Shadows off vs shadows medium in 2.8

[MoleUK]

Something still feels "off" with shadows since 2.8.

Performance takes a big hit when looking towards multiple ground-units with shadows on in 2.8, up to about a 60-70 mile distance. After that it doesn't seem to have the same impact.

Can anyone else confirm the same hit on busy MP servers? Particularly ECW? Cheers.

 

 

Edited December 25, 2022 by MoleUK

[speed-of-heat]

I didnt go as high as medium, and this is only in single player,

FPS	1% Low	0.1% Low	app CPU(ms)	render CPU(ms)	GPU (ms)	Shadows	Secondary  Shadows	Terrain Shadows	Scale
71.64	64.56	58.93	14.06	10.47	13.46	Off	Off	OFF	100%
71.17	64.93	63.25	14.20	10.56	13.59	Off	Off	FLAT	100%
59.16	49.87	44.02	17.15	14.97	15.22	FLAT Only	Off	FLAT	100%
55.63	46.85	41.70	18.49	16.34	15.93	LOW	Off	FLAT	100%
57.51	50.67	44.94	17.70	15.08	16.44	LOW	Off	DEFAULT	100%
59.22	49.41	43.16	17.33	14.96	15.12	Flat Only	Off	DEFAULT	100%

but yes with the changes to shadows in 2.8 they have introduced a significant performance impact. Hope that helps

 

 

[obious]

I’ve noticed an absolute hammering on my system with 2.8. Has made a few of my custom missions unplayable in VR 

[GunSlingerOZ]

DCS's handling of shadows is utterly atrocious - they've always been a huge hit to performance, but 2.8 has made it even worse. Is there a way to set up shadows so that only cockpit shadows work, and not object shadows?

[dburne]

6 minutes ago, GunSlingerOZ said:

DCS's handling of shadows is utterly atrocious - they've always been a huge hit to performance, but 2.8 has made it even worse. Is there a way to set up shadows so that only cockpit shadows work, and not object shadows?

 

Agreed. Plus VR performance took a bit of a hit anyway with 2.8. I sure hope multi core helps and I sure hope it comes sooner rather than later. 

[freehand]

6 minutes ago, dburne said:

 

Agreed. Plus VR performance took a bit of a hit anyway with 2.8. I sure hope multi core helps and I sure hope it comes sooner rather than later. 

And then ed will add some more shadows 

[Wolf8312]

12 hours ago, freehand said:

And then ed will add some more shadows 

That's what I worry about. Once we get the extra performance boost will it be taken as a go to pile on more bells and whistles that will eventually get us back to where we are now cancelling out all of the performance gains? 

 

[MoleUK]

14 hours ago, GunSlingerOZ said:

DCS's handling of shadows is utterly atrocious - they've always been a huge hit to performance, but 2.8 has made it even worse. Is there a way to set up shadows so that only cockpit shadows work, and not object shadows?

That would be ideal, don't think it's an option currently. It does feel like something is being loaded onto the CPU when looking towards ground forces with shadows on, from waaaaaaaay too far away. You can see the "update" and "parseobj" numbers start to spike.

I still wonder if there is a similar bug going on to the initial flat shadows bug when 2.8 launched.

Edited December 26, 2022 by MoleUK

[speed-of-heat]

You used to be able to something like this, by playing with shadows.lua, which has draw distances 

Ala this

But it doesn't seem to work as well as before

[Burt]

Seems that most terrain/shadows and lighting updates are for 2D players. Us VR people have to always tweak to get what we had back. Hopefully DCS 3.0 will come sooner then later. 

[dburne]

2 hours ago, Burt said:

Seems that most terrain/shadows and lighting updates are for 2D players. Us VR people have to always tweak to get what we had back. Hopefully DCS 3.0 will come sooner then later. 

 

We are 2nd rate citizens...

[Wali763]

Got one question regarding shadows.

Is it normal, that rotating vour head changes the shadows?

Eg, while taxxing on the taxiway with (flat from the low sun) shadows and passing an object giving a shadow, when I turn my head, often the edges of the shadow jump to another place, often lighting the taxiway in front of me, while before (or when I turn my head back to what it was before) they were in the shadow.

Also the shadow of my plane on the ground often looks strange since they often represent only part of the plane. Once just front part, then another part, then the whole plane again. Very strange.

Other than that I think shadows are essential since the make everything much more realistic. And since they need to be rendered, they require resources.

Often when people complain about a perf hit with a new patch, we often also get someting new, which requires more resources. As long as one can turn them off (if need for perf  balancing), Im ok with this.

We all want DCS to look better and better and maybe one day have  no visual difference between DCS and real life...

[icemaker]

Don't know what technology is used by ED to render shadows.
Maybe they should consider raytracing, compatible with all GPU since at least two years.

[WipeUout]

2 hours ago, icemaker said:

Maybe they should consider raytracing, compatible with all GPU since at least two years

RT is the most costly rendering technique, no thanks!  Maybe when i get my RTX 9090TI in a few years.

[some1]

Turn off terrain objects shadows. "default" was always costly, the more units and objects in view. "Flat" is still broken in 2.8, and not flat at all. They look like "default". So far "off" is the only option that lets me play the game with performance comparable to 2.7. 

You can still crank the main Shadows option on the left to "high", so you get a nice cockpit and self shadowing on the aircraft, plus clouds and mountains shadows. "Terrain objects shadows" only controls shadows on the ground from buildings, trees and vehicles. 

[speed-of-heat]

Well at least they wouldn't push it live... Oh...

[MoleUK]

1 hour ago, some1 said:

Turn off terrain objects shadows. "default" was always costly, the more units and objects in view. "Flat" is still broken in 2.8, and not flat at all. They look like "default". So far "off" is the only option that lets me play the game with performance comparable to 2.7. 

You can still crank the main Shadows option on the left to "high", so you get a nice cockpit and self shadowing on the aircraft, plus clouds and mountains shadows. "Terrain objects shadows" only controls shadows on the ground from buildings, trees and vehicles. 

Terrain object shadows already off. On busy MP servers like ECW with lots of ground forces, even having shadows on flat or low will cause the same FPS drop. Something additional seems to be being loaded onto the CPU when looking towards ground forces when shadows are anything but off. Even if those ground forces are dozens of miles away and not even close to being visible.

At least that's my best guess so far as to what's going on. But to be clear, at no point have I enabled terrain object shadows in my testing. Always been off.

If you could do me a favour and double-check it yourself it'd be appreciated. Just log into Enigmas cold war in VR with shadows on, hop in a helicopter that's close to the frontline, and look towards and away from the frontline while checking the in-game FPS breakdown. Look at your "update" and "parseobj" values, see if they spike. Then quit out, turn shadows off, hop back in the server and check again.

Edited December 27, 2022 by MoleUK

[MoleUK]

Shadows flat, exact same effect. Something has to be wrong.

 

[Lange_666]

On 12/26/2022 at 1:30 PM, Wolf8312 said:

Once we get the extra performance boost will it be taken as a go to pile on more bells and whistles that will eventually get us back to where we are now cancelling out all of the performance gains?

The moment i went to PC gaming (coming from Commodore VIC-20, C-64 and Amiga) i started chasing and i still do this to this day. Nothing has changed since then (sort of).

[Slick Twitchy]

I remember trying to get my soundblaster sound card to work with Wing Commander....JESUS!!!

 

[MoleUK]

A comparison in the Huey.

 

 

[Wolf8312]

https://old.reddit.com/r/hoggit/comments/zr3sc0/i_think_i_have_found_whats_causing_fps_drop/

Anyone tried this ^ with 2.8. Apparently theres a fix for the performance issues that somone has stumbled upon. Seems to be some debate if it actually works though...

 

Edited December 28, 2022 by Wolf8312

[MoleUK]

25 minutes ago, Wolf8312 said:

https://old.reddit.com/r/hoggit/comments/zr3sc0/i_think_i_have_found_whats_causing_fps_drop/

Anyone tried this ^ with 2.8. Apparently theres a fix for the performance issues that somone has stumbled upon. Seems to be some debate if it actually works though...

 

 

Already tried it. Unfortunately, it doesn't really help with the shadows problem as far as I can see. Shadows off gives you a lot of overhead to turn other stuff up though.

[dburne]

2 minutes ago, MoleUK said:

Already tried it. Unfortunately, it doesn't really help with the shadows problem as far as I can see. Shadows off gives you a lot of overhead to turn other stuff up though.

Yeah two biggest fps hogs - shadows and msaa.

 

[MoleUK]

Just now, dburne said:

Yeah two biggest fps hogs - shadows and msaa.

 

Yep, though now it appears shadows can have a much, much larger impact on FPS once you hit a certain threshhold. MSAA I can't do without.