Really bad frame glitches 5-7FPS with vsync, *finally found the issue* extended display/multyscreen and any form of vsync

[LHP]

So a week or 2 ago, maybe after the last update, I can't remember, but anyway, I started getting these really bad frame glitches, I had not changed anything, not a single setting, not anything, they happened regardless what I flew and regardless of what map I was on. I nothing I did fixed it, here's what it looked like

 

then i turned off Vsync.

 

Instantly the problem went away, back to smooth flying and frames

I don't know what happened to vsync, ive been using it for years, and I would like to use it again, but for now it's really bad.

 

I'm not quite sure what's wrong with it but it, but yea, it was causing the glitches, weirdly if I kept Vsync off and used the frame limiter we now have I do not get any issues, so it's definitely Vsync 

 

 

Edited March 21 by LHP
change title to more accurately fit the issue

[BIGNEWY]

Hi, 

please include a dcs log from a session and your dxdiag we can look for clues. 

thank you

[LHP]

Sure Thing, what dxdiag info do you want? all of it or just one specific bit? 

I have attached the dcs.log this is the most up-to-date one.

also, after many hours of tweaking I have been unable to dial the issue out, I'm open to ideas but am very confused as to what the issue is. I also grabbed this video that shows the drops that are causing this, in this video I have the Vsync on through the Nvidia control panel, it doesn't cause as bad of the the same frame drops as the one inside DCS does but they still happen. through testing I have found that these drops happen regardless of fps settings, they are just less noticeable at the higher framerates, as my monitor is 60 fps they are very noticeable around that fps setting. but still, it happens at the higher setting.

 

I have also spent a lot of time testing other games, DCS is the only one affected, all other games are smooth as butter, all drivers are fully up to date. not sure what's causing these dips but I'm interested to find out. this mission is just the default tomcat free flight instant action

 

I hope some of the information has been helpful, very intrigued to see what the results are!

 

 

dcs.log

[silverdevil]

14 hours ago, LHP said:

Sure Thing, what dxdiag info do you want? all of it or just one specific bit? 

I have attached the dcs.log this is the most up-to-date one.

also, after many hours of tweaking I have been unable to dial the issue out, I'm open to ideas but am very confused as to what the issue is. I also grabbed this video that shows the drops that are causing this, in this video I have the Vsync on through the Nvidia control panel, it doesn't cause as bad of the the same frame drops as the one inside DCS does but they still happen. through testing I have found that these drops happen regardless of fps settings, they are just less noticeable at the higher framerates, as my monitor is 60 fps they are very noticeable around that fps setting. but still, it happens at the higher setting.

 

I have also spent a lot of time testing other games, DCS is the only one affected, all other games are smooth as butter, all drivers are fully up to date. not sure what's causing these dips but I'm interested to find out. this mission is just the default tomcat free flight instant action

 

I hope some of the information has been helpful, very intrigued to see what the results are!

hello. you may be seeing an effect caused by MSAA. try DLAA. also make sure in NCP have VSYNC application controlled and then you can enable in DCS if you wish. 

 

[LHP]

Awesome I'll give that a go tonight!!

I'll try anything at this stage, haha, I'll report back if it's a success or failure and we can take the next step

[LHP]

oooooh K, update time, sorry it's been a while but I've been doing some testing, first up

I updated to the latest NVidia drivers, I was on the latest but a day or so ago they updated again, I updated because this one specifically mentioned bad vsync performance, specifically micro stutters, anyway, no improvement, vsync in DCS is still bad

however I did manage to get my framerates back, all I had to do was change some settings, I dropped the view distance from high to medium and then all of the detail sliders down by 1/4 that seemed to do the trick. I also used the frame limiter to limit the frames (duh) to 60 fps, this performs waaaaaaaay better than vsync ever had. 

now that I think about it the issue seems to happen when new things need to load in at range, maybe I need to adjust the LOD stuff?? something to try

I did try the DLAA, man it looked good and ran smooth, however, the shadow trail things were awful and I couldn't handle them so I've gone back to MSAA for the time being, at my new settings there is no appreciable performance hit, even at 4x, however, 2x will do while I'm sorting the issues out.

I still don't understand why the issue has even come around, I don't get why I've had to adjust my settings down to stop these frame glitches, it's very weird. I'm sure with our collective brain power (yours not mine haha) we can figure it out.

For reference my system specs are

CPU: i9 13900k
GPU: EVGA 3090 FTW 3
RAM: 64 GB DDR5 6000mts
MOBO:690 Series ROG
and the game and OS are stored on 980Pro M.2 drives

here are my current settings from the dcs log

    ['AA'] = 'MSAA';
    ['forestDetailsFactor'] = 0.85;
    ['rainDroplets'] = true;
    ['LensEffects'] = 0;
    ['box_mouse_cursor'] = true;
    ['anisotropy'] = 4;
    ['water'] = 1;
    ['motionBlurAmount'] = 1;
    ['BlurFlatShadows'] = 1;
    ['outputGamma'] = 2.2;
    ['aspect'] = 0.88888888888889;
    ['lights'] = 2;
    ['LODmult'] = 1;
    ['MSAA'] = 1;
    ['messagesFontScale'] = 1.25;
    ['width'] = 2560;
    ['visibRange'] = 'Medium';
    ['DLSS_PerfQuality'] = 2;
    ['useDeferredShading'] = 1;
    ['clutterMaxDistance'] = 0;
    ['textures'] = 2;
    ['cockpitGI'] = 1;
    ['terrainTextures'] = 'max';
    ['height'] = 2880;
    ['multiMonitorSetup'] = 'main setup - pilot 2k tall';
    ['shadows'] = 3;
    ['defaultFOV'] = 78;
    ['shadowTree'] = false;
    ['chimneySmokeDensity'] = 2;
    ['secondaryShadows'] = 1;
    ['SSS'] = 1;
    ['fullScreen'] = true;
    ['preloadRadius'] = 150000;
    ['scaleGui'] = 1;
    ['Scaling'] = 0.66;
    ['DOF'] = 0;
    ['clouds'] = 3;
    ['sceneryDetailsFactor'] = 0.85;
    ['Upscaling'] = 'OFF';
    ['Sharpening'] = 1;
    ['motionBlur'] = 0;
    ['ColorGradingLUT'] = 14;
    ['SSLR'] = 1;
    ['effects'] = 3;
    ['SSAO'] = 1;
    ['maxFPS'] = 60;
    ['sync'] = false;
    ['heatBlr'] = 2;
    ['forestDistanceFactor'] = 0.7;
    ['flatTerrainShadows'] = 0;
    ['civTraffic'] = 'low';
    ['ScreenshotExt'] = 'png';

 

Edited February 15 by LHP
updated settings info

[silverdevil]

16 hours ago, LHP said:

I did try the DLAA, man it looked good and ran smooth, however, the shadow trail things were awful

hello check this thread. this is an easy enough change to test and then revert.

also check that these two are off.

SSLR = Screen Space Local Reflections

SSAO = Screen Space Ambient Occlusion

[LHP]

I'll take a look at that and give it a go, looks promising!

What even are those other 2 what do they do, I can't seem to find a plain human answer, or i could just be an idiot, that's actually more likely haha,

I'll give those a go and report back

[silverdevil]

1 hour ago, LHP said:

I'll take a look at that and give it a go, looks promising!

What even are those other 2 what do they do, I can't seem to find a plain human answer, or i could just be an idiot, that's actually more likely haha,

I'll give those a go and report back

haha i feel you. i had to look for the explanation too.

SSLR

SSAO

 

[LHP]

Ok after 8 hours straight of testing, I have some answers...

TLDR: It is a DCS Multi-Threading issue/bug, 5-7FPS drops at regular and semi-random moments.

I have updated the title to reflect this

----------------------

before I go into this, the second video (one in the second post) shows what these drops look like, it happens at high altitude, at low altitude and even when just sitting at the fly screen, also it happens in MT regardless BUT is made worse when running any of the following programs

it does its glitch using,

Track ir

Helios

sim shaker.

it glitches when any one of them is active, and it does not glitch any more or less with some or all of them running.

so this was my starting point, oh also, OBS does not cause any issues even with replay buffer on and actively filming somthing

my testing was done on the F16 Free Flight instant action mission on the caucuses, my method was to start the control print screen displays as soon as I entered DCS, kick off the mission, wait for the load then wait 5min to let everything stabilize before clicking the fly button then I would fly in a straight line for a bit before beginning pylon turns, after a few reversals I would again fly wings level, the glitches happened regardless of what I was doing for the flight but seemed to be the least when 3 or 4 turns deep. I also cleared fxo and metashaders regularly just to make sure it wasn’t them. I also deleted everything from my dcs folders and did a full repair the night before starting these tests and things remained unchanged, so I cracked into it

I believe the glitch is related to loading things

 

back to testing.

first up all testing was done with all the listed programs running, and none of them skipped a beat, the only program glitching was DCS.

so I changed the priority of all of the programs, to below normal then low, with no effect, HOWEVER when I spun DCS up on HIGH priority the glitches were atrocious, fast, and often and bad

next I dropped DCS down to normal, and kept the other programs at low.

I then manually forced the extra programs onto the E Cores, I left DCS on all cores and stopped the extra programs using cores 1-16, leaving them on the remaining 17-32 cores

No improvements

 

 

Let me stress at this point that I’ve been running these programs for years and have never had an issue with them with DCS, and running them only makes the glitches worse, it does not cause them. and up until these issues started i never had a single problem with VSync or big frame drops

 

I also changed the local host ports they ran on just in case there was something there.

 

Next, I moved on to GPU settings, I tried, all the VSync settings in the Nvidia Control Panel, I tied limiting the fps of DCS, I tried limiting the FPS of the background programs, tried triple buffering etc, but no luck with any of them. There were natural improvements in frame rates, but not the glitch.

I also tried to brute force my way through, setting preferred max power in both Nvidia CP and in the Windows gaming graphics, I also tried game mode on and off. Nope still nothing

And with that, I returned to DCS, I made more adjustments, clouds from ultra to high, trees, scenery, and other settings on the right-hand side of the setting page (can't remember their names now haha) and dropped them all as low as 50%, no improvement, the frames were buttery smooth by this point however the glitch was still happening.

I tried shadows from default to flat and turned off SSS, but still nothing.

Turning VSync in game still yielded the same bad frame rates as it did when I posted this thread, BUT turning off the full screen mode did seem to make some difference to the VSync issue, not the glitch how ever.  It seemed at this point that if I held a tight pylon turn the glitch would stop happening but the second I rolled the other way it would come back hard.

The smoothest settings seem to be vsync off but limiting the frames to 60, which is absolutely fine, however, the glitch still happens. I spent about another hour messing around with variations but nothing would resolve the glitch.

Until I decided to see if anything happened on the non-MT I booted up non-MT DCS (with the last settings I had made and the extra programs running), and it was stable, it had a very minor frame wobble of 1fps, it would go between 59-61 fps in a normal way, but there were NO 5-7+ FPS drops at all. For 20 minutes, when I closed down and started writing this.

also, its of note that neither my 13900k nor my 3090 got anywhere near to being pushed at any point in the testing, temps were 40-50 for the CPU and 60-70 for the GPU, with the readout saying I was using less than half my GPU VRAM, theoretical frames were in the 300s by the end of testing

 

So there you have it, I don’t know what more I can find out about it but this seems to be an issue somewhere in the MT version of DCS

@BIGNEWY Not sure what else you may need of me but let me know, I’m happy to provide it!

 

For now ill stick with standard no MT DCS  good to have some resolution haha

 

EDIT:

 

Couldn't stop testing, but can now confirm that running dcs in NON-MT mode also let me go back up to the settings I was using before testing, and in fact even higher settings including VSync and it was running buttery smooth, with all programs running as well. locked at 60, no glitches, so its definitely an MT thing

Edited February 17 by LHP
did some more testing.. needed to update post

[H60MTI]

Good to know! I just fired up MT about 20 mins ago and it was unplayable. I played MT Thursday night and no issues what so ever. Today, garbage....And it just crashed my computer. Literally as I'm writing this. Just tried to restart MT amd my computer restarted. Fantastical....

[silverdevil]

15 hours ago, LHP said:

Ok after 8 hours straight of testing, I have some answers...

TLDR: It is a DCS Multi-Threading issue/bug, 5-7FPS drops at regular and semi-random moments.

I have updated the title to reflect this

i have a suggestion if you have a second monitor. i use this when i am troubleshooting missions. go to this site and download "logViewer"

https://www.softpagehomeware.com/

it is a German company so you may be presented with German language. Zeit, Deutsch zu lernen

open this application. there is a way to watch the log real time. put the log file folder in the monitored folder section. when DCS starts you will see real time when things happen in the background. you can also create filters for key words / phrases. i.e. error, warning, app. @MAXsenna turned me on to this and i am glad he did.null

[LHP]

Oooooooooo this looks like a powerful little piece of software for diagnostics, I'll take a look at it and let you know what's going on, going on, may be a few days tho 

[MAXsenna]

Oooooooooo this looks like a powerful little piece of software for diagnostics, I'll take a look at it and let you know what's going on, going on, may be a few days tho 

It's excellent! And really helpful! Thanks for the ping buddy! @silverdevil
If anyone's interested in some predefined filters, just shout out. Needs to be placed in app data somewhere.
That said, ED has published some log tool on their Discord. @BIGNEWY, might as well publish the link here. Might be useful to not make users need Discord though.
Cheers all!

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk

[LHP]

the issue has now started happening on the non-MT version too, I have no idea whats is going on, I'll grab that software and take a look, I'm lost now

 

went to grab it and I got this

Website blocked due to suspicious content

Website Blocked: swregistry.softpagehomeware.de

v2.6.22 | Heuristics: suspicious content

Malwarebytes Browser Guard blocked this page because it may contain malicious activity.

Edited February 21 by LHP

[LHP]

ok, so I thought to myself, I'll try it on a server as well, just in case. so..

 

this was recorded 5 minutes ago, on a server I hosted on my LAN, with the DCS MT.exe used. I am running all programs listed in previous posts.

 

I have uploaded it in full screen this time, and I have zoomed in so you can see exactly what is happening. this is probably the best example of it that I have

 

in this one you can see it happening on the menu, not as often but it still has the same drop, I'm so confused

 

 

Edited February 21 by LHP

[BIGNEWY]

On 2/17/2024 at 4:44 PM, H60MTI said:

Good to know! I just fired up MT about 20 mins ago and it was unplayable. I played MT Thursday night and no issues what so ever. Today, garbage....And it just crashed my computer. Literally as I'm writing this. Just tried to restart MT amd my computer restarted. Fantastical....

Yet we have made no changes to DCS since the last patch, so what has changed on your pc?

 

 

1 hour ago, LHP said:

ok, so I thought to myself, I'll try it on a server as well, just in case. so..

 

this was recorded 5 minutes ago, on a server I hosted on my LAN, with the DCS MT.exe used. I am running all programs listed in previous posts.

 

I have uploaded it in full screen this time, and I have zoomed in so you can see exactly what is happening. this is probably the best example of it that I have

 

in this one you can see it happening on the menu, not as often but it still has the same drop, I'm so confused

 

 

 

Some Tuning Tips below to try
 
Turn off SSAO.
Consider turning off Hyper-Threading (HT) 
Consider using DLAA.
Disable civil traffic.
Turn off SSLR.

I would suggest waiting for the next patch and then retest as we have added some optimisations. 

thank you 

[LHP]

18 minutes ago, BIGNEWY said:

 

I would suggest waiting for the next patch and then retest as we have added some optimisations. 

 

yes, this is my plan for sure  

The PC is unchanged since the last update, so I wonder if there's been an update to another program that's causing the issue? 

What's super strange is here I am about 20 minutes later (from the time of the last post that I made) on the server I hosted, with no vsync and the non-MT version of DCS and there are no issues at all, other than the vsync and NON MT DCS I have made no changes, this is just so bizarre!! I really want to get to the bottom of it just to find out what it is. @BIGNEWY you guys are awesome and you do amazing work, ill keep my eyes peeled for that new patch and thank you for taking the time to reply to these messages

 

 

 

 

Edited February 21 by LHP

[BIGNEWY]

7 minutes ago, LHP said:

The PC is unchanged since the last update, so I wonder if there's been an update to another program that's causing the issue? 

are you sure windows has not updated. I had a windows 11 update that created issues and I had to reapply my NVIDIA settings. Might be worth checking. 

[LHP]

I will check that for sure! I'll also work through your previous suggestions. hopefully, I can find what's causing it, just in case it affects someone else! again I can't thank you enough for taking the time and the work you and your team do  deep respect and appreciation 

[silverdevil]

7 hours ago, LHP said:

the issue has now started happening on the non-MT version too, I have no idea whats is going on, I'll grab that software and take a look, I'm lost now

went to grab it and I got this

Website blocked due to suspicious content

Website Blocked: swregistry.softpagehomeware.de

v2.6.22 | Heuristics: suspicious content

Malwarebytes Browser Guard blocked this page because it may contain malicious activity.

i see you have malwarebytes. sometimes malwarebytes can be a little firm. it is in its nature to be firm. better safe than sorry. i suspect is is trying to create a cookie like for language.

malwarebytes may be affecting DCS too. some people report false positive results from the security software.

Edited February 21 by silverdevil

[BIGNEWY]

it is a good point, malwarebytes have created issues in the past for DCS

[Badhorsie53]

 I play almost everyday DCS. Noticed after last Microsoft security update that I also was getting similar stutters. May want to check that also.

I had to go as far as uninstalling last Microsoft update because of several broken things in last MS patch.

Hope this helps a little.

 

Blue Skies

[BIGNEWY]

30 minutes ago, Dragan said:

When will the new update be available, I notice that it hasn't happened since the end of last year 2023, also for the stable version, the last update was on November 29, I believe it takes a lot of time, the difference between all previous versions of DCS is obvious, at least for me specifically, I like all graphic options to be high or ultra where possible, but specifically compared to all previous versions, there are various problems, stuttering when landing, in strong day or night runway light, there are also crashes, I had a few of them until now, especially during night flights, if we have to wait a little longer, that's fine, just let all the problems be fixed please...

please do not hijack someone else's thread, if you want help please make your own with your dcs log and system spec so we can all take a look. 

As for the patch please bookmark this thread for your convenience 

thank you 

[LHP]

OK, lunchtime testing done, first up I turned off HAGS through windows settings, no change, I then deleted the Nvidia cache, this made a difference, booted the pc, launched dcs MT no vsync and it was smooth as, then I turned vsync back on, and boom problem returned

Next thing I did was to make an exception in malwarebytes for the dcs folder, and both exes, this made no difference at all, tonight I'll add the saved games folder and also the other programs I use to it as well, just incase 

 

One thing I have noticed is that the drops seem to be associated with the yellow line in the performance monitor, what does that line represent? I couldn't find any notes on it anywhere