UI lags/is frozen when joining certain MP servers

[Pendragon]

Hi!

When trying to join Grayflag's server Sinai/Marianas (running server 2.9.2.49940) the UI such as the select role screen becomes really slow or freezes entirely. If I wait for 3-4 minutes per UI interaction and actually get into a cockpit the game seems to catch up again, but opening any menu, even the basic "escape" menu reintroduces the issue. I've seen similar issues on other servers with complex missions as well, but never this extreme. I experience the same issue when trying to join Enigma's Cold War server.

It seems very similar to what happens when too much work is performed in the UI thread, and I do get messages from Windows saying DCS is frozen.

I've attached a log file when this happens, and a performance snapshot of the DCS process.

My DCS version: DCS/2.9.2.49940

Specs:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X

Memory: 64 GB RAM / 32GB Swap

GPU: ASUS ROG STRIX 3080

SSD drive

dcs.log

Edited January 16, 2024 by Pendragon
Added Enigma Cold War to servers where this happens

[Pillowcat]

I have that problem too. Ryzen 5900X also btw. Described here:

for the record: increasing pagefile up to half/full size of RAM, disabling c-states in bios and power-service in windows, not any combination of process affinity or deleting dcs folder in saves with regeneration option defaults did not any good.

 

[Pendragon]

Update: this seems to at least to some extent be related to the number of players on the server. With 5 people online the UI performs as expected (except for the initial map load stutters), with 20 I get UI lag and freezes. Same results in both MT and ST too.

I've also upgraded to 64GB RAM now, with no improvement.

Edited January 6, 2024 by Pendragon

[Pendragon]

This older thread seems to be about the same issue:

@Flappie I'm not sure if you have access to the internal tracker, but would you happen to know what happened to the created ticket mentioned in that thread?

[Pendragon]

Update:
The below trick has been a workaround that sort of works for me. The freeze on join issue is gone, and in-game FPS are higher and much more stable. However, the time to load missions is up, and missions sometimes fail to load before getting to the menus, requiring a full reboot to recover.

 

@BIGNEWY I thought you'd might like to be aware of this.

It seems that HPET causes problems for DCS performance in certain hardware configs (such as mine), especially in multiplayer. This kind of problem is not unique to DCS, see this Youtube vid for some more examples of games that struggle with this and benchmarks: