stuttering on 2.9

[BIGNEWY]

Just now, Ace5 said:

I've posted my log like 10 times on discord and everyone says there isn't a issue but I'll give it ago again.

I'm not trying be rude or anything but it's getting really Repetitive when i cant play something I've invested so much money into

I'm very Appreciative for everything you guys do and will always Support you guys, just getting a bit Frustrated with these Stutters when I'm getting 140 FPS

I understand, but if you are getting 140 fps and getting stutters still there can be many reasons for that. Again my advice is to post here on the forum with the dcs log and dxdiag, discord is great but we are dealing with hundreds of people everyday, and information gets missed in discord very quickly.

[darkman222]

1 hour ago, BIGNEWY said:

Make a new thread post your dcs log and dxdiag, it is the only way to check out what is going on. 

I have already made several threads. The issue I run in all the time is in this thread:

DXDiag from today, with the issue happening all over again is posted in the thread.

I am contributing a lot, and not just complaining. And I take a lot of time to illustrate it with a video and track.

I am just curious on how many ED test PCs issues are spotted of a planned OB release, but pushed out to the  public anyway. ED always seems to be suprised about how many people are having issues, compared to their inhouse testing.

Edited December 16, 2023 by darkman222

[BIGNEWY]

1 hour ago, darkman222 said:

I am just curious on how many ED test PCs issues are spotted of a planned OB release, but pushed out to the  public anyway. ED always seems to be suprised about how many people are having issues, compared to their inhouse testing.

How many is is subjective, from the thousands of people using DCS without any issue at all the ones who are seeing issues is a much smaller group, but are vocal which is great. We just need to see as much data as possible from those seeing issues. We dont claim to be able to help everyone, and as we have mentioned in our multithreading posts and faq MT will not always be great for every system, they may be bottlenecks or setting issues, windows issues, hardware issues, and we have to continue to tweak to cover as many of the scenario's as possible. 

thanks

[AKULA_OPTIMUS]

36 minutes ago, BIGNEWY said:

How many is is subjective, from the thousands of people using DCS without any issue at all the ones who are seeing issues is a much smaller group

Are you sure about that? Considering like, 80%? of the player base doesn´t even know the forums exist, and of the ones who do, only a few write on them, and still is flooded with 2.9 stutering issues, the problem must be pretty massive

[BIGNEWY]

11 minutes ago, AKULA_OPTIMUS said:

Are you sure about that? Considering like, 80%? of the player base doesn´t even know the forums exist

and you pulled that statistic from where? 

again I dont want to derail this thread with back and forth, the thread has already been derailed enough. 

[Glide]

Perhaps some creative testing is required here.  Does the issue occur when the merging aircraft are the same as the player module?  Does the issue depend on the size of the merging module?  Does the issue occur with merging rotor and prop modules?

Edited December 16, 2023 by Glide

[darkman222]

6 hours ago, BIGNEWY said:

thousands of people using DCS without any issue at all the ones who are seeing issues is a much smaller group, but are vocal which is great.

I surely understand that the reasons that cause the issues are various. And I appreciate very much that ED is trying to adress as many possible causes in different hardware combinations.

I have a high end system ( i13900 KF, RTX 4090, fast M2 drive) and I run it on a Varjo Aero in VR. My system is on the edge. Every minor impact on performance adds. And it keeps adding in every update.

We are a small group possibly, but I guess I am not the only enthusiast spending a lot of money in hardware, but also in DLC by ED (lots of maps, almost every aircraft) Of course our small group are the people crying the loudest if performance degrades. But we are the best ED clients. My PC literally exists to play DCS only.

The average player, who plays occasually on 1920x1080 flat screen will not notice a performance degradation of 15 %. But for high end VR users a smooth 90 fps minus only 15% = 76 fps makes it a stuttery mess. So these are the people who will complain first. For a good reason, spending so much money. But in ED products as well.

I cant believe that EDs testing team does not have at least one high end VR machine to run a comparison before pushing an update out.

Check my post history. Every update I contribute with performance info. While updating my hardware to the latest available. And every major update brings my newer hardware again on the edge. The performance degrades quicker than better hardware is available.

Edited December 16, 2023 by darkman222

[Glide]

I did some testing on this today.   There is clearly something making the CPU work when aircraft cross the viewport.  As you can see from my screenshot, it is not related to the module you are flying or the movement of the viewport across the terrain.  The spikes occur when the camera is not moving.  Some notes:

OpenXR 120%.  I set this to add additional load to the GPU, but the sim stayed CPU bound.  Note that this number is different for each card.  At 120% I still get 90fps in the menus, but if I bump it up to 150% I don't get 90fps in the menus.  120% seems to be the best for my 3080TI.

Nvidia Control Panel.  Low Latency Mode ON and Prefer Max Performance gave me that nice steady performance graph with the least amount of variation in the frame times.

Game settings.  I turned off all AA and AF and added as much eye candy as I could to try to get to GPU bound performance. The sim stayed in CPU bound performance. (I turned off Terrain Shadows at the end for aesthetics.)  The combination of the Max FPS 45 with the above Nvidia CP settings is worth a try.  I still saw spikes, but I did not see any stutters.  Of course, there were the odd stutters now and then.

Notice that big spike in the last screenshot.  That's the OpenXR Toolkit screenshot being taken and written to disk.

My thoughts right now are either the CPU is periodically building very large frames or it's going off to disk for something that's not in memory. 

[Checkmate]

On 12/16/2023 at 4:29 AM, BIGNEWY said:

The attached log is ST, I would recommend you stick with MT and try to work the issues out. 

Tuning Tips
 
Turn down Anisotropic Filtering.
Turn off SSLR.
Set Water to Medium or Low.
Turn off SSAO.
Consider using DLAA.
Set Shadows to Medium.
Disable civil traffic.

Look at the core parking tweak people are using it has helped many, disable hotplug in DCS controls, if you overclock try default clocks.

Note:
I would recommend if people are having issues to make your own threads with logs and dxdiag. 

When everyone jumps into one thread and discusses different logs and opinions it does not help.

thanks

IMPORTANT

 

First off thank you #BIGNEWY and everyone who has responded. I made some progress and I wanted to share it with the forum. I think the problem caused by the stuttering is multiple issues, I'm only going to focus on two. Forgive me in advance for typing too much, but their is a lot to share. 

When the DCS 2.9 patch was released I just assumed that the stuttering introduced was caused by the patch, but I may have been wrong. I think the 2.9 patch only brought to the forefront what had been lying below the surface all the time. First-off let me just say that I am not a programmer and these are just my observations. I am now currently running DCS 2.9 with all my settings turned back on and enjoying the sim again maybe even better than 2.8. Their are still some issues, but for me they are minor and I feel the fluidity of motion in the simulator that I have always loved about DCS. 

There were two stuttering issues that I was dealing with: the first was micro stuttering that I was seeing every second and this was driving me nuts. This is now gone. I was able to remove this by installing a piece of software called Lasso, which optimises your CPU for gaming. Just installing this software and making one setting change allowed DCS to run much smoother. I will let others smarter than me comment on what this software is doing. My understanding is that this helps prioritize threads sent to the CPU and increases the effienciency of hyperthreading going on in the CPU. Obviously, this is a very complex issue and we can't expect ED developers to understand what is going on inside everyones PC. But I would like to remind others that just because you are not having this issue does not mean it does not exist and should moderate your comments in the furture. I would also like to recommend that ED look into what the program Lasso is doing to optimise CPU usage and see if this would help with furture development.

The second stuttering issues seems be caused by what I think are texture files being moved in and out of memory. I think this problem has always existed, but 2.9 being more efficient with Multi-Treading (MT) just brough it more to the surface. I think faster PCs with faster speed M.2 drives and ram can reduce this problem even more, but it would be nice if the developers in the future might be able to find a way to improve the efficency of loading and unloading texture files. You can see this stuttering when you flying low over the terrian at 1000 ft and pass over a bunch of F-16Cs or AH-64Ds taxing on the ground. Their is an Instant Action mission for the F-15E using the Syria map called Free Flight. Once the practice mission starts turn right to a heading 050 and descend down through the clouds to 3000 ft MSL. In about 20 NM you will see Tel Nof airfield with a bunch of aircraft taxing on the ground. Head for the aircraft on the taxiway and pass over them at 500 ft. and watch the FPS graph (CTRL Pause). As you pass over them look at the graph, if you see a bunch of green spikes and stuttering then you are seeing the issue I am talking about. I realize that many of you are not seeing this problem, but I would like to know if others are having the issue in hope that we might get this resolved in the future. I do believe that Lasso has reduced the severity of the stuttering a little and I would like to know if others are having any sucess in reducing it even further using diffrent settings either in DCS or Lasso itself.

Like many of you, I have been pulling what little hair I have left to fix this problem. Yes, I am referring only to my hair and no one elses. I deleted DCS from my hardrive. Installed two new M.2 drives and reinstalled DCS on one and installed Windows 11 on the other hoping to improve my situation. Anyone looking to install Windows 11 over Windows 10 in hope of improving things should know that this is not what I initially found. Not sure why, but initally running Windows 11 with DCS 2.9 made all the stuttering much worse. I came across another thread on the forum regarding Lasso and as a desperate act I decided to install it. I am not recommeding a Thirdy Party solution here, but I did not know what else to try. But to my suprised it dramatically improved my stuttering. My hope is that others will comment here and help us to understand why it worked and to let ED know, so that they might be able to use this feedback in furture development. 

Again to summurize if your running a CPU with a high core count like a 12th, 13th and 14th Gen Intel Processor or AMD Threadripper and you are experiencing micro stuttering that nothing else seems to fix then this might help. If it does not work you can just uninstall the software. As for the stuttering caused by texture files being loaded in or out of memory, I am hoping that over time this will get better. For now I am able to fly again so thank you all for your help. 

Checkmate

 

Ryzen AMP Threadripper  3970x

RTX 2080 ti 

128gb DDR4

Windows 11

Edited December 19, 2023 by Checkmate

[Bounti30]

I don't expect big changes in the futur, for ED multithreading is a success for the majority

[BIGNEWY]

16 minutes ago, Bounti30 said:

I don't expect big changes in the futur, for ED multithreading is a success for the majority

If you have been paying attention you will see we are looking to tweak and refine as much as possible, but we will require the data to look at. 

2 hours ago, Checkmate said:

Again to summurize if your running a CPU with a high core count like a 12th, 13th and 14th Gen Intel Processor or AMD Threadripper and you are experince micro stuttering that nothing else seems to fix then this might help.

Yes it certainly seems like the newer CPU's are seeing the most issues, the team are looking at this currently. 

[Pavlin_33]

For what it's worth, in my case the issue was MT. I thought I was running ST, but I was wrong - default desktop icon always starts MT.

[Bounti30]

My intervention was not clear.
I don't think that ED is doing nothing, but that big changes are not in the future.
Indeed, what will work for some will break for others.
Small adjustments will be made but will not solve everything.
To achieve this it would be necessary to standardize all computers, systems, drivers, etc.
And that's impossible

[BIGNEWY]

24 minutes ago, Bounti30 said:

To achieve this it would be necessary to standardize all computers, systems, drivers, etc.
And that's impossible

Yes exactly, there are so many different systems and setups, software and settings that it is a minefield for finding a happy middle ground for all. But we will continue to tweak. 

thanks

[Thx1137]

I've always wondered if the efficiency cores on the newer chips could be a problem. I'm retired so I no longer bother keep up with the constant changes in software and hardware but clearly they aren't "normal" cores so they should be treated differently. If a game sees 20 cores and 8 of them are efficiency cores then can it utilse each kind of core properly? How much is under dev control and how much, if any, is automatically managed by the chipset? 

The devil is in the details. I often found that how a low level feature worked in real life was never as simple as some documentation might have us believe. And if we don't know how the system works in a lot of detail it can be damn tough to troubleshoot!

Hmm. That's interesting. It might be time to read up

[SharpeXB]

I am running an i9-13900K without any trouble or the need to tweak anything.

[vgilsoler]

9 hours ago, Thx1137 said:

I've always wondered if the efficiency cores on the newer chips could be a problem. I'm retired so I no longer bother keep up with the constant changes in software and hardware but clearly they aren't "normal" cores so they should be treated differently. If a game sees 20 cores and 8 of them are efficiency cores then can it utilse each kind of core properly? How much is under dev control and how much, if any, is automatically managed by the chipset? 

The devil is in the details. I often found that how a low level feature worked in real life was never as simple as some documentation might have us believe. And if we don't know how the system works in a lot of detail it can be damn tough to troubleshoot!

Hmm. That's interesting. It might be time to read up

Maybe you’ll find this interesting, I guess ED already read it https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/articles/guide/12th-gen-intel-core-processor-gamedev-guide.html

[Moxica]

Things that took me over the top, and rid me of almost all frustrations:
-Power management mode in nVidia controlpanel to Max performance and Low latence mode to ultra.
-Going from 3080Ti to 4090ti with 24Gb vram
-The release of 2.9 with the nvidia DLSS

Beware of the placebo settings that do nothing.
If you want to experiment, use in-game settings

Edited December 18, 2023 by Moxica

[BIGNEWY]

Ive spoken to the team this morning and in future patches we will have tweaks for how textures are handled by multithreading. Again we will need to gather feedback to see how this helps. 

thank you

[darkman222]

Sounds promising. Fingers crossed.

Are there plans besides to tweak what we already have, to split up the threads even more? In the initial MT release it was said, that currently only the graphics and simulaton thread are split. The initial MT release gave a huge improvement, which seems now to get cluttered more and more degrading performance again.

For example whats done in the strike eagle running the radar on a separate thread.

[BIGNEWY]

when I have information I will share it. 

thanks

[noisy_lightning]

1 hour ago, BIGNEWY said:

Ive spoken to the team this morning and in future patches we will have tweaks for how textures are handled by multithreading. Again we will need to gather feedback to see how this helps. 

thank you

Will any of these changed be included in the patch dropping today?

[Vigo68]

after today patch - nothing changed 

[SteelSlav]

Non-forum user here, since 2.9.0 OB was introduced I started getting massive freezes every 4-5 seconds which do last about 5 seconds each time. I've never had issues running dcs on medium-high settings, but after 2.9.0 it became unplayable. I found one way in particular to fix it and (besides installing Lasso as @Checkmate suggested), everytime I spawn in an aicraft I have to switch my CPU affinity (got 4 cores, i5-7500) from 4 to 1 core. Having done this, I enter the game back in and have to alt-tab again and set CPU affinity again to 4 cores and I have no issues thereafter, almost running smoother than I usually did. ED, or whoever is responsible for tweaking this kind of stuff, please fix this soon because one of my friends is facing the same issue. I also have a crash log from the last mission I did and if useful and requested, I'll drop it here. Please, someone help me with this programming hell.

[Flappie]

4 minutes ago, SteelSlav said:

Non-forum user here, since 2.9.0 OB was introduced I started getting massive freezes every 4-5 seconds which do last about 5 seconds each time. I've never had issues running dcs on medium-high settings, but after 2.9.0 it became unplayable. I found one way in particular to fix it and (besides installing Lasso as @Checkmate suggested), everytime I spawn in an aicraft I have to switch my CPU affinity (got 4 cores, i5-7500) from 4 to 1 core. Having done this, I enter the game back in and have to alt-tab again and set CPU affinity again to 4 cores and I have no issues thereafter, almost running smoother than I usually did. ED, or whoever is responsible for tweaking this kind of stuff, please fix this soon because one of my friends is facing the same issue. I also have a crash log from the last mission I did and if useful and requested, I'll drop it here. Please, someone help me with this programming hell.

The issue you're mentioning is reported. I'll bump the internal report.