DCS Pausing / Freezing when I task switch out

[Dangerzone]

Hi,

I'm wanting to run some tests on missions I'm creating, but as soon as I task switch out of DCS to let it run in the background it will pause/freeze after a few moments until I return to it in focus.

Just wondering if this is a bug, or a feature, and if a feature if it's possible to turn this off?

Cheers

DZ

[Flappie]

DCS should keep going (no pause) when you Alt-Tab to Windows.

Please check your "UI Layer" controls category. Maybe you bound the Tab or Alt+Tab keys to the "Pause" command?

[Dangerzone]

9 hours ago, Flappie said:

DCS should keep going (no pause) when you Alt-Tab to Windows.

Please check your "UI Layer" controls category. Maybe you bound the Tab or Alt+Tab keys to the "Pause" command?

Thanks for the advise. No - there's nothing in UI layer that has pause going on.

Also - it's not immediately pausing - it will go for maybe 10 seconds or up to a minute, and then freezes until it has focus again. It also does this in the mission editor as well (If I bring DCS back up, it can be unresponsive for 10 or 20 seconds before it realises it's focused again and allows control). 

It's definitely as though the DCS process itself is being suspended while not in focus.  If it's not an option within DCS itself I'll have to focus my efforts on the Windows Task Manager to see if there's anything that may be suspending background applications. 

Thanks for confirming it's not DCS. 

[Flappie]

Oh OK, I misunderstood the word "pause". It just freezes then. I think I've never seen that happen either when Alt-Tabbing away from DCS.

Do you run a dynamic wallpaper app or something else that would monopolize GPU when in focus?

[Dangerzone]

4 minutes ago, Flappie said:

Oh OK, I misunderstood the word "pause". It just freezes then. I think I've never seen that happen either when Alt-Tabbing away from DCS.

Do you run a dynamic wallpaper app or something else that would monopolize GPU when in focus?

Hi Flappie. 

Thanks for the suggestion. No - there's nothing I can think of on the PC. (The PC is actually dedicated to DCS, so software installs have been kept to a minimum). 

Now that I know it's not a DCS 'feature' as such I'll be keeping an eye on the task manager and windows events to see if there's anything that I can spot instead. But now that you've mentioned GPU - maybe there's a GPU setting I've changed in NVIDIA panel or similar along the way to try and give priority to the active application (aka DCS) to squeeze every extra bit of performance out that could be kicking in when I task switch away from DCS maybe. 

If I find out what's happening I'll be sure to post here what I find. Once again thanks for the reply!

DZ

[Dangerzone]

OK - I think I may have found something. 

I can task switch to numerous programs and DCS will run in the background OK. 

As soon as I task switch to Edge - and switch some tabs in Edge- it seems that DCS stops in the background. It randomly starts again (I'm looking at the clock/time in the top-right hand corner of the F10 map - it literally stops but no pause icon shows up).

DCS switches to 0.1% and 0.0% usage (but no message about process not responding).

Once it kicks back in - it's back around 10-13% process.

Maybe Edge is doing something funky with other processes when it's open. IDK. I'm running in high performance on the power settings, so not sure what Windows is doing there. Anyway - it seems while doing dev work I should keep edge closed, or otherwise maybe use another browser. 

[Flappie]

Thanks for your feedback. I'll try that tonight.

[Flappie]

I tried but could not reproduce the issue (Win10).

[Dangerzone]

Hmm - not sure what's going on with my rig then. Thanks for trying to replicate for me flappy. 

Still happening for me, but only with Edge open - so at least I know what to close down. As for the why's - no idea there.

[draconus]

5 hours ago, Dangerzone said:

Still happening for me, but only with Edge open - so at least I know what to close down. As for the why's - no idea there.

You might want to try and turn off hardware acceleration in Edge options.