Performance increases 25-50% when fake grass and rocks are no longer drawn.

[XCNuse]

This is a simple test of looking straight down at one of the hangars at Mount Pleasant, and FPS goes from what really averaged to high 30s, all the way up to what was averaging to over 80.

Before anyone argues "triangles don't seem to change," which is correct; that's only showing drawn aircraft; not all visuals.

Also; there doesn't appear to be any loss of shadows or anything else; the only things not being drawn seem to be the additional fake grass and rocks.

 

Which I will remind once again... is not visible when DCS' grass slider is... used.

 

Same test again; but spawned in an F16; FPS went from again what was high 30s (seen as 41 in image), up to 57.

That's an incredibly significant bump.

And no you can't argue LOD's; as the F16 still currently does not have LODs.

[zildac]

This is a simple test of looking straight down at one of the hangars at Mount Pleasant, and FPS goes from what really averaged to high 30s, all the way up to what was averaging to over 80.
Before anyone argues "triangles don't seem to change," which is correct; that's only showing drawn aircraft; not all visuals.
Also; there doesn't appear to be any loss of shadows or anything else; the only things not being drawn seem to be the additional fake grass and rocks.
 
Which I will remind once again... is not visible when DCS' grass slider is... used.
 

Same test again; but spawned in an F16; FPS went from again what was high 30s (seen as 41 in image), up to 57.
That's an incredibly significant bump.
And no you can't argue LOD's; as the F16 still currently does not have LODs.

And how did you remove the rocks and grass?

[XCNuse]

7 hours ago, zildac said:

And how did you remove the rocks and grass?

you don't; but at least they have LODs so they disappear when you get far enough away.

 

But as the complaints have continued; all of the awful performance is when  on the ground.

And I'd argue 38FPS to 80FPS is a pretty significant impact for something that isn't offering anything anyone asked for.

[Nightwolf]

Been having this exact same thing, both in an aircraft and in F2 or F11 view. Close to the ground 15-20 fps, but as soon as the camera gets up a few hundred feet and the grass stops rendering, boom 40-60+ fps. It's basically stopped me from playing on SA since it's nearly unplayable to take off or land, and since the clutter doesn't obey any graphics settings, there's no way to get around it.

[Deano87]

Yes! I have the same problem. I’d really love this to be a disable-able option or something. 

[ST0RM]

@XCNuseNice findings. Pity its not being addressed. 

[Jacodv201]

Yeah I have not seen any mention of it being acknowledged anywhere. But it is not all negative, at least I have learnt my lesson. I will never buy a module first day again, I will wait and see what people have to say, and ultimately if the devs acknowledge. 
 

[Wing]

Bump... this is huge. Would be great to hear from ED in this regard.

Edited September 28, 2022 by Wing

[MARLAN_]

Could we mod DCS to remove those textures maybe? Or set the LODs to a very small range? I should look into this next time I'm home 

[Rapierarch]

Dear,

I'm happy that someone else finally noticed this behavior. I never had time to file a bug report because it is a lot of time consuming work and we do not have developers console to pinpoint guilty item there. 

My tests showed that it is not grass and clutter. But since you have already performed tests can you redo the same test after you applied this edit. 

Edit this file
Saved Games\DCS.openbeta\Config\options.lua

Change this below setting  to -150000 so it should read like this:

[“clutterMaxDistance”] = -150000,

This will stop all those rocks and rest of the clutter being drawn and should give you 3% or 5% FPS boost. 

 

In my tests what I have seen is the engine is screwed with places where splat textures are used. When first layer of texture starts blending engine goes to hyperventilation and starts rebuilding same metashader at full speed per frame almost over and over again. You should see CPU + GPU hike even when you pause the game. It gets even worse over large areas in splat textures because multiple blendings are happening. That's why Marianas map is useless since all over the island is splat textures. 

You can also confirm this by moving away from that low fps and note the system clock when you regain your fps. Go immediately to your metashaders2 folder and you will see one or 2 metashaders written exactly at the moment that you regained your fps. This marks the time when DCS engine stopped recreating them.

Also it gets worse in SA map over urban areas. But in SA map even over barren landscape there are splat textures but is is not too many layers. You can still trigger this by diving towards the ground. If you pass from those low density splat texture areas at low level level flight it will not trigger the blending. But diving towards ground triggers it. 

So when you are redoing the tests do it exactly the same way. I believe you looked at the ground in external view and zoomed in to trigger this. So now try it with the edit I have given and see if you can also confirm it is not grass. 

And if you have time file a bug report to ED not in SA map. This is related to game core. But let's confirm it first. In DCS you can never know anything 100% sure.

Cheers.  

 

PS: I have already contacted Razbam at the release and they have rechecked the map lods especially for the flowers and local vegetation which are all "speed trees". So map is build per ED specs. 

Edited September 29, 2022 by Rapierarch

[Minsky]

6 hours ago, Rapierarch said:

Also it gets worse in SA map over urban areas. But in SA map even over barren landscape there are splat textures but is is not too many layers. You can still trigger this by diving towards the ground. If you pass from those low density splat texture areas at low level level flight it will not trigger the blending. But diving towards ground triggers it. 

Yes, I've noticed this behavior yesterday while trying to get rid of small rocks, flowers, and other clutter.

If you rapidly move the camera to another location a couple miles away, you can notice a hi-res splat texture over a low-res photobackground. It then gets immediately overlaid by several other textures to form the final medium-res look.

Really hope someone smarter than me could look into this and submit a bug report if needed.

Edited September 29, 2022 by Minsky

[Raz_Specter]

Hi All

just ran the same test as the screenshots show, on the same hanger, (yeah i know right spooky how I know which hanger was used lol, spent too many hours in DCS I think)

first screenshot is without a F16 and the second is with a F16

First screenshot shows FPS at 87 second screenshot shows FPS at 83

Note: I am running a 3090TI and have everything maxed out for every single setting within DCS (can't have any higher for what I want turned on) running at 4k on a 43" monitor

Next Update

In the next update I have performed some optimisation on the map and am just slightly above the video memory goal that ED sets for every map

We continue to optimise the map and looking for ways to improve performance.

Thanks Specter
null

My DCS Settings

 

Edited October 3, 2022 by Raz_Specter

[Rapierarch]

4 hours ago, Raz_Specter said:

am just slightly above the video memory goal that ED sets for every map

Hi Specter. 

Can you tell us what is that VRAM limit set by ED for maps and where does SA peak now?

Thanks! 

[Nightwolf]

On 10/3/2022 at 9:38 AM, Raz_Specter said:

Hi All

just ran the same test as the screenshots show, on the same hanger, (yeah i know right spooky how I know which hanger was used lol, spent too many hours in DCS I think)

first screenshot is without a F16 and the second is with a F16

First screenshot shows FPS at 87 second screenshot shows FPS at 83

Note: I am running a 3090TI and have everything maxed out for every single setting within DCS (can't have any higher for what I want turned on) running at 4k on a 43" monitor

 

Specter, thanks for looking at this. I think there may have been a misunderstanding about what the problem here is. The original post isn't saying there is a problem with an FPS difference with and without an aircraft in the scene; in fact that was more about proving it wasn't an issue involving this. Instead, we're seeing a huge difference in framerate between the camera being at low altitude and higher up.

I'm interested in Rapierarch's findings, that it could be something weird causing shaders to recompile constantly at lower altitudes. If so, it might have little to do with VRAM, and not be affected by many graphics settings.

[Deano87]

@Raz_Specter

You might want to re-read the first post, it’s a comparison between camera height, not weather the F-16 is there or not. When the camera is low the FPS tanks to 50% of what it should be, move the camera a little higher and it suddenly jumps back up to what it should be. This is what’s making this map completely unplayable for me in VR. At low level it’s a slideshow, climb 1000ft and it’s smooth. I have zero issues with Syria.

[ShinyMikey]

I have this same problem. I've always noticed 800~1000ft to be where the fps goes up to normal. This is why I never really bother using this map. I really hope this gets improved.

[XCNuse]

2.8 Follow up....

I'm not saying it's resolved; whatever the problem actually was, other than it clearly being tied to something going on in my images in OP.

However..... Comparison images to my best abilities no longer see nearly as much of a FPS nosedive.

(Compare these to the bottom two images on OP)

NOTE: the weird texture glitch happening in top right of this image though. That is definitely a weird bug. No idea what's causing it or where it came from.

[XCNuse]

Whoops; forgot to share the ground image I never actually shared originally.

Which shows the reality of how bad FPS was while on the ground... 23 FPS!!!! Absolutely was unacceptable!

44 now? Absolutely acceptable!

[Raz_Specter]

ok thanks will pass this across to ED as the grass is their bag as we cannot change it, much to my dismay

[XCNuse]

6 hours ago, Raz_Specter said:

ok thanks will pass this across to ED as the grass is their bag as we cannot change it, much to my dismay

I think you've missed the entire purpose of this thread and showing the fact it was entirely the RB side of things lol.

 

Regardless; whatever changes were made and pushed, seemed to have helped as of 2.8's patch.

[Oreo147]

For me this issue is still present in DCS 2.8.0.32235.1 Open Beta.

I hopped in a test flight taking off from Mount Pleasant in an F-16CM. Low level FPS is around 55 FPS, and whenever I'm above 800 feet AGL (this seems to be the exact cut-off point) FPS jumps up to 110 for me. That's literally half of my FPS taken away at low level (which unfortunately is pretty bad). This seems to happen for me in most places in the Falklands map, and never on other maps.

I feel like, as specified in the above comments, I feel like the grass and rocks and other ground clutter on this map has an enormous performance impact. The performance impact disappears above 800 feet AGL which is when the ground clutter is no longer being rendered.

I'm really hoping this issue can be solved as it's pretty immersion-breaking. The SA map is really one of my favorites but like this I cant do low-level flying missions  

Edited November 7, 2022 by Oreo147

[Rapierarch]

On 11/7/2022 at 8:27 AM, Oreo147 said:

For me this issue is still present in DCS 2.8.0.32235.1 Open Beta.

 

Yes there is no change. I still have the issue too.

[Rapierarch]

 

Dear @Raz_Specter

Is this issue being worked on? The fps hit when splat textures start blending still exist it makes almost all finished area of map no fly zone for low level flights. Do we have a rough ETA? 

Otherwise I'll uninstall the map if the solution is months away or not being worked.

Thanks in advance,

 

[PLUTON]

That there is a problem with the card and that Razbam
doing everything possible to correct it it's very good
but they could put as much effort into drawing our attention to the patching work on the map as they put into bringing it out for us to buy.

[ST0RM]

I see the issues with SA still not being addressed. In fact, it appears to be cast aside. How are we to believe the same wont happen to the F-15E? 
Trust is earned, not bought.