Patch notes discussion 10th March - 12th April 2023

[Sr.]

Not gonna lie... so far I see 0 difference between the 2 on my setup.

Well, maybe one difference. It the takes MT version longer to draw the world and aircraft details once the load screen is finished.

 

Even the main lobby screen.

 

and yes: "Yes, I am launching the MT DCS.exe from the MT folder!"

BIOS SMT enabled (as per usual)

[Ratfink]

2 hours ago, GayCavalier said:

First MT report on VR.  On a 3080 and PIMAX 8kx running OpenXR (Pimax XR), the loading screens have now gone.   The main menu is there and mostly stable.  However, any of the progress-bar type loading screens are now replaced by black screens.    The sim still loads, and loads much quicker than usual, if you wait through the blank screens.  Once in sim, there's a terrible frame lag, almost like someone turned on an incompatible motion reprojection, and with usual fps.   I tried a number of SP missions, with the same effect.  Rebooted and tried again.  Same.   Starting with bin-mt\DCS.exe --force_VR --force_OpenXR command line.      I went back into ST DCS, and now I have around 25% more fps in VR - go figure!   Either way, whatever happened with this update, the performance has improved.  I guess i'll have to wait until the next OB update to see if the visual stability in VR has improved for me.

If anyone has any thoughts, i'd appreciate it - currently difficult to work in the menus in MT mode, as the shaking is worse than the opening sequence of "First Man"

 

I'm seeing similar with no change to my settings with Rift S. No load screen, just black.

I tried SP instant action AH64 Syria Hot Start mission and stuttering is far worse in MT than ST

[Gunfreak]

14 minutes ago, Beirut said:

 

I'm going to do exactly that when the Steam version patch comes out.

 

In two-hours.  

Steam version has been out for hours 

[BIGNEWY]

Please just make sure your report has MT in the title when reporting multithreading issues

thanks

[Beirut]

11 minutes ago, Gunfreak said:

Steam version has been out for hours 

 

You're right. Weird, it says it isn't available until 3:30 but now it's downloading. Thanks.

 

Did another quick and dirty test on my main site install with just the base game. This time I put 100+ WWII planes over the Marianas. Solid furball. 

 

100% increase in FPS. From ~20FPS to ~40FPS. Very, very very impressive!

[muzica9]

26 minutes ago, Victor3 said:

Just tried a quick SP free flight in the Harrier on NTTR, without changing any settings I got a bump from 30 fps to 90 fps on my HP Reverb G2 v2. Looks VERY promising.

that makes you unique. MT is not even addressed for SP free flights. Is for heavy missions with lots of units.

Edited March 10, 2023 by muzica9

[Hiob]

1 hour ago, SmirkingGerbil said:

Few things. I have seen an amazing increase in performance.

Seeing folks here report none, to very little. All could be true - but.

What I am not seeing consistently is WHAT environment?

My earlier post, mentioned I was a Pancake. Some posts not clarifying whether Pancake or VR.

Also, I am using a shortcut to the MT bin folder MT launcher . . . are other folks just launching the old standard binary?

I think it would be helpful for folks to list VR/Pancake, Resolution, Basic hardware and core count and an explicit reference to "Yes, I am launching the MT DCS.exe from the MT folder!"

IMHO

Pancake, 4K, single player

I have improvement between 20% (F-16 airborne above syria) and 40% (AH-64 sitting on the ground in marianas). All tested back to back after update and cleansing of the shaders between MT and OG.

I wouldn't name that nothing. 

[dburne]

Spent much of the day today flying campaign in the Spit on Normandy Map, holy cow I am so pleased with the performance I am getting with my Aero in VR now. MT today  along with native Open XR support we got on last update  are both a big win, especially MT!!

Great job ED!! Thank you so much also for still considering VR players in the equations as well!

[ThorBrasil]

SSAA is not working with MT enabled.

[EbonySeraphim]

4 hours ago, Raven (Elysian Angel) said:

People who have for example a 5950X, or 7950X CPU. The FAQ says those people should disable SMT.

Inaccurate. It says more than 32 threads, and those CPUs (I have a 5950x) is exactly 32. Outside of serious workstation CPUs like Threadripper, server CPUs, or non-consumer and non-mainstream (Intel/AMD) x86_64 chips, or some other weird UEFI/BIOS hack that might report more, no one has over 32 threads. Being a software engineer myself, I'm confident about their precise language here -- translation, "if you have 33 threads or more." It would be a non-sensible decision to expect very popular high end CPUs to disable a very valuable general performance feature for your entire system, needing to reboot everytime to get it back.

Though maybe a reboot isn't necessary for those who are aware: in Windows, you can limit the cores a process is allowed to run on by going to the Task Manager -> Details -> Right Click on the DCS process (yes, you will have had to launch DCS already)-> Set Affinity; and in that dialog deselect every other core. I'm fairly certain that typically the hyper-threading pairs are enumerated next to each other, which means CPU0 and CPU1 are on the same physical core; CPU2 and CPU3 are together. So basically you want CPUs 0, 2, 4, 6 etc to be selected. I haven't tested this myself and it could well cause DCS-MT to crash if it counts cores at process start (likely), tries to use them later, and then Windows tells DCS to f-off lol.

[M1Combat]

"+10/15 fps with MT is not a gain."

Umm...  yeah...  that's a gain and unless you were running 200FPS before...  it's a HUGE gain.

 

[dburne]

I would also add this tidbit of info in case it helps some others. I have always ran my i9 9900k @ 5.1 GHz with HT disabled cause I really did not need it. Well let me tell ya for Multi Threading  you want that enabled,so  now I am running 8 cores/16 threads instead of just 8 cores. And it made a signicant difference in my performance.  ED stated you don't really want more than 32 threads for MT. But if like me and you have less check and make sure your Hyper Threading is enabled in the bios.

[Ratfink]

4 hours ago, GayCavalier said:

First MT report on VR.  On a 3080 and PIMAX 8kx running OpenXR (Pimax XR), the loading screens have now gone.   The main menu is there and mostly stable.  However, any of the progress-bar type loading screens are now replaced by black screens.    The sim still loads, and loads much quicker than usual, if you wait through the blank screens.  Once in sim, there's a terrible frame lag, almost like someone turned on an incompatible motion reprojection, and with usual fps.   I tried a number of SP missions, with the same effect.  Rebooted and tried again.  Same.   Starting with bin-mt\DCS.exe --force_VR --force_OpenXR command line.      I went back into ST DCS, and now I have around 25% more fps in VR - go figure!   Either way, whatever happened with this update, the performance has improved.  I guess i'll have to wait until the next OB update to see if the visual stability in VR has improved for me.

If anyone has any thoughts, i'd appreciate it - currently difficult to work in the menus in MT mode, as the shaking is worse than the opening sequence of "First Man"

 

 

1 hour ago, Ratfink said:

I'm seeing similar with no change to my settings with Rift S. No load screen, just black.

I tried SP instant action AH64 Syria Hot Start mission and stuttering is far worse in MT than ST

So with my setup, I'm seeing this

 

bin-mt\DCS.exe - CPU0 = 100%, CPU1-7 60-70%

DCS.exe - CPU0 = 60-70%, CPU1-7 60-70%

both cases 3080 near max 12GB VRAM use, GPU 90+% stable

bin-mt\DCS.exe stutters and lags

Normal DCS.exe seems to be MT

Closing DCS either case all CPUs go to idle

WTF???

[unlikely_spider]

4 minutes ago, dburne said:

But if like me and you have less check and make sure your Hyper Threading is enabled in the bios.

Hyper Threading for Intel, or SMT for Ryzen. Mine was called SMT in the Advanced > CPU section in my BIOS, for my 5800X3D

[SatThuVoBui]

Is there anybody still running this game on a quad core CPU like a 7700K or before? I'm on a 6700K and while it's nice reading hype about huge performance boosts from plenty of other users (good job ED!) I still feel like I need to temper my expectations to maybe about slightly less than half of the median reported performance boost most other users are reporting. I'm also on 32gb of RAM with a 1080 Ti so up until this point CPU has always been the bottleneck. 

[muzica9]

17 minutes ago, M1Combat said:

"+10/15 fps with MT is not a gain."

Umm...  yeah...  that's a gain and unless you were running 200FPS before...  it's a HUGE gain.

 

than, just wait for a future update when they add new shadows, or new light sistem on the map and you lose again those 10/15 fps 

[M1Combat]

I'm sorry ED and 3rd party Devs...  I can't even imagine what it's like.

 

W O W

 

Seriously though.  Someone is bitching about a massive performance increase...  because some day you might give us new features to make the sim look better that might cost some performance.

 

But...

 

Probably not.  Because it will be on it's own thread...  LOL.

 

I can't even.

Edited March 10, 2023 by M1Combat

[Thunderchief2000]

First tests for me in Vr are positive, I’m m running a HTC Vive pro at 250% in steam vr, and most graphics options on max. The vive pro locks its frames at 90, 45 or 30fps.  I have my settings set so that I get a solid 45fps in most missions.  My rig is a 12900k with a 4090.

perviously my cpu frame timings would be on the limit of 45 fps and in busy moments regularly drop into the 30’s. With multi threading I’m am getting frame times equivalent to 90fps and in busy scenes drops to a solid 45fps. No drops below that as of yet.

there seems to be a small gain in gpu frame times as well, such that there is a bit more headroom if I want to turn on more graphic settings.

so for me this is a great improvement, I’m very pleased.

thanks ED.

[hakulus]

I flew the MT and it was INCREDIBLE in my Q2 but it ran in SteamVR when I ran just the MT version of DCS.exe.   That caused serious recentering issues.

Can someone tell me why Windows says this is INVALID as a target for my shortcut?   It LOOKS fine to me but it will Windows will not accept it.     "E:\Program Files\Eagle Dynamics\DCS World OpenBeta\bin-mt\DCS.exe"--force_VR --force_OpenXR

 

 

[Gunfreak]

Good news, I can now play the Operation Jubilee mission in VR(it would grind to single digit FPS as the bombs dropped and flak went off. But now it had okish FPS.

Bad news I got my first CTD in like a year and a half. and it was annoying as hell as I was enjoying myself, and was gonna use the video for a MT talk... Was almost finished too..

[Thunderchief2000]

4 minutes ago, hakulus said:

I flew the MT and it was INCREDIBLE in my Q2 but it ran in SteamVR when I ran just the MT version of DCS.exe.   That caused serious recentering issues.

Can someone tell me why Windows says this is INVALID as a target for my shortcut?   It LOOKS fine to me but it will Windows will not accept it.     "E:\Program Files\Eagle Dynamics\DCS World OpenBeta\bin-mt\DCS.exe"--force_VR --force_OpenXR

 

 

You need a space after the DCS.exe”  

before the —force_Vr

 

cheers

 

[davidrbarnette]

Ok, my initial report:

System: Ryzen 9 5950X, 64MB DDR4, RTX 3080, SSD, HP Reverb G2

Mission: DCS Liberation, Persian Gulf

Pre- Multi-Threading Settings & Performance: Med Textures, Med Visibility, MSAA 2X, shadows low, clouds low, no front line smoke in Liberation, no artillery strikes, no moving ground vehicles, culling enabled, performance averaged about 40 - 45 fps

Settings w/ Multi-Threading: High Textures, High Visibility, MSAA 2X, Shadows High, Clouds High, front line smoke enabled, artillery strikes enabled, moving ground vehicles enabled, culling enabled, performance averaging 65-75 fps

 

Overall, in complex missions, it makes a big difference. In a standard, simple mission, I see very little difference but can dial up the graphics settings. Overall very pleased. A great start!

 

[dburne]

4 minutes ago, Gunfreak said:

Good news, I can now play the Operation Jubilee mission in VR(it would grind to single digit FPS as the bombs dropped and flak went off. But now it had okish FPS.

Bad news I got my first CTD in like a year and a half. and it was annoying as hell as I was enjoying myself, and was gonna use the video for a MT talk... Was almost finished too..

 

Just an observation on my part that might be helpful for some. I had previously tuned my system overclock to run at 5.1 GHz on 8 cores with no Hyper Threading. This allows for a little less vcore voltage and cooler core temps. Today after installing the patch I went in and enabled Hyper Threading to get that advantage from MT, and my system froze during first couple of flights. Then it dawned on me how I had reduced the voltage , so I went in and increased the vcore slightly and all is well again. And well worth it for this Multi Threading now.

[Gunfreak]

5 minutes ago, dburne said:

 

Just an observation on my part that might be helpful for some. I had previously tuned my system overclock to run at 5.1 GHz on 8 cores with no Hyper Threading. This allows for a little less vcore voltage and cooler core temps. Today after installing the patch I went in and enabled Hyper Threading to get that advantage from MT, and my system froze during first couple of flights. Then it dawned on me how I had reduced the voltage , so I went in and increased the vcore slightly and all is well again. And well worth it for this Multi Threading now.

I have "auto" overclocked i9 9900k from 3.2 too 4.8-5.0. Should I declock it back to 3.2?

[Zebra1-1]

29 minutes ago, muzica9 said:

than, just wait for a future update when they add new shadows, or new light sistem on the map and you lose again those 10/15 fps 

Regardless, 10-15fps is still a considerable gain! What were you expecting? It's been said right from the onset that you should keep your expectations reasonable. MT should improve slightly over time, but then there is also Vulkan and DLSS coming in the future which will bring further improvements.

This was an excellent release/implementation from ED. I'm sorry you had your expectations set too high.