VRAM optimisation - the game can take nearly 20GB of VRAM if not more...

[MartinVoy]

Can we have some VRAM optimisation, please?

The game uses some ridiculous amounts of VRAM. 
Someone did a video showing that DCS can reach out for 19GB of VRAM. Only 3090(Ti) has the room for that...
I believe on any other system (without 3090 or 3090Ti) it would reach for RAM to compensate. 
I know he pushed the setting a bit, but still...

Thank you.

 

 

[FalcoGer]

Textures are ridiculously large in some cases, we don't need 4k textures for the M4 in the apache. DCS happily loads it all into memory. I have 4G of VRAM in my graphics card and 32 GB of main memory. If I use medium or high texture size it starts paging. Luckily I found a workaround. Deleting the mipmaps (I use texconv from microsoft with the -m 0 (zero, not O) option) from the textures and setting low quality textures doesn't give you an unreadable mess and instead nice, high quality textures, and the RAM footprint is reduced quite a bit. Thus I get no paging, nice textures and actually not 2 FPS. Downside of course is that you need to do that for all aircraft that you wish to fly, otherwise switching cockpits will give you that lovely texture smush that looks like someone just smeared white paint where there is supposed to be a label.

[Mr_sukebe]

Maybe a better way to put the opening thread would be "can we have the option to reduce texture sizes"?  

After all, people with 3090s might be quite happy to be using the VRAM that they have available.

[upyr1]

DCS needs to look good and run well on as many machines as possible

[MartinVoy]

On 5/24/2022 at 9:12 AM, Mr_sukebe said:

Maybe a better way to put the opening thread would be "can we have the option to reduce texture sizes"?  

After all, people with 3090s might be quite happy to be using the VRAM that they have available.

I think VRAM optimisation is the win-win, since everyone could enjoy what now is available only for 3090 and 3090Ti users. 

[Laurreth]

On 5/24/2022 at 8:11 AM, FalcoGer said:

Textures are ridiculously large in some cases, we don't need 4k textures for the M4 in the apache.

I thought you were joking, but the textures for the M4 and the holder combined are almost 120MB compressed on disk, and for some reason there are two separate texture sets for guns; I guess someone's standards didn't allow for the pilot and CP/G to have identical guns.

[Gierasimov]

As far as I remember DCS maxes out whatever GPU has, it kind of reserves what is there. At least that was the case for me in GTX1080Ti and now RTX 3080 as well as friends 3090.

Optimizing the game is always welcomed, but to me as an option and not a balance to fit all, as this is virtually impossible. 

I am maxing out, if I can't but I want I will go new hardware way. That's me and I get it that many people cannot go like that, fine, but I don't want to be "punished". 

I am all in for a highest quality looks at a fraction of hardware resources once that becomes possible in DCS. Other than that, DCS is what governs my hardware expenses. 

[FalcoGer]

Refactoring: Changing code so it is more readable without changing behavior. Performance may change in either direction.
Optimization: Changing code so it is more performant without changing behavior. Readability may change in either direction.

Not optimizing: Display worse graphics to make it go faster.

Example optimization: Use the same model and texture for both rifles to save on memory and disk space while giving the same result on the screen.

[upyr1]

I wonder what Vulkan could fix 

[FalcoGer]

1 hour ago, upyr1 said:

I wonder what Vulkan could fix 

vulkan is a hardware abstraction layer. it allows a uniform interface for software to access features on the graphics card. in the case of DCS vulkan has the potential for great performance boost as it allows for a rendering pipeline to be split and parts of it to be reused. for example with direct x you need two whole render pipelines for both eyes in VR while in vulkan you can split them off, reducing the workload of your gpu by nearly 50%. Of course it needs to be programmed that way. just using vulkan doesn't mean anything will be better just by itself.

[upyr1]

59 minutes ago, FalcoGer said:

vulkan is a hardware abstraction layer. it allows a uniform interface for software to access features on the graphics card. in the case of DCS vulkan has the potential for great performance boost as it allows for a rendering pipeline to be split and parts of it to be reused. for example with direct x you need two whole render pipelines for both eyes in VR while in vulkan you can split them off, reducing the workload of your gpu by nearly 50%. Of course it needs to be programmed that way. just using vulkan doesn't mean anything will be better just by itself.

the question I have still could reducing the second pipleline reduce the amount of VRAM being used?

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

On 7/4/2022 at 5:16 PM, upyr1 said:

I wonder what Vulkan could fix 

Vulkan won't reduce texture sizes, but as far as I understand, using Vulkan allows developers to implement smarter methods of determining which textures should get loaded into VRAM and which should not.

Edited July 5, 2022 by Raven (Elysian Angel)
better grammar

[upyr1]

1 hour ago, Raven (Elysian Angel) said:

Vulkan won't reduce texture sizes, but as far as I understand, using Vulkan allows developers to implement smarter methods of determining which textures should get loaded into VRAM and which should not.

 

That's my understanding as well, so I'm wondering if there is anything that DCS currently loads that won't get loaded with Vulkan.  

[5ephir0th]

On 6/26/2022 at 10:58 PM, Laurreth said:

I thought you were joking, but the textures for the M4 and the holder combined are almost 120MB compressed on disk, and for some reason there are two separate texture sets for guns; I guess someone's standards didn't allow for the pilot and CP/G to have identical guns.

This is absolutely ridiculous, who the hell though it was ok or necessary to have two different models or textures for the M4, doubling the requeriments of VRAM for absolutely nothing.

I have never seen a game of this magnitude using this kind of ridiculous "optimizations", ED just work with the models like our GPUs has an infinite VRAM and triangles that it can handle.

[upyr1]

11 hours ago, 5ephir0th said:

This is absolutely ridiculous, who the hell though it was ok or necessary to have two different models or textures for the M4, doubling the requeriments of VRAM for absolutely nothing.

I have never seen a game of this magnitude using this kind of ridiculous "optimizations", ED just work with the models like our GPUs has an infinite VRAM and triangles that it can handle.

I just hope that while they are doing the vulcan upgrade that they also take care of this. I mentioned this on the thread about disabling the zoom. Because of the inefficiency of the graphics in DCS it's almost impossible to set the graphics to a high enough level to read the instrument panel unless you spend $10K. 

[draconus]

6 hours ago, upyr1 said:

Because of the inefficiency of the graphics in DCS it's almost impossible to set the graphics to a high enough level to read the instrument panel unless you spend $10K.

And I still call bs. It's not gfx engine problem, only user's HW resolution.

[upyr1]

18 minutes ago, draconus said:

And I still call bs. It's not gfx engine problem, only user's HW resolution.

Just two a few questions, do you fly in VR? if so what are your system stats and settings do you have? Also why do you thin Eagle is planning to switch to Vulkan? 

[draconus]

7 minutes ago, upyr1 said:

Just two a few questions, do you fly in VR? if so what are your system stats and settings do you have? Also why do you thin Eagle is planning to switch to Vulkan? 

Yes I do fly in VR, my rig is in the sig, PD 1.2, no AA. I mostly fly F-14 and it's ok for most of the instruments but some are unreadable ex. TACAN digits or gun counter. It gets better with higher PD or AA but still lacking. I can't blame gfx engine here bacause it's simple lack of display resolution. This is 2K. You won't get better results even displaying neat still image. If you have at least 4K like HP Reverb G2, Pimax or Varjo you don't have this problem.

ED plans the switch to better utilise our HW (meaning get more performance from the same HW) and to have more freedom in development.

[SharpeXB]

4 hours ago, draconus said:

ED plans the switch to better utilise our HW (meaning get more performance from the same HW) and to have more freedom in development.

And then this “freedom in development” will add more features and hardware demand so performance will still be challenged. As in any game, top graphic settings will always demand top level hardware. 

[BIGNEWY]

37 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

And then this “freedom in development” will add more features and hardware demand so performance will still be challenged. As in any game, top graphic settings will always demand top level hardware. 

Our team test with various levels of PC's and hardware, we dont all have high end machines. 
( of course I do  )

[Dragon1-1]

That doesn't mean it's OK to have 4K textures for two small objects in the cockpit. Texture resolution doesn't matter for visuals, pixel density does. Right now, that M4 either has horribly unoptimized UV map, or excessive pixel density. Two consistent PD targets, one for internal and one for external textures, would get rid of most of those issues. 

Also, there's absolutely no reason to have specular maps and such in 4K. Diffuse maps, most definitely, but other kinds of maps merely modify the way lighting affects the texture. Apart from rare edge cases, it does not need to be in 4K. It will simply make no visible difference due to how these effects are applied. DCS, right now, is highly wasteful with both memory and storage space. A texture size optimization pass (without sacrificing actual visual quality) would give us better performance, faster loading, faster downloads and more disk space. Win-win, as far as I'm concerned.

Vulkan won't change the fact that the sim is cramming a bunch of oversized textures into memory. Not even getting rid of the separate render pipelines help, since they don't cause textures to be loaded twice. It will help VR users in many other areas, particularly in GPU-bound ones, but not in VRAM-bound ones.

34 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

And then this “freedom in development” will add more features and hardware demand so performance will still be challenged. As in any game, top graphic settings will always demand top level hardware. 

It's not true "in any game". Cookie Clicker or Crysis will happily run on a modern budget GPU with settings maxed out. "Top level hardware" is a fast-moving target. If something it taxing a 3090Ti, then it had better look the part. DCS, for most part, doesn't, and it isn't just because some models seem to date back to Flanker 2.0. In addition, as with the Crysis example, hardware available at the time is the key. A good chunk of DCS codebase and assets were made during the time of 1080Ti, so there's really no excuse for not running smoothly on it with medium-high settings. Proper optimization can work wonders, and give the devs room to make the sim look even prettier than it currently does.

[SharpeXB]

11 minutes ago, Dragon1-1 said:

It's not true "in any game". Cookie Clicker or Crysis will happily run on a modern budget GPU with settings maxed out.

Ok Crysis isn’t a current game that’s still being actively developed. In any current game if you want to run Ultra settings you’ll need Ultra hardware, simple. And DCS has a lot of room for improvement. Yes for what it looks like now it probably is too demanding. But I can’t imagine the game will remain frozen in development after something like Vulkan or multi-core enables better features. The game will grow to fill that overhead and the result will be that it will still be demanding on hardware. DCS isn’t Cookie Clicker. 

13 minutes ago, BIGNEWY said:

Our team test with various levels of PC's and hardware, we dont all have high end machines.

Sure that’s why the game has graphic settings obviously.

Edited July 8, 2022 by SharpeXB

[Dragon1-1]

27 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Ok Crysis isn’t a current game that’s still being actively developed. In any current game if you want to run Ultra settings you’ll need Ultra hardware, simple. And DCS has a lot of room for improvement. Yes for what it looks like now it probably is too demanding. But I can’t imagine the game will remain frozen in development after something like Vulkan or multi-core enables better features. The game will grow to fill that overhead and the result will be that it will still be demanding on hardware. DCS isn’t Cookie Clicker. 

Depends on the direction the devs want to take it. "Active development" is not the same as "everything is up for changes", new technologies are not always easy to retrofit to a framework made before they existed. In addition, many new technologies, such as Vulkan, actually make it cheaper, GPU-wise, to implement fancy visual FX. DCS has a long way to go, but it already looks pretty great, and quite often, major changes to the rendering engine require major changes to the assets, something ED doesn't seem terribly keen on. I'd expect visual FX such as new clouds or shadows and so on, but if implemented properly the performance impact should not be huge, and in fact, could sometimes be smaller than the impact of the previous way of doing this.

Also, keep in mind the matter of screen resolution. Back when DCS was first released, 1980x1080 screens were the most common setup. You can comfortably run DCS on Ultra using a 1080Ti on such a screen. Now, though, 4K is getting more and more popular, and there's VR to take into account, as well. Full HD is about 2 megapixels, 4K is almost 9, so the raw amount of data that the GPU has to output has more than tripled since that time. And that is just the most common setups, a true "ultra" setup that one could want to drive with a 3090Ti would be multiple 4K monitors, meaning you need to design for something like 8K, for top-level Pimaxes and 4K monitor arrays.

IMO, a top level GPU should handle a single 4K screen, or a 4K VR headset, with enough overhead so that at least one more 4K screen can be added without sacrificing visuals. In fact, the 3080Ti should probably be the "baseline 4K ultra" rig, nobody was designing games to Titan series cards back in 1080Ti days, they were exactly for people who had those giant arrays of screens. The 3090Ti, despite the rebranding, is not something that should really be necessary to get the most out of any modern game.

Edited July 8, 2022 by Dragon1-1

[SharpeXB]

14 minutes ago, Dragon1-1 said:

many new technologies, such as Vulkan, actually make it cheaper, GPU-wise, to implement fancy visual FX.

Or they can enable even fancier visual FX at the same GPU cost. That’s the more likely direction if ED wants to keep DCS competitive. Look at the development of this game over the last ten years. Just because ED introduced the EDGE engine etc doesn’t mean I can still run this game on a GTX670 or 3rd Gen i7 like I did ten years ago. The game’s hardware demand and graphics will continue to keep pace with what hardware can deliver. This is true for literally any other game so it will be true for DCS as well. 

[Dragon1-1]

3 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Or they can enable even fancier visual FX at the same GPU cost. 

Except when there's no such thing. You might have noticed people posting ArmA3 videos as ones from Ukraine, and a post on this very forum imploring people not to do things like that. The ultimate goal of a simulator's graphics is a photorealistic image. This is achieved by a combination of asset fidelity and appropriate postprocessing. The only major performance hog that could potentially be added into DCS is more volumetrics for things like chimney smoke or contrails. It's not like there's a massive stack of graphical improvements being held back by performance concerns, quite the contrary, the primary issue with adding more graphical bling is how difficult it is to implement. You appear to severely underestimate just how hard graphics programming is. Less so with high level APIs like DX12, very much more so with Vulkan, which is a low level API where everything is programmed and optimized "by hand". 

It doesn't happen for "every other game", either. Most other games take what is available at the start of their development and work with that, if you get in early enough you'll see them work up to that. Engine capabilities are the limit. You don't see major graphical overhauls unless the game has been in development for a very long time, and even then, it's natural that older games don't look quite as good as new ones, if only because of older assets. In fact, "every other game" doesn't do its own graphics programming any more - that job goes to engine devs, the ones who make Frostbite, Unreal and Cryengine and Unity. Even updating to a new major version of the engine can be painful. DCS devs are doing everything in-house, which is rare these days. As it stands, the sim exhausts the engine capabilities, and as such, every major technology addition requires expanding the engine, which can be a mammoth task.