DCS Newsletter discussion 29th September 2023 - DCS 2.9 Sneak Peak | Multiplayer Development Progress | B-17G Livery Contest Winners

[Hiob]

They need to start somewhere, don’t they? Nobody foreclosed the possibility of adding FSR too at some point. That is exactly what I meant by appreciating what you get instead of worrying what you don’t. 

Half-empty vs. half-full I guess.

 

[Fiztex]

I think most people here care about DLAA, and not really the upscaling of DLSS. DLAA should not bring issues with spotting or MFDs readability. It is basically free MSAA 4x, or even better than that. No other non-temporal upscaler (e.g. above mentioned FSR) can do that, so overall I think ED went the right way with choosing DLSS. We can already have FSR via reshade, but it always introduces aliasing and because of that there is very little use for it, especially in VR. Also, DLSS approach will likely lower VRAM consumption, which could be very beneficial for people with 8GB cards.

[Nedum]

8 minutes ago, Hiob said:

They need to start somewhere, don’t they? Nobody foreclosed the possibility of adding FSR too at some point. That is exactly what I meant by appreciating what you get instead of worrying what you don’t. 

Half-empty vs. half-full I guess.

 

I don't think a start to cut a community into half is a good start, not at all. FSR 2 would have been a good start. What is half full, if you slap the other half of the community in the face, giving the other half something good the others can never use?  A !!good!! start would have been to start with something !!all!! can use right from the beginning.

DLSS isn't a "good" start, not a tiny little bit!

"Hey, you, the !!whole!! DCS community should be happy, we start with something, "many" of you can't even use, so the other half will have a big advantage. Praise "me" for cutting you out of having this good stuff."

Yeah... half full, my fantasies aren't big enough to see a half-full glass, if the other half will stay outside the playing field for years two weeks. I want to play >>with<< them, not right from the start >>without<< them. The "losers" are divided from the "good" stuff, that's the truth. To start with, dividing the other half will never be a good start, how so?

[Nedum]

20 minutes ago, Fiztex said:

I think most people here care about DLAA, and not really the upscaling of DLSS. DLAA should not bring issues with spotting or MFDs readability. It is basically free MSAA 4x, or even better than that. No other non-temporal upscaler (e.g. above mentioned FSR) can do that, so overall I think ED went the right way with choosing DLSS. We can already have FSR via reshade, but it always introduces aliasing and because of that there is very little use for it, especially in VR. Also, DLSS approach will likely lower VRAM consumption, which could be very beneficial for people with 8GB cards.

DLAA is adding pixels too to the edges, so you will get less shimmer and a sharper picture, but it has to add pixels to work like it should. It will sharpen the picture, but the "AMD-GPU-People" will not get that stuff. The problem with the whole DL-Stuff is, ED can't control what part of the picture will be affected and how. DLXX means all or nothing, and the Producer of the game can't affect the outcome of DLXX a tiny little bit.

DLAA will modify the entire game like DLSS, the worse or better, but "half" of the community will see no effect, especially the better. How is that good? To start with, with a solution for a niche will never be a good one. And I say that as an nVidia GPU owner.

Edited September 30, 2023 by Nedum

[Hiob]

More like 25% I guess,  but whatever.

I wanted to spread some positivity not start a fight. I‘m out.

[Fiztex]

11 минут назад, Nedum сказал:

I don't think a start to cut a community into half is a good start, not at all. FSR 2 would have been a good start. 

The major task here was to add temporal information to everything, and since ED has done that I don't think there will be a problem in adding FSR or XeSS into the game later on. The tech doesn't require training any more. Probably when ED started working on it FSR 2.0 was not ready yet - it would be strange to cancel DLSS work and switch to FSR 2.0. If we go with that discussion I'd even prefer XeSS since it also works with all cards and brings better results in upscaling than FSR.

[Gipsy]

15 minutes ago, Nedum said:

I don't think a start to cut a community into half is a good start, not at all. FSR 2 would have been a good start. What is half full, if you slap the other half of the community in the face, giving the other half something good the others can never use?  A !!good!! start would have been to start with something !!all!! can use right from the beginning.

DLSS isn't a "good" start, not a tiny little bit!

"Hey, you, the !!whole!! DCS community should be happy, we start with something, "many" of you can't even use, so the other half will have a big advantage. Praise "me" for cutting you out of having this good stuff."

Yeah... half full, my fantasies aren't big enough to see a half-full glass, if the other half will stay outside the playing field for years two weeks. I want to play >>with<< them, not right from the start >>without<< them. The "losers" are divided from the "good" stuff, that's the truth. To start with, dividing the other half will never be a good start, how so?

Well I guess that we are treating this subject as if it was the begining of something rather than an evolution of something. This is not a "good start" (like you wrote), this is a good evolution of DCS, let us not forget that we have a fairly recent build regarding MT, which cater to your needs in regards of servicing the whole community. Some priorities have to taken into account and NVidia has a good amount of the pie in regards of GPU. Like Hiob stated FSR is not of the table, we just don't know whats next, the only thing we know is that this step was revealed some months ago. I mean, they told it was coming, it's not a surprise... 

[Fiztex]

2 минуты назад, Nedum сказал:

DLAA is adding pixels too to the edges, so you will get less shimmer and a sharper picture, but it has to add pixels to work like it should. It will sharpen the picture, but the "AMD-GPU-People" will not get that stuff. The problem with the whole DL-Stuff is, ED can't control what part of the picture will be affected and how. DLXX means all or nothing, and the Producer of the game can't affect the outcome of DLXX a tiny little bit.

DLAA will modify the entire game like DLSS, the worse or better, but "half" of the community will see no effect, especially the better. How is that good? To start with, with a solution for a niche will never be a good one. And I say that as an nVidia GPU owner.

I think % of people on AMD cards in our community is even lower than average due to overall higher system requirements of the genre and implementation of VR. And ED for sure has control over which objects get affected by DLXX and which not, there are masks for those kind of things, e.g. UI elements, extra cameras (MFDs in our case) - that's basically another part of game adaptation to DLXX. The fact that MSFS devs forgot to do that has nothing to do with tech itself, it's just the laziness on their part.

[Beirut]

1 hour ago, Hiob said:

They need to start somewhere, don’t they?

 

 

Agreed.

 

I've always heard DCS was better with Nvidia and that most DCS flyers are Nvidia users, so it makes sense to start improvements in that direction. That's why I upgraded to a 4070. DCS was my only concern when looking at a new card. And honestly, this endless talk about "splitting the community" is tiresome. If we want 100% equality in all things, we'll have to play DCS on an Xbox. And that would be gross.

[Fiztex]

4 минуты назад, Beirut сказал:

And honestly, this endless talk about "splitting the community" is tiresome. If we want 100% equality in all things, we'll have to play DCS on an Xbox. And that would be gross.

Indeed. Especially strange to see it from a user who has a 4090 and Pimax Crystal, which only started to work with AMD cards very recently. And there are plenty of VR devices which don't work at all (e.g. Varjo Aero) or have limited capabilities on AMD cards (all video streaming HMDs with bitrate limitations). DLSS/DLAA is simply better, and I'm glad that the best was chosen over other techniques, I'd want the same for my customers too if I were in ED. I assume ED has all the hardware data and decision to go with DLSS/DLAA to cover the vast majority of users with a significant improvement was likely based on that.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all in for fair competition, but I'm not going to suffer to prove a point and buy an AMD card for VR. Honestly, every time AMD releases their cards I want to buy them, but then I choose NVIDIA because they are just better overall for my task at that point in time. If I needed a card for 2D only I'd seriously consider AMD, but then I'm not sure that people need any more performance in 2D in DCS - it runs very well already even on a midrange card. If AMD doesn't care about me as a VR simmer why should I care about AMD and limit the outcome so 15% of people can get something too?

[Stratos]

Troop transport means ground vehicles or visible infantry on Huey, Hip and Hind?

[Beirut]

4 minutes ago, Fiztex said:

Indeed. Especially strange to see it from a user who has a 4090 . . . 

 

A 4090? I don't have a 4090.

 

The community is split! 

 

4 minutes ago, Fiztex said:

If I needed a card for 2D only I'd seriously consider AMD, but then I'm not sure that people need any more performance in 2D in DCS - it runs very well already even on a midrange card. If AMD doesn't care about me as a VR simmer why should I care about AMD and limit the outcome so 15% of people can get something too?

 

I'm in pancake mode and I'm still happy to have more performance. Some of the maps chew up the FPS and if DLSS helps, I'm all for it. 

[SteelPig]

1 hour ago, Nedum said:

I don't think a start to cut a community into half is a good start, not at all. FSR 2 would have been a good start. What is half full, if you slap the other half of the community in the face, giving the other half something good the others can never use?  A !!good!! start would have been to start with something !!all!! can use right from the beginning.

DLSS isn't a "good" start, not a tiny little bit!

"Hey, you, the !!whole!! DCS community should be happy, we start with something, "many" of you can't even use, so the other half will have a big advantage. Praise "me" for cutting you out of having this good stuff."

Yeah... half full, my fantasies aren't big enough to see a half-full glass, if the other half will stay outside the playing field for years two weeks. I want to play >>with<< them, not right from the start >>without<< them. The "losers" are divided from the "good" stuff, that's the truth. To start with, dividing the other half will never be a good start, how so?

I use a AMD card,and all I do is to shrug.
Maybe you got a little carried away? The end isn't near. 

[Fiztex]

12 минут назад, Beirut сказал:

 I'm in pancake mode and I'm still happy to have more performance. Some of the maps chew up the FPS and if DLSS helps, I'm all for it. 

I don't think DLSS will help with that, but you can check already. You can actually see if turning off MSAA helps you or not and get a rough idea on what to expect from DLAA. Or drop resolution and see what expect from DLSS. Most likely you are CPU limited on those maps though.

The biggest win would be for those who run extra high resolutions, like VR users, because pure GPU cost of MSAA on those resolutions is very high, as well as extra VRAM it needs. VR can have 50% more performance on cards like 3070 or 3080 thanks to this tech.

Edited September 30, 2023 by Fiztex

[Beirut]

13 minutes ago, Fiztex said:

I don't think DLSS will help with that, but you can check already. You can actually see if turning off MSAA helps you or not and get a rough idea on what to expect from DLAA. Or drop resolution and see what expect from DLSS. Most likely you are CPU limited on those maps though.

The biggest win would be for those who run extra high resolutions, like VR users, because pure GPU cost of MSAA on those resolutions is very high, as well as extra VRAM it needs. VR can have 50% more performance on cards like 3070 or 3080 thanks to this tech.

 

 

You might be right, I'm no DLSS expert. But I see a lot of videos showing improved FPS so that's what I'm looking forward to on some level.

 

Might be like chicken soup for a cold - might not help but it sure won't hurt.

[Badger1-1]

28 minutes ago, Stratos said:

Troop transport means ground vehicles or visible infantry on Huey, Hip and Hind?

I would think they mean visible, at least it would allow us to take troops(i guess also on player controlled trucks) without a script.

Guess they must do smth like that for the CH47 and C130. More logistics gameplay

Edited September 30, 2023 by Badger1-1

[Hiob]

1 hour ago, Fiztex said:

I think % of people on AMD cards in our community is even lower than average due to overall higher system requirements of the genre and implementation of VR.

The general market share of  team green is ~75% according to Steam statistics. And I agree that it is most likely rather bigger than smaller than average in the DCS/Flightsim community. 

[scommander2]

Hi,

I am wondering that are there the minimum requirements to run 2.9, especially GPU?

Thanks.

 

[Zebra1-1]

DLAA is adding pixels too to the edges, so you will get less shimmer and a sharper picture, but it has to add pixels to work like it should. It will sharpen the picture, but the "AMD-GPU-People" will not get that stuff. The problem with the whole DL-Stuff is, ED can't control what part of the picture will be affected and how. DLXX means all or nothing, and the Producer of the game can't affect the outcome of DLXX a tiny little bit.
DLAA will modify the entire game like DLSS, the worse or better, but "half" of the community will see no effect, especially the better. How is that good? To start with, with a solution for a niche will never be a good one. And I say that as an nVidia GPU owner.

Like others have said, Nvidia has At Least 75% market share in DCS. Outside of DCS, Nvidia is capturing 90% of GPU sales. Going off that alone, it makes perfect sense to start with DLSS.

Not to mention that DLSS is much better than FSR. At least up until FSR 3.0, which just came out yestsrday.
ED have said they will add FSR later, which is honestly better for AMD users since it will hopefully be 3.0.
Who knows, maybe even XeSS will be added at some point. The next gen Intel cards are looking pretty good based on current rumors.



Sent from my SM-S908U using Tapatalk

[Stackup]

8 hours ago, Northstar98 said:

This would also be important for the A-6E and A-7E - it would be a pain to have dedicated entries for something that should just be a loadout option.

Exactly my reasoning.  Especially for the AI A-6E since that's supposed to come this year with no talk at all about the KA-6 except that they plan to do it.  I believe the F-100 and Skyraider we're getting can carry the pod too (or maybe it's a different pod, F-100 team has said they might do it in their Discord but the A-1H guys never responded) so I would have thought they'd want it ready ahead of time while they were overhauling the external model anyways.  At least the S-3 can now refuel itself as I recall them showing the refueling probe along with the ASW boom is now modelled.

I wonder what the reasoning is, surely fuel flow is already modelled and they just have to make the pod removable and program it to only perform the tanker role when the pod is loaded.  I'm by no means a coder though so maybe it's some sort of limitation of DCS currently.

[Northstar98]

On 9/30/2023 at 5:39 PM, Stackup said:

I wonder what the reasoning is, surely fuel flow is already modelled and they just have to make the pod removable and program it to only perform the tanker role when the pod is loaded.  I'm by no means a coder though so maybe it's some sort of limitation of DCS currently.

Personally, I'm leaning towards it being an AI limitation rather than anything else.

Not only do aircraft capable of refueling need to have separate tanker units (such as the S-3) and cannot support mixed loadouts/missions (for instance, here's a picture of an A-6E with a buddy store and a Maverick, here's one with a load of CBUs), only a single, exclusive refueling method can be used per unit (which is why the KC-135 w/ MPRS can only support probe and drogue, when it should be able to service both probe and drogue and flying boom). It might also be that the AI is unable to use stores that aren't weapons - buddy pods wouldn't be the first, as countermeasure pods have been something the AI doesn't properly support for well over half a decade (even for weapons, the AJS 37 has dedicated AI-only entries for the RB 04E and RB 15F).

All of that is speculation though, so barge of salt and all that.

Edited October 4, 2023 by Northstar98

[Jayhawk1971]

Can't we just have Ground Pounder's Viper campaign now? ED has been sitting on it for what, a month now? It'll be at least another two weeks until the next patch. I'm bored to tears with DCS at the moment, I really would appreciate some new SP content to hold me over to 2.9.

 

Edited September 30, 2023 by Jayhawk1971

[Hiob]

6 hours ago, scommander2 said:

Hi,

I am wondering that are there the minimum requirements to run 2.9, especially GPU?

Thanks.

 

I doubt that they will change much. For the DLSS stuff you need a Geforce RTX of course. 

[draconus]

16 hours ago, Nedum said:

Yeah... half full, my fantasies aren't big enough to see a half-full glass, if the other half will stay outside the playing field for years two weeks. I want to play >>with<< them, not right from the start >>without<< them. The "losers" are divided from the "good" stuff, that's the truth.

What are you talking about?

With or without DLSS the MP stays exactly the same - you can play with the same people regardless of their vcard.

Consider it like a new module you didn't buy - it'll be easier to move over. You still have the option to buy nv card so it's not like you are cut away from the tech, and for sure, not from the game.

All this reactions to some future feature we don't really know how it will fare and yet with a notion from ED that FSR implementation is also considered?

Edited October 1, 2023 by draconus

[Tom Kazansky]

On 9/29/2023 at 5:01 PM, BIGNEWY said:

You can expect to see the all-new Voice Chat Radio features

The newsletter states:

"New Voice Chat features and immersive radio effects "

After that update with all-new radio features is there still something missing to replace good "old" SRS?