high-end system performance issues -- stuttering

[dmatsch]

I have a high-end system.  Really.  It's a screaming rig.  I shouldn't have performance issues with ANY kind of software.   In DCS, with the exception of the clouds, all of the graphics settings are either turned off or hobbled in the UI.  I'm running 3480x@70hz

DCS missions, with any more than a few units and/or with any kind of mission scripting brings DCS to its knees.  We're talking slideshows here specifically with Liberation missions.

This is getting ridiculous.  Do you really expect users to fire up a local server and connect to that just to fly a Liberation mission?  Now, with the latest patch, I am experiencing some local issues where DCS refuses to connect to that local server.  The AI is so atrocious that mission scripting is necessary to get any kind of immersive experience out of the big, empty DCS default world.

In effect, these performance issues are crippling the ENTIRE DCS immersive experience.  Please, please, please fix.

[ddc196]

I have a pretty good system and can run everything maxed out if I'm playing pancake and I have no issues. Now, you switch that to VR and it's all about compromise. If you have a "screaming rig" and are not in VR, I'm not sure why you are having problems.

[Hiob]

9 minutes ago, dmatsch said:

I have a high-end system.  Really.  It's a screaming rig.  I shouldn't have performance issues with ANY kind of software.   In DCS, with the exception of the clouds, all of the graphics settings are either turned off or hobbled in the UI.  I'm running 3480x@70hz

DCS missions, with any more than a few units and/or with any kind of mission scripting brings DCS to its knees.  We're talking slideshows here specifically with Liberation missions.

This is getting ridiculous.  Do you really expect users to fire up a local server and connect to that just to fly a Liberation mission?  Now, with the latest patch, I am experiencing some local issues where DCS refuses to connect to that local server.  The AI is so atrocious that mission scripting is necessary to get any kind of immersive experience out of the big, empty DCS default world.

In effect, these performance issues are crippling the ENTIRE DCS immersive experience.  Please, please, please fix.

There is a ton of optimization necessary to get the best results from any given hardware. Gamemode, Fullscreen Optimization, Pagefile, SSD, NVCP to name but a few.

Throwing hardware/money alone at DCS doesn't bring you there.... And in the end some things still will be bottlenecked by the poor multicore-utilization of DCS.

Using a MP-Server as single player just gives you two cores more to work with for the AI (at least that's my understanding of it).

Edit: Oh and by the way. You're most likely bottlenecked by CPU not GPU. No need to turn down the GFX that much. In fact I get decent fps with pretty high settings in 4K.

Edited March 21, 2022 by Hiob

[dmatsch]

believe me, I obsess over system optimization, double so when it comes to DCS.  My system is optimized in every single way I can tweak it without overclocking -- which I don't do.

 

[av8orDave]

Not sure why these posts get so much pushback. Seems to me that it is a true statement that the biggest thing that needs addressed in DCS is the performance. 
 

I also have a very high-end rig, and VR with any number of AI units cripples the experience. As the OP said, the solution for something like Liberation seems to be firing up a local server, which is silly. When you do this, the game performs much, much better. It needs handled. I’m sure they’re working on it, but it would be good to know where it is on the priority list and if the improvement is coming sometime soon. It has been talked about forever!

[Hiob]

The Pushback is, because some of what OP described simply doesn't make sense. Namely, that he has a high-end system but opts to tune down the GFX that much.

The Reason the Liberation Campaign performes so bad is not the graphics but the amount of units and scripting. Both asks a lot from the CPU not the GPU.

For the same Reason it helps to set it up as multiplayer. Because the server handles the whole AI and script stuff. Now you have generated a whole new process which utilizes its own cores (only two probably).

That is not meant to defend DCS and it's lacking multi core capabilities. But this issue has been adressed a thousand times and is being worked on. But for the time being you can either be in a bad mood and complain or use a workaround.

[dmatsch]

On 3/22/2022 at 7:03 AM, Hiob said:

 But for the time being you can either be in a bad mood and complain or use a workaround.

 

That's nice.  Thank for your thoughtful and insightful reply.  I believe this was the answer given to similar questions 10+ years ago.  And if we all just keep quiet about issues that are important to us -- the users paying the money for these modules, how is ED ever supposed to know what's going on with their own software and user base?

Instead of defending ED pay model and dismissing issues you perceive as "complaining", perhaps the more people who "complain" about issues, the faster ED will prioritize the issues and add them to the fix list??  Yathink?

ED seeing these attempts at discussion being "shot down" and dismissed by regular users would, in my opinion, make them think this is a localized issue to one user's PC setup and not the software as a whole.

[Wizard1393]

Ok so here's my reply @dmatsch:

Please post hardware specs, as well as DCS system (graphics) settings, and what FPS you're getting and what tool is measuring the FPS.
FPS is something measurable and something we more easily discuss and try to help you with. Stutters on the other hand is a black hole that can come from lots of different reasons.

Are you having high FPS but alot of stuttering, or low FPS alltogether looking "stuttery"?

[Tomcat388th]

I ran a liberation mission on my setup with out doing the multiserver.  Syria operation peace spring I did the options of no smoke ,no infantry and no carcass;s with in 100km. 4  4ship strike packages F15,f16,f18 and A10. I flew a f18 strike on a warehouse complex. Start up in hanger 15-20fps once airborne 30ish. Same mission but running it on it own server 25-35 on startup and 50-65 in flight.  I have a low end system dell t3600 xeon 1650 3.2g   32g ram 1070 8g. ssd drives. track ir and lg 42inch tv no overclocking on anything 1080p resolution.

[dmatsch]

ROG StrixB550F Gaming. Ryzen 7 5800x, 48G 3200 RAM, MSI RTX2080Ti, 43" 4k.

PassMark rates my system average for all areas at 95th percentile (5964.0).  https://www.passmark.com/baselines/V9/display.php?id=140369207539

I will run CPUID Hardware monitor and FPS tests this weekend.  

 

Spes.txt

[petsild]

You can start using NIS from Nvidia, the same function as FSR from AMD.

There are two games in the world that require TOP HW and that is DCS together with Star Citizen.

[Arthonon]

As mentioned, stuttering is difficult to track down, but on my new rig, I had stutters and found two ways to fix them.  One was related to TrackIR, and disabling hot plug devices in the controller screen (in the lower right) helped out a lot:

Another thing I found that seemed to smooth things out a bit was to set a maximum FPS in the Nvidia control panel.  That setting was off, so I set it to a high FPS, and for some reason, it seemed to work a bit better after that (placebo effect, maybe?):

But I still have weird FPS drops.  Here is a video where you can see the FPS in the upper left corner. All I do is look around, and it goes from 60 to 20, and it happens while flying as well.  I can't figure out what is in the view that is slow that bogs it down.

 

 

 

And that's on a pretty beefy system, 12700K, 2 NVMe drives, 32GB RAM, RTX 3060Ti video card.  The 60 FPS max is because I have V-SYNC on.

[Tippis]

On 3/21/2022 at 1:28 PM, dmatsch said:

I have a high-end system.

That's fundamentally your problem.

DCS doesn't particularly care about how high-end your system is. It simply doesn't use it — it can't. “Top” hardware for DCS would be things that follow a design and setup principle (high frequency, non-parallelised) that went out of style a decade ago. Or more, really. Any modern high-end system will go the exact opposite route and will not really provide much in the way of benefit for your DCS performance, outside of maybe having more VRAM.

The game even has a bunch of funny rendering quirks where you get objectively better results by lowering visual quality, especially related to sensors and spotting.

Ultimately, until DCS gets a full rewrite from the core up to actually match how hardware works these days, you need to give up the expectation that more — and especially “better” — hardware will solve things because the effects will be marginal at best. Instead, dial things down to where you get a good balance between performance and looks. In particular, make sure that you don't accidentally set the “sim awareness bubble” too high so your system has to handle and consider more units and decorations and the like in its already full processing pipeline.

Edited March 27, 2022 by Tippis

[petsild]

13 hours ago, Arthonon said:

But I still have weird FPS drops.  Here is a video where you can see the FPS in the upper left corner. All I do is look around, and it goes from 60 to 20, and it happens while flying as well.  I can't figure out what is in the view that is slow that bogs it down.

 

 

 

And that's on a pretty beefy system, 12700K, 2 NVMe drives, 32GB RAM, RTX 3060Ti video card.  The 60 FPS max is because I have V-SYNC on.

Decrease in performance due to stretched shadows when the sun is low over the horizon.

[Gryzor]

1 hour ago, petsild said:

Decrease in performance due to stretched shadows when the sun is low over the horizon.

There is a mod to solve this. Look for 3Dmigoto

[petsild]

I fly mainly around noon , but thanks for the solution.

[Arthonon]

5 hours ago, petsild said:

Decrease in performance due to stretched shadows when the sun is low over the horizon.

Thanks for the feedback, and I'm still not sure I understand the impact.  In the A-10A Push Back mission, I can fly over a certain area - that has some buildings roads, inactive enemy vehicles and trees - early in the mission and it's fine, but later when that area is in view, the FPS drops to about 20.  It is after the vehicles activate, so I thought it might be A! related, but even after I destroy them, the slow frame rate remains.  The light, shadows, number of objects, etc., don't change, but yet the FPS mysteriously drops partway through the mission.

[Arthonon]

Just in case it helps to analyze performance settings, I changed a couple of things, setting the terrain shadows to flat and reducing the anisotropic filtering to 4x, and it did seem to improve performance, but I still can't figure out what would cause FPS drops in certain situations.  Here's a video I recorded where simply zooming an external view slightly impacts FPS.  I have V-SYNC on, so maybe that's why it drops to 30 and not somewhere in between, but it seems to be OK at in-between levels in other circumstances.

 

 

[Limaro]

What are the real values, without vsync? After having bought a new graphic card, I also thought it would make sense to activcate it. but in situation where without I am getting stable > 80FPS, it still drops down to 30.

[Arthonon]

20 hours ago, Limaro said:

What are the real values, without vsync? After having bought a new graphic card, I also thought it would make sense to activcate it. but in situation where without I am getting stable > 80FPS, it still drops down to 30.

Hi Limaro,

 

I am seeing the same - I'll get pretty solid rates around 80-90, with bursts of over 100, then when flying over certain areas, it drops to the low 30s.  With V-Sync I get a solid 60 and then it drops down to 30.  I get tearing without V-Sync, and it generally seems a little smoother with V-Sync, I prefer to keep it on.

[Arthonon]

Just in case anyone is still looking at this info, I haven't done an exhaustive test, but the last few times I tried, the reduced FPS episodes I was seeing seems to have either gone away or been significantly reduced after the latest update (.11).  I flew the same mission I had consistently seen it in (A-10A Push Back), and did not see it at all, except in one brief moment where it seemed to drop from 60 down to the 50s, but that may be unrelated.

Edited April 18, 2022 by Arthonon

[JIMJAM]

Bumped up my processor/ram/mobo/case etc early 2022 with the latest greatest with "some" improvement with DCS. Always been acceptable but any self missions with AI, fast and low = some "air thickness". Not stutters but drag. Some maps are worse "Marianas" and best suited for helis/ props.

So 4/1/22 in a moment of weakness I spent WAY to much for a 3080 TI. It's been 4 years iirc, things getting worse so wth.

Hooked it up, new fire breathing PSU and was greeted with a "smell" and nothing but a blinked red light. Three different PSUs later sent it back to N Egg. 3080 TIs having issues, supply chain shortages and severe price gouging. No cards to replace it so still waiting for a refund.

So back goes in my trusty 1080 TI. My nephew and family computer whiz ran DCS, FS and had some graphics wierdness and even some ctds.

Time to stop stressing over it and maintain my current system maybe spend some on comforts, maybe a new large screen. Done ordering for a while. Still sketchy, shady feeling and expensive.