Patch notes discussion October 2023 - DCS 2.9

[Scotch75]

For me the update to 2.9 has been an unmitigated disaster. I am running a Nvidia 2070 card and the sim is unplayable due to stuttering.  This occurs in regular and MT versions. I have tried everything I can think of and nothing has resolved the issues.  I have checked, and I don’t appear to have a CPU bottleneck.  Prior to 2.9 everything ran without any issues. It seems to me that 3 and 4 series cards have seen significant benefit while earlier ones have significant problems. 

I've had the same symptoms on a 3060 gpu. I'm running i5-6600k and dedicated DCS SSD.


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[ctguy1955]

On 10/19/2023 at 10:44 AM, kotor633 said:

Holy <profanity>..,

 

 

[KCOOL]

I like VR with LOD 2, DLAA, SSS, all visual settings ultra and 200% WMR Tools. Amazing. I have discovered some new details in F16 cockpit. You need a 4090 for that. 45 FPS.

Congrats ED, this 2.9 is looking very promising. I can't wait for a better implementation of DLSS in next patches. For me current DLSS is not playable.

Edited October 23, 2023 by KCOOL

[Lange_666]

10 hours ago, draconus said:

I was sceptical on the whole DLSS thing but I was completely blown away by DLAA - total obliteration of shimmering, jaggies and alike - smooth image on the whole screen, even the hardest parts like metal fences, clouds or power lines were beautifuly rendered

That's not entirely true. While DLAA gives very good results in reduction of shimmering other stuff looks worse. There's ghosting on various "little" objects, the video posted here somewhere on the Harriers dials is a nice example just like the F-18 AA radar sweep line, with MSAA it's a solid coloured green line, with DLAA it's not, the green goes from dark to light and changes while running up and down the sweep line as it moves across the display.
So it's a trade-off (again). I reverted back to MSAA already because once i noticed all the little things that are not so good, i started to look at them all the time.

Edited October 23, 2023 by Lange_666

[YoYo]

8 hours ago, westr said:

Has anyone else noticed that you can add weather now in VR and it’s playable. It maintains a steady 45fps and stays smooth. I normally don’t run mods in my open beta but I love the new Bartek Caucasus mod so much and I wanted to try it in 2.9 because of the improvements and this is like a brand new game for me I’ve never know a DCS update to make such a difference before I highly recommend people try this along with the taz 1004 better trees V3 mod and they work so well together, it looks unbelievable, looks so convincing flying low it’s like I could see the moisture hanging round the trees between the mountains I am blown away now by this update. I think the last time I flew with weather and rain effects was Flaming Cliffs days. Thank you so much ED. 
 

No problem with textures for Caucasus of Barthek and Taaz trees, works ok in 2.9.

[jurinko]

Guys with stuttering, try fps throttling option in openxr toolkit. I meed to set mine to 90 to get absolutely smooth gameplay (4080, reprojection on, dlaa, pd 1.0, toolkit resolution 3000xsometing, g2).

[draconus]

1 hour ago, Lange_666 said:

That's not entirely true. While DLAA gives very good results in reduction of shimmering other stuff looks worse. There's ghosting on various "little" objects, the video posted here somewhere on the Harriers dials is a nice example just like the F-18 AA radar sweep line, with MSAA it's a solid coloured green line, with DLAA it's not, the green goes from dark to light and changes while running up and down the sweep line as it moves across the display.
So it's a trade-off (again). I reverted back to MSAA already because once i noticed all the little things that are not so good, i started to look at them all the time.

Dude, that's exactly what I wrote in the other part of the post that you've cut off replying to.

[BIGNEWY]

people having stutters in multithreading 

Try disabling Windows core parking ( if active), seems this is helping people, some have their cores parked and it seems windows does not react quick enough to unpark the cores when needed.

 

[Hiob]

15 hours ago, KCOOL said:

4090 users, is Nvidia control panel important or not for you in DCS 2.9? 

I know max power, but what about other options?

x16 in control panel vs in game?

Anisotropic sample optimization? Off or on?

Negative LOD bias? Allow or clamp?

Quality or Performance?

Trilinear optimization on or off?

Any other non-default setting? Do all this really matter for DCS 2.9?

Thanks!

 

 

Non-VR? Completely negligible. Forget about the max Power setting, too. The only thing you could, if you wanted to, was setting the transparancy AA (with a performance hit, but with DLAA you don't really need this anymore either).

Personally, I use it only to set the max fps. (...and I set the Tri-Buffer, but just as snake-oil. I don't see a difference). All the other stuff, if it does anything at all, is barely noticeable in fps. 

VR? Other than 2D, every tenth of a fps counts - even with a 4090. You can do all you suggested. At least it won't hurt.

[Hiob]

@draconus, @Lange_666

are you two sure, that the ghosting and artifacts are from DLAA and not from DLSS? I haven't seen anything but improvements from DLAA (yet). That is in 4K.

I firmly believed (or do believe still), that the ghosting issues and artifacts stem from the use of DLSS. I stand to be corrected of course. 

[draconus]

2 minutes ago, Hiob said:

are you two sure, that the ghosting and artifacts are from DLAA and not from DLSS? I haven't seen anything but improvements from DLAA (yet).

Yes. I didn't even try DLSS yet as I have no business in reducing image quality. Tested on 2.9 MT, VR, Syria, F-14: DLAA is pretty but the smearing, ghosting (on MFDs or external objects) and jelly effect in cockpit (like some parts of the cockpit move in different frames than the other parts) is unbearable. No such effect in AA off.

[Hiob]

2 minutes ago, draconus said:

Yes. I didn't even try DLSS yet as I have no business in reducing image quality. Tested on 2.9 MT, VR, Syria, F-14: DLAA is pretty but the smearing, ghosting (on MFDs or external objects) and jelly effect in cockpit (like some parts of the cockpit move in different frames than the other parts) is unbearable. No such effect in AA off.

Ok, I will keep an eye on it. I haven't experienced (or noticed) this yet. Maybe it is a function of GPU power and I'm just lucky.....

[draconus]

Just now, Hiob said:

Ok, I will keep an eye on it. I haven't experienced (or noticed) this yet. Maybe it is a function of GPU power and I'm just lucky.....

It might work better/differently with high fps, idk.

[Hiob]

Just now, draconus said:

It might work better/differently with high fps, idk.

Would make sense - more data, better results. But idk either. 

[average_pilot]

27 minutes ago, BIGNEWY said:

people having stutters in multithreading 

Try disabling Windows core parking ( if active), seems this is helping people, some have their cores parked and it seems windows does not react quick enough to unpark the cores when needed.

I wonder, can't Microsoft implement a real game mode that stops Windows from prioritizing power saving over 100% hardware use? Is it that hard? I'm tired of all this resistance to potential full performance in the form of tweaks here and there trying to prevent bits of my computer from going to sleep. I'll pay the extra bucks (if any!) in the power bill very pleasantly in exchange of smoother gaming sessions.

[BIGNEWY]

28 minutes ago, average_pilot said:

I wonder, can't Microsoft implement a real game mode that stops Windows from prioritizing power saving over 100% hardware use? Is it that hard? I'm tired of all this resistance to potential full performance in the form of tweaks here and there trying to prevent bits of my computer from going to sleep. I'll pay the extra bucks (if any!) in the power bill very pleasantly in exchange of smoother gaming sessions.

I have always run my machines at max power mode and with cores unparked did mine years ago and probably why I have never seen stutter in our MT DCS. I agree windows could handle the cores better, especially if in game mode. 

[Hiob]

35 minutes ago, average_pilot said:

I wonder, can't Microsoft implement a real game mode that stops Windows from prioritizing power saving over 100% hardware use? Is it that hard? I'm tired of all this resistance to potential full performance in the form of tweaks here and there trying to prevent bits of my computer from going to sleep. I'll pay the extra bucks (if any!) in the power bill very pleasantly in exchange of smoother gaming sessions.

My impression is, that windows is strongly geared towards laptops/notebooks and desktop-pc are merely an afterthought by now. Gamemode or not, they would rather have you buy an xbox for gaming next to your pc.

Luckily there are workarounds for most of the issues. Unfortunately they are usually not easy to find/do for casual users.

[Lange_666]

1 hour ago, Hiob said:

@draconus, @Lange_666

are you two sure, that the ghosting and artifacts are from DLAA and not from DLSS? I haven't seen anything but improvements from DLAA (yet). That is in 4K.

That's the video i was referencing to: It's starts off with DLSS, then later in the video DLAA.

 

[BIGNEWY]

Ghost images on MFD's will hopefully be tweaked, but you also have to understand when using upscaling you are compromising quality for performance. Using the sharpening slider can help, but you need to find the balance of quality / performance that suits you. 

thanks

[westr]

3 hours ago, YoYo said:

No problem with textures for Caucasus of Barthek and Taaz trees, works ok in 2.9.

Yeah I know. I didn’t say there was a problem with them and 2.9

[Crash *]

Great update. My favorite is the new downwash effect. Especially with the helicopters. Very cool.

The new ingame radios look extremely promising. SRS must be slowly retired.

And I notice a lot of bugfixes.

[Gianky]

Hey guys!

I have an old GTX 1070, from what I understand it should be able to use FSR 2.0, but the option is greyed out, even when AA is set to off. Is there an EDGE limitation to the cards that are supported for FSR? Or is it something else? My understanding is that I shouldn't need to install any AMD software to use FSR, is that correct?

[Hiob]

Just now, Crash * said:

Great update. My favorite is the new downwash effect. Especially with the helicopters. Very cool.

Agreed!

I would give one minor critical feedback here though, and that is that the effect is too short ranged (both in altitude and area) - especially with trees. That might be a deliberate decision for performance of course. Don't get me wrong - I love the effect and it is a big improvement to immersion as it is!

[draconus]

2 minutes ago, Gianky said:

I have an old GTX 1070, from what I understand it should be able to use FSR 2.0, but the option is greyed out, even when AA is set to off.

Are you running version MT 2.9? Check right bottom corner in DCS main menu.

[Mainstay]

I tried the parked core thing but even though the freezes/stuttering became less its still very present in MT.

For some reason the graphics,textures, missions (MP) take so long to load in nowadays.

The last few updates feel like a step back somehow  performance wise

 

Even though my hardware is more then efficient : Core I9 12900K - 64GB DDR4 - RTX4090 - NVMe Corsair MP600 4TB

Edited October 23, 2023 by Mainstay