Can we ever expect a fix for the lag that 2.9 brought to some of us?

[truebrit]

The latest update brought back the stuttering and freezes to almost the original 2.9 level, they have always been there since 2.9 first came out but improved from totally unplayable to playable but frustrating until the Feb update. Also the Syria map plays worse than ever.

Can we ever expect to see the smoothness of pre 2.9 DCS again?

 

[diego999]

This was last night. Same mission, same place on the map (Syria), same units, same settings.

 

Pre patch:

 

 

Post patch:

 

Very disappointing to be honest. 

Edited February 28, 2024 by diego999

[Dangerzone]

What video cards are you running? Could this be related to the VRAM leak?

[diego999]

45 minutes ago, Dangerzone said:

What video cards are you running? Could this be related to the VRAM leak?

 

3060ti. It's a strange issue, at least in my case, as the frametimes were almost identical in both situations, and nowhere near a bottleneck. VRAM usage was around 70-80%. Yet with the new patch I now have this horrible stuttering.

 

 

[Qcumber]

I was seeing a lot of these micro stutters after last week's update until I locked the frame rate in DCS and in OXRTK (I use VR). At a refresh of 72Hz and fps locked at 72 in OXRTK and 75 fps in DCS the frame times are a lot smoother and no spikes. This is using Virtual Desktop and Quest Pro. There is still occasional ground stutter when fps drops below refresh rate but these are not associated with any frametime spikes. 

[matze140]

I got this spikes in VR on a 4090…unstable 90 fps (refresh rate of Crystal).

Only when there is a huge headroom on GPU the frametimes are a flatline. On 72Hz mode it is slightly better.

Dropping LOT Switch factor to 0.1 makes it also better…so maybe its a bottleneck in loading things to the VRAM.

My rig is a 13900k build with 64GB of ram…so I can’t imagine it’s related to a raw Hardware Problem.

After restarting DCS several times I suddenly got one perfectly smooth session.

but after a PC restart ist back to the stuttery mess.

Edited February 28, 2024 by matze140

[BIGNEWY]

10 hours ago, truebrit said:

The latest update brought back the stuttering and freezes to almost the original 2.9 level, they have always been there since 2.9 first came out but improved from totally unplayable to playable but frustrating until the Feb update. Also the Syria map plays worse than ever.

Can we ever expect to see the smoothness of pre 2.9 DCS again?

 

Hi, 

we are not seeing the lag you talk about. 

We are happy to investigate but you will need to give us more information. 

Attach your:

DCS log 
DXDIAG

Also screenshots of your NVIDIA control panel and DCS settings would be helpful. 

 

[TBear]

This fix solved my same problem.

 

 

[truebrit]

3 hours ago, TBear said:

This fix solved my same problem.

 

 

I don't have a "scripts" folder, but thanks anyway.

[truebrit]

14 hours ago, BIGNEWY said:

Hi, 

we are not seeing the lag you talk about. 

We are happy to investigate but you will need to give us more information. 

Attach your:

DCS log 
DXDIAG

Also screenshots of your NVIDIA control panel and DCS settings would be helpful. 

 

Here you go mate, thanks. The video below shows how smooth DCS used to be for me before 2.9. 

 

dcs.log DxDiag.txt

dcs.log

Edited February 29, 2024 by truebrit
Added another log file from an official mission

[SMH]

Same here. (Reported it but the threads all got closed.)

ST still works fine. Except for the prop bug.

[Flappie]

Some things you can try to solve performance issues:

 

[diego999]

In my end it somehow seems to be related to the amount of units in the map. When I'm mostly alone on simple missions the improvements in the current version are noticeable, but in more complex scenarios the stutter fest begins. Those screenshots were taken on a populated mission, but without scripting, repetitive triggers, many mods or something you can point the cause at.

Frametimes remained low, GPU and CPU usage never reached 100%, yet the mission was unplayable. Disconcerting really.

I repaired DCS, updated drivers and removed all mods. Will test again tonight.

[truebrit]

6 hours ago, Flappie said:

Some things you can try to solve performance issues:

 

Tried everything here still the same. Thanks anyway.

[diego999]

Tested some more, and the results were bad.

Ran my benchmark mission. I made sure to be on the same spot of the map (Syria) and the screenshots were taken almost at the same moment of the mission.

DCS 2.9.3. Slow repaired version, no mods.

This is MT 2.9.3:

 

I tried 2.9.3 ST version to see if it made some difference. It did, it was way worse:

 

For comparison, this is last Open Beta version, 2.9.2 MT:

 

Something seems to be very broken. 

 

Attached diagnostics as requested.

 

 

dcs.log DxDiag.txt

[SMH]

Oh that's odd. ST still performs fine for me (except it has bugs they're no longer fixing like the warbird propellers). It's MT that's plagued with "microstutters". Particularly when I zoom my view in but generally any time my viewing angle changes rapidly. 

Another thing MT does that ST doesn't is load (and display) low resolution textures before the high resolution ones. That not only looks bad but it appears to take more time than how ST did it. Frankly I'd rather just see black objects than those low res textures anyway. Maybe it makes sense for distant aircraft, vehicles and buildings but obviously we're never going to need low res textures of our own cockpits as our faces are right up against them.

Edited February 29, 2024 by SMH

[truebrit]

On 2/28/2024 at 11:38 AM, BIGNEWY said:

Hi, 

we are not seeing the lag you talk about. 

We are happy to investigate but you will need to give us more information. 

Attach your:

DCS log 
DXDIAG

Also screenshots of your NVIDIA control panel and DCS settings would be helpful. 

 

Did you get a chance you look yet?

[BIGNEWY]

On 2/28/2024 at 6:15 PM, truebrit said:

Here you go mate, thanks. The video below shows how smooth DCS used to be for me before 2.9. 

 

dcs.log 129.48 kB · 13 downloads DxDiag.txt 119.6 kB · 7 downloads

dcs.log 112.84 kB · 4 downloads

 

Hi and thanks, sorry its been a busy day with the newsletter and late here in the UK now, just taking a quick look. 

GPU
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060
VRAM
5954 MB
Driver
551.52

CPU
Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4670K CPU @ 3.40GHz - maybe a bottleneck?

Process Lasso can cause issues with DCS MT. Consider disabling it to test 

Tuning Tips
 
Turn down Anisotropic Filtering.
Set Shadows to Low.
Turn off Terrain Object Shadows.
Set Water to Low.
Enable Full Screen mode.
Set Preload Radius to max. 60000.
Decrease Terrain Textures.
Set Clouds to Standard.
Set Textures to Medium.

In the NVIDIA Panel if you have low latency mode set it to ultra. - you may not have it with the older 2060's

On 2/29/2024 at 3:50 AM, diego999 said:

Tested some more, and the results were bad.

Ran my benchmark mission. I made sure to be on the same spot of the map (Syria) and the screenshots were taken almost at the same moment of the mission.

DCS 2.9.3. Slow repaired version, no mods.

This is MT 2.9.3:

 

I tried 2.9.3 ST version to see if it made some difference. It did, it was way worse:

 

For comparison, this is last Open Beta version, 2.9.2 MT:

 

Something seems to be very broken. 

 

Attached diagnostics as requested.

 

 

dcs.log 91.07 kB · 7 downloads DxDiag.txt 102.09 kB · 12 downloads

I would suggest renaming your dcs folder in saved games ( this will keep it as s backup )
Update windows and all drivers
Run DCS allow it to create a new DCS folder in saved games, login and reset your settings and test. 
You can always go back to the backup after, but we want to rule out any strange things happening. 

[SMH]

Why does ST run fine then? (Other than the prop bug that you refuse to fix.) Clearly we have hardware and system configurations capable of doing the job. All that changed was the software.

And, again, that low-res texture loading it does now is hideous. Who thought that was a good idea? Who asked for that?

[Flappie]

4 hours ago, SMH said:

(Other than the prop bug that you refuse to fix.)

Incorrect assumption. A fix is on the way.

[SMH]

56 minutes ago, Flappie said:

Incorrect assumption. A fix is on the way.

Just repeating what I was told. (Which was not to expect fixes for the ST version anymore because it's going to be removed entirely soon. This was the response anyone posting bug reports about the ST version received.)

Glad to hear that was incorrect!

[diego999]

20 hours ago, BIGNEWY said:

I would suggest renaming your dcs folder in saved games ( this will keep it as s backup )
Update windows and all drivers
Run DCS allow it to create a new DCS folder in saved games, login and reset your settings and test. 
You can always go back to the back after, but we want to rule out any strange things happening. 

 

Thank you. I already did that before the test to make sure there wasn't any mod, script or external file remaining. Then I ran a slow repair on the main folder.

There was no difference.

[matze140]

For me, enabling HT on Intel CPU (13900K) solved most of the stuttering and inconsistent frametimes.

I disabled it last year when there was the general advise to deactivate it. 
Today i gave it a try and it works. Maybe someone else can give it a try?!

[DrBob]

Tested some more, and the results were bad.
Ran my benchmark mission. I made sure to be on the same spot of the map (Syria) and the screenshots were taken almost at the same moment of the mission.
DCS 2.9.3. Slow repaired version, no mods.
This is MT 2.9.3:

 
I tried 2.9.3 ST version to see if it made some difference. It did, it was way worse:

 
For comparison, this is last Open Beta version, 2.9.2 MT:

 
Something seems to be very broken. 
 
Attached diagnostics as requested.
 

 
dcs.log DxDiag.txt

Turn power management to max


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[diego999]

3 hours ago, DrBob said:

Turn power management to max
 

 

It made no difference.

 

 

 

Same test, OpenBeta 2.9.2:

 

I also tried the fix from this thread to no effect.

 

 

As I said in a previous post, it doesn't seem to be related to a bottleneck. These screenshots were taken in 2D, and GPU usage was around 30-35%. CPU around 30%. 

Edit: attached diagnostics from this last session.

dcs.log DxDiag.txt

Edited March 3, 2024 by diego999