Shadows off vs shadows medium in 2.8

[MoleUK]

If any VR bros are running with shadows enabled, and want to test something for me it'd be appreciated. Currently shadows tanks performance in VR on ECW, it seems to get consistently worse the longer the server is running, then goes back to baseline after reset. If you still want to play with shadows on, feel free to try this workaround:

Goto your graphics.lua file in the DCS config folder. Find the "camera" section, and go to the setting you are currently using (low, medium, high, ultra, extreme). Find the "objects" line, it has two values following it. For low it's 3000, 80000. High is 5000, 80000. etc etc. Lower the 2nd value to say 30000 or 20000 or maybe even less. See what your experience is.

It will lower the range that ground forces and probably planes appear. I went as low as 3000, 3000 and ground forces wouldn't appear till very close. I think it also affects plane viewing range as well. So I don't know how low till be too low for you. Trying 20k in a helo in a moment and will see how it goes.

This fix will actually work for flatscreen players as well, but they're not quite as badly affected by the shadows problem.

At best guess the 80000 is 80km, I think with shadows on it's running calculations for everything up to 80km the way you're facing, causing the drop.

Edited January 1, 2023 by MoleUK

[Fuggzy]

Still not fixed with OpenXR. I have my Quest2 system purring like a kitty now, high resolution and silky performance. 2x msaa, 1.5 PD.  BUT -- only with Shadows = Off.  Any other shadow setting completely tanks it.  Cockpits are ugly as sin with no shadows, but I'm doing it. 

[MHAce75]

vor 23 Minuten schrieb Fuggzy:

Still not fixed with OpenXR. I have my Quest2 system purring like a kitty now, high resolution and silky performance. 2x msaa, 1.5 PD.  BUT -- only with Shadows = Off.  Any other shadow setting completely tanks it.  Cockpits are ugly as sin with no shadows, but I'm doing it. 

mh, cockpit shadows high work for me (not secondary shadows though). terrain shadows i have off too. well, that is in caucasus and less populated areas of syria, nevada, channel, but of course in marianas i have all shadows off, that is a different story though.

Edited February 26, 2023 by MHAce75
typos

[Fuggzy]

On 2/26/2023 at 2:05 AM, MHAce75 said:

mh, cockpit shadows high work for me (not secondary shadows though). terrain shadows i have off too. well, that is in caucasus and less populated areas of syria, nevada, channel, but of course in marianas i have all shadows off, that is a different story though.

 

Thank you for the idea.  I hadn't tried shadows on "high" since even Flat/Low gave me trouble.  Unfortunately, high shadows is a real killer...  from a solid 45fps to barely 22.  Shadows are simply broken.  No other single setting in DCS can nuke my pc like that one can, the only option I have to get smooth performance in any configuration I've tried (a crap-ton) is to turn them completely off.  Then the rest of it is smooth as butter.  

(edit) I should clarify that I did the graphics.lua hack above to see if maybe distant objects were getting shadows drawn, but it seems not.  But I did find that with my object distance set to 60000 (medium visibility) that my CPU overhead increased about 5% baseline.  So I'm keeping that setting.  

Edited February 28, 2023 by Fuggzy