Couple of things to make Helo's a little more enjoyable

[Boosterdog]

Firstly neither of these things are especially new nor groundbraking but, together and for me at least work to improve the experiecne (in addition to marginally increasing performance, which, on a maginal rig, is marginally better in marginal situations!)

First up is altering the shadows lua. Possibly a no- no for MP but ok for single player. Not my solution and one of a number out there but @Taz1004's suggested settings in the thread linked below, along with his clear explanation of stuff is worth having a looksee. In my experience the settings he proposes greatly reduce the flicker (which seem to pulse in time with the rotas for some odd reason, possibly just my impression) of the low res and pretty much stop the "pop" between the low and higher res shadows at low level. Given that the shadows in DCS are not one if its strong points its not a perfect solution to all scenarios but better then nothing for low level antics until ED come up with something better. If you are so inclinded I strongly recommend reading carefully what he has to say and experimenting.

You can find the shadows.lua in the game's root folder/Config/effects. 

Second is my attempt to ease the load on the system when messing about in the wooded valleys and forests of the Caucauses. This involves find your terrains folder (Root/Mods/terrains/Caucauses/), then opening the "surface details", then renaming "shrubs.ref" to something (anything) else. I use "Shrubs_0".  You will need to go delete the recreated Shubs file after every update unfortunately. Doing this removes the shrubs (obviously) but you'll be surrprised at just how many of those sods lurk under the forest canopy. Graphically it does show, the forests appears a little less dense but the overall impact isnt too severe. I presume the shrubs have shadow effects too but Im unsure if removing the shrub also removes its shadow. Either way, it made my Harrier excursions out of Batumi a much smoother experience. 

If you are not put off by renaming stuff in the terrains folder there are some other things you can do (again both are not new but Id thought Id mention them) in the Syria terrain's sufaceDetails folder , renaming the file "Anabasis_setifera.ref" gets rid of the pop up bushes whilst in the PG SurfaceDetails folder doing the same to "Small Bush" and "Small Bush Group" does similar. 

Whilst in the PG terrains folder, if, like me you think that civilian aircraft, as boring as they are, should not simply be concrete grey and undeletable using the the ME, you can erase all trace of them by opening the "Models/Aircraft" folder and renaming the "Aircraft.ref" and "Aircraft.ref.m5" files.  I presume you can do similar for the aircraft on other maps to. If you like yer Mods the cilivilan aircraft mod has some useful aircraft and approriate skins (in addition to the user files section) to re-populate the main airports nicely should your system support it. 

Finally, for an FPS friendly experience on the Marianas you can create a batchfile using the synax "Make_like_palm_oil_plantation" and this will instantly deforest the whole region and wipe out all those little pesky villages...........honest

Edited November 11, 2021 by Boosterdog

[Taz1004]

6 hours ago, Boosterdog said:

Firstly neither of these things are especially new nor groundbraking but, together and for me at least work to improve the experiecne (in addition to marginally increasing performance, which, on a maginal rig, is marginally better in marginal situations!)

First up is altering the shadows lua. Possibly a no- no for MP but ok for single player. Not my solution and one of a number out there but @Taz1004's suggested settings in the thread linked below, along with his clear explanation of stuff is worth having a looksee. In my experience the settings he proposes greatly reduce the flicker (which seem to pulse in time with the rotas for some odd reason, possibly just my impression) of the low res and pretty much stop the "pop" between the low and higher res shadows at low level. Given that the shadows in DCS are not one if its strong points its not a perfect solution to all scenarios but better then nothing for low level antics until ED come up with something better. If you are so inclinded I strongly recommend reading carefully what he has to say and experimenting.

You can find the shadows.lua in the game's root folder/Config/effects. 

Second is my attempt to ease the load on the system when messing about in the wooded valleys and forests of the Caucauses. This involves find your terrains folder (Root/Mods/terrains/Caucauses/), then opening the "surface details", then renaming "shrubs.ref" to something (anything) else. I use "Shrubs_0".  You will need to go delete the recreated Shubs file after every update unfortunately. Doing this removes the shrubs (obviously) but you'll be surrprised at just how many of those sods lurk under the forest canopy. Graphically it does show, the forests appears a little less dense but the overall impact isnt too severe. I presume the shrubs have shadow effects too but Im unsure if removing the shrub also removes its shadow. Either way, it made my Harrier excursions out of Batumi a much smoother experience. 

If you are not put off by renaming stuff in the terrains folder there are some other things you can do (again both are not new but Id thought Id mention them) in the Syria terrain's sufaceDetails folder , renaming the file "Anabasis_setifera.ref" gets rid of the pop up bushes whilst in the PG SurfaceDetails folder doing the same to "Small Bush" and "Small Bush Group" does similar. 

Whilst in the PG terrains folder, if, like me you think that civilian aircraft, as boring as they are, should not simply be concrete grey and undeletable using the the ME, you can erase all trace of them by opening the "Models/Aircraft" folder and renaming the "Aircraft.ref" and "Aircraft.ref.m5" files.  I presume you can do similar for the aircraft on other maps to. If you like yer Mods the cilivilan aircraft mod has some useful aircraft and approriate skins (in addition to the user files section) to re-populate the main airports nicely should your system support it. 

Finally, for an FPS friendly experience on the Marianas you can create a batchfile using the synax "Make_like_palm_oil_plantation" and this will instantly deforest the whole region and wipe out all those little pesky villages...........honest

 

Great tips.  I didn't know about Syria bushes.

If you don't want to delete the Shrub.ref file after each update, open \Mods\terrains\Caucasus\terrain.cfg.lua  Then line 216, rename the Shrub.ref file there.  You can make this into a Mod you can reinstall with mod manager after each update.