Current Performance and Modern Hardware

[EcosseFlyer]

Hi all

While flying today had a thought.

Is DCS getting to the point where users are needing to brute force with hardware to get it to run at a decent level? I see people with high end CPUs and 4090s still having issues, and in VR I'd imagine this to be even worse for some.

It seems that following every update we are having to adjust, turn down settings, fiddle with VR software tricks and outside programs to keep the FPS as it once was. Its odd that in 2023 the performance still isnt matching what the hardware is capable of providing. I know MT is now on the horizon and people are reporting much better results, but with the resulting bugs and issues in its wake. Are the modules possibly getting "too" high fidelity, at the overall cost of performance to your simming?

Dont get me wrong, love DCS and spend hours in it, but surely by now, the (very) expensive hardware that people have now been getting should be able to run this sim at a reasonable levvel, especially in VR which has become so prevalent in gaming these days?

Curious on your thoughts?

[Grennymaster]

Well in VR you have to trick a bit around to get it running good. BUT you have to considre that the core engine is absolutly not made for VR. The team is working on that. It will be a big improvement.

I have an Ryzen 58003DX with an 6900XT, 64 GB of Ram. Using the G2 and must say, yes you have to turn down the settings, but not to a level that i would say its ugly or unflyable

MT hase improved the whole situation.

think it all will be getting very much better with the update of the core engine.

[silverdevil]

i do pancake. i have Intel 11th Gen Core i9-11900KF, 3090, and max RAM of 128 GB. i personally think the memory is key. so many folks are reporting problems, that after review of their DCS.LOG, are related to not enough memory. memory is by far the easiest to implement. one just has to get compatible DIMMS. VR seems to have a whole other level of frailty that 2D users do not have.

[SharpeXB]

7 hours ago, EcosseFlyer said:

I see people with high end CPUs and 4090s still having issues

Where do you see that? I have such a system and it flawlessly runs DCS at maxed-out settings on a 4K monitor at 90-120 fps. 

7 hours ago, EcosseFlyer said:

surely by now, the (very) expensive hardware that people have now been getting should be able to run this sim at a reasonable levvel, especially in VR which has become so prevalent in gaming these days?

I don’t think VR is as prevalent as you imagine, my guess is about 10-15% of flight sim players use it. In gaming as a whole that figure is <2%. The trouble with trying to run a graphically sophisticated game like this in 3D is that its performance is targeted at 2D usage. Which means VR will forever be behind this curve, only running at about a third the setting which are possible in 2D. VR means drawing every scene twice and at higher consistent frame rates and resolution. 

7 hours ago, EcosseFlyer said:

It seems that following every update we are having to adjust, turn down settings, fiddle with VR software tricks and outside programs to keep the FPS as it once was.

This is only true of VR because many users are running at the very limit of their hardware. The game’s graphics are really intended for 2D. 
Games only evolve to get better a more demanding. Such is life in PC gaming. The trouble with VR is that you’ll always be right at the limit of what hardware can do with no overhead. That will never change. And any further capabilities in the game engine like MT or Vulkan will end up being utilized to make the game better but at more performance cost and so the cycle will continue. 

Edited July 23, 2023 by SharpeXB

[motoadve]

AMD 7800, 4090, Varjo Aero smoothly running at very high resolution, looks incredible.

On Very busy missions a bit of stutter now and then, totally playable even with the most busiest single player missions. MP is totally  smooth.

This is with DFR deferred rendering with the Varjo which is a game changer performance wise.

Whoever was waiting for 4K in VR it is here and its amazing.

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

19 hours ago, EcosseFlyer said:

following every update we are having to adjust, turn down settings, fiddle with VR software tricks and outside programs to keep the FPS as it once was.

Yes that's sadly often the case. Hopefully that will change at some point.

One of the latest patches seemed to have messed up memory management somehow, with both system RAM and VRAM usage going through the roof resulting in major stuttering in heavier missions particularly.
The framerates are pretty good but it's all the texture swapping that makes the experience rather unpleasant unless you turn down both Textures and Ground Textures.
Multithreading helps yes but a lot of people had unrealistic expectations from that, and I believe the largest bump in performance will come from Vulkan and further pipeline optimisations.

Edited July 24, 2023 by Raven (Elysian Angel)

[Exorcet]

My hardware is dated at this point (see sig) and I'm pretty much running DCS on High or Max. I'd expect anything newer than my setup can just crank everything to the max and then possibly tweak the files to go even higher.

I'm pretty content even with large missions and I don't plan to upgrade for a few years still.

[SharpeXB]

15 minutes ago, Raven (Elysian Angel) said:

Yes that's sadly often the case. Hopefully that will change at some point.

The cycle of continuing improvement and cost will never end. That’s the reality of computer gaming. 

Also if you’re experiencing problems it’s best to stick to the Stable release, remember MT is still in testing even in the Stable version.