Short List of things to try to Help Stutters & Poor Performance..

[The_Nephilim]

Hey all,

 

I, went ahead and put a short list together of thing we can do to help alleviate stutters and poor performance. the list is not an order of things to try, just a list of, what to try and is by no means an exhaustive list. If anybody can think of others to add I will look into and hopefully update the list but some of these are the more common things to try..

 

Figured it would be good to have a list of things one can try. If, all else fails make a post here and do not forget your DXDIAG, DCS.Log and trk files.. 

 

1. Do a Clean and repair slow, but long repair would be better, by marking check additional files..

 

2. Uninstall Mods, reenable one at a time to help track which one caused the issue. but do disable all of them and test DCS again and see if the issue persists..

 

3.Delete FXO and Metashaders2 folders. don't worry they will be rebuilt upon start of game and the game may load slower until the shaders are rebuilt.

 

4.check, Pagefile and set both min and max at 32768, and make sure it is on a FAST SSD or M.2 Drive. Not all SSD's are created equal. Test the read and write speed of your drive, sometimes the write speed is super slow..

 

5. Disable Hot plug devices.

 

6. Disable HPET, you can do this in Device manager or BIOS/UEFI.

 

7. Check for Parked cores, if they are parked you can just set your Power plan to High/Ultra Performance.. this should unpark all cores..

 

8. If, using VR, try lowering the HZ rate. Some users are affected buy the lower refresh rate.. users may see strobing in the game. sometimes it is worse then others and may take some time to get used too, Especially in HP Reverb G2 @ 60Hz.

 

9. Do not run DCS.exe as Admin.

 

10. Try lowering the Resolution of your Headset. I myself run my Reverb G2 @ 30% and with MSAA x2 looks fine to me, but I get near 60 fps at 60Hz and have very little stuttering, when looking to the side and no  stutters straight on. This is with a 1080Ti + 10700K @ 4.8GHZ, 32GB Ram..

 

11. for nVidia users set the Power management too Prefer maximum performance, and set that under Program settings Not Global settings..

 

12. Disable Hardware-accelerated GPU Scheduling..

 

13. Foveated Rendering is another thing one could try for better FPS in VR with supported headset.. it does work with a Reverb G2:   

 

 

If, anybody thinks of another more common issue name it and I will try and keep the list updated.. but these are a few of the Basics I see all the time.. one thing may help one user and have no effect on another user. it is a crap shoot sometimes and hopefully we one day can all roll sevens or whatnot lol!!

The following was for 2.8, 2.9 maybe similar

 

Minimum system requirements (LOW graphics settings): OS 64-bit Windows 10; DirectX11; CPU: Intel Core i3 at 2.8 GHz or AMD FX; RAM: 8 GB (16 GB for heavy missions); Free hard disk space: 120 GB; Discrete video card NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 / AMD R9 280X or better; requires internet activation.

Recommended system requirements (HIGH graphics settings): OS 64-bit Windows 10; DirectX11; CPU: Core i5+ at 3+ GHz or AMD FX / Ryzen; RAM: 16 GB (32 GB for heavy missions); Free hard disk space: 120 GB on Solid State Drive (SSD) + extra space for paid content ; Discrete video card NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 / AMD Radeon RX VEGA 56 with 8GB VRAM or better; Joystick; requires internet activation.

Recommended VR systems requirements (VR graphics settings): OS 64-bit Windows 10; DirectX11; CPU: Core i5+ at 3+ GHz or AMD FX / Ryzen; RAM: 16 GB (32 GB for heavy missions); Free hard disk space: 350 GB on Solid State Drive (SSD); Discrete video card NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 / AMD Radeon RX VEGA 64 or better; Joystick; requires internet activation. 

Edited November 11, 2023 by The_Nephilim
grammar

[sze5003]

I would also add if you are in VR don't have a lot of extra stuff running in the background and in your Nvidia control panel settings you should use prefer max performance for power settings and low latency mode to ultra, virtual pre-rendered frames to 1.

I'm still going through and trying to understand why I have so many micro stutters in multithreaded DCS. Hopefully will get to the bottom of it but I've tried unparking cores, disabling HAGS, optimizing my windows install. I don't get the same issues in single threaded mode.

There's gotta be a combination of settings that will work at some point I just haven't found them yet.

[The_Nephilim]

2 hours ago, sze5003 said:

I would also add if you are in VR don't have a lot of extra stuff running in the background and in your Nvidia control panel settings you should use prefer max performance for power settings and low latency mode to ultra, virtual pre-rendered frames to 1.

I'm still going through and trying to understand why I have so many micro stutters in multithreaded DCS. Hopefully will get to the bottom of it but I've tried unparking cores, disabling HAGS, optimizing my windows install. I don't get the same issues in single threaded mode.

There's gotta be a combination of settings that will work at some point I just haven't found them yet.

Well I do know one thing with VR especially the G2 is the closer you are to your set Hz rate the smoother it will be. try lowering your rez. like I said I run @ 60 hz and get 55-60 fps and it appears pretty smooth.. I will add the NVCP bit and HAGS.

[sze5003]

Well I do know one thing with VR especially the G2 is the closer you are to your set Hz rate the smoother it will be. try lowering your rez. like I said I run @ 60 hz and get 55-60 fps and it appears pretty smooth.. I will add the NVCP bit and HAGS.

Quest pro can do 72hz so I can try that as well but I've noticed the micro stutters still occur even when ASW is on and it's locked at 45fps.

With a 13900k and 4090 I should be able to use the full resolution of the headset, at least I'm reading that from others with the same specs.

But I don't want to hijack the thread I opened my own post in the bugs and performance section.

Hopefully this will be a good guide to folks that come in new and need some ideas on where to start.

[silverdevil]

On 11/4/2023 at 9:06 PM, The_Nephilim said:

Check for Parked cores, if they are parked you can just set your Power plan to High/Ultra Performance.. this should unpark all cores..

great list! Ultimate Power Plan is known to help with stutters.

https://www.howtogeek.com/368781/how-to-enable-ultimate-performance-power-plan-in-windows-10/

Quote

The Ultimate Performance power plan is designed to give an extra boost to high-power systems (think workstations and servers) by optimizing the High-Performance power plan. It's geared toward reducing or eliminating micro-latencies associated with fine-grained power management techniques. A micro-latency is just the slight delay between when your OS recognizes that a piece of hardware needs more power and when it delivers that power. Although this may only be a fraction of a second, it can make a difference.

The Ultimate Performance plan eliminates the polling of hardware to see if it needs more juice and lets the hardware to consume all the power it needs. Also, any power-saving features are disabled to improve performance even more. Because of this, machines that operate on battery power aren't given this option by default, as it can consume more power and kill your battery much faster.

in my case i enabled this pretty much immediately on my current rig i got in april 2021. i have never gotten any stutters.

[Maverick87Shaka]

On 11/5/2023 at 2:06 AM, The_Nephilim said:

12. Disable Hardware-accelerated GPU Scheduling..

Not sure about this one, this settings has a negative impact on DCS performance?
Normally it's good to have it enabled if also playing other ( more modern ) titles

[sze5003]

Not sure about this one, this settings has a negative impact on DCS performance?
Normally it's good to have it enabled if also playing other ( more modern ) titles

Some say it helps in dcs and others say they don't notice a difference. In other titles this helps with DLSS implementations.

[The_Nephilim]

3 hours ago, Maverick87Shaka said:

Not sure about this one, this settings has a negative impact on DCS performance?
Normally it's good to have it enabled if also playing other ( more modern ) titles

Well like my title says it is things to try, you would have to try but I seen all these things help some users. it is not a guarantee if you do these things it will fix your issue but the more common things I have seen over the years..

 

there are other things one could try and I think YMMV..

[KoN]

Biggest thing with DCS it's a memory hog . 

Lower textures . If running out of Vram.

Use 72hz . 

Set fps limit to 36 in openxr . Cap your frames. 

You don't need 60fps in VR , just smooth game play. 

Use CAS in openxr.

SteamVR set to auto . 

 

[Flappie]

This helped a friend today (he had 0 FPS, for real) : rename your Scripts/Export.lua file to "Export.lua.bak" and see if performance improves. If it does, ensure the two WinWing script lines are not called first.

BAD:

local wwtlfs=require('lfs')
dofile(wwtlfs.writedir()..'Scripts/wwt/wwtExport.lua')

local DCSDTClfs=require('lfs'); dofile(DCSDTClfs.writedir()..'Scripts/DCSDTC.lua')

-- load the DCS ExportScript for DAC and Ikarus
dofile(lfs.writedir()..[[Scripts\DCS-ExportScript\ExportScript.lua]])
pcall(function() local dcsSr=require('lfs');dofile(dcsSr.writedir()..[[Mods\Services\DCS-SRS\Scripts\DCS-SimpleRadioStandalone.lua]]); end,nil)

GOOD:

local DCSDTClfs=require('lfs'); dofile(DCSDTClfs.writedir()..'Scripts/DCSDTC.lua')

-- load the DCS ExportScript for DAC and Ikarushttps://forum.dcs.world/topic/337211-short-list-of-things-to-try-to-help-stutters-poor-performance/#
dofile(lfs.writedir()..[[Scripts\DCS-ExportScript\ExportScript.lua]])
pcall(function() local dcsSr=require('lfs');dofile(dcsSr.writedir()..[[Mods\Services\DCS-SRS\Scripts\DCS-SimpleRadioStandalone.lua]]); end,nil)
  
local wwtlfs=require('lfs')
dofile(wwtlfs.writedir()..'Scripts/wwt/wwtExport.lua')

This is not the first time I help users with this trick.

Back in March, I asked someone form WinWing to add their lines at the end of the Export.lua file, but it seems I was not heard...

Edited November 11, 2023 by Flappie

[The_Nephilim]

7 hours ago, KoN said:

Biggest thing with DCS it's a memory hog . 

Lower textures . If running out of Vram.

Use 72hz . 

Set fps limit to 36 in openxr . Cap your frames. 

You don't need 60fps in VR , just smooth game play. 

Use CAS in openxr.

SteamVR set to auto . 

 

well, I think you are on to something I seen this video here the original video is private but this helped massivly for me.. for VR set the FPS Limit in the graphics.lua. I set mine 5fps lower then my lowest seemed to have smoothed things massivly..

 

 

 

 

Edit: I noticed when I capped my FPS the world outside the cockpit seemed to have smoothed out but inside the cockpit when looking around in the pit seems a little stuttery.. so I guess it is a mixed bag, would you rather cap your FPS and have the inside cockpit views look stuttery or you can run full out without capping and the outside world looks stuttery..

 

IDK, I think I liked it full out.. so not sure if this is a total solution but it could help others with really bad stutters.. TheONLY time it is very fluid is when I am set at my VR Headsets Hz rate and with my gear 60Hz/FPS is about the best I can do for now.. so that is the only time it is super smooth for me.. if I dip a couple FPS below 60 it gets choppy/stutters.. I am waiting on a 2080ti which should help me keep 60Hz/FPS real easy..

Edited November 11, 2023 by The_Nephilim