Map Performance

[Rudel_chw]

14 minutes ago, Raven (Elysian Angel) said:

So in that respect my post was a lot more useful than yours

ok, sorry, didnt realize that the thread was just to talk about performance or lack of it.

[sirrah]

I noticed quite a performance drop as soon as I get close to urban areas, since the last update.

Performance was never great for me on this map when flying over cities, but yesterday, when I was inbound on Rio Grande, my framerate crippled as soon as the city got in my field of view. As soon as the city wasn't in my fov everything was smooth again.

I feel you looking at my system specs in my signature and thinking: this guys pc is just way too outdated for DCS in VR . But here's the strange thing: I can fly over Cairo (Sinai map) and performance is just fine.

Anyone else experiencing this since the latest update?

 

Btw: Luckily, flying over non-urban areas is still pretty smooth. It is so soothing, just flying around over this beautiful scenery  

Edited July 29, 2023 by sirrah

[YoYo]

On 7/28/2023 at 2:08 AM, Rudel_chw said:

How is the developer going to look at this issue? You don't even tell either the map coordinates or the town name, this post is not helpful at all. 

I just don't know if it makes sense to report it again. Somehow I just don't see the optimization work. From the very beginning (June 2022), there is a serious problem here with performance and much has been said and reported. Work is going on in adding new facilities and airports, but the problem still exists. The map in forest areas and urban areas performs much worse than other, largest cities such as Cairo. Aleppo or even London generate more FPS for me than smaller towns here. The map only looks good in screenshots and outside of urban/forest areas when there are no more objects. Unfortunately, Im not a programmer and builder of 3D objects to point out the problem. Perhaps each object here has too many construction points in relation to what it should be and hence the problems.

I would suggest that the author test at least one locality and improve it, e.g. Ushuaia, and perform full optimization here, doubling the number of frames. We would give feedback if the direction is right and then he could do the same with other places. But this is not happening. I hope we get to it. I think the map is cool, big and interesting, but I don't see any reason for it to work as it currently does.

[Minsky]

The latest update seems to be either deeply unfinished, or just plain broken. And it certainly wasn't properly tested.

Previously, it was possible to tolerate occasional performance drops and avoid problematic areas by looking other way or flying high enough.

Now, virtually all cities on this map (and, by extension, their adjacent aerodromes) have horrendous performance from any angle and altitude.

Moreso, all these allegedly improved cities look godawful, with the non-matching "generic grass" and "generic dirt" textures slapped over the satellite imagery, and with all houses arranged into repetitive Lego blocks.

Yes, I couldn't believe my eyes too, so I disabled all mods, cleared all shaders, and for first time in my life did the slow repair. It didn't help 

Punta Arenas, 20 fps:

Rio Grande, 17 fps:

Ushuaia, 25 fps:

Rio Gallegos, 17 fps:

Puerto Natales, 28 fps:

El Calafate, 30 fps:

P.S. Like many others above, I have no major performance issues with other DCS maps, and can comfortably fly heavy modules over Cairo.

Edited July 30, 2023 by Minsky

[YoYo]

Tragedy  sorry to say,

[Eugel]

On 7/26/2023 at 3:16 PM, YoYo said:

I don't regret buying the map

To be honest, I do regret it. It´s been over a year now, and the populated areas still are unplayable for me in VR, while outside of those areas the map really is kind of empty and boring.

In that whole year, I spent maybe 5 hours flying through admittedly beautiful fjords. But other than that, I haven´t really touched it.

Edited July 31, 2023 by Eugel

[YoYo]

1 hour ago, Eugel said:

To be honest, I do regret it. It´s been over a year now, and the populated areas still are unplayable for me in VR, while outside of those areas the map really is kind of empty and boring.

In that whole year, I spent maybe 5 hours flying through admittedly beautiful fjords. But other than that, I haven´t really touched it.

 

The SA map has cool potential, I think we're all in agreement here. I don't regret it because we have so few maps only for DCS anyway this is something new, made on a different principle (phototextures mostly). Of course, you're right that it's hardly used because of these problems, also note that no one here has made any paid campaign even till now. What if dozens of AI were added here. Power point (slide show) in DCS . I have about 40-50 hours here so I think it's a fraction of what I have on other maps. Looking at the money spent and the time spent, it is certainly the least profitable map for me, but it is also some support for the author. I just want to see that he listens to the users and actually some big and very noticable optimization update is planned instead of chasing after new objects that make the map slowly unusable.

[ouky1991]

Honestly, moded Caucasus has better looking cities and trees, and has much, much better performance. WTF hapenned with this update? This map just needs complete rework at this point.

[Hotdognz]

I do believe the developer doesn't care to address the FPS issues, I have some posts on their Discord about it (polite posts) and not one response from them about it at all there is none here either.

Also unsure if ED have any quality control over the 3rd party map makes as this update should never have passed a quality check for release in the last patch with reasonable FPS being part of that check, FPS is both bad in 2D and VR as mentioned by people here.

I wont be buying the new Kola map now until I see posts from VR uses on its performance.

[YoYo]

14 hours ago, Hotdognz said:

I do believe the developer doesn't care to address the FPS issues, I have some posts on their Discord about it (polite posts) and not one response from them about it at all there is none here either.

Also unsure if ED have any quality control over the 3rd party map makes as this update should never have passed a quality check for release in the last patch with reasonable FPS being part of that check, FPS is both bad in 2D and VR as mentioned by people here.

I wont be buying the new Kola map now until I see posts from VR uses on its performance.

It doesnt sound good.  I suspect that the map will never come out of EA, and those who are waiting for TRIAL version will not recive it, because instead of encouraging, it may discourage the current state of the map. I still hope that will change though.

The problem is that we have here very poor contact with @Raz_Specter (last visit 17th of July here), so I don't know how he collects reviews and opinions (even after the last patch). The complete opposite is the author of Sinai maps, who is very responsive, listens to his customers up to date and very active here. I love him for that. 

Edited August 2, 2023 by YoYo

[Minsky]

2 hours ago, YoYo said:

The problem is that we have here very poor contact with @Raz_Specter 

Much easier to reach him (and report/request stuff) on Razbam's Discord.

[YoYo]

59 minutes ago, Minsky said:

Much easier to reach him (and report/request stuff) on Razbam's Discord.

We are here where we bought the map and where the main support should be provided, not on Telegram, VK, Facebook, Twitch, Twitter, Discord, TikTok or whatever . As someone mentioned btw. no reply on Discord too.

[sirrah]

@BIGNEWY and/or @NineLine; are you aware of the SA map performance issues? Do you perhaps know if Razbam is aware?

If not, is there perhaps any chance you can maybe help bringing all these reports under Razbam's attention?

 

Oh, and maybe you could also move this thread to the SA bugs section where it belongs.

[sirrah]

21 hours ago, Hotdognz said:

I wont be buying the new Kola map now until I see posts from VR uses on its performance.

Kola map is not made by Razbam. Look at Sinai map for instance, it runs smooth as a babies bottom. Even when flying over the mega huge city of Cairo on my old and crappy pc in VR. Just saying, there's no reason for loosing all "trust" my friend 

 

[Hotdognz]

10 hours ago, sirrah said:

Kola map is not made by Razbam. Look at Sinai map for instance, it runs smooth as a babies bottom. Even when flying over the mega huge city of Cairo on my old and crappy pc in VR. Just saying, there's no reason for loosing all "trust" my friend 

 

Im not losing trust, just choosing not lose my $$$ this time, ill wait for reports to come in from people I trust , if those reports are good ill buy it.

But Razbam have seriously dented my trust in in them as a developer from the SA map issues it has, id get a refund on the SA map if I could.

[Minsky]

On 8/2/2023 at 5:55 PM, YoYo said:

no reply on Discord too.

Yeah, this is kinda odd, since he usually replies within a day or two tops.

What worries me the most is that it's been almost a week with zero reaction from Razbam or ED here and on Discord. Instead, they've pushed this half-broken map to Stable.

[=37.Sqn= Mjugen]

Please fix the map.

[Hotdognz]

Its pretty normal for ED to ignore issues like this as they will say its all on the developer to respond, and as noted we haven't seen any response here from ED or Razbam even after pinging both BN and Nineline, but agreed they pushed this out to stable and its totally useless as a combat sim map, TTi tanks performance even on high end rigs, but its ok just for sight seeing as long as you stay high and away from any towns.

So far in my group id say they have lost about 10-15 sales as we always push maps over planes as we use a lot of terrains in our missions, were just starting to explore using SA again before the last patch and were all very keen to use it until the patch broke it, so now were pushing Syria again to our new pilots.

RAZBAM deserve no more money for a map in this state and there lack of communication with the community.

Edited August 8, 2023 by Hotdognz

[YoYo]

Hi @BIGNEWY and/or @NineLine; any chances to influence the authors of this map and performance problems reported here and in bug section of this corner of SA map? We trusted that it's EA and the map will only get better, meanwhile it's the other way around, and adding new objects makes it worse. The map clearly stands out from other maps in terms of performance, offering significantly smaller tracts of forests or buildings, meanwhile it works much worse. There is also a serious problem in VR. We are a more than year after the release and it's still bad. Pretty please.

VR issues was reported here:

 

Edited August 7, 2023 by YoYo

[Minsky]

So, even after the proverbial two weeks™ we still have no reaction?

[Eugel]

Well I hope I learned my lesson to not buy early access stuff from Razbam

I think for now I´ll uninstall the map to make space for Baldurs Gate 3 and check back with this map when it leaves early access...

[YoYo]

3 hours ago, Eugel said:

Well I hope I learned my lesson to not buy early access stuff from Razbam

I think for now I´ll uninstall the map to make space for Baldurs Gate 3 and check back with this map when it leaves early access...

I hope that something will happen in the performance subject here, but in fact, there is a complete lack of communication about the right way finally of planned improvements. I use the map, not a week goes by that I don't fly here offline or online, but totally far from cities and towns and large forests. It doesn't make sense right now, so about 20% (not to get close) of the SA map is useless. What is amazing, the whole last weekend I flew quite a lot over Syria, which has undergone a lot of improvements and a lot of new objects have been added. Everything was ok, and here, a 75% smaller town generates a lot less FPS. I have no idea what's broken here. 

Edited August 14, 2023 by YoYo

[sirrah]

On 8/7/2023 at 4:50 PM, YoYo said:

Hi @BIGNEWY and/or @NineLine; any chances to influence the authors of this map and performance problems reported here and in bug section of this corner of SA map? We trusted that it's EA and the map will only get better, meanwhile it's the other way around, and adding new objects makes it worse. The map clearly stands out from other maps in terms of performance, offering significantly smaller tracts of forests or buildings, meanwhile it works much worse. There is also a serious problem in VR. We are a more than year after the release and it's still bad. Pretty please.

VR issues was reported here:

 

 

Bit of a long shot, but because I know how active and helpful you are; @Flappie, is there any chance you could get the attention from one of the community managers and point them in our direction? Given your contribution to the forum (and DCS) I'm sure a "reach out" from you to them, will mean something.

 

We have been trying to get any form of acknowledgement from Razbam (both here and on their Discord) and from ED's community managers, but no response whatsoever so far.

 

None of us are yelling for an immediate fix (although that would be convenient ), we're merely trying to find acknowledgement for what appears to be a huge issue for many, making SA map pretty much unplayable.

[Flappie]

Hi @sirrah. Thank you for the kind words.

A fellow tester has made an internal report about a huge FPS drop when looking in Rio Gallegos direction.

Like someone said in this thread (that may be you), chances are FPS drops come from city buildings themselves. So I guess if Rio Gallegos gets a fix, the global problem will be solved for all cities/towns.

I'll do a check when I get back home (I must admit I haven't flown over this terrain for a long time). We share almost the same rig (32 GB of RAM, trusty 1080Ti, rather old CPU), I expect to get the same results.

[sirrah]

3 minutes ago, Flappie said:

Hi @sirrah. Thank you for the kind words.

A fellow tester has made an internal report about a huge FPS drop when looking in Rio Gallegos direction.

Like someone said in this thread (that may be you), chances are FPS drops come from city buildings themselves. So I guess if Rio Gallegos gets a fix, the global problem will be solved for all cities/towns.

I'll do a check when I get back home (I must admit I haven't flown over this terrain for a long time). We share almost the same rig (32 GB of RAM, trusty 1080Ti, rather old CPU), I expect to get the same results.

Thanks for answering Flappie.

Admittedly, I (we ) have a pretty old rig, but all other maps still run pretty smooth (for my standards), even Sinai when flying over Cairo.

Yet flying over any town on the SA map and I'm looking at a slide show 

 

If you get the same (poor) results, maybe you can do what none of us managed and get some sort of response from Razbam.