DCS Update discussion February 2024

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

1 hour ago, Cab said:

Interesting. I use F10 all the time and don’t experience this. 

Neither do I. But when I exit the F10 map everything is so overexposed it hurts my eyes. It takes a while for it to settle back to normal. I'd like to see that fixed 

[BIGNEWY]

Just now, Raven (Elysian Angel) said:

Neither do I. But when I exit the F10 map everything is so overexposed it hurts my eyes. It takes a while for it to settle back to normal. I'd like to see that fixed 

over exposure issue is reported I will chase it up

thanks

[BIGNEWY]

2 hours ago, Wizard1393 said:

Too bad F10 map is still unusable in VR. Still halves the FPS / makes it all juddery when going back to cockpit.

We do have a related report for this, 

however I do not experience this issue, it maybe system specific depending on components and settings

[Hotdognz]

43 minutes ago, BIGNEWY said:

over exposure issue is reported I will chase it up

thanks

Its been that way for years, a fix would be great

[BIGNEWY]

4 minutes ago, Hotdognz said:

Its been that way for years, a fix would be great

In an ideal world all issues would be fixed, but not all issues can be fixed sadly, that is the reality of development sometimes. 

[Parrotnut]

Excluding DCS folder, save games folder and DXCache ( C:\Users\Your name\AppData\LocalLow\NVIDIA\PerDriverVersion ) folder from "Windows Defender" helped my game run smooth with the F10 map and no over exposure anymore. Maybe something to try?

( Spudknocker video how to: )

 

Edited February 29, 2024 by Parrotnut

[ChuckJäger]

On 2/22/2024 at 11:27 AM, unltd said:

Great patch.  Love the FA18 FLCS improvements!  Actually damage a left gear on landing!  Bravo Zulu!  Kneeboards!  Spitfire textures looking fine!

Honestly I had no idea how much that kneeboard would be utilised.  I cannot wait for this feature to show up in other modules.  This is truly clutch in VR.

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

46 minutes ago, Parrotnut said:

C:\Users\Your name\AppData\LocalLow\NVIDIA\PerDriverVersion

Just to add to that, for AMD users the folder is:
C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\AMD\DxCache

Edited February 29, 2024 by Raven (Elysian Angel)

[Knugge]

6 hours ago, Wizard1393 said:

Too bad F10 map is still unusable in VR. Still halves the FPS / makes it all juddery when going back to cockpit.

I have this problem sometimes too. Pressing the power button on the Quest 3 headset to turn it off and then turning it back on immediately fixes the problem. However, I have to do it every time I go back from the F10 map.

[tomeye]

I have the same problem with F10 especially the first time in a mission I use F10. Watching the GPU timing in OXR Toolkit it goes from 15-20ms to 60-80ms. It feels like unloading and reloading textures, objects, etc. but I could be wrong.

I will try the above mentioned exclusions from AV.

[Wizard1393]

On 2/29/2024 at 1:50 PM, Parrotnut said:

Excluding DCS folder, save games folder and DXCache ( C:\Users\Your name\AppData\LocalLow\NVIDIA\PerDriverVersion ) folder from "Windows Defender" helped my game run smooth with the F10 map and no over exposure anymore. Maybe something to try?

( Spudknocker video how to: )

 

 

 

On 2/29/2024 at 2:36 PM, Raven (Elysian Angel) said:

Just to add to that, for AMD users the folder is:
C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\AMD\DxCache

 

 

I don't use Windows Defender, I have it completely disabled so that's not an issue for me. It seems to me that something does not "unload properly" when going back to cockpit.
But I'm no game developer so this is just guesswork of mine really.

My hardware setup are in my sig if that helps at all...

 

Good to know you're tracking the issue at least.

Edited March 1, 2024 by Wizard1393

[theropod]

I just had the opportunity to try the new update. An incredibly smooth gaming performance. Thanks for this. Flights over crowded cities on the Syria map are now smooth for me.
Additionally, buildings and city no longer reduce FPS in the Marianas map. The only problem is the trees. Flying low in forest lands is quite troublesome and there are serious fps drops over forests. I hope you fix this in the future, otherwise we need someone to make a performance tree mod. Overall Thanks for this fps saver update!

Edited March 4, 2024 by theropod

[Zebra1-1]

I just had the opportunity to try the new update. An incredibly smooth gaming performance. Thanks for this. Flights over crowded cities on the Syria map are now smooth for me.
Additionally, buildings and city no longer reduce FPS in the Marianas map. The only problem is the trees. Flying low in forest lands is quite troublesome and there are serious fps drops over forests. I hope you fix this in the future, otherwise we need someone to make a performance tree mod. Overall Thanks for this fps saver update!

I think we will see another nice bump and further improvements once Vulkan API is available.

Sent from my SM-S908U using Tapatalk

[mmike87]

I was able to spend more time with this update over the past weekend, and all I can say is, "Wow, what an improvement!"

Running a Varjo Aero, 4090, 13900K (hyperthreading disabled, 5.6GHz all cores, undervolted), and 64GB DDR5 6800 and even with this hardware I had intermittent stutters and had to play around with settings to get good, smooth performance. 

My setup now:

• Aero at max resolution, locked at 45 FPS with motion smoothing enabled
• Running Varjo foveated with 1.0/1.4 settings
• DCS set to 1.4 
• DLAA enabled
• NO upscaling
• Trees, Grass, etc. set at about 3/4 to the right
• High details on textures
• Ultra viewing distance
• Primary and secondary shadows enabled and at high!
• Clouds and Water set to High
• SSAO and SSLR enabled
• nVidia pre-rendered frames set to 1, ultra latency, and the anti-aliasing set to enhance the game settings
• I limited my FPS to 50 in both the game and nVidia control panel (not sure this is right, but it seems to work great)
• Vertical syn in-game enabled

I experience no frame drops or stuttering, even flying over Beirut on the Syria map. Everything is very smooth and consistent. There is a little ghosting close-up with fast-moving objects, but a little motion blur at speed up close is not unreasonable (or inherently unrealistic IMO). And - with all of this, I am still not GPU-limited at least according to the in-game display.

I have bumped up the PPD higher but lowered it as it didn't seem to make much difference over where I have it now. I am still experimenting with how the focus area and peripheral areas with DFR and the in-game PPD (which is applied across the entire image I assume) play with each other. It seems odd to use both ... I would think I could leave the PPD at 1.0 and just adjust the DFR, but I have yet to find a combination that looks as sharp as what I have now. It's fun (I know, I am a bit sick in the head) playing around and experimenting with all the settings. 

One observation - I have tried Quad-views as I wanted to use The OXRTK to take advantage of the post-processing and FPS display features, however, no matter how I set it up, the performance was worse and the visuals were inferior. I know Varjo Foveated is a simpler configuration, but OOB it looks and performs better. I'd like to find a config for Quad Views that works as well, as I really miss the OXRTK. 

As far as the FPS limit and vertical sync go, opinions on the web are all over the place on this. But at least for me, right now - the above settings are killing it and are by far the best experience I have had with this game in VR so far. 

[Rosly]

@BIGNEWY @Wags 
> The new scenery compute system achieved our ambitious goals of:

> increased GPU performance
> improved VRAM management
> increased CPU performance
> improved streaming from storage disk to VRAM with optimised CPU usage

Whoever is responsible for this job, he deserved a pay rise!

This is the biggest performance upgrade since introduction of MP.
Woooow! At last! I have stable 90fps in VR on any map, including low level flight on Normandy 2.0! No reprojection. Zero!
Thank you so much!!!!

 

[SickSidewinder9]

I'm gonna be honest:  I have not seen this supposed higher QA that was announced.  OTOH, I have seen new bugs, old bugs, new "features" that aren't really documented or even there, a continuing tradition of breaking something seemingly unrelated when updating the F-16, the same lack of consistency between modules, etc.  What is this higher level of QA you speak of?

PS, also seems like people are stating that the biggest performance improvements are on non-ED developed maps.

Edited March 11, 2024 by SickSidewinder9

[St4rgun]

On 3/10/2024 at 7:40 PM, Rosly said:

@BIGNEWY @Wags 
> The new scenery compute system achieved our ambitious goals of:

> increased GPU performance
> improved VRAM management
> increased CPU performance
> improved streaming from storage disk to VRAM with optimised CPU usage

Whoever is responsible for this job, he deserved a pay rise!

This is the biggest performance upgrade since introduction of MP.
Woooow! At last! I have stable 90fps in VR on any map, including low level flight on Normandy 2.0! No reprojection. Zero!
Thank you so much!!!!

 

Well, good for you!

I also experienced a fine performance boost (great work, ED!), but it's only enough to have a stable 45 fps at 80% of the time and with most of the planes on the ground as well.

So please be careful with those comments without writing the actual configuration and settings (hw, VR headset, resolution etc.) because someone would think that the holy grail has been found with this update. Unfortunately this is not the case, altough I'll expect the stable 90 fps with the new EDGE where Vulkan will kick in, now THAT would be big. But it's the future, hopefully a not so distant future.

My config is in the signature.

[draconus]

18 hours ago, St4rgun said:

I also experienced a fine performance boost (great work, ED!), but it's only enough to have a stable 45 fps at 80% of the time and with most of the planes on the ground as well.

So please be careful with those comments without writing the actual configuration and settings (hw, VR headset, resolution etc.) because someone would think that the holy grail has been found with this update. Unfortunately this is not the case, altough I'll expect the stable 90 fps with the new EDGE where Vulkan will kick in, now THAT would be big. But it's the future, hopefully a not so distant future.

My config is in the signature.

Your 45fps 80% is not very detailed either. There's always some set of options and mission/place which can put any PC to its knees. Lower the settings and you will get performance back. And I wouldn't expect anything near 100% boost with Vulkan.

[St4rgun]

5 hours ago, draconus said:

Your 45fps 80% is not very detailed either. There's always some set of options and mission/place which can put any PC to its knees. Lower the settings and you will get performance back. And I wouldn't expect anything near 100% boost with Vulkan.

I agree, sorry for the missing information. For everyone interested here they are:

Spoiler

I'm playing solely singleplayer, MT with a Reverb G2, so 90 fps would be the best solution. Unfortunately this is rarely (if at all) reachable with my hw and settings. So as I prefer the absolutely smoothest, glitch-free flight I'd rather limit the max fps to 45 (and avoid any motion reprojection) which gives silky smooth and much better experience than having 55-60 fps with hiccups. Technically my system can produce between 30 and 60 fps most of the time, with occassional 90 fps at high altitute depending on the aircraft and map.

This is nowhere near "fixed" 90 fps, far from it. Don't get me wrong: the current version with the last Win10 updates runs at 45 fps like a dream, it was never been so good. Kudos to ED!

I'm really curious how will Vulkan help by massively reducing the graphics overhead. If only the fixed 45 fps will be achievable anytime, anywhere with any plane without a single micro-stutter then I'll be more than happy. But Vulkan could be (theoretically) give much more boost - at least I hope so.

[rob10]

7 hours ago, draconus said:

Your 45fps 80% is not very detailed either. There's always some set of options and mission/place which can put any PC to its knees. Lower the settings and you will get performance back. And I wouldn't expect anything near 100% boost with Vulkan.

People seem to have overblown expectations for Vulkan.  ED has publicly said on these forums (BigNewy or NineLine IIRC) that it will be good to have, but it's not going to magically cure all issues people have with FPS.  It will be another step forward, not a gigantic leap.

[St4rgun]

4 hours ago, rob10 said:

People seem to have overblown expectations for Vulkan.  ED has publicly said on these forums (BigNewy or NineLine IIRC) that it will be good to have, but it's not going to magically cure all issues people have with FPS.  It will be another step forward, not a gigantic leap.

Well, based on the previously said information Vulkan would be more suitable for displaying areas which are densely populated with objects (like trees, houses etc.). This is much more important in VR where the resolution is higher and it's a must to render different views for the eyes.

This benchmark is 3 years old, but portrays the overhead differences between DX11 (ST and MT), DX12 and Vulkan APIs.

I know, this is not the EDGE engine, but very interesting to see the possibilities on a decent GPU (RTX 3090):

 

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

6 hours ago, rob10 said:

not a gigantic leap

Perhaps not in 2D, but for VR it will be a game changer simply because the game engine will no longer be required to render every frame from scratch twice: it will be able to skip a few steps for the 2nd “eye”, if that makes sense.

Say if it can skip 50% of the render steps taken, instead of 100% for 1 eye + 100% for the other it would be 100% + 50%. That’s already a very substantial boost right there.

 

Also, MT should work quite a bit better with Vulkan than it does with DX11, especially when it comes to scaling on large core count CPUs.

Edited March 13, 2024 by Raven (Elysian Angel)

[Hiob]

17 hours ago, rob10 said:

People seem to have overblown expectations for Vulkan.  ED has publicly said on these forums (BigNewy or NineLine IIRC) that it will be good to have, but it's not going to magically cure all issues people have with FPS.  It will be another step forward, not a gigantic leap.

The main problem people have with fps right now (I'm strictly talking 2D here - VR is a different topic), is expectations. DCS only has a general fps problem when you try to run top tier gfx setting with less than top tier gpus. In that case you're right - vulkan won't change that much. And it doesn't need to, because you can set up DCS right now on almost any (reasonable) hardware to run 60+ fps.

But right now this experience isn't consistent through all scanarios maps and aircrafts. There are more or less frequent bottlenecks, where the otherwise good frame rate tanks due to asset-streaming/AI-computing/weather-computing/whatever. And this is where vulkan (and MT for that matter) will alleviate the strain and produce a more fluid experience.

At least this is my understanding. Vulkan will not magically produce 90 fps where now is 60, but will help to loosen those clocked bottlenecks.

And comming full circle to VR. VR is a build in bottleneck for the same reasons and will therefore (hopefully) benefit in the same way.

[Droning_On]

On 3/14/2024 at 10:20 AM, Hiob said:

The main problem people have with fps right now (I'm strictly talking 2D here - VR is a different topic), is expectations. DCS only has a general fps problem when you try to run top tier gfx setting with less than top tier gpus. In that case you're right - vulkan won't change that much. And it doesn't need to, because you can set up DCS right now on almost any (reasonable) hardware to run 60+ fps.

But right now this experience isn't consistent through all scanarios maps and aircrafts. There are more or less frequent bottlenecks, where the otherwise good frame rate tanks due to asset-streaming/AI-computing/weather-computing/whatever. And this is where vulkan (and MT for that matter) will alleviate the strain and produce a more fluid experience.

At least this is my understanding. Vulkan will not magically produce 90 fps where now is 60, but will help to loosen those clocked bottlenecks.

And comming full circle to VR. VR is a build in bottleneck for the same reasons and will therefore (hopefully) benefit in the same way.

Amen on 'weather-computing'  my setting work great to get a solid 75FPS out a RX6700xt but introduce bad weather I can see 20-25fps frame drops on the same map with same assests etc..... 

[Gunfreak]

38 minutes ago, Droning_On said:

Amen on 'weather-computing'  my setting work great to get a solid 75FPS out a RX6700xt but introduce bad weather I can see 20-25fps frame drops on the same map with same assests etc..... 

Yeah same here, rain is bad, snow is even worse.