New to DCS Black Shark - Intro and a few Questions

[Jazz_44]

Hello All,

 

Sorry if this is a long thread, but it's also my first one here.

 

A bit of background, I am an avid Sim fan, and I have been playing flight sims since I was 8 years old (first flight sim was on Apple IIe).

I loved my hobby so much that when I turned 13 I started to save money in order to make the hobby "as real as it gets" and at the age of 27 I got a Private Pilot License.

I currently fly a C-172 once a month.

 

I played all the major 'hardcore' flight sims to date (Falcon 4.0; Lock On;Flight Sim 9 and 10 just to name a few recent ones).

When I heard about Black Shark for the first time I got pretty excited - finally a "crazy" flight Sim for hardcore simflyers like me.

I waited a bit because I wanted the English version, and also to see how good the sim really was on launch day.

 

I don't have a lot of time to spend (I have a toddler at home) so that was another concern - I know it takes time to "know" this sim.

 

So here are the questions that will help me make the decision to buy or to wait -

 

1. How much time do you really need in order to get this thing "started" and in the air?

 

2. I am running Windows Vista 32 on a 2.4Ghz Dual Core CPU E6600; 4GB of RAM and an ATI4870 512 GPU, what frame rates should I expect?

 

3. I haven't been reading these forums a lot but can you please tell me if this sim is really good "out of the digital download (box)" or should I wait a couple of more months for the first patch to come out?

 

Thanks in advance for reading this and I appreciate all the answers you can give me.

 

Itai

[Feuerfalke]

Welcome, Itael.

 

 

1. That depends on what you mean with getting in the air.

 

From a cold-start, this takes a bit of learning and testing before getting airborne. The Producers Notes on the DCS main site give you a hint about how many buttons are needed for the full startup procedure. With a bit of training, it's less than a minute, I guess, but I never looked at the clock.

 

To get airborne and fly the things, there are a few shortcuts and options, though. You can either start with a ready helo from the FARP/Airbase or even use missions where you start in the air.

 

To operate the helo to actually keep it flying, you will need a little time of training. It tends to be unstable and sometimes pretty nervous if you're flying it at the edge. Also typical rotary-problems like vortex ring state and colliding rotors will make your first steps hard, but with your experience, you will manage this soon, too.

 

2. Your PC is pretty nice for playing DCS. On rather high settings, you should get decent framerates and there's always room for optimization, like disabling water, self-shadowing and exhaust haze (you won't see the later two from within the cockpit all that often anyway ;) )

There are 2 things to consider though:

a) your performance will increase when using an affinity-tool like DCS MAX, since you are using Vista.

b) BlackShark is very CPU dependend. The faster the CPU the faster the game, while the graphics card increases the FPS only minimal.

 

3. It's absolutely playable from the box and one of the most stable games I ever played. It sure has a few glitches and things you miss, even from LockOn, but you really don't need a patch to have fun with the game.

[luckybob9]

I only have a few mins here so ill be brief.

1) full startup procedure takes about 2-3 minutes at its fastest. To memorize the startup sequence I would recommend either watching the producer notes or the tutorial. What was helpful for me was to watch the producer note on my laptop as i was doing the startup on my desktop.

 

2) probably 25-35 on average

 

3) yes! get it now. you will not be dissapointed

[funkee]

hi dude

 

1. to get this russian thing started manually you need 3 - 5 minutes, but you can use auto startup procedure (by pressing win+home buttons) what takes much shorter (about 1 min). to learn and memorize this you will need 1 - 2 days. but dont need to worry about this because you can set the game realism as you wish, from arcade shooter for retarded children to realistic combat simulator for aces like you ;)

 

2. I afraid that your CPU is not well-matched to your graphics card, which is too fast for such processor. as ppl said above, DCS is very CPU dependend, so you will need at least 3GHz to play it smoothly. you can double your framerate by setting affinity to both CPU cores (by default game uses only one), but you need Vista x64 or Windows 7 to do this. On my E8400@4GHz, 8800GTS and affinity, I get 90 - 100 fps in singleplayer and 50 - 70 fps in multiplayer on 1680/1050 with every setting but water set to max. however, if you gonna play DCS with 25 - 30 fps, better dont touch this and stay away. on such framerate game is just unplayble.

 

greetz

Edited April 8, 2009 by funkee

[Feuerfalke]

Correction: You don't need 64bit to use that affinity trick. It works with 32bit as well, with both Vista and Win7 because they have native multiple Core/CPU support.

 

The E6600 has great potential for overclocking with little risk. I have mine set to 3.6 GHz. But even with normal frequencies, I get above 30FPS while playing which is good enough for an ego-shooter and of course enough to play a flightsim. You don't need 60FPS to play a game smoothly. Infact you won't barely notice a difference if you get anything beyond 35 or 40FPS. Your eyes have only 24 FPS and above it's mostly for smooth input, which is well optimal at 35 FPS. :smilewink:

Edited April 8, 2009 by Feuerfalke

[EtherealN]

Funkee,

 

On #2 there, that all depends on one's definition of "smooth". My laptop runs the game smooth on a Centrino Duo running at 2GHz if I use the affinity trick and don't overstress the 8600m card with too much smoke and water effects. Some of the more mega-busy maps can also be troublesome. But it'll still play above 25fps most of the time with just the occassional hickup down to 10.

 

Then again, some people don't consider it smooth until it's at 60, in which case yeah, that CPU would struggle. :P

 

Thirdly, uou do not need Vista x64 to take advantage of affinity tweaking for multicore processors. You need Vista or W7. (Though since the OP has 4GB of RAM plus video memory he really ought to look at a 64 bit OS for other reasons.)

[Yskonyn]

You do not need 3Ghz to play it smoothly and to play it on both cores you do not need Vista 64-bit or Windows 7. Please, if you start telling people stuff be sure to give the facts... This guy is reluctant to go at it as it is and now you're telling him stuff that's total bull and might put him off because he thinks performance will suffer.

 

First of all, you can just as easily change the affinity to both cores in Vista 32-bit as you can in 64-bit. And to make it even better there's a little tool you can download off these boards called DCSMAX (thanks Skypat!) which will do it automatically for you when you use that to start up DCS! Just like Feuerfalke said this will increase your framerate quite a bit.

 

Secondly, you do not need at least 3Ghz at all. I am running on a 2.66Ghz Quad Core system and can fly around pretty smoothly. Changing the affinity from 2 to 4 cores doesn't make much difference in performance.

 

Lastly, be sure to keep Water detail away from the HIGH setting as it will only maginally improve detail, but eat massive amounts of performance.

Cockpit Mirrors are something I have disabled as well, because I hardly ever use them and they are a performance hog as well.

 

DCS is quite stable and a very well crafted product right from v1.0.0 so if you're really longing for a full detail helo sim for Aces like yourself, come and join the party! :D

[Jazz_44]

Thank you all for the very informative replies!

Now that I have the basic questions answered I think I will definitley buy this sim.

I think I will frist try it without any tweaks or mods and then see if I can improve overall performance with your suggestions.

 

Thanks again and I will give you my personal "review" later on.

 

Itai

[funkee]

...if you're really longing for a full detail helo sim for Aces like yourself, come and join the party! :D

hmm dunno why but have feeling that someone have copied my post... dude you didnt say nothing new, everything was already said, so read before posting and dont spam the forum.

 

Just like Feuerfalke said this will increase your framerate quite a bit.

this is not a true. by setting affinity to both cores you should double your framerate. if not, something is wrong with your system. and I wrote only about Vista x64/Windows 7 cuz I didn't test affinity on Vista x86.

 

Besides, try to play with Track IR at 24 fps (just like "your eyes have"). I guarantee it won't be enjoyable. But who have never played with framerate 80 and more, that will never understand what's a real smoothness in PC games ;)

Edited April 9, 2009 by funkee

[EtherealN]

this is not a true. by setting affinity to both cores you should doubble your framerate. if not, something is wrong with your system.

 

No.

 

The game executable is not multithreaded so it will not run fully on both cores. The affinity just gives the Vista multicore management a chance to handle the process more efficiently between the cores.

 

It can under certain circumstances double performance, but it not doing so is not necessarily an indicator of a problem in the system.

[Feuerfalke]

hmm dunno why but have feleling that someone have copied my post... dude you didnt say nothing new, everything was already said, so read before posting and dont spam the forum.

 

 

this is not a true. by setting affinity to both cores you should doubble your framerate. if not, something is wrong with your system. and I wrote only about Vista x64/Windows 7 cuz i didn't test affinity on Vista x86.

 

Besides, try to play with Track IR on 24 fps (just like "your eyes have"). I guarantee it won't be enjoyable. But who have never played with framerate 80 and more, that will never understand what's a real smoothness in PC games ;)

 

1. You can read in numerous threads that it works with all OS after XP, on some configs even with XP.

2. The framerate is not doubled. Nobody stated that. At most it's nearly doubled, because the second core is not always fully working as DCS is not a native multithreading software. The more cores you use, the less you will benefit from the additional cores.

That is also stated in numerous threads.

3. If you quote me, please do it correctly: Your eyes can process 24 FPS, 35-40 FPS are needed for smooth play. But even with TrackIR you won't note a difference between 40 and 400 FPS. :smilewink:

[Yskonyn]

(...) Your eyes can process 24 FPS (...)

 

That's not entirely true. ;) I found a nice little page to offer some cool reading into the issue.

 

http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm

 

It all depends and as our eyes are not some technical instrument there's no telling how many FPS we can process. It depends on factors and the way we process the data in our brain. :)

Interesting isn't it?

[Feuerfalke]

That's not entirely true. ;) I found a nice little page to offer some cool reading into the issue.

 

http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm

 

It all depends and as our eyes are not some technical instrument there's no telling how many FPS we can process. It depends on factors and the way we process the data in our brain. :)

Interesting isn't it?

 

Inconclusive.

 

The tests are very theoretical, especially those based on light and darkness. How many times do you have a fullscreen black-white-black-flicker ingame?

 

Modern TFTs have reaction times of about 5ms. Those values are artificial, though. The original test-parameters stated, that the time was taken from 95% black to 95% white and back. As the wanted times were not reached, manufacturers decreased the values freely from 80 to 60%. That means 5ms may be from 60% white to 60% black and back.

 

In laboratory tests reaction times are about 25ms still, though some try to overcome physical limitations with electronic workarounds that in the end cause additional artifacts.

 

Long explanation short: A decent TFT is able to show 40FPS, a good conventional monitor about 80FPS. Anything above is blured by afterglowing, slow-reaction times and of course blinding effects to the eyes, from those nerds who use the monitor with 100% contrast.

 

So while your link and the explanations are true in theory, it is not true for reality. You simply have no fully accurate pictures without blur. Additionally most users have antialiasing enabled to blur edges, decreasing the described effect drastically and modern games also use motion bluring and other blur and shining effects.

 

But of course nVidia, AMD/ATI and INTEL are very happy, if you believe in the link posted. :smilewink:

[Jigsaw]

Welcome! You already have gotten quite a few answers but I give you my input anyway ;)

 

1. How much time do you really need in order to get this thing "started" and in the air?

 

If you mean the time to learn it, I needed about three hours to familiarize myself with the systems and to learn the startup procedure by heart. But I already had lots of chopper experience with Longbow, so flying this thing wasn't a problem. And of course the production note videos helped a lot. I'm a visual learner and I memorize things best when I see them, instead of reading about them.

 

And about the startup procedure itself: I timed it yesterday. I needed 2 minutes and 46 seconds from flipping the first switch to lifting it into the air and retracting gears at full combat readyness. Most of the startup time is used up by spooling up the APU and the engines and by waiting for the HUD to get ready. That can't be accelerated. In the meantime you have plenty of time to activate the other systems while keeping an eye on the RPM and temperatures.

 

 

2. I am running Windows Vista 32 on a 2.4Ghz Dual Core CPU E6600; 4GB of RAM and an ATI4870 512 GPU, what frame rates should I expect?

I'm running WinXP on an AMD 3.2 GHz Dual Core with 2GB of RAM and an Ati 3850 512 GPU. I get smooth frame rates (25+) pretty much all of the time, at max details and 1920x1200 resolution. During some missions with lots of units on the battlefield I get little loading freezes once in a while. But they aren't too bad and gone pretty quickly.

 

 

3. I haven't been reading these forums a lot but can you please tell me if this sim is really good "out of the digital download (box)" or should I wait a couple of more months for the first patch to come out?

In over 30 hours logged in the game, I only had one crash to desktop, which probably was a result of my video card getting too hot (I have to clean it from dust). Otherwise this is probably one of the most bug free pieces of software I ever had the pleasure to deal with, which is remarkable considering the complexity of it.

[funkee]

...I found a nice little page to offer some cool reading into the issue...

...Interesting isn't it?

 

really interesting Yskonyn, thank you for that helpful page ;)

 

If you quote me, please do it correctly: Your eyes can process 24 FPS, 35-40 FPS are needed for smooth play

 

hehe, first you write 35 fps is optimal, now 40... decide dude. you don't quote correctly even your own :)

 

The framerate is not doubled. Nobody stated that.

 

I stated it :) If you don't believe, I can post the screenshots. And of course you can note a difference between 40 and 400 FPS, unless you are blind and/or need a new glasses :D

Edited April 9, 2009 by funkee

[EtherealN]

Funkee, you stated that unless someone gets double framerate from going affinity-tweaked there's something wrong with the system. That's a [citation needed] right there.

 

In fact, people should not expect twice the framerate from affinity on a dualcore, because the code is not multithreaded. To even start expecting something like that it would have to be multithreaded.

 

That you may have gotten a double FPS does not mean that people who doesn't get it should start looking for broken components or system "problems".

[Jigsaw]

Hehe, yeah. Maybe HE should look for a problem when running single core affinity. ;)

 

I certainly don't get twice the frame rates. But they were pretty good to begin with.

[Yskonyn]

Inconclusive.

 

:D Isn't that the outcome of the whole article itself? It exactly states the same! ;)

 

[self pat mode]Yay! 100th post![/self pat mode]

[Feuerfalke]

:D Isn't that the outcome of the whole article itself? It exactly states the same! ;)

 

[self pat mode]Yay! 100th post![/self pat mode]

 

LOL - that's what I wanted to point out ;)

 

 

 

What good is an evidence for an argument, if the article itself comes to the conclusion that even the testbasis and the relation to the actual game is inconclusive. :D

 

 

@funkee

I wrote 35-40. The original statement is still there. You're free to re-read.

Just don't take a false quote for what I originally stated, mate ;)

 

 

Glasses are not needed for 400 FPS. If you'd said that it is a difference in terms of input resolution, I would have at least partially agreed, but your monitor and your graphics-card won't even show 400FPS. :P

 

Can you please post the screenshots with your FPS doubled + system information and test basis? I bet there are many people on this board wanting to do the same with their own PCs, me included. Remember, even RiseOfFlight, which is a multithreaded software does not run 100% faster per additional core assigned. How should DCS be, which is not even rigged for that technology?

[Yskonyn]

Ah now I see what you mean, Feuerfalke, but I think the article shows the relativity of the issue very well, thus supporting my statement of the fact that you can't just say how many frames per second would be ideal for any given game (or other application in general).

 

How the inner workings are regarding fps and the processing of the eye/brain, in fact, I don't know and was not my point to show either.

 

Good point though! ;)

[funkee]

Hehe, yeah. Maybe HE should look for a problem when running single core affinity. ;)

 

you got it Jigsaw :)

 

single core affinity:

http://img206.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dcs2009040812333907.jpg

dual core affinity:

http://img206.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dcs2009040812354588.jpg

 

I just took these screenshots at all max settings but water (medium), AAx2, AFx16 and resolution 1680/1050.

anyone experience the same performance with dual core affinity? or maybe my CPU is just special? :D

 

btw Feuerfalke:

...it's mostly for smooth input, which is well optimal at 35 FPS. :smilewink:

 

you said 35 not 40, don't fool :P and plz dont tell me there is no difference between 40 and 400 or even 80 fps, and that monitor can't show it, cuz this is a bull shit :) but if you guys never experienced such framerate, what can you know about this? first try, then post.

Edited April 9, 2009 by funkee

[Feuerfalke]

Your FPS did not double. 2x65 = 130 FPS.

 

Not even in this barely representive test-basis, with nothing but flat environment in visible range ;)

 

Why not post the full statement? Of course you can still pick out the sniplet, which suits your argument best.

The E6600 has great potential for overclocking with little risk. I have mine set to 3.6 GHz. But even with normal frequencies, I get above 30FPS while playing which is good enough for an ego-shooter and of course enough to play a flightsim. You don't need 60FPS to play a game smoothly. Infact you won't barely notice a difference if you get anything beyond 35 or 40FPS. Your eyes have only 24 FPS and above it's mostly for smooth input, which is well optimal at 35 FPS.

Well then, let's get back on topic, shall we? Edited April 8, 2009 by Feuerfalke

[EtherealN]

We should, but I just ran some tests to doublecheck and thought I'd share them first. >.<

 

Test premise is that there are some programs in the background (Windows Mail, Steam, FRAPS, and a few tray icons. They're all kept equal between the tests), and I run FRAPS benchmarking for one minute in the Instant Action, where I just initiate a rightwards rotation and maintain that until the benchmark is complete.

 

AA 16x and AF 16x are forced by nHancer. First two also have V-sync forced by nHancer. (I use that due to getting tearing with the TrackIR, the tests do not have TrackIR running though.)

 

#1, no affinity:

MinFPS: 29

MaxFPS: 62

AvgFPS: 54.1

 

#2, affinity set:

MinFPS: 58

MaxFPS: 62

AvgFPS: 59.9

 

#3, no affinity set, no v-sync:

MinFPS: 43

MaxFPS: 65

AvgFPS: 55.817

 

#4, affinity set, no v-sync:

MinFPS: 68

MaxFPS: 111

AvgFPS: 80.383

 

Some interesting data to collect from that, I must say, but as you said Feuerfalke, this isn't quite the topic of the thread.

[funkee]

lol... this is almost 130 fps (without 9). who said it must be exactly 2x more? it may be 10 fps less, 10 more, but all this is about twice. I took screenshots from training mission cuz that was fastest. In more demanding environment I got relatively less fps, but still almost or exactly double than single core affinity.

 

If you'd said that it is a difference in terms of input resolution, I would have at least partially agreed, but your monitor and your graphics-card won't even show 400FPS. :P

 

input, output... blablabla :P this is all theory. in practice you can easily see a difference between each 10 fps (especialy at low framerates), and ppl pay hundreds buying new GPU's even for that 10 fps gain. why? because more fps, the more comfortable and enjoyable is your game.

Edited April 8, 2009 by funkee

[funkee]

Well then, let's get back on topic, shall we?

 

sure. backing to our topic, there are a few more things Itael need to know before he buy the game. you guys probly won't like it but I dont care :)

 

well, there is a huge sound problem in Blackshark, especially (or maybe only) with Realtek sound cards: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=40212. game sound engine is just bugged (like was in LockOn) and probly this will not be fixed in upcoming patches. you can read about it arrount the forum.

 

another issue is limited a number of activations. so if you f.e. reinstall your O/S often, or lose your registry data, you may have problem with getting the game to work in a future.

 

the 3rd thing is that Kamov implemented in game has no any natural air opponent (such like AH64 or any NATO combat aircraft), what makes the game unrealistic (Kamov vs Kamov?) and boring. thats all translate to playbility and number of players on the servers (about 30 was the most I've seen).

 

sorry for honesty ;)

Edited April 8, 2009 by funkee