointless as therr is no comparison with pancake mode. Fewer FPS don’t seem to matter as much as it does not feel as jerky visually or unsmooth. For 95% of the time, I have a completely fluid experience. Only exception is taking off from Beirut in early morning / evening when the ground clutter causes it to be stuttery visually - but that passes at > 1,500feet.

Edited August 31, 2021 by C3PO

[schmiefel]

The last 3..4 different statements sum it up very well: 2 users with top notch and very expensive PC Hardware running VR on a RTX 3090 have to tune down their resolution in VR to about 2k to get a slightly smooth experience and one using a still very well performing but nowadays  slightly outdated GTX1080 can run it with similar graphics and experience.

 

That states very well that DCS hangs in the days (or even prior to this) when 1080ti systems were the top notch ones and it can't make much use of today's hardware - at least in VR and when it comes to 2D just throw it on a highres 4k monitor and you'll end in a similar situation to have to tune it different for rather each module to get a decent performance. Add some AI, weather, put this on a MP scenario and you'll reach a stutter fest while your top notch hardware is halfway idling... this situation reminds me of a well known civil flight simulation that I stopped using years ago despite having modules worth thousands of Euro's.

Edited August 31, 2021 by schmiefel

[TAW_Impalor]

Yes, the DCS monster is out of control. I feel sad reading this thread as I was really looking forward to upgrade by the next year...