What tricks are you doing to 'optimize' VRAM?

[KCOOL]

Hi all,

We know VRAM is one of the limiting factors of our GPUs for DCS. And several DCS modules are not very optimized (Marianas, Syria, etc.). Some mods brought by amazing community members help us mitigate this.

Are there any other effective methods to 'free' as much VRAM as possible? For example, on a 3080 with 10GB VRAM we only have around 8.3-8.4 GB available. The other 1.6-1.7 GB are 'locked' by something else... I guess.

What do you do to 'free' some additional hundreds of MB in VRAM? Clift house? Other? Any way to manually make textures a bit lower (with no real effect on visuals) for our maps?

Best

[Nodak]

 

[Tepnox]

In my testing (have had the 3080Ti with 12 GB in the past and struggled alot with the AH-64 in case of VRAM usage) the most important factor for using less VRAM in DCS was:

Textures to Medium

Terrain Textures to Low

There are also some user files for reduced cockpit-textures that could save some more VRAM, for example for the AH-64 this helped reduce the VRAM-usage alot:

https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3321192/

Cheers!

[Mr_sukebe]

+1 on terrain textures to low.  I believe that makes a big difference.

In addition, if you’re using VR, disable the “home” that you’re shown when first booting up your headset.

In the Rift S, that “home” uses circa 1.7GB or VRAM.

[KCOOL]

7 hours ago, Mr_sukebe said:

+1 on terrain textures to low.  I believe that makes a big difference.

In addition, if you’re using VR, disable the “home” that you’re shown when first booting up your headset.

In the Rift S, that “home” uses circa 1.7GB or VRAM.

Yes, yesterday i used one black hangar mod from Walshtimothy member and I believe i gained some performance. Is that the disabling home you mentioned?

Terrain textures to low makes you save TONS of VRAM, but the visuals are way worse I believe.

The clift house doesn't have impact now, right?

We need DLSS... And the Syria developer optimize the map...

Caucasus with low textures Barthek mod looks great and VR friendly.

Thanks

Edited April 5, 2023 by KCOOL

[Mr_sukebe]

Give the terrain textures a quick try.  I really wasn’t that bothered by the visual degradation, though being in VR, it might not be as obvious.

 

Ref disabling the home.  No, didn’t mean the hangar.  I meant “home” that you first see on putting on a VR headset, prior to firing up DCS or any other VR App.

Edited April 5, 2023 by Mr_sukebe

[Blinde]

7 hours ago, Mr_sukebe said:

Give the terrain textures a quick try.  I really wasn’t that bothered by the visual degradation, though being in VR, it might not be as obvious.

 

Ref disabling the home.  No, didn’t mean the hangar.  I meant “home” that you first see on putting on a VR headset, prior to firing up DCS or any other VR App.

 

How do you disable that?

[Mr_sukebe]

6 hours ago, Blinde said:

How do you disable that?

I can only comment on my Rift S, that it was within settings for the headset

[Rifter]

Breaking news: Taz1004 the Tasmanian Texture Devil did some devilish good optimizations with impressive VRAM reduction.

https://forum.dcs.world/topic/323252-dcs-optimized-textures/

[Schlomo1933]

Not IC safe…

[KCOOL]

Taz is a genius and their mods helped a lot. I run 3080 10G.

I see Syria better in ST, and Caucasus better in MT. Odd, but both much better with his mods. Thank you Taz.

After a mission, what do you do before starting a new one? Exit and restart DCS? I see re-starting a mission suffers from lower (10 FPS less) without exiting DCS. Odd? If I restart DCS I get the max FPS again.

[Bushwood]

On 4/6/2023 at 3:31 AM, Mr_sukebe said:

I can only comment on my Rift S, that it was within settings for the headset

I'm running a Rift S.  Where is this setting at.  The only thing I can find from searches, is set it to "Run as administrator"  And that doesn't work at all.  

[Lace]

1 hour ago, Bushwood said:

I'm running a Rift S.  Where is this setting at.  The only thing I can find from searches, is set it to "Run as administrator"  And that doesn't work at all.  

I'm also interested to hear where this setting is please?

[jnr4817]

I use rift s and OTT. It’s called Oculus Homeless and I enable it. No more home just gray blank background.