VERY LONG MISSION LOAD TIMES IN MT

[Chief_Biv]

I have noticed that since the mid-April Open Beta update that mission load times are taking up to 5 minutes to load whereas in ST they only take seconds. There was no noticeable difference between MT and ST load times with my previous version back in March. Windows task manager shows there is almost zero CPU utilised by DCS during the waiting time. When I see DCS CPU increase I know I can switch back into DCS and get back to playing. 

I have DCS loaded on a SSD and have a 12900 cpu, RTX3080, and playing in VR with HP Reverb G2 running on native OpenXR and OpenXR toolkit (in both MT and ST). 

Is this a known issue or am I the only one experiencing this change with the current OB version?

[dankmaster]

Same issue here (i5-11400, 3080, 64gb, 2tb ssd, Win 10 Home, TrackIR, VoiceAttack, SRS).  After restarting windows and launching DCS, the load time for a mission is either 15-20 seconds or 3+ minutes.  Windows task manager shows low CPU load, and high SSD read utilization during the extended load times.  I wonder if it has anything to do with the preloading setting in DCS or maybe the windows swap settings?

 

[silverdevil]

9 hours ago, Chief_Biv said:

I have noticed that since the mid-April Open Beta update that mission load times are taking up to 5 minutes to load whereas in ST they only take seconds. There was no noticeable difference between MT and ST load times with my previous version back in March. Windows task manager shows there is almost zero CPU utilised by DCS during the waiting time. When I see DCS CPU increase I know I can switch back into DCS and get back to playing. 

I have DCS loaded on a SSD and have a 12900 cpu, RTX3080, and playing in VR with HP Reverb G2 running on native OpenXR and OpenXR toolkit (in both MT and ST). 

Is this a known issue or am I the only one experiencing this change with the current OB version?

 

7 hours ago, dankmaster said:

Same issue here (i5-11400, 3080, 64gb, 2tb ssd, Win 10 Home, TrackIR, VoiceAttack, SRS).  After restarting windows and launching DCS, the load time for a mission is either 15-20 seconds or 3+ minutes.  Windows task manager shows low CPU load, and high SSD read utilization during the extended load times.  I wonder if it has anything to do with the preloading setting in DCS or maybe the windows swap settings?

 

there are others with same / similar issues. post up your DCS.LOG. there are timestamps in the logs.

[dankmaster]

As requested dcs.log attached

dcs.log

[silverdevil]

4 hours ago, dankmaster said:

As requested dcs.log attached

dcs.log 48.9 kB · 0 downloads

it does seem to be taking upwards of 5-6 minutes to get into mission. mine is about half that. there is another thread that alludes to P vs E cores. in your case i do not believe it is memory

Quote

2023-05-16 13:04:58.748 INFO    APP (Main): CPU cores: 6, threads: 12, System RAM: 65210 MB, Pagefile: 32768 MB

here is the other thread for reference.

what happens when you use ST? or deleting the contents of the shader folders?

[dankmaster]

ST version loads quickly, around 15 seconds or so.  Deleting fxo and metashaders2 folders didn't improve MT load time.

[Sr.]

On 5/15/2023 at 6:01 AM, Chief_Biv said:

I have noticed that since the mid-April Open Beta update that mission load times are taking up to 5 minutes to load whereas in ST they only take seconds. There was no noticeable difference between MT and ST load times with my previous version back in March. Windows task manager shows there is almost zero CPU utilised by DCS during the waiting time. When I see DCS CPU increase I know I can switch back into DCS and get back to playing. 

I have DCS loaded on a SSD and have a 12900 cpu, RTX3080, and playing in VR with HP Reverb G2 running on native OpenXR and OpenXR toolkit (in both MT and ST). 

Is this a known issue or am I the only one experiencing this change with the current OB version?

Try this. Curious if your issue is same as mine.

 

Start your mission, advances to the next screen... seems to stall, no movement on the progress bar.

Take off your G2 and slowly tap a few times on the sensor between the lenses. Same for the next screen where the game usually loads terrain and other objects.

When this issue happens on my system, I can actually hear my system and GPU fans come to idle. Indicating that the process has halted or paused. When I do the tap the sensor trick they spin back up to speed and the mission load screen zips to the end.

I came across this out of frustration... wait...wait lift HMD to see if anything was happening on screen, then it dawned on me.

 

Can achieve the same thing in 2D MT mode, only performing a single click on the load screen. If you wait too long... then you get the "application has stopped responding....crash" notification.

 

 

My thread topic
 

 

Edited May 17, 2023 by Sr.

[Sr.]

2 hours ago, dankmaster said:

ST version loads quickly, around 15 seconds or so.  Deleting fxo and metashaders2 folders didn't improve MT load time.

Neither will a complete uninstall/reinstall of DCS ... trust me.

[dankmaster]

After some trial and error, I may have stumbled on a solution and thought I'd share for the benefit of others.  I added another SSD to my computer and moved the Windows swap file from the C:\ drive (which contains Windows, DCS and my programs) to the newly added SSD drive and mission load times are back to normal again.  More importantly, my FPS stuttering problems are now fixed as well.

 

Prior to the change I was running on 1080p and low settings and despite averaging around 250-300 fps, I would consistently get micro stuttering every 5-10 seconds that would momentarily pause DCS for a fraction of a second.  While it was annoying, the game was still playable.  Now it's as smooth as butter!!!

 

I have 64gb of RAM and never noticed anywhere near that amount being used even in heavy multiplayer missions, so I'm surprised virtual memory settings made a difference but hey I'll take it.  FWIW I even tried turning the swap file off but that made things worse.

[Czar66]

31 minutes ago, dankmaster said:

After some trial and error, I may have stumbled on a solution and thought I'd share for the benefit of others.  I added another SSD to my computer and moved the Windows swap file from the C:\ drive (which contains Windows, DCS and my programs) to the newly added SSD drive and mission load times are back to normal again.  More importantly, my FPS stuttering problems are now fixed as well.

 

Prior to the change I was running on 1080p and low settings and despite averaging around 250-300 fps, I would consistently get micro stuttering every 5-10 seconds that would momentarily pause DCS for a fraction of a second.  While it was annoying, the game was still playable.  Now it's as smooth as butter!!!

 

I have 64gb of RAM and never noticed anywhere near that amount being used even in heavy multiplayer missions, so I'm surprised virtual memory settings made a difference but hey I'll take it.  FWIW I even tried turning the swap file off but that made things worse.

Please, to anyone having stutter issues. Never under estimate page file use while playing DCS. You can even play with 16gb of system Ram if you bump up the page file to 30gb+ on a SSD. DCS World as of now is a monster on data reading and having DCS and the page file (virtual memory) in different SSDs helps even with low system Ram like 16gb.

Using 40gb System Ram here and my page file is at 30gb from 35gb when I had only 16gb RAM. 2D and flawless load times either on MT and ST.

Do not follow instructions to disable page file in the arguments that 'you have large amount of RAM such as 64gb so you won't need such thing as "paging file" made for "low end systems"'.

Disabling it makes everything worse to everyone.
Keep a healthy amount of 20+gb and on a SSD.

[Worrazen]

I think I'm noticing this as well, let me do another comparison

 

[silverdevil]

17 hours ago, Czar66 said:

Please, to anyone having stutter issues. Never under estimate page file use while playing DCS. You can even play with 16gb of system Ram if you bump up the page file to 30gb+ on a SSD. DCS World as of now is a monster on data reading and having DCS and the page file (virtual memory) in different SSDs helps even with low system Ram like 16gb.

Using 40gb System Ram here and my page file is at 30gb from 35gb when I had only 16gb RAM. 2D and flawless load times either on MT and ST.

Do not follow instructions to disable page file in the arguments that 'you have large amount of RAM such as 64gb so you won't need such thing as "paging file" made for "low end systems"'.

Disabling it makes everything worse to everyone.
Keep a healthy amount of 20+gb and on a SSD.

agreed. in all my years of working with windows, memory is king. and disabling pagefile does not bode well. i personally have 128 GB RAM and a static 32 GB pagefile.

 

PS something i have noticed with ST vs MT. MT takes a bit longer to exit and get back to desktop. ST is nearly instantaneous.

Edited June 8, 2023 by silverdevil

[dankmaster]

Unfortunately I spoke too soon.  The stuttering has returned and randomly appears and disappears.  Task manager shows disk utilization spiking to 100% during the stuttering.  ST is working fine and reporting only a few percent disk utilization in comparison.

[Sr.]

Completely reworked my VM settings... no difference.