Graphics/Smoothness benchmark from ED directly

[Kevin509]

*not sure if this is the right spot in the forums for this so I apologize if I've got it wrong

We all know that DCS is a complex simulation to run even on modern hardware, but I think it's also fair to say that this is a hobby quite a few of us (myself included) are willing to invest serious amounts of money into enjoying. I personally have perhaps ~$6000 invested in a PC, software and other peripherals almost exclusively to play DCS and I know I'm not alone in saying that. 

However, even with absolutely top tier hardware I still struggle to get the experience I want out of DCS. I'm not able to run max graphics settings, my experience does not look like ED's youtube videos or say Growling Sidewinder or other high end content creator and it can be so frustrating trying to chase down performance issues when it seems like performance can be so different from one user to the next even with similar systems. 

So, I think it would be great if ED made a benchmark mission of some kind, preferably on caucus with the TF51 or SU25T so that it would be applicable to every DCS user and then made a video (with the FPS monitor open) that went something like this:

"Hey guys, Wags here with Eagle Dynamics. I'm flying our graphics benchmark mission in the TF51 today. My hardware specs are X and my DCS settings are Y, this is the performance I'm getting in terms of FPS and frametime." 

In other words, ED, you guys must know how your product should perform or what is 'normal performance' in a given scenario. Please share that information with the rest of us so that the community has a repeatable way to test our own performance. As one example, when I open the in game FPS monitor (Rcntrl+pause) I'm almost constantly getting a "heartbeat" sort of pattern in frametime that results in a steady stutter of FPS, but I have no idea how to diagnose it. Is it something inside DCS, a result of my mission design or some setting? Or is it something else with my PC?  There are forum posts about this going back years, but it's impossible to tell what fixes that worked 5 years ago still apply today and vice versa. 

 If we could all test from the same mission/settings I feel like the community could resolve some of these graphics/performance issues that have plagued us forever. 

I'd even volunteer to build the mission and more or less script the video for y'all if there's any interest in doing this from the ED team. 

[THERION]

30 minutes ago, Kevin509 said:

So, I think it would be great if ED made a benchmark mission of some kind, preferably on caucus with the TF51 or SU25T so that it would be applicable to every DCS user and then made a video (with the FPS monitor open)

Your idea and intentions are very good and would make sense - the only thing I'm a little bit worried about is: Does ED want to do that? It might not be their interest to do
such a benchmark, I'm afraid. It might reveal that their actual engine is some kind of outdated or at least badly optimized.

Of course, this is my opinion and based on all those performance issues reported by people using top edge hardware. And on top of this, have a look at their system
requirements published on their store page - these are not very accurate and make me think of some kind of "bait" or "false promise".

Just my thoughts

[Kevin509]

3 minutes ago, THERION said:

...the only thing I'm a little bit worried about is: Does ED want to do that? It might not be their interest to do such a benchmark, I'm afraid. It might reveal that their actual engine is some kind of outdated or at least badly optimized...

See, this is sort of my fear too, and I'm hoping that my ask gives ED a chance to prove us both wrong in good faith? 

I am concerned that my top end PC, which runs IL2/MSFS/insert other similar title here at max settings in the ~200 FPS area in 4k cannot achieve half of that performance or a quarter of the smoothness in DCS. I'm starting to wonder if ED's beautiful "2023 and beyond" videos and others are heavily edited in some way or somehow are not reflective of actual in game performance...

[Exorcet]

There was a user made benchmark some time ago, but this was for DCS 1.5 maybe? I don't think I've seen it used for a while.

We could always make another, and keep it updated as DCS changes. On the other hand though, with DCS being free to play I don't think a benchmark is completely necessary. If someone is having performance issues, they can record and share a track with other players in an attempt to resolve performance problems.