Map Performance

[westr]

Am I the only one experiencing severe performance drop off in VR with the latest update. Other maps are performing considerably better in comparison 

[BJ55]

Maybe you're askin' too much from your rig?

Smooth as silk in 2D.

 

[westr]

11 hours ago, BJ55 said:

Maybe you're askin' too much from your rig?

Smooth as silk in 2D.

 

yeah but the point i'm making is i'm getting smooth gameplay on other maps Syria Sinai Normandy Caucasus, and south Atlantic did run smooth before aside from the drop in performance after a few minutes flying if you went above a certain altitude (bug). Tried a few minutes and just not playable, plus 2D and VR are always different performance outputs.  I've had the map since early access and have hardly used it.   

Edited July 18 by westr

[RaisedByWolves]

I get same performance down low.  THen agin, my computer is like 5 years old. 

[westr]

6 minutes ago, RaisedByWolves said:

I get same performance down low.  THen agin, my computer is like 5 years old. 

Do you use VR? How did the SA map run for you before this update? 

[RaisedByWolves]

I do use VR. However haven’t used this map for several months. Until I reinstalled with current update. Before this, it ran ok.

Edited July 19 by RaisedByWolves

[Czar66]

On 11/18/2023 at 2:45 PM, westr said:

extremely strange gameplay where I can fly in VR with 45 fps in the harrier zero stutters extremely smooth. Low level, high altitude. Then all of a sudden I find FPS drop into the 20s, not flying over any built up areas, just low level. Sim is like a slide show, but if I climb above 1,300ft stutters stop, solid 45fps and smooth gameplay. Drop below 1,300ft and then severe stuttering.  

I've been experiencing this constantly on this map only. FPS drop and GPU goes to 100% triggered by altitude after take off climb. On the ground before take off the fps is smooth and constant, locked at 40fps here for consistency at any scenario, but once after the first climb anything bellow 1k ft or so the gpu goes 100% and severe input lag ensues.

No other map this occurs. Syria, Persian Gulf, Marianas (which is much heavier above cities and forests), Caucasus. The FPS are fine and GPU load is consistent to the scene.

Quick video to show. The forest on the left is not a factor. This problem occurs anywhere. The curious thing is that before take off, and on the first climb, everything is fine.

This problem didn't occur on an empty mission I've made. I'll keep testing and any update I'll edit here.

EDIT: With further testing, I could not reproduce this on an empty mission. The mission displayed above where the issue appears was a mission made through Briefing Room for DCS to let anyone know. Perhaps some script is messing with this map or some unit. I don't know the cause.

Edited July 21 by Czar66

[demonesque]

I am finding the same altitiude related FPS drop on the South Atlantic map in VR as reported above. I have tried the same spot in 2d and it did not seem to occur. I chose a spot that was intentionally blank except for a few roads. I find this drop in missions but also in this air spawned test made in the mission editor with nothing else on the map.

As you will see in the image below on the frame counter in the left window, I am normally at the 60FPS self imposed frame limit. Then when I get below about 250 ft is steps to 25fps then to 15-13fps below about 200ft. Climbing reverses the steps exactly (as shown) back up to 60fps. Looks like LOD to me.

This also happens in other Aircraft but not on any other maps.

 

 

 

[Holbeach]

Edited July 25 by Holbeach

[Holbeach]

With regards to my previous post. All the text has dissappeared and it's uneditable.

But briefly, after a perfect high and low level flight, pressing F10 and back to F1, has flat lined my fps from 75 to 17 fps.

The remainder of the LL flight will stay at low frames and nothing will change it.

The F1 is similarly affected, but my new aquisition, The Viggen, is so far completely at home high or low.

F4 at 18 fps.

Viggen at 55 fps.

..

Edited July 25 by Holbeach

[Czar66]

On 7/24/2024 at 12:27 PM, Holbeach said:

With regards to my previous post. All the text has dissappeared and it's uneditable.

But briefly, after a perfect high and low level flight, pressing F10 and back to F1, has flat lined my fps from 75 to 17 fps.

The remainder of the LL flight will stay at low frames and nothing will change it.

The F1 is similarly affected, but my new aquisition, The Viggen, is so far completely at home high or low.

F4 at 18 fps.

Viggen at 55 fps.

..

 

Same mission on both?

Wildly strange if so.

[Holbeach]

5 hours ago, Czar66 said:

Same mission on both?

Wildly strange if so.

Same mission, climb to attack Bears at 26000', just change the aircraft.

F4/F1, will start on runway at either 50 fpm or 16 fpm, depending on how they feel.

Viggen starts at about 55 fpm.

..

[demonesque]

I just had 2 runs in dcs where it was 60fps (perfect) all the way down to ground level. That has never happened before. So it is intermittent like Holbeach says. (But usually broken for me)

The next time I started dcs it was back to its old 15fps tricks. 

Edited July 27 by demonesque

[Biggus]

19 minutes ago, demonesque said:

I just had 2 runs in dcs where it was 60fps (perfect) all the way down to ground level. That has never happened before. So it is intermittent like Holbeach says. (But usually broken for me)

The next time I started dcs it was back to its old 15fps tricks. 

 

I've had the same happen, and it's not consistent from module to module either.

Have you tried turning forest details down to the very minimum on the slider?

[Holbeach]

1 hour ago, Biggus said:

I've had the same happen, and it's not consistent from module to module either.

Have you tried turning forest details down to the very minimum on the slider?

I tried 0.1 forest with the F4. 17 fps on the runway.

Go to F2 which sometimes works, then F1 and we jump to 50fps. We're off round and round up and down and it stays up to 75 fps. Looking good.

Back to sub 900', press F10 and the flatline 17 fps is back.

The only one that remains un affected is the Viggen.

..

 

[Biggus]

That's extremely frustrating.

[demonesque]

20 hours ago, Biggus said:

I've had the same happen, and it's not consistent from module to module either.

Have you tried turning forest details down to the very minimum on the slider?

Both trees sliders make no difference and neither does the scenery details slider, or the grass slider. 

What I have found was if I changed the aircraft using the mission editor in my test mission to something like the P-51D-25 I could get the problem to dissappear UNTILL I used the F10 map. So confirming in vr what Holbeach is reporting for f10 too. (Though it did not always happen after f10. )

However with some playing around i was able to switch back to the mossie eventually and have the problem gone, as long as I did not want to use f10. 

Trying to see if this could be expanded to a workaround for normal missions.... maybe...

 

Edited July 28 by demonesque

[BJ55]

Note that not all the map has been optimized, there are some areas that still cause a FPS drop. Forest and scenery detail factor together with terrain object shadows make a lot of difference in this very demanding map and Marianas map (GPU and VRAM usage), also check if NVCP power management mode is set to prefer maximum perf.

I see a lot of stutters/F10 reports in the VR Bugs subforum, so maybe it's only more evident with this map?

[Biggus]

I'll investigate the F10 issue.  The sub-900ft FPS drop has been an issue for me for a long time now.  With my frame limiter being set reasonably low, the forest details fix might just be masking for me.

[Holbeach]

I managed to get the Viggen into the under 18 club.

Using F4 or Harrier from Stanley, I travelled round the island at any altitude, with frames from 45 low to 75 and up to 100 for the Viggen also using F10 without probs on these instances.

But, intercept an aircraft and fire a missile and things change.

At my next drop to below 900',  my frames drop from about 60 to 17 flatline instantly.

No other map does this.

..

[demonesque]

17 hours ago, BJ55 said:

Note that not all the map has been optimized, there are some areas that still cause a FPS drop. Forest and scenery detail factor together with terrain object shadows make a lot of difference in this very demanding map and Marianas map (GPU and VRAM usage), also check if NVCP power management mode is set to prefer maximum perf.

I see a lot of stutters/F10 reports in the VR Bugs subforum, so maybe it's only more evident with this map?

Thanks for the reminder about the NVCP power management as mine had reset, but that did not change the behavior of the 'steps' in fps shown the image in above thread.

A good thought about testing Marianas and while it has lower fps over the towns due to the detail (varies around 30 or so), that is acceptable as it is consistent and smooth. I also accept this is a free ed map that was a test of new terrain tech at the time. 

I have not found any areas of Sth A map that do not display this stepped fps behavior yet. Will report here if I do. 

Turning off object shadows made no difference. My test spot has only roads anyway. I also tried with no object shadows and all tree sliders and grass sliders and scenery details all the way down all at once, and the  behavior is still the same. 

The thing is, I know my machine can render down low at the 60fps or close to it in this area because of the few times that I have mucked around long enough for the issue to stop temporarily. Then when it starts again it does seem to be like a stepped bottle neck of some sort has been re-introduced in the code that does not happen on other maps. I have no idea what that would be.

(Full disclosure, my machine is only mid range. None the less, there is something unusual going on here compared to other maps.)

 

Edited July 28 by demonesque

[Holbeach]

This is also happening with ships.

View your ship at say 60fps. Move between ships. OK. Then suddenly bam, you are down to sub 20 fps.

View from above 900' and you are back to 60 fps. Repeat this and it gets worse, until in my case a crash will occur.

In extreme case, the DCS exe dissappeared.

I have been unable to recreate, Belgrano fleet/Argie carrier fleet/ Brit carrier fleet, successfully.

..

[Biggus]

I think I'm seeing a performance improvement in this patch.  Normally with each update, I'll load in to the F1EE instant action mission at Ushuaia, take off and then fly back over the town at low level to evaluate performance using my normal graphics settings.  As I've said in a few threads, I have experienced my frame rate being quartered as I pass below 900ft.

Today, I did the same instant action mission.  Lo and behold, I'm screaming over the rooftops at my frame rate limit of 65fps.  I'm hoping my short test tonight is not an anomaly.  Good work, devs.

[demonesque]

Unfortunately for me when I deleted my fxo and metashaders2 folders and tried my blank test mission, it still had the same stepped behavior.

[Biggus]

3 hours ago, demonesque said:

Unfortunately for me when I deleted my fxo and metashaders2 folders and tried my blank test mission, it still had the same stepped behavior.

I've found that after patching, deleting metashaders and fxo and then launching the game, that first session seems to be quite stuttery for me regardless of what I'm doing.  I suspect that there's some weirdness happening where it's rebuilding the files, so my update routine usually includes loading a random instant action and then quitting, then starting the game again.  You've probably tried this, but I thought I'd throw it out there.

 

I did a little more testing today with both the F1 and the Phantom.  Liberal usage of F10 menu, lots of transitioning through that old 900ft boundary.  The only real performance slowdowns were in the Phantom, where I was holding 45fps at rooftop height at Mach 0.9 over Rio Grande.  I suspect that's more a Phantom performance issue than a South Atlantic performance issue though.  I will test the map with some larger missions using more assets over the next week or so, but my confidence with this map is growing.