investigating Large performance drop in VR after updating to 2.8

[Sr.]

1 hour ago, zildac said:

Win11, 4090. Terrain shadows to off = pretty much 2.7 performance except for the increased texture load times. Terrain shadows to flat or default 25fps loss over 2.7.
 

wow...

I'm sitting here literally considering going back to pancake mode. I spend far too much $$, time and effort constantly jacking with VR settings. Seems 95% of my time has to go to optimizing, fiddling, testing, patching when I should be flying.   And to be honest, by the time I'm doing doing ALL that, I've lost the mood... It's almost like "making it playable" has become "the game."

Edited November 5, 2022 by Sr.

[slughead]

Just now, Sr. said:

wow...

I'm sitting here literally considering going back to pancake mode. I spend far too might $$, time and effort constantly jacking with VR settings. Seems 95% of my time has to go to optimizing, fiddling, testing, patching when I should be flying. 

I was just thinking the exact same thing.

[Sr.]

54 minutes ago, slughead said:

I was just thinking the exact same thing.

You should give the "newer" FacetrackNOIR a look. I just set mine up following "Juice" videos.

Pay attention to the files he mentions in the description.

And his follow up on adding 10 to the axis curves in DCS controls options.

 

 

[HeavyGun1450]

1 hour ago, zildac said:

Win11, 4090. Terrain shadows to off = pretty much 2.7 performance except for the increased texture load times. Terrain shadows to flat or default 25fps loss over 2.7.
 

This.

[slughead]

15 minutes ago, Sr. said:

You should give the "newer" FacetrackNOIR a look. I just set mine up following "Juice" videos.

Pay attention to the files he mentions in the description.

And his follow up on adding 10 to the axis curves in DCS controls options.

 

 

Yeah, but no but. I packed away my TrackIR a long time ago. VR is the way for me. I'll just muddle through. Shadows are messed at the moment, so I'll just dial them down until a fix comes along. Just have to dial a few things down until ED sort it out.

[YoYo]

3 hours ago, Flappie said:

@YoYo I'm starting to wonder if the difference in performance for some users can be explained by the OS they use. I'm also experiencing the FPS drop and my PC is still running Windows 10.

Small poll for those experiencing FPS drops with 2.8: is your PC running W10 or W11?

Win 10.

[Sr.]

6 hours ago, Flappie said:

@YoYo I'm starting to wonder if the difference in performance for some users can be explained by the OS they use. I'm also experiencing the FPS drop and my PC is still running Windows 10.

Small poll for those experiencing FPS drops with 2.8: is your PC running W10 or W11?

11

[Burt]

Yup turning off terrain shadows seemed to help a lot. Makes sense being that there’s a shadow issue with 2.8

About going back to 2d, I have thought about that too to be honest, its beautiful in 2d and all setting cranked up, kinda make you feel like one can enjoy the hardware in the mode. 

Edited November 5, 2022 by Burt

[YoYo]

1 hour ago, AirMeister said:

Thought i give the hotfix a try just now. 

I sit in cockpit. 
13900k . 8 performance cores @ 5,5 ghz 
"CPU headroom" =  10% to 0% > target (45 fps) missed

null

 

 

I changed CPU too, from i9 9900K to i9 13900KF. In the same time 2.8 was released. So I did the first test on 2.8 only and one whole  day I was thinking what is wrong here ;).

[ColinM9991]

1 hour ago, YoYo said:

I changed CPU too, from i9 9900K to i9 13900KF. In the same time 2.8 was released. So I did the first test on 2.8 only and one whole  day I was thinking what is wrong here ;).

I'm currently waiting for my 13900KF. Now running a 9900k

 

I was hoping to squeeze out some more frames by essentially building a new PC. ED obviously had other ideas for everybody who were happy with their 4090s.

Edited November 6, 2022 by ColinM9991

[Talisman_VR]

18 hours ago, Sr. said:

wow...

I'm sitting here literally considering going back to pancake mode. I spend far too much $$, time and effort constantly jacking with VR settings. Seems 95% of my time has to go to optimizing, fiddling, testing, patching when I should be flying.   And to be honest, by the time I'm doing doing ALL that, I've lost the mood... It's almost like "making it playable" has become "the game."

 

I am not going back to flat screen but putting DCS on the shelf and using other flight simulations that work very well with VR.  It is all about MP for me and I can't fly MP in DCS or enjoy flying with my squadron mates in VR, so it is all over.  Halloween sale was a waste of time for me as it is pointless me purchasing products from DCS at the moment due to bad performance in VR.

Version 2.7 was reasonable but 2.8 is a burnt stake.   

Happy landings,

Talisman

Edited November 6, 2022 by Talisman_VR

[Art-J]

@BIGNEWY Keep in mind that, as you probably noticed in some other threads, perf drop happens for pancake users (like me) as well. VR guys are just more vocal about it, because for them every lost fps counts.

Let me add my 2c here then. For a VERY quick & rough benchmarking I've been using P-51 Caucasus instant takeoff mission for years, just checking out framerate I'm getting in 8 camera positions: F1 front/back/left/right and F2/front/back/left/right, with default zoom.

Unfortunately, I didn't note results in the very last iteration of 2.7.9 before the 2.8 release, only have 2.7.9.17830 ones, with God knows what NV driver version I was using back then. Still, I'll post them here for comparison. All readouts taken with the same gfx options. The only important difference was using Barthek's Caucasus retexture mod for 2.7.9, which should make fps lower compared to stock textures both then and now, but actually, as shown below, it turned out to be the other way around (I use stock textures now).

 

My long-time preferred shadow settings are: shadows medium, secondary off, terrain flat. Results for 2.7.9.17830 were:

Shadows medium, terrain shadows FLAT, F1 camera: 137/132/130/117, F2 camera: 166/144/150/133

 

Now, testing the 2.8.0.32235, plus checking how terrain shadows affect fps:

Shadows medium, terrain shadows OFF, F1 camera: 139/134/132/123, F2 camera: 166/153/158/144

Shadows medium, terrain shadows FLAT, F1 camera: 128/124/122/111, F2 camera: 152/139/143/129 

Shadows medium, terrain shadows DEFAULT, F1 camera: 117/113/111/99, F2 camera: 133/124/128/113

 

I also repeated 2.8.0 tests with cockpit shadows changed to low just to see what would happen, but in that particular mission, it didn't affect performance at all (results were the same within margin of 1 fps). To sum it up, 2.8.0 brought some perf drop for me as well on Caucasus (avg 6% in cockpit, between 3 and 8 % in externals), but, surprisingly, terrain shadow options seem to be doing what they're supposed to do, at least from fps penalty point of view (did not compare visuals). I can say the drop is noticeably worse on Marianas (lots of stuttering when panning around quickly - was not there in 2.7.9), but sadly, I don't have old fps comparison data for that map, so I can't offer anything more quantitive in this case.

I tried removing old options.lua file and setting up a new one (such a "refresh" used to be a good habit in older DCS versions), but it hasn't made a difference now.

For the record, Win 10 here, and NV driver version is 526.47 (latest, I suppose?).

 

Edited November 6, 2022 by Art-J

[some1]

Yes, the performance hit with 2.8 is not limited to VR. 

The thing is, from the data I showed in the first post, CPU frametimes went up by 30% while GPU frametimes went up by roughly 10% at the same settings. So for people who run DCS at GPU limit, they only saw about 10% drop with 2.8, while those limited by CPU saw 30% drop. On a monitor with 100+ FPS, that's not even perceivable without FPS counter. But in situations where DCS framerate is limited by CPU performance (like heavy missions or MP), a 30% drop becomes very noticeable.

VR users are also more often dialled with the settings near the limit of their PCs, so any drop like that will kick them out of the "sweet spot". 

[ags]

On 10/29/2022 at 1:01 PM, zildac said:

On 10/28/2022 at 11:56 PM, Sr. said:

Show of hands... how many here are running a 4090? 

I am, as per OP 86fps is now 60fps....

I am as well.

v476 NTTR was 70 on the ground with 3090, 80 with 4090, after 2.8 is 40-45.

2.8 in flight experience varies, but is not a stable 90 fps both cards produced - usually in the 70s. This is running OpenXR.

[tsonagoat]

Yes I know this is the beta. Maybe before realeasing in such a hurry ED would do some actual testing and not just for the TracIR guys. Game practically unplayable in VR. 20% framerate loss is lie at least for me and I have a high end PC. When you've paid as much as I have to ED you expect to be able to play it !!!

[Ramires]

Question concerning the MSAA mask setting: does it has any effect? I'm especially struggling with tearing over areas with many buildings/objects and when wearing HMD/HMCS/IHADSS.

[sorcer3r]

On 11/6/2022 at 6:07 PM, some1 said:

Yes, the performance hit with 2.8 is not limited to VR. 

 

This. Was flying Apache in Syria (especially near Bairut) and I had to check if someone reinstalled my old gtx1070 ...

[speed-of-heat]

On 11/5/2022 at 3:01 PM, Flappie said:

@YoYo I'm starting to wonder if the difference in performance for some users can be explained by the OS they use. I'm also experiencing the FPS drop and my PC is still running Windows 10.

Small poll for those experiencing FPS drops with 2.8: is your PC running W10 or W11?

W11

[Flappie]

Thanks for the answers about W10/W11. I guess the result means that it was not a good lead.

[slughead]

I managed to get my DCS performance back up to 2.7 levels.... I installed a 4090 

[Lurker]

 

5 minutes ago, slughead said:

I managed to get my DCS performance back up to 2.7 levels.... I installed a 4090 

This is not the solution. This is the antithesis of a solution.  

[Hiob]

53 minutes ago, slughead said:

I managed to get my DCS performance back up to 2.7 levels.... I installed a 4090 

Have the fire extinguisher in close proximity!

[WipeUout]

56 minutes ago, Lurker said:

This is not the solution. This is the antithesis of a solution.  

Well, it is a solution, but the most expensive one!  We need more cheaper/accessible solutions (other than to scale down settings and resolution) like an optimized graphic engine!     

[C3PO]

I'm just wondering why none of the FPS drops were detected prior to the release of 2.8. Seriously, did no-one suffer major issues in VR testing?

Edited November 9, 2022 by C3PO

[speed-of-heat]

25 minutes ago, C3PO said:

I'm just wondering why none of the FPS drops were detected prior to the release of 2.8. Seriously, did no-one suffer major issues in VR testing?

 

It doesn't seem to impact everyone, one of my friends got a boost... so don't know what's going on